7th Sigma (3 page)

“Are you upset?”

Kimble shrugged. “Not right now. I get nightmares sometimes.” He looked away. “What should we do with the body?”

Bodies, actually. After another half hour, the bugs settled down and Ruth and Kimble scouted ahead, leaving the travois in the ditch. The other man was lying in the middle of the road. He'd bled so much, the blood had eroded a path across the road's surface and into the ditch. Flies buzzed on the blood-soaked ground. Kimble counted five different bug holes in the man, including one in his forehead.

“Look,” he pointed at a spot in the road a few yards away from the body.

“Those bugs?”

A dozen bugs clustered around a spot in the road. They were jostling each other as they all strove to reach something in the middle.

“Yeah. They're eating the broken one. The bug these guys stepped on.”

“And started the swarm.”

“And started the swarm.” Kimble rubbed his upper right arm through the cloth of his shirt.

They covered the bodies using blankets from the men's own packs, which they had flung aside in the initial panic. According to Ruth's map, there was another village just two miles ahead. “We'll report it there,” she said.

It was only a few houses clustered around a store and some surrounding farms. “You could've just buried them,” said the storekeeper, examining the Oklahoma driver's licenses Ruth had brought from the bodies. “Driver's licenses. Ha! What they gonna drive?”

“What about their families? Won't they want the bodies?”

The storekeeper eyed Ruth. “New to the territory?”

Ruth nodded once. “Six weeks.”

“We don't got no refrigeration. In winter you could get away with hauling bodies all the way to the border, but this time of the year you just want to get them into the ground as soon as possible.”

He took Ruth's name and direction and said, “We'll get someone out there with a spade. You say they had stuff?”

“Backpacks. I put them in the bushes near where they lay.”

The storekeeper brightened. “Good thought to hide them. It might be worth someone's while to go out and give them a Christian burial.”

“Oh,” said Kimble. “Is that what a Christian burial is? One with a profit?”

The storekeeper gave Kimble a dark look. “This isn't some vacation destination. They can't come into the territory without seeing that film. They had to sign the release before they were allowed in.” He looked at Ruth. “They're still doing that, right?”

Ruth nodded. “Yes. At Needles, at least.”

Kimble started to open his mouth again, but Ruth grabbed him by the collar and said good-bye.

Outside she said, “Why are you giving him such a hard time? Don't you want those bodies buried?”

Kimble ducked his head. “Sorry. It was that Christian thing. What about ‘Christian duty'? They would preach something awful at the shelters. Some of them really meant it, but some of them would spout scripture then prey on the homeless girls. Let us ‘prey,'” he said, holding his hands like claws.

She nodded. “I can see that. I don't care what people believe, myself. I care how they behave. Sometimes their beliefs are part of that, right? Let's make tracks.”

*   *   *

THAT
night they camped on the Rio Puerco, where the road crossed the river and merged with the River Road. A store and an inn were tucked above the bosque. Ruth talked to the clerk at the inn but shook her head at the prices. Several others had also found it too dear and were camped below in the bosque.

They found a spot to unroll their blankets and eat supper. As it got dark, they joined the group sitting around a campfire where the river had washed the sandy bank clean of foliage.

The Munn family, an Anglo couple with two kids, were headed for the capital to shop. Mr. Herbert was an older black man returning from the capital after a yearly physical. Honovi and Cha'risi were Hopi freighters, resting on the east–west run to Arizona. And there were Andrea and Samantha, two “sisters” who looked nothing alike and sat with their shoulders touching. The Reverend Torrance was a Baptist missionary from Alabama.

Kimble ended up telling about the two dead men from Oklahoma. Mr. Herbert raised his head. “I passed them, I think, while they were still alive, of course. They were walking, right? I was on my horse. They were headed south. Sad.”

The Reverend Torrance bowed his head and clasped his hands together. “May God Almighty take them into his keeping and bring them into the glory of his presence.”

Mrs. Munn said, “Amen.”

Ruth said, “I've only been in the territory for six weeks, but it surprised me. Do you see that often?”

