Contagious (28 page)

Hoses from the trucks poured water onto the burning house, turning the yard into a slushy mess filled with cinders and mud. A lead on a triangle case taking him to a house on fire?
Gosh,
Dew thought,
what a surprise
. If he’d come as soon as they reached Gaylord, he’d probably have the Jewells in custody right now. Instead, Dew had a feeling all he’d get would be more corpses for Margaret’s collection.
Margaret. She was a mess. Amos had gone out hard. The longer she stayed in this business, in the secret land of the Murray Longworths and the Dew Phillipses, the more she’d understand shit like that was inevitable. He wondered if she’d block it out, or if someday in the future she’d be telling her own war stories.
Dew looked at Perry, who stood expressionless, watching the fire. What was going on in that big melon of his? Three days since they’d tussled, and Perry really seemed to have come around. Looked like Margaret was right again. Dew hoped it was a genuine change. As fucked up as it sounded, and it sounded damn fucked up, he was starting to like the kid.
Dew nudged Perry. “You feel anything?”
Perry shook his head. “Just that gray feeling. Something else is there, but I can’t lock onto it.”
“How about that other feeling?” Dew asked. “The one where they’re mounting the fourth-quarter comeback?”
“Yeah,” Perry said. “I still feel that. Only now it’s stronger.”
A man wearing fireman’s gear stomped through the slush toward them. “You Dew Phillips?”
Dew nodded and offered his hand.
“Brandon Jastrowski. The police chief said I need to help you guys in any way.” Brandon looked at Perry, then offered his hand. “And you are?”
Perry looked at Dew. Dew nodded.
“Perry Dawsey,” Perry said, shaking the offered hand.
“Dawsey?
Scary
Perry Dawsey?”
Perry nodded.
“Holy shit,” Brandon said. “A real pleasure to meet you. Used to love watching you play. Oh how I hate Ohio State, am I right?”
Perry nodded again.
“And what was up with all that murder stuff in the news a few months back?”
“Mistaken identity,” Dew said. “Perry’s working for the government now. What’s the deal with the house? Any bodies?”
“Unfortunately, there are,” Brandon said. “Adult male, adult female and a child, maybe seven to ten years old. Probably Bobby and Candy Jewell—they owned the place—and their daughter, Chelsea.”
“Probably?”
“Bodies are in bad shape,” Brandon said. “All three were in the kitchen, where the fire started. Definitely arson, no question. And some major foul play. The woman has a hole in her skull, likely a gunshot to the back of the head.”
“We need the bodies,” Dew said.
“Excuse me?”
“The bodies, we need them. Have your men get them out, put them in body bags, then leave them over there, under that little swing.” Dew pointed to a tree in the front yard. Two ropes hung down from a bare, snow-covered branch and ended in a little plank of snow-covered wood.
Brandon looked at the swing, then looked back at Dew. “But . . . ah . . .we need to take bodies to the county morgue.”
“Not today,” Dew said. “The morgue is coming to us, so to speak. Put the bodies in the bags, put the bags over there, do it as fast as you can. Understood?”
Brandon stared for a second, then nodded. He went back to the fire.
Dew pulled out his cell phone and dialed. Otto answered immediately.
“Otto, it’s Dew. We’re at the Jewell place. Whole family is dead, house fire, maybe some gunplay.”
“Perry go off again?”
“No, he had nothing to do with it.”
“Seriously?”
“Shut your pie-hole,” Dew said. “Get your team moving, I want the MargoMobile here ASAP. It’s time for Margaret to sack up and get back to work.”
THE MAP
Chelsea sat behind a glass door looking out over Mr. Jenkins’s backyard. She’d pulled the curtain almost closed, leaving only a one-inch space to look through the glass. That was enough to see up the hill and watch the flames lick up from her house. It looked so small from this far away. She couldn’t really make out individual people, but she knew they were there.
One person in particular.
The boogeyman
.
Chelsea was very careful not to reach to him, not to connect. If he sensed her now, when he was this close . . .
“Chelsea,” Daddy called from Mr. Jenkins’s living room, “I think you need to see this.”
Chelsea carried her bowl of ice cream into the room and sat down next to Daddy. Mr. Jenkins didn’t have ice cream bars, but double chocolate almond wasn’t bad, either.
The TV was showing a commercial. Five people were in the living room: Ryan Roznowski, Daddy, Old Sam Collins, Mommy, Mr. Burkle the Postman and Mr. Jenkins.
Mr. Jenkins sat in a La-Z-Boy. He didn’t look well, all sweaty and pale under his big red beard, but he was getting better fast. Chelsea could already sense his mind. Mommy’s smoochies had worked. Chelsea knew that was very important—the ones Chelsea kissed could kiss others. God’s love could spread from person to person to person, until everyone in the world knew the joy.
Mommy was sitting on Mr. Jenkins’s lap, petting his head with a wet washcloth.
It will be okay, Mr. Jenkins. You’ll feel better very soon
.
The man looked at her with sunken eyes. He smiled. “Thank you. Thank you for the gift of God’s love.”
“It’s coming back on,” Daddy said. He pointed the remote at the TV and turned up the volume. The picture showed a pretty lady sitting behind a desk.
“Once again, the breaking news tonight is a transport plane that went off the radar somewhere in Otsego County,” the lady said. “The plane was carrying samples of necrotizing fasciitis bacteria, the bacterium that causes flesh-eating disease, which may have been released in the crash and has already been potentially linked to one death. The National Guard has been called in, and state officials have ordered a temporary evacuation of Gaylord.”
