Contagious

MOVEMENT

Margaret sat down at the computer desk, utterly relieved to finally be out of the hazmat suit she’d worn for fifteen hours straight. She typed commands to call up the new Sanchez samples.

What was that smell? Had someone left food in here? She looked under the desktop, then under the chair before she realized what it was.

The smell was her.

Damn, she needed a shower something fierce. Nothing she could do about that now, though.

She looked at the readout. The latrunculin was working—Sanchez’s crawler counts had fallen. The chemical’s side effects were taking their toll, but he wasn’t in any serious danger. Not yet. She called up a feed from one of the latest samples. It showed three crawlers, still motionless, just as they had been since Murray’s people shot down the satellite. As she watched, one of the crawlers slowly dissolved into little bits, courtesy of the latrunculin.

The second crawler started to disintegrate. Margaret had never seen anything so beautiful in her entire life.

And then…

…then the last crawler twitched.

She stared, wondering if she’d imagined it, hoping she had. It twitched again, kept twitching. It reached out, looking for something to grab. A dendrite arm locked onto the surrounding muscle tissue and pulled.

The crawler was crawling again.

The intercom buzzed.

“Margaret, you there?” Dan’s voice, urgent.

“I’m here.”

“Something’s up,” he said. “I’m looking at the side-by-side samples. Everything that wasn’t already dead is moving again. They just woke up, all of them.”

THE REBOOT

So many thoughts. So many voices. No organization. No cohesion. Did she know what that word meant? Yes, she did.

Chelsea blinked and opened her eyes. Slivers of early-morning light poured through cracks in the roof and the boarded-up windows. She felt sleepy. She felt sad.

Her special friend was gone.

She needed Chauncey’s wisdom, needed to know what God wanted her to do. She sensed the minds of the soldiers, the hatchlings, the converted. They were all very still. Random thoughts… they were dreaming. No one there to tie them all together.

That’s what Chauncey had provided. He’d made them one.

A sneaking suspicion grew in her mind. What if she could connect everyone? She could replace Chauncey.

He had been God, but he was gone.

Now Chelsea was God.

She sensed all the soldiers, Mommy, Mr. Burkle, the Postman, General Ogden… she sensed the two hatchlings back in Gaylord… and she sensed one more voice, a new voice, very faint, very weak, but also very close.

The two hatchlings in Gaylord remained prisoners.

Prisoners of the boogeyman.

Chauncey had told her to leave the boogeyman alone. Chauncey had blocked her, but Chauncey wasn’t around anymore.

And besides, no one could tell Chelsea what to do. She wasn’t afraid of the boogeyman. God shouldn’t be afraid of anyone.

Could she block the boogeyman, like Chauncey had done? Maybe, but it would take time to learn how, to experiment. If she couldn’t block him fast enough, the boogeyman would come for her.

Unless she got to him first.

She summoned General Ogden. It was time to put the pieces in place for his contingency plan, just in case the boogeyman escaped.

PERRY HEARS AGAIN

I’m going to kill you.

It started as a mental tickle, or maybe a ringing. Something faint. At first he wished it away. He just wanted to sleep.

You will scream… and scream…

The ringing grew louder. He heard a voice but couldn’t register it. What he could register was a serious hangover. Holy God, did his head hurt.

…and scream.

Perry sat up and tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. The movement produced a metallic sound. The bed felt wobbly. Both hands held his head as he looked around. He wasn’t in a bed. He was on an autopsy trolley in the examination room. Someone’s idea of humor? Well, yeah, that was kind of funny.

The mental tickle grew. With a sinking sensation, he recognized the feeling.

Chelsea.

Are you afraid?

She’d grown stronger. His breath came in short gasps. He was afraid.

I’m gonna get you, boogeyman. Maybe I’ll make you shoot yourself…

Fuck. Fuck-fuck-fuck.

Perry’s hand shot to his waist, to the holster. The .45 was there. His hand gripped the cool handle. He didn’t draw it, just held it.

Soon, boogeyman…

He hadn’t experienced her this clearly before. The intensity shocked him. It felt as if her every little emotion was the most important thing that could possibly happen. And yet behind the intensity lay a curious blankness, the feeling that she wasn’t good, or evil.

Chelsea didn’t know what good and evil were.

She would do whatever she wanted, without remorse, without conscience.

Soooooon…

Perry had to find her. Find her and help her.

He jumped off the trolley and ran to find Dew.

CRAVING McDONALD’S

Private Alan Roark parked the Hummer on the shoulder of North Chrysler Drive. He hopped out. So did Private Peter Braat, who carried the map. They both walked to the back bumper and looked at the massive overpass.

“Fuck,” Peter said. “That’s a lot of road.”

Alan nodded. It was a lot of road.

To their right, three lanes of I-75 heading north, then just past it three more lanes heading south. Those six lanes slid under the overpass of another six-lane highway, this one M-102, also known as Eight Mile Road. The sound of tires whizzing over wet pavement combined with hundreds of passing engines to create an almost riverlike, tranquil babble.

“That’s a lot of lanes,” Peter said.

Alan nodded again. “Yep. Sure is.”

He turned and looked into the back of the Humvee. He’d already counted what was back there five times, but God was in the details, so he counted again.

“Seems like a long ways off for a perimeter,” Peter said. “We’re ten miles away from the gate. How are we gonna hold a perimeter ten miles out with just two fucking platoons, you know what I mean?”

“The general knows what he’s doing,” Alan said. “So does Chelsea. They’re bringing in the other two platoons from Gaylord, so we’ll have that. Besides, the bigger the area we control, the harder it is for them to find Chelsea.”

Peter nodded. “Makes sense, I guess. Still, I wish we got to do the airport thing.”

“Willis and Hunt got that one.”

“I know,” Peter said. “I hate those guys. We should have got that gig. Let’s just hope we make it back to watch the angels come through. That will be such a glorious moment.”

“Truly,” Alan said. “But if we don’t see it, I’m sure it’s all part of the plan.”

Peter nodded, slowly and solemnly. “Okay, so we’ve seen these roads. Where is our spot?”

Alan pointed up to Eight Mile. “We’ll just drive up there and get to work.”

“Easy peasy,” Peter said.

Alan nodded. “Easy peasy bo-beasy. Let’s go. We’ll just drive around and see if we get the call. You hungry?”

“I could go for some McDonald’s,” Peter said. “I have the biggest craving for it lately. That, and I can’t stop jonesing for ice cream on a stick.”

“You too? Man, that’s weird. I never liked ice cream before, but now I wanna fucking bathe in that shit. Let’s eat.”

They got back in the Hummer. Alan waited for traffic to clear, pulled onto the road and headed north, looking for the golden arches.

GO SOUTH, YOUNG MAN

Take some lumpy shit from horses, the smelly kind that’s peppered with half-digested hay. Mix that with gravel. The jagged kind. Now cover it all in kerosene and light it on fire.

That’s what it felt like inside Dew Phillips’s skull. He’d slept on the floor of the computer room, right after Baum and Milner convinced him it would be funny to put a passed-out Perry Dawsey on the autopsy trolley.

Well, that was kind of funny.

A headache like that and a hyperactive Perry Dawsey jabbering a mile a minute? A match made in hell.

“Perry, you gotta talk slower,” Dew said. “Seriously, my head.”

“Yeah, mine too,” Perry said.

“There’s a difference. You and Baum and Milner, you’re all young. I’m old enough to know what will happen if I drink that much, which means I’m old enough to know better.”

“You seemed to be down with it last night.”

Dew nodded and instantly regretted doing so. “Last night I was awash in the glory of victory. And now that it’s morning, my head feels like ass, and you’re telling me that victory was no victory at all?”

“She’s talking to me,” Perry said. “She says she’s gonna kill me.”

“Where is she?”

Perry shrugged. “South.”

“How far south?”

“I don’t know,” Perry said. “Could be Ohio, could be Indiana, fucking Kentucky for all I can nail it down.”

“So how do we find her?”

“Like before, I guess,” Perry said. “We start driving south till I feel it getting stronger, then we go in that direction. The signal is fucked up, though. I feel something moving south, something big, and something even stronger beyond that. We should start driving right now.”

Dew thought that over. It would work, it had before, but how long would it take?

“I don’t know if we have that much time,” he said. “Now that the jamming is gone, now that you feel something, you can focus on the hatchlings. Maybe we’ll find out exactly where this thing is.”

Perry thought for a second, then nodded. “It’s worth a shot.”

“So will you go in there and talk to them again?”

Perry took a deep breath, then let it out long and slow. “I don’t want to. She’s so strong, Dew. She might be stronger coming through the hatchlings, I really don’t know.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” Dew said. “Will you or will you not go talk to them again? I’ll be right there with you.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Perry said.

Dew smiled. “We’ll do it just like the shooting range, okay? I’ll have a gun at your back. You get silly, I’ll put you out of your misery.”

Perry chewed his lip for a second. “Okay. I’ll do it. But Dew, you better not be lying about shooting me in the back. If I have to die, I have to die, but… I couldn’t handle it if I hurt you.”

Hard to believe this was the same kid who had butchered a family only eight days ago. But people couldn’t change that much in that short of a time. This version of Perry had always been there, waiting for a reason to come out.

Pride swelled in Dew’s chest—once again Perry Dawsey was going to stand face-to-face with his nightmare.

MOMMY IS A BIG BABY

Chelsea Jewell sat at the Winnebago’s back end, in the couch that faced the front. Her small body made the couch look like a giant throne. She had a little blood in her hair. A hatchling sat on her lap. She’d named it Fluffy. Chelsea slowly petted Fluffy, feeling the nice texture of his stiff, triangular body. Fluffy’s eyes stayed mostly closed, and when they opened, they opened only a little bit.

Chelsea wanted to stay calm, but General Ogden was making her so angry.

“Chelsea,” the general said, “we should just leave him alone.”

She said nothing. He stood there, waiting for her to speak. The plastic on the Winnebago’s floor was torn in places, kicked aside in others. Covered with tacky blood, it still crinkled under General Ogden’s feet. Little bloody tentacle tracks lined the walls and the burnt-orange fabric on the seats and couches.

I want the boogeyman dead.

“Can’t you block him? Like Chauncey did?”

I’m trying, but it’s hard. I don’t know how yet. He could come for me before I figure it out.

“The gate will be done in about three hours,” he said. “We don’t have to show our hand. Even with the rest of the men driving down from Gaylord, we have too few soldiers for a real fight.”

She just stared at him. What did he know, anyway? He was just the general. Chelsea was in charge. If she said they had enough soldiers, they had enough soldiers, and that was that.

What about the other soldiers back home? The ones you left to deal with Whiskey Company?

“That’s just eighteen men, Chelsea,” Ogden said. “They have to go up against a hundred twenty men and do enough damage to take Whiskey Company out of the picture.”

Well, if you have eighteen, then—

A voice called from outside the Winnebago, stopping Chelsea in midsentence.

The strange, deep new voice of Mommy.

“Chelsea! May I please talk to you?”

Mommy used her mouth, not her thoughts, which meant she was upset, confused.

Chelsea sighed. She would have to get up and walk outside. Mommy was already having trouble fitting through the Winnebago’s door. Chelsea lifted Fluffy and set him down on the couch.

“You stay, Fluffy. Stay!”

She didn’t have to speak out loud to Fluffy, but it was more fun. That’s how you talked to puppies, in the special voice so they knew you loved them.

Come with me, General.

Chelsea walked out of the Winnebago’s side door and into the building’s cold winter air. Ogden followed her. They both looked at Mommy.

Mommy seemed sad.

“Hello, Mommy.”

“Chelsea, honey,” Mommy said. “Something’s wrong. Wrong with me. Maybe with my crawlers?”

Chelsea shook her head. “No, Mommy. Nothing is wrong.”

Mommy started to cry a little. She was such a baby.

“But… look at me,” she said. “It hurts. I’m not pretty anymore. It hurts so bad.”

“Pain brings you closer to God, Mommy. Don’t you want to be closer to me?”

Mommy nodded. “Of course, but baby, just look at Mommy for a second. If this keeps going, Mommy is going to… to…”

“You’ll serve God, Mommy,” Chelsea said. “You’ll see, it will be so cool. Bye-bye now, Mommy. Bye-bye.”

Mommy turned, slowly, and walked away.

Chelsea turned to stare up at General Ogden. “You don’t know anything,” she said. “You’re just a general. I’m the boss of you. I want you to kill the boogeyman. I want it!”

“But Chelsea… most of our men are already on their way here.”

Then take some of the eighteen you left back home and send them to kill the boogeyman. And tell them to rescue my hatchlings, too—we can’t make those anymore.

“But Chelsea, that will leave only nine men for the sneak attack on Whiskey Company. That’s just not enough.”

You think you’re so smart. Beck Beckett thought he was smart. If you don’t start behaving, I can make you look just like Mommy.

Ogden’s face turned white. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. The general glanced at Mommy. She was still walking away, still crying. He looked back at Chelsea.

“Tell Dustin Climer to split his eighteen men,” he said. “Tell him to lead the attack on Dawsey. Corporal Cope can continue to Detroit as planned.”

Chelsea closed her eyes, then pushed her thoughts to Mr. Cope and Mr. Climer. It was so much easier now, so much faster.

It is done. Now go make sure the rest of your men are ready for the contingency plan.

She turned and walked back into the Winnebago’s heat. Mommy started to cry louder, but Chelsea shut the door and then she couldn’t hear it anymore.

DOUBLE DOSE

The little bastards were fighting back.

She was in the damn suit again, in the cramped containment cell with Dr. Dan. Clarence stood outside the open glass door. If Sanchez could somehow pull free from his restraints, Clarence wouldn’t even have a clear shot. That pissed Clarence off, but Margaret didn’t give a shit.

The latrunculin had worked, no question, but Sanchez’s body wasn’t the wide-open killing field it had been at first. Some of the crawlers seemed resistant to the drug, and those were splitting, dividing. It wasn’t mitosis, nothing so elegant—the little bastards simply split into two smaller versions, each of which grabbed and incorporated free-floating muscle strands that broke away from dead crawlers. Under the microscope it was like watching a mass of tiny snakes entwining with each other, merging, becoming a collective organism.

She felt a sensation of dread—if the crawlers developed resistance to latrunculin, then she had no weapons that could keep Sanchez alive. If that happened, the only way to stop them was to kill the host.

“He’s getting weaker,” Dan said. “Breath rate is increasing, pulse is getting a little erratic.”

She’d doubled the dosage, and that had helped, but the crawlers were still in there, still heading for his brain.

How many had already made it?

She’d stayed ahead of this whole thing by trusting her instincts, following her gut. And right now her gut told her that if enough crawlers reached Sanchez’s brain, there would be no coming back.

He’d be permanently changed. Just like Betty Jewell. And wasn’t death better than that?

“Double it again,” Margaret said.

Dan turned his shoulders to face her square-on. “No way. Didn’t you hear me? He’s got an erratic heartbeat.”

“He’s a strong man, Doctor,” Margaret said. “He can handle it. Now double the dosage.”

Inside his helmet, Dan shook his head. “No fucking way.”

“Damnit, Daniel,” Margaret said. “If these things mass in his brain, he’s screwed. We’ve got to cure him.”

“Is killing him the same as curing him? Because that’s what’s going to happen if you jack up the dosage again.”

“Get out of here,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

He stared at her. “I don’t know you very well, but you’re a doctor. What the hell happened to you?”

“They happened to me,” Margaret said. “We have to know if this works. If we don’t find a cure, one life won’t really matter. Now get the hell out of my way.”

Daniel pushed past her, past Clarence, and opened the airlock door to Trailer A. As she turned back toward Sanchez, her eyes caught Clarence’s.

In his eyes, she saw sadness. More than that, she saw pity. She finally understood why Bernadette Smith had to die. And she hated herself for it.

She looked away from Clarence and started increasing the dose.

Dew hated the biohazard suit almost as much as Perry did. He’d always made fun of the human condoms, but now that he’d actually caved in and worn one, he felt jinxed, as though the next time he didn’t wear one he’d catch something for sure. With a new .45 in a hip holster worn outside the suit, Dew imagined he looked like a total douchebag.

Perry just stared at the two caged hatchlings. They looked lethargic, defeated. Maybe sitting next to the center cage containing Perry’s decomposed shooting victim mellowed them out. They’d barely moved in the last twenty minutes.

“What do they say, kid?”

“They’re still not saying anything,” Perry said. “They just seem to be out of it.”

“Can’t you read their minds or something?”

Perry shook his head. “It’s not like that. The triangles are still connected to human brains, I think that’s why I can hear that chatter from hosts. But the hatchlings aren’t connected to human brains. They can talk to me, but only when they want to.”

“But you’re still hearing that triangle chatter?”

Perry nodded. “Yeah. It’s getting stronger, too, which is kind of weird. It usually only gets stronger when I’m tracking them down, getting closer. Maybe they have more power now? I don’t know, Dew—maybe we don’t need these fuckers at all. Can I shoot another one?”

Dew leaned down to look into the cage on the left. “What do you say, champ? Should we shoot you?”

Both of the hatchlings stirred. They blinked their black eyes, seemed to gain a little life.

“Something’s getting them moving,” Dew said. “They afraid of the gun?”

