Contagious (34 page)

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.

LEAD FROM THE FRONT
Agony.
Heat.
Brutal, shooting pain, his whole body on fire, his
brain
on fire.
Was he in hell? Charlie Ogden had caused enough death to qualify. Both the enemy and his own men. How many enemy soldiers? His best guess was over a thousand—the kill ratio in Somalia and Iraq had been so ridiculously high that it was hard to keep track.
The exact number didn’t matter, did it?
Thou shalt not kill.
One death was the price of admission to hell; everything else was just overachieving.
A snippet of a picture flashed through his mind. Something black, wiggling. A snake? A centipede?
The heat in his brain grew even higher, which was impossible, because it couldn’t
get
any higher. Ogden heard himself screaming, or at least trying to, but something in his mouth muffled his sounds.
The picture again. Not a snake . . . a tentacle.
A hatchling.
Were they there to kill him? To take revenge?
Hello . . .
A voice. More pictures, more images. Hatchlings. Hundreds of them, building something,
making
something.
Something beautiful. Something . . .
holy
.
The heat went yet higher. Ogden felt his brain
tearing.
AC/DC had once sung that
“hell ain’t a bad place to be,”
yet Ogden knew that was some crazy shit, because he would have done
anything
to escape this endless agony.
Can you hear me?
The voice. The voice of an angel coming for him. The heat seemed to drop. Just a little, but even that tiny bit felt like a miracle.
Ogden made a noise that was supposed to be a
yes
, but through the gag it sounded like
yay
!
Hands touching his head, his
hot
head. The gag lifting. Fresh breath in his lungs. A foul taste on his thick, sore tongue.
Can you hear me?
“Yes,” Ogden whispered. Was the voice making the heat fade away? He loved that voice.
Good. We need you.
Ogden felt hands lifting him, sitting him in a chair. He looked around. There was Corporal Cope, beaming with love. There was Nurse Brad, drooling, smiling, a saggy-lidded socket where an eye used to be. There was Dustin Climer, grinning, nodding as if he and Ogden shared a secret. They
did
share a secret, the best secret the world had ever known.
Ogden took a deep breath, trying to handle the new emotions ripping through his soul. “What do you need me to do?”
What you were born to do. Protect the innocent.
Ogden nodded. Protect the innocent. He’d done that his whole life.
We need your men in Deeeee-troit
, the voice said.
You must hurry, but be careful. The devil will try to stop you. Stop you so he can get to me.
Ogden shook his head. Cope and Climer shook theirs as well.
“They won’t get you,” Charlie said. “I won’t let them.”
Good. Bring your weapons, bring your men.
“But . . . the men . . . they don’t all feel like this. I think some won’t see.”
Then you must show them love. Hurry, please hurry.
The voice seemed to wash away on a mental wind. It faded, but the love did not. Charlie Ogden knew what he had to do. He looked at Dustin Climer. “How long did it take for me to see the light?”
Climer checked his wristwatch. “You went under at twenty-one-thirty five, sir. It’s oh-four-thirty, so about seven hours. It only took Corporal Cope four hours to convert. Maybe because he’s younger, sir.”
Ogden knew. He knew exactly when the gate would open. Chelsea had pushed that information into his head, a ticking clock to the beginning of heaven. He had a little over fifty-two hours to make it all happen.
“Corporal Cope,” Ogden said. “Order all troops confined to barracks. Order First Platoon to prevent access to or egress from camp. No one gets in or out, not even a four-star general. Order Second Platoon to conduct detainment drills. They are to immobilize all men in Third and Fourth platoons. Tie them to their bunks, hands and feet. Inform all squad leaders from Third and Fourth platoons to cooperate without hesitation, that I’m evaluating the ability to restrain large numbers of able-bodied individuals. After this is complete, First Platoon is to return to their barracks and wait for further orders.”
“Yes sir,” Corporal Cope said. He moved to the radio.
Ogden turned to Climer. “How many of us are there now?”
“Just us four, including you, sir.”
Ogden nodded and checked his watch. It would take about an hour to restrain Third and Fourth platoons and show them God’s love. Add four to seven hours for the gestation period, and he’d have the first sixty men fully converted a little after noon.
