Contagious (42 page)

You think you’re so smart. Beck Beckett thought he was smart. If you don’t start behaving, I can make you look just like Mommy.
Ogden’s face turned white. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. The general glanced at Mommy. She was still walking away, still crying. He looked back at Chelsea.
“Tell Dustin Climer to split his eighteen men,” he said. “Tell him to lead the attack on Dawsey. Corporal Cope can continue to Detroit as planned.”
Chelsea closed her eyes, then pushed her thoughts to Mr. Cope and Mr. Climer. It was so much easier now, so much faster.
It is done. Now go make sure the rest of your men are ready for the contingency plan.
She turned and walked back into the Winnebago’s heat. Mommy started to cry louder, but Chelsea shut the door and then she couldn’t hear it anymore.
DOUBLE DOSE
The little bastards were fighting back.
She was in the damn suit again, in the cramped containment cell with Dr. Dan. Clarence stood outside the open glass door. If Sanchez could somehow pull free from his restraints, Clarence wouldn’t even have a clear shot. That pissed Clarence off, but Margaret didn’t give a shit.
The latrunculin had worked, no question, but Sanchez’s body wasn’t the wide-open killing field it had been at first. Some of the crawlers seemed resistant to the drug, and those were splitting, dividing. It wasn’t mitosis, nothing so elegant—the little bastards simply split into two smaller versions, each of which grabbed and incorporated free-floating muscle strands that broke away from dead crawlers. Under the microscope it was like watching a mass of tiny snakes entwining with each other, merging, becoming a collective organism.
She felt a sensation of dread—if the crawlers developed resistance to latrunculin, then she had no weapons that could keep Sanchez alive. If that happened, the only way to stop them was to kill the host.
“He’s getting weaker,” Dan said. “Breath rate is increasing, pulse is getting a little erratic.”
She’d doubled the dosage, and that had helped, but the crawlers were still in there, still heading for his brain.
How many had already made it?
She’d stayed ahead of this whole thing by trusting her instincts, following her gut. And right now her gut told her that if enough crawlers reached Sanchez’s brain, there would be no coming back.
He’d be permanently changed. Just like Betty Jewell. And wasn’t death better than that?
“Double it again,” Margaret said.
Dan turned his shoulders to face her square-on. “No way. Didn’t you hear me? He’s got an erratic heartbeat.”
“He’s a strong man, Doctor,” Margaret said. “He can handle it. Now double the dosage.”
Inside his helmet, Dan shook his head. “No fucking way.”
“Damnit, Daniel,” Margaret said. “If these things mass in his brain, he’s screwed. We’ve got to cure him.”
“Is killing him the same as curing him? Because that’s what’s going to happen if you jack up the dosage again.”
“Get out of here,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
He stared at her. “I don’t know you very well, but you’re a
doctor.
What the hell happened to you?”
“
They
happened to me,” Margaret said. “We have to know if this works. If we don’t find a cure, one life won’t really matter. Now get the hell out of my way.”
Daniel pushed past her, past Clarence, and opened the airlock door to Trailer A. As she turned back toward Sanchez, her eyes caught Clarence’s.
In his eyes, she saw sadness. More than that, she saw pity. She finally understood why Bernadette Smith had to die. And she hated herself for it.
She looked away from Clarence and started increasing the dose.
11:50 A.M.: THE INTERROGATION
Dew hated the biohazard suit almost as much as Perry did. He’d always made fun of the human condoms, but now that he’d actually caved in and worn one, he felt jinxed, as though the next time he
didn’t
wear one he’d catch something for sure. With a new .45 in a hip holster worn outside the suit, Dew imagined he looked like a total douchebag.
Perry just stared at the two caged hatchlings. They looked lethargic, defeated. Maybe sitting next to the center cage containing Perry’s decomposed shooting victim mellowed them out. They’d barely moved in the last twenty minutes.
“What do they say, kid?”
“They’re still not saying anything,” Perry said. “They just seem to be out of it.”
“Can’t you read their minds or something?”
Perry shook his head. “It’s not like that. The triangles are still connected to human brains, I think that’s why I can hear that chatter from hosts. But the hatchlings aren’t connected to human brains. They can talk to me, but only when they want to.”