“No, that’s not it,” Perry said. He closed his eyes, seemed to concentrate. “The chatter is getting louder. A lot louder. Wait, Dew, I’m picking up thoughts of a gate… and a tall building.”

“You recognize it?”

Perry’s eyes stayed closed, but he shook his head. “No, not really. This is weird. Usually everything feels so chaotic, like the hosts are scrambling, trying to figure out what to do, but this… this feels organized. One-fifteen P.M.”

“One-fifteen?” Dew said. “What the hell happens at one-fifteen?”

Perry opened his eyes. “They’ve got a timeline. That’s when the gate will open up. And I don’t know why this is so strong. I mean, it’s really strong, and it’s got nothing to with the hatchlings.”

“It’s eleven-fifty right now,” Dew said. “We’ve got less than ninety minutes. Perry, focus on that building. See if you can recognize it, or at least describe it to me.”

Milner’s voice in his earpiece. “Dew, can you talk?”

Perry’s eyes opened—he had the same earpiece, so he also heard Milner’s voice.

“Jesus, Milner, not now!”

“Some of Ogden’s men are coming down the driveway,” Milner said. “Two Hummers. You want to come out?”

“Handle it,” Dew said. “Tell them whatever it is it has to wait.”

“I’ve got it,” Baum said. “Heading out now.”

“Come on, Perry,” Dew said. “Concentrate.”

Perry closed his eyes. His face started to crease. “This is confusing,” he said. “Now I’m getting a bunch of feelings, emotions. Hatred. Anger.”

“Just breathe, kid,” Dew said. “Take your time, just breathe, and figure it out.”

Dustin Climer waved from the passenger seat as the Humvee slowed to a stop on the Jewells’ icy dirt driveway. His driver eased over to the left side, allowing the Humvee behind to pull up on the right. The burned-out husk of a house sat before them. Off to the left, the two MargoMobiles, side by side and connected. To the right, a big, bare tree with a rope swing.

Five men in his Hummer, four in the other. More than enough to get the job done.

He waved again to the man standing in front of the MargoMobile. Climer hopped out and walked forward. He recognized the mustached face of that CIA puke Claude Baumgartner.

“Afternoon, gents,” Baumgartner said. “What’s up?”

“We came for the hatchlings,” Climer said. “Ogden wants them moved to the camp.”

Baum shook his head. “Uh, I don’t think we can do that right now.”

Climer smiled. “Sure we can, Baumer. It’s just a matter of who calls the shots.”

Perry knew that building. Black. Tall. Glossy. Usually he had to listen very carefully to sense anything in the chatter, but this was different—now he had to block things out, try to ignore the random thoughts ripping through his head. But that could only happen if there were a bunch of hosts, way more than the three he’d sensed in Glidden.

The image of the building crystallized.

The Renaissance Center.

Perry’s eyes shot open. The chatter wasn’t getting louder because the hosts had more power—it was getting louder because, just like before, he was getting closer to the hosts.

More accurately, the hosts were getting closer to him.

“Oh shit, Dew,” Perry said. “I’m hearing Ogden’s men! They’re here to kill me!”

A muffled gunshot from outside, then another, then another.

Milner’s voice blasted in Perry’s earpiece. “Ogden’s men just shot Baum!”

Dew drew his .45. “Milner, defend yourself. These guys are with the hatchlings.”

More gunshots. Perry heard them both from outside the trailer and in his helmet speakers. That meant gunshots inside the computer room—Milner trading fire. Just as quickly as it started, the gunfire stopped. Milner was likely dead. The men would come through the decontamination area, into the autopsy room, then across the collapsible connector and into Trailer B.

Then they would kill Perry and Dew both.

Dew ran to the airlock door, reached to open it, then paused. He turned to face Perry.

“What about the hatchlings?” Dew said. “Do they want those?”

“Yeah, but I’m the main target.”

Men shouting, things falling. The airlock door’s light changed from green to red—someone had just opened the opposite door on the other side of the walkway. Foosteps on the collapsible grate outside—they were right outside the door to Trailer B.

“Don’t try to open this door!” Dew shouted. “We’ve got two hatchlings in here, and we’ll kill them.”

The man on the other side of the airlock door sounded both happy and angry at once. “If you do that, we’re going to torture you for a looooong time. Give them to us, and we’ll let you go.”

More footsteps outside, more men packing into the collapsible hallway.

Perry didn’t know what to do. He waited for Dew to say something, anything. They were so fucked.

“Perry,” Dew whispered, too quietly to be heard through the airlock door, but Perry heard him in his earpiece just fine. “On the containment cell’s control panel, type in pound, five, four, five, and then as soon as the airlock light turns green, hit five again.”

Perry ran the four steps to the isolation chamber’s door. He typed in the numbers. His fingertip hovered over the final 5.

A pounding on the airlock door.

“Time’s up, asshole!” the man outside yelled. “We’ve got a lot of firepower out here!”

“And I’ve got some in here,” Dew said. He raised his .45 and emptied the magazine at the hatchling cage on the left. Just like Perry’s shots from the day before, the glass spiderwebbed as bullets tore the hatchling to splattery pieces. Dew’s empty magazine hit the floor and he reloaded.

“You fucker!” the man screamed.

More footsteps outside the airlock, then a solid thump—the airlock door from Trailer A, closing.

The light above Dew turned from red to green. That equalized pressure in the walkway. Ogden’s men were coming in.

Perry pressed the 5.

Spray nozzles in the ceiling, the floor and the walls erupted with a heavy mist of concentrated bleach and chlorine gas. Perry’s visor instantly beaded up with the deadly liquid. They heard initial noises of confusion from outside the door, then screams of panic, coughing and vomiting. Gunfire erupted, but no bullets hit the airlock door.

“Make sure your safety is off,” Dew said. “Follow me, watch my back, and make sure you don’t point your gun my way, got it?”

Perry nodded quickly.

Dew opened the airlock door. Perry followed onto the collapsible walkway, the chlorine fog so concentrated that he could barely make out the three bodies lying on the grate, tearing at the small holes they’d shot in the walkway’s collapsible walls.

Dew pulled the trigger six times. Two for each man. They stopped moving.

Perry followed Dew but felt a slight pressure on his right thigh. His heads-up display flashed a message in orange letters—SUIT INTEGRITY BREACH.

He looked down at his thigh. A piece of metal in the shot-up, torn walkway had ripped a three inch gash in the suit. Chlorine gas roiled around the tear. Perry froze for just a second, thinking this was it, that his lungs would burn, before he realized that air was shooting out of the cut, not in. His suit’s positive air pressure.

Perry heard four more gunshots from inside the autopsy room.

“Dawsey, move it!”

He reached down with his right hand and grabbed the cut, bunching the material and sealing off the hole as best he could. He ran into the autopsy room.

Two more bodies. Dew reloading again.

“You idiot,” Dew said. “Did you tear your fucking suit?”

“Just go already!”

Dew turned and ran into the main decontamination chamber. Two more men clawing at themselves, trying to break free of the chlorine spray that shot into their noses, their screaming mouths, their eyes.

Dew killed them both.

A roar from outside and the tearing of metal.

“Get down!” Dew screamed as he dove to the bleach-wet floor. Bullets tore huge holes in the decontamination chamber’s wall. Someone outside opening up on the trailer. Perry hit the deck hard, adrenaline raging through his body. His hand came off the hole in his thigh as he hit, and he scrambled one-handed to close it up again.

Machine-gun fire sawed through the trailer walls. The air filled with flying chunks of white epoxy, yellow insulation and a disturbing amount of thin, jagged metal torn from the trailer’s exterior. An explosion rocked the trailer on its suspension, throwing Perry up in the air and smashing Dew headfirst against the wall. The walls buckled and twisted. Perry landed hard on a bent floor. Dew slumped to his belly, then rolled on his side.

“Dew! Dew, are you okay? What the fuck was that?”

“Grenade,” Dew said, his voice oddly calm. “In the computer center. They’ll throw one in here next.”

Perry saw chlorine gas roiling away from three spots on Dew’s helmet. His faceplate was cracked. Higher-pressure air pushed out from the new holes.

“That’s not good,” Dew said.

“No fucking shit!”

They were both leaking air. The compressors on their suits could only compensate for so long.

“Take the guy outside,” Dew said as he scrambled to his feet. “Hit him or we’re dead.”

Perry saw a gaping bullet hole at the base of the wall. Sunlight poured through, lighting up a beam of green mist. He crawled toward it and forced himself to look out. The guy was on top of a Humvee, shooting a huge gun mounted in a turret. Perry was wearing bulky gloves, spraying mist kept beading up on his visor, he held his right thigh with one hand and someone was shooting at him—but the guy was only about twenty feet away.

Perry rolled to his side and extended his left arm. He aimed Dew’s .45 at the man’s head and pulled the trigger until the slide locked on empty.

The machine-gun fire stopped.

The man went limp and fell sideways. He half-hung off the turret’s right side. He didn’t move.

Perry heard the seven-shot report of another .45.

“Perry, I’m outside!”

Perry scrambled to his feet, a little too fast—he caught another piece of ripped wall on his left arm, and the suit tore again. He didn’t bother looking at it, just ran out of the decontamination room and into the final airlock walkway. The last door hung partly open, bent and twisted, full of small holes. Perry sprinted the last ten feet, shouldered the door without breaking stride and found himself outside in a sunny winter afternoon.

Dew stood in the middle of the burned-out house, crouched in a wide stance, .45 in front of him as he swept it back and forth.

Not knowing what else to do, Perry did the same.

Dew emptied a magazine into the dead man in the Humvee turret. Just to be sure, apparently. He reloaded, then let out a long sigh.

“Fuck,” he said. “This is completely fucked, kid.” He took off his helmet and looked at it. Perry saw four or five cracks—the thing was useless.

“At least it served its purpose,” Dew said, and tossed the helmet away. He looked at Perry’s suit. “I don’t think brown sticky tape is going to help that.”

Perry looked at his left arm. Something had hooked the PVC just past his wrist, then torn the fabric almost to the shoulder.

“Perry, you sure that gate opens at one-fifteen?”

Perry nodded. “Yeah, totally.”

They heard engines, heavy vehicles coming down the driveway.

General Charlie Ogden stood in the back of the Winnebago, waiting for Chelsea to say something. She just sat there, petting Fluffy. She no longer looked like an icon of love. She looked flat-out pissed, her small face furrowed with anger.

He knows we are here. He is coming.

“Are you sure? Sure they didn’t get him?”

I can sense him. You failed.

“What about the men we sent to attack Whiskey Company?”

They are dead. You failed.

Ogden said nothing. He’d known that all the men would die. Even with the element of surprise, the odds were just too great. But if he’d kept all eighteen men together, they would have crippled Whiskey Company. This was Chelsea’s fault.

Ogden pushed the thought away. Chelsea knew best—he seized that belief and held it, because it was far better than imagining himself suffering the same fate as her mother.

“Chelsea, what now?”

There is nothing we can do to stop the boogeyman from coming. We need more time. Start the contingency plan.

Ogden nodded. “Yes, Chelsea. I’ll begin immediately.”

Dew scanned the Jewells’ yard for a place to hide. The vehicles out on the road sounded like approaching Humvees. More of Ogden’s troops. He holstered his .45 and ran to the man he’d killed outside the computer room. He slung the man’s M4 and pulled at his ammo belt.

The goddamn biohazard suit was getting in the way. He couldn’t possibly run through the woods in that. They’d catch him in minutes. He unzipped and started taking it off when Perry called out.

“They’re coming!”

Dew turned and looked. His balls shriveled up—five Humvees roaring down the long driveway.

He was out of time.

Dew looked for cover. A sagging, charred wreck of a refrigerator. He ran behind it, then aimed his M4 at the lead vehicle.

“Dew, don’t shoot,” Perry said. “I’m not hearing any chatter.”

Dew looked at him, then back to the Humvees that were almost on top of them.

“Well, too late anyway,” Dew said.

The front Hummer slid to a halt behind the two that had brought their attackers. Soldiers pointing M4s poured out, led by the blocky figure of a man almost as big as Perry. A bandage circled his head, bright white against his black skin, a red spot on the left temple. He wore a sergeant major’s chevrons and star. Dew saw that some of the other men also had fresh bandages. The man looked at Perry, then strode toward Dew.

Dew scrambled around the melted fridge. He felt silly standing there in his scrubs, the biohazard suit dangling off at the waist.

The sergeant major snapped a salute so rigid and perfect that it was damn near comical. Dew returned the salute, only because he’d seen men like this many times—this guy would hold that ridiculous salute all damn day if he had to.

The man lowered the salute and slid into an at-ease stance. “Are you Agent Dew Phillips?”

“I am,” Dew said, wincing at the man’s bellowing voice.

“Sergeant Major Devon Nealson, sir. Domestic Reaction Battalion, Whiskey Company.”

Dew would have described Devon as huge if he hadn’t been hanging around Perry Dawsey as of late. Devon’s big neck supported a pitch-black head. A graying high-and-tight peeked out from the bloody white bandage around his head. His eyes seemed extremely wide—Dew could see all of the man’s irises. The look bespoke rage, or shock, but seemed to be Devon’s normal expression. His lower lip was too big for his mouth and stuck out in a perpetual pout.

“Whiskey Company?” Dew said. “Can you get me Captain Lodge? He’s the commander, right?”

“Was the commander, sir. Captain Lodge is dead.”

“What happened?”

“Sir, an X-Ray Company squad came into our area of the airport, then just started shooting, throwing grenades and launching AT4 shoulder-fired rockets. After we dealt with them, we attempted to locate Colonel Ogden, but his portion of camp was empty and his men will not answer our calls. We called Deputy Director Longworth. He told us to find to you immediately.”

“This is bad news, Nealson,” Dew said. “How many casualties?”

“Thirty-two dead, sir,” Nealson said. “The X-Ray squad had complete surprise, and they were very efficient. Another twenty-five wounded that need to stay put. We’ve got sixty-three men fit for duty. Just tell us what to do, sir.”

“Stop calling me sir,” Dew said. “I work for a living. Sergeant Major, have you seen any real combat action?”

“Action in Somalia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq,” Nealson said. “I have busted heads and killed on three continents, and if there are any more members of X-Ray Company that need to be dealt with, I’ll add North America as my fourth.”

If it had been possible to relax in the current fucked-up situation, Dew would have done so. Devon Nealson was a gift from above. His men would follow him anywhere.

“Sergeant Major, something tells me you have a nickname?”

“At times, people call me ‘Nails.’”

“Nails, you’re now officially in command of Whiskey Company. I’m going to venture a guess that you already established our transport options?”

“We have three Ospreys including the one assigned to you,” Nails said. “Sixty-five men, including the two of you. It’ll be a little snug but the Ospreys will take us all.”

“Load them up,” Dew said. “We’re all heading to Detroit.”

Alan Roark stopped the Humvee right in the middle of the I-75 overpass. Horns immediately started honking from behind. He ignored them and finished cramming the rest of his Big Mac into his mouth. The things were so fucking good. He tried to drink from his Coke, but all he got was the bottom-of-the-cup straw sound.

Peter passed over his Coke, which looked half full. Alan smiled a thanks, then drank. It soaked the giant bite of Big Mac sitting in his mouth.

The horns kept honking.

Alan swallowed and let out a big ahhh.

“Dude,” Peter said, “you need to take smaller bites. Seriously.”

“True,” Alan said. “Just got carried away. You ready?”

Peter nodded. “That guy’s horn is bugging me. Maybe we should show him what it means to love instead of hate?”

“Chelsea would like that,” Alan said. “But we don’t have time. I’ll talk to him.”

He opened the door carefully and stepped out into the hazy gray light of a frigid winter afternoon. Cars whizzed by on the second lane, missing him by inches, kicking up fine sprays of dirty slush.

The guy kept honking.

Alan reached back in and grabbed his M4. He saw a French fry on the seat and popped it into his mouth. It was still warm—five-second rule and all. As he chewed, he walked to the Hummer’s back bumper.

The car behind him was an SUV. Who still drove those things? Pretty fucking tough on the environment.

The driver saw Alan, saw Alan’s gun.

He stopped honking.

Alan pointed the M4 and squeezed off a burst. The SUV’s windshield spiderwebbed, splattering with red from the inside.

Tires screeched. People saw him and swerved, not thinking about the fact that they were on an overpass and there was nowhere to swerve. Cars smashed. Metal ground. Plastic cracked. Glass scattered.

Alan turned and saw Peter leaning over the overpass rail, an AT4 rocket on his shoulder. A cone of flame belched out the back as a rocket streaked down, trailing smoke for two seconds before it hit a gray Chrysler. The car turned into a fireball rolling along at sixty-five miles an hour, spewing parts and burning tires as it went. Peter dropped the empty rocket tube, aimed his M4 and started firing on the panicked traffic below.

Alan would join him in a second, but first he had to take care of all the people suddenly stuck in their cars. In only ten seconds, the Eight Mile Road overpass was already shut down.

Alan pointed, squeezed off a burst, turned to the next target and repeated.

Murray Longworth hated the goddamn Situation Room. He’d had it, just had it. Maybe Vanessa Colburn was right. Maybe it was time for a new generation. Let the kids have the country—it was time for Murray Longworth to go golfing.

