Plague Year (21 page)

Ruth looked up and smiled as footsteps came into her cubby, but it wasn’t James. It couldn’t be James. She’d only met him in person once, years ago, and the man in front seemed about the right age, mid-fifties...but James was originally from Seattle. This guy had decked himself out like a cowboy, hat, jeans, string tie on a chambray work shirt. He was clean-shaven.

The second man was too young to be James, and Arabic, apparently a doctor. He wore a surgical mask and held an extra one. They had been arguing at the door about whether or not the cowboy would also cover his nose and mouth.

The cowboy stuck out a small hand. “Miz Goldman. Glad to see you’re awake.”

Ruth looked at the doctor first. She couldn’t afford to get sick. His brown skin looked stained around his eyes, bruised by exhaustion. “Do you feel up for this?” he asked.

No.
“Absolutely.”

“Not a germ on me, Miz Goldman,” the cowboy said easily. “I came straight to your room here and didn’t touch a thing.”

She took his small hand, regretting the care that had made her hesitate. He was unquestionably someone in power. “I just like to follow the rules,” she said. A soft pitch, to see how big of a whack he’d take at it.

“Good.” He smiled without showing teeth. “Always good.”

The young doctor said, “Five minutes?”

“Might be longer,” the cowboy answered. “Don’t you worry.”

Ruth made sure to agree with him, half-consciously matching his clipped way of talking. “Really. We’re fine.”
Except I’m going to pee myself.
She hoped they couldn’t see that her thighs were tight together but felt like she was on display up on the raised bed.

“Go on, Doc,” the cowboy said. “I can find my way out.”

The doctor glanced once at the mask in his hand, then shook his head and left. They had taken blood from her, and urine and mucus, to test her immune system among a hundred other things like kidney function and protein and calcium levels, and Ruth worried that the results had been poor.

She turned back to the cowboy. He glanced at the plastic chair but remained standing. She didn’t think a bedpan would deter him. He just didn’t want to sit lower than her.

“I’m Larry Kendricks,” he said.

“Wonderful to meet you.” She was sincere.

Senator Lawrence N. Kendricks, Republican, Colorado, occupied one of seven prized seats on the president’s council. Ruth had been scheduled to appear before this ruling body in two days, after the public ceremonies, after settling in, but maybe the crash of the
Endeavour
had changed things. Maybe Kendricks had always intended to see her directly, yet chose not to prearrange it on the radio for everyone to hear.

“Sorry I couldn’t afford the rooftop luxury suite,” Ruth said. She meant it as a joke, meant to be charming, but Kendricks thought she was playing him.

He lifted his chin and his broad white hat in a slow, serious movement. “Should be able to do something for you there,” he said. “Get you a window, at least. Anything else?”

“No, no, they’ve been great. It’s perfect.”

“Well, the plague year’s been pretty rough on us here, you understand. We’re working with what we have. But the right people always get taken care of.”

He watched her, and she nodded.

“I want you taken care of,” he said. “Anything you need. We all have big, big hopes.”

“Yes.”

“Everything is riding on you people.”

Ruth nodded again, trying to keep her face clear. She couldn’t risk his thinking that her disgust and anger were directed at him. Damn. One careless remark, and they’d instantly dive-bombed into this grim exchange.

She was too tired, too uncomfortable. Her bladder actually hurt more than her broken bones.

He said, “You sure you’re all right? How’s that arm?”

Ruth met his gray eyes, wondering at this shift back to small talk. But he’d already made sure she knew who was in charge. At least he wasn’t heavy-handed about it.

She said the obvious things. “They’re taking good care of me. Really. I appreciate it.”

His outfit, the hat and string tie and everything—he probably would have been laughed at in Washington, but this was his native ground and a good percentage of the survivors were locals, maybe a solid majority if you counted the refugees out of Arizona and Utah and the Midwest. Much of the surviving military had also been based in this state.

Ruth didn’t think there had been any elections, or would be, yet every politician worth his name wanted to be popular. And it must be easier, playing the caricature. People wanted the traditional and the familiar to steady themselves against the brutal tide of change.

