Plague Zone Read Online Free PDF Page A

he pointed for Ruth to leave. “You can’t help us.”
     
“I knew Eric better than you.” There was a dangerous tone in Ruth’s voice. She backed it up by stepping closer to them.
     
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” Cam said, but he regretted his honesty. That was the wrong thing to say, he thought. “Go. You’re not on the team.”
     
“Fuck you,” Ruth said. “I’m staying.”
     
“We don’t have time for this,” Allison said, and Greg Estey nodded with obvious relief.
     
“Yeah, let’s get started.” Greg gestured at his flamethrower and said, “This gun’s full, Cam. You want to drain some of it off?”
     
“Absolutely. We’ll soak the ground as deep as we can.”
     
“How big is the colony?” another man asked.
     
“Twenty feet across, maybe more,” Cam said.
     
Ruth scowled at them, clenching her hands on her shovel. Cam thought she might throw it down, but Ruth wasn’t given to melodrama. “Fine,” she said, thrusting the shovel into another woman’s hands.
     
Cam watched her walk away.
     
In the darkness, Greenhouse 3 continued to burn weakly. Some of the framework was exposed now, smoldering in the melted plastic. Cam knew they would be crazy to bring gasoline into the fire, but the longer they waited, the farther the ants might burrow from the heat. Okay, you’re off the team, too, he thought at Allison, preparing for another argument.
     
He got lucky. One of their scouts ran out of the night, a sixteen-year-old boy with an assault rifle. “Wait!” the boy said. “Hey!”
     
Tony Dominguez was the youngest person in the village except for three infants. He was also one of Allison’s most ardent supporters. The boy had a crush on her about the size of the moon, for which Cam forgave him. For one thing, he approved of Tony’s taste in women. The poor kid didn’t have anyone his own age to lust after in Jefferson and his mom never let him join their trips to Morristown, probably because she was afraid he’d stay there. With a population of twelve hundred people, Morristown was practically a city. It was also a religious enclave and worked like a shield for Jefferson, deterring most travelers even as it provided a welcome source of crops and wealth in the area.
     
“Someone’s coming!” Tony said. “I heard someone in the fences on my side!”
     
Allison said, “You’re at Station Five?”
     
“Yes, ma‘am.”
     
Cam glanced at the southern perimeter, impressed that Tony hadn’t abandoned his post despite the ant swarm. He knew for a fact that other lookouts had left their stations, because he was one of them.
     
The village was supposed to have three people on patrol during the day and twice that many at night. The best time to travel was in the cold and in the dark, when most of the bugs were dormant. That made it tough to see people coming, but they’d surrounded their home with irregular rings of early warning fences. In some places, they’d actually strung barbed wire. Mostly these “fences” were just fenders, hoods, and hubcaps stripped from the dead traffic on Highway 14, which they’d scattered on the ground like bells and gongs. Not everyone who walked out of the hills was friendly. Sometimes there were bandits, and they were constantly afraid the military would learn where Ruth was hiding.
     
“It’s just one person?” Allison asked, tipping her head at Tony’s weapon. The M16 was equipped with a big infrared sniper scope, and Tony said, “Yeah. I think he’s either shit-faced or hurt. He’s making a lot of noise in the fences.”
     
“Great.” Allison’s tone was sarcastic.
     
Their village was one of the smallest in northern Colorado, but they did business with Morristown and New Jackson. Word got around. Sometimes their permanence made them a target for people who hadn’t worked so hard, like the weed-heads, drunks, or other troublemakers who weren’t welcome elsewhere.
     
Cam seized the opportunity. “See what