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extinction.
     
There was a more personal insult. Ruth was thirty-eight. Her best years of fertility were already behind her, with few prospects in sight. She knew Cam tried to avoid her, which was impossible. They didn’t have enough firewood to make hot meals individually or to provide warm water in every home, nor were there enough pipes to install central plumbing throughout the village. It wasn’t safe to eat alone, either, so they ate in shifts and they bathed in the same hut beneath sun-warmed tanks, always with guards on duty. She saw Cam every day.
     
Who could blame her if she lived a bit vicariously through Allison? The girl should have been a sister to her, even if they were sisters who mistrusted each other.
     
Is it my fault we never got along? Her thoughts boiling, Ruth turned her eyes from Allison and the stranger and opened the door into her home at last. I’ll try harder, she thought.
     
Then the screaming began. Ruth jerked backward, staring, just in time to see someone drop to the ground with her spine bucking in the grip of a violent seizure.
     
The stranger killed Allison first.
     
     
     
     
     
The flashlights added to the confusion. One of the white beams spun into the ground, rocking up through the human shapes. The other two briefly pinned the old woman. Then another flashlight fell away. The sight paralyzed Ruth. She lost crucial seconds trying to understand what she was witnessing.
     
Allison had touched the old woman, reaching for her shoulder. In fact, Allison’s left arm was still thrown sideways from her body and clawed at the earth with a short, ripping motion. It peeled her fingers to the bone. Then her cheeks ran dark with blood as she chewed through her tongue.
     
There was one thing more that struck Ruth despite her wrenching shock. The old woman’s expression never changed. The wide look in her eyes was nervous, even rattled, but she didn’t even glance down at Allison as the others reacted. She’s contagious, Ruth thought before she added her voice to the yells rising across the village. “Get back, get back!” she screamed, running toward them.
     
Tony’s M16 fired a three-round burst. The shots were inef fective, aimed into the sky. Ruth saw him stagger as Allison continued to hammer herself against the ground. Then the boy fumbled his assault rifle and went to one knee, trembling. It was only a spasm that pulled the trigger.
     
Michael should have known better. He tried to drag Tony away from the old woman and suddenly he swooned, affected by the same shambling movements.
     
Nanotech, Ruth thought. Nothing else spread so fast.
     
“Michael!” Denise yelled, but her instincts were stronger. Instead of charging after her husband, she hesitated. “Michael! Oh Jesus, no!”
     
Allison had stopped moving, bloody and limp. Ruth was aware of more flashlights and yelling behind her. A small crowd was hurrying toward them, and her neighbors had emerged from their home with a lantern—but there was an enormous danger in bringing reinforcements, because they would go to their friends. Cam would run to his wife.
     
Ruth pulled her sidearm and shot the old woman dead, firing twice over Allison’s body.
     
“No!” Denise screamed.
     
The old woman toppled, knocking Michael down, too. Her blood must have been contagious, but they were partially upwind. If there was nanotech in the explosions across the woman’s chest, the microscopic disease was swept away from them.
     
Ruth shoved Denise farther into the slow current of the breeze. It was critical to keep their distance. Then she turned her pistol on Michael and Tony.
     
Denise drove Ruth to the ground, punching at her chest and gun hand. The worst part was that Ruth understood. Denise still had some frantic hope for her husband, but Ruth struck her in the head with two quick panicky blows.
     
Denise fell sideways and Ruth leapt up. “Stop!” she yelled in a flurry of lights. The other villagers had arrived