“Well, I should let you rest,” Kendricks said. “Doctor’s right. I just had to meet you myself.”

“Thank you for watching out for me.” She almost said
sir
.

Kendricks made no move to leave. He offered that thin smile again. “Now, see, Miz Goldman, a whole pack of folks have been telling me you were a bad apple.”

Ruth considered surprise but went with an answering smile instead. “I guess I can be really stubborn.”

He moved his head again in that slow, lifting nod. “There’s not going to be much room for that here. We need team players. We need everybody on the same page.”

This was why he’d come.

“I understand, sir, it won’t—”

“We need everybody cooperating. Everybody does their part. That’s the only way we’ve kept so much together for so long.” He paused, maybe waiting to interrupt her again. “You got an eyeful today, what happens when some people go off on their own, working against each other.”

A memory reared up inside her, of the menacing clicks on the radio that Gus had identified as recording equipment. It raised the hair on her arms and neck.

It was the same feeling as that instant of silence before the rifle shot pressed into her ears.

Ruth made her head go up and down, a nod. “Yes.”

Kendricks repeated it. “Yes.” Like they were sealing a bargain. He patted the rail of her bed, hammering in the word, then creased his lips again with a meaningless smile. “Get some rest. Get some food in you. Tomorrow or the next day we’ll start you working again and you can show us your magic.”

* * * *

The feeling stayed with her after he was gone, after she’d peed, after she’d curled up on her side and closed her eyes with the unwashed blankets balled against her chest like a ragged teddy bear. It was a phantom pressure closing in all around her and she could only think of one escape—someone who’d carefully flirted with her for months.

She knew where to find Ulinov because Major Hernandez had continued to do an exemplary job of making them feel at home, and because her nurse had been excited and talkative to have such celebrities on her watch.

Ruth had asked why they were in a downtown hotel and learned that this building was VIP care. The only hospital in the area had been more of a clinic, with only forty beds.

“Your friends are doing great,” the nurse had told her. “We have a great staff and great equipment.”

It was a rare case of too much wealth. Both military and civilian medical gear had been flown and driven into the area, in the first days of the plague and later after salvage operations— and anyone with medical experience or education had been given a place inside the safety of Leadville’s barricades.

Wallace would remain in what had been the hotel restaurant under intensive care and Deb and Gus, kept for observation, were directly behind Ruth with the woman who coughed and coughed.

Nikola Ulinov had been wedged into a cubby like hers across the broad hall. Ruth only made it that far because she’d been resting and because she leaned on the walls like an old woman. Less than one in five of the ornate lamps were on, and the carpet had been ripped up so that wheelchairs and gurneys rolled easily. Ruth might have sat down on the unfinished wood floor to collect herself before going in, except she didn’t want to get caught and sent back to bed.

She needed a friend very badly.

He was there, propped up on what looked like sofa cushions, reading from a sheaf of papers. He was alone. Ruth had expected to find Kendricks visiting, or another council member, but she didn’t care what they wanted with Ulinov. Not now.

His eyes dropped to her bare legs and paused on the front of her T-shirt, and she was glad. She was too conscious of her stiff left arm hanging off her shoulder like something from a marble statue. His leg was elevated, slung up at the knee and at the foot. What a pair.

“Comrade,” she said. It was an old joke between them.

“Sit. Your face. You are white.”

Wonderful.
“Comrade, can I squeeze in with you?”

“There is no room—” His bull chest, clad in an ugly green army undershirt, took up all but a few inches of the narrow bed.

“I’m very cold.”

A man in the other half of the room groaned, barely separated from them beyond the divider of plywood. Ruth didn’t care. She could be quiet. All she really wanted was to lie with him, to be held. Neither of them had strength for much more. A soft word. A touch.

She pushed off the wall and went to his side.

Ulinov looked at his stack of papers, tucked it down by his elevated leg. He turned toward her again to say something and Ruth leaned in, her gaze lowering to his mouth, feeling the first true glow of excitement at her own boldness.