“Not as much, these days,” said Mr. Herbert. “Not like it was during the Exodus.”

Honovi, one of the Hopi freighters, shook his head. “No. Nothing like that. Most drove out, of course, in the first weeks, while the cars were still working. The Air Force dropped those leaflets after the power went.”

Mr. Munn, father of the two kids, nodded. “I've got a whole stack of those on my bookshelf.”

Mr. Herbert said, “Once the bugs started eating cars, though, that's when things got bad.”

“Where'd you live?” Mr. Munn asked. “When it happened.”

“I was outside, stationed at Fort Carson, First Battalion, 67th Armor. Hoo-ah.” He smiled to himself. “It was Captain Herbert, then. We came south in all our mechanized glory and we destroyed bugs by the thousands. I will say this, we probably saved a lot of lives, 'cause the millions of bugs that came for us left the adjoining territory clear.” The faint smile dropped off his face. “We lost over six hundred men and all our vehicles and weapons.”

The other Hopi freighter, Cha'risi, said, “I was at the University of New Mexico then. I remember the helicopters falling out of the sky. The few that made it back went high quickly but it was a gamble. Sure, the bugs couldn't reach you but any bugs that had attached themselves lower down went for the electrical systems and it was a toss-up whether you'd lose an instrument or the engines. I got out into the west face of the Sandias. Took one of the trails. Eventually, the National Guard found me. The stripped down version of the guard. No weapons, no metal. They walked in supplied by air drops.”

“Why'd they stop, Daddy?” asked Mr. Munn's daughter. “Why didn't they just eat all the metal in the world?”

Three people spoke at once.

“The barrier,” said her father.

“The sunlight,” said one of the sisters, Samantha.

“The army,” said Honovi.

Then Mr. Herbert said, “Bullshit.”

They all looked at him and he went on. “I've heard all of those but I've seen the barrier. The bugs don't go anywhere near it. And there's as much sunlight in southern Utah as in Arizona and New Mexico. Sure they seem to be solar-powered but they're not spreading everywhere there's good sun. And I was there, son. The army didn't stop them. We could destroy bugs, sure, but it just brought more. Once the bugs are on your own equipment, what are you gonna do? Shoot at your own tanks?”

He shook his head and knocked on his thigh, a hard rapping sound, knuckles on plastic. “My battalion's intelligence officer visited me in the hospital before my discharge. The bugs had stopped spreading over more territory. Even then they didn't know why the bugs stopped where they did.”

The other sister, Andrea, asked, “I heard they came out of the lab, at Sandia. They were designed to clean up toxic and radioactive waste, but they got out of hand.”

Mr. Munn said, “Heard something similar, but that it was from the labs up at Los Alamos. That the radioactivity caused their instruction set to mutate and we got the uncontrolled replication.”

“I've heard all of those,” said Mr. Herbert. “Also that it was from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant down near Carlsbad or that the aliens seeded them at Roswell in 1947 and it took that long for them to grow.” He shook his head. “I do know this—the original infestation spread from near Socorro. But that's all I know.”

“New Mexico Tech?” said the other sister, Samantha. “The full name
is
the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. That would make more sense. I mean, there's heavy metal pollution, but a lot of pollution is organic solvents that the bugs wouldn't touch. But if they'd been developed for mining—that would make sense.”

Mr. Herbert shrugged. “There's no record of that kind of research. Some nano-technology stuff, sure, and robotics, but not like this.”

Mrs. Munn said, “Well, there wouldn't be, would there? This would be big money stuff. You just turn your bugs loose on a deposit and they go mine it, making more bugs and more bugs and when they're done, they just fly back to you, to be melted down. Company or government that could do that wouldn't want his competitors to know. Then, when it went wrong, they covered it up, of course. Thousands died. Worse than Bhopal.”

The Reverend Torrance said, “You're overlooking another possibility.” His eyes shifted sideways to the “sisters” and back to the fire. “God, who created the world, who washed it in the flood, who burned Sodom and Gomorrah with fire, is visiting his wrath on our country
in particular
as we stray from the path of righteousness.”

