Jefferson belonged to the infected.
“Run through the greenhouse,” Cam said, gesturing with his entire body against Ingrid. Greenhouse 2 was upwind of David, if that mattered. Every breath was a gamble. The air must be streaked with nanotech.
“Go!” Greg said. “Ingrid, go. I got him.”
She stepped over the foundation wall, ducking one of the crossbeams that had supported the plastic. Instead of running ahead, though, she turned with her M16. There were more silhouettes to their left, bumbling through the space between Greenhouses 1 and 2. In a moment, they would be cut off.
Cam heaved his legs over the foundation wall as Ingrid took aim.
Chik kik.
She was empty. “Idiot,” she said, fumbling a new magazine from her jacket as she backpedaled through the low, broad planters, still soft and green with seedlings.
Greg and Cam outpaced her before she opened fire. Muzzle flashes danced over the posts and crossbeams, throwing shadows like crucifixes on the surface of Greenhouse 1. Someone howled. Most of the others tumbled in silence. Then another gun fired from the jeeps, supporting Ingrid. Cam recognized the chatter of an M4. A pistol barked, too, punctuating the lighter, popping noise of the carbine. At least two other villagers had survived, and Cam lunged forward with Greg, buoyed by a new surge of hope.
“This way!” a woman hollered.
They fell out of the back of the greenhouse. Greg staggered to his feet but Cam’s right arm wouldn’t work. He could only push himself onto his hurt side. His thoughts were short and confused.
Get up. Get up.
“Cam!” Ruth yelled. She stood over him with her hand thrust out, squeezing off three rapid shots from her 9mm Beretta. He thought he was dreaming.
Somewhere the M4 blazed again on full auto, running through an entire clip in seconds. Spent cartridges rang against the bumper of a jeep. Cam felt himself dragged against the vehicle’s fender, which was alive in a way that the ground was not. The jeep rocked violently as someone climbed in. The engine was idling, too, a low, bass grumble.
“Help me!” Greg shouted, heaving Cam upright. Ruth lowered her pistol and shoved her free hand against Cam’s stomach. Together they levered him into the back of the jeep, where Bobbi knelt with the M4, reloading.
“You crazy—” Cam said in admiration before he ran out of breath.
Crazy goddamn females,
he thought. Ruth and Bobbi had disobeyed him, running for the jeeps instead of entering the sealed huts like he’d told them.
It had saved their lives.
“Is there anyone else!?” Ruth yelled.
“No, they’re gone,” Ingrid said.
“But I saw—”
“They’re gone!”
Something was wrong with Bobbi’s carbine. Probably it had jammed. The M4 was prone to seizing on full auto, and Bobbi threw it down and lurched into the driver’s seat as Ingrid heaved herself in beside Cam. They had almost nothing else besides another carbine and a backpack. Cam didn’t see the Harris AN/PRC-117.
“The radio,” he gasped.
Bobbi said, “Susan fought us for it—”
“The AFM!” Ruth shouted, firing twice more into the corridor between the greenhouses. “I have my laptop but I think the AFM is still next to my cabin! If we—”
“Leave it!” Greg yelled. “Get in!” Then he stepped away from the vehicle himself.
“What are you doing!?” Bobbi screamed.
“I’ll burn the town. The fire should keep them back.” His voice was loaded with fear and Cam understood that, more than anything, Greg Estey intended to join his wife and daughter.
“You can‘t!” Ruth shouted. But their friend had run into the darkness. He was headed for the toolshed, Cam realized—where the last of their fuel cans were kept—and Ingrid leaned out of the jeep with her rifle and blasted the truck beside them. Bullets slapped and whined from the side of the truck, shredding the rear fender and gas tank. Gasoline spattered on the earth. Ingrid was starting the job Greg intended to fulfill, but then Bobbi accelerated. She nearly threw Ingrid from the jeep. She must have thought the truck would explode and they roared out of the motor pool, speeding between two huts on the east side of town.