They’d killed the satellite, goddamit. They’d won. It should have been over, and now a wave of bad news so high he could drown in it. A sense of hopelessness, a feeling that no matter what you did, the enemy was going to keep coming, keep trying to kill you—it didn’t just depress him, it exhausted him.

Thirty-three soldiers dead at the Gaylord airport. Thirty-three so far, because some of the wounded weren’t going to make it. Ogden gone AWOL. The Exterminators unaccounted for. And now Detroit.

They had all gathered in the Situation Room; the Joint Chiefs, the secretary of defense, Tom Maskill, Vanessa. Gutierrez himself would be there soon.

The main flat-panel screen changed to a news helicopter’s shot of a highway. The bottom left corner of the screen showed a logo for Detroit’s WXYZ-TV. The bottom center of the screen read EIGHT MILE OVERPASS AT I-75. Hundreds of cars sat motionless on the three lanes heading north as well as the three lanes heading south. On I-75, cars had driven up the inclined shoulder, some stopping there, others rolling back down to land on their sides or roofs.

The traffic on the overpass itself looked much the same—motionless cars, smoke, flames and bodies sprawled everywhere. The only movement was near one green vehicle.

A Humvee.

Even from the high angle, Murray could see two men in fatigues. Wherever they moved, little puffs of smoke from automatic weapons soon followed.

The speakers suddenly played the sound that accompianied the image.

“…we don’t know who these men are or how many people are hurt. We can see bodies from here. The vehicle is army green, but there is no unit insignia.”

An air response was already on the way. A-10 tank killers from Selfridge would be the first to engage, then Apache attack helicopters. Murray had even scrambled Ogden’s squadron of four dedicated Strike Eagles—he just prayed he wouldn’t have to use any bombs on Detroit.

“Murray,” Tom said.

Murray tore his eyes away from the screen. Tom had a phone in his hand again.

“Dew Phillips on line two, said it’s mission-critical.”

Murray nodded, grabbed the nearest phone and hit line two as he looked back to the surreal carnage on the screen.

“Dew,” Murray said. “You okay?”

“Yeah, so is Perry, but a squad of Ogden’s men tried to kill us. They took out Baum and Milner. Perry identified the gate location—it’s in Detroit, and apparently it opens up at one-fifteen sharp.”

“We’ve got a lot of gunfire in Detroit,” Murray said. “Rockets, too. Looks like more of Ogden’s men. He’s AWOL, so he’s either dead or hiding somewhere and calling the shots.”

“We know,” Dew said. “It’s all over the news.”

“Where are you?”

“With Whiskey Company,” Dew said. “Two platoons in three Ospreys, headed for Detroit. We’ll be there in thirty minutes. We’ll set down, then Perry will find the gate.”

Murray popped four more Tums into his mouth and chewed. This couldn’t be happening. They’d had it won.

“Another one,” Tom called out.

“Dew, hold on,” Murray said. He looked at the screen. The bottom left corner of this one showed Fox-2 News. The center bottom of the screen read 8-MILE OVERPASS AT M-10 JOHN C. LODGE FREEWAY. The scene looked like a mirror image of the other, hundreds of cars piled up on the road, a Humvee on the overpass with soldiers firing away.

Nothing could get through that tangled mess of cars. Ogden was shutting down the highways into and out of Detroit.

Murray turned his attention back to the call. “Dew, if this is Ogden’s doing, what the hell is he up to?”

“Causing chaos,” Dew said. “Looks like he’s trying to block all traffic in and out. He wants a big perimeter with lots of civilians inside it so you won’t drop bombs if we find the gate.”

“Motherfucker,” Murray said.

“Are the other two DOMREC companies still at Fort Bragg?”

“They’re already on their way to Detroit,” Murray said. “They should land at DTW in about thirty minutes. I’ll also activate the Eighty-second Airborne. It will take them eight hours, but…”

His voice trailed off. He didn’t need to finish. If the gate opened and something came through, the Eighty-second would be the first organized unit to tackle it.

“I hear you,” Dew said. “One more thing. Sergeant Major Nealson said he saw at least two platoons of X-Ray Company at the airport this morning. They aren’t there now, and there’s only two squads accounted for—that means a platoon and a half has to be on the way to Detroit. Roughly forty-five men. Get some birds in the air to take them out.”

“Take them out?” Murray said. “We don’t know those men are infected. We can set up a roadblock, test them. If they’re negative, we use them to go after whatever Ogden has in Detroit.”

“A roadblock?” Dew said. “Are you insane? Do you really want heavily armed, combat-tested soldiers going up against some state troopers in a roadblock?”

Dew was right. “I’ll take care of it,” Murray said.

“Get on the offensive, Murray. Pin them down, whatever it takes. We have to get Perry on the ground in Detroit so we can find the gate.”

“Wait for Yankee and Zulu companies to arrive from Fort Bragg,” Murray said. “Ogden’s units have ten Stinger missiles, and you can bet he took them all to Detroit. We need to account for those before you go in. We can’t afford to lose Dawsey.”

“L. T., if Perry’s right about the time, that thing opens up in seventy-five minutes. Whatever you do, don’t drag your feet.”

“Just hold outside the city,” Murray said. “We’ll get to work softening up his positions, tasking satellite coverage to see if we can spot the gate and find you someplace to land.”

Margaret stood in the isolation chamber, looking down at Officer Carmen Sanchez. Clarence stood outside the chamber—patient, quiet, clearly ready to act if Sanchez sprang to life.

But that just wasn’t going to happen. Sanchez was having difficulty breathing, and it was only getting worse. She might have to intubate him soon. That, or take him off the latrunculin altogether, because he wouldn’t live through another hour of the treatment.

His tongue still looked normal.

His tissue samples no longer showed crawlers. Either the latrunculin had worked or the last ones had moved into his brain. But if they had reached his brain, was the chemical stopping them from forming that mesh? Could the mesh form despite the chemical?

No. She refused to believe that. It had worked. This was so much bigger than just Sanchez. Latrunculin worked. It killed them. Not all of them, but a lot, and that meant she had a weapon. The weapon needed development, true, but at least she had a starting point.

And if it didn’t work, then she had nothing. No cure. Sanchez had been exposed to a small amount of the vector. If she couldn’t defeat that much, what could she do against higher amounts of exposure? Some of the John Doe’s pustules had grown to the size of baseballs—a hundred times the size of what had popped on Sanchez. Someone hit with that much contagion and she’d have no chance at all.

Fuck Murray’s secrecy. Margaret was going public, and she’d call Dew out on his offer to back her up. Would Clarence also back her, or would he continue to obey orders?

Gitsh’s voice in her earpiece. “Otto, Dew’s calling in.”

“Patch him through,” Clarence said.

“You’re connected, Dew,” Gitsh said. “Otto and Margo are listening in.”

Dew’s voice, urgent and excited. “Otto, have you or your people had any contact with Ogden’s men?”

“No sir,” Clarence said. “We’ve been working all night on the John Doe and the police officer. We didn’t even know Ogden’s men were in Detroit.”

“They are,” Dew said. “And you are to avoid him at all costs. Your trailer, is it visible from a main road?”

“No. We’re tucked under a little railroad overpass, trees on either side. Excellent concealment. You can’t see us at all.”

“Okay,” Dew said. “Then maybe you should just stay put.”

“Dew,” Margaret said, “what’s happening?”

“Ogden is working for the triangles.”

Margaret looked at Clarence, her anger at him forgotten for the moment. “Ogden?How… how do you know?”

“His men tried to kill Perry. Perry’s okay, but they got Baum and Milner. Ogden’s men are shooting the fuck out of the highways in Detroit, murdering people left and right. The gate is somewhere in Detroit, and Ogden wants to protect it.”

She shivered at the implications—just like that, Ogden and his men, converted, working for the enemy. She’d missed something back in Gaylord, clearly. And even if her new drug worked, was it already too late?

“We’re coming in,” Dew said. “Perry is going to find the gate. If we can get to you, we will, but otherwise stay put.”

“Watch out for infected bodies,” Margaret said. “That’s how the contagion spreads. Bodies can have big, puffy pustules, filled with spores. Those pop on you, you have the new strain. And they can spread it through their tongues, so make sure no one licks you.”

“Understood. You have a cure for this shit yet?”

Margaret looked down at Sanchez. “We’re very close.”

“Get your info to Murray, Margo, in case Ogden finds you and takes you out. You guys are in a bad spot. I’m pretty sure you’re inside Ogden’s perimeter.”

“Understood,” Clarence said.

She couldn’t stop now. She had to get Sanchez out, away from the danger.

“Dew,” Margaret said, “I appreciate what’s going on, but we have to evacuate the patient. He could be the key to stopping this.”

“If Ogden finds you, he’ll kill you,” Dew said. “He’s hit all the major roads out of Detroit. Surface streets are jammed with people trying to leave, so there’s no fucking way you can get a semi out of town. You guys either stay where you are, or you leave the trailer, find a hidey-hole and lay low till I know I can get transport to you. You got it?”

“But Dew, this is a critical phase—”

“We’ve got it,” Clarence interrupted. “We’ll evaluate the situation and act accordingly.”

“Good,” Dew said. “No offense, Margo, but let Otto handle this unless you like the taste of bullets. And how about you guys put away the nerd gear once in a while and watch the fucking news.” He hung up.

“Uh, guys?” Gitsh said. “I think you better come to the computer room. We just turned on the local news, and we’re in a lot of trouble.”

Clarence looked at Margaret, then held an arm toward the airlock door—After you.

Margaret took one more look at Sanchez, then headed to the airlock.

Northwest Flight 2961 from Detroit to Bangor never had a chance.

The Airbus A319 jet carrying 193 passengers took off from Detroit Metro Airport. Michelle McMichael, age sixty-three, had the window seat because Bernie, her husband of forty years, basically had to pee every twenty minutes. He got the aisle. That was fine by Michelle. She liked to hold a map and look out the window when they flew. Using the map to identify landmarks was a fun way to pass the time. As the A319 banked to the right, it gave her a nice view of a long stretch of I-94. The map said she was looking south at Taylor, Michigan. She craned her head to look back at the airport.

That was when she saw it.

Michelle was no military expert, but she’d seen enough movies to know a missile’s smoke trail when she saw one. And just like that, she knew that this was the end.

Michelle had time to reach out and grab Bernie’s hand. She looked into his eyes and said, “I love you,” and then the Stinger missile hit the A319 just behind the right wing.

The warhead penetrated and erupted, splitting the plane in two and ripping the right wing free from the fuselage. Michelle died on impact, she and her seat torn into three separate pieces. Bernie actually lived through the initial blast, barely, but was quickly incinerated as a fireball rolled through the broken cabin.

The A319’s tail spun away and started to drop. A secondary blast disintegrated the midsection. From row ten forward, the A319’s nose arced toward the city, trailing fire and smoke as if it were a second, gigantic rocket.

At the northwest corner of Detroit Metropolitan Airport, also known as DTW, Vining Road passes over a parallel set of railroad tracks. Under this overpass stood Brian Hunt and Jordan Willis, formerly of Domestic Reaction Batallion’s X-Ray Company, now proud members of Chelsea’s Army. The overpass hid them and their Hummer from view yet still gave them a clear field of fire on several of DTW’s runways.

Jordan had watched Flight 2961 take off, waited for it to come around and start curving north. He knew that it would, because he knew that it was heading to Bangor—he’d used his cell phone to look it up on a travel website. Once that curve carried the jet close to Detroit, he had aimed his Stinger missile, acquired the target and fired. Bye-bye, Flight 2961.

“Fuckin’-A, Jordan,” Brian said. “Chelsea will love you so much. That was a great shot.”

Private Jordan Willis nodded. He could only hope his actions pleased Chelsea. And it was a great fucking shot.

“Wait for it,” he said. “I think I double-dipped.”

Fifteen miles away from their position, the A319 trailed a thick, curved column of smoke as its nose dropped toward downtown Detroit. It sailed down into the city. Seconds later, a ball of flame rose into the sky.

“Bonus points,” Brian said. “Nice work.”

“Thanks. Wow, look at all the planes bailing out. I’m betting they aren’t asking the tower for permission to change their flight plans.”

One jet had been approaching and another had been circling, waiting for clearance. Both now turned away from DTW. Those suckers were big beasts, sure, but it looked like they could still haul balls when they kicked in the engines.

Brian shouldered his own Stinger, looking for just the right target.

“You gonna shoot that thing or just pose with it?” Jordan asked.

“I think I better save it,” Brian said. “The general says they could still try to bring in C-5s or some C-17s. They do that, I’ll hit one on the way in.” He set the Stinger down and picked up one of five AT4 antitank weapons.

Jordan shook his head. He liked Brian, but sometimes the guy just didn’t think. “That’s an antitank missile, dumb-ass. Ain’t no tanks here.”

“How about a fuel tank?” Brian pointed to a 747 sitting at a runway’s back edge. “I think that plane was probably going to take off before you shot down the other one. They can move pretty good in the air, but something tells me they can’t exactly turn on a dime when they’re on the ground.”

Jordan looked at the plane, a giant white sitting duck. Huh.

“I should have never doubted you,” Jordan said. “In fact, you’ve inspired me. I think I’ll see if one of these AT4s can hit the tower. I apologize for calling you a dumb-ass, good sir.”

“Don’t mention it,” Brian said as he sighted in on the stationary 747 and pulled the trigger.

Clarence, Gitsh, Marcus, Dan and Margaret sat in the computer room of Trailer A. Each of the three computer screens played a different local channel. The left screen showed a live shot of a fire burning just east of Dearborn. The news anchor said a plane had been shot down by a missile. The middle screen showed jittery shots of panicked people rushing away from the towering Renaissance Center, the broken-glass top of which belched smoke from some large internal fire. Apparently gunmen had rushed into the center tower, killing everyone in sight, then started shooting the place up with shoulder-fired rockets. The screen on the right showed a bulky A-10 fighter sweeping in, strafing a green vehicle up on the Eight Mile Road overpass. Even with the poor camera work, Margaret saw the Humvee shake and shudder as bullets tore through it.

“This is insane,” she said. “It looks like footage from Iran or something.”

“I think we stay here,” Gitsh said. “There’s people all over out there, cars whipping down the streets and smashing into each other. Ogden’s men could spot us anywhere.”

“No, man,” Marcus said. “People all over is why we need to go now. Then we’re just more civvies running around looking for a place to hide our heads.”

“We’re on a railroad track that hasn’t been used in decades,” Gitsh said. “We’re tucked under a fucking overpass, man. You can’t even see us from the road. We just stay right here and we ride this out.”

Marcus shook his head. “Look, that John Doe in the autopsy room? He was found not a block from here. That was fine when it was just him, but now there’s infected all over the place. These people pack together, which means their base or whatever has to be close. All it takes is one rocket hitting this trailer and we’re all dead. We get out there on foot, find a building to hide in, maybe we live.”

“You mean maybe some of us live,” Gitsh said. “You just want to get out there because you know this urban-combat bullshit and you want to save yourself.”

“Motherf—”

“Enough,” Clarence said. He spoke quietly, but his voice carried command. “It’s my call, and we stay. Those highway interchanges they attacked are ten miles from here. That probably means most of Ogden’s men are nowhere close to us. We’re not equipped to take them on. They see us, we’re screwed, so we stay right here under cover.”

“What about the cop?” Gitsh asked.

“What about him?” Margaret said.

“Come on, Doc,” Gitsh said. “What if he wakes up and starts screaming?”

Dan shook his head. “He’s not going to be screaming anytime soon. He’s in pretty bad shape.”

Gitsh laughed. “Yeah, well, Betty Jewell was in pretty bad shape too, right? Besides, these fucking things can talk to each other mentally and shit.”

“Not him,” Margaret said. “We cured him.”

“You think we cured him,” Dan said. “You don’t really know.”

“We’ve got to kill him,” Gitsh said.

“He’s right,” Marcus said. “We have to kill him.”

“You can’t,” Margaret said. “This isn’t just about the five of us. Officer Sanchez could be the key to a cure for the new strain. I’ll watch him.”

“I agree with Gitsh,” Dan said. “He starts talking, we’re screwed. I vote we kill him.”

Margaret sneered at Dan. “And what happened to being a doctor?”

He shrugged. “He’s going to die anyway from an overdose of latrunculin, so what’s the difference? Kill him now.”

Gitsh nodded. “That’s three votes. Majority rules.”

“This isn’t a democracy,” Clarence said. “It’s a dictatorship, and I’m the dictator. Sanchez is a civilian, a cop. He caught this shit in the line of duty. And Margaret is right—he could be the key to a cure. Unless we know he’s a threat, he stays where he is. Margaret will watch him. I’ll stay with her. If he poses a threat, I’ll kill him myself. Cool?”

Gitsh, Marcus and Dan all traded looks, then nodded. None of them doubted for a second that Clarence would kill Sanchez if it came to that. Margaret wondered if she’d saved her patient or only delayed his execution.

“Margaret and I will suit up,” Clarence said. “When we’re done, you guys do the same. I want everyone sealed up nice and safe. Dan, you stay in here and keep an eye on the news. Holler if there’s anything major we need to know about. Gitsh, Marcus, you take up positions at the front and back of the trailers. Watch for trouble. You see anything fishy, call it out over the comm system. Do not engage without the rest of us, got it?”

