Contagious

INBRED TRAILER-TRASH HICKS WATCHING SPRINGER

Three more cars to go. She could fool them. She had to fool them. They wanted to kill her whole family but Bernadette wouldn’t let that happen.

She had to stay calm, keep the kids calm. William was in the passenger seat, all buckled in. He was scared, she knew, but he was being quiet. Sally and Christine were in the backseat. They were being so good, just perfect little angels. She’d tucked a blanket around them so they wouldn’t get cold.

Two more cars to go. She pulled her Saab up one car length.

Shawn was still back home. The cheating bastard. Let him stay there, let him have the whole house to himself. He’d fucked around on her, she just knew it. Maybe with that little whore secretary at his construction office. He hired a girl who dyed her hair jet-black and wore all that eye makeup to be a secretary? Bernadette didn’t know what a goth was and didn’t want to know. Probably just another term for slut, which is what the little whore most likely was.

She knew he’d cheated, because the voices told her so.

One more car to go. She pulled up again. She rolled down her window. Cold winter air poured in.

The soldiers were everywhere. Soldiers and cops. They wanted to kill her, she just knew it. She didn’t want to go near them, but the voices had told her to go this way, told her she could get past the checkpoint, onto the highway and away from Gaylord.

The soldiers had some kind of test. Maybe it was like a Breathalyzer. She’d passed those before. The voices told her she could pass it, and she believed them.

After all, if you can’t believe the voices in your own head, who can you believe?

“Mom, where are we going?”

“We’re leaving, William,” she said. “Now, I told you to be quiet. Are you going to talk again?”

William’s eyes grew wide and he shook his head violently. No, he wasn’t going to talk again. If he did, she’d just have to deal with him.

The pickup truck ahead of her pulled forward. A state trooper stood in front of her car. He waved her closer. She inched up slowly until he snapped his palm out, signaling her to stop.

She stopped.

Another state trooper leaned down and looked in her open window. He had one hand on her door, the other hand on his gun. Peeking out under that ridiculous cop hat—where did they get these meatheads, anyway?

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said. “We’ve set up this roadblock to do a quick test for a bacteria that may be in the area. Are you familiar with the situation?”

“Of course I’m familiar with the situation. You think I don’t watch the news? You think I’m some inbred trailer-trash hick that watches the Springer show? I know all about the situation, and we’re fine, we don’t have the bacteria. We’ll just drive through, then you can get on with it.”

The trooper looked less than pleased that Bernadette would not be taking the stupid test, but those were the breaks. Fuck him.

“I’m afraid we do need to test you, ma’am,” the trooper said. “It will only take a second. We also need to test your children, but let’s get you first.” He held up a narrow foil envelope. He was wearing surgical gloves. “Please open this packet, ma’am, then pull out the swab inside, run it inside your cheek and along your gum line, then hand it back to me stick-first.”

“I’m sorry, Officer, but are you deaf? I just told you we don’t need to be tested. Let’s remember that my taxes pay your salary. Now, unless you want me to take your badge number and make your life a living hell, get your partner out of the way. We’re in a hurry.”

The trooper stared at her for a second. Then he looked at William. Then he looked into the backseat. His brow furrowed beneath the brim of his hat. His eyes widened. He suddenly stood up and took a step back.

His hand stayed on the grip of his gun. “Ma’am, step out of the car, right now.”

He knew. That fucking cop knew.

Bernadette pushed the gas pedal to the floor. Her Saab shot forward. The state trooper in front of her car dove out of the way. The on-ramp to I-75 was only a few hundred feet from here—she could make it. There was a state police car parked across the on-ramp. Maybe there was enough room on the shoulder to get around it.

She heard a popping sound, like cap guns.

Her car lurched to the left. Bernadette turned the steering wheel hard to the right, trying to recover. More popping sounds. The car pulled violently to the right and skidded. It hit the snowbank and stopped suddenly, throwing her forward.

The tires. They’d shot out the tires, like this was a fucking TV show like Frankie Anvil or something. Did they not understand that the voice told her she could go past?

Bernadette opened the door, grabbed her purse and got out of the Saab.

“Down on the ground!” a trooper shouted. More shouts, all of them saying the same thing. “Down on the ground, now!”

They had guns pointed at her. Blue jackets and round hats everywhere, in all directions. They were going to kill her.

Bernadette reached into her purse and pulled out the butcher knife. That would show them. It had worked on her daughters, made them shut up, and it had sure as hell taught Shawn an important lesson about not fucking around on his wife. It worked on them, it would work on the troopers.

She rushed at the trooper who had been leaning into her car.

Everything blurred, her body twitched and trembled, she dropped the knife and fell to the cold, slushy pavement. Such agony. The pain stopped as suddenly as it started, leaving an echo effect rolling through her body. She shook her head and tried to stand, but suddenly there were hands all over her. She felt her face pushed into the wet pavement, something heavy on her spine. Her hands were pulled behind her back, and she felt handcuffs snap into place.

ROADBLOCK

About six miles east of the I-75 on-ramp, Private First Class Dustin Climer looked to the sky and watched a Black Hawk helicopter head west. For the past thirty minutes, the helicopter had been cruising around slowly, watching the roads below. Something was up. Dustin wondered if they’d got one.

“Dustin?” Neil Illing called out. “The swab?”

“Sorry,” Dustin said, then slid the swab into the white detector. He’d been holding both, swab and detector, but the helicopter’s sudden movement had distracted him. After just a couple of seconds, the detector let out two short beeps and the green square lit up, indicating a negative result.

“She’s fine,” he said to Neil.

Neil bent down just a bit to look in the car window.

“You’re all set, ma’am,” Neil said.

The woman let out a huge sigh of relief. Dustin wasn’t sure if her relief came from a negative result on the flesh-eating-bacteria test, or because the four heavily armed men surrounding her car finally seemed to relax.

“When can I come back home?” the woman asked. “This is just so crazy.”

Neil nodded. “Yes ma’am. You should be able to come back tomorrow, or the next day at the latest. Just watch the news.”

“Thank you, Officer.”

Neil laughed. “I’m a soldier, not a cop, ma’am.”

The woman gave an exaggerated nod, as if to say, Yes, of course. Neil smiled again and stood back from the car. The woman put it in gear and drove past the checkpoint, continuing down the snow-covered dirt road.

Dustin and Neil stood there in the early-morning cold, waiting for the next car. Joel Brauer was at the side of the road, manning the M249 machine gun, so he had to endure the cold as well. James Eager, the fourth member of their team, slid back into their Hummer’s heated interior. He only had to come out when a car drove up, which meant Dustin was damn jealous of him at that moment. Fifteen more minutes, and then he and Neil would switch positions with James and Joel.

With the helicopter gone, they could hear the faint sound of snowmobiles again. Local boys whipping through the woods, probably.

James opened the door and leaned out. “They got one,” he called. “Triangle host trying to get on the I-75 on-ramp. Cope said to stay sharp. They’re sending the backup units to reinforce the on-ramp in case there’s more, so we’re on our own for a bit.”

“Got it,” Dustin said.

James slid back inside the heated Hummer, and Dustin hated him a little more.

“This is kind of trippy,” Neil said.

“What is?” Dustin said. “Fighting little monsters and shit?”

“Well, sure, but what I mean is, even though we’re fighting little monsters and shit, we’re still pulling checkpoint duty. I mean, I’m staying sharp and all, but this is boring, you know? We’ve seen three cars in the past two hours.”

Dustin shrugged. “What are you gonna do? We have to check everyone. They just got one, didn’t you hear James?”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard,” Neil said. “It’s just… I mean, five days ago we shot the bejesus out of that construct thing, and now here we are checking IDs and swabbing civvies. Five days ago we’re shooting friggin’ electric bullets at monsters, and today our primary weapons are these.”

Neil pulled a zip-tie out of his pocket and waved the long, thin piece of plastic. The plastic restraints let them detain large numbers of people, if necessary, and were much lighter than handcuffs.

“I might beat a hatchling to death with this,” Neil said, whipping the zip-tie like a flacid sword.

“Oh relax,” Dustin said. “Colonel Ogden isn’t telling you not to defend yourself. If we’re in danger, we shoot.”

Neil spun 180 degrees and landed in an overly dramatic, wide-legged stance. He pulled out another zip-tie and waved one in each hand like nunchucks.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I bet I can stop bullets with these bitches.”

Joel was cracking up. The laughter made Neil ham it up some more.

Dustin shook his head. Fucking idiots. These were the morons he got to work with?

The sound of the snowmobiles seemed to draw closer for a bit, then stopped. Climer and Neil looked to the trees but couldn’t spot the sleds.

“Joyride?” Neil asked.

“Maybe,” Dustin said. “Doesn’t sound like they’re trying to slip past the roadblocks. If they were, we wouldn’t have heard them all morning. They would have just gone through in the woods.”

“How the fuck can people be joyriding at a time like this?”

Dustin shrugged. “You can’t reach everyone, I guess. Although that one dude turning all black and shit, that has people falling all over themselves to get this test. Fuck, man, I should charge five bucks a head.”

The sound of another vehicle drew Dustin’s attention. A U. S. Postal Service van drove toward the checkpoint, pristine white near the top, spackled with thick arcs of frozen brown slush down on the bottom, particularly behind the tires.

“Mail must go through,” Dustin said. “You want to run the detector this time?”

“Sure,” Neil said. “Something different. Gimme.”

Dustin handed over the plastic detector.

James Eager got out of the Hummer and moved to the other side of the road, giving him and Joel converging fields of fire toward the front of the postal van.

Dustin stepped into the middle of the road. He held up his left hand in a stop gesture. His right hand rested on the grip of his sidearm. The van gently slowed and stopped.

He walked around the driver’s side. The driver opened the sliding door.

“Good afternoon, sir,” Dustin said. “May I have your name and identification, please?”

“John Burkle,” the man said. He handed over his driver’s license. Dustin took it, moved one step back and examined it, then looked up again. The picture definitely matched the man, but John Burkle had a big bruise on the left side of his jaw, and under his hat some gauze was wrapped around his head, holding a big, puffy bandage on his left ear.

“You look like you’ve had a rough time, sir.”

“Dogs,” Burkle said. “One chased me yesterday; I slipped on some ice and hit a tree. Pathetic, right?”

“That’s unfortunate, sir.”

