“Yeah.” He tried to smile.
Ruth went back to her laptop, but her concentration was shot. It didn’t help that she was cramping. Finally she had to pee. Relaxing those muscles was humiliating, even though no one else could feel or smell the trickling puddle. Ruth tried to emulate Foshtomi’s tomboy attitude to herself.
Just be glad you only have to pee,
she thought, but she wasn’t looking forward to taking off her suit and revealing what had happened. Maybe it was childish, but she wanted to be a giant like Freedman, and legends didn’t wet their pants.
Her anger was a spark.
“I might have found a weakness,” she said, returning to an earlier idea. “The new vaccine must recognize the same marker that the mind plague uses to identify people who are already infected.”
“What does that mean?” Pritchard asked.
“Both nanos are limited by the marker. They communicate with each other. The mind plague only replicates to a certain maximum within any given individual. Otherwise it would tear them apart just like the first plague. The vaccine works almost in the same way. It only protects people in which it finds the mind plague isn’t already present. The marker makes all the difference. Without it, the Chinese would lose their advantage. The vaccine would be transmitted to our side, too, the way every other nanotech spread around the world, and Freedman’s conceptual work has always been too advanced for that.”
“Why would she even build this shit for them in the first place?” Foshtomi asked.
“I don’t know. She’s a prisoner. Her message sounded like she thought she was somewhere else—that the Chinese were fighting India, not us.”
“So you were right,” Cam said. “The vaccine won’t reverse the plague in anyone who’s already sick.”
“I don’t think so. But if we can isolate that marker, we might be able to exploit it. Theoretically, we could design a parasite that would go after the mind plague and shut it off. We ...”
Lord God,
she thought. What if Freedman had deliberately constructed the mind plague with the marker available as a kill switch?
“What is it?” Bobbi asked. “Ruth? What?”
“The marker’s too obvious,” she said, shifting restlessly. “I think Freedman sabotaged the mind plague so people like me could stop it. But I need time. And I need to get out of this fucking car.”
“How much time?” Pritchard asked.
“I don’t know. Days. Somewhere safe.”
“I don’t think we have that long.”
“I know.” Ruth’s claustrophobia was squeezing down on her lungs again and she turned away to stare out the window.
The light never changed.
There was no sun. The day seemed eternal beneath the black sky, but Ruth guessed it was early afternoon when Medrano came on the suit radio just minutes later. “We’re clear, sir,” Medrano said.
Walls spoke on their main frequency. “This is Five,” he said. “One, you’re first. Park to the side of the warehouse door. Two, you drive straight in. Bornmann says there’s room behind the plane if you stay to your left. We need space around the forward door, just make sure you don’t hit the wing. Is that understood? Take it slow. Over.”
“Roger that, sir,” Pritchard said. He turned to Foshtomi. “As slow as butter.”
“Don’t talk dirty to me,” Foshtomi said.
That didn’t really make sense, but Pritchard laughed and Ruth glanced sideways at Cam. She watched his expression until he noticed her eyes and turned, and she thought again that he was very handsome despite his scars and his beard, which she’d always hated. It was a strong face.
She made a formless sound like a question.
“Mhm.”
I love you,
she thought.
“We’re going to be okay,” he said.
“Yes.” Ruth leaned her shoulder against him. Then Foshtomi started their engine and rolled forward.
The first Humvee parked on the side of the warehouse doors, only one of which had been slid open. Foshtomi drove in. As she passed, three of the commandos rolled the door shut again. Foshtomi hit her headlights. One was broken, but the other cut into the gloom.
The Osprey was a sleek, black, medium-sized aircraft that hugged the ground. Its wheels seemed ridiculously small. Thick wings extended out of the top of the fuselage instead of from the bottom or the middle as Ruth had seen on other planes. The propellers were also different, with long, long blades on rectangular engines as big as cars. The plane itself looked large enough to carry everyone, although it would be crowded. An enormous pair of tail fins rose from the back. Foshtomi eased past. In back of the warehouse were a row of white-walled offices and she stopped alongside them.
