Contagious

“Fine,” Margaret said. “I’m not cleared. Let me ask this another way. Do these brilliant minds know exactly what they are looking for? Do they have the whole story?”

“You just keep feeding us whatever biological information you discover,” Murray said. “We have to keep this compartmentalized.”

Margaret rolled her eyes. “Murray, we had to drop a bomb this time. Your compartmentalization isn’t working.”

“Look, I’m not a complete idiot,” Murray said. “Doctor Cheng is using the full resources of the CDC to find a vector.”

“Right,” Margaret said. “And how can he do that if he can’t say what the disease is?”

“He’s using flesh-eating bacteria as a cover story, entering in additional symptoms like blue triangles, skin necrosis, paranoia, et cetera. He’s using all the CDC’s disease-tracking databases looking for such symptoms, and he’s also working with data that FBI investigators have collected on each of the hosts and the hosts’ families.”

Margaret sat back. Actually, modifying the symptoms of flesh-eating bacteria to include the triangle symptoms was a brilliant idea. Everyone in the medical profession took necrotizing fasciitis very seriously and would pay close attention to any updates and requests for information.

“Okay, I can see that strategy,” Margaret said. “So what angles is Cheng pursuing?”

“Everything from mechanical and biological vectors to doomsday cults intentionally targeting specific victims,” Murray said. “He’s focusing on the rural nature of the constructs, hoping for a correlation to deer or other animals that flourish in remote areas.”

“The Bambi vector,” Amos said. “Well, that’s just plain brilliant. I’m so glad one of the nation’s most brilliant minds is on this.”

Margaret gently put a hand on Amos’s arm to silence him. “Murray,” she said, “deer are not the vector, and this isn’t a doomsday cult. Cheng is grasping at straws. We need access to the same data he has.”

Murray smiled. “Margaret, Doctor Cheng’s track record is impeccable, and he’s been working on Morgellons for years. He also has CDC’s computer system, the most advanced disease-tracking database on the planet. What makes you think you can do any better from a d.a.m.n autopsy trailer?”

“The three people in this room already know everything,” Margaret said. “If there’s a connection to be made, we’re the ones most likely to make it. Hey, if you’re happy with your Option Number Four fighters flying around America, then by all means keep the status quo—just make sure we’re very far away from the eighteen-million-degree fireball, okay?”

Murray considered this for a moment. “All right, fine, I’ll give you access.”

“What about signals intelligence?” Clarence asked. “Ogden thinks there has to be a satellite involved. Anything on that?”

Murray shook his head. “Nothing. The NSA still isn’t detecting any kind of signal. NASA is looking for indications of anything weird in orbit, but so far nada.”

“It could be a stealth satellite,” Clarence said.

“They’re telling me the physics doesn’t add up,” Murray said. “It’s way beyond me.”

“The enemy is doing things with biotechnology that we can’t even fathom yet, let alone replicate,” Margaret said. “Maybe hiding something from NASA isn’t as hard as we’d like to think.”

“Maybe,” Murray said. “You’ll get your access, but do not contact Cheng directly, understood? Apparently he’s not fond of you, Margaret.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Margaret said.

Murray broke the connection.

“That’s great we have the data,” Amos said. “But seriously, Margo, the CDC has that software, one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers to run it and systems a.n.a.lysts to tweak it. I know the three of us are a clever bunch of monkeys, but what do we have that they don’t?”

“That’s simple,” Margaret said. “We have a newly cooperative Perry Dawsey.”

THE YOUTH OF A NATION

A child’s cells haven’t divided as many times as an adult’s. Hence children’s telomeres have suffered less damage, mutation and shortening. They’re just plain healthier.

So when the reader-b.a.l.l.s converted Chelsea’s stem cells into hacked-muscle factories, most of those factories produced exactly what they were supposed to produce: healthy, modified muscle fibers.

The fibers sought each other out, then turned into crawlers that slinked up her nerves.

Pains shot up the little girl’s body, making her twitch in her sleep, making her whimper, making tears leak from her closed eyes. Like the rest of the newly infected, she slept through the pain.

Unhindered by bad production or spreading apoptosis, her crawlers made excellent time. The army of slowly moving microorganisms followed the afferent nerves from her hands to her arms, her shoulders, and soon found themselves sliding inside her backbone and into the spinal column.

The journey to this spot hadn’t been easy. Nerves run through and/or around muscles, veins, bones, tendons, ligaments and cartilage. The crawlers forced their way through these dense areas like explorers fighting through thick jungle underbrush. Reaching the spinal column, however, was like stepping out of that jungle onto the smooth asphalt of a superhighway.

The crawlers poured into her spinal column by the thousands.

From there it was a hop, a skip and a jump into Chelsea Jewell’s brain.

DRUNKEN CONVERSATION

Dew hadn’t been this drunk in a long, long time.

The last time had been with Malcolm, his partner. Malcolm, who had been killed by a hatchet to the stomach courtesy of Martin Brewbaker. One of the infected. And now, Dew was getting drunk with another of Brewbaker’s kind.

But Dawsey wasn’t infected anymore.

“I’ll tell you something, hoss,” Dew said. “I’ll tell you. I have met a lot of tough b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in my day. I have to say, in some ways, you might be the toughest.”