Plague Year (20 page)

“I just meant—” The EMT shut up, like the gray-bearded medic had done when he took the bullet.

Thunder swept toward them from downriver, closing fast, sheets of noise that intensified into a single bass vibration. The ambulance shook. So did Ruth’s heart.
Rebels.
The setup had been perfect. Start a panic, pack the leaders into a kill zone— Gus shouted and Ulinov reached for the rear doors as if to jump out—

The gunships went overhead, upriver, at least two of them, then swooped around and thudded back again. They were covering the slow wedge of trucks and Suburbans.

It was a disproportionate response to a lone rifleman, even to protect the president if he’d come. The fuel cost alone would be awesome. The response was also improbably quick. They must have readied the chopper crews before
Endeavour
even grazed the atmosphere and Ruth wished fleetingly, honestly, that she was back in her lonely little cell aboard the ISS.

This time she did laugh, one short huff.

Betrayal, disillusionment, she had no name for her tired anger. She’d long suspected that the situation down here wasn’t as stable as she’d been told, carefully worrying over the few reports of raiders and food riots, but if James had ever hinted at civil war, she’d missed his clues. What else didn’t she know?

They jockeyed around the next bend and the reason for the jam was obvious. Ruth knew the barricade existed, from orbital photographs, but her eye had skipped over it easily. She had wondered at its size, yet accepted that Leadville’s security needs were extraordinary. The harsh fact was that there wasn’t enough food or shelter for everyone who’d reached elevation, and it was mandatory to protect the labs and the nanotech experts who were the one hope of reversing the situation.

She had rarely considered what it would be like on the outside. She didn’t have to. She was one of the chosen. She always had been. Now she stared at the wall, following the helicopters with her ears, as the ambulance nudged forward a few yards at a time.

It would be such a waste for her to be killed out here.

The up-and-down terrain slumped into a saddle between the short hill on their right and, on their left, a more gradual rise that eventually thrust up into Prospect Mountain, one of the rounded white peaks east of Leadville. In this rare low spot, their highway merged with another that had come out of the northeast along the river. It was a textbook defensive position. Cars had been stacked three deep and three high across the gully, civilian cars, many stripped of their tires and seats and possibly their engines and wiring as well.

This colorful pile of steel was beyond anything required to divert the refugee masses up the eastern slope, of course. It would withstand artillery, though it didn’t look as if an assault of any kind had ever come. No wonder. A tank had pulled forward from the one gap left in the wall, where it probably functioned as the gate, its stout barrel raised cross-river in support of the helicopters.

Twenty soldiers stood at the entrance and stopped each vehicle, if only briefly. Why? Was there a password? She supposed there must be. How else could you keep out infiltrators who looked like you and talked like you?

Impeded by the tank, traffic jostled for position. Directly ahead of Ruth, a black Suburban butted against the lean man’s jeep and he beat on its tinted driver-door window with his walkie-talkie. Horns bawled, helpless, stupid, but she still heard some of his confident voice.

The soldiers at the gate waved the lean man through without hesitation, before his driver had stopped—and when he gestured they let both ambulances pass as well.

* * * *

Leadville was the stuff of postcards and paintings, even disregarding the majesty of its mountain cradle. The pride taken by its tourist board had been deserved.

The main body of town covered slightly more than one square mile on a shallow, concave plain just west of a sweeping mess of upheavals and canyons with names like Yankee Hill and Stray Horse Gulch. Eastward, the mayhem of land rose onward until it finally broke at 14,000 feet and plunged away toward Kansas.

There had never been many trees at this elevation— absolutely none, now, all burned for fuel during the first winter—and Leadville was a gathering of red brick. The white spire of a church jabbed heavenward. Anchoring main street were two heritage museums, the courthouse, and a well-preserved opera theater built in 1870, and the low buildings and wide boulevard would always have the shape of a frontier town. It didn’t matter that these structures, and the shops and breakfast cafes, had been turned into command centers for civil, federal, and military staffs. It didn’t matter that sandbagged firing positions cluttered the sidewalks.