“Wait for my order,” Walls said on the radio. “One, you’re out first after Reece decons your vehicle. Move for the plane through the regular door.”
“Copy that, sir,” a soldier in One answered.
Ruth marveled at their discipline. Walls was using the men in the other Humvee to see if the warehouse was safe. They must know it, and yet they did as they were told.
Five minutes later, Deborah appeared beside Ruth’s vehicle with the blanket. As she maneuvered around the Humvee, Ruth’s suit radio said, “This is Bornmann. The guys from One are inside the plane and we’ve sealed up again. Over.”
“They’re safe,” Ruth said to her friends.
“Excellent.” Pritchard gestured from side to side. “Make sure we have everything when we go, your laptop, food, water, weapons. I’ll grab the radio.”
“Move around if you can,” Foshtomi said. “Limber up. We’ve been sitting a long time.”
They rustled against each other, and Bobbi fidgeted with her jacket collar. Cam had already donned his goggles and mask. Ruth didn’t want to jinx them by saying anything that sounded like farewell—these might be their last words—but it didn’t make sense to wait. For what? She wanted to be braver than she really was, so she forced herself to take the chance.
“I love you,” she said. “I’ve always loved you.”
The second part wasn’t true, but she wanted it to be. She needed that level of connection and support, and she didn’t want to lose him without making it real.
“Me, too,” Cam said. “I love you, too.”
Ruth wept when he kissed the faceplate of her helmet. They were so close, and yet couldn’t touch. She also felt like she should say something to Bobbi and the two soldiers. She didn’t know what—but just for being alive, they were her sisters and her brother. “Thank you,” she said. “Thanks.”
“Just get us out of this shit, Ruth,” Foshtomi said.
“Okay, clear,” Deborah said on the suit radio. Ruth and Pritchard relayed this information to Walls, and Walls said, “It’s your turn. Go.”
They stepped out.
There was a man
inside one of the office windows. He stood just inches from Ruth, slumping. He must have been asleep until the throaty engine of the Humvee woke him. He’d been hurt. His jaw seemed broken, and blood leaked from his teeth down his chin.
“Oh!” she shouted, flinching back toward the Humvee.
The infected man rattled the glass with both hands. His eyes were huge and disoriented. They didn’t match his face, which was aimed directly at her. Instead, he gazed upward and to his right. Almost nothing showed of his eyes except the whites, as if he was staring deep into his own skull. But he was aware of her. He shoved his hands into the window again. A crack split sideways through the glass.
Foshtomi yelled from the driver door as Ruth began to turn. “Run!” Ruth felt Cam grab her air tanks, but his glove slipped off as she bent and shoved him. She was safe in her suit. He was not. She put as much weight into her arm as possible and knocked him past the rear of the Humvee.
I love you.
“Wait—” he shouted.
Foshtomi opened fire. A three-round burst from her M4 punched through the window and the infected man. Debris exploded from the white office wall as he spun away, blood spattering from his chest.
Ruth felt a sting across her wrist, either a ricochet or a shard of glass. Before she could look down, her forearm went rigid. The muscles locked up as if they’d become steel. It nearly tore the flesh from her shoulder. Tendons jumped all the way from her elbow through the side of her chest. She would have screamed if there was time. Then the pain engulfed her heart. The floor sagged up to meet her like a big gray wall and she was only barely aware of slamming her helmet against the Humvee as she fell. She was no longer able to differentiate between the vehicle and the floor at that speed.
Her last thought was a strange sense of déjà vu, as if she was coming home. She’d been here before. Her agony and confusion were intense, but those feelings were coupled with an impression of longing. Somehow she knew where to go. She would find her way there, and her body jerked with nerve impulses as she tried to stand and walk.
Ruth Goldman had absorbed the mind plague.
21
Cam’s choice was the
only one. He ran. He rolled onto his feet with the impact of Ruth’s hand still aching in his bad side and then he ran from her with his feelings buried in cold screaming terror. He’d left so many other people behind. He was able to submerge his grief, but it destroyed him.