Gitsh and Marcus nodded.

“Come on, Doctor Montoya,” Clarence said. “Let’s get to work on your patient.”

The cacophony of a dozen animated phone conversations filled the Situation Room. Satellite images of Detroit lit up the main screen. Other monitors showed live feeds from news cameras and tactical maps dotted with unit symbols. One screen showed two tallies: one for dead, one for wounded.

The top of every screen showed a countdown: forty-five minutes and fifteen seconds, the time remaining before the clock struck 1:15 P.M.

President John Gutierrez sat at the end of the table, his face an expressionless mask. He looked at the monitors one by one, then circled back again. Murray was sweating like a pig, damn near hyperventilating, and Gutierrez sat there looking calm, collected—like a leader.

The unflappable Vanessa Colburn wasn’t sweating at all. She worked the phones, quietly offering advice to Gutierrez, but only when he asked for it. As Murray’s World of Secrets crumbled around him, he started to wonder if maybe she wasn’t the political vampire he’d made her out to be. For the first time, Murray wondered if his way was wrong and Vanessa was right for wanting him out.

General Cooper had a phone pressed to each ear. He nodded once, then put a phone on each shoulder and called out to the room.

“A military convoy has been spotted heading south on I-75,” he said. “Seven vehicles, including two troop trucks. Around sixty men. I’ve got a squadron of Apaches moving to a good kill point.”

“On a highway?” Gutierrez said. “What kind of civilian damage will we face?”

“Moderate,” General Cooper said. “But a hell of a lot less than if those two platoons get off the road and into the countryside.”

“Do it,” Gutierrez said.

No hesitation. This guy might turn out to be okay after all. Murray certainly hoped so, because it was high time to pass the baton to the next generation. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. It was one thing to go Cold War or cross swords with the Iranians, but Ogden’s men were tearing Detroit to pieces.

Detroit.

Eight Mile Road passed over every major highway to the north of the city. At each interchange a massive pileup blocked the roads. Hundreds of cars, some burning, along with the sprawled bodies of people who had been gunned down trying to escape on foot. Ogden’s men had also hit the major arteries on the west side: the I-96 and I-94 interchange, the interchange of I-96 and I-75. Surface roads were the only way in and out of the city, and those were choked with traffic from panicked citizens trying to escape the burning buildings and the random automatic-weapons fire that hit every few minutes. The citywide traffic jams had the Detroit police scattered and disorganized. When isolated police units did encounter Ogden’s gunmen, the gunmen either cut them down or blew up the cop cruisers with shoulder-launched rockets.

Ogden hadn’t stopped with the roads.

Fire poured from the top ten floors of the Renaissance Center’s middle tower. A westerly wind carried the thick, heavy black smoke plume across the city in the direction of Ann Arbor. The Fisher Building and the Penobscot Building were also in flames—three of the city’s tallest skyscrapers burning out of control. Firefighters were working on those blazes as well as a half dozen raging infernos caused by the crash of Northwest Flight 2961.

Two burning wrecks blocked the runways of Detroit Metro Airport. The main air-control tower was destroyed. Random gunfire. Hundreds dead. Airport security hadn’t found the attackers, which meant they were still out there. Some witnesses estimated five gunmen, others claimed ten or even twenty.

The smaller Detroit City Airport? Same deal—blocked runways, burning wrecks, tower destroyed. Totally out of commission.

The attack was less than forty minutes old, yet Ogden had taken out the airports, clogged the roads and tied up every cop, firefighter and paramedic.

“Look at this,” Gutierrez said. “Look at what’s happening. How many men does Ogden have in Detroit?”

“Maybe sixty,” Murray said. “We’re not sure.”

“Sixty men,” Gutierrez said. “Two platoons and he’s paralyzed a major city. What happens to America if the contagion spreads to six hundred people? Six thousand? We have to bottle this up here. We can’t let it get out.”

Murray looked at the screens and cursed Charlie Ogden. That man knew exactly what he was doing. All that would end when the five C-17s came in from Fort Bragg. Those planes carried two full companies, plus vehicles and heavy weapons. Ogden’s party was about to come to an end.

“General Cooper, we need an airport,” Murray said. “We have to assume that Ogden will take out anything that comes near DTW.”

“Goddamit!”

The room fell silent as all eyes turned to General Luis Monroe. The normally soft-spoken, God-fearing Monroe had just cursed at the top of his lungs. He held a phone with both hands, squeezing it as if it were the cause of all this misery.

“The C-17s,” he said. “Two of them just went down. There were reports of automatic-weapons fire in the cargo sections, where the troops were. Some explosions, possibly grenades. We’ve lost most of Zulu and Yankee companies, plus the crews. At least two hundred men.”

Silence fell over the Situation Room.

Another gift from Ogden—that guy really knew his stuff.

Gutierrez glared at Murray. “What else do we have that can get there before one-fifteen?”

“Dew Phillips and the sixty-three men left from Whiskey Company,” Murray said. “With the shape Detroit is in now, that’s all we’ve got.”

“We have no idea where the gate is,” Gutierrez said. “We have no forces on the ground. We have little or no communication into the city, and we have no reinforcements that can be deployed in less than six hours. I want Phillips in there now. Let’s not leave it up to our Strike Eagle options, shall we?”

Murray nodded. “General Monroe, you need to saturate the area with air assets, see if we can take out more of Ogden’s men and draw fire from the Stingers he has left.”

Monroe nodded and went back to his phone.

Dew and Perry had to find that gate and shut it down, because Murray most certainly did not want to leave it up to the Strike Eagles. They carried both the big two-thousand-pound bombs… and the nuke.

Gutierrez, he noticed, hadn’t specified which option he’d use.

Wake up, sleepyhead.

Detroit police officer Carmen Sanchez opened his eyes. It took him a second to get his bearings. He was weak, could barely move. Well he was weak, sure, but the reason he couldn’t move was that his wrists and feet were tied down.

“He’s awake,” he heard a muffled voice say. There was a woman to his left, dressed in some crazy black Halloween costume.

It hurt to breathe. How messed up was it when it hurt to breathe? Pretty messed up, true, but not as messed up as God talking in your head.

“Officer Sanchez, can you hear me?”

He nodded. He could hear her, from speakers in the walls, and that was weird because she was standing right next to him.

Ahhh, there you are!

He’d never bought into the whole God thing. Never. He got married in a church, sure, but that didn’t mean shit—everyone got married in a church unless you were a fucking hippie. Now that God was chattering away, right in his head… well, that made it just a wee bit easier to believe.

“Officer Sanchez, my name is Doctor Montoya. You are very sick. Nod if you understand.”

He nodded.

Would you like to join us?

“Can’t,” Sanchez said. “Tied down.”

“Ah, you can talk,” Montoya said. “That’s great. Do you think you can answer a couple of questions about how you feel?”

Sanchez nodded.

Your thoughts feel very weak, Mr. Sanchez. I’m not sure you’ll be of much use to us.

“So try to take a deep breath for me,” Montoya said.

“Maybe… not,” Sanchez said.

“Maybe not what?” Montoya said. “You can’t take a deep breath?”

Well then, Mister Sanchez, the people who are with you are very bad. What should we do about this?

“Kill me,” Sanchez said.

“Mister Sanchez, we’re not going to kill you. You’re going to make it.”

I understand. We are on our way.

He turned his head to look up at the woman. He smiled at her. “She’s… coming,” he said. “Isn’t that… nice?”

Montoya leaned back, away from him. She suddenly looked guarded, afraid. “Who’s coming?”

“Ch… Ch… Chelsea.”

He didn’t see her hand move, but he felt gloved fingers on his jaw, forcing his mouth open.

“No,” Montoya said. She sounded like she might cry. “No.”

“Margaret, what is it?”

A man’s voice. God would probably kill him, too.

“His tongue,” Montoya said. “Blue spots, he’s got it.”

“Get to the decon chamber and wait for me,” the man said. “Move.”

Sanchez heard footsteps, a door open, then a little farther away a bigger door open. It was all kind of a whirl. He hurt soooooo bad, and his brain wouldn’t process things fast enough.

I’m sorry you can’t join us, Mister Sanchez, but you really helped out, because we’ve been looking for the bad people who are doing this to you.

“I’m… glad,” he said.

Another black suit on his left. Bigger. A black man inside. A black man with a broken front tooth. Pointing a pistol.

“I’m sorry about this,” the man said.

Sanchez saw a flash, and then he was gone.

Margaret waited in the decontamination chamber for Clarence. She knew what he was going to do, and she knew that it would only take a couple of seconds.

She needed out. She just wanted to go home to her apartment in Cincinnati. She wanted to spend way too much for a Starbucks and sit down and read People or US Weekly, something truly brain-dead, because she wanted to be brain-dead.

Maybe she already was.

Her brain didn’t seem to amount for much anymore. It hadn’t saved Amos. It hadn’t saved Betty Jewell or Bernadette Smith. And it hadn’t saved Officer Carmen Sanchez.

Too much death. Too much failure.

Clarence entered the decon chamber and closed the airlock door behind him. She activated the spray. Thanks to her earpiece, she could hear Clarence’s orders despite the high-pressure spray.

“Dan, get outside, back of Trailer A,” Clarence said. “Gitsh, Marcus, we’re out of here. Check north, up by the tractors. Make sure no one is coming down the old train tracks.

“Got it,” Marcus said.

Margaret shut off the spray, then opened the other door. Seconds later, dripping with bleach, they both walked out of the trailer and into the shade of the overpass. Dan was standing there in his biohazard suit, holding a pistol, looking scared.

“Okay,” Clarence said. “We’re going to walk out the way we drove in and head for the water. There we only have to watch for attacks from three sides. I’ll take point. Gitsh and Marcus, you’ve got the rear. Dan, you’re in the middle with—”

Gitsh’s voice, urgent and sharp in her earpiece, cut off Clarence in midsentence.

“Company!”

Gunfire erupted, amplified by the overpass’s brick walls. Margaret’s arms flew up around her head, an instinctive reaction, a panicked reaction. A hand grabbed her wrist, yanking her into a run.

Sunlight. She came out the far side of the underpass before she even knew that it was Clarence who’d pulled her along.

“Margaret, come on!”

Breath locked in her throat; she stumbled, then regained her feet and ran. That put the sound of gunfire behind her.

In front of her, below the next underpass, two cars. A compact and a convertible. Just people looking for a place to hide, probably, but apparently Clarence didn’t want to find out for sure.

“This way!” he yelled, then he turned right and started sprint-climbing up the steep, tree-spotted, snowy-dirt slope. Margaret followed, arms pulling, legs pumping, heart hammering.

A hissing sound from behind.

Then a shattering roar.

She looked back—a ball of fire and smoke billowed out from the underpass, so thick she couldn’t even see the MargoMobiles.

A hand on her ass, pushing her.

“Move!” Daniel said. “They’ve got fucking rockets!”

She scrambled up the hill, knees grinding into the dirt and rocks until she remembered the hazmat suit, and then she ran on feet and hands only. Sharp bits poked through the PVC into her palms and fingers, but she could tape those later. They reached the black fence on top of the incline. Her gloved fingers clawed at the rubber-coated chain-link, and she swung over the top before she even knew what she was doing.

More gunshots from behind. Things whizzing past her head.

Daniel crying out.

Margaret pushed off the fence and hit the ground hard. She stood and looked around. White building, Ford dealership. Behind her, the fence, behind that… Daniel, rolling limply back down the incline.

Clarence’s hard grip on her wrist again. “Move!”

They ran away from the dealership and into an eight-lane road choked with bumper-to-bumper traffic. No buildings on the other side of the street—an empty lot to the left and a parking lot to the right. Some people were looking out of their car windows, but most had heard the explosion or seen the rising smoke and were already abandoning their vehicles, sprinting for cover anywhere they could find it.

Margaret finally regained her balance and yanked her hand away from Clarence.

“Just go. I’ll keep up. What about Gitsh and Marcus?”

“Dead,” Clarence said. “And Dan took a round in the head. He’s gone.”

They skirted cars and ran into the half-empty parking lot ringed with trees growing up through the asphalt. On the far side, they hopped a smaller fence and found themselves on a cobblestone street, old bricks bumping under the soles of their thick biohazard boots. Two blocks straight ahead, across yet more tree-dotted, wreckage-strewn vacant lots, she saw an abandoned three-story brick building. Faded white letters on faded blue paint at the top of the building spelled out GLOBE TRADING COMPANY. She started toward it, then stopped when Clarence again grabbed her.

“No, don’t,” he said. “Look at the bottom there, by the corner.”

She did and saw two men in army uniforms running out of the building. A second later, two more.

“They have men stationed in there,” Clarence said. “That’s their fucking headquarters for all we know. We gotta get out of here. Come on!”

People ran in all directions. It wasn’t the screaming sprint of a monster movie, but rather silent running, people moving fast in a half-crouch, looking every which way for the next threat. Margaret and Clarence must have appeared to be such a threat, because one glance at them sent people running the opposite way.

Margaret and Clarence ran left down the old brick road, putting the abandoned lot and the Globe building beyond it on their right. She heard gunfire behind her again—the men who’d killed Gitsh, Marcus, and Dr. Dan, they were giving chase. Shit-shit-shit, was this how her life would end? A bullet in the back?

The road changed from bumpy brick to bumpy pavement. On their right a red brick building, one story, loading-dock doors open. Clarence aimed for it.

Margaret was already exhausted. “Where are we going?”

“Away from the bullets.” Clarence stopped at the loading dock, lifted her by her waist and set her on the ledge, then hopped up behind her.

“Just run, Margo. We have to find a place to hide or we’re dead.”

The convoy roared down I-75. Three Humvees, followed by two M939 five-ton troop trucks, followed by two more Humvees. With that much heavy vehicle ripping along at ninety miles an hour, cars just got the hell out of the left lane and let the convoy roar by. Farmland spread out on either side, snow covering the broken remnants of last year’s crops. Beyond the fields, rows of trees, at least a quarter mile from the highway. Beautiful scenery.

Corporal Cope rode in the third Hummer, feeling his connection with God. Soon they would see the glorious gateway and, God willing, would be there when the angels came through.

God, it seemed, was not willing.

The lead Humvee suddenly morphed from a hardy piece of military gear into an orange blossom of fire, spewing bits of metal and body parts all over the highway. The explosion engulfed a slow-moving VW Beetle in the right lane, and sent part of a rear axle through the windshield of the Ford Explorer directly behind it.

The second Humvee swerved to the right, around both the suddenly tumbling Explorer and the newly burning Beetle. The Hummer driver showed amazing reaction time, but at ninety miles an hour the heavy vehicle quickly lost traction. Its rear end fishtailed, making it almost perpendicular with the road when the wheels dug in and it flipped violently, barrel-rolling into the ditch. Cope saw a freeze-frame image of a man thrown free, already missing an arm and part of a leg.

Cope’s driver swerved into the left shoulder, past the still-moving, burning wreck of the lead Hummer. If this had been Iraq, with insurgent-launched rockets raining down from rooftops, hitting the gas would have been the right thing to do. But this wasn’t Iraq, and here hitting the gas just made Cope’s Hummer the lead vehicle—the primary target.

“Stop this thing!” Cope shouted at his driver. “We’re sitting ducks!”

The Hummer’s brakes hit hard, throwing Cope forward.

“Go-go-go!” Cope screamed. “Get to cover!”

He jumped out the passenger door and started sprinting. He looked up at the sky to see what was killing his people. Apache Longbow attack helicopters. Compact, dark shapes, like flying tanks with that signature radar dome sticking up above the blurring rotor blades.

He was in some deep shit.

As he ran off the pavement and onto the right shoulder, he looked back to his Hummer. Private Bates hadn’t jumped out. Instead, Bates had turned the M249 turret, trying to return fire. The man didn’t even have time to pull the trigger before a Hellfire missile slammed home. The Hummer erupted in a semi-trailer-size fireball. The blast threw Cope into the ditch on the side of the road. He hit hard, but adrenaline drove him on—he scrambled to his feet and up the five-foot-high slope of the ditch’s far side.

In front of him, a snow-covered cornfield, irregular white spotted with knee-high, rotting-yellow stalks. At least a hundred yards to the trees.

Cope snapped another quick look around him. A few soldiers were sprinting across the fields, headed for the woods. On the road behind him, tall black columns of smoke rose into the air. Five Hummers, two trucks, all destroyed. Looked more like the road to Baghdad than a Michigan highway.

All this open space. If the Apaches’ pilots couldn’t see him in the afternoon sun, they’d just lock on with infrared targeting—a soldier’s body heat stood out clearly against frozen ground.

A trap. This was a kill point. The Apaches had been waiting, probably just out of sight behind a hill.

He had no chance.

He ran anyway.

Thirty yards to his right, another soldier running. A wavering line of glowing red reached out toward the man, like some science-fiction death ray—tracer rounds from an Apache’s thirty-millimeter chain gun. The rounds erupted when they hit the ground, harsh explosions launching man-size clods of frozen dirt and smoke. The initial shots went wide, but in a fraction of a second the red death ray closed the gap—the soldier exploded in a literal cloud of blood.

