Contagious

The image of the building crystallized.

The Renaissance Center.

Perry’s eyes shot open. The chatter wasn’t getting louder because the hosts had more power—it was getting louder because, just like before, he was getting closer to the hosts.

More accurately, the hosts were getting closer to him.

“Oh s.h.i.t, Dew,” Perry said. “I’m hearing Ogden’s men! They’re here to kill me!”

A m.u.f.fled gunshot from outside, then another, then another.

Milner’s voice blasted in Perry’s earpiece. “Ogden’s men just shot Baum!”

Dew drew his .45. “Milner, defend yourself. These guys are with the hatchlings.”

More gunshots. Perry heard them both from outside the trailer and in his helmet speakers. That meant gunshots inside the computer room—Milner trading fire. Just as quickly as it started, the gunfire stopped. Milner was likely dead. The men would come through the decontamination area, into the autopsy room, then across the collapsible connector and into Trailer B.

Then they would kill Perry and Dew both.

Dew ran to the airlock door, reached to open it, then paused. He turned to face Perry.

“What about the hatchlings?” Dew said. “Do they want those?”

“Yeah, but I’m the main target.”

Men shouting, things falling. The airlock door’s light changed from green to red—someone had just opened the opposite door on the other side of the walkway. Foosteps on the collapsible grate outside—they were right outside the door to Trailer B.

“Don’t try to open this door!” Dew shouted. “We’ve got two hatchlings in here, and we’ll kill them.”

The man on the other side of the airlock door sounded both happy and angry at once. “If you do that, we’re going to torture you for a looooong time. Give them to us, and we’ll let you go.”

More footsteps outside, more men packing into the collapsible hallway.

Perry didn’t know what to do. He waited for Dew to say something, anything. They were so f.u.c.ked.

“Perry,” Dew whispered, too quietly to be heard through the airlock door, but Perry heard him in his earpiece just fine. “On the containment cell’s control panel, type in pound, five, four, five, and then as soon as the airlock light turns green, hit five again.”

Perry ran the four steps to the isolation chamber’s door. He typed in the numbers. His fingertip hovered over the final 5.

A pounding on the airlock door.

“Time’s up, a.s.shole!” the man outside yelled. “We’ve got a lot of firepower out here!”

“And I’ve got some in here,” Dew said. He raised his .45 and emptied the magazine at the hatchling cage on the left. Just like Perry’s shots from the day before, the gla.s.s spiderwebbed as bullets tore the hatchling to splattery pieces. Dew’s empty magazine hit the floor and he reloaded.

“You f.u.c.ker!” the man screamed.

More footsteps outside the airlock, then a solid thump—the airlock door from Trailer A, closing.

The light above Dew turned from red to green. That equalized pressure in the walkway. Ogden’s men were coming in.

Perry pressed the 5.

Spray nozzles in the ceiling, the floor and the walls erupted with a heavy mist of concentrated bleach and chlorine gas. Perry’s visor instantly beaded up with the deadly liquid. They heard initial noises of confusion from outside the door, then screams of panic, coughing and vomiting. Gunfire erupted, but no bullets. .h.i.t the airlock door.

“Make sure your safety is off,” Dew said. “Follow me, watch my back, and make sure you don’t point your gun my way, got it?”

Perry nodded quickly.

Dew opened the airlock door. Perry followed onto the collapsible walkway, the chlorine fog so concentrated that he could barely make out the three bodies lying on the grate, tearing at the small holes they’d shot in the walkway’s collapsible walls.

Dew pulled the trigger six times. Two for each man. They stopped moving.

Perry followed Dew but felt a slight pressure on his right thigh. His heads-up display flashed a message in orange letters—SUIT INTEGRITY BREACH.

He looked down at his thigh. A piece of metal in the shot-up, torn walkway had ripped a three inch gash in the suit. Chlorine gas roiled around the tear. Perry froze for just a second, thinking this was it, that his lungs would burn, before he realized that air was shooting out of the cut, not in. His suit’s positive air pressure.

Perry heard four more gunshots from inside the autopsy room.

“Dawsey, move it!”

He reached down with his right hand and grabbed the cut, bunching the material and sealing off the hole as best he could. He ran into the autopsy room.

Two more bodies. Dew reloading again.

“You idiot,” Dew said. “Did you tear your f.u.c.king suit?”

“Just go already!”

Dew turned and ran into the main decontamination chamber. Two more men clawing at themselves, trying to break free of the chlorine spray that shot into their noses, their screaming mouths, their eyes.

Dew killed them both.

A roar from outside and the tearing of metal.

“Get down!” Dew screamed as he dove to the bleach-wet floor. Bullets tore huge holes in the decontamination chamber’s wall. Someone outside opening up on the trailer. Perry hit the deck hard, adrenaline raging through his body. His hand came off the hole in his thigh as he hit, and he scrambled one-handed to close it up again.

Machine-gun fire sawed through the trailer walls. The air filled with flying chunks of white epoxy, yellow insulation and a disturbing amount of thin, jagged metal torn from the trailer’s exterior. An explosion rocked the trailer on its suspension, throwing Perry up in the air and smashing Dew headfirst against the wall. The walls buckled and twisted. Perry landed hard on a bent floor. Dew slumped to his belly, then rolled on his side.