Mostly Ruth was happy. Certainly she was never bored. They’d spent seven of the past fifteen months on the move, hiking and scouting, negotiating with other survivors. Most of their energy went into the basic necessities. Food. Shelter. Ruth was even glad to forget her research, contributing instead to their day-to-day struggles. It was selfish, she knew. More critical than any other challenge was the next-generation nanotech that must be designed as quickly as possible. A second invasion wasn’t impossible. The Russians and the Chinese had dragged their feet as they prepared to leave, bickering with each other and haggling with the disunited American government, even constructing new bases to house their airmen and soldiers in the meantime, playing for every advantage as they developed their own nanotech.
Ruth had no illusions about what had finally happened.
Her hands shook as she double-sealed the windows of her home. She thought her tremors were only bad nerves and exhaustion, but what if it was something else? Would I know if I was infected? she worried. What if it’s possible to absorb a low-level dose of the contagion that’s breeding in me right now?
Another thought occurred her, and it was even more awful. What if their village had been specifically targeted because of her? They knew Colorado was under intensive electronic surveillance. What if the invaders had heard something or if a facial recognition program had finally made a match? The nanotech could be meant for her, infecting Allison and the others only because they were in the way.
Michael woke up behind her. He thrashed against his bonds and huffed for air in guttural, rhythmic grunts. “Haaah. Haaah. Haaah.”
Ruth turned only to make sure he wasn’t pulling free of the tape. But her gaze lingered. Michael’s eyes were half closed and roamed endlessly behind his eyelids, almost as if he was in REM sleep. His mouth hung open like a cave.
“Haaah. Haaah.”
He was ugly, wrapped in the flopping bandage of the shirt. Ruth fought down an urge to smash his head with the lantern. The infection wasn’t his fault, but she couldn’t look at him anymore. She was embarrassed by the sounds he made.
“Haaah. Haaah.”
Her claustrophobia was like a tidal wave inside her, swelling and hurting. Her pulse didn’t make it any easier to be careful with the knife, slicing another big square of plastic. Every minute, she was sealing herself deeper in plastic and tape. Would she ever get out?
“Listen,” Cam said to Bobbi, gesturing for her to join him by the radio. They crouched together in a busy hut as other people hammered plastic sheeting over the windows. “We need to find somebody,” he said, but Bobbi was distracted.
“I don’t hear anything,” she said.
“Listen to me.” He showed Bobbi the frequency control, trying a second band and then a third. Each time, he clicked twice at his SEND button and waited to hear something in return. “We’re going to have to walk through as many channels as possible,” he said. “One at a time. Like this.”
“Why can’t you just call?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
The hut stank of marijuana, which was their only anesthetic except for alcohol. Brett had been gutshot. They were afraid to let him drink, although Susan had used a jar of 150 proof moonshine to sterilize his torso as best she could. The alcohol was expensive. Marijuana was not. The plant was called “weed” for good reason. It had survived in the wild only to be recultivated in Morristown, where it was grown for its fibrous stalks for cloth and rope and as an easy cash crop as a drug.
Cam breathed clean air as people continued to hurry in and out of the door, piling backpacks, canteens, and other gear in the corner. Jefferson was consuming itself. They’d torn down Greenhouse 2 as well as 4, intending to use the plastic and the last of their tape, staples, and nails to seal most of the villagers inside.
They had to assume the worst. No one had responded to his calls on the civilian channels. Morristown, Steamboat, New Jackson, Freedom — every town within reach was off the grid, so he’d abandoned the CB for their Harris AN/PRC-117 instead. Cam wanted a helicopter for Ruth and he was prepared to face a jail sentence if necessary. Let the U.S. leadership punish him if there was ever time for it. The important thing was to get her to safety, but first they needed a bit of luck.
Like most of their military hardware, the Harris was something that had been abandoned by American troops whose positions were overrun. Cam regarded it with a mix of old pride and pain. His time in the Rangers had been short but intense, full of the quick, meaningful friendships that were born of relying on each other, and Eric and Greg had continued his training after they went into hiding. Bobbi was still a newlywed or she might have known more herself. Eric had focused more on her weapons training during their courtship. Guns were exciting, so she’d learned to shoot instead of other basics.
“This radio was Z‘ed out,” he said. “That means the encryption software was dumped to keep it from the Chinese, so we can’t hear or talk on the secure net. That’s why it’s so quiet. I guarantee you there are people talking right now. We just can’t hear their transmissions.”
Bobbi pointed at the handset. “But you can still call.”
“No. This radio is only capable of open broadcasts. We can only reach people who are monitoring or broadcasting in the open.”
The Harris was a sixteen-pound chunk of metal intended for use in a vehicle or as a field pack. It didn’t have the strength to contact Grand Lake or Sylvan Mountain directly. It was meant to be deployed as a part of a larger net — and they were in friendly territory. There were signals corpsmen and retransmission stations scattered across the Rockies. He might even be relayed through a plane if U.S. forces had put the right equipment in the air, trying to find stragglers like himself.
Or to kill them.
Cam was paranoid enough to believe that the new plague might have its origins on the American side. The U.S. weapons programs wouldn’t have stopped after Ruth went AWOL, and it wasn’t impossible that the plague zone was limited to this valley. What if, through sheer bad luck, this place had been chosen as a test area? He needed to make it clear who was at risk. They would come for Ruth. He was certain of that.
“The best we can do is stumble onto a frequency that’s being monitored or find two units talking in the unsecure and step on their transmission,” he said. “That’s why this could take awhile. There’ll be units who don’t have any better equipment than we do, but there are hundreds of frequencies. So you need to do this for me.”
“Hey!” Owen called from across the room, hefting a staple gun and a roll of tape. “We’re done except for the door. Are you coming out?”
“One minute.”
“We gotta seal up!” Owen shouted. He was a tall man and among the most visible in the crowd, which included his wife. The village gossip was that she’d miscarried twice, which was why Owen doted on her like nothing else. Cam didn’t want to argue with him.
“Close it,” he said. “I’ll come out as soon as I can.”
The air wouldn’t last. Sealing two huts in plastic was a temporary fix. Ripping down the greenhouses had also left more of their late-year crops unprotected, increasing the likelihood of more insect swarms tomorrow. Meanwhile, the fire ants were still expanding beneath Jefferson. Even if the colony stayed in the ground tonight, Cam knew they could count on dealing with the bugs again after sunrise. The vicious goddamned ants would be excited by the blood they’d spilled.