Corporal Jeff Cope kept sprinting.

He’d made it almost fifteen yards when he heard a roar on his left. He turned and saw the tracer-round death ray plowing a path toward him.

He didn’t even have time to look away.

She could feel them dying. Her soldiers, her protectors. The enemy was too powerful, too many devils out to stop her.

Chelsea Jewell began to realize that maybe, just maybe, she should have listened to Chauncey. Should have listened to General Ogden.

But that didn’t matter.

She still had Mommy.

Together they could build a new network, a bigger network—one that would eventually spread all over the whole planet.

The gate to heaven?

Fuck the gate to heaven. Fuck the angels.

Bad words, she knew, but not really, because God decides what is bad and good. God can’t do anything bad.

Chelsea didn’t need the angels. If she escaped, she could use the Legos to make her own angels.

If she escaped. And that was a big if, because the boogeyman was coming.

If he found her, nothing mattered. She had to block him.

Block him… or maybe control him.

She could do that, she knew she could. She could make him do things. And who could be a better protector than the boogeyman?

Still, she didn’t want it to come to that. She didn’t want to face him. Killing him had sounded like fun when he was a long ways away. Now that he was so close, none of this was fun anymore.

Dew held the satphone to his right ear. He covered his left ear with his left hand and leaned his head forward, his belly pressing into the camouflage helmet sitting on his lap.

“Yeah,” he said. “Look, Murray, we can secure whatever area you want when we land, but first you have to find us a spot to put down.”

Perry couldn’t get comfortable. They’d found him a flak jacket and a helmet. He was used to not having anything in his size, so he found it odd when both fit. The helmet in particular would take some getting accustomed to. It had a microphone mounted on the side, connected to a little push-to-talk switch clipped to his vest. Small speakers mounted inside let him hear the tinny voices of soldiers preparing for the coming fight. Some were joking, some were serious, but up and down the facing rows of seats they all looked very pissed off. They’d lost friends during X-Ray Company’s sneak attack. Most of the conversation revolved around finding Ogden and what they would do to him when they did. The men had also offered Perry an M4, but Dew said Perry would stick with the .45, and that was that.

Dew looked up, eyebrows raised, sweat beading on his bald head despite the cool temperature inside the Osprey. He turned and regarded Perry.

“You saw the Renaissance Center in your vision, right?”

Perry nodded.

“Where was the river?”

Perry tried to think. So much shit had gone down so fast. That image had flashed from multiple minds, like a strobe-light dance from different cameras all hitting at once. But in each of the images, the angle had been pretty consistent.

“On the left,” Perry said.

“How far away would you say it was?”

Perry shrugged. “I’m not great with distances, Dew.”

“Take a guess, college boy.”

“Maybe a mile? Maybe a bit less.”

Dew relayed the information, waited, then laughed. “You’ve got to be shitting me, L.T.”

He listened, then nodded. Apparently Murray wasn’t shitting him.

Dew tucked the satphone back in his flak jacket. “We’re going to put down and secure the LZ. Then Murray is going to fly in another Margo-Mobile set behind us. They’ve lost contact with Margaret and Otto, so he thinks their trailers were destroyed.”

“Is Margo dead?”

“I doubt it,” Dew said. “They had plenty of warning. Otto is a sharp guy, so let’s hope for the best.”

“Well, where are we landing, then?”

Dew smiled a shit-eating grin. “Perry, my boy, you’re going to love this landing field. The irony is so thick you could spread it on toast.”

“What? Where are we landing?”

Dew kept smiling and shook his head. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

He thought this was funny. Funny. They were heading into a firefight, Detroit was burning, Margaret might be dead, and Dew was laughing.

“Just sit back and enjoy the ride,” Dew said. “This might be the last time you ever fly in one of these things.”

Perry sat back and hoped that was true. But he hoped it would be because they walked away and just never got on one again—not because they crashed and died.

General Charlie Ogden made another mark on his paper map of Detroit. He’d lost contact with the men at the 94/75 intersection. They’d done their job, but the fact that he’d lost contact meant two more men gone. Fifty minutes into the attack and losses were higher than he’d expected.

Those low-flying A-10s were a real pain in the ass. Small-arms fire just wouldn’t take them out. He’d had only ten Stingers to begin with—five for the various airports and five in the city. Three of the latter set had already fired—two misses and a hit, bringing down an Apache right on Woodward Avenue. He’d ordered the last two Stingers held in reserve. It was possible, however improbable, that Ogden had missed something. Giving up air superiority wasn’t an issue. What he couldn’t handle was troops on the ground. His men were too spread out, too dispersed to repel infantry.

Ogden could sense it now. He could sense how close they were. Thirty-two minutes, give or take, and the hatchlings would activate the gate.

The angels would descend upon Detroit.

He was in the Globe building with Corporal Kinney Johnson, a sorry excuse for a communications man. Just the two of them, the hatchlings busting ass to finish the gate and Chelsea still sitting inside the Winnebago. Mr. Burkle continued to run in and out, finding whatever material he could for the hatchlings.

“Sir,” Johnson said, “we’re getting reports of massive air traffic off Belle Isle, less than a mile up the river. A-10s, Apaches, even F-15s, flying low.”

“Flying low… are they attacking anything?”

“It looks like just targets of opportunity, sir,” Johnson said. “Some of our men tried volley fire with AT4s, even brought down an A-10, but as soon as our men fire, one of the gunships takes them out.”

He’s coming.

Chelsea’s voice, tinged with fear. That instantly made Ogden sweat, made his stomach churn—how could God be afraid?

The boogeyman, he’s coming. Stop him.

His men had failed to kill Perry and Dew. What if they had also failed to do enough damage to Whiskey Company?

“Johnson, call out to everyone who’s left. Look for Ospreys. Repeat, Ospreys.”

Johnson bent to the task, and Ogden waited. Perry and Dew were on the way. The only question was, who was coming with them?

“Sir, visual confirmation of three Ospreys—I repeat, three Ospreys—coming in fast from the north.”

“Concentrate all remaining Stinger fire on the Ospreys,” Ogden said. “Tell any unit that can see the Ospreys to move toward them, set up sniper positions. If any of the birds land, concentrate all fire on whatever comes out.”

Perry Dawsey wanted to puke.

Downtown Detroit spread out before them. Urban sprawl stretched out to the right, while Lake St. Claire filled the left-side view. Plumes of smoke rose from the city, some from skyscrapers, some from the ground, wind carrying the black smoke from left to right, due west across the heart of the city toward Ann Arbor. He wondered if the smoke would reach that far, spread soot on the University of Michigan Stadium where he’d once been a star. The three skyscrapers looked like smokestacks, as if the whole city of Detroit was a giant ship steaming eastward.

He was in the last of three Ospreys. Dew had told him why—any missile fire would probably hit the lead helicopter. That strategy, of course, was only as good as the guesswork of the guy firing the Stingers.

The closer Perry got to Detroit, the more he sensed the infected. This was so different from before. Mather had been one guy, really hard to locate. It had been easier to track down three hosts each for the South Bloomingville and Marinesco gates. The Detroit signal felt huge, undoubtedly more hosts there than he’d ever encountered.

It was also stronger for another reason.

Chelsea Jewell.

He could experience her, taste her blank soul. He would find her, he would help her, because she had tried to fuck with his head—and nobody fucks with a Dawsey.

An alarm blared through the cabin.

“Incoming!” the pilot shouted. “Missiles inbound!”

Perry gripped hard on the bottom of the seat. The Osprey’s nose tipped down, allowing him a view of the ground far below and the other two Ospreys out in front. The smoke trail started low, from a house way off on the right. It curved, course-correcting to match the Osprey’s velocity.

“Hold on, kid,” Dew said. “It’s out of our hands now.”

The missile seemed to pick up speed as it closed in, covering the final bit of distance in the blink of an eye. Up ahead the lead Osprey ejected a spray of flashes with white contrails. Countermeasures of some kind.

They didn’t work.

The Osprey rocked to the left, a fireball spewing out of its right side. Amazingly, it didn’t disintegrate. Perry felt a flash of hope that the pilot had lived, that he might be able to set her down. Then the Osprey’s right engine fell away. The half-plane/half-helicopter simultaneously rolled to the left and tumbled forward as it plummeted. It disappeared beneath Perry’s line of sight. He didn’t get to see it crash, but those guys were gone. Twenty members of Whiskey Company, plus the Osprey crew.

Dead. Just like that.

“Let’s hope they’re out of Stingers,” Dew said. “Our chances of survival just dropped from sixty-six percent to fifty-fifty.”

The alarm beeped again.

“I guess they’re not out,” Dew said. He looked semi-relaxed, not in the least concerned that he had a 50 percent chance of dying in the next ten seconds.

The alarm changed from a beep to a steady blare.

“That’s not good,” Dew said.

Perry heard whooshing sounds, something shooting off of his Osprey. Two seconds later he heard an explosion. The Osprey tilted to the left a little, then came back to normal and kept descending.

Dew looked a little bored.

“How can you be so calm?” Perry said. “The next one could be us.”

Dew shrugged. “When your number is up, your number is up. Besides, you’re here, and you’re like a cockroach—you survive anything. I’m sticking close to you. You’re like a big death umbrella.”

Perry nodded and tried to control his breathing. Dew was going to stick close to him? Screw that. More like the other way around. This was Dew’s world, and Perry wasn’t going to leave his side.

Dew nudged him. “Take a look out front. We’re coming in for a landing. Right up your alley.”

Perry looked, then shook his head.

Dew started laughing.

Clarence turned, aimed and fired, squeezing off four rounds as Margaret sprinted toward the long, two-story, tan brick building. She glanced at the street signs—Franklin and St. Aubin. Cinder-block walls filled the building’s windows. The place looked like a miniature fortress.

She ran for the door. Clarence passed her; he was so much faster. He reached it, stood at an angle, shot the deadbolt lock and then kicked the door open. They were only a block from the loading dock in which they’d first hidden. Ogden’s men had followed them in. Clarence hadn’t found any hiding places he thought were defensible, so they’d run again, bullets hitting all around them. If this building didn’t give them some protection, it was over.

She ran inside. He shut the door just as more bullets reached out to them, tearing into the door’s heavy wood, ricocheting off bricks on the outside wall. One step slower and they would both have been cut down.

Margaret was so scared she wanted to pee, but she kept moving, one thought in her head keeping her feet keep pumping—this wasn’t as scary as a one-cheeked Betty Jewell.

Clarence turned and ran farther into the abandoned building. Rusted metal machinery dotted the cracked floors amid stagnant puddles of standing water. Margaret saw trash and discarded crack vials everywhere, as well as a rusted shopping cart and half a blue toilet seat. It was a big building, a lot of halls and rooms. If they could find the right spot, it might take their pursuers a long time to track them down.

Clarence saw some stairs and dashed toward them. Margaret followed him up, both of them looking for a place to hide.

The Osprey slowed quickly as they came in for a landing. Perry heard a plinking sound, bullets hitting the craft’s armored sides. His body screwed tight with raw anxiety as he waited for a Stinger to hit.

But none did.

Nails spoke loud and calm, his words picked up by the little microphone curling around from the side of his helmet.

“We’re taking fire, possibly from a ten-or fifteen-story building south-southeast of the landing area,” Nails said. “I need air cover right now!”

Nails turned to face his men. Apparently he didn’t trust the microphone to pick up everything, because he started screaming at the top of his lungs. “All right! We’re coming in under fire. The Osprey will land with its nose facing the fire to give you a little cover as you go down the ramp. Hit the ground, go left. There are some bleachers there. Get under them. Find cover, return fire. Once our air support kills the snipers, we will move out. We have twenty-five minutes to destroy the target. We’re maybe a mile away, but we’re not sure where we’re going. I’m guessing we’ll be under fire as we run. We must press forward, no matter what, understand?”

“Yes sir!” the men barked in unison.

Dew leaned in to talk in Perry’s ear. “All these guys are expendable. You are not. They will draw fire and give you enough cover to move out. Hopefully, they’ll pin down the shooters.”

“Hopefully?”

Dew smiled and slapped Perry on the shoulder. “Like I said, kid, it’s all just odds. I put us at about eighty percent to make it.”

“Which means there’s a twenty percent chance we won’t make it.”

Dew winked and pointed a finger at Perry’s face. He flicked his thumb down twice—bang-bang. The face under his helmet showed electricity, excitement. As if someone had just sliced twenty years off his soul.

He likes this shit, Perry thought. He likes it, and this is the man I’m counting on to keep me alive?

Perry felt something. The sensation of the hosts flickered. Faded just a little. Another sensation flared up, very weak, but unmistakable.

The grayness.

“Dew,” Perry said. “I think they’re trying to jam me again.”

Before Dew could respond, the Osprey landed hard, throwing men against their seat restraints.

“Get up and move!” Nails screamed. The rear ramp dropped open, and men rushed out. Perry started down the ramp, looking out at what had to be the most surreal thing he’d seen yet.

The open, green expanse of a high-school football field.

“You should feel right at home, Dawsey!” Dew shouted.

Perry hit the green artificial turf and cut left along with the other men. They’d landed almost on the fifty-yard line. He ran across a black circle decorated with the yellow letters MLK, and then he was on the green again.

Somewhere in the back of his head, the ghosts of his past cheered for Scary Perry Dawsey one more time. He was even wearing a helmet.

In front of him, a man’s head snapped to the left. The man stumbled and started to fall. Perry reached out and grabbed his jacket, then flipped the limp body up onto his right shoulder. He never even broke stride.

From far off to his left, a deep stuttering sound, then an explosion. He only semi-heard these things—all he could think of was reaching the empty aluminum stands that stretched out in front of him. Suddenly he was on the red track, heading for the corner of the stands, then curving around them—their bulk shielded him from more bullets. Men surrounded Perry, helping him lower the wounded man. As soon as Perry set him down, it was clear the man wasn’t wounded.

He was dead.

A bullet had hit him on the right cheekbone and gone out the other side, the exit wound much larger than where the bullet had entered.

“Nice try, Perry,” Dew said. “An A-10 went after the snipers on that building. We’re probably okay for now, but we have to move.” Dew checked his watch. “According to you, we’ve got twenty-three minutes—so which way do we go?”

Perry looked away from the dead man. Forty-odd soldiers stared at him. Some were breathing hard. All were waiting.

“Perry,” Dew said. “Now or never.”

Perry closed his eyes and just felt. Without looking, he raised his right hand and pointed. When he opened his eyes, he saw that he was pointing toward the smoking Renaissance Center.

Nails drew in a big breath. “Let’s moooove! Time to get some payback, men. Fall out by squads, and let’s make time!”

The men turned and started to move out by squads.

Perry took one more look at the dead man, then stood and began jogging after the men of Whiskey Company.

Corporal Kinney Johnson was no Corporal Cope. That was for sure.

“Talk to me,” Ogden said. “This isn’t the Pythagorean fucking theorem here—just give me a fucking head count.”

Kinney was on one knee, handset held to his ear, trying to contact the remaining soldiers. He scribbled away on a note pad as he talked.

“Johnson!”

He looked up, his face showing anguish, panic and fear all at the same time.

“My guess, sir, twenty men. That’s the best I can do.”

Twenty. That was not good.

“Sir,” Johnson said, “I’m also getting reports from the inner perimeter. Large force of maybe fifty men moving southwest down Lafayette, toward our position. Regular army. Snipers are slowing them, but we can’t stop them.”

Ogden hung his head. Whiskey Company had found a way. So close to success. Fifteen more minutes, that’s all they needed. As long as Murray didn’t know what building they were in, he’d have to bomb half the city. Or drop the nuke, and Gutierrez didn’t have the grapes for that.

But the attackers probably had Dawsey—he would sniff out the gate, and that would be that.

Ogden had to protect Chelsea.

“Tell all units to fall back to Bravo positions,” Ogden said. “That includes Mazagatti and my personal squad.”

Ogden closed his eyes and reached out. He had to prepare Chelsea.

Maraget and Otto sat motionless beneath a loose chunk of plaster and lath. They were in what had once been a small closet, or a smaller bathroom, she wasn’t sure—some of the holes in the floor might have been for plumbing.

She hoped their black suits would let them fade into the shadows. Clarence was down to one bullet. If the three soldiers found them here, it was all over.

When they’d entered this room, they’d been careful to avoid the crack vials that littered the floor. Even with the gunfire echoing through the city, any noise might give them away. Ogden’s men had been searching for ten minutes, rummaging through the ground floor while Margaret silently prayed they would leave. They hadn’t. Now they were going through the second floor. Every few seconds the men shot something. Probably firing into shadows, just to make sure.

Soon they would fire into this shadow.

“They’re coming,” Clarence whispered. “Our only chance is for me to shoot the first guy in and take his weapon.”

“No,” Margaret hissed. “They’re moving as a team.”

“We have to try something. When I move, you stay here. Maybe if they get me, they’ll think we split up. After they leave, you sneak out as best you can.”

Margaret couldn’t speak. If they got him, meaning if they killed him, he hoped it would give her a chance to live.

Clarence Otto was willing to die for her.

She heard a crunching pop of glass, a foot stepping on a crack vial. She grabbed Clarence’s hand and squeezed it tight. Then she remembered he needed the hand to shoot, and she let go.

