Contagious

CRAWL

Perry Dawsey’s seeds had come from batch thirteen. His triangles hatched in seven days. Due to constant design improvements, the seeds of batch seventeen needed only five.

Five days is an engineering marvel of self-organization, a testament to some seriously advanced technology. Consider it an upgrade to the old strain.

For the new strain, however, five days seemed like an eternity. Whereas Perry’s structures had to build many complex parts, the new structures produced only one thing.

Microscopic strands of modified human muscle.

Hacked muscle.

Each strand contained muscle cells, of course, but also tiny neurotransmitter secretors and a complex crystalline set of molecules capable of both sending and receiving rudimentary signals.

A hacked strand by itself was worthless. It could wiggle… and that’s about it. It could also send and receive “I am here” signals, which was key because the strands weren’t designed to work by themselves.

The “I am here” signals drew them together, almost like the last individual bits of cereal floating on top of your milk. The bits just float there, until they get close, and then surface tension yanks them together. When a strand detected an “I am here” signal from another strand, it wiggled toward it. The wiggling strands reached out to each other, touched and intertwined. Now their signal was twice as strong, drawing more strands, and so on.

A normal human muscle cell by itself is useless. Many cells working in unison, however, produce complex movement. The hacked strands followed a similar logic—the whole proved greater than the sum of the parts. When the hacked-strand collections reached a certain size, about five hundred microns wide, the “I am here” signal shut off.

A micron is one one-millionth of a meter. Five hundred microns is five ten-thousandths of a meter, or about two-hundredths of an inch. Damn small, but you can still see something like that with the naked eye.

If you could have looked inside the bodies of Chelsea Jewell, Donald Jewell and Betty Jewell, you would have seen something rather disturbing, something that looked very much like a human nerve cell. On one end, a long, thin axon. On the other end, branching dendrites spreading out like the tributaries of a river.

But in a regular nerve cell, the dendrites don’t latch onto other nerve cells, muscle cells and membranes, and they certainly don’t reach out and pull.

Regular nerve cells, you see, don’t crawl.

The crawlers implemented a very simple navigation system: cause pain. This was a practical strategy, not a sadistic one: the human body is wired to give pain messages the highest priority. The crawlers’ stretching dendrites reached out, locked onto axons, then released a chemical that mimicked normal pain signals. Some nerves ignored this message—those were the efferent neurons, the ones that carried signals from the brain to the rest of the body. Also called motor neurons, they let the brain do its thing, controlling muscle reactions and bodily functions. The nerves that did not ignore these messages of pain, but instead replicated them and passed them on to the brain, those were the afferent nerves.

Once the crawlers identified afferent chains, they grabbed, and pulled, and crawled. Every three or four nerves, they released the pain signal again, measured the results and kept moving.

Eventually their crawling would lead them to the brain.

UNKIE DONNY DEPARTS

Fluffy snow blew lightly in all directions, flying into Chelsea’s eyes and tickling her nose.

She didn’t feel good. She felt kind of hot, achy, and she had some little bumps on her hands. Those hurt a bit, but didn’t itch or anything. She held her daddy’s hand as Unkie Donny and Betty got into Unkie Donny’s car. Betty blew her nose into a pink Kleenex, then put her head back on the car seat and closed her eyes. She didn’t feel good, either.

Unkie Donny shut the driver’s door and rolled down the window. He coughed hard, a rattling sound in his chest, then stuck his hand out of the window toward Daddy. Unkie Donny’s breath billowed out as he talked.

“Little brother, thanks for having us,” he said to Daddy. “And thanks for the gift that keeps on giving.”

“Oh, put a sock in it,” Daddy said. “You imported the creeping crud from Pittsburgh. I’m not shaking a hand you just coughed in.”

Unkie Donny’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Chelsea took a step back. Unkie Donny suddenly looked kind of scary.

“I’m just teasing,” Daddy said. “Relax, big brother.”

Unkie Donny stared for a few seconds, and then his face softened. He blinked a bunch, like he was waking up or something.

“Sorry, man,” he said. “I… I guess I really took that the wrong way.”

“Meds?” Daddy said.

Unkie Donny nodded. “Took them. Honest.”

“Cool,” Daddy said. “We’ll come down to Pittsburgh sometime soon.”

Unkie Donny’s eyes narrowed again, then opened again. He shook his head the way a puppy would.

Mommy stepped forward and leaned in the window to give Unkie Donny an awkward hug. “Drive safe,” she said. “This storm is supposed to turn into freezing rain. The roads are full of downstaters, and the traffic is going to be terrible. Watch out for the drunks.”

She backed out of the window. Unkie Donny smiled and nodded.

Mommy went around the other side of the car to say good-bye to Betty. Unkie Donny looked right at Chelsea. He held out his hand.

“Come here, dolly,” he said. “Say good-bye to me.”

Chelsea shrank back. Why did Unkie Donny want to touch her? Was he going to do something to her?

“Honey,” Daddy said, “go say good-bye to your uncle.”

Unkie Donny smiled. Chelsea blinked a few times. It was Unkie Donny—why would she be afraid of him? He loved her. Chelsea let go of her daddy’s hand and ran up to the car door. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed Unkie Donny on the cheek.

“Bye-bye, Unkie Donny.”

“You be a good girl, okay?”

Chelsea nodded. He seemed… different. So did Daddy. So did Cousin Betty. The only one who didn’t seem different was Mommy. Why was that? Maybe Chelsea didn’t need to fear Unkie Donny at all—maybe she needed to fear Mommy. Mommy might get the spanky-spoon.

Chelsea leaned in and whispered in Unkie Donny’s ear. “When we come see you, can you take me to get my ears pierced?”

Unkie Donny laughed, then touched her cheek. “I’m afraid that’s up to your dad.”

Chelsea loved the way Unkie Donny smiled at her. Just like Daddy did.

Unkie Donny was a lot like Daddy. Chelsea wished he would come by more often. He knew a lot about the Deeeee-troit basket-ballll.

Unkie Donny’s face wrinkled up. He gently pushed Chelsea away, then coughed so hard his head almost hit the steering wheel. He coughed again, then leaned back and laughed a little. He waved his hand at his face, like he was trying to cool off.

“I’m going to get you for giving this to us,” Unkie Donny said to Daddy.

“I hope we get home before it really kicks in; I’ve got a feeling this is going to be a humdinger.” “If you get sick, just be safe and get a hotel,” Mommy said. “Don’t be a stubborn bastard like your brother.”

“Candice, come on,” Daddy said.