This place, already so laden in history, would survive to repopulate the continent and become America again. Ruth swore to herself. Her days, her nights, her life, anything. She would make it happen. These people had fought too hard.

Gus touched her leg and she leaned away, squeezing both hands into fists despite the horrible grating in her arm.

“Look,” he said. “Look at that.”

But she had already seen. Red, white, and blue bunting hung from the streetlights and storefronts, and she noticed a podium on the courthouse steps as they sped past. A victory parade. A celebration in the face of starvation and madness.

“We made it,” Gus said.

Ruth nodded but couldn’t talk, too busy, too keyed up, all senses locked on absorbing her surroundings.

She had never cried in front of them.

* * * *

The jeep led their little convoy around the back of a modern hotel, which seemed strange, but she saw another ambulance parked in the lot already. She stared at the three-story building. Some new reflex in her was desperate to get
inside
again. Inside meant clean, calm, alone. Inside meant safe.

“My name is Major Hernandez,” the lean man told them, as medical staff bustled around the open doors of the two ambulances. “We’re going to get you out of those suits and have the doctors look you over.”

It was a chaotic moment for an introduction but he made it work, looking for Ruth’s eyes as she sat deep inside the ambulance, then trading a curt nod with Ulinov. Ruth had the impression that he made everything work, but he wasn’t her idea of an officer. He wore no decorations or pins. His only insignia was a single nonreflective black oak cluster on one side of his collar—and she recalled how the MPs had acted, making way but not saluting. Of course. It would be stupid to identify command in a war zone with snipers in the hills.

Hernandez was also shorter than she’d realized, no bigger than Ruth, yet stood undisturbed by the rush of white uniforms. The medical staff had wheelchairs, a gurney, and two men held IV bags overhead, shouting, but they went around him exactly as the traffic jam had dodged around the tank.

The gurney and IV bags, probably blood plasma, went to the other ambulance—for Derek Mills or for the wounded medic?

Ruth opened her mouth but Major Hernandez continued, his tone practiced and reassuring. “You’ll probably see some old friends inside. We have NASA’s best physicians waiting.”

Ulinov was lifted down into a wheelchair as Gus crawled out on his own. Ruth tried to follow, with help from the EMT inside the ambulance, and she fell against the woman. Raging adrenaline had carried her up and down the
Endeavour
’s interdeck ladder, but at a real price. Her body had no more strength left than a bag of jelly rammed full of sticks and stones wherever it hurt.

Then the gurney rolled past again in a knot of bodies, bearing an orange pressure suit. Mills had made it!

Deborah stood at the rear of the other ambulance, resisting the nurse who was trying to ease her into a wheelchair beside Ulinov. “Let me go with him—” Deb had her smooth jaw tipped up in that haughty, aggressive way.

“Easy.” Hernandez pushed an open palm at her. “We have the best teams right inside. Let us take care of you too.”

Ruth grimaced. Her own heart was slamming, badly overtaxed by Earth’s gravity, and her system hadn’t been ruptured. The injuries Mills had suffered must be twenty times more dangerous because of that strain.

She was grateful to be set in a wheelchair herself.

“There are some people who need to see you,” Hernandez said, and Ruth looked up and was confused to find him addressing Ulinov. “I’ll hold them off awhile if you like, Commander.”

Ulinov shook his head. “You have the shuttle secure?”

Hernandez turned smoothly to Ruth, as if the question had been hers. “Yes. Your equipment is all safe, Dr. Goldman. We’ve pulled everything out.”

He made another spare gesture and they were wheeled toward the glass entrance. Ruth watched Ulinov’s face, wondering at his exchange with Hernandez. Why was it important for them to talk to
him
?

Too much else was happening. “Is Derek going to be all right?” she asked. She didn’t want anyone to think her only concern had been for her gear.

Hernandez paced alongside her without answering, and Ruth realized that he might not know the name. She glanced up again to clarify. His frown was genuine, affecting his dark, direct eyes. “I’m afraid your pilot is dead,” he told them.

