Plague Zone

it.

After she dressed, she told them about Kendra Freedman and the message in the nanotech, but Walls just shook his head. “I don’t know if there’s anything we can do about that right now,” he said.

“Freedman could stop the plague!”

“We’ll talk about it. But let’s get moving.”

Sergeant Huff and three men were left behind with the Ford Expedition to drive north, where Agent Rezac had placed the fallen plane. Ruth wondered at their chances. Walls should have sent a larger force, but Huff expected to go most of the way on foot, hiking into the ravines where the IL-76 had gone down, and Walls couldn’t afford to give up more of his few remaining air tanks.

Lieutenant Pritchard was the commando assigned to Huff’s empty seat inside Foshtomi’s Humvee, probably because Walls wanted to make certain he controlled the vehicle. Foshtomi had challenged him once, if slightly — and Walls must remember how Ruth had betrayed them before. Pritchard was his enforcer.

Like Walls, Pritchard had given up his suit. Ruth was the only one in the vehicle who sat awkwardly, trying to make room for her air tanks, sealed off from everyone else.

Ash swirled up from the road as they drove. Ruth was allowed to call Deborah to quiz her about her equipment, which was good, and the progress she’d made, which was zero. The other woman, Emma, was only another medical officer like Deborah. Neither of them had any nanotech skills. The brief exchange left Ruth disheartened. They were done in two minutes and weren’t given the opportunity for more personal words. Walls demanded radio silence.

Ruth turned to Pritchard. “How did you decontaminate these suits?” she asked — anything to divert herself. She was wasting too much energy on recrimination and guilt. She needed to hear that they could keep her friends safe. “How much radiation were you taking?”

“Nothing,” Pritchard said. “Millirems.”

“So the blanket’s no good at a distance.”

“Two or three inches. Maybe four.”

“I thought we’d made more progress with OECs,” Ruth said, but Pritchard only grunted.

“What are you talking about?” Cam said.

“Open environmental countermeasures. During the plague year, we tried everything we could think of to stop nanotech, including beta emitters like Cobalt-60.” She saw his confusion and said, “Radioactive material. The idea was that you could carry an OEC with you like a beacon. Anyone within range of it would be safe.”

“Except for the radiation,” Cam said.

“Right.” Ruth hesitated. Radiation sickness had become less of a problem after Leadville’s science teams developed the booster nanotech, which provided a low, steady level of protection. The booster would help them against the fallout, and Ruth wondered if it made sense to try a larger radioactive source. “Even a medium dose would be better than dying right away or losing your mind,” she said.

Cam nodded. “How does that blanket work?”

“Smoke detectors have a bit of Americium-241 inside,” Pritchard said, staring outside as they passed another camp of infected people. “It emits alpha particles into an ionization chamber. If you obstruct it with smoke, the alpha flux drops and the alarm goes off. Complex 3 was full of ‘em. Cut away the shielding and you have a very small radiation flashlight.”

“Why didn’t they tell us? Ruth? Why didn’t you tell us? We could have had a bunch of these things.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Cam, I consulted on large-scale OECs, but I never knew how smoke detectors work until Pritchard told us.” And now it’s too late, she thought. How many stockpiles were never utilized because we’ve been too busy growing food or arguing politics with ourselves?

“What do you mean by large-scale?” Foshtomi asked. “Like more bombs?”

“Yes. But what’s the point? We talked about laying down huge sterilized areas with nuclear waste, too, but no one could stay there. They tested it in parts of Denver and Phoenix just to give scavenging efforts more time, but then we were losing people and supplies in a different way.”

“So the fallout is a good thing as far as we’re concerned,” Foshtomi said. “It might hurt the plague.”

“Yes. That’s one reason why we used to be safe in the mountains. The atmosphere’s thinner, so we got more UV. A lot of ultraviolet is hard on nanotech.”

“The machine plague self-destructed at altitude,” Cam said.

He was still angry, so Ruth’s tone was cautious. “That’s what happened above the barrier,” she said, “but sometimes we gained some extra room because nanobots are delicate little fuckers. They burn easily.”

People forgot that nanotech was man-made, whereas living things were the result of two billion years of evolution and had learned ways to heal that nanobots couldn’t mimic. Not yet. They wouldn’t need a great leap from existing replication keys to self-repair mechanisms. It was only one more program to develop — but it would slow both plagues and vaccines.

Self-repairing nanotech would be more durable but less volatile. That was why it hadn’t happened yet, which was fortunate. Otherwise an OEC might not work at all.

“Viruses can be killed by a few hundred radioactive impacts,” Ruth said. “Nanobots are probably disabled by no more than five or ten. Imagine a well-made watch being shot by a dozen BB guns. Something inside it’ll break.”

“So we should be driving up again,” Cam said. “Not down.”

“It’s like nighttime with the smoke,” Foshtomi said. “We’re not getting any UV today.”

“But it’ll clear. We could—”

“Hey,” Pritchard said. “This isn’t open for discussion. General Walls knows where he’s going.”

“Ruth?”

“Let’s see what they’ve planned,” she said. “Okay? If we can get the new vaccine, that’s a thousand times better than hoping there’ll be enough sun tomorrow to make a difference.”

Cam nodded, but she was afraid of his silence. So was Pritchard. The USAF lieutenant turned in his seat and said, “You with me on this, Najarro? We follow orders.”

“Yes, sir,” Cam said.

Ruth would have touched his leg if she wasn’t in the suit, because it wasn’t fair that she was safe and he wasn’t. She wanted to take it off because she wanted to share his fate, but she knew that would be stupid and disrespectful. Everyone had sacrificed too much for her to reject the thin, temporary luck of her suit.

Then her frustration became something darker. A chill drew up her spine like one slow finger and Ruth tried to ward off the premonition, bowing her head inside her helmet to pray. Oh please, God, don‘t, she thought.

She’d remembered her dream of losing Cam. Was it an omen? Ruth did not believe a higher power was on her side. No one was handpicked for glory or salvation. That was obvious. Their losses were horrific. So were their mistakes. There certainly wasn’t a big white Zeus in the sky who favored them over anyone else. To think otherwise was simplistic, even stupid. They made themselves what they were — hero, villain, bystander, linchpin — even as they were influenced by everything around them. The world was always in flux. That was destiny. Ruth had utter faith in the laws of probability, and each step she took was like a promise, leading her in one direction or another. She knew her subconscious often grasped things ahead of her waking mind. Was there a pattern she should have seen? Or was it simply that in a bad situation, she knew Cam would give his life to save hers?

She needed to be ready to stop him.

20

Their convoy decelerated suddenly as they came around a bend in the highway. Ruth looked up, expecting trouble. They’d arrived at the depot and their four vehicles split into pairs to cover the road from both