He tipped his head back from her.

She didn’t beg, exactly. “Don’t you...Uli...”

“This is not a time,” he said, his accent thickening as it always did when he was upset.

“I just don’t want to be alone.”

“I am sorry.”

Her surprise hurt, too colossal to fit. It had gone on so long between them, the hesitant flirting, the looks, and finally they were free of being commander and subordinate. They were free to do whatever they liked and he didn’t want her.

How had she been that wrong? She was not a romantic. When her mind wandered, her thoughts revolved around her work. Could she really have only
imagined
that the slow-building tension was mutual? Yes, they had argued, and yes, Ulinov had always been two-faced, or three- or four-faced, trying any mood that might help him. Maybe what she thought had been restrained interest on his part had only been another trick to earn her obedience.

No. Ruth touched his arm, leaning close again so that the hem of her shirt raised to expose her thighs and underwear.

“I am sorry,” he repeated. But he looked.

There was something else. A reason for rejecting her. Because she’d been tagged as a “bad apple,” and he didn’t want to be associated with her?
You coward, you stupid coward, we could have been fantastic together.
But she didn’t say it. This armed camp that had been Leadville, this maze of intimidation and deceit, was too complicated for her to burn any bridges.

She might need him later, so she tamped down her anger and her embarrassment. She forced a smile.

“Okay,” she said.

18

Nothing else on Earth was like Ruth had expected it either, not even James. When they did meet, the next day, she initially mistook him for another politician. Her memory was of thick geek glasses and a desk-belly, but he’d had laser surgery two years ago and nobody in this place carried extra weight.

He looked good. His cheekbones were high and compact above his white mask and his well-trimmed beard, and he appeared to be using the same setting to chop his bristly brown hair as well. At least that was a hint of lab rat mentality, efficiency taking priority over appearances. The one-inch carpet of beard and hair gave him a no-nonsense look that was reinforced by a plain beige sweater. It was an image he’d cultivated, unassuming, inoffensive.

James Hollister had turned into a politician in every sense of the word. He was both a general administrator for the nanotech teams and their liaison to the president’s council. He rode herd on thirty-eight disagreeable geniuses, quelling their disputes, enforcing a rotation of the equipment, and meanwhile championed their interests above every other problem faced by Leadville without excessively irritating the bigwigs above him.

He walked these many tightropes with confidence.

Ruth was attracted to his poise before she knew most of this. She was also much different than she’d envisioned, more alone, more needy—but the father-daughter thing was too strong in her head. She had leaned on James for several months now, going to the radio for guidance and for praise.

Just getting a hug was super. He smelled clean. She might have clung long enough to make him uneasy, then babbled the words she’d held back from Kendricks. “There’s a war going on out there! How did— What’s happening?”

But James didn’t want to talk seriously, another change. To this point their entire relationship had been nothing except scheming and big ideas. He murmured pleasant things. “Your pilot was incredible, they’re talking about a plaque or something,” and pulled his ear and touched his index finger to his mouth and shrugged. Ruth swallowed her questions.

They might be listening.

* * * *

She was released the next morning with a quarter-full bottle of calcium supplements and a handful of aspirin. She had been invaded by a gynecologist, and attacked by a dentist who made her gums bleed, and an optometrist had briefly tested her eyes, and they needed her bed. An ATF assault group had been brought in with gunshot wounds and the peculiar subdermal rash caused by nano infestations.

Major Hernandez personally escorted Ruth out into the vast, crisp light of the open sky, along with James and no less than nine soldiers in three jeeps. James seemed to know Hernandez well, asking after someone named Liz, and Ruth was glad. The two of them were a lot alike, she thought, assured, methodical.

It was good to know that there were still good men.

Yet it felt damned surreal, listening to them chitchat as the jeeps rattled south through residential streets.

“Come by tonight for a drink,” James told him. “And bring your lady. I can definitely scrounge up a little more of that boo juice if you’ve got another can or two of sardines.”