Contagious (32 page)

“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