Ruth shook her head. “But I saw—”

Deb, close behind, cut her off in a clipped tone that Ruth took to be accusing. As if she could have known. “Bill has puncture wounds over his left hip, arm and shoulder, blunt trauma to the abdomen and thigh. He’s hemorrhaging.”

And yet Bill Wallace had stayed at his console to complete the emergency power-off.

Ruth moved her head again, unsure what she was denying, if anything. She would need to rediscover that kind of courage and dedication in herself.

17

She fell out of a dream and clutched at the narrow hospital bed with her good hand and the awkward club of her cast, digging at the mattress, pressing into it with her bare heels.

The dark wood ceiling was no part of the ISS. Ruth breathed in and took stock of herself.

Strange, how the mind persisted in making sense of things, even unconscious. Her body would be a long time adjusting to gravity again and as she rested her brain had worked furiously, whirling up on uneven tornados of fear.

Voices buzzed at her door, which was probably what had woken her. Not the noise itself—the ceiling creaked regularly, and a woman coughed and coughed in the room behind her— but even asleep Ruth had been waiting.

She needed to see a friendly face. She just hoped James hadn’t brought too much of a welcoming party with him. She would be a long time adjusting to crowds again, too.

What took you so long?
Ruth glanced left and right to see if it was night or even morning already, thinking to impress him with a cavalier remark. Unfortunately this room had been divided in two with raw sheets of plywood, and the window was on the other side. No clock. One sixty-watt bulb in a ceiling fixture meant to hold four. She knew she was lucky to get any privacy at all, but a touch of claustrophobia made her feel like she was still caught in that falling dream. She might have slept for an hour or for a hundred years.

Her bladder was full, a heavy boulder pressing hard. They’d made her drink as much as she could hold. But this divided space had been the living room in one of the hotel’s business suites, dark walls, light trim, and there was no toilet. All she had was a bedpan, and the men at the door seemed to be coming in.

“—telling you.”

“And I’m telling you, Doc. Not a chance.”

The bedpan! Her nurse had left it in full view, on a blue patio chair that was this cubby’s only other furniture. Ruth half lunged for the pan but there was only one hiding place—under the sheets with her, where it would form an obvious lump. Better to leave the damn thing out as a conversation piece.

They were still at the door, maybe trying to wake her. That would be like James. He was very sly, and very polite, though she didn’t think she’d heard him yet.

“I said no. Now get out of my way.”

“It’s for your benefit as well.”

Maybe that was how he sounded off the radio. Ruth almost called out,
I’m awake
, but touched her hair and frowned. She must look awful, dirty and dazed and puffy with sleep, her short curls matted into spaghetti. Lord knew they should be beyond anything so trite as appearances—except that she was the new girl, after all, and those dynamics would play a part in her success or failure. She needed to establish herself correctly.

There was a lot going in her favor, a reputation of past achievements, the mystique of being from the space station, the fact that the science teams here had hit a wall.

Some people would resent her for those exact same reasons, of course. She was used to that. Some people would want any excuse to distance themselves from her, to spread doubt, to keep or increase their own support, and a bad first impression might be all they required to begin their little campaigns. These were brilliant minds. No one was capable of more cutting ridicule.

She was practically naked, damn it, clad only in a T-shirt and undies. James should have known better than to bring anybody before she was ready!

Ruth tried to heave herself into a sitting position. Her broken arm made a lousy stilt, though, locked into an L-shape by the thick plaster, and a shiver of pain shot all the way up through her shoulder.

It would have been so much better to endure three or five hours of parades, speeches, medals, baking inside her photogenic orange pressure suit up at the podium with the astronauts and every big cheese in town. After that she would have been the undisputed king. Queen. Whatever.

Swooning, Ruth swept her good hand over her legs and smoothed her blankets like a dress.

She had asked four times for painkillers but they refused, afraid to make her heart or respiratory system work any harder. Now she was glad. She had grayed out again when they reset her bones, spasming away from her own arm, but this meeting would be hard enough to pull off looking like an abused mouse. At least she wasn’t dull with morphine.