Chelsea knew that Daddy was pointing at her, even though she couldn’t see him do it. He did that when Mommy used the bad language.

“Aw, crap, sorry,” Mommy said. “Okay, guys, you get going—and drive safe!”

Unkie Donny rolled up the window and backed out of the drive. As he drove away, Chelsea poked at the little bumps on her hands.

Mommy knelt down in front of her. “Honey, are you okay?”

What did Mommy mean by that? Maybe she meant… nothing. Chelsea did feel really hot. Mommy was just trying to take care of her. Chelsea shook her head.

“Okay, baby,” Mommy said. “Let’s get you out of this cold air and back to bed.”

“Me too,” Daddy said. “I feel wrecked. Let’s hit the sack.”

The Jewell family walked inside the house.

MALE BONDING STRATEGIES

Dew Phillips knocked on Perry’s door.

“Come on in.”

Dew did so and shut the door behind him. Perry Dawsey looked like hell. A red and black scalp line ran through his blond hair. Another such line ran down his forehead in an angle from above his left eye almost down to the bridge of his nose. His lips were horribly swollen. The left eye was pure red dotted with a blue iris.

Dawsey was sitting on his bare mattress, elbows resting on his thighs, head hung low. He held a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey American Spirit.

“Where the fuck did you get that bottle?”

“You get your per diem, I get mine,” Perry said. “Had another bottle in the trunk of the ’Stang, but it broke.”

Dew casually pressed his right arm against his right side, feeling the comforting bulge of the .45 under his jacket. He’d gotten lucky fighting Dawsey, and he wasn’t about to push that luck—if Dawsey attacked, Dew was going to shoot him.

“How you feeling?” Dew asked.

Perry raised his head. The blond hair hung in his face.

“I feel like someone hit me in the head with a table leg,” Perry said. “And the mouth. And back. And thigh. And look at you—I can tell by that little Band-Aid that I really fucked up your world.”

Dew’s hand went to the small Band-Aid on his forehead. The cut from hitting the table hadn’t even required a stitch.

“If it’s any consolation,” Dew said, “I can still barely move my arm.”

“Why, do you have arthritis? I didn’t even land a punch.”

“You grazed me,” Dew said. “That’s all it took. Look, I’m not going to lie to you—my patience is at its end. You hurt any more of my men, I’m going to shoot you. If you come at me again, I’m going to shoot you. In the leg if I have time, in the face if I don’t. We need you real bad, but I’m not about to take one for the team, if you catch my drift.”

“I’ll… I’ll behave,” Perry said. “You whipped me fair and square.”

Dew marveled at the phrase. It sounded like something Dew would have said in his childhood after a fight. But that had been over fifty years ago. Kids today weren’t like that: they didn’t trade punches, then shake hands and call it good. Nowadays they talked shit and found a gun. Dew felt a surprise spike of admiration for Perry.

“I’d hardly call beating you with a table leg fair,” Dew said.

Perry shrugged. “I outweigh you by like sixty pounds. If I’d got my hands on you, I think I would have killed you. Besides, it doesn’t matter how you win, as long as you win.”

Silence filled the room for a few moments.

“So,” Dew said, “you’re not looking for a rematch?”

Perry stared at the wall for a few seconds, then spoke slowly, thoughtfully.

“Not very many people can take me out. There’s you, and… there was one other person that’s ever done that. I don’t want a rematch. I’ll play ball.”

Dew nodded. He let himself hope that maybe he’d finally gotten through. “Okay, kid. Let’s start from the top. You told me that something had changed. What changed?”

“The voice.”

“The voice. You said they hadn’t said any words yet. Can you hear any now?”

Perry shook his head. “No. If I’m close enough to an infected, I can hear words, but when I’m far away, it’s more like a sensation. Images, emotions, stuff like that. Sometimes I can get a grip on it, sometimes it’s like a half-whisper in a crowded room. The more infected there are in one place, the stronger the sensation. You can only pick out little bits and pieces, maybe enough to get the gist of a conversation, you know what I mean?”

Dew nodded.

“Now there’s the same bits and pieces, but there’s a different… intensity. I don’t know how to describe it. Sort of feels like… like you were down by twenty-one at the end of the half but you adjusted your blitzing strategy, you shut them down, and your offense scored twice to cut it to seven, and there’s three minutes left, and you’re so excited, because if you get just one more stop, your offense can tie it up or even win it. And that’s hard to do, right? But you feel like it’s destiny, it’s going to happen for sure. You’ve got the momentum. You think you’ve got them figured out, and the win is… is…”

“Inevitable?” Dew asked.

Perry snapped his fingers, pointed at Dew and smiled. The smile looked ghastly on his stitched, swollen lips.

“That’s it,” Perry said. “It’s inevitable. That’s what it feels like.”

“So this voice of God says, or feels like, it’s… uh, mounting a fourth-quarter comeback?”

Perry nodded. “Yeah, that’s pretty close.”

“So what happens next?”

“I don’t know,” Perry said. “Maybe it actually is the voice of God, and if we get to heaven, he’s going to kick us in the Jimmy and send us packing.”

“There ain’t no heaven,” Dew said. “And there ain’t no God. ’Cause if there is some all-powerful deity, he sure is one mean fucker. He likes to let good people die and bad people live. And, apparently, he likes to infect former football stars with things that eat them up from the inside.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Perry said, and took a long swig of Wild Turkey.

“We’re in a bit of a pickle here, boy,” Dew said. “Maybe you should stop drinking.”

“Maybe you should start,” Perry said. “I killed my best friend, cut off my own junk, and I’m some kind of psychic call-in line for these things. And you? Dude, you’re dropping bombs on America. You’re in charge of fighting honest-to-God aliens. Ask me, that’s a pretty good reason for a snort or three.”

Perry held out the bottle. Dew looked at the nasty scar on Perry’s left forearm. War scars, that’s what Perry had.

Dew accepted the bottle. The kid was right. Dew took a long swig. The bourbon tang was a welcome sensation, a friendly memory of distant times when he could just have a drink and relax. He knocked back another long pull, then handed the bottle to Perry.

Perry drank. “You got something you got to do?”

“I’m doing it,” Dew said. “Margaret asked that we stay here a little longer, give you a chance to rest. So until we leave, getting you to be more cooperative is kind of my main job.”

Perry looked at the chair. Dew wasn’t sure, but he thought the kid turned a little red. Like he was embarrassed or something.

“You, uh…,” Perry said. “You want to… sit down and… shoot the shit?”

Perry offered the bottle again. Dew took it, sat down and had another long swig.