“But you’re still hearing that triangle chatter?”
Perry nodded. “Yeah. It’s getting stronger, too, which is kind of weird. It usually only gets stronger when I’m tracking them down, getting closer. Maybe they have more power now? I don’t know, Dew—maybe we don’t need these fuckers at all. Can I shoot another one?”
Dew leaned down to look into the cage on the left. “What do you say, champ? Should we shoot you?”
Both of the hatchlings stirred. They blinked their black eyes, seemed to gain a little life.
“Something’s getting them moving,” Dew said. “They afraid of the gun?”
“No, that’s not it,” Perry said. He closed his eyes, seemed to concentrate. “The chatter is getting louder. A lot louder. Wait, Dew, I’m picking up thoughts of a gate . . . and a tall building.”
“You recognize it?”
Perry’s eyes stayed closed, but he shook his head. “No, not really. This is weird. Usually everything feels so chaotic, like the hosts are scrambling, trying to figure out what to do, but this . . . this feels organized. One-fifteen P.M.”
“One-fifteen?” Dew said. “What the hell happens at one-fifteen?”
Perry opened his eyes. “They’ve got a timeline. That’s when the gate will open up. And I don’t know why this is so strong. I mean, it’s
really
strong, and it’s got nothing to with the hatchlings.”
“It’s eleven-fifty right now,” Dew said. “We’ve got less than ninety minutes. Perry, focus on that building. See if you can recognize it, or at least describe it to me.”
Milner’s voice in his earpiece. “Dew, can you talk?”
Perry’s eyes opened—he had the same earpiece, so he also heard Milner’s voice.
“Jesus, Milner, not now!”
“Some of Ogden’s men are coming down the driveway,” Milner said. “Two Hummers. You want to come out?”
“Handle it,” Dew said. “Tell them whatever it is it has to wait.”
“I’ve got it,” Baum said. “Heading out now.”
“Come on, Perry,” Dew said. “Concentrate.”
Perry closed his eyes. His face started to crease. “This is confusing,” he said. “Now I’m getting a bunch of feelings, emotions. Hatred. Anger.”
“Just breathe, kid,” Dew said. “Take your time, just breathe, and figure it out.”
Dustin Climer waved
from the passenger seat as the Humvee slowed to a stop on the Jewells’ icy dirt driveway. His driver eased over to the left side, allowing the Humvee behind to pull up on the right. The burned-out husk of a house sat before them. Off to the left, the two MargoMobiles, side by side and connected. To the right, a big, bare tree with a rope swing.
Five men in his Hummer, four in the other. More than enough to get the job done.
He waved again to the man standing in front of the MargoMobile. Climer hopped out and walked forward. He recognized the mustached face of that CIA puke Claude Baumgartner.
“Afternoon, gents,” Baumgartner said. “What’s up?”
“We came for the hatchlings,” Climer said. “Ogden wants them moved to the camp.”
Baum shook his head. “Uh, I don’t think we can do that right now.”
Climer smiled. “Sure we can, Baumer. It’s just a matter of who calls the shots.”

•  •  •

Perry knew that
building. Black. Tall. Glossy. Usually he had to listen very carefully to sense anything in the chatter, but this was different—now he had to block things out, try to ignore the random thoughts ripping through his head. But that could only happen if there were a bunch of hosts, way more than the three he’d sensed in Glidden.
The image of the building crystallized.
The Renaissance Center.
Perry’s eyes shot open. The chatter wasn’t getting louder because the hosts had more power—it was getting louder because, just like before, he was getting closer to the hosts.
More accurately, the hosts were getting closer to him.
“Oh shit, Dew,” Perry said. “I’m hearing
Ogden’s men
! They’re here to kill me!”
A muffled gunshot from outside, then another, then another.
Milner’s voice blasted in Perry’s earpiece. “Ogden’s men just shot Baum!”
Dew drew his .45. “Milner, defend yourself. These guys are with the hatchlings.”
