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CHAPTER ONE
"Private, get the hell away from the cenote." Cliff slung his rifle over his shoulder and pulled Private Huang from the precipice by gripping his torn shirt. Huang seemed like a fifty-fifty suicide risk. Before December of last year, he’d have sent him packing for a psych evaluation. The Army didn’t care about meltdowns now. Everyone who had survived was going through a meltdown of some kind.
"Cenote? What’s down there?" Huang pulled off his worn bandana and wiped sweat from his puffy eyes. The guy’s been crying, or he’s sick. Great.
Professor Martin held out her hand, indicating he should join her under the meager shade of a sparse palm tree. It’s a sinkhole; the Yucatan is littered with them. They connect underground. The Mayans thought they were holy.
Maybe they were right about that, too. Cause they sure as hell got the end of civilization down to the day.
You don’t look good, Huang.
Cliff didn’t have to elaborate, the statement was clear enough: do you have a fever? Have any lesions surfaced? Would you like me to shoot you before the hell kicks in?
He didn’t want to lose Dustin Huang, despite the guy’s complete ineptitude for jungle reconnaissance. If low scrub and dying palm trees counted as jungle. Huang was another kind of virus casualty—an emotional mess, probably better off dead than as miserable as he seemed to be. But something about the guy, besides his physical allure and despite his bad temperament, endeared him to everyone.
Huang shook his head and joined Tam Martin, a civilian, and a handful of surviving soldiers under Cliff’s withering command. Can’t I just be tired? Does the Army have a regulation about that?
Shoot him,
Tam Martin said with a wink and tapped Huang on the knee affectionately. Citizen Martin, refrain from commenting on military matters.
Cliff felt foolish the second he finished speaking. Tamara Martin, their guide through the Mayan jungle and ruins, had lost her husband, her child, and nearly all of her archaeologist colleagues and friends.
Technically he was in charge of her ass, too, but the woman could easily take care of herself without him. When his unit had stumbled upon her hacienda twenty miles north, she’d shot first and asked questions later. Looters had razed most homes to the ground before fleeing north, away from one of the epicenters of disease. When she’d learned Cliff’s unit was heading to the ancient ruins, she asked to join them. At first Cliff thought she’d be a nuisance, another mouth to feed, but when she described the ruins and her knowledge of legends of the Mayan apocalypse, he’d figured she might be useful. In truth, she just didn’t want to be alone. He couldn’t blame her. Solitude was a fast train to insanity.
Sorry, Tam. Sometimes I forget…you’re a civilian.
No need to remind her that since Mexico’s government fell and the US annexed it under the umbrella of international martial law, she reported to him. Martial law. He snickered. Even the word law
had lost meaning. How many rules had he broken in the weeks since coming to Mexico? And who the hell cared anymore?
So, fifteen or so miles to the caves. When we’re within a mile, Private Huang will escort you home.
Cliff turned away, regretting that he used the word ‘home’ to her. He’d done so once before, only to see an empty stare that spoke volumes. What was home to a woman who’d cremated her daughter and husband on a mass funerary pyre with dozens of her friends and neighbors?
Huang looked up with a smirk. That’s how you’re going to get rid of me? I know I’m not your top recruit, but hell… Anyway, she’s a better shot than I am… Oh, you mean she’s supposed to watch my back. Got it. She’s not going anywhere, are you, Tam?
No, hardly.
Not his top recruit? That was an understatement. After the die-off, 4A meant was that you were alive and not completely decrepit. Every able-bodied adult was pulled into a mission of some kind—whether rebuilding burned-out roads and hospitals, burying the dead, shift work in the DNA labs, replanting fields and building up livestock, caring for newly orphaned children, or tromping through one of the godforsaken corners of the earth deemed hot spots by the UN brainiacs. At least the CoPresidents had managed some order, and Canadians and Americans were mostly fed, mostly clothed and housed, and mostly had some work to occupy their battered brains and souls. Some of Europe, Japan, and China had fared as well. Most other nations had blown themselves back into the Dark Ages.
The world was broken. Everyone in it was broken. But for some reason Cliff didn’t understand, it all went on, limping into the future on a faint whisper of hope. Faith, some had called it. Human resilience, according to others. A rumor had started a few days earlier that Australia and at least