“God is certainly visiting a pestilence upon us in
you
,” Kimble muttered, but only Ruth heard him and he shut his mouth at her glare.

Mr. Herbert shifted his artificial leg and stood. “The only thing worse than discussing politics with strangers is arguing religion. I'm turning in.”

Andrea grinned at the Reverend Torrance. “I'm for bed, too.” She looked back at Mrs. Munn. “Once you allege cover-ups and the machinations of the powerful, there's no proving anything. ‘Evidence has been suppressed.' I will say this, though; we've been studying them for a couple of decades now and we're no closer to duplicating them.”

Mrs. Munn said, “That you
know
.”

Andrea laughed. Mr. Herbert just shook his head and limped off into the night, followed soon after by everyone else but the family Munn, whose fire it was.

Later, after brushing his teeth
without
being told, Kimble asked Ruth, “What do
you
think?”

She shook her head. “Insufficient data. Don't think it's God punishing us. Seriously doubt Mrs. Munn's vast conspiracy.” She turned back her bedroll and sat on it. “But after seeing that man die today … well, I'm imagining that times thirty thousand.” She shook her head. “History. It has a distancing effect, doesn't it?”

Kimble stared off into the dark. Thirty thousand? All dead? He had a hard time imagining that many people in the entire world. He rubbed his fingers together, remembering the slippery blood. Thirty thousand riddled with bug holes.

“Yes, Sensei.”

3

Bugs Don't Like Water

It took four days to reach the village of Perro Frio on a bend of the Rio Puerco. There was a more direct route, but bugs still worked the rusty remains of refineries, pre-bug communities, and railroad trestles, and Ruth and Kimble took the safe road, swinging wide. They arrived midday on Thursday, market day, when the population of the village increased fourfold. Though they had been taking turns pulling the travois, Kimble insisted on pulling it as they entered the village.

She bought fresh tomatoes and onions from one of the farmers using coin left over from the foiled thief.

“Passing through?” the man asked.

“No. I've come to homestead,” explained Ruth.

“Near here?”

“Yes.”

“You've already registered it? Then you must've taken one of those plots up on the east mesa. Mighty dry.”

“Uh, no. It's on the river.”

The farmer and his wife exchanged glances. “Everything near water is already being worked. Until you get about twenty miles downriver.”

“According to the map, it's only a mile south of here.”

“Oh, no, dear,” said the farmer's wife. “Is it in the bend?”

Ruth took out her map and looked at it. “Yes. Did the registrar get it wrong? They said that land was unclaimed and took my fees. Is someone living there?”

“Bugs, dear. Lots of bugs.”

Ruth's face froze. “Really? The clerk said it was unused. No building, no installations, no pipelines.”

“They used to dump stuff there, before. Old cars and refrigerators and washing machines. Not legally. And it got worse when the bugs first came. People who stayed, trying to clear their land of metal, they dragged more stuff over there.”

Ruth's face was still frozen as they left the market. Kimble said, “We should go look.”

She turned to him. “Bugs are dangerous. Remember the men from Oklahoma?”

“So is water, Sensei. We still drink it. We've walked four days. You walked six weeks. What's twenty more minutes?”

She looked at him and took a deep breath, then let it out. “Very well.”

*   *   *

THEY
followed the old county road, now a mass of cracked and crumbling asphalt with stretches of sandy washes cutting across where there used to be metal culverts under the pavement. The worst of these had been filled with rock and packed down, as had the worst of the potholes. When they reached the section where the road bordered the homestead site, a former culvert,
not
filled-in, cut across the road, well washed out. Someone had painted on the old asphalt,
DANGER: BUGS
, and an arrow labeled
DETOUR
pointed to a new trail, mostly wagon ruts cutting through the brown grass, that swung wide to the east.

Ruth exchanged glances with Kimble. “Okay. Let's go see how bad this is.”

Together they wrestled the travois down into the cut and then back up onto the asphalt on the other side.