Cam and Allison hesitated
,
trying to shift gears from their private argument to assuming command of the group. “You guys ready?” Cam asked, looking only at Ruth, as Allison said, “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m so sorry about Eric,” Ruth said.
She was careful to keep her distance, but Cam would have recognized her silhouette even if he hadn’t memorized her voice. Ruth’s curly brown hair was longer than it had been during their run from California, and he knew her long nose and the slender lines of her shoulders and neck all too well. They had been lovers briefly. Ruth had also been the ring-leader in their conspiracy to end the war, using the threat of a new plague against the United States as well as the invaders.
Ruth Goldman was the last of the top nanotech researchers in America. She was the reason why Cam and Allison had invested themselves in Jefferson, making what had been a shantytown into a more permanent outpost.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Allison said again. “You can’t be on the smoke team.”
“Eric was my friend, too,” Ruth said.
“We can’t put you at risk,” Allison said, but the undercurrent of mistrust between the two women was achingly clear. Allison protected Ruth, accepting Cam’s friend for her own reasons, but the awkwardness of their triangle had never faded. If anything, Allison’s pregnancy heightened that tension, introducing a new kind of jealousy to their dynamic.
Ruth was thirteen years older than Cam. He thought the age difference was partly why things hadn’t worked out between them. It was also part of the allure. Ruth had not been shy at all with her body or his.
The two women were similar in many ways, not physically, but in character. Like all of the best survivors, they were both active, tough, and smart, and yet Ruth’s maturity gave her an edge over the younger woman. She could usually anticipate what Allison would do and say. On the other hand, that self-possession also worked against Ruth. She’d kept her heart from Cam, wanting time to understand her feelings, whereas Allison hadn’t hesitated.
Cam and Ruth had never fully consummated their interest in each other. Allison thought otherwise, because Cam had lied to his wife by implying it was over and done with. The truth was that he and Ruth were unfinished business.
“Ally’s right,” Cam said, emphasizing his wife’s nickname as he pointed for Ruth to leave. “You can’t help us.”
“I knew Eric better than you.” There was a dangerous tone in Ruth’s voice. She backed it up by stepping closer to them.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” Cam said, but he regretted his honesty.
That was the wrong thing to say,
he thought. “Go. You’re not on the team.”
“Fuck you,” Ruth said. “I’m staying.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Allison said, and Greg Estey nodded with obvious relief.
“Yeah, let’s get started.” Greg gestured at his flamethrower and said, “This gun’s full, Cam. You want to drain some of it off?”
“Absolutely. We’ll soak the ground as deep as we can.”
“How big is the colony?” another man asked.
“Twenty feet across, maybe more,” Cam said.
Ruth scowled at them, clenching her hands on her shovel. Cam thought she might throw it down, but Ruth wasn’t given to melodrama. “Fine,” she said, thrusting the shovel into another woman’s hands.
Cam watched her walk away.
In the darkness, Greenhouse 3 continued to burn weakly. Some of the framework was exposed now, smoldering in the melted plastic. Cam knew they would be crazy to bring gasoline into the fire, but the longer they waited, the farther the ants might burrow from the heat.
Okay, you’re off the team, too,
he thought at Allison, preparing for another argument.
He got lucky. One of their scouts ran out of the night, a sixteen-year-old boy with an assault rifle. “Wait!” the boy said. “Hey!”
Tony Dominguez was the youngest person in the village except for three infants. He was also one of Allison’s most ardent supporters. The boy had a crush on her about the size of the moon, for which Cam forgave him. For one thing, he approved of Tony’s taste in women. The poor kid didn’t have anyone his own age to lust after in Jefferson and his mom never let him join their trips to Morristown, probably because she was afraid he’d stay there. With a population of twelve hundred people, Morristown was practically a city. It was also a religious enclave and worked like a shield for Jefferson, deterring most travelers even as it provided a welcome source of crops and wealth in the area.
“Someone’s coming!” Tony said. “I heard someone in the fences on my side!”
Allison said, “You’re at Station Five?”
