Plague Zone by Jeff Carlson Read Free Book Online

shouted.
     
“We can’t let them get up again,” Greg said as another man drew his pistol and a third turned away from Cam.
     
“Enough,” the third man said. “Let’s do it.”
     
Cam grabbed his arm. “No.”
     
The debate might have been harder because most of their faces were wrapped in goggles and masks. They were friends, but their armor was another layer between them, like the darkness, their guilt, and their fear.
     
“Wait!” Bobbi said. “Wait. Look!”
     
Some of the flashlights came around, playing on Ruth’s suit. “I can do it,” she called through her brightly lit faceplate. “I can take care of them.”
     
“Ruth,” Cam said, desperate with relief.
     
She was glad, faintly, but she couldn’t forget that she had been the first to start shooting. What if there had been another way? Could they have subdued Tony and the old woman without killing them? Denise would still be alive, too.
     
Ruth was afraid of walking into the field of bodies alone. What if they woke up? She might tear her gloves or her sleeves when she tried to carry them. The suit wasn’t designed for heavy labor, much less for combat—but she couldn’t leave those people to die.
     
“We’ll use my cabin to hold them,” she said, “but I need help. Rope. Water.” Her windows and doors were bug-proofed, but those seals wouldn’t hold nanotech. “Get me as much plastic sheeting as we have.”
     
“Tear down Greenhouse 4,” Cam said, shoving at the man who’d drawn his gun. “Go.”
     
Maybe they still could save most of their friends.
     
     
     
     
     
Ruth went to Allison first, sidestepping Linda and Doug. She should have tied some of the unconscious men and women before doing anything else—she had a bit of duct tape left after sealing her gloves to her sleeves—but she was drawn to her longtime foe. She told herself it was because Allison was pregnant, but the girl was dead, her crimson eyes bulging from the pressure of some intracranial rupture.
     
Whatever the nanotech is doing, the process doesn’t always work, she thought, taking the only lesson she could from Allison’s death.
     
Somewhere in her sadness, Ruth was also comforted. It was a backward sort of feeling, as if she’d lost a burden she would have preferred to keep, but she couldn’t imagine this bright young woman living with her hideously chewed mouth, especially if her mind was gone.
     
Ruth had wanted to hold Cam’s baby even more than she’d realized, and her hand paused above Allison’s belly. But no. No. Stay with your mother, she thought, weeping inside her helmet. They lacked the technology to care for a premature birth. Even before the machine plague, saving a fetus early in its second trimester would have been remarkable. Today, it was impossible—so they’d lost the child, too.
     
I can’t let Cam see her like this, she realized, pressing her glove to Allison’s swollen face. She turned the girl’s head and hid her partly in her jacket hood. Now her tears were hot and thick and she tried to wipe her eyes, which was stupid. It would have infected her if she got inside her helmet. Instead, she only smeared blood and dust across her faceplate.
     
Her voice broke when she called back to the stabbing flashlights. “Allison’s dead. So is Tony. And the stranger. Michael’s alive.”
     
“You better hurry,” Greg yelled back. “Linda’s starting to move her arms.”
     
Ruth walked toward the lights again. Greg, Cam, and another man had stayed to hold three beams on her. Deeper in the village, other flashlights and lanterns swarmed. Then she knelt beside Linda Greene, who was weakly stretching her arms as if dreaming. Ruth pulled Linda’s wrists together and secured them with duct tape, binding the other woman like a criminal.
     
What’s happening to you? she wondered.
     
     
     
     
     
     
    4
     
     
Doug Tillman quit breathing before Ruth got to him, and Martha Shemitz had a broken neck. The other four