The picture changed to show a big man in an immaculate blue uniform. Everyone in the living room stirred uncomfortably at the sight. Chelsea felt a similar reaction, her body recoiling from the uniform, from the gun on the man’s hip. This was an enemy of God . . . this was another one of the devils.
Below the man were the words MICHAEL ADAMS, MICHIGAN STATE POLICE SPOKESMAN. Below that was a phone number that started with 800.
“It’s only a temporary evacuation,” said the tool of the devil. “It’s important we test everyone for exposure and do a sweep of the town. Then everyone can return. For those without transportation, or for those who can’t travel on their own, we’re providing a toll-free number for people to call. Very soon we’ll be doing door-to-door checks, just to make sure we haven’t missed anyone. The National Guard will be assisting with this.”
“Turn it off,” Chelsea said. Daddy fumbled with the remote, then turned off the TV. All eyes turned to Chelsea.
“They are coming for us,” she said. “That’s what they mean by ‘door-to-door.’ They want to find us and kill us. The National Guard, that means
soldiers
. They want to stop the gates of heaven.”
“I knew they were out to get us,” Daddy said. He was shaking with anger and excitement. “Chelsea . . .
soldiers
. . . what are we going to
do
?”
Everyone in the living room nodded. Chelsea heard them all mumbling that terrifying word:
soldiers
.
“God sent the soldiers to us,” Chelsea said. “You must trust in Him, it’s all part of His plan. He sent us soldiers with lots of
guns
. Do you see? We need to show the soldiers how much God loves them.”
She pushed out images of men with guns standing around a gate. She felt the images flash in the minds of the others, and then something strange happened—for just a moment, their thoughts melded as one and the image took on startling clarity. Like it was
real
. As soon as it started, the moment was gone.
“What was that?” Mr. Burkle said. “What the fuck just happened?”
“Bad word, Mister Burkle,” Chelsea said.
Mr. Burkle hung his head. “I’m sorry, Chelsea.”
She didn’t know what had just happened. She knew that she was the cause of it, though. Everyone thinking together, thinking the same thoughts, they had felt so . . . so . . .
smart
.
They all ate their ice cream and stared at Chelsea. They wanted to know what to do next. Chelsea closed her eyes and thought
hard.
Chauncey, where do we build the gate?
You have to find a place.
Should we go into the woods?
No, not this time. The devil will use bombs on you there. If you go to a place with many people, the devil will hesitate to use bombs, and that could get you a little more time.
Somewhere with lots of people. The dollies would probably like that a lot. Lots of people to play with when they got there. But Chelsea still had to hide everyone, or the devil would find them.
“Mister Jenkins, do you have a map?”
“Of course, honey,” he said. Mommy helped him out of the chair. He waddled to the kitchen.
Chelsea had to get everyone out of there. She was running away, not just from the devils but from the
boogeyman
. Running away wasn’t as bad as peeing her pants, but it wasn’t good, either. She was growing stronger, she knew that. Maybe someday soon she could face the boogeyman.
Face him, and
kill
him.
Mr. Jenkins came back with a folded paper map and walked to the dining-room table.
It was covered in guns—four hunting rifles with those big scope things, two shotguns and one pistol. Boxes of ammo filled in the spaces between the guns.
“Can you guys clear this off?” Mr. Jenkins said. “Chelsea wants to see a map.”
Hands shot in to remove the guns and ammunition. Chelsea liked how fast everyone moved.
Mr. Jenkins spread the map out on the newly cleared table. Chelsea, Mr. Burkle, Mommy and Mr. Jenkins gathered around it.
Chelsea stared at it, but she didn’t really know how to read a map.
Mommy stroked her hair. “Do you know what you’re looking for, honey?”
Chelsea nodded, then shook her head. “How can you tell where there are lots of people?”
Mr. Burkle pointed to a yellow spot on the map. Chelsea saw the word FLINT in big black letters on top of the yellow.
“See the yellow?” Mr. Burkle said. “The more yellow, the more people there are.”
Chelsea bent her head and stared at the map. Her blond hair hung down and touched the paper. She put her finger on the map and raised her head, her face all smiles.
“This place has the most yellow! So that means it has the most people, right?”
Mr. Burkle looked, then nodded. “Yes. There would be a lot of people there, all right.”
“This is where we’re going.”
“So what now?” Mommy asked.
“Well,” Mr. Burkle said, “we have to figure out how to show a soldier God’s love, make sure no one finds out,
and
get out of town without getting killed.”
“And pick up more dolly daddies on the way,” Chelsea said. “We need enough dollies to make the gate. Mister Jenkins, how many people will your big car hold?”
“The Winnebago?” Jenkins said. “Hmm, probably ten more people, no problem. Will that be enough?”
Chelsea shrugged. It was getting easier to reach out, to find the others. She was in contact with three more dolly daddies. So many things to do—give a soldier smoochies, get past the other soldiers and get to the place with lots of people. How could they do it all?
She had an idea, an idea that Chauncey wouldn’t like. Maybe she just wouldn’t tell Chauncey. She wasn’t sure if the idea would work, though—she needed some help to figure it out.
What she needed was more brain power.
Like a few minutes ago, when they all had that feeling . . .
“Everyone, think with me,” Chelsea said. She closed her eyes. Even though she couldn’t see, she felt the others close their eyes, one by one. Their thoughts melded together, and they started to plan.

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.