Moments later, feet softly crunched the broken glass as a second man entered the room. Even through the suit, she felt Clarence’s body stiffen.

“Hey, Sergeant Major, hold up,” one of the men said. A pause, then: “That douchebag Kinney says the general ordered us back to Bravo position.”

“Now?”

“Yeah, of course now.”

“What about Montoya?”

“Forget her, man. We gotta get ready for the counterattack. If the general beats us there…”

“Fine. Let’s go, men. Haul balls.”

Creaking boards. One last faint crunch of glass. Footsteps descending the stairs. Margaret and Clarence waited, but heard nothing. Her body sagged as if her soul had slid free and taken her skeleton with it.

Her body relaxed, but Clarence’s did not.

“I want you to stay here,” he said. “I’m going to follow them and see if I can spot this Bravo location.”

“Clarence, no. You’ve only got one bullet. We need to get out of here.”

“I’m not discussing this with you. I have to see what it is.”

“Fine,” Margaret said. “Then I’m going with you.”

“Margaret, goddamit, knock it off. There is some serious shit going down. It’s not just Ogden’s men. It’s total chaos out there. You could get hit by friendly fire. Stay here, and as soon as I make contact with someone, I’ll have Murray send people right to you.”

“I’m not leaving your side,” she said. “I don’t want to get shot at anymore, believe me, but if you go, I’m following you. So it’s your call. If you want me out of harm’s way, that’s exactly where you need to be.”

He glared at her. He looked even angrier than when she’d broken his tooth.

She glared right back.

He shook his head and sighed. “You stay behind me and be ready to run, got it?”

Damn it. She assumed he would stay with her. Well, she’d opened her mouth, and no matter what, she wasn’t letting him go alone.

“I got it,” she said. “After you.”

He walked out of the room, quickly but carefully, letting his pistol lead the way. Margaret stood and followed.

Dew popped up over the trunk of a Ford, fired off a burst, then ducked back down. Bullets peppered the car, hitting metal, glass and rubber. Whiskey Company had cut through most resistance up until now, but Ogden’s men seemed to have concentrated in this area. The fighting grew nastier by the second, racking up casualties—about fifteen so far. With the uncontested and constant air support, that left plenty of fighting strength to push forward. When Ogden’s men did fire, Apache chain-guns quickly ripped into their positions.

“Come on, Perry,” Dew said. “They’re digging in here. We’ve got to be close. Which goddamn direction do we go?”

Perry lay curled up half under the Ford, slush-wet pavement coating him in black winter road grime.

“I’m trying,” he said. “They’re jamming me. It’s getting bad. I think it’s Chelsea, Dew; I think that little bitch is doing it.”

Another burst of plings and cracks as bullets ripped into the Ford.

Dew heard the buzzing roar of a chain gun, then the firecracker-on-steroids blast of thirty-millimeter rounds tearing through brick and wood and glass.

Then nothing, a pause in the action. Dew pulled Perry back up to a sitting position and leaned him against the ruined Ford.

“Look at me, Perry,” Dew said. “We’ve got nine minutes. Come on, kid, focus.”

Perry nodded and closed his eyes. “It’s blurry, Dew. It’s two signals, and… and one of them is moving.”

“Key on the signal that is not moving,” Dew said. “They can’t move the gate.”

Perry nodded. He breathed in deeply through his nose and let it out slowly from his mouth. Eyes still closed, he raised a hand and pointed over the hood of the battered Ford.

He was pointing down Atwater Street, toward downtown. A snowy field stretched along the left side of the road, and past that, the Detroit River. On the right side of the street, he saw a dilapidated three-story brick building surrounded by empty lots. Faded blue paint up on top had a barely legible sign painted on it: GLOBE TRADING COMPANY.

“That way?” Dew said. “Where, behind that building?”

“No, in it. I think.”

“You think or you know?”

“I think,” Perry said. “I told you, the signal is fading really fast.”

Dew scratched at his face, then looked around. Even in the middle of the firefight, he could see civilians scrambling for cover, cowering in doorways, frightened eyes peeking out from windows.

Apache HEAT rounds would destroy the building, but that didn’t guarantee destruction of the gate. Was there a basement? Had Ogden built protective berms or other support structures to harden the target?

Dew could have one of the F-15s drop a two-thousand-pound bomb, but again he wouldn’t know for sure if that took out the gate. Not to mention inevitable civilian casualties. Those bombs could kill people as far as a hundred yards from impact. Dew’s conservative guess was that a bomb would kill at least fifty people: men, women and children.

He checked his watch—1:08 P.M. Five minutes to go.

Dew pulled out his satphone. “Murray! Come in!”

Murray’s scratchy voice came back immediately. “Murray here, over.”

“We think we found the gate,” Dew said. “Corner of Orleans and Atwater.”

“Understood,” Murray said. “Can we bomb it?”

“Negative. Do not take out the building. There are too many civilians around. I’ll take Whiskey Company in and make sure this is the real deal. We’ll capture it, blow it manually if it gets hot.”

There was a pause.

“Dew, this is President Gutierrez.”

“Uh… hello, sir.”

“It’s admirable that you want to protect civilian life, but I was informed that Dawsey is one-hundred percent sure that gate opens at one-fifteen.”

“That’s correct.”

“I’m ordering the bomb run for one-fifteen,” Gutierrez said. “If you want to stop it, enter the building and capture the gate in the next six minutes.”

Fuck. Dew shoved the satphone into his flak jacket, then thumbed the transmit button on his helmet mike. “Nails, Nails, come in, over.”

Dew heard the response in his helmet’s earphones. “Nails here. What are your orders?”

“Building at the corner of Orleans and Atwater,” Dew said. “That’s the target. Get in there right now, kill everything that moves. We have four minutes to secure that building or they’re going to drop a bomb that will level about five square blocks.”

“Yessir!”

Dew looked at Perry. “Well, kid, you ready?”

“No,” Perry said. “Not even close.”

Dew slapped him on the shoulder. “Tell you what. We go out there, we get this bullshit done, and then tomorrow you and I go fishing. How about that?”

Perry stared at him for a second, then nodded. “Okay.”

Maybe Dew’s daughter wouldn’t go fishing, but Perry was probably the closest thing he’d ever have to a son.

Following the three gunmen turned out to be much easier than Margaret had thought possible, for a very disturbing reason. They had run back to the eight-laned Jefferson Avenue, turned west and started collecting hostages. Herding them along at gunpoint, like cattle. Sixteen so far. Women, children, a few men. Some people had resisted—and had been gunned down instantly. A few had shot back, men in their twenties and thirties, firing handguns and even one shotgun. Gangbangers, maybe. They didn’t stand a chance. The body-armor-clad soldiers worked as a team, moved as a unit and gunned down any resistance. They even collected the resisters’ weapons, leaving nothing behind.

Margaret and Clarence followed at a distance, staying out of sight, feeling completely helpless. Clarence kept cursing in a low growl. He wanted to kill those men. So did Margaret, but Clarence still had only one bullet.

Attacking the gunmen would be suicide, plain and simple. There was nothing he could do but wait for an opportunity. So he followed, and Margaret stayed by his side.

Perry didn’t know jack shit about military tactics, but as a football player he knew great team play when he saw it. Right before Dew called in the attack on the old factory building, Perry could spot maybe four Whiskey Company soldiers. They popped up, shot, dropped back down, moved from one spot of cover to the next. They grabbed wounded comrades and civilians alike, dragging them to safety. Fifteen seconds after Dew’s call to Nails, Perry saw at least two dozen soldiers. They seemed to materialize out of nowhere, charging forward, shooting at the Globe building’s boarded-up windows. The building grew hazy as bullets pounded bricks into little puffy tan clouds. Perry’s helmet radio buzzed with the excited talk of soldiers on the attack.

“Sniper, third floor!”

“Got him!”

“Keep that fire on the second-floor windows. They’re chucking grenades!”

Dew stood, groaning a bit as he did, then scooted around the front of the Ford and ran toward the building.

Perry drew his .45 and followed. This was insanity. But if Dew was going, Perry was going with him.

Dew’s sprint wasn’t much of a sprint at all. Mentally, maybe the guy had shed twenty years, but physically, not so much. Soldiers raced across the empty lot on either side, passing Perry and Dew as if they were standing still. Each step felt like it took five minutes, five minutes during which a bullet might connect at any second.

Yet no fire came his way.

Perry saw only one enemy gunman. Didn’t actually see him, really, just four or five muzzle flashes from behind a cracked piece of plywood covering a third-floor window. About two seconds after that shot, the plywood disintegrated thanks to a massive concentration of fire that kicked out a rain of splinters and paint chips. The gunman didn’t fire again.

Dew followed a dozen soldiers toward a rusted roll-up garage door that was closed only a quarter of the way. A battered plywood wall blocked the rest of the opening. Perry heard a whoosh from behind and instinctively ducked. A rocket shot past, at least twenty feet to his right. It hit the plywood wall and erupted in a cloud of fire and wooden shrapnel.

Nail’s voice in his helmet speakers. “Take that building!”

Perry moved forward, still right behind Dew. Whiskey Company soldiers were thirty yards ahead of them, rushing toward the now-gaping door. For what must have been the hundredth time in the past hour, Perry tried to comprehend the bravery of a soldier, someone who chose to rush headlong into enemy fire.

The first soldiers reached the open door. One tossed in a grenade. Like an optical illusion, someone from inside the building tossed out a grenade at the same time. The two devices actually passed by each other, going opposite ways. The charging Whiskey Company men scattered and dove for cover. Two didn’t make it far enough. The grenade exploded. No fireball like in the movies, just a hellacious bang, an instant cloud of smoke and a fist-hard hit of air. The two men were standing one second, falling the next. One hit the ground face-first and didn’t move. The other turned as he fell, landing on his right side, hands reaching behind his back and grabbing madly as if his clothes were on fire.

Automatic gunfire erupted from the boarded-up second-floor windows, one gunman on either side of the roll-up garage door. Another Whiskey Company soldier went down, screaming, grabbing at a thigh instantly soaked with blood.

Dew kept running forward.

Perry stayed on his heels.

Dew raised his M4 and fired. Perry pointed his .45 at one of the windows and emptied the magazine. Plywood splintered where he shot. Behind him, to the right, he heard a whuff, then a second later a heavy crunch as something ripped through the plywood window right before a concussive bang blasted it outward in a fiery cloud of pulverized brick and wooden splinters. Perry reloaded, debris raining down on him and Dew as they followed soldiers beneath the roll-up garage door.

Once they were inside the long open space of the Globe building, there was no subtle strategy, no effort to capture a hatchling alive, only the brute force of twenty-five pissed-off soldiers, one old CIA agent with a bad hip and one former all-American linebacker with two bum knees.

The fight didn’t last long. Only a few of Ogden’s men remained alive, and most of them were already wounded. The hatchlings attacked, of course, but they had no cover and were quickly mowed down by concentrated fire.

Perry killed three of the little fuckers himself.

Each shot felt better than the last, a tingling trip of adrenaline ripping through his body. He’d killed the infected because they needed to die—killing hatchlings was just plain fun.

All eyes had been focused on the soldiers, their guns, the hatchlings. When the last hatchling fell, shivering in its sickening death throes, Perry and the others took in the massive brown and green construct arching to an apex some twenty feet high. Strands of the brown material ran from the arches up to the roof’s metal framework forty feet above, supporting some of the construct’s weight.

And past the gate, a white and brown Winnebago. From inside, even through the jamming, he sensed the infected.

“She’s in there,” Perry said, and pointed.

Dew shouldered his M4 and opened up on the Winnebago. Within seconds, four other men unloaded on it as well. Shiny dots appeared as bullets tore through the thin walls. One tire popped, then another.

Dew stopped firing and put in a fresh magazine.

“Secure the building!” Nails called. “No prisoners, make sure they’re dead, and do not touch the bodies. And find Ogden! I want to piss on his fucking corpse.”

The men spread out.

Perry walked right under the gate toward the Winnebago. Behind him he heard Dew.

“Murray, we have the building, abort bomb run,” Dew said. “Repeat, abort bomb run, keep the F-15s on-station, just in case. We’ll rig the gate to blow manually.”

Perry kept walking. He held his .45 tight but was careful to keep his finger off the trigger. The Winnebago had so many holes it looked darkly comical. He stepped toward the small side door.

Blood leaked from it.

Dew kept shouting. “Nails! I want C-4 at the base of every arch, and don’t be stingy with it on those other parts.”

Perry stared at the blood dripping from the bottom of the RV’s door, lightly pattering onto the dirty, cracked concrete below.

More commotion behind him, Nails screaming, men yelling back and forth, but little of it registered in Perry’s thoughts.

He still sensed that other presence, but barely—the jamming had grown during the firefight, so bad now that it was almost all gray again.

This was it. It had to be.

He opened the bullet-ridden door and looked inside.

A body, but not Chelsea. A man in a postal worker’s uniform, dead and still oozing blood onto crinkled plastic that partially covered the narrow floor.

Perry leaned over the body and quickly looked around.

Chelsea wasn’t there.

No, no-no-no …Chelsea had been the moving signal. She was gone.

“Perry!” Dew yelled. “Get your ass out here!”

Perry shut the door and turned back to the others.

The gate was glowing, like white frosted glass illuminated by countless tiny, slow-moving, high-powered bulbs. It lit up the warehouse interior, filling it with a beautiful glow.

Perry walked up to the gate. He could already feel the heat. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. A biological jewel glowing with light drawn from a million stars. Texture like a rough tree trunk. A smell like leftover barbecue. Emotions of love, admiration, even awe, they rolled through him, too strong to deny.

Perry saw it, felt it and sensed it all at the same time. The vibration. The opening. The spongy green door from his dreams of six weeks ago, an eternity ago. A connection from infinite distance, the threads of the universe binding, entwining, coalescing into something that blended all existence. Purity.

“Nails, how much longer?” Dew said. “It’s one-fourteen. This thing opens up in sixty seconds.”

“Almost there, sir!”

Perry stroked the gate one last time. It wouldn’t be long now. He left his hand there, feeling the growing heat.

“Okay, it’s ready!” Nails screamed. “Moooove out! Go-go-go-go-go!”

Men sprinted out of the ware house. Perry marveled at their energy, their intensity. Someone hit him on the shoulder.

“Stop staring at their asses, kid,” Dew said. “Let’s go.”

Dew hobble-sprinted toward the door. Perry followed, barely needing to jog to keep up. They ran out and across the field. He tried to concentrate as he ran, concentrate on the fading sensation that had to be Chelsea Jewell. What direction? He couldn’t tell.

Nails’s men squatted in a wide, loose circle, each man facing out, guns at the ready. Nails pulled a small black plastic clicker from his breast pocket.

“Fire in the hole,” he said, then clicked the clicker three times.

The walls of 1801 Atwater blasted outward at the base. The last surviving bits of glass shattered, along with the plywood that covered most of the windows. Pieces of the roof shot into the sky, trailed by thick tendrils of expanding black smoke. The building collapsed upon itself, hundred-year-old brick walls falling in and down. A second later, rolling smoke and dust billowed out, obscuring everything.

“Holy shit,” one of the men said, laughing. “That’s awesome.”

“Crap,” Dew said. “I sure hope there’s nothing contagious in this dust.”

He pulled out his satphone. “We got it, Murray.”

Perry felt her, just a bit, the last trailing of sensation. Chelsea. Moving, still blocking him…

…then she was gone.

And he knew, with absolute certainty, that he’d never get her back, not unless she wanted it to happen. She had become too powerful.

“I lost her,” Perry said. “I lost Chelsea.”

Margaret crouched at the base of a small abandoned building, watching dust roil through the air around her. A block away, the Globe building had just exploded and collapsed, sending a thick dust cloud rolling through the abandoned lots. She wondered if the cloud carried the contagion—but she and Clarence were safe in their suits. The sticky tape on her hands would keep the glove cuts sealed. A white-trash version of BSL-4 safety, but it worked nonetheless.

Clarence moved along the sidewalk. His right shoulder stayed close to the graffiti-covered brick wall, but he didn’t touch it—she had warned him about sliding across anything, even leaning on things for cover should he wind up in a shoot-out. The tough hazmat suit could still tear if dragged across any jagged metal.

Helicopters soared overhead, guns fired, explosions made the ground vibrate—war had come to Detroit.

Clarence peeked around the corner. He watched for a few seconds, then reached back and gently pulled her hand, urging her forward until she could see for herself. Down the block, on the other side of the intersection, stood yet another abandoned building. A corner unit, battered front door opening out at an angle toward the intersection of Franklin and Riopelle. Light gray, two stories, boarded-up windows; it looked like an old restaurant or bar, maybe a corner store from decades past when this area had more buildings than abandoned lots.

“That’s where the gunmen took the hostages,” he said.

“What’s in there?”

“I don’t know. If the gate is gone, Ogden has to know it’s over, that he lost. He filled the building with hostages so we can’t drop a big fucking bomb on his ass.”

“Or maybe they’re trying to convert those people? Infect them?”

“Maybe,” Clarence said. “Maybe some of them, but it makes more sense to have regular people as hostages. Otherwise they have no negotiating power.”

“What do we do now?”

