The Reaper Plague (17 page)

“
A couple dozen Twosies out
in the woods to the southwest. They had improvised weapons, sticks
and shovels and things. They rushed a perimeter patrol.” Rick’s
face reflected pain. “Killed most of them, all except a few who ran
away.”

“
Killed them?
Why?”

“
They didn’t survive the
Needleshock. The docs think it was the Plague interactions, Eden
versus Demon Two.”

“
Damn. So we can’t save the
Twosies, at least not with a simple Eden shot. I guess that’s
something for the long term, some kind of cure. At least it works
on the Onesies.”

“
Yeah. Small
favors.”

Jill pushed herself more upright and asked
Rick to hunt her up some lunch. Once he came back with a heated MRE
she asked, “So what else is going on?”

“
Well, they got all the
tents up. The medical folks say they are ready to start
inoculations as soon as we can bring them customers, and send out
teams if we can find villages or gathering places.”

“
What about
you?”

“
I wrote a preliminary
report, it won’t get through for a day or two probably, until they
get good comms set up…until then I’m helping with the computers.”
Rick went on to chat about the battalion and expected to go back to
his duties when SSG Grusky showed up, but the shooting started
first.

Skull awoke with a start and tried to get
up, but found himself held fast. Trying to move his head, he
realized that he was naked, immobilized, and completely encased in
some kind of material – presumably the same modified base-stuff
that made up the walls and floor. He was upright, with nothing but
his face showing outside the cocoon.

He carefully exerted his strength, building
until he could feel his own arms bruising and his skin threatening
to split, but no matter what he did he could not move more than a
half an inch in any direction. Resigned, he cleared his throat.
“Raphaela?”

She walked into his range of vision, looking
guilty. “I’m sorry, Alan. I gave you every chance I could, but I
have bigger concerns right now. You may not agree, but that’s just
the way it is.”

“
The way what is? What do
you plan to do? You can’t keep me here forever.”

“
I can keep you there for a
long time. The mechanism I’ve set up will tend to all your
needs.”

Changing tack, he asked, “What do you mean
bigger concerns? What’s bigger than saving the Earth?”

“
We’ll have just enough
time for that. I’ve re-run the calculations based on the incoming
scout ship’s latest signals. They will be here in just over nine
months.” She raised her eyebrows at him, as if that period of time
should be somehow significant.

He looked around the room, searching for
something to give him a clue as to her purpose. “Is that supposed
to mean something to me? And do you mean to keep me in here for
nine months?”

“
Almost. You’ve made it
clear you don’t want to be my lover, or my friend, or my…or my
anything. But like it or not you’re going to be the father of my
child, so like all single mothers down through history I’m just
going to have to deal with things as they are and do the best I
can. I wanted us to be together somehow, but since you’ve rejected
me I have to put my energy into our son.” She tried but failed to
keep anger out of her voice.

He gaped at her, his mind in turmoil. “Our
son…but…this changes everything!”

“
Really? How? How, Skull.
How?
”

It was the first time she’d called him Skull
since they’d been together, and he realized it stung. That maybe he
had been trying to deny this thing between them so vehemently
because there was truth to it. “Because…we’re having a child!”

“
Yes
I’m
having a
child, without
you
,” she said bitterly. “
You’re
going
into stasis. Just as soon as this conversation, is over. It’s as
wonderful and endearing as every other talk we’ve had. You’re going
to stay there until he’s born, because I can’t trust you. You’re a
danger to us both.”

“
I’d never hurt my own
child!” he cried.

“
How do I know that? Do you
have one back on Earth that you never told me about? All I know is
that you’re unstable, violent, and super-nano-infused. And I gave
you every chance and you blew me off.” Now that she had allowed
herself to give vent to the anger she had been holding back, it
spewed forth in a wave. “You’re the stupidest man I know, Alan,
which isn’t saying much because I don’t know very many men, but I
bet there are ten thousand guys on Earth that would love to have me
and would be better fathers and better men than you so you can just
suck it up and deal with it, isn’t that what you Marines say? Suck
it up and deal with it and if you’re very lucky I’ll be in a better
mood when you wake up.” She reached for a control.

“
Wait! If you’re determined
to do this, what can I do? But I wanted you to leave me here to
ambush them. Then you – you and the baby now – could go back to
Earth. You’ll be safe there.”

Raphaela laughed. “Safe on Earth? That’s a
laugh. And what do you care anyway?”

“
I do care about
you.”

“
You’re just saying that
now that you’re helpless.”

He tried to shake his head but failed. “No,
I…nevermind. Whatever. You haven’t listened to me since we took
off.”

She choked. “Who hasn’t listened?” With that
she touched a control.

“
Wait! I…” He trailed off
as his vision went from gray to black, and his thoughts did
likewise.

Raphaela sat for a long time on the floor
next to the cocoon, tears running uncontrollably down her face,
sobs racking her body. She already felt the loneliness of his
absence and her guts cramped with the fear of it. She rolled over
onto her side and curled into a ball of pain.

She wept for her failure to make him love
her, or even treat her decently, and she wept for herself and her
predicament and for her unborn son. Eventually she wept herself to
sleep as the warm hum of the dying base accompanied her into
Morpheus’ arms.

Major Dionicio “Denny” Vargas, commanding
Alpha Company (Homeland Security – Detached), rode in the center
vehicle of their seven Mine-Resistant Armored Personnel-carriers,
commonly called MRAPs. After landing with the Civil Affairs
battalion, they’d quickly and efficiently mustered and moved out on
their mission, heading south. Vargas was proud of them for
that.