More gunshots. Perry heard them both from outside the trailer and in his helmet speakers. That meant gunshots inside the computer room—Milner trading fire. Just as quickly as it started, the gunfire stopped. Milner was likely dead. The men would come through the decontamination area, into the autopsy room, then across the collapsible connector and into Trailer B.
Then they would kill Perry and Dew both.
Dew ran to the airlock door, reached to open it, then paused. He turned to face Perry.
“What about the hatchlings?” Dew said. “Do they want those?”
“Yeah, but I’m the main target.”
Men shouting, things falling. The airlock door’s light changed from green to red—someone had just opened the opposite door on the other side of the walkway. Foosteps on the collapsible grate outside—they were right outside the door to Trailer B.
“Don’t try to open this door!” Dew shouted. “We’ve got two hatchlings in here, and we’ll kill them.”
The man on the other side of the airlock door sounded both happy and angry at once. “If you do that, we’re going to torture you for a looooong time. Give them to us, and we’ll let you go.”
More footsteps outside, more men packing into the collapsible hallway.
Perry didn’t know what to do. He waited for Dew to say something,
anything
. They were so fucked.
“Perry,” Dew whispered, too quietly to be heard through the airlock door, but Perry heard him in his earpiece just fine. “On the containment cell’s control panel, type in pound, five, four, five, and then as soon as the airlock light turns green, hit five again.”
Perry ran the four steps to the isolation chamber’s door. He typed in the numbers. His fingertip hovered over the final 5.
A pounding on the airlock door.
“Time’s up, asshole!” the man outside yelled. “We’ve got a lot of firepower out here!”
“And I’ve got some in here,” Dew said. He raised his .45 and emptied the magazine at the hatchling cage on the left. Just like Perry’s shots from the day before, the glass spiderwebbed as bullets tore the hatchling to splattery pieces. Dew’s empty magazine hit the floor and he reloaded.
“You
fucker
!” the man screamed.
More footsteps outside the airlock, then a solid thump—the airlock door from Trailer A, closing.
The light above Dew turned from red to green. That equalized pressure in the walkway. Ogden’s men were coming in.
Perry pressed the 5.
Spray nozzles in the ceiling, the floor and the walls erupted with a heavy mist of concentrated bleach and chlorine gas. Perry’s visor instantly beaded up with the deadly liquid. They heard initial noises of confusion from outside the door, then screams of panic, coughing and vomiting. Gunfire erupted, but no bullets hit the airlock door.
“Make sure your safety is off,” Dew said. “Follow me, watch my back, and
make sure
you don’t point your gun my way, got it?”
Perry nodded quickly.
Dew opened the airlock door. Perry followed onto the collapsible walkway, the chlorine fog so concentrated that he could barely make out the three bodies lying on the grate, tearing at the small holes they’d shot in the walkway’s collapsible walls.
Dew pulled the trigger six times. Two for each man. They stopped moving.
Perry followed Dew but felt a slight pressure on his right thigh. His heads-up display flashed a message in orange letters—SUIT INTEGRITY BREACH.
He looked down at his thigh. A piece of metal in the shot-up, torn walkway had ripped a three inch gash in the suit. Chlorine gas roiled around the tear. Perry froze for just a second, thinking this was it, that his lungs would burn, before he realized that air was shooting
out
of the cut, not
in.
His suit’s positive air pressure.
Perry heard four more gunshots from inside the autopsy room.
“Dawsey, move it!”
He reached down with his right hand and grabbed the cut, bunching the material and sealing off the hole as best he could. He ran into the autopsy room.
Two more bodies. Dew reloading again.
“You idiot,” Dew said. “Did you tear your fucking suit?”
“Just go already!”
Dew turned and ran into the main decontamination chamber. Two more men clawing at themselves, trying to break free of the chlorine spray that shot into their noses, their screaming mouths, their eyes.
Dew killed them both.
A roar from outside and the tearing of metal.
“Get down!” Dew screamed as he dove to the bleach-wet floor. Bullets tore huge holes in the decontamination chamber’s wall. Someone outside opening up on the trailer. Perry hit the deck hard, adrenaline raging through his body. His hand came off the hole in his thigh as he hit, and he scrambled one-handed to close it up again.