“Well anyway, I already got swabbed,” Burkle said. “I was the guy that found that body.”

Dustin nodded. “Who swabbed you?”

“The paramedics did. I was so freaked out I went to the hospital and insisted they do it again. I tell you what, you couldn’t pay me enough to do your job.”

“I appreciate that, sir,” Dustin said. “However, if you don’t mind, I have to swab everyone who goes through this checkpoint.”

The postman shrugged. “No problem, it’s painless. You need me to get out?”

“That’s okay, sir, please stay where you are.” He handed John back his license, which the man took. Dustin then offered the foil packet with his left hand. “Please open this, pull out the swab inside, run it inside your cheek and along your gum line, then hand it back to me stick-first.”

John reached for the foil packet. Just as he was about to grab it, his hand shot forward and gripped Dustin’s left wrist. Dustin yanked back reflexively, causing John to stumble out of the van. Dustin reached over with his right hand and grabbed John’s wrist. He was about to wrench it free and twist the arm down to put John on his face when he saw something in the postman’s other hand.

It took only a fraction of a second to realize it was a Taser, another fraction to feel fifty thousand volts hit his left hand and course through his body. He jerked convulsively, brain on hold, body doing its own thing. From the far side of the road, past the van, Dustin heard gunshots, the long reports of a hunting rifle echoing through the woods.

Dustin Climer found himself on the ground. He heard automatic weapons firing, the sharp cracks of an M4, the stuttering bark of the M249. Then the echo of more hunting rifles, this time from behind him, on the other side of the road.

The M249 stopped.

He tried to move, but could not. “We’re under fire, we’re under fire!” He heard Neil scream, then two more rifle shots.

The M4 fire stopped.

“Climer…” Neil’s voice. “Oh fuck, man, help me…”

Dustin shook his head, tried to get to his knees. He heard movement in the van, then feet hitting the road.

A gunshot—no echo this time, it was so close. Something hit the back of his left shoulder. His left arm gave out. He found himself facedown again.

He’d been shot. Holy shit, he’d been shot.

“No!” Neil said. “No, please!”

Another rifle shot. This one only ten feet away.

Neil said no more.

Snowmobile engines, getting closer. Another sound, a vehicle approaching, larger than a car or the mail truck.

Noise, pain, movement—it all overwhelmed his senses.

Dustin was flipped onto his back. Hands covered his eyes, hands held his arms, a whirlwind of confusion and pain. He started to kick, but a fist in his stomach ended the struggle, curling him up into a fetal position. Hands on his face, holding his jaw open, something wet in his mouth, burning in his mouth.

Hands pushing him away.

The bigger vehicle’s noise fading.

His body screaming for air, his shoulder just plain screaming.

A crackling sound, a whooshing sound.

Heat. Real heat, nearly scorching the side of his face.

A mini-eternity without oxygen, then a half-gasp that let in just a little, and finally a deep, ragged breath.

“I’m gonna kill you, soldier boy.”

Dustin sucked in air. He rolled to his hands and knees, then pulled his sidearm. His right hand filled with the knurled handle, the cold feeling of power, of protection.

“You better pull that trigger, soldier, or I’m gonna shoot ya like I shot your friends.”

Dustin pushed himself to one knee, right hand holding the pistol, left hand dangling uselessly, dripping blood onto the frozen dirt road.

To his right, flames billowed out of the postal van, fat orange tongues licking the air and spewing forth roiling black smoke.

In front of him, a man standing, holding a hunting rifle. It wasn’t the man who had been driving the van. He pointed the rifle at Dustin.

“Gonna kill you, soldier bo—”

Dustin’s first shot hit the man dead center in the chest. Two small feathers drifted away from his down coat. The man took one step back, then looked at his chest.

Past the man, far past, Dustin could see the rear end of a white and brown RV driving along the road.

The man looked up. He smiled and started to say something right before two more shots hit him in the chest. Still holding the hunting rifle in both hands, the man sagged and fell to his back.

Dustin struggled to stand. He felt weak, cold, but turned and looked for Neil. Neil lay on his back in a puddle of dark red. Someone had shot him in the face, blowing his brains all over the road. Looked like he’d also been hit in the leg, a fist-size blood spot above his right knee.

Dustin turned. He had to check on the others. He stepped forward, his right hand keeping the shaking gun pointed at the fallen man. The man’s eyes were wide open, a snarl locked on his face. Dead as fuck. Just like Neil. Tit for tat, you infected motherfucker.

Dustin stumbled again, barely catching himself as his foot slid on the snowy road. Oh man, getting shot fucking hurt.

He kept moving, checking his squadmates. Joel was slumped facedown over the M249. Not moving. The man with the hunting rifle probably took him out first. On the other side of the road, James was also down, helmet sitting upside down about three feet away from him.

The ground came up and smacked Dustin Climer right in the face. Oh man, oh man …he’d fallen. He forced his eyes open. So fucking cold. No sound but the wind. Then a soft humming, growing louder, growing closer. He knew that sound. A V-22. No, a couple of ’em. Climer put his gun hand on the ground and tried to push up, but his palm weakly slid across the snow-covered dirt road.

Finally he passed out.

IMPROPER EQUIPMENT

If this kept up, they’d need another MargoMobile just to store the bodies.

The live triangle host was on the way. Dew and Ogden had decided to leave the MargoMobile at the Jewell house and transport the host instead of parking the trailers next to a highway on-ramp and off-ramp. Made sense, as the Jewell house was far more rural and somewhat isolated.

The host would go into the containment cell in Trailer B.

The cadaver cabinet was filling up as well. In there they already had the liquefied remains of Donald Jewell, the pitted black skeleton of Cheffie Jones, the burned corpse of Bobby Jewell and the corpse of his wife, Candice. Their daughter would join them as soon as Margaret finished the last of the preliminary autopsies.

Once again a biohazard-suited Margaret stood in Trailer A’s autopsy room, looking at a big body bag filled with a small body. Gitsh was with her. Clarence had suited up and checked each body for himself, making damn sure they were all dead before taking up his usual position in the computer room.

She needed to make this fast. Bernadette Smith would be here soon, and that would require all of Margaret’s attention. Also on the way was the body of Ryan Roznowski, the triangle host who had killed those soldiers at the roadblock. He was a low priority—she needed to clear her schedule for Bernadette.

“Gitsh, get Chelsea out of the bags and let’s get cracking. We need to do this fast. Marcus, you there?”

“Yes ma’am,” she heard Marcus’s voice say in her earpiece. “At the cadaver locker, making sure Bobby Jewell’s remains are properly stowed.”

“Okay, finish up and hurry back. We need to get the girl done before the live host arrives.”

She’d already completed preliminary autopsies on Candice and Bobby Jewell. Candice had died from a gunshot to the back of the head, well before the fire scorched her body. Bobby had multiple knife scores on his ribs—Margaret couldn’t say for sure yet, not with such a rush job, but odds were he’d also died before the fire burned him.

Gitsh removed the girl’s small corpse and put it on the table. Burn victims and charred flesh. Always such a joy. The human body doesn’t actually burn up in a house fire. To cremate a body, you need fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit for two hours or more. House fires usually hit about five hundred degrees. While some could burn as hot as two thousand degrees, at that temperature the flames usually consumed all available fuel material within a half hour or so. Bobby Jewell’s body had been blackened and charred, but preserved enough for Margaret to find one scorched triangle on his cheek, another at the base of his neck.

She’d been on the case long enough to know the story: Bobby Jewell had contracted the triangles, and as a result he’d killed his family. Then he’d set a fire and committed suicide by stabbing himself repeatedly. Sounded crazy, but she’d seen worse—at least Bobby hadn’t chopped off his own legs with a hatchet. The bullet hole in the back of the wife’s skull fit the murder-suicide profile. Margaret was sure the girl’s cause of death would support it as well.

Gitsh folded up the body bag and put it in the incinerator chute.

Margaret stared at the girl’s body. It was curled up in the fetal position, legs and arms flexed, fists tucked beneath the chin. That didn’t mean the person had burned alive and curled up from the pain—dehydration from fire causes muscles, even dead muscles, to contract, pulling bodies into this posture.

The fetal position wasn’t what held Margaret’s attention, however. What really caught her eye was the size of the body.

She looked at the wall-mounted flat-panel, part of which showed stats on Chelsea.

“Clarence, this is supposed to be a seven-year-old girl?”

“Checking,” Clarence said in her earpiece. “Yeah, Chelsea Jewell, seven years, four months, ten days.”

“How tall is she on the medical records?”

“Ummm… three feet, six inches.”

“This body is bigger than that,” Margaret said. “And the hips are wrong. Gitsh, roll the body onto its back.”

Clarence’s voice in her ear again. “You don’t think it’s Chelsea Jewell?”

Gitsh moved the body.

Margaret took a good look, then shook her head. “Not unless Chelsea Jewell was more like four-foot-two and had a penis. Get Dew on the line, right now.”

IF IFS AND BUTS WERE CANDY AND NUTS

“How is Private Climer, Doc?” Ogden asked.

“He’ll be fine,” Doc Harper said. “He was lucky the bullet didn’t hit the bone. Took out a chunk of muscle, though. Colonel, I have to request again that we transfer him out of our area and to the base hospital.”

“Request denied, again,” Ogden said. “Unless it’s a life-and-death situation, he’s not leaving our area until I talk to him. And you just said he’ll be fine, so it’s not life and death, correct?”

“But sir,” Doc Harper said, “you can pick up the phone and have a replacement for him sent from one of the companies at Fort Bragg here in… what, three hours?”

“I don’t need a replacement for him. I need to find out what happened. There’s no way one redneck should have taken out four soldiers.”

“Colonel, we just pulled a.308-caliber bullet out of that boy’s shoulder,” Doc said. “Three hours ago he was facedown on a dirt road bleeding all over the place.”

Ogden checked his watch. “It’s sixteen hundred right now. I want him talking by seventeen hundred, got it?”

“He’s my patient, sir,” Doc said. “As soon as he wakes up, he’s yours, but I’m within my rights to say that I will not bring him out of it early.”

Ogden sighed. Couldn’t have Doc Harper bitching about putting wounded troops at unnecessary risk, not when that general’s star was so close. He’d have to ship Doc Harper out soon, though, get someone else in here who followed orders no matter what they were.