“Yes, ma‘am.”
Cam glanced at the southern perimeter, impressed that Tony hadn’t abandoned his post despite the ant swarm. He knew for a fact that other lookouts had left their stations, because he was one of them.
The village was supposed to have three people on patrol during the day and twice that many at night. The best time to travel was in the cold and in the dark, when most of the bugs were dormant. That made it tough to see people coming, but they’d surrounded their home with irregular rings of early warning fences. In some places, they’d actually strung barbed wire. Mostly these “fences” were just fenders, hoods, and hubcaps stripped from the dead traffic on Highway 14, which they’d scattered on the ground like bells and gongs. Not everyone who walked out of the hills was friendly. Sometimes there were bandits, and they were constantly afraid the military would learn where Ruth was hiding.
“It’s just one person?” Allison asked, tipping her head at Tony’s weapon. The M16 was equipped with a big infrared sniper scope, and Tony said, “Yeah. I think he’s either shit-faced or hurt. He’s making a lot of noise in the fences.”
“Great.” Allison’s tone was sarcastic.
Their village was one of the smallest in northern Colorado, but they did business with Morristown and New Jackson. Word got around. Sometimes their permanence made them a target for people who hadn’t worked so hard, like the weed-heads, drunks, or other troublemakers who weren’t welcome elsewhere.
Cam seized the opportunity. “See what this guy wants,” he said to Allison. “We’ll take care of the ants.”
His wife met his gaze in the dark. She knew what he was doing, but she grinned like a cat. “Fine,” she said, almost daring him. It was precisely what Ruth had said. Cam didn’t know what to make of that, although Allison could be playful about the weirdest things.
She was very pretty. A few blond strands had pulled free of her ponytail and framed her steady eyes, flagging in the wind. Then she set down her gas cans and left. Tony hurried after her, toting his rifle.
Cam glanced at a couple named Michael and Denise Stone, who both wore pistols. “Go with them, okay?”
“No problem,” Michael said, dropping his shovel and ski mask. Denise added a pry bar and her own makeshift body armor.
Now we’ve got more tools than people,
Cam thought. He considered going after Allison himself, but he was in no mood to be diplomatic to some lost, hungry loser. “Let’s throw some dirt on the fire,” he said. “I want to get Eric out of there.”
“Yeah.” Greg winced. In a different life, Greg had been Eric’s squad leader. Cam could barely imagine what he must be feeling. With Eric’s death, the best link to Greg’s days as an Army Ranger was gone.
They heard Allison call out at the edge of the village, challenging the newcomer. Her voice was strong in the wind. A moment later, she repeated herself. Cam and Greg began to suit up with the other three people on their smoke team, donning goggles and masks.
“I’ll go in first,” Cam said.
Then somebody screamed from Allison’s direction, a high, boyish shriek. It was Tony. Cam whirled, trying to place the sound beyond the blocky silhouettes of homes and greenhouses. He saw flashlights and human shapes. One was familiar, fair-haired and lean, yet round in the middle. The others were only shadows. They seemed to dance spastically.
Jefferson was under attack.
3
Ruth was standing at her door when Tony and Allison hurried past. She almost said something, but what? Allison didn’t even like to hear
thank you
from her, much less complaints, so Ruth stood quietly against her home as their flashlights rocked by, followed by Michael and Denise. There was someone in the fences. Ruth could hear him banging through the car parts, and Allison called, “Hey there! What’s your name?”
Her mild tone was an odd counterpoint to Tony’s M16, which the boy seated against his shoulder with the barrel pointed skyward. It was a position that made the weapon more visible in the glinting white beams of their flashlights. Ruth nearly went to add herself to the guns beside Allison. The girl was a force to be reckoned with, but she was pregnant, and that increased her importance in more ways than Ruth could put into words.