Machine-gun fire sawed through the trailer walls. The air filled with flying chunks of white epoxy, yellow insulation and a disturbing amount of thin, jagged metal torn from the trailer’s exterior. An explosion rocked the trailer on its suspension, throwing Perry up in the air and smashing Dew headfirst against the wall. The walls buckled and twisted. Perry landed hard on a bent floor. Dew slumped to his belly, then rolled on his side.
“Dew! Dew, are you okay? What the fuck was that?”
“Grenade,” Dew said, his voice oddly calm. “In the computer center. They’ll throw one in here next.”
Perry saw chlorine gas roiling away from three spots on Dew’s helmet. His faceplate was cracked. Higher-pressure air pushed out from the new holes.
“That’s not good,” Dew said.
“No fucking
shit
!”
They were both leaking air. The compressors on their suits could only compensate for so long.
“Take the guy outside,” Dew said as he scrambled to his feet. “Hit him or we’re dead.”
Perry saw a gaping bullet hole at the base of the wall. Sunlight poured through, lighting up a beam of green mist. He crawled toward it and forced himself to look out. The guy was on top of a Humvee, shooting a
huge
gun mounted in a turret. Perry was wearing bulky gloves, spraying mist kept beading up on his visor, he held his right thigh with one hand and someone was shooting at him—but the guy was only about twenty feet away.
Perry rolled to his side and extended his left arm. He aimed Dew’s .45 at the man’s head and pulled the trigger until the slide locked on empty.
The machine-gun fire stopped.
The man went limp and fell sideways. He half-hung off the turret’s right side. He didn’t move.
Perry heard the seven-shot report of another .45.
“Perry, I’m outside!”
Perry scrambled to his feet, a little too fast—he caught another piece of ripped wall on his left arm, and the suit tore again. He didn’t bother looking at it, just ran out of the decontamination room and into the final airlock walkway. The last door hung partly open, bent and twisted, full of small holes. Perry sprinted the last ten feet, shouldered the door without breaking stride and found himself outside in a sunny winter afternoon.
Dew stood in the middle of the burned-out house, crouched in a wide stance, .45 in front of him as he swept it back and forth.
Not knowing what else to do, Perry did the same.
Dew emptied a magazine into the dead man in the Humvee turret. Just to be sure, apparently. He reloaded, then let out a long sigh.
“Fuck,” he said. “This is completely fucked, kid.” He took off his helmet and looked at it. Perry saw four or five cracks—the thing was useless.
“At least it served its purpose,” Dew said, and tossed the helmet away. He looked at Perry’s suit. “I don’t think brown sticky tape is going to help that.”
Perry looked at his left arm. Something had hooked the PVC just past his wrist, then torn the fabric almost to the shoulder.
“Perry, you sure that gate opens at one-fifteen?”
Perry nodded. “Yeah, totally.”
They heard engines, heavy vehicles coming down the driveway.
General Charlie Ogden
stood in the back of the Winnebago, waiting for Chelsea to say something. She just sat there, petting Fluffy. She no longer looked like an icon of love. She looked flat-out pissed, her small face furrowed with anger.
He knows we are here. He is coming.
“Are you sure? Sure they didn’t get him?”
I can sense him. You failed.
“What about the men we sent to attack Whiskey Company?”
They are dead. You failed.
Ogden said nothing. He’d known that all the men would die. Even with the element of surprise, the odds were just too great. But if he’d kept all eighteen men together, they would have crippled Whiskey Company. This was Chelsea’s fault.
Ogden pushed the thought away. Chelsea knew best—he seized that belief and held it, because it was far better than imagining himself suffering the same fate as her mother.
“Chelsea, what now?”
There is nothing we can do to stop the boogeyman from coming. We need more time. Start the contingency plan.
Ogden nodded. “Yes, Chelsea. I’ll begin immediately.”
Dew scanned the
Jewells’ yard for a place to hide. The vehicles out on the road sounded like approaching Humvees. More of Ogden’s troops. He holstered his .45 and ran to the man he’d killed outside the computer room. He slung the man’s M4 and pulled at his ammo belt.
