Infected

87.

It had all happened so fast that wisps of smoke still curled from the freshly fired. 45. Dew had done his job yet again, but he didn’t feel any better. He was no closer to discovering the parties responsible for this horror, for killing his partner. Dew said nothing, kept a grip on his weapon, watched Clarence Otto direct the rapid-response team as they set up a small perimeter around Dawsey.

A third-floor window shattered outward. Dew looked up, saw the flame tongues billowing out, greasy black smoke roiling toward the sky. But he saw something else, something burning, something falling. A brief flailing comet, whipping, ropelike extensions making it resemble a flaming medusa’s head.

The thing hit hard against the snow-covered pavement, flames seeming to splash outward before they roared upward again. He stared, disbelieving, the back of his mind already making a connection that his conscious thoughts refused to allow. The flaming thing stood, or at least tried to stand, burning, boneless legs supported a body all but obscured by jumping flames. There was a small screech, a pitiful thing, the sound a weak woman makes when she feels severe pain.

A thin trail of fluid shot from the thing to land in a steaming, boiling black streak on the dirty snow. The creature shuddered once more, then popped, flaming pieces scattering across the parking lot. The pieces burned brightly like wreckage from a crashed airliner.

Suddenly Margaret was at his side, her protective helmet gone, her black hair hanging about the biosuit, an ashen look of dread on her face.

“Now it makes sense,” she said quietly. “Oh my God now it all makes sense. Dawsey, the others-they’re just hosts for these things. ”

Dew let his mind make that connection, let himself accept the unimaginable. This was no time to start doubting the obvious, no matter how fucked up the obvious might be, and he still had a job to do. The sound of approaching men tore his attention from the dwindling bits of flame. Cops were coming on the run, local boys, state troopers, at least a dozen, with more probably a few steps behind.

Dew turned to Otto and the biosuited agents. All of them stood with guns at the ready, casting snap-glances all around the parking lot, looking to see if there were more of the nightmarish creatures.

Dew barked orders in his booming sergeant’s voice. “Get Dawsey in the van! Squad Three, police those pieces and do it now! Move move move!” The soldiers scurried to obey Dew’s commands. He turned to face the cops, who closed on the burning building. He stepped forward, thinking of what bullshit to say, thinking of a way to explain the creature, but the cops rushed right past the burning pieces and through Building G’s main door.

Bob Zimmer sprinted up to Dew, his eyes on the flames shooting from the broken third-floor window.

“Did you get him?” Zimmer asked.

“Yeah,” Dew said. “I got him. He’s dead.” The cops hadn’t seen the falling creature. Or if they had, they hadn’t made sense of it; perhaps they were too far away. Or perhaps, his conscience nagged him, perhaps they were too worried about the people in the burning building to care about something peculiar but obviously not human falling from the third-floor window.

“Are there still people in there?”

“Probably,” Dew said. “I didn’t get anybody out before Dawsey ran.”

Zimmer didn’t nod, didn’t acknowledge Dew’s comment. He stepped toward the building, directing other cops inside, shouting orders to the first cops emerging from the building escorting confused and scared residents.

The biosuited soldiers were already dousing the pieces and scooping up what bits they could. Dew watched the last of them hop into the vans. Everyone was loaded up except for Clarence Otto and Margaret Montoya. She stared at the building, a blank look on her face. Otto stood by her side, waiting for Dew’s next command.

Dew pointed his finger south, in the direction of the hospital. Otto put his arm around Margaret’s shoulder and quickly guided her to the van that held Dawsey. Dew closed the doors behind them. The vans quietly pulled away, avoiding the confused rush of policemen, then sped out of the parking lot.

Somewhere in the distance, Dew heard the faint approach of sirens: ambulances, the fire department. He looked up at the third floor one last time-the window was all but obscured by the raging fire, flames shooting up at least twenty feet into the sky. There wouldn’t be anything left in that apartment.

Amid the shouting chaos, Dew calmly walked to his Buick. He shut himself inside the Buick and stared at Dawsey’s singed map, at the strange symbol so neatly drawn there. The symbol matched the one carved into Dawsey’s arm. The words This is the place neatly written in blue ink. It wasn’t the same hand that had scrawled This is the place on the map in Dawsey’s apartment. This writing was clean, measured.

The writing of a woman.

“Fuck me,” Dew whispered. Dawsey hadn’t run randomly at all-there had been another infected victim in that apartment, a victim that was likely still in the apartment and burning to a crisp. She’d sheltered Dawsey; they were working together.

It was very possible they knew each other before the infection. They lived in the same complex, after all. But if they hadn’t known each other before contracting the triangles, then that meant victims could somehow identify each other, help each other.

And, more important, if they hadn’t known each other, it was possible they had independently decided that Wahjamega was the place to be. And if that was the case, then the only possible conclusion was that they wanted to go there because of the infection.

Or, possibly, the infection wanted to go there.

Margaret’s words replayed in his head: They’re building something, she’d said.

Dew thought back to the burning creature that had fallen from the third-story window, then scrambled for his big cellular.

Murray answered on the first ring. “Did you get him?”

“We got him,” Dew said. “Alive, exactly the way you wanted him. The stakes just went up. Listen and listen good, L.T. I need men in Wahjamega, Michigan, and I need them now. And none of those ATF or CIA commando wannabes. Make it marines or Green Berets or fucking Navy SEALs, but get me men, at least a platoon and then a division, as fast as they can get there. Full combat gear. Fire support, too. Artillery, tanks, the whole works. And choppers, lots of choppers.”

“Dew, what the fuck is going on?”

“And that satellite, is it redirected to Wahjamega yet?”

“Yes,” Murray said. “It already made a pass. The squints are looking at the images now.”

“I’m going to take a picture of a symbol and send it to you as soon as I hang up. This symbol, that’s what the squints are looking for, got it?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“And I want a surveillance van punched into that satellite, and I want it there in thirty minutes. And a chopper better pick me up in the next fifteen minutes. I don’t care if we have to commandeer the fucking Channel Seven Eye in the Sky, you get me transport ASAP.”

“Dew,” Murray said quietly, “I can’t get you all that so fast, and you know it.”

“You get it!” Dew screamed into the cellular. “You get it right fucking now! You can’t believe the shit I just saw.”