UNKIE DONNY HAS HAD BETTER DAYS

Donald Jewell, or “Unkie Donny,” as Chelsea liked to call him, did not feel good. Perhaps it was more accurate to say that he felt like a tainted can of boiled elephant ass.

The fever had picked up steam. It came nicely packaged with an overall ache, as well as annoying shooting pains in his left arm. Far worse was that Betty seemed just as sick. She was slumped in the passenger seat, head against the window, eyes closed. And she was sweating.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Someone was following him.

He couldn’t be sure who it was; there were so many cars on the highway. But he’d seen cars behind him, the same cars, several times. Who was it? What did they want?

He’d been on the road for over two hours. He had at least six to go, more like eight or nine if the weather didn’t let up. Freezing rain made driving a royal bitch. All the traffic on I-75 moved along at forty-five miles an hour. At least up north, people knew how to drive in winter: it was a safe bet that the cars in the ditch belonged to downstaters or people from Ohio.

He was hot, he was sleepy, the conditions were crap—not a good combination when his whole life sat in the passenger seat next to him.

Who was following him? Who?

Donald pulled off the highway into a rest stop near Bay City. He exited slowly, seeing which cars behind him did the same. None did. They must have known he was onto them.

Or maybe he was acting crazy…. No one was following him. That was just nuts.

He pulled up to the rest stop building and parked gently, so as not to wake his daughter. Cars packed the lot. Some were still running, tailpipes trailing exhaust, windshield wipers fighting the constant battle against icy clumps. Other drivers had thrown in the towel, shutting off the engines and letting the freezing rain cover their cars in a thin, bumpy sheet of ice.

Since he was here, maybe he could just get some sleep. He shouldn’t be driving when he felt like this. What if he fell asleep at the wheel?

He quietly opened the door and headed to the trunk, shoulders hunched against the frigid, driving rain. He stopped halfway, face scrunching in pain and head twitching to the left until his ear touched his shoulder. Another shooting pain, this one a real doozy. It faded slowly. By the time it was gone, Donald’s jacket was nearly soaked. He cursed his brother for making him sick, then opened the trunk and pulled out a sleeping bag.

Darting back into the car, he removed his wet coat before spreading half of the sleeping bag on his daughter. He spread the other half on himself, coughed, blew his nose, cursed his brother one more time, then laid his head against the headrest.

Just an hour or two, a quick nap while the storm blew over and the snowplows cleared the highways, and then they’d be back on the road.

Inside Donny’s body, things were rapidly shifting from Fucking Bad to Even Fucking Worse.

The problem began with his telomeres. What is a telomere? Picture the little plastic bits on the end of your shoelaces. Imagine each time you tie your shoes, you have to clip off a little bit of that plastic part to get it to go through the lace holes. After you’ve done this enough times, the plastic tip is gone and the shoelace starts to unravel. Once the laces unravel enough, it’s impossible to tie your shoes, and you walk around looking like a goober.

Telomeres are the DNA equivalent of those plastic shoelace bits. When your cells divide via mitosis, the chromosomes of those cells also divide. One set of chromosomes divides to become two half-sets. Your body duplicates each half-set, and one cell becomes two daughter cells.

Simple enough, but there’s a catch.

When your chromosomes split, it’s like a zipper splitting into two parts. Enzymes flood the newly divided chromosome and fill in the missing zipper halves, one little zipper tooth at a time. Problem is, the zipper teeth can’t reach all the way to the end—there has to be a little cap there, and that cap is the last bit of the repetitive telomere. On the next cell division, that last bit of telomere is discarded just like the snipped bit of the plastic shoelace.

If cells with shortened telomeres continue to divide, bad stuff can happen. The cell might enter into apoptosis (the natural kind, not the triangle-induced chain-reaction kind). Worse, damage to a critical gene might make the cell cancerous. This can happen in skin cells, muscle cells, lung cells… and even stem cells.

When a stem cell splits into two daughter cells, it uses a process called differentiation to make one daughter cell another stem cell, while the other becomes any number of good things—muscle, bone, nerve cells, whatever. Stem cells are just funky that way. But as they divide, they suffer the same telomere reduction as any other cell.

As you get older and cells continue to divide, those telomeres shorten and problems become more likely. We have a simple word for this phenomenon: aging. Cells with telomeres that are too short stop dividing and stop replenishing themselves. This is why your skin gets thin when you age, because the cells stop replicating as effectively—they have used up their telomeres during your preceeding years of life.

Or to think of it in simpler terms, a copy of a copy of a copy can get pretty messed up.

Triangles used many stem cells to make their cellulose framework and become full-blown hatchlings. Sometimes old stem-cell lines produced bad shit: defective cells, even cancerous cells. When that happened, the reader-balls and herders and builders identified bad stem cells and simply removed them.

The stem cells producing crawler strands, on the other hand, worked as solo operatives. They were in a hurry. Herders focused on finding and converting more stem cells, not doing quality control.

Donald, being the oldest of the three infected Jewells, had more shortened telomeres than Betty, and far more than Chelsea. Most of his modified stem cells produced defective muscle strands. Some of these strands were dead on arrival, just floating bits. Others lived long enough to send and receive the “I am here” signal and join up with other strands. Still others made it to full crawler size and began their mission along the nerves, although this effort alone was usually enough to make them shut down after a little bit of distance.

And when they shut down, the rot began.

Slowly at first, a low-level exponential reaction. But as the number of dead strands grew, so did the level of rot-inducing chemicals.

Each modified muscle strand carried both the apoptosis catalyst and a strong counterchemical that blocked the catalyst. If there were more living strands than dead strands, the apoptosis couldn’t gain a foothold. But when there were more dead strands than living strands, that balance tipped the other way.

Throughout Donny’s body that balance was tipping fast. Tiny areas of cell death expanded and multiplied. Particularly in his left hand, the apoptosis compounded on itself and started to spiral out of control.

While he slept, Donny Jewell began to dissolve from the inside out.

THE LITTLE BLUE BOOK

Zero casualties. Well, one if you counted Private Domkus tripping on a branch and spraining his ankle, but other than that, nothing. So if it was his most successful hatchling encounter yet, why did Colonel Charlie Ogden feel so anxious?

Air transport had pulled all of Whiskey and X-Ray companies out of Marinesco and taken them back to Fort Bragg. North Carolina wasn’t exactly a central location for the missions, but it wasn’t that far, only a forty-five-minute flight to Detroit on a C-17 Globemaster transport jet.