The goddamn biohazard suit was getting in the way. He couldn’t possibly run through the woods in that. They’d catch him in minutes. He unzipped and started taking it off when Perry called out.
“They’re coming!”
Dew turned and looked. His balls shriveled up—five Humvees roaring down the long driveway.
He was out of time.
Dew looked for cover. A sagging, charred wreck of a refrigerator. He ran behind it, then aimed his M4 at the lead vehicle.
“Dew, don’t shoot,” Perry said. “I’m not hearing any chatter.”
Dew looked at him, then back to the Humvees that were almost on top of them.
“Well, too late anyway,” Dew said.
The front Hummer slid to a halt behind the two that had brought their attackers. Soldiers pointing M4s poured out, led by the blocky figure of a man almost as big as Perry. A bandage circled his head, bright white against his black skin, a red spot on the left temple. He wore a sergeant major’s chevrons and star. Dew saw that some of the other men also had fresh bandages. The man looked at Perry, then strode toward Dew.
Dew scrambled around the melted fridge. He felt silly standing there in his scrubs, the biohazard suit dangling off at the waist.
The sergeant major snapped a salute so rigid and perfect that it was damn near comical. Dew returned the salute, only because he’d seen men like this many times—this guy would hold that ridiculous salute all damn day if he had to.
The man lowered the salute and slid into an at-ease stance. “Are you Agent Dew Phillips?”
“I am,” Dew said, wincing at the man’s bellowing voice.
“Sergeant Major Devon Nealson,
sir.
Domestic Reaction Battalion, Whiskey Company.”
Dew would have described Devon as
huge
if he hadn’t been hanging around Perry Dawsey as of late. Devon’s big neck supported a pitch-black head. A graying high-and-tight peeked out from the bloody white bandage around his head. His eyes seemed extremely wide—Dew could see all of the man’s irises. The look bespoke rage, or shock, but seemed to be Devon’s normal expression. His lower lip was too big for his mouth and stuck out in a perpetual pout.
“Whiskey Company?” Dew said. “Can you get me Captain Lodge? He’s the commander, right?”
“Was the commander,
sir.
Captain Lodge is dead.”
“What happened?”
“
Sir,
an X-Ray Company squad came into our area of the airport, then just started shooting, throwing grenades and launching AT4 shoulder-fired rockets. After we dealt with them, we attempted to locate Colonel Ogden, but his portion of camp was empty and his men will not answer our calls. We called Deputy Director Longworth. He told us to find to you immediately.”
“This is bad news, Nealson,” Dew said. “How many casualties?”
“Thirty-two dead,
sir,
” Nealson said. “The X-Ray squad had complete surprise, and they were very efficient. Another twenty-five wounded that need to stay put. We’ve got sixty-three men fit for duty. Just tell us what to do,
sir
.”
“Stop calling me sir,” Dew said. “I work for a living. Sergeant Major, have you seen any real combat action?”
“Action in Somalia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq,” Nealson said. “I have busted heads and killed on three continents, and if there are any more members of X-Ray Company that need to be dealt with, I’ll add North America as my fourth.”
If it had been possible to relax in the current fucked-up situation, Dew would have done so. Devon Nealson was a gift from above. His men would follow him anywhere.
“Sergeant Major, something tells me you have a nickname?”
“At times, people call me ‘Nails.’ ”
“Nails, you’re now officially in command of Whiskey Company. I’m going to venture a guess that you already established our transport options?”
“We have three Ospreys including the one assigned to you,” Nails said. “Sixty-five men, including the two of you. It’ll be a little snug but the Ospreys will take us all.”
“Load them up,” Dew said. “We’re all heading to Detroit.”
11:55 A.M.: THE FIVE-SECOND RULE
Alan Roark stopped the Humvee right in the middle of the I-75 overpass. Horns immediately started honking from behind. He ignored them and finished cramming the rest of his Big Mac into his mouth. The things were so fucking good. He tried to drink from his Coke, but all he got was the bottom-of-the-cup straw sound.
Peter passed over his Coke, which looked half full. Alan smiled a thanks, then drank. It soaked the giant bite of Big Mac sitting in his mouth.