Contagious

Mommy and Daddy only got one bar each.

“We can’t stay here for long, Chelsea,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Pretty soon they’ll find out that the bodies in the house aren’t you and your parents.”

“What are you talking about?” Mommy said. “Won’t they burn up?”

Mr. Jenkins shook his head. “House fires don’t get hot enough for that. When they find out the bodies aren’t yours, the cops might start looking for you guys. You’ll be wanted for murder, probably. Depending on how bad they want you, they’ll run vehicle registrations for all your neighbors, figuring maybe you stole a car or took a hostage. Cops might be looking for this Winnebago before too long.”

“Is that for sure?” Mommy asked.

Mr. Jenkins shrugged. “You guys left three bodies in a burned-out house. Not like it’s an unpaid parking ticket.”

“How long do we have?” Mommy asked.

Mr. Jenkins shrugged again. “I couldn’t say. But I can say we should get the ’Bago off the road as soon as we can.” He rattled the map, his finger tracing their route. “We’re on Highway 33 right now. We can take that to Highway 75, which will get us there after dark.”

Chelsea crawled under the map and into Mr. Jenkin’s lap. They looked at it together. She pushed the route out with her mind, telling the remaining dollies and Mr. Korves to meet them along the way, or at the end.

“Mister Jenkins, if we go that way, will we see any more soldiers?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I hope not. They scare me. I know we had a good plan, honey, but I think we also got lucky.”

Chelsea nodded. “Me too. But if we do see them, we’ll just deal with them, so they better not try to stop us.”

STAREDOWN

This time Clarence Otto was by her side. He had a gun on a nylon cord hanging around his neck, because a holster really didn’t work with the biohazard suit.

When Margaret looked into the containment cell, she almost wished she had a gun herself.

Inside those clear walls, another woman was strapped to the autopsy trolley. Naked. She had a blue triangle on her left breast, one on her right forearm and one on her right hip.

Almost three months of work, all the insanity, all the violence, and this was the first time Margaret had seen a live triangle. After seeing so many dead ones, she had thought she knew what to expect—black eyes staring, blinking.

But she’d never thought about them staring at her. Their blinking made it so bizarre. It made them look . . . real. She wished Amos could have been here to see it. A live triangle meant they were that much closer to stopping this nightmare.

The woman was unconscious. She had enough meds in her to make sure she stayed that way. At least Margaret hoped. Betty should have stayed under, too, and look how well that had turned out.

Margaret looked at the touch-panel display mounted on the door. Bernadette Smith. Age twenty-eight. Mother of three. Well, not anymore. Now she was a mother of one and a widow—she’d killed her husband and slit the throats of her two daughters, one age five, one age three, before bundling the dead girls into the backseat of her Saab.

What would this woman be like after they removed the triangles? Perry still carried the guilt of murdering his best friend. How would this woman live with the knowledge she’d killed her husband, her own children?

And that was if they could remove the triangles at all. Margaret had seen the X-rays. The ones on the hip and the forearm would be tricky but doable. In each case the triangle’s barbed tail was wrapped around bone and arteries, but during surgery Margaret could repair a damaged artery.

The one on Bernadette’s chest . . . that was another matter.

The tail of that one was wrapped around Bernadette’s heart. The X-ray showed dozens of those wicked hooks, like sharp rose thorns, pressing up against it. One wrong pull and they’d cut multiple holes. If that happened, even with Bernadette on the operating table and Dr. Dan at her side, Margaret didn’t know if they could save her.

The heart monitor began to beat faster. Margaret punched b.u.t.tons on the display, calling up the woman’s EKG. Pulse rate increasing.

“s.h.i.t,” Margaret said. “She’s waking up.”

“I thought you knocked her out for a couple of hours.” Otto said.

“I did. The triangles are countering the anesthesia somehow. Daniel?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Call Dew,” she said. “Tell him to bring Dawsey. The patient is waking up. We’re going to have to knock her out again and operate right away. If Dew wants to ask these things some questions, he’d better do it fast, because in thirty minutes I’m going to save this woman’s life and kill these little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the process.”

DUSTIN GETS RELIGION

Dustin Climer woke up on a cot. His shoulder hurt. His head felt like it was going to explode. A fever washed through his body, and every nerve throbbed with shooting pains. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. The infirmary tent, and he was the only one there.

His training kicked in, and his hands found his weapon. The empty M4 carbine was leaning against a small metal cabinet of drawers at the side of his cot. Just having the M4 in his hands made Dustin relax a bit.

The tent’s soft plastic windows showed darkness outside. He’d been attacked in the morning, so he’d been out for what, eight hours? His clothes and shoes were folded up under a metal rack next to the bed. Something about his jacket bothered him. The shoulder patch . . .

Images flashed through his mind. A little girl. A blond, perfect, angelic little girl. Had he ever seen anything so gorgeous? He had. When he’d been out, he’d had visions of something black, something triangular.

The hatchlings.

Beautiful?

Yes, beyond beautiful. Perfection. Utterly divine.

Shame washed over him. He looked down at his jacket again, at the shoulder patch depicting a lightning bolt hitting an upside-down roach. And even worse, the three small black triangle patches sewn beneath it. One of those patches was just black. One had a glossy white X embroidered on it.