“Who’s with Climer?” Ogden asked.

“Brad Merriman,” Doc Harper said. “The guy they call ‘Nurse Brad.’”

Ogden nodded. He knew Nurse Brad. Good kid. Medic first class, but somewhere along the line the boys started ripping on him for being a “male nurse,” and the nickname stuck.

“You and Merriman both sit with Climer,” Ogden said. “If one of you has to take a crap, the other is staring at Climer to see if he wakes up. And when he does wake up, you call me immediately, you understand?”

Doc Harper nodded and saluted, then turned and walked out.

Charlie didn’t like being such a hard-ass, but he needed answers. Three of his soldiers killed. The only known enemy unit a thirty-one-year-old civilian named Ryan Roznowski who had stolen a mail truck and tried to run the roadblock. The postman assigned to that truck was missing and presumed dead.

Roznowski had four triangles. He also had a wife, who was nowhere to be found, and a house that showed signs of a struggle, including blood on the living-room floor. Charlie knew that triangle hosts were dangerous, sure, killers, no question, but a guy with a hunting rifle setting a postal van on fire, then taking out four trained soldiers? It just didn’t add up.

But it wasn’t all bad news. They had finally succeeded in capturing a live host. Mission accomplished. That’s what made the general’s star a lock, just as long as he didn’t fuck anything up.

But that star would come at a price—more names in his Little Blue Book.

Neil Illing.

James Eager.

Joel Brauer.

If he’d been able to put a full squad at each checkpoint, nine men instead of four or five, those boys might still be alive. Maybe he should have brought the other two companies. No, his plan was solid; it allowed for the maximum situational flexibility under the circumstances. If they’d had more time, if he’d had more men…

If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, what a wonderful Christmas it would be.

He’d write the families later that night. The best part of the job, really, telling some proud mom that her son had died while serving his country.

“Corporal Cope! Get in here!”

Cope was in the tent before Ogden even finished the second sentence. He must have been waiting right outside, just in case he was needed. You didn’t get guys like Cope all that often.

“Sir?”

“Where the hell are my updates on the air search?”

“Nothing so far,” Cope said. “All recon flights came up negative. Satellite squints say the same thing. Doesn’t look like there’s a construct within at least fifty miles.”

Damn it. It had to be out there. Bernadette Smith had tried to escape. So had Ryan Roznowski. How many infected had slipped out, either between the roadblocks or before Ogden arrived? No maps this time: none in Smith’s car or at her house. Same for Roznowski, and the Jewell place was a cinder. No clues.

If they were going to find the gate’s location, once again it was all up to Perry Dawsey.

APB ON CLAN JEWELL

Dew Phillips sat in the MargoMobile’s computer room. He and Perry had the room to themselves. Gitsh, Marcus, Margaret and Clarence were all in the Trailer B containment cell, locking down a feisty Bernadette Smith.

Dew wanted to hit a certain chief of staff, then rub her face in broken glass and finish up with a nice saltwater spritz on the fresh cuts.

“Dew, you okay?” Perry asked. “You’ve got veins pulsing in the top of your big bald head.”

“I’m not okay,” Dew said. “Fuck, we had them.”

Vanessa Colburn was the reason the Jewells had escaped. If she’d just let Murray do his thing, Dew would have that family in custody right now.

“We almost had who?” Perry said.

“The Jewells. Those bodies we found in the fire? Not the Jewell family. We don’t know who the woman is. The man was Wallace Beckett. Identified from dental records. They’re guessing the dead kid is his son, Beck. They searched the Beckett house, found Nicole Beckett chopped up and stuffed into a laundry hamper.”

“But Margaret said the man had triangles.”

“That’s what’s fucked up,” Dew said. “Wallace Beckett did have triangles. The Jewell family was a man, a woman and a kid. We found the bodies of a man, a woman and a kid, and the man had triangles. Sounds familiar, right? Man gets triangles, goes gonzo, whacks his family.”

“Wait a minute,” Perry said. “You’re saying the Jewells killed three people, including a host, so we would think it was a nice neat package while they skipped town?”

“Try to keep up, college boy,” Dew said. “Clan Jewell pulled the switcheroo on us. We didn’t even bother to search the fucking area.”

“Then who is the woman?”

Dew shrugged. “Who knows? It’s not Candice Jewell, though. They know that from dental records, too. So we have three bodies, none of which belong to the Jewells. The Jewells, who are nowhere to be found. If they took off right when they started the fire, we’re talking a fifteen-hour head start. They could be fucking anywhere.”

“What if they didn’t leave right away?” Perry said. “Maybe they’re still in Gaylord.”

Dew scratched his chin. “Maybe. Or maybe they were part of that attack on the roadblock.”

“Which had another triangle victim.”

Dew flipped through the paperwork. “Yeah, Ryan Roznowski. He killed three soldiers and wounded Private Dustin Climer. Climer returned fire, killing Roznowski.”

“What the fuck,” Perry said. “Was this Roznowski, like, a Special Forces Rambo guy, or what?”

“A plumber,” Dew said. “Roznowski is married, but the FBI can’t find his wife. That’s not a cause for alarm in itself, because this whole town just bugged out, but there are signs of a struggle at the Roznowski house, blood on the living-room carpet, so do your college-boy math.”

“Roznowski’s wife is the burned woman in the Jewell house?”

“Probably,” Dew said. “We’ll see if we they identify her, but that all adds up. Roznowski kills or hurts his wife, then brings her over to the Jewells’ house.”

“And the Becketts either go there or are brought there.”

“Nicole Beckett was murdered,” Dew said. “So maybe someone kills her and kidnaps Wallace and his son, but I’m thinking that maybe Wallace killed her, then went to the Jewell house on his own, just like Roznowski.”

“Went on his own,” Perry said. “Or maybe was called. Summoned.”

“Like the triangles put you and Fatty Patty together?”

Perry shrugged. “Maybe. So what do we do now?”

“We get some pictures of the Jewell family, for starters, and put out an APB on them. Hell, we’ll use the media again, say the Jewells are carrying the flesh-eating bacteria.”

Perry nodded. “Okay, that will work, but what about their cars?”

“All the cars registered to the Jewells burned up in their garage.”

“So they took someone else’s car?”

Dew nodded. “Probably. They had three snowmobiles registered, two of those are gone. If they stashed them in the woods somewhere, we won’t find them for weeks. So maybe they did take someone else’s car, but this whole town just evacuated—we have no way of knowing what cars should be here and what cars were taken by the evacuees. We can search neighboring houses for signs of a struggle, though, maybe get lucky and find a body. But if we don’t find one, there’s no way to connect them to a specific vehicle.

“Bottom line? The Jewells got out. All we can do now is circulate their pictures and hope they fuck up.”

THE TOWER OF POWER

Performance far beyond projections.

The Orbital measured the growing abilities of Chelsea Jewell. Not only was her communication ability developing faster than expected, it showed signs of immense power—eventually more powerful than even that of the Orbital.

Reasons for this remained unclear. The crawlers in her skull continued to divide and grow, adding length to the dense mesh that melded with her brain. The denser the mesh, the more processing power, and yet there was something more. Triangles could interface with a human brain, use it for their purposes, but Chelsea was human to begin with. No need for informational conversion or translation. Her thoughts were a native tongue. All she needed was a connection, which the crawlers provided.

How strong might she become? The Orbital did not know. What mattered was that her development was ahead of schedule. She would handle most of the communication, the organization, allowing the Orbital to focus on blocking the sonofabitch.

STRANGE THINGS ARE AFOOT…

Mio, Michigan, is a tiny town about thirty-five miles southeast of Gaylord. Mr. Jenkins’s Winnebago stopped at a gas station in Mio to fill up and to pick up a passenger by the name of Artie LaFrinere.

Artie had heard Chelsea’s call, but since he was outside the checkpoints, he drove to Mio, ditched the car, then walked to the gas station and waited. To be precise, he waited near the gas station, because Artie LaFrinere didn’t look so hot.

Four days ago Artie had gone tobogganing with his friends. He lost control of the toboggan, slid into the woods and plowed into a drift. Artie’s friends laughed at him as he wiped snow out from under his jacket and the crack of his ass. Unfortunately for Artie, that snowdrift had been a landing pad for a big gust full of seeds, which—of course—wound up all over his belly, his back and yes, the crack of his ass. Artie didn’t know it, but he was now a world record holder with his thirteen triangles. He coughed up blood every fifteen minutes or so. He didn’t talk much. Everyone understood. They welcomed him into the Winnebago and made him as comfortable as possible.

Artie was actually the second passenger: they’d picked up Harlan Gaines on Country Road 491 just outside of Lewiston. He and his four triangles were getting along just fine. With Mr. LaFrinere’s thirteen, plus Mr. Gaines’s four, Daddy’s five and Old Sam Collins’s three, Chelsea had twenty-nine dollies in the Winnebago.

Only four to go! Math was one of her favorite classes.

Chelsea sensed one more dolly daddy out there, a man named Danny Korves, trying to make his way to meet up with the Winnebago. She also sensed something even more exciting—free-moving dollies that had already hatched weeks ago, sneaking across the countryside, trying to reach her. She told them where to go, but since they could only travel at night and they had far to run, she doubted if they could make it in time. Everything would come down to Mr. Korves. Chelsea pushed out to him and told him that he had to reach her no matter what the cost.

She just might have enough dollies to build that gate, and that made her happy. Another thing that made her happy was that Mr. Jenkins had bought all the Nestlé Crunch Eskimo Pies the Circle-K gas station had in its little freezer. The Winnebago was still in the parking lot. Everyone sat in the back, enjoying that yummy ice cream on a stick.

Mommy and Daddy only got one bar each.

“We can’t stay here for long, Chelsea,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Pretty soon they’ll find out that the bodies in the house aren’t you and your parents.”

“What are you talking about?” Mommy said. “Won’t they burn up?”

Mr. Jenkins shook his head. “House fires don’t get hot enough for that. When they find out the bodies aren’t yours, the cops might start looking for you guys. You’ll be wanted for murder, probably. Depending on how bad they want you, they’ll run vehicle registrations for all your neighbors, figuring maybe you stole a car or took a hostage. Cops might be looking for this Winnebago before too long.”

“Is that for sure?” Mommy asked.

Mr. Jenkins shrugged. “You guys left three bodies in a burned-out house. Not like it’s an unpaid parking ticket.”

