We might not have twenty gallons in the entire village,
Cam realized, walking into the night with her, but Allison didn’t say it and neither did he.
They were losing the battle for the environment.
Most of the survivors
called it Plague Year, restarting the calendar and forgetting everything else in human history. The machine plague killed more than five billion people and left thousands of animal species extinct. Now it was Year Three. In many ways, Earth had become a different planet. The microscopic nanotech disintegrated all warm-blooded life below ten thousand feet, where it self-destructed. What remained of the ecosystem was beyond repair. There were only reptiles, amphibians, and fish left to whittle down the exploding insect populations. Entire forests had been devoured by beetles and ants. Lakes and riverways were forever changed by erosion.
The wars that followed caused another level of damage. The plague left few habitable zones anywhere on Earth, and mammals and birds could only dip into the invisible sea for hours at a time. Without a host, the nanotech was inert. But as soon as anyone crossed below the barrier, the plague got into their lungs or their eyes or the slightest breaks in their skin, where it began to multiply.
The nearest cities and towns beneath the barrier were immediately picked clean by the survivors. After that, there was nowhere to turn except on each other. North America was lucky in that it had the massive Rockies and the smaller range of the Sierras to hold just three nations. Nevertheless, civil war divided the U.S., with Canada and Mexico ultimately siding with the rebels.
On every other continent, the fighting was far more savage and mixed. India, Pakistan, and China battled for the Himalayas. Everyone in Europe fought for the Alps. Russia took Afghanistan—but during the second winter, they lost their struggle against the Arab world. The Russians looked for any escape, offering their veteran armies to both India and China. They planned to reinforce either side in exchange for a sliver of real estate to call their own, but there was one problem. They no longer had enough aircraft or fuel to move their population.
At the same time, the American civil war began to heat up. Scientists everywhere had made great strides in nanotechnology, especially in the consolidated labs in Leadville, Colorado, where they used the plague itself to learn and experiment. Originally designed to attack malignant tissue, the
archos
tech was a versatile prototype—the cure for cancer and more.
First their science teams created a new bioweapon. Next they developed a vaccine that would protect people from the plague, but the Leadville government intended to keep this discovery for themselves. They saw an opportunity to control the only way down from the mountains, ensuring loyalty, establishing new states, leaving every enemy and undesirable to succumb to famine and war unless perhaps they agreed to come down as slaves. The prize was too great, after too much hardship.
Three of their top researchers betrayed them, stealing the only samples of the vaccine. These heroes wanted to spread the new technology freely and end the fighting. That proved to be a mistake in several ways. The vaccine became a flashpoint in the American civil war. Worse, as the vaccine spread among the pockets of survivors in California, the inoculated people became a target for a new enemy.
On the other side of the world, the Indians and the Russians had reached an agreement that also benefited the Leadville government. Leadville would help ferry the Russian Army into the Himalayas in exchange for India’s research teams and equipment. Leadville was eager to stay ahead of the Chinese in the sprint for nanotech supremacy. As part of the deal, Leadville agreed to bring the wives and children of Russia’s highest leaders safely into Colorado along with the Russian treasury, deepening the bond between the two nations. But there was a double cross. The Russians smuggled a doomsday bomb among their gold and museum pieces. They murdered their own families for the chance to destroy the world’s only superpower, erasing Leadville from the mountains with a fifty-megaton nuclear strike. U.S. and Canadian forces across North America were blinded by the electromagnetic pulse. Hours later, the Russians flew into California, supplementing their few aircraft with the rest of the planes sent by Leadville, which they’d commandeered.
They captured most of the scattered Americans who carried the vaccine in their blood. Then they spread the immunity among their own pilots and ground troops, not only in California but on the far side of the world. The Russians became the first organized military to own the vaccine. It gave them an insurmountable advantage. They raided below the barrier everywhere, not only restocking from their motherland but also using Arab and U.S. planes, armor, fuel, and food to turn the tide against their enemies.
Even then, the Russians barely had the strength to mount an invasion, but they were committed. After bombing Leadville, their safest course was to defeat the entirety of the United States rather than retreating home, where they might have been vulnerable to reprisal missile strikes.
The Russians also shared the vaccine with the Chinese. Their new allies brought naval fleets into Los Angeles and San Diego, accelerating the push for control of North America.
Beneath the air war, Cam became instrumental in spreading the vaccine. He was one of the very few Americans who escaped California. Later, he also had a hand in developing a third new generation of nanotech. More importantly, he also joined the conspiracy that betrayed the U.S. leadership again. Their generals wanted to unleash a new contagion against the Russians and the Chinese. Instead, Cam and the other traitors forced a cease-fire. None of them wanted to see any more killing, no matter what the enemy had done.
The peace they created was an uneasy one, yet the Russians and the Chinese pulled back to the coast. Some of the invaders had already left for Europe and Asia. Presumably the rest were preparing to go, too. The war had ended fifteen months ago, but the combatants on all sides were exhausted. There were shortages of fuel, medicine, and tools. They had to deal with the bugs and widespread crop death.
America had become a frontier again. Outside of its military bases and the few civilian populations of any size, there was no law. The government was a loosely tied conglomeration of territories and city-states led by generals, farmers, engineers, and the occasional religious messiah. Many people were seasonal nomads, forever trying to stay ahead of the insects. They retreated up into the Rockies each summer and moved down again in wintertime, which made the foothills a perfect place to hide.
Among the military, Cam and Allison were still wanted criminals for their role in ending the war.
2
“We’re going to starve
if this keeps up,” Cam said bitterly. For the moment, he was alone with Allison at the short metal doors of their toolshed. Otherwise he never would have said what he was thinking. That was the price of leadership. He was never allowed to falter, and he worried that becoming a father would only increase that pressure. A small son or daughter would need unerring guidance to survive.