Fort Bragg was a big base. Big enough to sequester an entire battalion for five weeks and counting. Aside from missions, the men hadn’t left the base or had any contact with people outside the unit save for CIA-screened letters, or CIA-monitored phone calls to immediate family only. Ogden was no exception—he hadn’t seen his wife in over a month. It sucked, but that was war.

Fort Bragg also housed the USASOC, the United States Army Special Operations Command. Unconventional warfare, special reconnaissance, antiterrorism—all kinds of aircraft, coming and going at all hours. No one asked where they went, no one asked why they went. That was life 24/7 for the USASOC, and it provided ideal cover for Project Tangram operations.

Throw in all the aircraft available at the adjacent Pope Air Force Base, including plenty of those C-17s, and you had a perfect mix—built-in secrecy, endless options for transport. The DOMREC came and went; no one wondered why.

Ogden sat alone in his quarters, performing his nightly ritual. It consisted of three things:

A letter to his wife.

The Bible.

The Little Blue Book.

He kept the letter short. He was tired and had to get some sleep. I love you, I miss you terribly, I don’t know when I can come home, but I pray it will be soon. The usual stuff, repetitive only because it was sincere and he had to express it to her every day. Fold, insert, but don’t seal—tomorrow some CIA shithead would read it and make sure he wasn’t writing home about the hatchlings.

The Bible was just the New Testament, actually. Most of the gold lettering on the faux-red-leather cover had flaked off. Half of the back cover had torn off somewhere in the Mideast. Just random damage, not sacrilege.

Every night he read passages from the New Testament, then moved on to the Little Blue Book. Sometimes he’d skim the Bible passages, skip around, read some sentences and not others, but he didn’t do that with the Little Blue Book. With that one he read every single word.

Every single name.

He opened it and started reading.

Lewis Aucoin, 22.

He never wrote down rank. Death was death. You didn’t get a better death because you had a better rank, right?

Parker Cichetti, 27.

He remembered Parker. Good guy. Could juggle.

Damon Gonzalez, 20.

He’d never met Damon. Not even once.

He continued down the list of names, giving each one a moment of remembrance, a flicker of light in the terrestrial world just in case the afterlife was dark and silent. Sometimes he wondered if the souls of the dead could experience heaven only when someone remembered their name. Once you were forgotten, you were truly gone forever. Guys like Einstein, Patton, Caesar… every day people read about them in history books, saw their names in movies and TV—they spent an eternity in heaven. Guys like Damon? Probably would wink out of existence shortly after Ogden himself passed on.

He didn’t know where he’d picked up that strange belief, but it was always at the back of his head, driving him, pushing him to greater and greater achievements. He had to make a name for himself. He’d never thought the name could be as grand as that of a Churchill or a Schwarzkopf, but now he knew better.

He’d been given a once-in-a-lifetime task, and if he succeeded, victory would land him in the history books forever.

Was God testing him with this task? That was definitely possible. God worked in mysterious ways, true, but twenty years in the military had shown Ogden more of man’s inhumanity to man than he cared to remember. Sometimes God just put the players on the field and let them have at it.

Before all this began, he thought he’d spend four or five more years at lieutenant colonel, maybe make colonel near the tail end of his career, then retire as such. He wasn’t that great at playing the political game. He knew tactics and strategy. He knew how to win battles and minimize casualties. That’s what the army should base promotion on, but it doesn’t always work that way.

How things had changed in the past five weeks. He was a full bird colonel. He talked directly with the Joint Chiefs, had their total confidence. He had a black budget, a blank check for resources, for transport, for air support.

A command like this should have gone to a more senior guy, but President Hutchins had been obsessed with secrecy, limiting those in the know. Ogden had simply drawn the lucky card for the first mission, and now he got to keep playing it.

He’d fulfill the mission to destroy any gate he found, and he’d do it while adding as few names to the Little Blue Book as possible. Thirty-seven names was enough, but he knew there would be more.

Many more.

He put the book and the Bible away, then lay down to get his usual four hours of sleep. At least he didn’t have to finish the night by writing condolence letters to mothers, fathers and wives. In the morning he’d start planning again, figuring out how to prepare for an enemy no one had ever fought, an enemy guaranteed to change tactics.

Whatever happened, Colonel Charlie Ogden would be ready.

GAYLORD GOES TO BED

The Jewell family won the honor of having the most infected, but they weren’t the only residents of Gaylord sleeping away fevers, exhaustion and paranoia.

Bobby and Chelsea Jewell were already in bed. Donald and Betty slept fitfully at a rest stop on I-75 outside of Bay City, Michigan.

Sam Collins was damn old, damn tired and, although he was convinced that someone would probably break in and kill him, he just locked all the doors and went to sleep in his bed.

Wallace Beckett wasn’t quite so brave. He couldn’t stop scratching at his cheek and lower neck. He hid in his pantry, blocked the door with a stepladder, then went to sleep right on the floor. His son, Beck (yes, the lad was saddled with the unfortunate name of Beck Beckett), was so hot he took off all his clothes and went to sleep naked in an empty bathtub. Nicole Beckett, wife of Wallace, mother of Beck, was off seeing her grandmother in Topinabee. Unfortunately for her, she’d be home the next morning.

Ryan Roznowski was also itchy as all get-out. He hated being itchy, a phobia carried over from the time he’d been a kid and gotten poison ivy on his ’nads. His mom had always told him to stop touching himself so much, but did he listen? That incident meant Ryan always stocked a healthy supply of calamine lotion. He doused his four itchy spots, then promptly hid behind the lumber pile in his garage and went to sleep.

Bernadette Smith suddenly had a sneaking suspicion her kids were talking about her behind her back. She sent her son and daughters to their rooms, told them not to come out or make a noise. If they did, they’d get the paddle again. Her husband, Shawn, argued with her about paddling the kids, but she told him to shut the fuck up or she wouldn’t let him go to bowling league. In fact, Shawn, why don’t you just go to the store and get me some tampons, and when you get back, don’t you dare wake me up or let the kids out of their rooms. Do you hear me, Shawn? Shawn did hear her. She didn’t use the paddle on him, but she could control him just the same.

Chris “Cheffie” Jones was a little more off-kilter than the others. Cheffie had hardwood floors covered with a big roll-up carpet. For reasons known only to him, he crawled under said carpet. Confident that this made him effectively invisible, Cheffie went to sleep.

The Orbital had estimated fifteen to twenty infections. Ten was below those projections, but still within acceptable parameters for success. And it broke down evenly, five with the triangle strain, five with the new strain. That part, at least, was on par with the statistical projections.

All of these hosts slept.

The only question was… how many would wake up?