“We’ve got to get help. Listen, you watch where those soldiers went in, and don’t move. Ogden’s headquarters blew; our guys had to cause that. I’ll slide around to the other side of this building—the gunmen can’t spot me from there—see if I can flag down our guys and get them over here.”

Clarence slowly ducked away from the corner. Margaret knelt and watched. Every twenty seconds or so, a car drove through the settling dust, full of people hunting for a place to hide. When they saw her or Clarence, saw their biohazard suits, the cars instantly sped up to get away. The faces inside looked terrified, shell-shocked. Nothing she could do for these people, not without making a scene, making herself visible to the gunmen in the building across the street. She silently prayed that all the cars would just keep driving.

Then, coming up Riopelle from the direction of the river, a motorcycle. A squat one, American and loud, kicking up a low cloud of the still-falling dust. A man driving, someone behind him, someone small.

“Keep going,” Margaret whispered. “Don’t stop here, keep driving.”

The motorcycle stopped right in front of the hostage building.

Margaret tensed. She couldn’t let those people go inside. They got off the bike, and Margaret saw the small person was a little girl with curly hair.

Blond.

Chelsea Jewell.

And the man—Colonel Charlie Ogden in street clothes.

They ran into the building.

Margaret whipped behind the corner, out of sight.

Clarence was already coming back from the other side. He wore a wide smile, an expression of near disbelief.

She grabbed his arm. “I just saw Chelsea Jewell.”

His smile widened. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure! It’s her. Why are you smiling?”

He actually laughed. “I don’t know. Too much death, stress, something good finally happens, and now I can’t stop grinning. Go take a look—you won’t believe who’s coming this way.”

Margaret traded places with him. Still moving slowly, cautiously, she walked to the other side of the building and looked around the corner.

And understood Clarence’s joy.

Because she felt it, too.

Coming across an empty, abandoned city block, running through the settling dust, she saw Dew Phillips, Perry Dawsey and soldiers carrying machine guns.

THE CAVALRY

If you went back in time, say, six weeks, to a point when Margaret Montoya stood in an apartment parking lot in Ypsilanti, Michigan, scared for her life because a gigantic, burned and brutally wounded infected man named Perry Dawsey was trying to tear through her biohazard suit, his wild eyes staring, his spit and blood smearing her visor, his cracked lips screaming open that fucking door and let ’em in …if you could go back to that moment and tell her there would come a time where she would feel infinitely happy and relieved to see his face, she wouldn’t have believed you. You could have bet her on that. Bet her with the same bill that traded hands so frequently between Clarence and Amos.

And you’d have won twenty bucks.

Perry, Dew and maybe twenty-five heavily armed and grim-faced soldiers came running down Woodbridge Street. The cavalry to the rescue. The men fanned out, working like the fingers of a hand, some pointing guns across the street at the boarded-up windows of Chelsea’s building, some darting across that same street to the building next to hers, backs against brick walls, slowly inching to the corner, some continuing down the street, probably to surround the place. Dew and Perry ran right up to her.

“Margaret!” Perry said. “We got the gate. Are you okay?” He hugged her, suit and all, picking her right up off the ground.

“I’m okay, I’m okay.” She hugged him back. She couldn’t believe how good it was to see him.

Dew scooted to the corner, peeked around, then ducked back.

“Clarence said you saw Ogden?”

“And Chelsea Jewell,” Margaret said.

Perry’s smile faded. A look of hatred filled his eyes. Margaret instantly thought of the dead, angry stares of the infected victims she’d had on her autopsy table.

“And hostages,” Clarence said. “About fifteen of them. And at least three gunmen armed with body armor, M4s, sidearms and grenades. There could be more already inside.”

Dew looked Clarence up and down. “Human condom, eh?”

Clarence nodded at Margaret. “Blame her.”

“Hell, I wish I had one right about now,” Dew said. “Margaret, what happened with Sanchez? You figure this thing out yet?”

The sensation of relief vanished, replaced once again by feelings of failure.

“No, I didn’t,” she said. “Try not to get infected, because there’s still no cure.”

Dew and Perry nodded.

“How about Gitsh and Marcus?” Dew asked. “Doctor Dan?”

Clarence shook his head.

“So we’ve got losses,” Dew said. “Let’s make them count. Clarence, take Margaret and go to the football field at Martin Luther King High School, about a mile up Jefferson, you can’t miss it. Murray dropped a Margo-Mobile there to set up an infection triage. There are also two Ospreys on the ground. If things turn dicey, you get her out of here.”

“I’m standing right here, Dew,” Margaret said. “Clarence isn’t my keeper.”

“Yes he is,” Dew said. “And he’s getting you out.”

“Have some of your men take her,” Clarence sad. “I’m staying to finish this.”

Why couldn’t Clarence just shut up and leave? Hadn’t he done his job? Hadn’t they sacrificed enough? She wanted out, and she wanted him with her.

“Otto, you will get the fuck out of here,” Dew said. “Your mission is to protect Margaret, and I want her gone.”

Clarence shook his head. “But Dew—”

“Shut your broken-toothed mouth. You’ve got your orders. Do you mind if we go ahead and save the fucking world? Perry, you go with them.”

Perry Dawsey actually laughed. A dark laugh, something he might have let slip back in a kitchen filled with three dead bodies.

“Fuck you, Dewie,” he said. “Chelsea and I need to talk.”

Dew turned to look at Perry, tilted his head up to make eye contact. Perry’s filthy blond hair hung in front of a face smeared with grime and reddish dust.

“You’ll go now, Dawsey, and that’s an order.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, old man?” Perry said. “I’m not a soldier, and your orders don’t mean dick to me. I’m getting that girl. The only way you can stop me is to shoot me, and this time I’ll shoot back. With your own gun.”

Perry raised his eyebrows and lifted a pistol, not pointing it at Dew, more of a show-and-tell gesture.

“Sir!” A big black man, almost as big as Perry, ran up to Dew. “Sir, someone is sticking a white flag out the front door.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dew said. “Let’s see if we can close this out. Nails, have half your men target the second-floor windows, the other half the ground floor. I don’t want to kill any hostages, but I’m not in the mood to be shot at, either.”

“Got it,” Nails said, then started barking orders. Margaret had never heard a human being that loud.

Dew looked at Perry again. “I suppose if I tell you to stay here, you’ll just ignore me?”

Perry nodded.

Dew sighed. “Fine, fuck it. Let’s go.”

Perry’s slow breaths steamed in the cold air, carried away by the breeze coming off the river. The helmet felt cold on his head, but his flak jacket trapped his body heat and made him sweat despite the freezing temperature. He gripped the .45 tightly and followed Dew around the corner. Dew carried an M4, barrel angled toward the ground. Jets still screamed overhead, their engine roars echoing across the cityscape. Far up ahead, the RenCen continued to burn like a tall, smoldering black torch, a column of greasy smoke angling up and trailing across downtown Detroit. Helicopters hovered all over the place, probably waiting for more of Ogden’s men to show themselves.

Perry and Dew walked toward the building on the corner. The front door was open just a little, enough room for a stick with a white shirt tied to it to wave back and forth.

He saw Whiskey Company men all over the place, guns trained on the open door and the windows. If someone opened fire from inside the building, an instant bloodbath would ensue.

Dew stopped twenty feet in front of the door. Perry did the same, a step behind Dew, a step to his left.

“We’re listening,” Dew said.

The door opened, and Chelsea Jewell walked out, carrying the flag.

Had it been anyone else, a soldier, a grown-up, some twitchy finger might have opened fire, white flag or no. But the image of a seven-year-old girl with beautiful blond curls and an innocent face instantly made fingers ease off triggers, if only a little.

To anyone else she looked innocent, but Perry saw deeper. He saw a nightmare, something dark and self-serving, something happy to destroy anything that didn’t give her what she wanted. He didn’t care what he had to do, how far he had to go—Chelsea Jewell would never leave this place alive.

She walked ten feet from the door, far enough to stand in the debris-strewn, potholed street.

Perry stepped forward. Time to end this. A hand on his chest—Dew pushing him back. Perry wanted to shoot her, but he would back Dew’s play.

“We wanna negotiate,” Chelsea said. “My mommy needs help.”

“Tell all your men to throw out their weapons,” Dew shouted, loud enough so the men in the building could hear him.

Chelsea stood there, motionless save for the white flag still twitching in her little hand. Guns flew out of the building’s broken windows and clattered on the sidewalk. Two came from the ground floor, just one from the second. Was that all Ogden had left? Three gunmen?

More silence.

“Where’s Col o nel Ogden?” Dew asked.

“He will come out now, with my mommy,” Chelsea said. “She’s hurt, she needs help.”

Perry heard Nails’s bellowing voice. “Squad One, move up!”

Soldiers of Whiskey Company stepped out from cover and moved forward, forming a wide half circle around Chelsea.

She turned and walked back through the door. Perry started to follow her inside, but Dew’s hand on his chest stopped him again. She slipped inside, out of sight. Only a few seconds of tense waiting later, a man walked out. Ogden. He reached back and pulled something through the door. Something big, like a two-legged hippo. Gray. Wearing… pants?

Wait.

The man wasn’t pulling that thing.

That thing… was walking.

Margaret watched an obscenity walk out of the building.

“What the fuck?” Clarence said. “What is that?”

It was a woman. A woman horribly bloated to insane proportions. Her arms were swollen to the point where the skin stretched out thin and semitransparent like a balloon, or like the casing of a sausage sizzling away on a grill. Her stomach distended like a cartoon-character. Her breasts looked massive, misshapen, like beach balls. Her face was puffed up to the point that her eyes were nothing more than stretched, squinting slits. The woman couldn’t see—that’s why Ogden led her forward.

“Stay where you are!” Dew screamed. “Ogden, stop or we shoot!”

Guns rattled as soldiers took aim. Ogden stopped. So did the woman. With a smooth, confident motion, Ogden reached into his pocket, drew out a grenade and pulled the pin. He jammed the grenade into the woman’s bloated folds.

Dew fired. Ogden’s head jerked to the side, and he dropped, lifeless.

Next came two long seconds, a pregnant pause. Margaret and the soldiers stared at the obscenely bloated woman standing next to Colonel Charlie Ogden’s fallen body.

Someone started firing.

A dozen M4s suddenly erupted, bullets punching into the monstrosity that had once been the beautiful Candice Jewell. Each bullet kicked out a gray jet like the spray of a miniature fire extinguisher. She stumbled back a step, arms comically pinwheeling as she fought for balance.

And then the grenade went off.

A bang, no flash. A cloud of gray peppered with red, fleshy shrapnel.

The cloud expanded, billowing past Dew and the men who had surrounded Chelsea. It thinned as it spread, a translucent sphere growing more and more transparent. The soldiers turned to run, but the cloud engulfed them before they made it three steps. It blew past them, seemingly hungry for the next man in line, and the next.

The soldiers slowed, then stopped. Hands went to throats, to eyes, to ears. They scratched at themselves. They clawed. They screamed. They fell. They writhed and kicked.

The cloud billowed past Margaret, tiny spores covering her airtight suit.

Tears rolled down her face. This was it, this was the final stage. There had to be millions of the spores. Sanchez had caught the disease from a tiny puffball, maybe a thousand spores landing on his hand, and even though he’d washed the hand immediately, it hadn’t mattered—the stuff penetrated almost on contact.

Every one of these men, including Dew, including Perry, was already infected with a dose at least a thousand times more concentrated.

She looked away from the men, looked at the air around her. The pollenlike dust drifted away, a grayish cloud carried by the wind. The spores were already starting to fall, but only slightly—they might travel a mile or more before they finally came to rest.

A mile would carry them into downtown Detroit, even beyond, spreading them across the tens of thousands of panicked citizens trying to hide from gunfire. Spores were far smaller than bullets, far more dangerous, and from those spores there was no place to hide.

People stumbled out of the house. The hostages. Clawing at their eyes and throats and ears, running in any direction, every direction. It wasn’t just the wind that could spread the contagion—these people would take it much farther.

How many of them would leave the city in a panic? Find a car, a way out, and just start driving? How many would travel three or four hours before they fell asleep?

And how many of those would change into another gasbag, like Chelsea’s mother?

She saw other civilians, stumbling out of buildings where they had hidden, hands rubbing desperately at eyes, digging at exposed skin. They ran in a panic, aimlessly scattering in all directions.

“Clarence, does your HUD say anything about suit integrity?”

He said nothing. He just stared at the carnage.

“Clarence!”

“Uh… no, nothing about suit integrity.”

Thank God. He was safe.

“We have to get out of here,” she said. “We have to get to the decon trailer at the football field. Can you drive that motorcycle parked in front of the building?”

“Yeah, but what about Dew? Perry? We have to help them.”

Margaret swallowed. Dew writhed on the ground. Perry just lay on his back, barely moving. She wanted to go to them, but the cold, mathematical part of her brain knew the score.

“We can’t help them,” she said. “Do what I say, and do it now. If you don’t, the world is fucked.”

Clarence looked at her, then looked back at the men crawling across the ground, at the people running into the city. It seemed to click home for him. He closed his eyes tight. Tears dripped down his cheeks. He opened his eyes, grabbed her hand and ran for the motorcycle.

PEOPLE HELPING PEOPLE

Get up, Perry. I need you.

Coughing.

Dust, the taste of smoke, the taste of dirt, the taste of…

(don’t think about it)

…of scorched flesh. In his mouth.

More coughing.

But not just from the brick and dirt and smoke and wood and the (don’t think about it) scorched flesh, coughing from something deeper, way down in his lungs.

Something that burned.

Perry knew. He felt stabbing pains all through his skin, his face, in his muscles and eyes. They were inside him.

It’s time for you to join me.

It was her again. In his head. He’d thought the gate was the most beautiful thing he would ever experience. He was wrong. As rapturous as that gate was, it paled in comparison to the voice.

Come to me, Perry. Get me out of here.

So beautiful. He’d heard her before, but he’d been hundreds of miles away. Now there was no distance, no jamming, no grayness—her pure, raw power raged through his soul.

Perry stood and stumbled down the street. Men were all around, the brave guys of Whiskey Company, rolling on the ground, coughing, spitting up blood. They were all totally fucked.

Just like Perry.

And there, lying in the middle of the street… Dew Phillips.

Just relax and let it happen. You’ll be stronger now. You’ll be like me. Come to me, Perry. Protect me.

Perry shuffled toward Dew. The man was on his back, mouth opening and closing. He saw Perry and managed to smile, then shrug.

Dew knew the deal.

“Sorry… kid,” he said, his voice a hoarse croak. “Looks like… we’re not going fishing after all.”

Kill him.

Dew’s face screwed into a pinched mask of agony. Perry knew what Dew was feeling, because he felt that same pain himself. The difference was, Perry and pain were long-lost buddies.

Dew’s wave of pain seemed to fade for a second. He blinked rapidly, then coughed, bloody foam splattering onto his lips.

“Kid… get my radio. See if Margaret got out.”

Perry nodded. “I will.”

Kill him. Do it now.

“I’m proud of you, Perry,” Dew said. “Maybe you don’t… have testicles… but you sure got balls.”

Dew Phillips actually laughed. Or started to, then he coughed up a little blood.

Perry saw his .45 lying on the ground. The one that had belonged to Dew for thirty-some years.

Kill him!

“Thank you, for everything,” Perry said. “And I’m sorry about this, but I have to.”

Perry put the .45 against Dew’s forehead.

“Kid? What…”

Perry closed his eyes, kept his hand perfectly still and pulled the trigger.

Then he turned away and walked toward the building.

Chelsea had called for him, God had called for him, and he had to obey.

RIDE TO LIVE

The black Harley Night Rod Special roared down the sidewalk of East Jefferson Avenue. Shell-shocked people ran out of the way, only too eager to flee from yet another potential threat—a loud-as-hell motorcycle carrying two people in black hazmat suits.

Bodies lined the sidewalk and the street, the corpses of people who had resisted the hostage roundup of Ogden’s men. Clarence wove around those bodies, around cars that had driven onto the sidewalk and crashed into buildings, and around a few people wandering aimlessly, clawing at their eyes, their faces, their arms. Margaret saw traces of gray dust everywhere. As they drove, the dust thinned until she saw no more of it. They’d driven out of the puffball’s expansive blast radius.

Now the only spores would be on their hazmat suits.

Even with the parking-lot-like traffic jam, the Harley moved along at a brisk pace, its obscenely loud engine a long-distance warning to anything that might stand in its way. Within minutes they saw the high-school football field on the left. Sitting on it, a MargoMobile and two Ospreys.

An icon illuminated on her heads-up display—wireless connection. Her suit computer had picked up the communication net from the new MargoMobile.

“This is Doctor Margaret Montoya!” she shouted as Clarence turned sharply on Mount Elliot. “Prepare for immediate evacuation. Patch me through to Murray Longworth on this frequency right now, open the airlock door, then everyone out of the trailers and onto the Osprey. Get it warmed up. We’re out of here in three minutes. Do not approach me, I am contagious.”

A block later they reached the football field’s main gate. A guard had been there, but she saw only his back as he sprinted for the Osprey. Clarence drove the roaring motorcycle through the gate onto the field and stopped at the MargoMobile’s airlock door.

