Plague Zone

Ruth saw they’d lost more people. There were six men and women on the ground between the huts, plus, farther out, Michael and the sprawled corpses of Tony, Allison, and the old woman. She didn’t see the man who’d been shot by Denise. They must have carried him away along with any other uninfected casualties. Were more people hurt? At least 20 percent of the village had been incapacitated or killed and Ruth moved slower than she wanted, devastated by the scene.

Some of the figures closest to her were probably dead, too. Even in the sporadic light, she could see head wounds where they’d been beaten. One of them was Denise, her skull blasted open beneath her dark hair. Another of the crumpled figures was still alive, straining for air through a throat obstructed by blood or dirt. His breath came in hoarse gasps.

Was it possible Allison was also alive? Cam must have been clinging to the belief that she could be saved — but if she was, she’d sustained horrible injuries to her mouth and one hand. Ruth would be surprised if Allison hadn’t also experienced a massive stroke, and their medical abilities were limited to setting broken bones or helping women through childbirth. Even the doctors in Morristown might not be able to perform the surgeries Allison would require.

Please be dead, Ruth thought, closing her eyes against her grief. But she couldn’t ignore the doubt she also felt. Do I want her to be dead?

“There has to be something we can do!” Cam shouted.

“We can’t let them get up again,” Greg said as another man drew his pistol and a third turned away from Cam.

“Enough,” the third man said. “Let’s do it.”

Cam grabbed his arm. “No.”

The debate might have been harder because most of their faces were wrapped in goggles and masks. They were friends, but their armor was another layer between them, like the darkness, their guilt, and their fear.

“Wait!” Bobbi said. “Wait. Look!”

Some of the flashlights came around, playing on Ruth’s suit. “I can do it,” she called through her brightly lit faceplate. “I can take care of them.”

“Ruth,” Cam said, desperate with relief.

She was glad, faintly, but she couldn’t forget that she had been the first to start shooting. What if there had been another way? Could they have subdued Tony and the old woman without killing them? Denise would still be alive, too.

Ruth was afraid of walking into the field of bodies alone. What if they woke up? She might tear her gloves or her sleeves when she tried to carry them. The suit wasn’t designed for heavy labor, much less for combat — but she couldn’t leave those people to die.

“We’ll use my cabin to hold them,” she said, “but I need help. Rope. Water.” Her windows and doors were bug-proofed, but those seals wouldn’t hold nanotech. “Get me as much plastic sheeting as we have.”

“Tear down Greenhouse 4,” Cam said, shoving at the man who’d drawn his gun. “Go.”

Maybe they still could save most of their friends.

Ruth went to Allison first, sidestepping Linda and Doug. She should have tied some of the unconscious men and women before doing anything else — she had a bit of duct tape left after sealing her gloves to her sleeves — but she was drawn to her longtime foe. She told herself it was because Allison was pregnant, but the girl was dead, her crimson eyes bulging from the pressure of some intracranial rupture.

Whatever the nanotech is doing, the process doesn’t always work, she thought, taking the only lesson she could from Allison’s death.

Somewhere in her sadness, Ruth was also comforted. It was a backward sort of feeling, as if she’d lost a burden she would have preferred to keep, but she couldn’t imagine this bright young woman living with her hideously chewed mouth, especially if her mind was gone.

Ruth had wanted to hold Cam’s baby even more than she’d realized, and her hand paused above Allison’s belly. But no. No. Stay with your mother, she thought, weeping inside her helmet. They lacked the technology to care for a premature birth. Even before the machine plague, saving a fetus early in its second trimester would have been remarkable. Today, it was impossible — so they’d lost the child, too.

I can’t let Cam see her like this, she realized, pressing her glove to Allison’s swollen face. She turned the girl’s head and hid her partly in her jacket hood. Now her tears were hot and thick and she tried to wipe her eyes, which was stupid. It would have infected her if she got inside her helmet. Instead, she only smeared blood and dust across her faceplate.

Her voice broke when she called back to the stabbing flashlights. “Allison’s dead. So is Tony. And the stranger. Michael’s alive.”

“You better hurry,” Greg yelled back. “Linda’s starting to move her arms.”

Ruth walked toward the lights again. Greg, Cam, and another man had stayed to hold three beams on her. Deeper in the village, other flashlights and lanterns swarmed. Then she knelt beside Linda Greene, who was weakly stretching her arms as if dreaming. Ruth pulled Linda’s wrists together and secured them with duct tape, binding the other woman like a criminal.

What’s happening to you? she wondered.

4

Doug Tillman quit breathing before Ruth got to him, and Martha Shemitz had a broken neck. The other four were still alive. Michael had lost some teeth and Ruth tried to staunch the gash on his chin, tying Doug’s shirt around Michael’s head as a crude bandage. Andrew also seemed unlikely to recover, his scalp split in two places where he’d been beaten.

Meanwhile, both Linda and Patrick woke up. Linda was agitated, grunting and shuffling on the ground as she fought her bonds. In contrast, Patrick nearly seemed lucid. He trembled, but he was silent, blinking his distorted eyes. Ruth also noticed a recurrent tic in his cheek. What did he see? Was he feeling nonexistent stimuli like cold or heat? Itching?

“You need to get out of here,” she called to Cam. “Leave everything inside my place. I’ll seal the doors and windows.”

“Ruth,” he said distantly.

“Get out of here.”

“Ruth, how long can you breathe in that suit?”

That was the least of her worries. She should be able to swap out her air tanks without contaminating herself, so dehydration became the greater threat. Even though it was made for a much larger man, her suit was like wearing an individually sized sauna. Already she could smell her own sweat, and she’d forgotten to drink her fill before she suited up. In the short term, that was fine. The suit had no sanitary features, so if she had to go to the bathroom, it would run down into her boots, but ultimately the water problem meant that Ruth only had hours, when she might need days to take care of these people and to study them.

She wanted to go to him. She knew she couldn’t.

“Leave me a walkie-talkie and a pistol,” she said. “Make sure I have lots of tape.” I love you, she added to herself. Be careful.

She was stunned when Cam echoed the thought exactly.

“Be careful,” he said.

“Yes.”

He set his weapon beside his flashlight, near her door, where the others had stacked plastic sheeting, rope, tape, batteries, a med kit, and jugs of water. Someone had lit two kerosene lanterns for Ruth, leaving one in the open, the other inside her hut. The bandages and the water were for the people she hoped to save, but already her mouth was dry. Stop crying, she thought, summoning a grim resolve from within. She was alone. That was the truth.

Ruth dragged Linda inside first, cracking the woman’s head against the doorframe when she jerked and