Cam might have caught a glimpse of Greg. Would his friend hesitate at the toolshed? Instead of creating a barricade for the infected people, a fire might kill Tricia and Hope and everyone else in Jefferson, asphyxiating them with smoke. Maybe that was Greg’s intent even if he couldn’t be honest with himself. If he’d been able to get close enough, maybe he would have shot his baby instead of leaving her to suffer in the night and then in the heat of the day, neglected and helpless—or maybe Greg had convinced himself that his love for Hope would survive the mind plague in some form. He might believe he would retain enough of a spark to care for his daughter.
Hurry,
Cam thought. He didn’t want to say good-bye, so he tried to imagine Greg’s success instead. It was the only way he could stay with his friend.
The jeep slammed over a bump in the ground. Bobbi braked hard and swerved through the fences, turning on her headlights at last. Something like a hubcap careened up from the front tire. Then a heavier object smashed against the undercarriage.
“People on your left!” Ingrid shouted.
There were more figures approaching Jefferson in their bare feet and pajamas. The cold made their skin like marble: blue lips, white eyes. One woman had cut her face and her chest was slick with blood.
After that, Bobbi seemed to clear the silent migration. She slowed down and leaned over the wheel to stare into her headlights, weaving constantly. The ground was rough and spotted with rocks. Cam buckled his elbow down against his side, trying to staunch the wound. “Help me,” he said to Ingrid, but Ruth turned to him first. “My ribs,” he said.
“Oh no,” Ruth pleaded, touching his shoulder.
Cam grimaced and sat up. He needed to give her room to inspect his wound and, at the very least, pack something against the side of his chest.
He couldn’t let Greg’s suicide go for nothing.
Their losses were unimaginable. Allison, Hope, Tricia, Tony, Owen, and the rest ... the hundreds of people from Morristown ... How many other survivors must be feeling the same despair? What if the new plague really was everywhere across America? That was how Allison would have looked at things, including herself in the larger whole instead of standing apart, and Cam grasped at the sense of being with her. He nursed the bright embers of his grief, encouraging it. Rage was a defense mechanism he’d learned years ago, burying his pain and taking energy from his hate. At times, it had been the only thing that kept him going.
It gave him direction.
If there was any chance of reversing the mind plague, they had to get Ruth to safety and the equipment in Grand Lake.
11
The soldier at the
bunker door stiffened, then relaxed and fell. Beside him, a second Marine began to twitch against the concrete wall. He dropped the medical tape he’d been using to seal the door. Then he collapsed on his friend, bucking all over with short, rigid, stuttering movements. Both men were volunteers, but that didn’t make the decision any easier for Major Reece, who stood across the room with her pistol in her small hands.
Dry-eyed, Deborah Reece fired. She had always taken pride in the clarity of her self-discipline, no matter what she was feeling. But she couldn’t breathe and her balance was off. She missed her first shot. The round sparked from the concrete floor and banged into the wall.
“Please,” she said, like a prayer.
The first soldier was already trying to wrestle free of his buddy, pinned by the other man’s weight. Impossibly, he looked straight at her despite his struggle. His pupils were the same enormous holes she’d seen in every other casualty.
She didn’t know his name. He was simply one of the J2 specialists who’d been inside the complex when the nanotech swept over the Continental Divide. He looked to be about thirty-five, the same age as Deborah, and very much in his prime. A captain. Lean and sunburnt, he was exactly the sort of man she preferred for her discreet, almost professional affairs, and in that instant Deborah felt a startling intimacy with this stranger.
Kill him,
she warned herself.
Grand Lake was buried in the new plague. Even at eleven thousand feet, sealed within the mountain, their superstructures were vulnerable. Everyone up top was infected. Some of them seemed to
remember
what lay beneath, clawing at the tunnels and blast doors. The nanotech was more insidious than fallout or chemical agents. Complex 4 had gone silent within the first minutes of the attack, and 1 and 2 were both compromised.
These warrens had been built by engineers who were limited in equipment and supplies. Most of the subterranean complexes had been designed only to withstand the brutal winters at this elevation. Air strikes had been a secondary concern, and, possibly, the chance of surviving a nuclear near-miss.