Each armored truck mounted either a .50
caliber heavy machine gun, a 7.62mm six-barreled electric Gatling
minigun, or a 40mm grenade launcher. After furious, nearly mutinous
“discussion,” the heavily armed paramilitary company had been
issued a mix of lethal ammo and Needleshock, rather than pure
nonlethal. He’d had to go over Colonel Muzik’s head and make his
case to the new Deputy Under Secretary of Homeland Security, but
eventually they’d hammered out a compromise.

All the personal weapons were supposed to be
loaded with nonlethal ammo – though Vargas wasn’t going to try too
hard to enforce that one. But the heavy weapons had standard lethal
rounds available, as well as a nonlethal supply. He’d argued that
Needleshock grenades or .50 caliber wouldn’t penetrate armored
vehicles or structures like good old high explosive or full metal
jacket. On the other hand, he had to seem to accept the new
military leaders’ arguments that anyone they were shooting at was
an American, and their responsibility was to minimize casualties
and save lives.

Denny didn’t give a shit about that.
Kill
them all, the sooner the better. Let El Diablo sort them out.
He breathed the cool morning air as he stood in the top hatch of
his MRAP, ecstatic just to have his own independent command.

His convoy crept southward along Highway 1
toward Richmond. They’d thought about using Interstate 95, but the
Navy recon flights had shown that hundreds of thousands of fleeing
vehicles had turned that artery into a hopeless parking lot filled
with evil and death.

He flogged his mind, reviewing the special
intelligence briefings they’d had, much more detailed than the ones
given to those dumbass military personnel.

Immediately after the warheads had fallen,
those at the edge of the death zones had fled, despite being told
to stay in their homes. Marginally smarter people fled westward
toward the mountains and the rural areas. The hopeless sheep, the
professional classes of Northern Virginia, had joined hundreds of
thousands of their closest friends in a pointless attempt to flee
southward. Most had no plan, no supplies, and no skills, just a
vague notion of getting away toward the rural South, where the
rumors said no bombs had fallen.

When hours in their cars became days with no
food, no water and no fuel, many had turned on each other, fighting
and killing for something to drink or eat or just because they were
frustrated. Some escaped overland into the rural farms and small
towns, until they overwhelmed the people living there, who began to
turn the refugees away.

Sometimes with bullets.

With martial law’s advent the National Guard,
regular troops and first responders everywhere made a valiant
effort to bring the civil disaster under control – and they were
making progress. Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands had died in
the aftermath of the bombs, but slowly order emerged from
chaos.

Until Plaguefall One.

The population was hard-pressed, already
straining to cope with fallout, radiation burns and sickness,
scattered outbreaks of cholera, violence and starvation. When Demon
Plague One spread down the East Coast, the camel’s back broke.

It was panic as much as anything that
shattered the fragile remains of civilized society, especially in
the zones north of Richmond. With over a million infected refugees,
Virginia’s shaky remnants of state government had no choice but to
establish strict borders around the capital and close them to all
but a careful trickle of refugees.

Camps sprang up at the edge of the defended
zones, hellholes of exploitation, rape and murder. Richmond tried
to alleviate the problems by passing out food and sending armed
parties to repair water sources, but soon gave up. There were just
too many human animals. Demon Plague One had seen to that. Whatever
vestiges of civilized behavior might have remained, the alien virus
swept them all into a Darwinian nightmare, individual survival of
the fittest as the virus destroyed any sense of community, any
finer feeling, any decency.

Even that situation stabilized, somewhat.
Then the next Demon Plague fell. All those infected with Plague One
were fallow fields for number Two.

Onesies were nasty, brutish but still
recognizably human.

Twosies became animals, no better than apes.
Worse than apes, for primates showed affection and rudimentary
kindness to their own. The only cooperation the Twosies showed was
to band together to kill, to eat, and to kill again. Sometimes, for
the sheer lust of it.

So Vargas could expect Richmond to have
killed, driven off or captured their Twosies, but there was no
telling how they had dealt with their Onesies. The Federal
government had airdropped vaccines and information into the city,
but had often been shot at for their trouble, and the State
authorities had refused to negotiate until ground forces showed up,
citing empty promises and memories of FEMA failures.

So Vargas was back to delivering the Special
Envoy in person.

They’d laagered that first night in the
enormous parking lot of some kind of ruined motorcycle shop south
of Fredericksburg, and no one had bothered them. A few stealthy
figures crept about the periphery but no one challenged the unit’s
right to be there or really seemed to care. Most of the shops and
buildings had been looted; a few showed signs of fortification and
defense.

Now the convoy moved carefully past
intermittent vehicle pile-ups along the highway. Some had crashed
and burned; others looked to have been blockaded and looted. Still
others had simply crowded up in their own traffic-jam volume,
unable to get by, and thus had been abandoned. The MRAPs with their
enormous tires were usually able to make their way around these
obstacles, through the fields and pastures. Sometimes they pushed
cars out of the way, occasionally dismounting a double dozen troops
to clear obstacles by hand.

It made for slow going.

By midday they made it some twenty miles,
averaging three or four miles an hour. Vargas cursed loudly at his
people. Their progress was hardly faster than the blue and gray
armies that had marched up and down this green countryside so long
ago.

They’d passed tiny crossroads villages like
Thornburg and Cedon, Ryland Corner and Ladysmith. The remnants of
buildings were broken teeth set in the green gums of pastures and
peanut fields. Their first sign of occupation, or at least of a
live community, was at the resort town of Lake Caroline. Vargas
called a halt to the convoy as it came into view.

He lifted binoculars to his eyes and surveyed
the west side of the highway. The crossroads and turnoffs were
clear, but he could see that they were all blocked and barricaded
about a quarter mile back. A wise precaution, if the community was
still functioning and civilized. No need to contest passage along
the highway, but he figured anyone that left the roadway to go in
their direction would encounter well-armed citizens.