They should have been friends. They owed each other their lives, but it wasn’t only Cam who stood between them. Allison excelled at being mayor and she had always been very watchful of Ruth, seeing her as a potential rival for this role as well. Ruth’s nanotech skills were a brand of authority that Allison could not match. The girl had never believed Ruth when she said she wished she could give it up. Allison was always thirsty for more control over their lives, whereas Ruth’s decisions had led to thousands of deaths during the course of the war. Given the choice, Ruth would have become just a regular person again, anonymous and ignored—and yet she felt that old conflict of responsibility now.
I should back her up,
Ruth worried, watching Allison. Then her gaze shifted. Michael’s flashlight had picked out the stranger in the fences.
It was a woman about fifty years old. She was short and thin and dirty. Ruth thought there was blood on the woman’s elbow, staining her jacket sleeve. She was unarmed. She wasn’t even wearing a backpack. Had she been robbed? She looked skittish as hell, turning away from them when Michael’s light traced over her pale face.
Even so, Allison was cautious, holding her ground instead of going to help. “It’s okay,” Allison called. “We have food and water and a place where you can sleep.”
Michael aimed his flashlight into the dirt. Tony lowered his rifle, and, well behind them, Ruth lifted her hand from the 9mm Beretta on her hip.
There was no question that she and Cam would have been a better fit cosmetically. He was black-haired and black-eyed and Ruth’s coloring was dusky, whereas the darkest thing about Allison was her sunburn. Ruth often wondered what their baby would look like, but it had been the same with Bobbi and Eric. Bobbi was black, Eric was white, and neither of the mismatched couples turned many heads. They were
alive.
Nothing else was important.
The only exceptions were people of Chinese or Russian descent. There was still widespread hatred since the war, which made things tough on anyone with Asian heritage. Some idiots didn’t bother to differentiate between Japanese, Koreans, or Chinese—or even Filipinos or Malaysians—not even those who’d lived in the U.S. for generations.
Racism had become a very different thing after the plague. Yes, there were some communities where people were trying to preserve ethnic purities, breeding only with fellow whites or Hispanics or blacks. Once a runner came through their village with marriage offers for anyone who was at least 50 percent Jewish. Ruth hadn’t been tempted, but it did make her wonder. Had the Israelis reestablished themselves on the other side of the world? Were there enough Jews alive to sustain their culture? For nearly everyone, though, race was trivial, and Ruth knew she was grasping at straws comparing her skin to Allison’s.
She was jealous of the younger woman. She was afraid for Allison, too. They had all been exposed to high levels of insecticide and other chemicals, not just in their village but during the plague year. Many of the pathetic refugee shelters had been slapped together with welding torches or made of vinyl or rotting carpet or cardboard, exposing the inhabitants to heavy metals, mold, or toxic compounds like vinyl chloride. Everyone had burned furniture, tires, plastic, and dung for warmth and cookfires, filling their homes with poisonous smoke.
Ruth had missed most of that. She’d spent the first thirteen months of the plague aboard the International Space Station as the centerpiece of a crash nanotech program, but the ISS was its own hostile environment, like a submarine. The recycled air became foul with human smells and bacteria. They were exposed to solar radiation and the more subtle damages of zero gravity, losing bone and muscle mass. Later, Ruth had also spent weeks on the outskirts of the Leadville crater, absorbing fallout. Perhaps worse, her body had been a war zone for different kinds of nanotech.
The next generation faced all the same problems as their parents and more. Babies required not only nourishment and warmth. First they needed a healthy start. The human body was capable of extraordinary resilience, but the most sinister wounds were those that went unseen, inside, at the cellular level or even deeper within their DNA.
So far, the women in Jefferson had suffered only four stillbirths and one toddler who showed every sign of being autistic. The other two children were okay. From what Ruth heard, however, the infant mortality rates were even more severe in Morristown. She hoped that was only because Morristown was thirty times larger, thus allowing for more data. It surely didn’t help that most of the people there were New Evangelicals, who pushed for as many babies as possible, no matter if the women were in their teens or in their forties or worn out from earlier pregnancies. Either way, the statistical curves were alarming. If the numbers continued to play out so poorly, the human race was no more than a hundred years from extinction.