DON’T CALL DR. CHENG

Margaret, Amos and Clarence sat in the MargoMobile’s computer room, waiting for a scheduled all-hands call with Murray Longworth. Right on time his face appeared on the center flat-panel screen. Murray was watching them on a similar monitor back in Washington.

“Where’s Dew?” he asked.

“Talking to Perry.”

“Can’t you guys talk on the road?” Murray said. “I want you out of there.”

Clarence leaned forward. “Perry had a little accident. Margaret wants to let him rest a bit more before we head out.”

“An accident?” Murray said. “What kind of accident?”

“He fell down some stairs,” Clarence said. “Then bumped into a doorway. He’s happy to cooperate with us now.”

Murray smiled thinly. “I guess the good news just keeps on rolling in. We finished the first batch of your testers, Margaret. Ten thousand are being distributed to police, paramedics and hospitals all over the Midwest.”

“Wow,” Margaret said. “How did you get them made so fast?”

“Money, how else?” Murray said. “We’ll have another fifty thousand ready by late tomorrow.”

“Fantastic,” Margaret said. “But we’re still at square one when it comes to the vector.”

“You know we’ve got people on that, Doctor,” Murray said. “Some of the most brilliant minds the nation has to offer.”

“Such as?”

“You’re not cleared for that information,” Murray said. He sounded annoyed, and Margaret couldn’t really blame him—she’d lost count of the number of times they’d had this conversation. She prayed President Gutierrez would loosen the noose of secrecy around this project, but so far Hutchins’s policies were still in force.

“Fine,” Margaret said. “I’m not cleared. Let me ask this another way. Do these brilliant minds know exactly what they are looking for? Do they have the whole story?”

“You just keep feeding us whatever biological information you discover,” Murray said. “We have to keep this compartmentalized.”

Margaret rolled her eyes. “Murray, we had to drop a bomb this time. Your compartmentalization isn’t working.”

“Look, I’m not a complete idiot,” Murray said. “Doctor Cheng is using the full resources of the CDC to find a vector.”

“Right,” Margaret said. “And how can he do that if he can’t say what the disease is?”

“He’s using flesh-eating bacteria as a cover story, entering in additional symptoms like blue triangles, skin necrosis, paranoia, et cetera. He’s using all the CDC’s disease-tracking databases looking for such symptoms, and he’s also working with data that FBI investigators have collected on each of the hosts and the hosts’ families.”

Margaret sat back. Actually, modifying the symptoms of flesh-eating bacteria to include the triangle symptoms was a brilliant idea. Everyone in the medical profession took necrotizing fasciitis very seriously and would pay close attention to any updates and requests for information.

“Okay, I can see that strategy,” Margaret said. “So what angles is Cheng pursuing?”

“Everything from mechanical and biological vectors to doomsday cults intentionally targeting specific victims,” Murray said. “He’s focusing on the rural nature of the constructs, hoping for a correlation to deer or other animals that flourish in remote areas.”

“The Bambi vector,” Amos said. “Well, that’s just plain brilliant. I’m so glad one of the nation’s most brilliant minds is on this.”

Margaret gently put a hand on Amos’s arm to silence him. “Murray,” she said, “deer are not the vector, and this isn’t a doomsday cult. Cheng is grasping at straws. We need access to the same data he has.”

Murray smiled. “Margaret, Doctor Cheng’s track record is impeccable, and he’s been working on Morgellons for years. He also has CDC’s computer system, the most advanced disease-tracking database on the planet. What makes you think you can do any better from a damn autopsy trailer?”

“The three people in this room already know everything,” Margaret said. “If there’s a connection to be made, we’re the ones most likely to make it. Hey, if you’re happy with your Option Number Four fighters flying around America, then by all means keep the status quo—just make sure we’re very far away from the eighteen-million-degree fireball, okay?”

Murray considered this for a moment. “All right, fine, I’ll give you access.”

“What about signals intelligence?” Clarence asked. “Ogden thinks there has to be a satellite involved. Anything on that?”

Murray shook his head. “Nothing. The NSA still isn’t detecting any kind of signal. NASA is looking for indications of anything weird in orbit, but so far nada.”

“It could be a stealth satellite,” Clarence said.

“They’re telling me the physics doesn’t add up,” Murray said. “It’s way beyond me.”

“The enemy is doing things with biotechnology that we can’t even fathom yet, let alone replicate,” Margaret said. “Maybe hiding something from NASA isn’t as hard as we’d like to think.”

“Maybe,” Murray said. “You’ll get your access, but do not contact Cheng directly, understood? Apparently he’s not fond of you, Margaret.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Margaret said.

Murray broke the connection.

“That’s great we have the data,” Amos said. “But seriously, Margo, the CDC has that software, one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers to run it and systems analysts to tweak it. I know the three of us are a clever bunch of monkeys, but what do we have that they don’t?”

“That’s simple,” Margaret said. “We have a newly cooperative Perry Dawsey.”

THE YOUTH OF A NATION

A child’s cells haven’t divided as many times as an adult’s. Hence children’s telomeres have suffered less damage, mutation and shortening. They’re just plain healthier.

So when the reader-balls converted Chelsea’s stem cells into hacked-muscle factories, most of those factories produced exactly what they were supposed to produce: healthy, modified muscle fibers.

The fibers sought each other out, then turned into crawlers that slinked up her nerves.

Pains shot up the little girl’s body, making her twitch in her sleep, making her whimper, making tears leak from her closed eyes. Like the rest of the newly infected, she slept through the pain.

Unhindered by bad production or spreading apoptosis, her crawlers made excellent time. The army of slowly moving microorganisms followed the afferent nerves from her hands to her arms, her shoulders, and soon found themselves sliding inside her backbone and into the spinal column.

The journey to this spot hadn’t been easy. Nerves run through and/or around muscles, veins, bones, tendons, ligaments and cartilage. The crawlers forced their way through these dense areas like explorers fighting through thick jungle underbrush. Reaching the spinal column, however, was like stepping out of that jungle onto the smooth asphalt of a superhighway.

The crawlers poured into her spinal column by the thousands.

From there it was a hop, a skip and a jump into Chelsea Jewell’s brain.

DRUNKEN CONVERSATION

Dew hadn’t been this drunk in a long, long time.

The last time had been with Malcolm, his partner. Malcolm, who had been killed by a hatchet to the stomach courtesy of Martin Brewbaker. One of the infected. And now, Dew was getting drunk with another of Brewbaker’s kind.

But Dawsey wasn’t infected anymore.

