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in the fight, clubbing three infected men as Ruth turned and ran. She pinballed through a jumble of silhouettes. “Wait!” someone yelled. Let them think she was a coward. Ruth crashed through her cabin door and slammed it shut, throwing the lock behind her.
     
Someone was pounding at the door when she yanked it open again, holding a sawed-off shotgun in one hand. Outside, the storm of lights and voices continued. Ruth had thought maybe Cam was trying to reach her, but it was Bobbi Goodrich.
     
Bobbi’s face was a grimace of terror, her fist raised to strike again. “You—” she said.
     
“Take this.” Ruth’s voice echoed in her helmet. She handed Bobbi the shotgun. “Don’t let anyone grab me.”
     
“I can‘t—Just watch out,” Bobbi said.
     
The two women moved into the darkness together. Ruth walked ponderously in her bright yellow gear, a Level A microbiological containment suit with two SCBA tanks on its back. One of the air tanks was only half full. Even so, the aluminum cylinders weighed thirty pounds. Both the Nomex jumpsuit underneath and the suit itself were too big. The chest piece billowed around her small breasts like a giant bag. The sleeves rubbed against her torso, filling her ears with the rsssh rsssh of the loose, heavy rubber.
     
Despite the suit, she knew immediately that a lot of the noise had moved away from them. Ruth barely recognized Jefferson anymore. The buildings were the same, except for the fallen greenhouse, but she’d never heard screaming in this place before. Their community had become a riot.
     
She turned into the sound of hoarse voices. “We can’t just kill everyone!” Cam said, pleading with an array of other villagers. Everyone kept their distance from each other. They had also been smart enough to throw their tools away after beating down the infected people, although doing so only left them with guns if there was another outbreak. Worse, now they faced each other with pistols and carbines.
     
Greg had sided with the larger contingent of the group. “There’s no other way,” Greg said. “We can’t tie them up.” He meant because they were afraid to touch their sick friends. Prolonged contact would be even more dangerous than jumping into range with a club.
     
Ruth shouted inside her helmet. “I can do it!”
     
The villagers didn’t notice, locked on each other.
     
“You could be next,” Cam said. “Don’t you get it? What if the nanotech hits you next?”
     
Ruth saw they’d lost more people. There were six men and women on the ground between the huts, plus, farther out, Michael and the sprawled corpses of Tony, Allison, and the old woman. She didn’t see the man who’d been shot by Denise. They must have carried him away along with any other uninfected casualties. Were more people hurt? At least 20 percent of the village had been incapacitated or killed and Ruth moved slower than she wanted, devastated by the scene.
     
Some of the figures closest to her were probably dead, too. Even in the sporadic light, she could see head wounds where they’d been beaten. One of them was Denise, her skull blasted open beneath her dark hair. Another of the crumpled figures was still alive, straining for air through a throat obstructed by blood or dirt. His breath came in hoarse gasps.
     
Was it possible Allison was also alive? Cam must have been clinging to the belief that she could be saved—but if she was, she’d sustained horrible injuries to her mouth and one hand. Ruth would be surprised if Allison hadn’t also experienced a massive stroke, and their medical abilities were limited to setting broken bones or helping women through childbirth. Even the doctors in Morristown might not be able to perform the surgeries Allison would require.
     
Please be dead, Ruth thought, closing her eyes against her grief. But she couldn’t ignore the doubt she also felt. Do I want her to be dead?
     
“There has to be something we can do!” Cam