As soon as the bike’s engine died out, Margaret heard Murray’s voice in her helmet speakers. “Margaret, what’s going on?”

She and Clarence sprinted for the airlock. She’d been running forever, it seemed, and every last muscle screamed in protest. She entered, and he shut the door behind them. The instant the air pressure equalized, she opened the door to the decontamination chamber.

“Margaret,” Murray said, “answer me!”

“It’s contagious,” she said through heavy breaths. She ran to the controls as Clarence shut the second airlock door. She hit the controls and the room filled with the bleach/chlorine spray.

“We know it’s contagious,” Murray said.

“No, you don’t get it.” She raised her arms and slowly turned, letting the mist wash over her. “It’s airborne. It replicates inside people, fills them up like a puffball till they burst.”

“Okay, how do we contain that? Where’s Dew?”

“Dew is infected,” Margaret said. “So is Perry; all of them are. There’s nothing we can do for them, Murray, and if we have any hope at containing this, we need to act right now.”

Dead silence on the other end.

“Murray, did you hear me?”

“Yeah,” he said quickly, but in a voice that oozed total exhaustion. “What do you want us to do?”

The mist shut off. Clarence opened the airlock door that led back to the entrance. Margaret swallowed “You have to…”

Her voice lodged in her throat as she followed Clarence. He shut the door, then ran to the final airlock.

“Margaret?” Murray said. “Talk to me.”

She felt tears pouring down her face, but because of the suit she couldn’t wipe them.

“Option Number Four,” she said. “You have to use Option Number Four.”

Dead silence. Otto pulled her onto the football field and started taking off her gloves.

When Murray spoke, his voice sounded thin, old. “There’s got to be another way.”

Clarence lifted her feet one at a time, took off her shoes.

Margaret shook her head. “There isn’t. The fireball will crank the temperature up so high it will kill all the spores for three or four miles around. They’ve probably spread a mile already. You have to do it. Now.”

Another pause. She disconnected the helmet from the suit but left it on her head so she could keep talking to Murray. She started tearing off her suit. Clarence did the same with his.

A new voice in the speakers.

“Margaret, this is President John Gutierrez. Do you realize that you’re asking us to drop a nuclear weapon on Detroit?”

“Of course I fucking realize that! I know exactly what I’m asking, you fucking moron!”

Margaret couldn’t stop the tears now, nor could she stop the sobs. She stepped out of the suit. She wore nothing but scrubs and the helmet. Otto grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the Osprey’s open rear ramp.

“How much time to evacuate?” Gutierrez asked.

“You can’t evacuate,” she said. “If you don’t do this right now, it’s going to be too late. Look how it converted Ogden’s men, how fast it took over and what it made them do. The spores have already spread all through downtown Detroit. Thousands are infected. The infected will radiate out of the city. These people are terrified. They’re going to get as far from Detroit as they can; you can’t stop them. Some of them will turn into these… gasbags… full of spores. We just watched it happen. The infection will spread everywhere. People will be converted into this collective organism—they won’t be human anymore. If it spreads past Detroit, we’re fucked. Humanity is fucked. You have to act now, Mister President, or it’s out of our hands for good.”

“Where are you?” Gutierrez asked.

“We’re getting on the Osprey at the football field.”

She ran up the ramp. It started to close behind her. Seven men were inside. They stared at her and Clarence, and instantly shied away, shuffling toward the front of the passenger section.

“Margaret,” Gutierrez said, his voice quiet and cold. “Are you sure, absolutely sure this is the only way?”

“I… I am.”

Another pause, then Murray again. “I’m telling the Osprey pilot to take off fast,” he said. “You should be out of range when it goes off. What are the exact target coordinates?”

Margaret stared out for a second. All of Dew’s men were gone. No one to paint the target. There was one way, though, to make sure the nuke hit the right spot.

“Can you get a signal from Dew’s satphone?”

“Yes.”

“Drop it there.”

PERRY MEETS CHELSEA

Perry’s body boiled inside. He and pain were old buddies, but his old buddy was making itself a little too welcome. His second infection, it seemed, would be just as much fun as the first.

He walked through the front door of the abandoned building. Two of Ogden’s men were inside. They’d recovered their weapons. The spores didn’t seem to affect them.

They let Perry pass.

Come to me, my protector.

He walked. The two men followed him, one behind each shoulder. Chelsea was on the second floor. He could sense her, feel her beauty, her power, her divinity. He walked up old stairs that creaked under his feet.

General Ogden said we’d have another hour or so before they shut down the city, so we have to hurry. We need a car. Then we can go for a ride.

He reached the top of the stairs.

Down the hall, standing in an empty, trash-strewn room of the abandoned building, he finally saw her.

Chelsea.

And his heart ached.

“I’m afraid I destroyed the gate, Chelsea.”

You have destroyed many things.

“No gate… what will you do?”

We’re like a new person now. A superorganism. Isn’t that a neat word? Can’t you feel the crawlers working through your body? They will change you even more, Perry. We will escape Detroit, and then you and I will make the whole world play together.

He walked up to her. His feet seemed heavy, each step like dead-lifting a thousand pounds. Every nerve screamed with agony.

She could do it. She could take over the world.

Chelsea Jewell could be God.

You understand now, don’t you? You understand how silly it was to fight all this time? Let’s get a car and go get some ice cream.

Perry smiled down at her. So tiny, so fragile, so beautiful.

He snapped his right arm back into the soldier behind him. A pile-driver elbow smashed into the man’s face, crushing his left cheek and fracturing his right orbital bone. The man on Perry’s left started to raise his M4, but Perry pointed his .45 down and fired twice. Two bullets shredded the man’s foot into raw meat. The man shivered, dropped his gun and instinctively reached for his foot. As he bent down, Perry put the.45 to his head and pulled the trigger.

Perry swiveled right to face the man he’d elbowed. Two shots, both bullets ripping through the man’s chest. Before the body even hit the filthy wooden floor, Perry turned back and reached out.

His big right hand locked on Chelsea Jewell’s throat.

He lifted her. She weighed nothing.

Stop it!

“No.”

No, Perry, NO! Bad Perry!

She didn’t look scared. She didn’t look evil, either. She looked like a spoiled child, a child who did whatever she wanted, took whatever she wanted.

He squeezed a little harder.

Fear crept into those angelic blue eyes, the realization that maybe she didn’t control him.

You have to do what I say! I told you to kill that man, and you did!

“You didn’t make me do it,” Perry said. “I couldn’t let him wind up like me. I had to help him.”

Footsteps rushed up the stairs behind him. Perry turned to face the open door, Chelsea still held out in front of him. The last gunman sprinted down the hall, M4 raised. He skidded to a halt when he saw Chelsea held in the air like a shield.

Perry aimed and fired.

The bullet hit the last man dead center in the forehead. He took one step back, dropped his gun, then lifted his right hand, weakly, as if he wanted to touch Chelsea’s hair one last time.

The man fell backward.

He didn’t move.

Perry looked at Chelsea. So beautiful. He understood that man’s dying gesture of love, of affection.

Why would you kill me, Perry?

Hate tinged her ice-cold eyes.

Cold, like the eyes of a hatchling.

You’re not like anyone else. I can see into your memories, Perry. No one accepted you for who you are, but with me you can be what you were born to be—a killer.

“Maybe that’s what I was born to be,” Perry said. “But it’s not who I am anymore.”

It is, and you know it is. Why help them? What have these people ever done for you?

“One of them was going to take me fishing,” Perry said.

Then he shot Chelsea Jewell in the face.

DEW’S SATPHONE

A soldier handed Margaret a satphone. She just looked at it. Clarence took it and answered.

“Agent Otto here.”

The voice on the satphone was crackling but clearly audible. “It’s Murray. I’ve got Perry. He wants to talk with Margaret.”

Margaret’s body sagged in her seat. Perry was still alive? Not for long, not long at all.

“Okay,” she said, and took the phone.

More crackling, then the deep voice of Perry Dawsey. “Hey Margo.”

She fought back the tears. If she cried too hard she couldn’t speak. “Hey,” she said. “Are you… are you on Dew’s phone?”

“Yeah,” Perry said. “I got Chelsea. The voices have finally stopped, but… I don’t think I’m doing so good. I’ve got those things inside me. It hurts. Bad. I think they’re moving to my brain. Margaret, I don’t want to lose control again.

“You won’t,” she said. “They won’t have time.”

A pause. “Holy shit,” he said. “Are you nuking me?”

“Yes.”

Laughter, cut short by a wet cough, then a groan of pain. “Dew said I’m like a cockroach, that nothing can kill me. I don’t think physics is on my side this time, though.”

Margaret let out a sound that was half cry, half laugh. Her soul hurt.

“Clarence with you?”

“I can hear you,” Clarence said, his voice also choked with sobs. “You are really something else. Nobody ever been as tough as you.”

“Sorry about those Toby jokes,” Perry said. “Truth be told, I was just jealous of you and Margo. I wanted to beat the shit out of something, and you were there.”

“I know,” Clarence said. “It’s nothing.”

“Don’t fuck it up with her,” Perry said. “I hope you know what you’ve got.”

“I do,” Clarence said. “Trust me, I do.”

“Cool,” Perry said. “Uh… how long do I have?”

Murray’s voice. “About fifteen seconds.”

“No shit?” Perry said. “That’s kind of fucked up.”

A pause. More coughing.

“Margo?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you for saving my life.”

B61 MAKES BINGO

The order came through.

Captain Paul Ward asked them to repeat it.

They did.

Paul said nothing.

His weapons officer, Lieutenant Colonel Maegan “Mae” Breakall, sat right behind him. She was one the few female crew members of an F-15E, and she’d achieved that position by being a team player and never questioning an order.

While Paul sat speechless, Mae also asked them to repeat it.

They did so, this time with a bit more force.

Captain Paul Ward then did something he hadn’t done in his entire military career—he refused to obey.

No sir.

No sir, I will not drop a ten-kiloton B61 nuclear warhead on the Motor City.

Fifteen seconds later, air force general Luis Monroe came on the line. As if that weren’t enough, President John Gutierrez joined in as well. One hell of a conference call.

Monroe explained, quite calmly, considering the situation, that if Paul and Mae disobeyed a direct order, it was an act of treason. Gutierrez added some motivation of his own—if Captain Paul Ward did not drop the bomb, like right fucking now, he would be directly responsible for a disease spreading across the United States of America, a disease that could potentially destroy the country, its people, and if they were really unlucky, the entire human race.

Paul and Mae had no idea how much of this was true, but then again, it wasn’t their job to question orders. Their job was to follow orders, from any commanding officer—and when those orders came first-person from the air force’s top man and the commander in chief, it was impossible to disobey.

Paul pulled back on the yoke, bringing the F-15E to fifteen thousand feet. As he did, the rest of his squadron kicked in the afterburners and headed out. The radio filled with chatter: the Ospreys, Black Hawks, A-10s, F-15s and every other aircraft turned away from downtown Detroit and flew at maximum speed.

Paul and Mae were alone.

About to drop a nuke on America.

Mae fought back tears as she entered information into the computer.

A B61 Model 4 tactical nuclear warhead is a kiloton-range weapon with a “dial-a-yield” feature. Dial-a-yield allows aircraft crews to change the B61’s output while in midflight. As ordered, Mae set in a yield of ten kilotons. She set the detonation point at one thousand feet, armed the weapon, then told Paul that it was ready to fire.

He flipped open the covering plate on the nuke trigger. He thought of his three sons back at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, wondered how many sons like them were down there in Detroit, how many daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces and cousins. And dogs. How many dogs were down there?

His finger gripped the trigger. His hand felt weak. He hoped that maybe, just maybe, he’d have an unexpected stroke and lose the ability to squeeze it.

Mae said, “Do it, Paul.”

He squeezed.

He didn’t have a stroke.

The trigger clicked home.

The twelve-foot-long B61 rocket fired, launching away from the F-15E at 750 miles per hour. As the bomb streaked toward the target, Paul went full throttle and shot away from Detroit at supersonic speed.

The seven-hundred-pound B61 dropped toward the city. The guidance computer tracked a signal emitting from near the corner of Franklin and Riopelle. The B61 wouldn’t actually hit the ground, but if it had, it would have landed only twenty feet away from the satphone in Perry Dawsey’s hand.

At twelve hundred feet, a gas generator fired, ejecting a twenty-four-foot nylon/Kevlar-29 ribbon parachute. In just three seconds, the B61 slowed from 750 miles an hour to 35.

It drifted down until it hit eleven hundred feet, where barometric pressure activated a firing mechanism that began a nuclear chain reaction.

Detonation.

In a millionth of a second, a fireball formed and heated the air to 18,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit, nearly twice as hot as the surface of the sun. This heat radiated outward at the speed of light, expanding and dissipating. Dissipating being a relative term, however, as the heat caused instant first-degree burns as far as two miles away. The closer to the detonation, the worse the burns. Inside a quarter mile of the blast, flesh simply vaporized.

Every spore within a mile of the detonation point died instantly. Those between one and two miles out lived for as long as two seconds before they burned up in infinitesimally small puffs of smoke. The five-mile-per-hour wind had carried some lucky spores as far as two and a half miles away—those took almost five seconds to cook, but they cooked just the same.

The plasma ball was really the whole point of the nuke, to create instant, scorching temperatures that would kill every spore, and it worked like a charm.

The rest of the nuke’s effects were a bit of unavoidable overkill.

The Renaissance Center stood less than a mile from the detonation point. Star-hot heat radiated down, turning metal, glass and plastic into boiling liquid. Some of these liquids evaporated instantly, but the building didn’t have time to completely melt and burn.

The shock wave came next.

The explosion’s power pushed the air around it outward in a pressure wave moving at 780 miles an hour, just a touch over the speed of sound and twice the speed of an F-5 tornado, the most powerful wind force on Earth. The wave smashed into the melting glass, metal and plastic of the RenCen, thirty-five pounds per square inch of overpressure splashing the molten liquid away in a giant wave and shattering the still-solid parts like a sledgehammer slamming through a toothpick house.

The RenCen’s main tower had seventy-three stories, the four surrounding towers thirty-nine stories each. Less than three seconds after detonation, all of it was gone.

The shock wave rolled out at the speed of sound, losing energy as it moved. It shattered Comerica Park, home of the Tigers, ripping the concrete stands to pieces and hurling chunks of them for miles. In the days that followed, three seats from Section 219, half melted but still bolted to their concrete footings, would be found in the parking lot of Big Sammy’s Bar in Westland, twenty miles away. The curved white roof of Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions, caved in like an eggshell stomped by a fat man.

A mile outward from the detonation point, the pressure wave smashed any building smaller than ten stories, broken pieces flying farther outward in a lethal, hurricane-class shrapnel cloud of brick and wood and metal and glass.

That same pressure wave picked up cars and flung them like Matchbox toys, spinning them through crumbling buildings, each Ford or Toyota or Chrysler its own whirling missile of death. As far as a mile away, the blast knocked burning cars onto their sides and roofs.

Detroit wasn’t the only city to feel the effects. Across the river the fireball scorched most of Windsor. The shock wave tore through the city, leveling houses as far as a mile from the shoreline.

Everywhere people died. The lucky ones, close to the detonation point, evaporated in the initial flash, their shadows instantly burned onto sidewalks and walls. One woman was in the middle of drinking a Coke—the flash vaporized her, leaving a perfect silhouette with arm bent, head tilted back, can in hand. Farther out from the detonation point, you didn’t vaporize; your skin just bubbled as the sudden heat caused the fluid in each cell to boil, expand and burst the cell membranes. Survivors would later describe the feeling as being dunked deep into a vat of boiling water. Most of those who lived through the initial fireball effects died from the pressure wave or were killed by building wreckage and various car parts traveling at five hundred miles an hour.

If you lived through all that, you had to deal with second-and third-degree burns, burning buildings and dead as far as the eye could see.

And if you lived through that, your body would feel the effects of radiation for years to come. The cancer rate in southeast Michigan would skyrocket.

The initial blast caused an estimated 58,000 deaths. Another 23,000 died within days as a result of burns and shock-wave-related injuries. Combined, the blast caused 81,000 deaths. In the five years that followed, another 127,000 would die of persistent injuries, cancer and other radiation-related causes.

In those years, through all the scandals and congressional inquiries and public outcry, President John Gutierrez, his staff, the Joint Chiefs, Murray Longworth, Margaret Montoya and Clarence Otto would ask themselves every day…

Was it worth it?

As brutal as it sounded, it was.

They had destroyed the spores, killed Chelsea and brought down the Orbital. They still didn’t know what was supposed to come out of those gates, what the angels really looked like and what damage they might have caused.

They didn’t know, and thanks to those who gave their lives, they never would.

In the weeks after the explosion, as FEMA, Homeland Security and a dozen other agencies and charities converged on the Motor City and its suburbs to help the survivors and bury the dead, two small, manned submarines began picking up the only solid enemy remains.

The pieces of the Orbital.

Nine hundred feet below Lake Michigan’s rough surface, the Orbital’s wreckage lay spread across the lake bed, a collection of twisted, warped and broken rubble.

One piece, however, remained mostly intact. This object had been engineered to survive such crashes, to endure almost any type of damage in order to ensure delivery of its contents.

That particular object was about the size of a soda can.