“I’ll tell you something, hoss,” Dew said. “I’ll tell you. I have met a lot of tough bastards in my day. I have to say, in some ways, you might be the toughest.”

Perry smiled his split-lip smile and raised the bottle in salute. There was only a swig or two left

“Thanks, Mister Phillips,” Perry said, then tipped back the bottle. He left a little bit, perhaps half a shot’s worth, and offered the bottle to Dew.

Dew took it and drained it.

“For all the good it does me,” Perry said. His smile faded, and it had been fake to begin with. He looked haunted. Dew had seen expressions like that before, many years ago. He’d seen them on the kids in his platoon. Not all the kids, and not all the time. Usually after losing a friend, or hunkering down against a mortar attack that lasted for days, or killing a little boy who was holding a hand grenade and running right at their buddies, or the first time they put a knife into a man’s belly and held a hand over his mouth while he died.

“So I’m tough,” Perry said. “Whoop-de-fuckin’-doo. What did being tough get me? My cock is ruined, man. They sewed it back on, but they don’t know if I’ll ever get a boner again. They said I might be impotent for the rest of my life. For sure I can never have kids.”

“So you don’t get to have kids, so what? I’ll never have a son.”

“You have a daughter,” Perry said.

Dew nodded. “True, and I love her to death. You’ve got me there. But you know what? She hates fishing. Wouldn’t go even one time just to try it. She saw fish on TV and thought they looked slimy. I never went fishing with my kid. Won’t be able to do it with grandkids, either, because she’s not having children. My line gets snuffed out just like yours.”

“Why won’t she have kids?”

“She’s a dyke.”

“No shit?”

“No shit,” Dew said. “I don’t see her and her partner kicking out a passel of little ones, if you know what I’m sayin’. And I love her for who she is, by the fucking way, so if you use the word dyke again, I’m going to kick you right in the nuts.”

“I didn’t say dyke, Mister Phillips. You did.”

“I did?”

“Yeah.

“Oh,” Dew said. “Well, then stop calling me Mister Phillips, goddamit.”

“Yes sir.”

“And can that sir shit. I work for a living. You call me Dew. But not Dewie. I hate that.”

“Okay, Dew,” Perry said. His voice sounded deeper than normal. Elbows on his thighs, his head hung low again, uneven hair drooping down like a blond curtain hiding the stage of his face.

Dew realized he’d just threatened to kick Perry in the nuts. Probably not the most sensitive thing to say to someone who had taken a pair of poultry shears to Big Jim and the Twins. Dew took a deep breath—he’d have to remember to think before he talked.

“You know what, hoss?” Dew said.

Perry managed to shrug without lifting his head.

“I’m kind of sick of your whining.”

This time Perry looked up. Not all the way, but enough for the blue eyes to stare out from behind the blond curtain.

“Whining?” Perry said in a hiss. “How about you cut off your junk, get shot twice, then go through two weeks of an experimental treatment that feels like little men made of fire walking around under your skin and pissing flames on all the important stuff, stuff like your brain. And while you’re visiting my slice of paradise, bring in a team of specialists to sew your Jimmy back on, minus your nuts, of course, ’cause they had tentacles growing through them, and then listen to the motherfucking specialists tell you your cock has maybe a ten percent chance of ever functioning again. How about you do that, Dew, and tell me I’m whining.”

“You poooooor fucking baby.”

Perry’s eyes showed another emotion—shame. Or maybe it was just pain. The pain of hearing someone you respect tell you you’re worthless.

“Look, hoss, that sucks,” Dew said. “But the thing is, you need to quit feeling sorry for yourself.”

“I think I’ve got a golden ticket to feel sorry for myself,” Perry said. “I think I pass ‘go’ and collect two hundred bucks on the way, because if I don’t have the right to feel sorry for myself, who the fuck would?”

“How about Marty Hernandez?”

Perry’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Who the hell is that?”

“A kid I served with back in ’Nam.”

“Oh, come on,” Perry said. “War stories?”

“Yes, war stories. Just listen, okay?”

Dew let it hang in the air. Perry gave that narrow-eyed look again, but nodded.

“We were on patrol in the foothills of Binh Thuan. We came under fire, caught off guard. Couple guys went down right away. Marty and I jumped off the trail into a nice little depression that gave some cover, only Marty took a round just as he jumped. Hit his leg below the knee, man. Severed it, except for a little string of meat and skin. So he starts screaming. I get to the edge and return fire, because they might have been right behind us, you know?”

Perry nodded as if he knew.

“Marty is in real bad shape. But I can’t help him, because I’ve got Charlie coming at us. I can see them charging, so I’m shooting. Marty is bleeding all over; he has leaves and sticks and shit stuck to the stump of his leg. He stops screaming. I’m still firing. I know I killed two, maybe a third, then Marty, he says real calm, Dew, let’s get out of here. I sneak a look at him. He’d used his knife to finish the job on the leg, and he’s holding his foot and leg to his chest like it’s a fucking baby. Bullets are hitting all around me, so I turn back and start firing again. Then you know what Marty does?”

Perry shook his head.

“He starts talking to me about the Raiders.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” Perry said. “The Oakland Raiders?”

Dew nodded. “Yeah, he loved them. Had that logo with the shield and the swords tattooed on his shoulder, man. Bad tat, too. Another guy in the platoon did the work, but that doesn’t matter, right?”

“Right.”

“Right. So he’s in shock, he’s sitting there, holding his leg like you’d hold a baby, and he says, They gotta get Flores back. You know about Tom Flores?”

“Sure, he won two Super Bowls as a coach.”

“He was a quarterback first.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

Perry was leaning forward now, his eyes wide with interest.

Dew continued. “Quarterback. First hispanic QB in the league, so of course Alvarez, El Mexicano, he thinks Flores is fucking God in a helmet and pads. The Raiders traded Flores to Buffalo, and Alvarez was pissed. He says, Dew, they gotta get Flores back. He’s sitting there holding his severed leg, and he’s talking goddamn football.”

“So what did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything. I’m killing gooks left and right and I’m thinking, God help me for thinking it, but I’m thinking, if he can hold his leg, he can hold a gun, and why isn’t he laying down fire? Anyway, our line forms up on the right and left and we held, and then our F-O called in artillery.”

“F-O?”

“Forward observer.”

“Oh.”

“So the artillery comes in, practically right on top of us. I’m still shooting. Marty starts talking again, but he has to yell to be heard over the artillery. So he’s yelling, I just got this goddamn tat and they trade Flores to Buffalo. I’m not getting a Buffalo Bills tattoo, Dew. I’m just not. Artillery stops, Charlie is gone, so I decide to get the unit the hell out of there. I turn to help Marty, and he’s dead.”