His DOMREC men owned the airport. They could control all movement in and out. Gaylord was still evacuated—the only problems he might face would come from the police, emergency workers, or the media. Reporters were undoubtedly outside the checkpoints, waiting to come in with lights blazing and cameras rolling. He’d have to take his men out at night, using the same back roads they’d guarded since yesterday.
“Corporal Cope.”
“Colonel?”
“Start planning logistics,” Ogden said. “At twenty-three hundred hours, I’m taking Platoons Three and Four to Detroit. Climer, you make sure Platoons One and Two complete the conversion process. By tomorrow they need to be ready to head to Detroit when I call them.”
“Yes sir,” Climer said.
“That leaves Whiskey Company,” Cope said. “What about them, sir?”
The 120 fighting men of Whiskey Company. A wrinkle in his plans. He could convert them, but that would take more time, add risk. Might be best to just avoid them. Leaving them at the Gaylord airport, even after he moved all of X-Ray Company to Detroit, would maintain appearances for Murray and the Gaylord police. Not for long, of course, but now everything was about buying a few hours of discretion here and there.
“Tell Captain Lodge that Whiskey Company is to immediately take over all roadblock work and interaction with law enforcement,” Ogden said. “Whiskey Company is
not
to interact with anyone from X-Ray Company. Tell Captain Lodge about our detainment drills, and that I need to test Whiskey Company’s ability to operate solo. He and Nails can handle things just fine. That will buy about a day, maybe two, before anyone notices that I’m gone.”
“Yes sir.”
“Come to think of it, Cope, you’d better stay here with Climer,” Ogden said. “Everyone knows your voice, knows you deliver my orders. Who can come with me and operate as my communications man?”
“The most skilled would be Corporal Kinney Johnson, sir,” Cope said. “But to be honest, he’s not too bright.”
“He’ll have to do,” Ogden said. “Make sure he’s in the next batch to be converted. Now get cracking.”
Ogden leaned over the table, staring at the map of Michigan. He could create only so many protectors in the next forty-six hours, and that number paled in comparison to the forces he would face.
Despite the odds, he had to find a way to win. It would take strategy.
Grand
strategy.
The kind that would put you in the history books forever.
DADDY IS SO SILLY
The building was perfect.
Rusted, once-white metal beams held up a peaked ceiling way above. There were holes in that ceiling. Through them Chelsea could see little patches of early-morning sky, tiny stars still flickering their fading light. She could see the
heavens.
It was such a long building—her Mickey Mouse watch said it took her thirty seconds to run from one end of the trash-strewn floor to the other. On one side of the building, a second deck and even a third deck looked out over a long, open, central area. There was lots of graffiti. Some naughty words, too. If anyone else came in to paint bad words, Chelsea would have Mr. Jenkins take care of them.
They’d found a big entrance in the back. Mr. Jenkins called it a loading dock. Up above was a metal roll-up door, stuck three-quarters of the way open. Mr. Jenkins said it worked exactly like a roll of paper towels, that people used to just pull it down, but it was rusty and broken. Grafitti-covered plywood blocked the rest of the entrance. Mr. Jenkins had to drive the Winnebago right into the plywood, and the whole wall fell in like one of those drawbridges like in the princess stories. He drove over it, cracking the wood in many places, but then he and Daddy and Old Sam Collins and Mr. Korves were able to put it back up again.
The Winnebago was inside, safely out of sight. Which was good, because right about the time they put that plywood back, Chelsea sensed that the dollies were almost ready to come out and play.
Chelsea made Mr. Jenkins put all the dolly daddies side by side in front of the Winnebago. The rising sun was already spreading a little light into the building through the small holes in the roof, but she wanted the daddies in the headlights so she could see everything. Their heads were closest to the Winnebago, all their tootsies pointed away. Kind of looked like nap time at summer camp.
Mr. Jenkins tied them up.
He tied up Daddy, Mr. LaFrinere, Mr. Gaines, Old Sam Collins and Danny Korves.
Mommy took one of Mr. Jenkins’s knives and cut off their clothes.
They all shivered a lot. A little bit of snow had blown into the building, fine white powder drifted up against fallen boards and broken bricks. Every now and then, a gust of wind found a way through the walls and the boarded-up windows, swirling the powder in slow arcs.
Then the dolly daddies all started screaming. That was annoying. Chelsea told Mommy to stuff their mouths with some of the cut-up clothing. That helped.
Chelsea sat down and watched.