Cam knelt and set his flamethrower beside a fuel can. “I don’t know what else to do,” he said.
“It’ll be okay,” Allison said, handing him a funnel.
He stared out across the dark blocks of their homes and greenhouses. Beyond the village, the vast, pyramid shapes of the Rockies were still distinct against the night. Much closer, flashlights cut and swayed through the buildings, as restless as the wind. Batteries were priceless, and only four of their lights were rechargeable—but in an emergency, all rationing efforts were forgotten despite the fact that they had no industrial base whatsoever. This village was barely more than a collection of huts, like so many other towns, most of them with patriotic names like Freedom or Defiance or Washington, celebrating their lost heritage. There were probably ten villages called Independence in Colorado alone. At least these people had been more original, naming their home Jefferson after one of America’s slightly less popular founding fathers.
“We were going to have a tough winter even with all that corn,” he said. “There’s no way to tighten rations any more.”
Allison shook her head. “We can trade with Morristown if we have to. The other greenhouses are fine, right? We’ll inspect the floors, and we can rebuild the third one. We’ll make the concrete thicker this time.”
Cam opened the flamethrower’s tanks but stopped there. Then he stood and kissed her. Allison grinned and pressed against him. Cam slipped his hands on either side of her waist. Inside her jacket, Allison was strong and lean except for her rounding belly. She smelled like soap, a good, healthy, feminine smell.
They’d reversed their normal attitudes while Cam was inside the greenhouse—her pessimistic, him upbeat—when Allison was usually more positive, even bold. They handled danger differently. Cam tended to be clearheaded in the face of a threat. It was only afterward that he sometimes invented new problems, as if, deep down, he’d long since become more comfortable with stress than with calm.
He knew he would never have been a successful voice in Jefferson without her support. She steadied him. Allison had a huge grin that could be aggressive but she also used it to make friends, like a beacon, drawing everyone to her. It didn’t hurt that her willingness to work was unparalleled even now that she was in her second trimester. Allison just naturally found her way to the front of any group. She had no trouble riding herd on a township of forty-four souls, whereas Cam preferred to work in small groups on short missions like burning out the ants.
He lacked her easy calm—and he was always proud of her. He cupped his hand on her stomach. “You know you can’t build a whole city by yourself,” he said, teasing.
Allison flashed her teeth in the dark, obviously pleased by the joke. “We don’t need a city,” she said. Then she squeezed his hand and turned away, ready to get back to work.
Cam tried to share her optimism. He didn’t like it that he was always angry. Allison was right. Their village was more than he’d ever expected to have, and he clung to his sense of gratitude. But he knew he would miss Eric. Worse, they could no longer trust the ground under their feet.
Their homes were built on concrete pads like the greenhouses, with few windows, because every board and nail had to be pried out of the old cities, where the bug infestations were unimaginable. Every scavenging mission was a risk, but fabricating things such as glass, hinges, or doorknobs was beyond them. They were limited to what they could find, and they were always desperate for cement, paint, and caulking. Every seam needed to be sealed. Ants, termites, spiders, and beetles were all attracted by one appetite or another. Everything was a target, even electrical lines or simple items like motor oil or tea or clothing.
It was true that the machine plague had done some good. Pests like mosquitoes and ticks were practically extinct. Even the common cold seemed to have been wiped out because there hadn’t been enough people left to sustain it.
The flip side of this one benefit was that some of the long-isolated survivors were Typhoid Marys who’d developed immunities to their own nasty strains of spotted fever or herpes or a seeping black nail fungus called finger rot. Some of them had also harbored lice or fleas all this time, both of which were making a comeback. As the population mingled again, they made each other sick. Cam had heard of a measles outbreak in Wyoming, and people said most of the Idaho panhandle was under quarantine for some kind of dysentery that was killing babies.
So far, it was only insects that had been a problem in Jef ferson. The fire ants had migrated up from Texas last year, while the desert locusts were thought to have spread out of the Middle East with the Russian invasion.
They lived almost like astronauts, locking away every speck of food in airtight containers such as ammunition boxes and Tupperware. Their urine, excrement, and garbage all needed to be canned until they brought it to the greenhouses, where they sun-baked their waste into safe, rich fertilizer. It was a difficult way to live. Maybe it was pointless. Cam worried that the ants might surge through someone’s home, burying them in tiny, stinging bodies—and suddenly the images in his head became very personal. What if a colony erupted over Allison and their newborn child?
He finished reloading the flamethrower, then slung its tanks onto his back and looked at his wife, who’d lifted two more five-gallon cans herself. That was the extent of the gasoline in the village, except whatever was in the tanks of their few jeeps and trucks.
Thirty gallons if we’re lucky,
he thought, reaching for her. “Let me carry those.”
“I got it.”
“You can’t help us with the ants.”
“I’m going to tell you how much gasoline you can use,” Allison said, “and you’re going to listen.”
“We need to make sure we burn them all.”
“Tomorrow we’ll drive out to the highway and look for more fuel, but we need to be able to get there, Cam. So we save most of what we have.”
If we leave any part of the colony alive, they’ll tunnel somewhere else in a frenzy,
he thought. The image of her disappearing beneath the ants ...
It won’t happen,
he told himself, feeling anxious and grim, and yet those same emotions were bound up in the tenderness he felt for Allison and their baby. He would die to protect them, which is why he yelled at her. “Give me the cans, Ally! There’s plenty of fuel in the trucks. We’ll probably siphon some of that, too.”
“Goddammit,” she said.
Then several people hurried toward them in the night. In addition to their flashlights, everyone carried ski goggles, masks, and canteens. Greg Estey wore another flamethrower and the rest of the group bristled with crowbars and shovels, ready to dig open the colony. One of them was Ruth.