“But you said he was just talking all normal and stuff.”

Dew nodded. “He was. We could have been in my living room watching Monday Night Football. He was just dead, laying there with his foot and leg in his arms like it was a teddy bear.”

Dew stayed quiet for a moment, wondering if Perry would get it.

“I don’t get it,” Perry said.

Maybe Perry knew computers, but he had the common sense of a goat.

“How old are you?” Dew asked.

“Twenty-seven,” Perry said.

“Marty Alvarez was nineteen and three days. He’ll never have kids, either. He never even saw his twenties, man. Your life is fucked up, I’ll give you that, but you’ve already had a decade more than Marty ever had. And he went out way more peaceful than most, hoss. I watched guys go out trying to stuff their guts back into their bellies. I watched guys crying and begging when someone stabbed them in the chest with a bayonet, over and over. So your life is fucked up? So fucking what? At least you’re alive. You play the hand you’re dealt. You can either be a man, or not.”

Dew stood up. It took two tries. Perry didn’t say anything. Dew swayed a bit as he looked down at the big man.

“Kid, I got to know something.”

“Okay,” Perry said.

“When you knocked out Baum and Milner, you didn’t take their guns.

Why?”

“I didn’t need them.”

“Bullshit,” Dew said. “You were going in there to kill those infected people. As far as you knew, they were dues-paying members of the NRA. Maybe you wouldn’t mind getting killed, but I know your kind—the game was on, and you wanted to stop a gate from opening up. You didn’t want to lose. Am I right?”

Perry looked at the floor, blond hair hanging. “I want to stop them more than anything,” he said quietly. “They’ve taken so much from me, but I… at least I can still win. If they can’t do what they were sent to do, junk or no junk, well then, guess what? I win. Fuck them, I win.”

Dew nodded. “I know what you’re saying. I want to stop these little fuckers like you have no idea. But you didn’t take the gun, which means you left a way for them to beat you. Why?”

Perry sat still and quiet. Dew just waited. Sometimes you get more done with silence than with all the words in the world.

“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” Perry said.

“I already think you’re more batshit than a padded room full of Charlie Mansons. So out with it.”

“I… I still hear Bill.”

Dew hadn’t expected that. This was one messed-up camper.

“You mean, like you heard your dad? Back when you were infected?”

Perry nodded. “Yeah, kind of like that. Bill keeps telling me to shoot myself.”

“Shoot yourself.”

“Uh-huh. So I don’t want to pick up a gun, ’cause… ’cause maybe I want to listen to him.”

“If you really want to kill yourself, you don’t need a gun.”

Perry looked up. “Yeah, but the other ways, they take at least a little preparation. Some time to think. Maybe you come to your senses. But a gun? You go from thinking about it to pointing it, pulling the trigger in what, like two seconds?”

Dew nodded. He’d planned on doing just that if he found strange, itchy lumps on his own skin. Wasn’t eating a bullet better than enduring Perry’s ordeal?

“Yeah,” Dew said. “Two seconds, if even that.”

“So that’s why I didn’t touch their guns.”

He was no psychologist, but even so drunk he could barely stand, Dew Phillips still had all the common sense his mama had given him. Perry had suicidal thoughts but was cognizant enough to stay away from something that could instantly make those thoughts a reality.

“Dawsey, have you ever shot a gun?”

Perry shook his head.

“Get some sleep. Your life is what it is. Tomorrow we’re going to stop letting you feel sorry for yourself.”

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON CRAWLERS

Chelsea Jewell woke up. She wiped a mist of sweat from her face, then got out of bed. She grabbed her pillow and dragged the comforter off the mattress.

Mommy might come in when she slept. She might come in and punish her. Chelsea had to hide.

She opened the closet’s folding doors and pulled out all of her shoes. She put those under the bed, then lugged her pillow and blanket inside. She shut the closet door, then lay down, head on the pillow, body on top of the comforter, and fell asleep even before she could cover up.

Inside Chelsea’s head 1,715 crawlers were waiting at the base of her skull. As a unit, they released enkephalins and endomorphins into the blood pouring through her brain. These powerful natural opiates spread through her brain, locking onto opioid receptors and stopping them from receiving any information—in particular, messages of pain.

Which, considering what was about to happen, might have been the only humane thing the crawlers would ever do.

The crawlers surged upward, expanding through her frontal lobe like a gas. Once dispersed, they unbundled, turning back into individual hacked muscle fibers ready to rebind in new ways with entirely new functions.

The “I am here” signals began again, but this time the fibers latched onto each other end to end, forming long strands. These strands crossed over each other on all axes, X and Y and Z and everything in between, creating a ropy mesh that ran through her frontal lobe, her parietal lobe, her hippocampus and, in particular, her orbifrontal lobe. In many places fibers formed dendritelike fingers that connected to Chelsea’s brain cells on one end and to the mesh on the other.

In just a few hours, 1,715 crawlers morphed into a neural net lacing through the parts of Chelsea’s brain that controlled higher functions. Functions like memory. Thought. Reason. Abstraction. Emotion.

Finally, the remaining fibers wiggled and converged at the center of Chelsea’s brain. If you could have seen in there, you would have sworn they were attacking each other, ripping each other to pieces. But the fibers weren’t alive, and they weren’t individuals; they were part of a larger function. They weren’t tearing each other apart; they were rearranging, rebuilding… melding.

When they finished, they formed a ball some one thousand microns in diameter. Tendrils reached out from this ball, connecting with the neural net of converted crawlers. Once those connections were made, the ball did what it was designed to do.

It sent a signal.

REACH OUT AND TOUCH SOMEONE

The Orbital had monitored early biofeedback from the new strain. Based on initially high levels of apoptosis, the Orbital had logically assumed that this batch of crawler-building seeds was a total failure. The growing workers would once again have to fend for themselves, try to avoid the sonofabitch as they built a gate.

The Orbital was already working on creating a second crawler-building batch with a modified code. This would be the last chance, the eighteenth and final probe.

When it received the signal, however, it abandoned the modified code. It focused all processing power on the new situation.

This signal, this lone signal, meant potential success. It provided a direct point of entry. And if the Orbital could communicate clearly enough, gather enough information, send enough reprogramming code back down the signal chain, then that lone signal meant a vector.

The Orbital sent a signal of its own and started gathering information.

SENIOR PICTURES

“Daddy, wake up.”

Donald’s mind swam in a sea of subdued pain. His body burned. Every inch seemed to be deep-fried, and his left hand felt even worse than that.

