Contagious

“No, the baby is clean,” Perry said. He casually tossed the baby toward one of the soldiers. Dew twitched reactively as the child softly arced through the air. The soldier dropped his P90 and awkwardly caught the kid, who started crying immediately.

Crying loud.

The baby hadn’t cried when he was sitting with the psycho who had just butchered his family, but as soon as he was safe, he fired up the air-raid siren. There’s just no figuring kids.

“Both of you, get that baby out of here,” Dew said to the soldiers. “Get him in a van and keep him there. I’ll send a guy to check him out. Doc Braun, real short, you’ll know him when you see him.”

The men left, leaving Dew alone with Perry.

Dew started to shiver from his wet suit and shirt. The weather in Wisconsin was much like the weather in Michigan—both f.u.c.king sucked, and both made his b.u.m hip ache.

“Any others?” Dew asked.

Perry pointed to a place inside the kitchen. Dew carefully walked to the living room’s edge, leaned in a little and looked around the corner.

Another corpse, a man, lying on the floor in front of the refrigerator. A big dark spot covered the crotch and legs of his jeans. He was the source of the s.h.i.t smell.

Three more hosts, dead. Murray Longworth was going to c.r.a.p a canary when he found out. Three murders. Just like that. And Dawsey sat at the table, sipping a Bud.

It would be so easy to just put a bullet in the psycho’s head.

Perry pulled a second beer from the six-pack and tilted it toward Dew. Want one? the gesture said.

“Drink up while you can,” Dew said. “If Baumgartner and Milner are dead, I don’t care how important Murray thinks you are.”

“Were those the dumb-s.h.i.ts following me in the little white car?”

Dew nodded.

Perry shrugged, drained his beer, then opened the one he’d offered Dew.

“Control, this is Phillips,” Dew said. The microphone in his earpiece picked up the words and transmitted them to a control van some five or six blocks away.

“Copy, Phillips,” the tinny voice said.

“Status on Baum and Milner? Anyone find them yet?”

“Let me check,” the voice said.

Dew waited.

Dawsey took a long swig. “I bet you want to shoot me. I bet you want to kill me.” He tossed the gold Budweiser cap up and down in his free hand.

“Maybe I just want to help you,” Dew said quietly.

Perry grinned and nodded. “That’s pretty good.”

The tinny voice returned. “Baumgartner and Milner are alive. Agent Revel says they’re roughed up a little but will be okay. Ambulance en route. Their car and Dawsey’s Mustang are totaled, by the way.”

Dew put his .45 back in its shoulder holster.

Dawsey smiled. “I told you not to have anyone follow me, Dew. I could have killed them if I wanted do.”

“What the f.u.c.k is wrong with you, Dawsey? We’ve told you a million times we need a live host.”

“I’m not a soldier,” Perry said. “Your orders don’t mean d.i.c.k to me.”

“We need information, you murdering piece of s.h.i.t. These people had information.”

“I have all the information you need,” Perry said. He cleared away the beer bottles, revealing a ring-stained map spread across the table. His sweeping hand also brushed aside a clump of hair that had fallen off the tire iron, leaving a long, b.l.o.o.d.y arc on the paper. He wiped his hand on his pant leg.

“The next doorway is northeast of here,” Perry said. “Across the border into Michigan. Nearest town is called Marinesco. That’s where these people were going. If anyone else around here is infected, that’s where they’re headed, too, or they’re already there. That’s the information you really need, and now you have it, so why would you need these losers alive?”

“Losers? That one you snapped in half couldn’t be more than five years old.”

“Sure,” Perry said. “And any knife he could pick up, he’d put it right in your belly. Why do you need him alive?”

Dew ground his teeth. “Because the eggheads say so, that’s why.”

Perry nodded. “Right. They need to watch someone suffer. They need to watch someone go crazy. They need to watch someone go through what I went through, right?”

Dew said nothing.

“You’re stuck with me, old man,” Perry said. “I’m the only one who can hear them. I’m the only one who can find them. My a.s.s is made of gold.”

Dawsey was completely out of control. Dew understood the kid being messed up, sure. Only five weeks ago, Dawsey had snipped off his own jumblies for f.u.c.k’s sake. Dew could sympathize with some anger, some depression, even post-traumatic stress disorder, but this?

Still, part of Dew couldn’t shake the thought that if he treated the infected the same way Perry did, his partner, Malcolm Johnson, would still be alive.

“Perry, you have to stop this,” Dew said. “Margaret thinks she can save these people. How can she do that if you keep going apes.h.i.t?”

“She can’t save them,” Perry said. He drained the bottle in one pull and opened a third. “Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I’m all the help these people need.”

Dew stared at the gigantic man for a few more moments. For the third time—and the second in the past three days—Dawsey had located a construct.

Dew remembered the horror of that first construct. So hot it melted the snow around it. Watching it light up, the whole thing glowing brightly, then the vision of thousands of creatures coming through the gate, almost pouring into the woods before a dozen HEAT missiles launched from Apache attack helicopters blasted the thing to bits.

“That’s two new doorways in a pretty short time,” Dew said. “You think there’s more?”

Perry shrugged. “I dunno. I can’t really explain it. I hear—what’s the word you spy guys use? I hear chatter. More might be coming. I can’t say. But you better get it in gear, old man, instead of sitting here with your thumb up your a.s.s—I think the Marinesco one is well under way.”