Contagious

“h.e.l.lo, Betty,” Margaret said.

Betty stopped whimpering for a second, just long enough to draw in a huge, ragged lungful of air.

“Let me go!”

“We can’t,” Margaret said. “You’re very ill.”

“No f.u.c.king s.h.i.t I’m ill, you f.u.c.king a.s.sholes! Did you do this to me? Please, get my dad. Get my mom. Please!”

“Your father is dead,” Amos said.

Margaret quickly pressed a b.u.t.ton on the touch screen to turn off the intercom.

“Amos, what are you doing?”

“Telling her the truth.”

Margaret wanted to smack him right in the mouth. “Amos, we need to get this girl to talk, not put her further into hysterics.”

“Margaret, I’ve got a teenage daughter,” he said. “You do not. So shut the f.u.c.k up.”

He had a cold look on his face, an expression Margaret hadn’t seen on him before. Amos was personalizing this, projecting Betty’s situation onto his own child. He reached for the b.u.t.ton and turned on the chamber’s speakers. “It’s true, Betty,” Amos said. “You father is dead. I’m very sorry.”

Margaret realized that Betty wasn’t screaming anymore. The girl still had tears streaming down her ruined face, but there was also a hard lucidity in those eyes.

“Daddy’s . . . dead? You killed him?”

“He died in the parking lot before anyone could get to him,” Amos said. “Before anyone could help him.”

A single sob hit her body like a big cough, and then she lay still.

“But I’ve been here for like hours,” Betty said, fighting back sobs. “Why didn’t anyone just f.u.c.king tell me?”

“Because they didn’t think you could handle it,” Amos said. “They treated you like a child. I’m sorry about that, but Doctor Montoya and I are in charge now. My name is Doctor Amos Braun.”

“What’s . . . what’s happening to me?”

“You are very sick,” Amos said. “You have whatever killed your father. We don’t know why it’s developing more slowly in you.”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“We’re trying to save you,” Amos said. “We need to ask some important questions first. Where were you and your father coming from?”

“Just let me go,” Betty said in a low voice. “I’m not one of the ones you want, I swear. Don’t kill me, please don’t kill me.”

“Betty, we’re not trying to ki—”

“I will f.u.c.king slash your throat, you needle-d.i.c.k motherf.u.c.ker!” She yanked at her restraints so hard the heavy trolley wobbled. “Lemmego-lemmegolemmego!”

“Amos, we need to put her under,” Margaret said. “She’s paranoid.”

Amos ignored Margaret. His face showed anguish, his deep need to see Betty calm down and cooperate. Was it Betty Jewell he saw in there or his own daughter—rotting, terrified and strapped to an autopsy trolley?

“Where were you coming from?” he asked. “We need to know where you were.”

Betty stared at them, wide eyes full of hate and terror. She screamed, one long, ragged note. She stopped only to draw a deep breath, then hit the ragged note again.

“Please,” Amos said. “Stop this. We’re trying to help you.”

“Amos, that’s enough,” Margaret said. She reached to the control panel and hit a b.u.t.ton, sending fifty milligrams of propofol through one of the IV needles taped to Betty’s feet. Amos put both of his gloved hands on the gla.s.s. He and Margaret silently watched as Betty’s screams slowed, faded and stopped.

“She’s out,” Margaret said.

“Then let’s get her wheeled into Trailer A,” Amos said. “I want to operate immediately.”

MIXED MESSAGES

The neural net stretched through Betty’s frontal lobe, but it was still very thin. Too thin to send the signal. It needed more connections.

For hours Betty’s crawlers had fought the dissolving chain reaction, struggling to reach her brain. The WDE-4-11 injection turned out to be a lifeline for the crawlers—combined with their own apoptosis antidote secretions, it stalled the chain reaction before it grew so bad that they couldn’t even move.

As Margaret and Amos wheeled Betty through the collapsible walkway and into the autopsy room, some of the muscle fibers coalesced at the center of her brain, tore themselves to bits and formed a ball. Where Chelsea’s ball of fibers was a thousand microns wide, Betty’s was closer to six hundred, just over half the size.

It was enough to send a weak signal.

And enough to receive a response.

That response signal wasn’t for the crawlers. It was meant for the host.

The remaining crawlers stopped producing the apoptosis antidote and started flooding Betty’s brain with neurotransmitters.

They had to wake her up, wake her up so she could receive the signal.

CHEFFIE’S OPEN DOOR

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

The phrase is attributed to Herodotus and refers to the courier service of the ancient Persian Empire. Many people incorrectly think this is the motto of the United States Postal Service. The phrase is inscribed over the James A. Farley post office in New York City, but it’s not an official slogan.

Official or not, John Burkle figured it was a pretty dead-nuts on-target description for driving a white postal truck in weather fifteen G.o.dd.a.m.n degrees below freezing, complemented by G.o.dd.a.m.n thirty-mile-per-hour winds that were blowing thin sheets of snow right across the G.o.dd.a.m.n back roads. Who drives in this weather?

Postal workers. That’s who.

He drove the truck’s right wheel into a frozen rut in front of the Franklin place. Yesterday this had been a mud puddle filled with chunks of brown ice. That was because it had been fifty degrees for two straight days. If you don’t like the weather in Michigan . . .

John stuffed the Franklins’ mail into their metal mailbox, then drove to the next house. Houses were pretty s.p.a.ced out around here, at least a couple of acres apart. The next house belonged to Cheffie Jones. Cheffie had always been a little off. Hit in the head in an industrial accident or something. Pretty much kept to himself. Plenty of time to buy s.h.i.t on eBay, though—John put four small boxes into Cheffie’s supersize mailbox. Sometimes Cheffie came out to get his mail and say h.e.l.lo. John looked toward the house, but didn’t see any movement. He started to drive on, then stopped short and looked back.