Over time, many sections had settled badly, shifting out of plumb. Snowmelt seeped through the mountain and pushed against the bulkheads, eroding the rock alongside or beneath them, creating new pressures and holes. Today, the steel doors would stop people, even fire, but not microscopic machines. Attempts to retrofit the base after the war had been brief. Far more energy had gone into expanding these warrens than into improving the existing, upper levels. Complex 1 had grown to include three entrances to the outside—and from the last reports, the nanotech was cascading inward from all three directions.
It wasn’t just the doors. The air systems were also a weak point, as were the thousands of conduits for electrical and communication lines. Once inside, the nanotech was unstoppable. The warrens were too small. Built like honeycombs, even the largest complex barely covered one full acre with its offices, storerooms, and other areas stacked in a tight, vertical puzzle. Deborah had asked for volunteers and the Marine captain turned to his buddy and said, “It’s us.” Then they gave their lives trying to secure a door with nothing more than medical tape.
He did his best,
she thought.
Now do yours.
There was a terrible symmetry in the idea. Deborah respected their bravery too much not to emulate it, and her next bullet went through the captain’s head.
The other Marine’s spasms had slowed to a pace that was erratic and weak. He was dying. Her way was quicker. Deborah shot him, too.
She turned and ran past an overturned desk at the back of the room. Her long legs danced easily through the mess as she clapped one hand against the white Navy shirt she’d cinched over her nose and mouth, snarling the knot in her blond hair even though she’d taken to wearing it short.
The mask was still there. So was the team at the rear entrance of the room, which shouldn’t have surprised Deborah, but they were less a squad than a hastily picked group without an obvious chain of command. Most of the eleven men and woman were Army, and therefore her subordinates, yet she’d also ended up with an Air Force major and three Navy officers, and their orders were more important than any individual’s life.
Seal your exits at any cost.
That duty might have been easier because many of them didn’t know each other. Instead, Deborah was saved by the same thing she’d learned to value most in herself—their loyalty to the uniform. They could have slammed the door shut with her locked on the other side, but first they made a hole, lifting their rifles and sidearms so she could pass.
Focused on their weapons, Deborah wasn’t light-footed enough to clear their legs. She tripped and sprawled on the hard floor.
“Major!” one of her soldiers cried, Emma Kincaid, a medical corps officer like Deborah.
“I told you to abandon that door!” Mendelson yelled. He was the USAF major, a square-headed man of fifty. His words were directed at the other troops instead of Deborah, challenging her for command.
This short concrete hall was lined with office doors. Several of the men and women held armloads of paperwork and more files lay on the floor. Like most of the complex, these offices served intelligence personnel from all five branches of the military, and yet the low cubicles hadn’t only been ransacked for priority files but also for simple, precious desk supplies like Scotch tape. They had no other way to seal the doors. Deborah, Emma, and two nurses had snatched as many medical kits as they could find, breaking out adhesive bandages and tape, but those were almost gone.
Behind her, one soldier had closed the steel door. Three more slapped sheets of paper over the lock and hinges. Half a dozen hands held the sheets in place as others jabbed at the paper with tape or an incongruous tube of toothpaste, anything to create a seal.
“We should give up this door, too!” Mendelson yelled. “We need to get ahead of the nanotech! Don’t you see? It’s getting deeper into the complex because of us! It needs people!”
Two men had died because of her. That much was true. Still, Deborah said, “No.”
She should have volunteered herself, but a CO couldn’t afford that luxury. If she’d taken the Marines’ place, she would be dead now, too, leaving Mendelson in charge, and either he didn’t have the guts or he didn’t understand. The air systems had been shut down, so an empty room might serve as a buffer—it might have been best to lock several doors and hope that some dead space between them and the infected soldiers would be enough—but they didn’t have any more space to give up. From this hallway, there were barely fifty yards left before they hit the command center. It was critical to protect the operations room. Otherwise they would be deaf and blind to the outside world even if they found their way into a few safe corners inside the complex—and then what?