“How long do we have?” Mommy asked.

Mr. Jenkins shrugged again. “I couldn’t say. But I can say we should get the ’Bago off the road as soon as we can.” He rattled the map, his finger tracing their route. “We’re on Highway 33 right now. We can take that to Highway 75, which will get us there after dark.”

Chelsea crawled under the map and into Mr. Jenkin’s lap. They looked at it together. She pushed the route out with her mind, telling the remaining dollies and Mr. Korves to meet them along the way, or at the end.

“Mister Jenkins, if we go that way, will we see any more soldiers?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I hope not. They scare me. I know we had a good plan, honey, but I think we also got lucky.”

Chelsea nodded. “Me too. But if we do see them, we’ll just deal with them, so they better not try to stop us.”

STAREDOWN

This time Clarence Otto was by her side. He had a gun on a nylon cord hanging around his neck, because a holster really didn’t work with the biohazard suit.

When Margaret looked into the containment cell, she almost wished she had a gun herself.

Inside those clear walls, another woman was strapped to the autopsy trolley. Naked. She had a blue triangle on her left breast, one on her right forearm and one on her right hip.

Almost three months of work, all the insanity, all the violence, and this was the first time Margaret had seen a live triangle. After seeing so many dead ones, she had thought she knew what to expect—black eyes staring, blinking.

But she’d never thought about them staring at her. Their blinking made it so bizarre. It made them look… real. She wished Amos could have been here to see it. A live triangle meant they were that much closer to stopping this nightmare.

The woman was unconscious. She had enough meds in her to make sure she stayed that way. At least Margaret hoped. Betty should have stayed under, too, and look how well that had turned out.

Margaret looked at the touch-panel display mounted on the door. Bernadette Smith. Age twenty-eight. Mother of three. Well, not anymore. Now she was a mother of one and a widow—she’d killed her husband and slit the throats of her two daughters, one age five, one age three, before bundling the dead girls into the backseat of her Saab.

What would this woman be like after they removed the triangles? Perry still carried the guilt of murdering his best friend. How would this woman live with the knowledge she’d killed her husband, her own children?

And that was if they could remove the triangles at all. Margaret had seen the X-rays. The ones on the hip and the forearm would be tricky but doable. In each case the triangle’s barbed tail was wrapped around bone and arteries, but during surgery Margaret could repair a damaged artery.

The one on Bernadette’s chest… that was another matter.

The tail of that one was wrapped around Bernadette’s heart. The X-ray showed dozens of those wicked hooks, like sharp rose thorns, pressing up against it. One wrong pull and they’d cut multiple holes. If that happened, even with Bernadette on the operating table and Dr. Dan at her side, Margaret didn’t know if they could save her.

The heart monitor began to beat faster. Margaret punched buttons on the display, calling up the woman’s EKG. Pulse rate increasing.

“Shit,” Margaret said. “She’s waking up.”

“I thought you knocked her out for a couple of hours.” Otto said.

“I did. The triangles are countering the anesthesia somehow. Daniel?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Call Dew,” she said. “Tell him to bring Dawsey. The patient is waking up. We’re going to have to knock her out again and operate right away. If Dew wants to ask these things some questions, he’d better do it fast, because in thirty minutes I’m going to save this woman’s life and kill these little bastards in the process.”

DUSTIN GETS RELIGION

Dustin Climer woke up on a cot. His shoulder hurt. His head felt like it was going to explode. A fever washed through his body, and every nerve throbbed with shooting pains. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. The infirmary tent, and he was the only one there.

His training kicked in, and his hands found his weapon. The empty M4 carbine was leaning against a small metal cabinet of drawers at the side of his cot. Just having the M4 in his hands made Dustin relax a bit.

The tent’s soft plastic windows showed darkness outside. He’d been attacked in the morning, so he’d been out for what, eight hours? His clothes and shoes were folded up under a metal rack next to the bed. Something about his jacket bothered him. The shoulder patch…

Images flashed through his mind. A little girl. A blond, perfect, angelic little girl. Had he ever seen anything so gorgeous? He had. When he’d been out, he’d had visions of something black, something triangular.

The hatchlings.

Beautiful?

Yes, beyond beautiful. Perfection. Utterly divine.

Shame washed over him. He looked down at his jacket again, at the shoulder patch depicting a lightning bolt hitting an upside-down roach. And even worse, the three small black triangle patches sewn beneath it. One of those patches was just black. One had a glossy white X embroidered on it.

One had two X’s.

Oh, sweet God… what had he done? He’d destroyed them. Three of them.

Are you awake?

His head snapped up. A voice. A little girl’s voice. But he wasn’t hearing it—it was in his head. He put his hands on his face and lay back down on the bed. He was a sinner. He had destroyed perfection, and now he would have to pay.

Wake up, sleepyhead.

“I’m awake,” he said. “Your man tried to kill me, and now I understand why. I’m ready to pay the price.”

You don’t have to pay a price, silly. You didn’t know. And he wasn’t trying to kill you. He sacrificed himself so that you were a hero—you killed the man who killed the other soldiers. He only shot you so no one would question why you were tired and wanted to sleep. He died so that you could see my pretty dollies. Do you see now? Do you understand?

“Yes,” Dustin whispered. “Yes, I see them. I… I killed them.”

That’s okay. You didn’t know, so it wasn’t your fault.

“No, I didn’t know. I didn’t know how beautiful they were.”

You can make up for it.

“How?” He sat up again. “How can I? I’ll do anything!”

You need to make others see, the voice said. You are the protector. You need to make them all see, especially your leader.

“Colonel Ogden?”

Yes. You need to give him smoochies and let him see the pretty dollies.

More images flashed in Climer’s brain. Images of Chelsea watching her mother sleep. Images of Chelsea’s tongue.

You know what you need to do?

Dustin nodded. “Yes.”

Then hurry, but be careful. Don’t get caught. You are a protector now. You and the others must join us, because we want to open the gates to heaven.

The tent curtain opened, and two men came in. Doc Harper and Nurse Brad.

“Well, look who’s up,” Doc Harper said. “You jabbering to yourself in here?”

The men walked over to the cot.

Dustin shrugged. “I guess so, Doc.”

“Well I’m not surprised,” Doc Harper said. He slid a stool next to Dustin’s bed and sat. “You’re probably a better conversationalist than Brad here.”

“Ha-ha-ha,” Brad said. “Keep it up and I’ll stop letting you win at chess.”

Doc Harper picked up Dustin’s wrist and checked his watch. “Brad, you couldn’t beat me in chess if I played with my queen shoved up my rectum.” Doc released Dustin’s wrist, then pulled a penlight out of his breast pocket and started flicking it in Dustin’s eye.

“Just stare straight ahead, Private,” Doc Harper said. “Everything looks okay. How’s your head?”

“Hurts a bit,” Dustin said.

Harper nodded as he switched to the other eye.

“Describe the pain on a scale of one to ten,” Doc Harper said.

“Um, maybe a three.”

“Doesn’t sound like a major problem,” Doc Harper said. “Well, since you’re alert, the colonel wants to see you ASAP. I’ll let him know you’re ready to talk. Brad, grab some Tylenol packets. Four should do the trick.”

Brad knelt down to open a drawer of the cabinet next to Dustin’s cot.

Dustin grabbed the back of Doc Harper’s neck and head-butted him in the nose. Before Harper even slid off the stool, Dustin picked up his M4 with both hands.

Brad turned his head to see what was happening, just in time to catch an M4 stock right in the mouth. He sagged to his left butt cheek, mouth bleeding, staring out with eyes that didn’t really focus on anything. Dustin hit him again. Brad fell to his back, arm resting awkwardly against the open medicine drawer.

Dustin looked down at the two men. Doc Harper blinked like mad. Tears poured from his eyes, and blood gushed from the bridge of his broken nose. He tried to back away, a reverse crab-walk, but he couldn’t seem to send enough strength to his feet. The heels of his shoes pushed weakly at the floor.

Dustin pulled his zip-ties from his pants pocket.

“Does that hurt, Doc?” Dustin said. “Let me kiss it and make it all better.”

Chelsea let her mind spread farther and farther. This was so cool. Better than all her best toys combined. She’d felt Dustin hit those men, like she had been there, like she had hit them herself.

She liked it. It was really fun.

Every time she spread her mind, the feeling got stronger, the connections got stronger. Each host, each dolly, each converted person—they all felt a little different. Kind of like how vanilla ice cream tastes one way and chocolate another way. That was it; each had its own taste.

Dustin was a long ways away, but she could still connect with him. She could connect with Bernadette Smith, too, with each of the three dollies growing in her body.

Those three tasted like anger. Anger and fear.

Sending Bernadette to the highway worked, but Chelsea had thought the soldiers would shoot the woman. Chelsea even had Bernadette kill her daughters and bring the knife. But the devils captured Bernadette, and that was bad.

Bernadette’s dollies were growing so fast! Maybe soon they would come out to play, come out to build. Chelsea sensed needles poking into them, so many needles. Just like the doctor had always stuck needles into her. Poking, prodding, testing. Dollies didn’t feel pain like she did, though. The needles were really just kind of annoying to them.

So why were they so scared and angry? None of the other dollies tasted like that. Chelsea concentrated on those three dollies, listened to their thoughts, and she found the answer.

The sonofabitch.

The boogeyman.

They were staring right at the boogeyman! Of course they were angry, of course they were afraid. Chelsea felt a stab of that same fear, a stab of that same anger. Chauncey had told her not to connect to the boogeyman, but that was before. She was stronger now. The dollies were so close to the boogeyman, maybe only a few feet away. She could connect through them and talk to him.

The boogeyman made Chelsea afraid. That wasn’t fair.

Now it was his turn to be scared.

FACING HIS PAST

Perry Dawsey had never been claustrophobic. Then again, he’d never been crammed into a full-body suit obviously not made for someone his size, then walked into a friggin’ semi trailer so jam-packed with stuff he had to turn sideways to walk through these pitiful excuses for aisles.

But claustrophobia was the least of his concerns. The naked woman in the clear glass containment cell took up most of his attention.

Her, and what was on her. In her.

Tight restraints held her wrists, ankles and waist. She was crying. Perry felt shame wash over him, shame at how he’d treated Fatty Patty. He’d screamed at Patty. He’d hit her. Cut her. Watched her die, hoping that in the process he could learn something that might help him save himself. He hadn’t even been a man then.

