Contagious

Dustin turned. He had to check on the others. He stepped forward, his right hand keeping the shaking gun pointed at the fallen man. The man’s eyes were wide open, a snarl locked on his face. Dead as f.u.c.k. Just like Neil. t.i.t for tat, you infected motherf.u.c.ker.

Dustin stumbled again, barely catching himself as his foot slid on the snowy road. Oh man, getting shot f.u.c.king hurt.

He kept moving, checking his squadmates. Joel was slumped facedown over the M249. Not moving. The man with the hunting rifle probably took him out first. On the other side of the road, James was also down, helmet sitting upside down about three feet away from him.

The ground came up and smacked Dustin Climer right in the face. Oh man, oh man . . . he’d fallen. He forced his eyes open. So f.u.c.king cold. No sound but the wind. Then a soft humming, growing louder, growing closer. He knew that sound. A V-22. No, a couple of ’em. Climer put his gun hand on the ground and tried to push up, but his palm weakly slid across the snow-covered dirt road.

Finally he pa.s.sed out.

IMPROPER EQUIPMENT

If this kept up, they’d need another MargoMobile just to store the bodies.

The live triangle host was on the way. Dew and Ogden had decided to leave the MargoMobile at the Jewell house and transport the host instead of parking the trailers next to a highway on-ramp and off-ramp. Made sense, as the Jewell house was far more rural and somewhat isolated.

The host would go into the containment cell in Trailer B.

The cadaver cabinet was filling up as well. In there they already had the liquefied remains of Donald Jewell, the pitted black skeleton of Cheffie Jones, the burned corpse of Bobby Jewell and the corpse of his wife, Candice. Their daughter would join them as soon as Margaret finished the last of the preliminary autopsies.

Once again a biohazard-suited Margaret stood in Trailer A’s autopsy room, looking at a big body bag filled with a small body. Gitsh was with her. Clarence had suited up and checked each body for himself, making d.a.m.n sure they were all dead before taking up his usual position in the computer room.

She needed to make this fast. Bernadette Smith would be here soon, and that would require all of Margaret’s attention. Also on the way was the body of Ryan Roznowski, the triangle host who had killed those soldiers at the roadblock. He was a low priority—she needed to clear her schedule for Bernadette.

“Gitsh, get Chelsea out of the bags and let’s get cracking. We need to do this fast. Marcus, you there?”

“Yes ma’am,” she heard Marcus’s voice say in her earpiece. “At the cadaver locker, making sure Bobby Jewell’s remains are properly stowed.”

“Okay, finish up and hurry back. We need to get the girl done before the live host arrives.”

She’d already completed preliminary autopsies on Candice and Bobby Jewell. Candice had died from a gunshot to the back of the head, well before the fire scorched her body. Bobby had multiple knife scores on his ribs—Margaret couldn’t say for sure yet, not with such a rush job, but odds were he’d also died before the fire burned him.

Gitsh removed the girl’s small corpse and put it on the table. Burn victims and charred flesh. Always such a joy. The human body doesn’t actually burn up in a house fire. To cremate a body, you need fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit for two hours or more. House fires usually hit about five hundred degrees. While some could burn as hot as two thousand degrees, at that temperature the flames usually consumed all available fuel material within a half hour or so. Bobby Jewell’s body had been blackened and charred, but preserved enough for Margaret to find one scorched triangle on his cheek, another at the base of his neck.

She’d been on the case long enough to know the story: Bobby Jewell had contracted the triangles, and as a result he’d killed his family. Then he’d set a fire and committed suicide by stabbing himself repeatedly. Sounded crazy, but she’d seen worse—at least Bobby hadn’t chopped off his own legs with a hatchet. The bullet hole in the back of the wife’s skull fit the murder-suicide profile. Margaret was sure the girl’s cause of death would support it as well.

Gitsh folded up the body bag and put it in the incinerator chute.

Margaret stared at the girl’s body. It was curled up in the fetal position, legs and arms flexed, fists tucked beneath the chin. That didn’t mean the person had burned alive and curled up from the pain—dehydration from fire causes muscles, even dead muscles, to contract, pulling bodies into this posture.

The fetal position wasn’t what held Margaret’s attention, however. What really caught her eye was the size of the body.

She looked at the wall-mounted flat-panel, part of which showed stats on Chelsea.

“Clarence, this is supposed to be a seven-year-old girl?”

“Checking,” Clarence said in her earpiece. “Yeah, Chelsea Jewell, seven years, four months, ten days.”

“How tall is she on the medical records?”

“Ummm . . . three feet, six inches.”

“This body is bigger than that,” Margaret said. “And the hips are wrong. Gitsh, roll the body onto its back.”

Clarence’s voice in her ear again. “You don’t think it’s Chelsea Jewell?”

Gitsh moved the body.

Margaret took a good look, then shook her head. “Not unless Chelsea Jewell was more like four-foot-two and had a p.e.n.i.s. Get Dew on the line, right now.”

IF IFS AND BUTS WERE CANDY AND NUTS

“How is Private Climer, Doc?” Ogden asked.

“He’ll be fine,” Doc Harper said. “He was lucky the bullet didn’t hit the bone. Took out a chunk of muscle, though. Colonel, I have to request again that we transfer him out of our area and to the base hospital.”

“Request denied, again,” Ogden said. “Unless it’s a life-and-death situation, he’s not leaving our area until I talk to him. And you just said he’ll be fine, so it’s not life and death, correct?”