They were all tied up, but they still kicked and thrashed around. Everyone except Daddy. Daddy was looking at Chelsea. His eyes seemed very sad. He was trying to say something. He wasn’t screaming like the others, even though the dollies on his arm were starting to bounce in and out.
Chelsea stood and walked over to him. She pulled the piece of T-shirt out of his mouth.
“Chelsea, honey,” Daddy said. It was hard to understand his words because he was breathing so hard. “Please, baby girl, make . . . make them stop.”
Chelsea laughed. “Oh
Daddy
! You’re so funny.”
“No, honey, I’m . . . I’m not joking with you.”
The triangles bounced out farther, making interesting moving shadows on the far wall. Daddy’s face scrunched shut. He ground his teeth and let out a little noise.
“It will all be over soon, Daddy.”
His eyes opened again. They blinked so
fast
. He was breathing like he’d just come back from a run.
“Chelsea . . . you have power over these things. You can make them stop . . . you can . . . shut them down.”
One of Old Sam Collins’s hatchlings popped free. It arced through the air, lit up by the headlights. How
pretty
!
The muffled screams got louder.
“Chelsea!” Daddy yelled. “I’m not . . . not kidding around. You
stop them
or you are in
big trouble.
” Tears leaked from his eyes. Snot bubbled from his nose. He started to kick. The triangles on his arm were coming out really far now.
“Daddy, God wants them to come out. Why would I stop them?”
“Because I’m going to die, you little bitch!”
Daddy’s chest heaved. His eyes opened and shut, opened and shut. “Please, Chelsea! Oh my God it
hurts
! They’re screaming in my head.
Please
!
Make it stop.
”
One of Daddy’s hatchlings popped free. Daddy screamed really loud. He was just confused, that’s all. Now he got to go to heaven. Anyone who
really
believed in heaven would be happy to die. Why, the longer they lived, the more chances they might do something bad, then wind up in hell. She didn’t understand why people prayed to God to stay alive. It just didn’t make any sense.
He drew a big breath to scream again, and Chelsea stuffed the T-shirt back into his mouth.
“I love you, Daddy,” she said. “Say hello to Jesus for me.”
Daddy’s screams stopped a few seconds later.
Chelsea walked around, picking up the little hatchlings and taking them inside the Winnebago. She wanted to make sure they were safe and warm.
THE DOLLY MAMA
Bernadette screamed so hard that flecks of blood flew out of her mouth. The containment-cell walls would have muffled most of the sound, but Margaret had insisted that the room’s microphones pump the audio throughout the comm system.
If the men were going to let Bernadette Smith die, Margaret would make sure they heard every last second of it.
Dew was there. So was Clarence. Daniel Chapman was there as well, holding a handheld high-def camera. The two fixed cameras built into the containment cell would catch everything, but Dan had his in case they needed specific shots. Dew had asked Perry to come; Perry hadn’t shown.
Only an hour earlier, Perry had told Margaret what to expect. She wasn’t surprised he’d taken a pass.
“Nine thirty-seven A.M.,” Margaret said. “The triangles are beginning to move.”
She watched, horrified, as the triangles, now inch-high pyramids, started to bounce up and down under Bernadette’s skin.
“Sweet Jesus,” Dew said.
“Don’t you look away,” Margaret hissed.
Somehow, Bernadette found the energy to scream even louder.
The triangles bounced out farther, stretching her skin, tearing it. Little jets of blood shot out from the edges.
“Please
help me
! Make it stop! Make them stop
shouting in my head
!”
“Doctor Chapman,” Margaret said, “put that camera down and sedate that woman.”
“Do
not
do that, Chapman,” Dew said. “It could damage the triangles.”
Margaret turned to look at Dew. Her anguished soul longed for any excuse to look away from Bernadette, and this one fit the bill.
“Dew, you fucking
bastard
. We’re
torturing
that woman!”
“I’m not going to take a chance your potions will kill the hatchlings,” Dew said. “This will be over soon.” Even as he spoke, he stared unflinching at the dying woman.
“Nine forty-one A.M.,” Dan said. “Patient is going into V-tach.”
Those words made Margaret snap around to look in the cell, made her instinctively take a step forward before she remembered that she wasn’t allowed to save the patient.
But Margaret could take away her pain.
Everyone in the trailer wore a hazmat suit—sealed, airtight, protected. Margaret moved to the containment cell’s door and started punching buttons on the touch screen.