Milner was right.

Perry was a monster.

The woman in the chamber pulled weakly against the leather straps.

“Those restraints tight?” Dew asked Margaret.

“Goddamn right they are,” Margaret said. “I put those on myself. Any tighter and she’d lose circulation.”

Margaret’s voice sounded colder than before. Colder and harder, as though maybe cutting off that woman’s circulation wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world after all. That wasn’t the voice she’d used when she was helping him recover, or sewing up the cuts Dew had given him. Then she’d sounded like she cared, like she really wanted to help. Now? Now she had a touch of disgust in her voice. Maybe even a slight helping of hate.

“Please,” the woman sobbed. “Please, let me go. I swear, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Try to relax, Bernadette,” Margaret said. “We want to help you.”

“LIAR!” the woman screamed. “You’re the POLICE! You want to cut me up!”

She couldn’t move anything but her head, so move it she did, thrashing it around as if she were being electrocuted. Her sweaty brown hair flew in all directions. Her face carried an expression of wide-eyed terror one second, psychotic fury the next, then back again.

The triangles stared out. With their black eyes, they could have been looking anywhere, but Perry knew they were looking right at him.

Sonofabitch. You will die. Your death will be worse than the rest.

Perry took a half step back. That sensation of grayness remained, but whatever was jamming him, it didn’t work this close to a triangle. He hadn’t expected that—he’d hoped to come in, not hear a thing, then get the fuck out.

Perry didn’t realize he was shaking until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Take it easy, Perry,” Dew said. “They can’t get to you.”

“I gotta get out of here, Dew. I gotta get out.”

Dew’s voice stayed low. Low and calm. “What you gotta do is focus. We need to talk to these things. We need the location of the next gate, and you’re the only one who can get it.”

“But Dew—”

“Listen to me,” Dew said. “Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to. You can’t bring Bill back, but this is your chance to make it right. You have to take it.”

Dew was right. Dew had fought, had sacrificed. He wasn’t asking Perry to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.

“Can they hear me in there?” Perry asked.

Margaret nodded. “There are speakers in the cell. The microphone in your earpiece picks up your voice. They can hear you just fine.”

Perry nodded inside the helmet. Now he was grateful for the suit, because if he pissed himself no one would see. He cleared his throat. For some reason he remembered the punch line to an old joke: It’s sure not gonna suck itself.

No more waiting.

“I’m supposed to talk to you,” he said. “Figure out what you want.”

We want kill you. You are the destroyer.

Full sentences. Punctuation. Soon they would tear free from the woman’s body.

“Where is the next gate?”

Nothing.

“You want to… open up the door, I know that. What’s going to come through?”

Ayyynnngellls.

Angels. Coming through the gate. Perry had never heard that from his own triangles, and there was something profoundly disturbing about it.

The angels are coming. People build for them," just like we do. We’re going to make your life a living hell,"just like we do. We’re going to make your life a living hell, and that’s what you deserve, you cheating bastard.

They seemed different, different from his own triangles, the ones he had called the Magnificent Seven. Different from Fatty Patty’s triangles and hatchlings. These three sounded feminine, but caustic, angry. Perry wondered what Bernadette Smith’s personality had been like before the infections. Something told Perry there was one word for it—bitch.

“What did they say?” Dew asked.

“Hard to tell,” Perry said. “I think whatever is coming through wants to make us build things.”

“Build things?” Dew said. He spoke louder, as if that would held him be heard inside the containment cell. “What are we going to build for you?”

You’ll do what you’re told or you’ll get the paddle.

“They’re not going to say what it is,” Perry said. “I can tell. So much hate, derision coming off them… I think they want to make us slaves.”

“Oh fuck that,” Dew said. “The Jewells. Ask them where the Jewells are, see if you get any vibes.”

Kill him. Get the gun, kill kill kill.

Perry stared at them, waiting to feel the rush of violent desire.

But he didn’t feel anything.

He’d beaten them. Dew was right, he could do this.

“Where is the Jewell family?” Perry said, his voice growing a little stronger with each word. “Bobby Jewell, Candice Jewell, Chelsea Jewell.

Where are they?”

Perry locked onto their jet-black eyes. Nothing.

And then he heard a voice. Not the triangles, something new.

Something cold.

I think you should leave the Jewell family alone.

A little girl’s voice. Clear, human, but in his head.

You’re scared, aren’t you? You should be scared.

“You’re scared, too,” Perry said. “I can feel it.”

Dew nudged Perry’s shoulder. “What are they saying, kid?”

Kill that man.

“Nothing,” Perry said. “They’re not saying anything.”

I can make you do it. I’m in charge. People have to do what I say.

An intense rage swept through Perry. Oh, God, there it was, that heated lust to hurt. The hatchlings couldn’t stir that up in him anymore, but this girl could, and far more powerfully than he’d ever felt before.

Only this time he felt it for Dew Phillips.

Kill him.

Kill him.

“I gotta get out of here,” Perry said. “I can’t be in here.”

“Kid, come on,” Dew said. “Don’t chicken out now. We have to find the Jewells, or at least see if the triangle-whatever will negotiate or something.”

What’s the matter, scaredy-cat? Are you afraid?

Perry shook his head. “No. I got to go. Margaret, whatever you’re going to do, you need to do it quick. They’re going to hatch soon.”

“How do you know?” Margaret asked.

“They’re using complete sentences,” Perry said. “Pauses, like they’re talking with punctuation. They didn’t do that with me until near the end.

You’ve got a day, maybe half a day before they hatch.”

Kill him.

Margaret looked at Bernadette, then back to Perry. “You’re sure about that?”

“Perry, talk to them,” Dew said.

I feel your fear. I’m going to get you…

Perry put his hands to his ears, a subconscious effort to block out the voices. His gloved hands hit his helmeted head before he remembered he couldn’t actually hear the voices with his ears at all.

“Leave me alone!”

“Okay, kid,” Dew said. “Just take it easy.”

“Don’t worry, Perry,” Margaret said. “We’re going to operate on her right now. We’ll get rid of them.”

Perry had to turn his whole body so he could look at Margaret. She seemed so small, a tiny face swimming inside that big helmet, like a guppy in a fishbowl. Was she really that naive?

“You know what?” Perry said. “I never thanked you for saving my life.”

He turned and opened the airlock door. The light changed from green to red. He walked out. Dew followed, shutting the door behind them both.

Margaret stared at the red/green light above the airlock door for a few seconds, irrationally worried it wouldn’t change from red back to green, that she wouldn’t be able to open the door again and that Bernadette might tear free from the trolley at any moment. When it finally turned back to green, Margaret realized she’d been holding her breath.

“Margo, you okay?” Clarence asked.

“Fine,” she said.

“Man,” Clarence said. “That guy is soooo messed up.”

“Yes, he is,” Margaret said. “It’s got to be hard to see triangles again. So disturbing to see them for anyone… I can’t imagine what’s it’s like for Perry. Despite that, aside from what he just had to endure, I think he’s making progress. It was nice of him to finally thank me for saving him.”

“That’s not what he said. He said he never thanked you. I don’t think he wanted to live.”

She started to correct Clarence but stopped herself. Maybe he was right. Perry Dawsey’s life wasn’t exactly a bed of roses.

“It doesn’t matter, because I did save him.” She jerked her thumb toward Bernadette. “And I’m going to save her, too. Now, please help me prep this woman for surgery. If Perry’s right, we don’t have much time.”

“We need to go back to the control room first,” Clarence said. “We need to talk to Murray.”

“Why the hell do we need to talk to Murray? We need to get moving, hon. Every second counts.”

“Please, Margaret,” Clarence said. “This is already complicated enough.

We have to make sure the president is informed. Doctor Dan needs to suit up, anyway. He can prep the patient while we tell Murray what’s going on. Okay?”

She didn’t have time for this. But then again, keeping the wheels greased was part of the program. Gutierrez wanted to pretend he was in control? She could play that game, but only for so long.

“I’ll talk to him,” she said. “But you’ve got fifteen minutes, hon. Then I’m operating no matter what. We’re going to need all hands for this. We might have to work as two separate teams simultaneously, Dan and Marcus on the heart, Gitsh and I on the hip.”

“Sure,” Clarence said quietly. “I’ll get everyone ready. You get back to the control room, okay?”

Margaret nodded. She squeezed his gloved hand, then opened the airlock door and walked out.

“Perry, wait up.” Dew tried to run after him, but the biohazard suit combined with his aching hip and popping knees made that practically impossible.

Perry kept walking. Even though he had a limp of his own, his long strides quickly carried him into the darkness of the Jewell family’s expansive property.

Dew stopped and put his hand on his hips. He was too old for this crap.

“Perry! Come on.”

Perry stopped and turned.

“Stay there for a second,” Dew said. “Better yet, come back here.”

Perry glared at Dew, then walked, big steps bringing him back just as fast as they’d taken him away.

“What was that all about?” Dew asked. “Those things are behind glass, and they haven’t even hatched yet. I know they’re freaky, but come on, you have to be stronger than that.”

“It’s not them,” Perry said. “It’s… something else.”

“What?”

“I think Chelsea Jewell was talking to me. Talking to me through the triangles.”

Dew longed for the days when he could hear something like that and say, You’re fucking crazy. But Perry Dawsey wasn’t crazy. This was just another facet in his waking nightmare.

“What makes you think it was Chelsea?”

“I’m taking a guess,” Perry said. “It was a little girl’s voice. Chelsea and her family got out, she’s a little girl, I’m making the connection.”

“You’re a regular Columbo,” Dew said.

Perry stared, then smiled a strange smile. “That’s more of a compliment than you can know.”

There was probably a story behind that, but now wasn’t the time. “So you had Chelsea Jewell in your head. Tell me why that scares you so bad.”

Perry leaned back a little and stared up at the black winter night.

“Power,” Perry said. “It wasn’t like when the triangles talk to me. This is something different. I don’t know, Dew, not all of these things have easy definitions, but she wanted… never mind what she wanted. She’s got power, Dew. Big-time. Whatever she is, it’s nothing I’ve felt before.”

“What about her parents? You get anything from them?”

Perry shook his head. “No, just her. We need to find her. Deal with her.

Before she gets stronger.”

