“The vaccines kill everything else, Bobbi.”
Arguing with Ruth was pointless. She had an answer for everything, so Cam turned his attention to Ingrid again. Her toe wasn’t even sprained that he could see. She was just sixty years old. She probably hurt in other places, too — knees, hips, back — but she’d toughed it out until this one pain was too much.
“Bend your toes for me,” he said.
“I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Any numbness?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s do what we can to keep you moving,” Cam said, taking a knife to his own sock. He cut off most of the material above his ankle, then did his best to seal his pantleg into his boot again. Next, he used the few inches of spare sock to pad the ball of Ingrid’s foot. She didn’t have any extra meat on her at all, and her foot was bony and lean.
His thirst was maddening. It made him weak. They needed fluids, especially Cam, after losing so much blood, but running water might be even more dangerous than the air. Ruth had said that if the mind plague only replicated when it found new hosts, the worst of it might have passed. Everyone else in this region was infected, so the thickest clouds of nanotech should have already floated away by now, leaving only trace amounts in random, invisible traps — and yet the plague was less likely to adhere to the earth or rock or plants than it was to be absorbed by water. Moving water would enfold the nanotech in itself, gathering and concentrating the mind plague, lining the banks of rivers and lakes with it, so they didn’t know what to do except suffer.
“Are you ready?” he asked, not to Ingrid but to Ruth. The words came out harder than he’d intended, but he couldn’t believe she was just sitting there with her computer on her thighs, pecking at the keyboard with two gloved fingers.
“Leave her be,” Ingrid said. “She’s onto something. You know that.”
“Five minutes.”
“I need fifteen,” Ruth said.
Bobbi found a place against a tree with her M4. Cam didn’t sit down himself. He paced away from the three women, dodging through the white trunks and coin-sized yellow leaves of the aspen. There was a low buzzing he couldn’t identify, but he knew better than to let his curiosity get the better of him. Was it beetles? “We need more people if we’re really going to try to hit the Chinese,” he said, circling back toward Ruth. “Let’s go.”
“Fifteen minutes,” Ingrid said.
“There’s something in these trees. Bugs.”
“Lord God, let me think!” Ruth shouted. “Shut up! Just shut up!” She nearly dropped her laptop as she lurched onto her knees. “What is wrong with you? I swear to God, I’m almost done programming this—”
“Move,” Cam said.
“I won‘t!”
“Shh,” Bobbi said. “I hear it, too.”
“Leave me alone!” Ruth said. “We need to know what we’re dealing with even if we steal their vaccine. I’m almost done. Then we can let the computer work through—”
Cam wrenched her to her feet. The pain in his side was bad but his fear went deeper, because he’d finally seen two of the buzzing insects. Yellow jackets. Big, striped yellow jackets. There was no way of knowing how many of the meat-eating insects would swarm from their nests if they smelled him. He could only guess why they were here at all. Yellow jackets, wasps, and bees were believed to be extinct like moths and butterflies. The ants had wiped out everything that relied on hives and cocoons. Flying insects were also vulnerable to the machine plague. They generated too much warmth, absorbing sunlight with their bodies, creating friction with their wings — enough to activate its heat engine. The environment here was cold enough for the yellow jackets to escape disintegration, but something else must have shielded them from the ants.
“Downhill,” Cam said. “Fast as you can.”
The buzzing grew around them. The fluttering leaves concealed the smaller, darker movements of the yellow jackets — but in seconds, there were fifty or more. Then a hundred.
“Ouch!” Bobbi cried, slapping at her neck.
Ruth quit fighting him. She tucked her laptop into her pack and grabbed her M4, swinging both objects like unwieldy fly swatters. Bobbi and Ingrid chopped at the air, too. They drove some of the yellow jackets away. They enraged the rest. Yellow jackets hummed at Cam’s face, swooping and bumping as he led the group at an angle across the hill. They landed on his shoulders and pried at his hood.
“Oh!” Ingrid shouted.
Cam looked back. The older woman must have had one inside her clothing, because she was pounding at her chest. Then she walked into a tree. She almost fell. Ruth turned to help and Cam yelled, “No! Ruth! Let me—”
He saw a snake near her feet. Long and thick, it was creamy brown with dark blotches, a bull snake. It reared its head back to strike. Bull snakes weren’t poisonous, but if it drew blood it would make her a more desirable target for the yellow jackets.
Cam jumped forward and kicked, intercepting the bite. Its fangs grazed his pantleg, stabbing the skin beneath as he stomped at it.
“Look out!” Bobbi screamed behind him. Her M4 chattered into the ground. She wasn’t firing at the yellow jackets. There were more snakes in front of Bobbi and Cam sank his good hand into Ruth’s sleeve, pulling at her as she pulled at Ingrid. They staggered away in a chain.
Cam nearly stepped on a writhing nest. Most were shredded and bloody. A dozen more snapped and bit at each other in a frenzy of pain.
They smashed through the underbrush and the aspen. Cam punched at as many branches as he could reach, trying to drive off the insects as Bobbi squeezed off another short burst at nothing that he could see, sweeping the earth. If there were more snakes, Cam didn’t know if the gunfire would excite them or drive them off, but he drew his pistol, too, thinking to reinforce her.
By now, Ingrid was running with more momentum than intent. She collapsed. Ruth dragged her up and Cam fired six times in front of them, hoping the muzzle flashes and gun-smoke might affect the bugs. Bobbi had the same idea and squeezed off the rest of her magazine, strafing the air. Bullets thunked into the trees. Leaves and bark spun overhead.
Somewhere, far away, Cam thought he heard rifle fire crackling in response to their weapons, like Morse code. They kept running. Bobbi reloaded but held her fire exactly as Cam was hoarding his last shots.
They broke out of the yellow aspen into a green meadow. The insects seemed to be gone. Cam didn’t want to stop, but Ruth and Ingrid were staggering and his side felt like it had split open, tearing the stitches.
“Rest,” he gasped. “Rest but get ready to move.”
“I saw fifty of them! Fifty snakes!” Bobbi said. Heaving for air, she tried to climb onto an old log but slipped and half fell. At the same time, Ingrid, Cam, and Ruth stepped gingerly in the brush, facing outward from each other.
“Water,” Ruth said. “There has to be water.”
“We’ll follow that gully,” Cam said. The north side of the meadow dropped away into a pair of ravines. He was sure they’d find a creek eventually… but would anything be safe to drink?
Bobbi wept, removing her mask to knead at the welts on her face and neck. Cam distracted himself by listening for more gunfire. The artillery unit must have heard them. Were they trying to signal Cam’s group or were they losing the on-and-off battle he’d been following for more than an hour? If they’d left their artillery and were fighting with small arms instead, was that because they were retreating from infected people?
There were no more shots, so Cam glanced back into the trees, wondering at what he’d just seen. Bull snakes were not indigenous to this elevation. Neither were yellow jackets. Cam believed they were at nine thousand feet. There shouldn’t be anything here to feed the snakes, who lived mostly on rodents and small lizards. There were no rodents left below the death-line, and not many above it, either — but maybe that was why the bull snakes had migrated this high, finding just enough chipmunks, immature marmots, birds, and eggs to endure all this time. Maybe the snake population was actually descending again after surviving the plague year above ten thousand feet, hibernating through the long winters and leaving only the hardiest, most adaptable individuals to reproduce.