He slapped at Bobbi on the other side of the Humvee, dragging her toward the plane with such maniacal force that he threw her to the ground. “Get up! Go!” he yelled, clutching at her sleeve.
Foshtomi’s reaction was more vicious. At first Cam thought she’d killed Ruth. She emptied her carbine on full auto, the gun chattering inside the metal warehouse.
“Noooo!”
Cam yelled before looking back. Foshtomi stood in the space between the Humvee and the office wall, but Cam glimpsed just enough details to realize she was firing over Ruth into the far wall of the building. The aluminum popped and rang. Foshtomi was using her weapon to create an airflow away from herself. Maybe it was enough to repel the nanotech.
Men were shouting. “What happened! What happened!”
Pritchard ran past Cam and Bobbi, sprinting in the same direction as they ducked the Osprey’s huge tail fins. Then someone in a containment suit blocked their path. It was Medrano. “Where is Goldman!?” he shouted.
Cam tried to dodge by, but Medrano grabbed him. Cam shoved Bobbi toward the front of the plane even as he yelled, “She’s gone—Infected—”
They separated. Medrano and a second man in a black suit charged toward the Humvee. Cam banged alongside the plane. The fuselage was only sixty feet long. There was a loading ramp under its tail, but they’d been using the forward door on its starboard side. Each breath was a searing pain. He staggered, but then Foshtomi appeared beside him. She wrapped her arm around his hips.
Pritchard was holding Bobbi back from the forward door as she kicked and screamed, keeping her from the plane. Cam saw Bornmann on the inside of the small window in the door. Bornmann had taken off his suit, yet still wore his headset. He was shouting, too, but Cam couldn’t hear. “Shut up!” Cam yelled. “Shut up!”
“Let us in!” Bobbi screamed.
Ruth was at her most contagious, breathing and sweating out nanotech. Nearly all of it would stay inside her suit, yet there would also be a cloud of it around the dead man in the office. The mind plague would drift through the warehouse. Specks of it had probably wafted in with the Humvee, too. They might have only seconds, but there was no way for Cam to force his way inside. Shoot the lock? Then the plane itself would be open to the plague—but they could seal the holes with something. Cam had nearly convinced himself to fire when he saw Bornmann lift his hand to his ear, listening to his radio.
Bornmann opened the door.
Foshtomi squeezed her temples
with both hands and cursed, “Shit! Oh shit! I should have just knocked that guy down, tackled him, anything. He could have had
me.”
Cam didn’t blame her for what had happened. They were all making bad decisions, stupid with exhaustion, and Foshtomi‘s heart had been in the right place. She’d tried to protect Ruth.
The interior of the plane was utilitarian. Except for its snub cockpit, the Osprey was little more than a tube with a flat deck and bare struts on the curved metal walls. The wiring was exposed. There were no seats. It was outfitted for cargo or paratroopers, but Foshtomi found one of the only corners available, sinking down near the long, angled seam of the aircraft’s tail end.
“Shit! Oh shit,” she said.
So close, Cam thought.
We were so goddamned close. We should’ve left Ruth in the car until she was immune.
But they didn’t know if Huff would succeed in retrieving the vaccine. The fact of the matter was that getting Ruth into the plane was a necessity. They were down to the last of their air. Very soon, more of the commandos would need to de-suit like Bornmann just to extend the time that one or two were able to remain protected, using the mostly depleted air tanks as a final reserve. Keeping everyone safe had been like juggling time bombs.
Cam stalked away from Foshtomi. There were no windows in the rear of the plane, just a few small portholes along its sides. He bent to gaze through the cockpit but saw only the warehouse doors. All of the action was taking place behind him. Bornmann said the commandos had immobilized Ruth and removed her helmet, watching to make sure she didn’t choke or bite her tongue. Deborah checked her vital signs, which were strong except for the poor pupil response they’d come to expect. Her brain was shutting down.