“We’re working on that, kid. We’ve got an APB out on Clan Jewell. Every cop in ten states has their pictures. Now, come on, we have to get the gate location. We have no maps this time—it’s Bernadette Smith or bust. Let’s get back in the trailer and ask some more questions.”

“I’m not going back in,” Perry said.

“Don’t be a pussy,” Dew said.

Perry’s eyes widened, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a slight smile. He pointed a finger at Dew. “Don’t. Push. Me.”

Perry turned and walked into the darkness.

Dew let him go. There was a time to lead, a time to follow and a time to get the fuck out of the way. He’d seen that look on Perry’s face once before—when the kid had been coming right at him, smiling, wide-eyed, naked and covered in blood, hopping on one foot with his severed cock flopping in his clenched fist.

Yep, definitely the time to get the fuck out of the way.

The Orbital couldn’t understand it. It had given Chelsea very specific instructions.

Chelsea, I told you not to talk to the destroyer.

I know you did.

So she hadn’t forgotten. She remembered the order, yet she had disobeyed anyway.

If you knew it was for bidden, why did you do it?

I dunno.

The Orbital tried to process the response. Tried, and failed.

What do you mean, you do not know?

I dunno.

Do not disobey me, Chelsea. You will bring the destroyer if you talk to him. You must never, ever connect to him again.

I already told you once, Chauncey. You’re not the boss of me.

The Orbital felt the connection end. Chelsea had broken it. The Orbital hadn’t known that was possible.

Clearly, it had to make additional changes. Now it would have to divert yet another part of its processing to making sure Chelsea could not speak to the destroyer again.

She was already more powerful than projected, and that power would only increase as she connected to become more and more converted.

MURRAY AND VANESSA, BFF

The president of the United States of America sat in his Oval Office chair, holding a glass of sixty-year-old Macallan on the rocks. Vanessa Col-burn sat in a chair near the desk. She didn’t drink, Murray had heard. Except, maybe, for the blood of her victims. Or of random orphans. Or maybe a kitten.

The Macallan was an Inauguration Day gift from the Scottish ambassador. It was rumored to cost upwards of thirty thousand dollars a bottle. You didn’t exactly give the president of the United States a bottle of Chivas Regal as a present. That glass alone was probably worth more than Murray made in a week. He would have loved to let Gutierrez savor the scotch, but now wasn’t a time for slow sipping.

“Mister President, we need an answer,” Murray said. “Doctor Montoya wants to operate on Bernadette Smith immediately.”

“So operate,” Vanessa said. “Ogden’s men got you the live host you wanted, but Dawsey won’t talk to the triangles. Kind of shoots the whole plan right out of the sky.”

In one sentence she managed to combine the success of her idea to send Ogden with the failure of Murray’s team to capitalize on it. Okay, so it was actually a compound sentence—that didn’t change how effortlessly Vanessa Colburn could make you look like an idiot.

“Montoya can still dissect a triangle before it decomposes,” Vanessa said. “We’re further ahead than we were before, even though Dawsey failed to communicate, so what’s the problem?”

“The problem, Miss Colburn, is that for three months we’ve also been trying to capture a live hatchling. Now we can achieve that objective.”

Vanessa stared at him. “Achieve that objective? What the hell are you saying, Murray? That we should just let this woman die so we can capture a hatchling?”

“It’s an option that’s on the table.”

“It’s an option if you’re a fucking vampire,” she said.

She was calling him a vampire? Priceless. “We need information. Wars aren’t won with guns. They’re won with intel.”

She shook her head. “This isn’t a war, Murray.”

He’d had just about all he could take from her. This woman had the president’s ear? This woman was part of deciding the fate of the free world?

“Not a war?” Murray said. “What would you call it, then?”

“It’s a crisis situation,” Vanessa snapped. “No one in his right mind would call this a war.”

“And what the fuck do you know about war? Huh? With your fucking Ivy League education? You’re going to tell me what a war is?”

“Take it easy, Murray,” Gutierrez said.

“I don’t think I will, Mister President,” Murray said. He could hear himself, he tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t take it anymore. “Tell me, Miss Colburn, in your infinite wisdom, do you know what it’s like to have someone shoot at you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” she said. “I earned my Ivy League education.

Earned it while growing up without any money, with drugs all around me and crime all over the place. I saw my fair share of guns, Murray. I’ve seen friends die.”

Murray laughed at her. “Oh, is that right? So you grew up in da hood, and that means you know what war is? After you saw someone die, did you run back to your house and turn on MTV?”

“You don’t know me,” Vanessa said. “You don’t know how I grew up.”

“Fine, then educate me. How many people have you killed?”

She said nothing.

“None? Okay, I’ll give you a free pass there. How many times have you held your friend’s head while he bled out, looked into his eyes and promised him you’d make sure his kids would grow up strong? None? Well then, surely you must have had to wipe your friend’s brains off your fucking face, right? How many times have you hidden in a rice paddy as your blood seeps into the filthy water? How many times have you had to kill a twelve-year-old girl because she was shooting her AK at you? Huh?

Maybe da hood don’t sound so tough now, does it?”

“Murray!” Gutierrez barked. “Your service to this country is no small matter, but that’s enough.”

Murray realized he was breathing hard and sweating. In thirty years of being in this room, in front of six presidents, he’d never snapped like that.

This woman could push his buttons like no other. He pulled some Kleenex from his pocket and wiped the perspiration from his head.

Vanessa didn’t look upset at all. Her poker face was good, but it couldn’t hide her main emotion—satisfaction. She’d won. She’d exposed his mistakes. She’d made him lose his temper, big-time. In her eyes he saw a crystal-clear message—if he was going to save any part of his career, he needed to cave in and back whatever she suggested.

Murray cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Mister President.”

Gutierrez gave his political smile. “This is a rough situation. We’re all a little short-tempered.”

“Listen, Murray,” Vanessa said. “Believe me, I’m not some hippie who thinks you were a baby killer or something. I respect your service and your experience, but you’re from a different time. This is the reason we came into office. Because people like you think we can just forget someone’s civil rights if it fits the moment.”

Murray’s temper reignited, but he’d be damned if he’d lose it again. He locked his jaw shut. An uneasy silence filled the Oval Office. Gutierrez finally broke it.

“How controlled would this be, Murray? If we let them hatch, would anyone know?”

Vanessa’s head snapped around in confusion. She started to speak, but Gutierrez held up a finger, cutting her off.

“How controlled, Murray?”

All Murray had to do was steer Gutierrez away from allowing the triangles to hatch. All he had to do was fall in line behind Vanessa, and she’d back off.

But they still didn’t know the location of the next gate. For that they needed a hatchling. Dawsey would come through—he had to come through.

And besides… Murray fucking hated Vanessa Colburn.

“Well, sir, I’ll be blunt,” Murray said. “The media already knows about the flesh-eating bacteria. If someone dies from that…” He spread his hands. “These things happen.”

Vanessa shook her head patronizingly. “These things do not just happen.”

“Vanessa,” Gutierrez said, “do me a favor and shut the fuck up.”

The look on her face might be the same one she’d have if Murray whipped out his cock and asked for a blow job with whip cream and ice cubes.

“On a scale of one to ten, Murray,” Gutierrez said, “how bad do we need to know what we’re up against?”

“One to ten? Try four hundred thirty-two. We’re facing some kind of invasion here. I think the time for tea and crumpets is long past.”

He looked hard at the president. Just two weeks in, was John Gutierrez already seeing beyond his idealism?

Only one way to find out, and that was to force the issue. Murray pulled out his phone and held it up.

“Mister President, please, I have to get your decision or soon there won’t be any point to this discussion. Saying nothing is the same thing as telling me to let them hatch. If you don’t mind a little advice from an old man, sir, don’t let indecision decide things for you. Make a call and live with it.”

Gutierrez stared off into nothingness, looking at something not inside the room.

“Let them hatch,” he said.

Murray typed LET IT RIDE into his cell phone with a thumb speed that would have drawn admiration from Betty Jewell in her texting prime. He hit send.

Vanessa shook her head. She had the look of a person about to explain something obvious to a loved one who just doesn’t get it. “Mister President,” she said. “John, I… we can’t do this.”

Gutierrez laughed. Murray heard the anguish in that laugh. “Vanessa, are you flinching? I never thought I’d see the day. I always knew that sooner or later I’d have to send people to their deaths. Every now and then, I’d kid myself, let myself hope that maybe my administration would be the lucky one, that a decision of mine wouldn’t result in flag-draped caskets. Sending soldiers to die is difficult, but dying is part of a soldier’s job. They understand that when they sign up. You know what’s even harder to deal with? Realizing that there is an American woman named Bernadette Smith, age twenty-eight, mother of three, a Christian who volunteers at her church, and that I’m going to knowingly let her die in the most horrible way imaginable.”

Vanessa shook her head. “Mister President, I insist th—”

He pounded the desk with his right fist. “You insist? You insist? Who is the fucking president here?”

“You are, John,” she said quietly.

“That’s Mister President,” Gutierrez said.

Vanessa looked down. “You are, Mister President.”

“Do you know why I’m the president of the United States of America, Vanessa?”

She shook her head.

“One, because I’m smart enough to hire and listen to people like you. And two, because I’m smart enough to know when not to listen to people like you. The hardest decision is usually the necessary decision, and that decision has just been made. Now get out.”

Vanessa looked at Murray, then back at the president. Murray wondered if she was going to cry.

She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, then opened it again.

“You… you want us to leave?”

“No,” Gutierrez said. “Just you. I need to talk to Murray.”

She did the double look again, first at Murray, then at Gutierrez who stared back, his face immobile.

Vanessa Colburn stood and walked out of the Oval Office so fast she almost broke into a run. The door shut behind her. Silence hung in the air.

“What about Montoya’s weather report?” Gutierrez asked. “Any luck finding this invisible satellite?”

“Not yet,” Murray said. “But we’ve got a lot of resources focused on it, sir. We’re trying to extrapolate possible locations. We’re hopeful we can find something soon.”

Gutierrez nodded slowly. He’d asked about the satellite in almost a perfunctory manner.

Murray calmly waited. He’d done this dance before.

“Am I doing the right thing?” Gutierrez asked finally. His stony expression broke. Murray could see the pain, the indecisiveness on the man’s face. “Murray, tell me straight. You’ve been doing this for a long time, right?”