“Daddy, wake up!”

He didn’t want to wake up. When he was asleep, he didn’t have to feel it.

“Daddy, mah face! Mah face!”

The voice finally hit home, as did the hysterical urgency of Betty’s words. She was mispronouncing things, as if she had food in her mouth. He blinked awake, hissing in a sharp breath as the pain continued to wash over his body. A cough caught the tail end of that breath, then ripped out, dragging barbed wire through his lungs, his throat, smashing his eyes shut as liquid burned his mouth. He’d coughed so hard he’d thrown up.

“Daddy! Omahgod!”

Donald pulled his right hand out from under the sleeping bag, put it on the steering wheel and eased himself back. The steering wheel felt hot and wet from his vomit. He didn’t want to move his other hand—it burned too much—so he left it under the blanket. He opened his eyes.

And found that it wasn’t vomit at all.

Blood covered the steering wheel. Blood, and bits of something black.

“Daddy, are you okay? You’re coughing up blood!”

Donald blinked, trying to get his bearings. He hurt so bad. His body burned. His daughter screaming right in his fucking ear. He had to calm her down. Donald turned to look at her and flinched when he saw her face. Three oozing black sores clung to her left cheek. For a second, he thought how nothing could be worse to a teenage girl than something messed up on her face. Only for a second, though, because through the haze Donny realized that this wasn’t some monster pimple—there was something very wrong with his baby girl. He had to get her to a hospital.

He had to get both of them to a hospital.

“Baby, I…” Another coughing spasm built up in his chest. No, not again, it hurts too much.

The cough hit, and he covered his mouth with both hands. As he did, his left hand felt like he’d punched jagged glass. Blood sprayed between his fingers, all over the steering wheel and even into the windshield.

“Omahgod Daddy your hand yourhandyourhand!”

Betty was in full-bore hysterics now, her syllables running together without punctuation, broken up only by the level of her screams.

Donald lifted his left hand. It looked as if he’d dipped it in acid. The wet, shriveled, blackened fingers stuck out lifelessly. Most of the flesh was gone. He could see bare bone in some places. At least he guessed it was bare bone, because even that was black and pitted.

Donald Jewell screamed. He reached across himself with his right hand and grabbed for the door handle. He bumped his left hand as he did.

His pinkie and ring fingers fell off in a clump, right into his lap.

“Omahgodomahgod!”

He ignored the missing fingers, the blowtorch sensation. What else could he do? He ignored them and yanked the door open and scrambled out of the car. His blackened fingers fell off his lap and bounced on the icy pavement. The rain had stopped. Donny ran straight for the nearest snowbank, now a shriveled thing all crusted with ice. Crying, screaming, he kicked at it with his foot to break the crust, then jammed his blackened hand through the hole and into the snow. His hand burned. He had to cool it off, but the snow didn’t make it any better.

Another cough hit, this one deep, from way inside his stomach. Hot blood gushed into his mouth. He tasted chunks of something rotten, chunks that burned his tongue. The whole mess spilled onto the icy white snowbank, covering it with bright red and wet black. Donny Jewell fell over on his side. Pain overwhelmed him, jabbing into his body from every possible angle.

He just wanted to go to sleep again.

The next cough yanked him into a fetal position. More red and black sprayed out of his mouth. Something inside broke. He knew it, not from increased pain, but when his stomach muscles seemed to suddenly relax, like he’d been curled up by a rubber band that had just snapped.

He could still hear his daughter screaming.

The last thought he had was a hope that her face would clear up in time for senior pictures.

CHEFFIE

Cheffie Jones awoke to find himself under the living-room carpet.

He had two infections. One on his left collarbone, one just under his Adam’s apple. The skin between them had blackened and sagged, the necrosis spreading toward his face, down his chest and deeper into his throat.

Before he died, Cheffie had just enough time to flip the carpet back and wonder why he hurt so bad. While he’d slept, the apoptosis had weakened his carotid artery, which gave way at that exact moment. Just one tiny hole at first, enough for blood to squirt out into the blackened sludge surrounding it. He was in so much pain he didn’t even notice the difference. The first pinhole became a second, then a third, and then blood pressure against the thin artery wall ripped open a hole the size of a pencil eraser.

Blood sprayed all through his throat. A few thin jets pushed out through the black rot, but most of it just shot around inside his body. He gurgled as he breathed it in. Blood filled alveoli and soon reduced the ability of his lungs to draw oxygen.

He couldn’t scream, because his vocal cords had dissolved right before his carotid gave way. He managed to stumble to the front door and open it; then he fell. He tried to crawl, but it wasn’t very effective—Cheffie hadn’t been in good shape to start with, and without oxygen his muscles shut down right quick. He got to his knees, struggled to get one hand out the front door, then fell again.

Cheffie Jones stopped moving. He had drowned in his own blood.

The apoptosis chain reaction continued.

THE SONOFABITCH

The Orbital rearranged the probability tables and ran scenario after scenario. The child’s mind had produced a clear signal. She might be strong enough to carry out the new strategy’s next phase. And if she wasn’t strong enough, the other child might be. He wasn’t as well devolped as Chelsea, but he was coming along fast. Both of them together would provide all the ground-based brain power the Orbital needed to direct the protectors.

Unless, of course, the sonofabitch found them, as he had found the rest.

Biofeedback from the new strain showed the Orbital that cultivating muscle fibers from each host was too risky. Too much potential of harvesting damaged stem cells.

A problem with a simple solution—the children would become the vector. The children had successfully developed modified muscle fibers, fibers that could split on their own, reproduce. Introduce those fibers into new hosts, and the infection would spread.

That solved one problem—creating protectors—but a second, equally significant problem remained: how to stop the sonofabitch. The Orbital hadn’t been built for situations like this. The creators hadn’t programmed specific instructions on how to handle a host-turned-hunter.

Killing him was the obvious strategy, but that hadn’t worked yet. Hosts from each of the last three batches had tried and failed. Not only failed, they had died in the process, removing their potential hatchlings from the build phase. Sonofabitch was human, he could die, but targeting him was too risky.

The simulations rolled on, and one strategy continued to show the highest probability of success—just keep the sonofabitch away.

Could the Orbital block just one host from the communication mesh? Yes, it decided it could. It would be difficult, taking up much of the Orbital’s ability to process communication for the rest. The female child host could be modified. She could act as the central communication bridge, freeing up enough of the Orbital’s processing power to locate and block the sonofabitch.

If he couldn’t hear, he couldn’t find the new gate.