“Yes, Mister President.”

“Am I doing the right thing, letting that woman die?”

“I don’t decide right and wrong. You do, sir. I just give you the information to make decisions, then carry out those decisions.”

“I see. And does that gigantic line of bullshit help you sleep at night?”

“No sir,” Murray said. “But a Xanax or two sure as hell does.”

Gutierrez sank back in his chair. He drained the glass of scotch, then set it down so hard that one of the ice cubes shot out and skidded across the desk. Murray walked to the drink cart, grabbed the bottle of Macallan, then poured the president a double.

“If it’s any consolation, Mister President, it makes me very proud, and very hopeful, that this decision is so hard for you. I’ve served five presidents before you. For some of them, I watched decisions like this become… become easy.”

Gutierrez stared at Murray for a second, then raised the glass in a salute. “Thank you, Murray. Now go take care of this.”

“Yes, Mister President,” Murray said, and walked out.

BOXERCISE

Margaret paced in the computer room, which was tough to do considering she could only walk about five steps before she had to turn a 180. The PVC fabric on her legs zip-zipped as she walked. She was still wearing the suit, sans helmet, in order to save time when she had to go back in for surgery. Dew was already out of his. She’d never seen him in scrubs before.

Clarence walked into the control room.

“Did you reach Murray?” she asked. “Is it okay with him if we go ahead and save this woman’s life now?”

Clarence looked at Dew, then back at her.

“What’s the problem?” she asked. “Come on, guys, chop-chop. Time’s a-wastin’.”

Dew looked at the floor. Clarence’s face was a blank.

“You can’t operate,” Clarence said.

“What are you talking about? We’ve got everything we can get from her.”

“Not everything,” Clarence said. “Not yet.”

She stared at him for a moment. Understanding flared up, but part of her fought it down. She didn’t want to believe what she was hearing.

“You… Clarence, you can’t be serious. You don’t think we’re going to let those things hatch out of that woman, do you?”

“We have orders,” he said.

Clarence had known what Murray’s answer would be. That’s why he’d insisted they wait, delay the surgery. If he hadn’t fed her that bullshit about keeping people in the loop, she’d already have Bernadette Smith on the operating table.

Margaret had heard the phrase seeing red. She’d understood it in theory, but she had never actually seen red. Until now. A rage exploded inside her like nothing she’d ever felt.

“We are not going to let that woman die!”

She took two steps forward and started jabbing her finger into Clarence’s broad chest. She could have also screamed at Dew, sure, but she’d almost expected this from a cold-blooded killer like him. But from Clarence? A man she’d made love to? “That woman has a ten-year-old son who just lost his father and two sisters. I can save Bernadette, I know it. We are going to operate on her, and right now, you rotten bastards. Do you hear me? Right now.”

Clarence shook his head. “We can’t, Margaret.”

“That’s Doctor Montoya to you, asshole. Doctor. As in sworn to protect life.”

“We have orders,” Clarence said.

“Orders from who? From that slimy bastard Murray Longworth? From Ogden? From him?” Margaret pointed at Dew, who kept staring at the floor. “Who the fuck thinks they can order me to let this woman die?”

“The president,” Clarence said quietly. “It’s from the top. Executive order.”

“Is that right? Well maybe he can order you to gas some Jews while you’re at it! How about that for following orders? Or maybe he can order Dew here to tie up some nigger and give him a whippin’ just to set an example!”

Clarence’s face wrinkled in anger, but she didn’t care. In fact, she liked it. She wanted to get a reaction out of this asshole, this goose-stepping asshole. How could she have ever thought she loved a coldhearted machine like this?

“What do you think, Dew?” Margaret screamed. “If you were ordered to do it, that would make it okay, wouldn’t it?”

“Margaret,” Clarence said, “please calm down.”

“Didn’t I tell you it’s Doctor Montoya? Didn’t I, Agent Otto?”

“You don’t understand, we ha—”

Margaret threw a straight right jab. He was still talking when she did. Her fist hit the bottom of his left front tooth. His head snapped back, from pain, not from the force of her punch, and his hands shot to his mouth. She had seen anger on his face before, but his new expression went way beyond that. This was fury. His eyes cut through her rage a bit, made her realize that no matter how mad she got, she was still a small woman and someone his size could hurt her. Hurt her bad, anytime he wanted to… or anytime he lost control.

His nostrils flared. He stood up to his full six-foot-three-inch height.

“You broke my tooth,” he said. His voice remained quiet, but it was no longer calm. Agent Clarence Otto, her lover—correction, former lover—was about one ounce shy of knocking her right the fuck out.

“Leave, Otto,” Dew said.

Clarence’s head snapped to the left and he glared at Dew. For a second, Margaret thought his rage might manifest itself on Dew Phillips.

“That’s an order,” Dew said quietly.

Clarence glared at him for another few seconds, then looked at Margaret, hate in his eyes. He turned and walked out of the trailer.

“You need to get a grip, Doctor Montoya,” Dew said. “We’re in a very bad situation here, and you’re smart enough to understand the big picture. Do you have that first-aid kit in here?”

“Why the fuck do you need a first-aid kit?”

Dew pointed down to her right fist. “Because you’re bleeding all over the place.”

Margaret felt the hot wetness a second before she lifted her hand. Only when she saw it did she feel the pain. Her right ring finger was split wide open at the base knuckle, cut by a piece of broken tooth wedged between the torn skin and the bone.

With her left hand, she opened a cabinet and pulled out the plastic first-aid kit. One-handed, she lifted its lid and rummaged for a suture needle and some gauze.

Dew held out his left hand, palm up.

“I don’t need your help, Phillips.”

“Yes you do.” His hand was still waiting for hers.

“My left hand is fine,” Margaret said. “I’ll be happy to split that one open on your tooth if you push me.”

“Clarence Otto is a gentleman,” Dew said. “I’m not. I’m a firm believer in equal rights. You hit me and you’ll be spitting up blood. Then, if I know Otto, he’s going to come after me because I hit his girl. He’s bigger than me, so I’ll have to knee him in the balls and then probably break his right arm to make him stay down.”

Margaret just stared at him. Dew talked in a slow, steady voice. A smooth voice. Even while he was talking about nothing but violence, his voice calmed her. Every degree her temper dropped, the pain in her hand went up correspondingly.

“Do you want to know how I’ll break his right arm, Doctor Montoya?”

Images of Perry Dawsey flashed through her mind, images of the huge man curled up on a hotel-room floor, bleeding from Dew’s handiwork. Her brain superimposed Clarence Otto over Perry Dawsey.

Dew’s left hand was still out, palm up.

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to know.” She lifted her bloody right hand and put it in his palm.

He picked the tooth out of her knuckle and put it on the computer counter. “Otto might want that back,” he said. “Aren’t you scientist types supposed to be above the fray and all that?”

“I’m not going to let that woman die,” Margaret said. “What just happened doesn’t change anything. I’m going to operate.”

“No you’re not.” Dew pulled gauze on the wound, pressed hard and held it. Margaret hissed at the pain. “What you’re going to do, Doctor Montoya, is what you’re told.”

She started to protest, but he squeezed her hand a little bit harder. The pain made her gasp, cutting off her words.

“The president ordered that we allow that woman’s triangles to hatch,” Dew said. “We can’t locate the next gate; therefore we can’t afford to kill something that might have that information.”

“We can’t sacrifice our own citizens, goddamit.”

“Wake up, Doctor Montoya. America sacrifices her own all the time. Always has, always will. We sacrificed enough of my friends in Vietnam.”

“We have a volunteer army now, Dew,” Margaret said. “It’s not the same thing. We don’t have the draft anymore.”

“Which will last exactly as long as there are enough troops to fight the engagements we have.” Dew removed the bloody gauze and tossed it into a wastebasket. He pressed another batch in place, held it with his left thumb, then pulled out a suture kit with his right hand. He tore it open with his teeth and set it next to the keyboard.

“The very second we face a big enough threat, you know damn well that draft will be back,” he said. “The few die so the many can live. That woman in there, she needs to die for that same reason.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Margaret said. “I’m not military. I am a doctor, and I do not sacrifice people. I’m going over your head.”

Dew removed the second batch of gauze, which was less bloody than the first. He pinched her torn skin together, picked up the pre-threaded needle and slid it through the flesh.

His hands were rough but warm. Gentle. She watched his technique: smooth, experienced.

“You’ve done this before?”

Dew nodded. “Sugar, I’ve done this while people were trying to kill me. I’ve done it to myself while people were trying to kill me. This here is just a little ol’ barroom brawl cut. Where did you learn to punch like that?”

“Boxercise,” Margaret said. “I’ve never actually hit anyone in my life.”

Dew nodded again. “You go over my head and you’re out,” he said as he made the second stitch. “It’s not a threat to say you’ll be put in solitary confinement until this thing is all over. I say it’s not a threat because I know you don’t care about punishment or pissing anyone off.”

“I don’t.”

Dew made a third stitch. “Still, that’s what will happen. You’ll be off the case and someone else will take over. Maybe that Doctor Chapman fella, maybe your old buddy Doctor Cheng.”

Dew made the fourth stitch, then looked her in the eyes. His face was only a few inches from hers. She felt his hands moving—he was tying off the stitch by feel alone.

“Whoever it is, they won’t know as much as you, Margaret. They’re going to have to spend time catching up, time we don’t have. And they will probably miss something that could make all the difference.”

She looked away. He was right.

“We don’t know what’s coming through those gates,” Dew said. “But whatever it is, it would already have come through if it wasn’t for you. Thanks to your weather theory, we may even find the source of infection. If it’s a satellite, we might be able to shoot it down. That’s because of you. Margaret—we can’t do this without you.”

“But Dew, that woman… it’s going to he horrible.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, it will. But we need to know. You’re playing in the big leagues now, and part of the game at this level is knowing when you have to make a sacrifice.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Margaret said. “This is what you’re good at, right?”

Dew smiled. It was a smile full of bitterness.

“Among the best, I’m told. Kind of a dubious honor. Look, Doc, no matter what you say, what you do, or who you talk to, Bernadette Smith is going to die. All you can do is put up a useless protest and be pulled off the project. You get to keep your integrity, but at what cost to the country? To humanity? Tell me you understand that part at least.”

She did understand. Any protest would just be ignored, accomplish nothing—the Murray Longworth machine would roll over her. Things would continue, only less effectively. And as much as it made her hate herself, she wasn’t going to let a wasted gesture take her off this project.

“I get it,” she said.

“If you think Gutierrez is making this call on a whim, if you think it’s easy for Otto and me to execute it, then you’re a fool. I hope you never have to make a call like this, Margaret. But if you do, you just remember—is one life worth the lives of hundreds? Of thousands?”

“We don’t know that sacrificing Bernadette Smith is going to save hundreds of lives. Or even one life.”

Dew nodded. “Exactly. We don’t know, and that’s why a decision like this is such a mindfuck.”

He stood up and started repacking the first-aid kit. Her hand was already bandaged. She hadn’t even felt it. Had a few different cards been dealt, Dew Phillips could have been a world-class surgeon.

He started to walk out, then turned to face her. “So shall I get Doctor Chapman to run things, or will you do your job?”

She hated him. She hated him more than she thought it possible to hate a human being, and almost as much as she hated Clarence Otto.

“I’ll do it,” she said.

That bitter smile again.

Dew Phillips walked out of the control room, leaving Margaret alone to think about the coming nightmare.

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

Colonel Charlie Ogden stood in the command tent, looking over the maps and satellite photos spread across a central table. Corporal Cope sat on a stool. He had the forward-leaning posture of a bird of prey, waiting to pounce on Ogden’s next order.

Ogden wondered if he’d get even his customary four hours of sleep that night. Probably wasn’t time for it. And if he couldn’t sleep, neither could Corporal Cope. Poor guy. But Cope was a young man; he didn’t really need sleep. Sleep was for pussies.

Ogden checked his watch: 2130.

“Corporal.”

“Yes sir?”

“Any word from Doc Harper about private Climer?”

“Nothing yet, sir,” Cope said.

“How long ago was Harper in here?”

“About twelve hours, Colonel.”

“How long does it take to wake up from being shot in the fucking shoulder?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir,” Cope said. “I can look it up online if you like.”

“It was a rhetorical question, Corporal.”

“Yes sir.”

Maybe the kid did need some sleep after all.

“Corporal, any hits from the satellite search?”

“No sir,” Cope said. “I’m all over them, as you requested. I’m on a first-name basis with the squints now, sir, although the name they have for me when they take my calls every fifteen minutes isn’t Jeff, if you know what I mean.”

The squints were annoyed with thoroughness? Well, fuck ’em. They weren’t on the front lines.

Ogden sipped lukewarm coffee, staring, thinking. He’d expanded the search area, applied every available resource, and still no sign of a gate. All the previous outbreaks had resulted in a construct somewhere within about a hundred miles. Granted, a hundred-mile radius made for a huge area, but they had dozens of air assets and dedicated satellite coverage. If something was there, they should have found it.

What really worried him, however, was the Jewell family. Ogden had no doubt the Jewells were at least partially responsible for the deaths of his men. Thus far the APB hadn’t turned up a thing.

So where had they gone?

The tent flap opened. A soldier walked in, shirtless, wearing boots, fatigues and a white bandage around his left shoulder. In his right hand, he carried his M4.

“Speak of the devil,” Corporal Cope said. “Dustin, how you feeling?”

“Fine,” Dustin said. “I’m here to see the colonel.”

Ogden put down his coffee mug. “You’re wounded, son, and you’re out of uniform. I told Doc Harper I’d come see you.”

“That’s okay, Colonel,” Dustin said. “I came for you. You’re the one we need.”

“You get your ass back to bed, Private Climer,” Ogden said. “I’ll talk to you there. I don’t want you out of Doc Harper’s sight, understood?”

Climer stood tall and gave an exaggerated salute. “Sir, yes sir! Doc Harper is right outside, sir!”

The kid was acting strange. Painkillers? Climer walked closer to Corporal Cope. The tent flap opened again and two men entered: Doc Harper and Nurse Brad. Doc Harper’s nose was broken, white bone jutting up from a red gash. And yet he was smiling. Nurse Brad was smiling as well, his mouth hanging open at a strange angle. Drool dripped from his jaw, swinging in a long, glistening strand when he moved.

“Sir!” Climer screamed. “We are here on a recruiting trip, sir! We want you to be all you can be!”

It all clicked home. How could he have been so stupid? Roznowski had let Climer live. The gunshot to the shoulder had just been camouflage to keep Climer under the radar as the disease took him over. That meant the disease was now contagious.

Charlie Ogden reached for his sidearm.

Nurse Brad and Doc Harper rushed forward.

Dustin Climer whipped his M4 in a horizontal arc, catching the slow-reacting Corporal Cope in the throat. Cope fell off his stool, coughing.

Ogden fired two shots. The first one went wide. The second one hit Doc Harper right in the forehead just as Brad connected with a flying tackle. Nurse Brad was a big, strong, young soldier, and the hit rattled Ogden’s middle-aged body. As they crashed to the ground, Ogden heard Climer rushing toward them. Ogden tried to bring the gun around, but Brad grabbed his wrist with both hands. With his free hand, Ogden jammed his thumb into Brad’s right eye. The eyeball popped, spilling clear fluid onto Ogden’s hand.

Nurse Brad didn’t let go.

He didn’t stop drooling.

He didn’t even stop smiling.

Another hand tore the gun free and pinned Ogden’s arm to the ground. Something slammed into his stomach, and he suddenly found himself unable to draw a breath. Ogden tried to kick, tried to pull, but he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t fight against the two young soldiers pinning him down.

Climer’s face seemed to float over his own, backlit by the tent’s lights.

“Sir, yes sir!” Climer said. “I want you to get your mind right, sir!”

Ogden felt hands on the sides of his head, holding it so he couldn’t turn in either direction. Climer straddled his chest. His right hand held Ogden’s forehead, pinning his head to the ground. Climer’s other hand grabbed his chin—hard—and pulled his mouth open.

Then Climer leaned forward, leaned close.

Ogden would have said, What the fuck are you doing? if he could have breathed, if he could have moved his mouth, but he couldn’t do either. All he could do was growl from deep in his throat.

Colonel Charlie Ogden saw Climer’s tongue. Swollen. Covered in blue sores.

Triangular blue sores.

Climer’s lips closed around his own, and Climer’s tongue dove into his mouth. Wide-eyed in shock and confusion, Ogden tried again to get away. He tried to bite down but could not—Climer’s strong hand held his lower jaw open.

Ogden felt the hot wetness of Climer’s tongue fishing around inside his mouth. He felt the sting of a hundred needles.

Then he felt the burning.

Climer sat up, looked down at him, wiped his lips with the back of his hand and smiled.

Ogden’s mouth was on fire.

“It won’t be long now, sir,” Climer said. “Not long at all.”

WELCOME TO DETROIT

“Mister Jenkins, are we there yet?”

“I think we’re close, Chelsea,” Mr. Jenkins said.

Chelsea was tired of driving. She followed along on the map. The long trip from Gaylord, then driving all over the city, looking for just the right place. The Winnebago rolled down an empty St. Aubin Street. Headlights played off abandoned buildings and lit up broken pavement. A light wind blew wisps of snow, invisible until they crossed in front of the headlights, then invisible again as they swept past. Even with a couple of inches of snow, they saw trash everywhere: newspapers, Doritos bags, chunks of broken wood, piles of broken bricks speckled with bits of mortar like ocean rocks dotted with barnacles.

“You wanted a secret place,” Mr. Jenkins said. “I think this area will do. This is the kind of Detroit we’ve been looking for.”

“There’s no one down here,” Mommy said. “It’s like a ghost town. You’d think there would at least be homeless, squatters.”

“Winter is hard on them,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Looks like these buildings don’t have electricity, so no heat unless they build a fire.”

“What about gangs?” Mommy asked. “Will we be safe here?”

Mr. Jenkins shrugged. “Pretty much. Look around you. What are the gangs going to do here? Freeze their asses off, that’s what. If we get out of sight and stay out of sight, we should be okay. It’s like most cities, I bet—you don’t fuck with people, people don’t fuck with you.”

“There’s that naughty word again, Mister Jenkins,” Chelsea said.

Mr. Jenkins hung his head. “I’m sorry, Chelsea.”

The Winnebago turned right on Atwater Street. On their left was a small, mostly empty marina opening onto the Detroit River. Ahead on the right, they saw a lone three-story brick building surrounded by vacant lots filled with rubble, broken fences and tall grass weighed down by snow. A faded blue band ringed the top of the building, flecked with reddish-tan where spots of original brick showed through. The words GLOBE TRADING COMPANY were painted on the blue in faded white letters.

Chelsea liked this building. She liked it a lot.

“What about this place, Mister Jenkins?”

“Looks like no one’s here,” he said. “It’s all boarded up. Could be some bums inside, but if so, we can take care of them.”

“Is there…” Chelsea searched for the words that Chauncey had given her. “Is there a lot of concrete? Is there… rebar? Metal? Those things will make it hard to see us from space.”

“Oh sure,” Mr. Jenkins said. “There will be lots of that.”

“Good,” Chelsea said. “I think the dollies will like it here. Let’s go inside and look.”

“Okay,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Let’s drive around the building and look for a door we can open up. We need to pull the Winnebago inside, or the police will see it in the morning.”

The Winnebago turned right on Orleans, and its headlights lit a man in the middle of the street. He was dressed in only a T-shirt and jeans, shivering like mad. Even in the dim headlights, they could see that his fingers were swollen and raw. Behind the man they saw the rear of a squat, jet-black motorcycle caked with frozen sludge, dirt and even some ice.

“Holy shit,” Mr. Jenkins said. “It’s freezing outside. That guy was riding a Harley? Is that an Ohio plate on that thing? Look at his fucking fingers.”

“Language,” Chelsea said.

“Sorry, Chelsea,” Mr. Jenkins said.

She reached out. The man’s name was Danny Korves. He had lived in a town called Parkersburgh. That was a long ways away, and he was cold to the point where he would soon die.

“Mister Jenkins,” Chelsea said, “go get that man and bring him inside. We need to warm him up.”

She didn’t want Mr. Korves to be cold.

After all, if he felt cold, so would the nine dollies growing inside him.

Now that she had enough of them, she knew how long it would take to build the gate. Construction would begin almost as soon as the dollies hatched.

And that moment was only a few hours away, sometime around dawn.