Contagious

Chelsea stood there, motionless save for the white flag still twitching in her little hand. Guns flew out of the building’s broken windows and clattered on the sidewalk. Two came from the ground floor, just one from the second. Was that all Ogden had left? Three gunmen?

More silence.

“Where’s Col o nel Ogden?” Dew asked.

“He will come out now, with my mommy,” Chelsea said. “She’s hurt, she needs help.”

Perry heard Nails’s bellowing voice. “Squad One, move up!”

Soldiers of Whiskey Company stepped out from cover and moved forward, forming a wide half circle around Chelsea.

She turned and walked back through the door. Perry started to follow her inside, but Dew’s hand on his chest stopped him again. She slipped inside, out of sight. Only a few seconds of tense waiting later, a man walked out. Ogden. He reached back and pulled something through the door. Something big, like a two-legged hippo. Gray. Wearing . . . pants?

Wait.

The man wasn’t pulling that thing.

That thing . . . was walking.

Margaret watched an obscenity walk out of the building.

“What the f.u.c.k?” Clarence said. “What is that?”

It was a woman. A woman horribly bloated to insane proportions. Her arms were swollen to the point where the skin stretched out thin and semitransparent like a balloon, or like the casing of a sausage sizzling away on a grill. Her stomach distended like a cartoon-character. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s looked ma.s.sive, misshapen, like beach b.a.l.l.s. Her face was puffed up to the point that her eyes were nothing more than stretched, squinting slits. The woman couldn’t see—that’s why Ogden led her forward.

“Stay where you are!” Dew screamed. “Ogden, stop or we shoot!”

Guns rattled as soldiers took aim. Ogden stopped. So did the woman. With a smooth, confident motion, Ogden reached into his pocket, drew out a grenade and pulled the pin. He jammed the grenade into the woman’s bloated folds.

Dew fired. Ogden’s head jerked to the side, and he dropped, lifeless.

Next came two long seconds, a pregnant pause. Margaret and the soldiers stared at the obscenely bloated woman standing next to Colonel Charlie Ogden’s fallen body.

Someone started firing.

A dozen M4s suddenly erupted, bullets punching into the monstrosity that had once been the beautiful Candice Jewell. Each bullet kicked out a gray jet like the spray of a miniature fire extinguisher. She stumbled back a step, arms comically pinwheeling as she fought for balance.

And then the grenade went off.

A bang, no flash. A cloud of gray peppered with red, fleshy shrapnel.

The cloud expanded, billowing past Dew and the men who had surrounded Chelsea. It thinned as it spread, a translucent sphere growing more and more transparent. The soldiers turned to run, but the cloud engulfed them before they made it three steps. It blew past them, seemingly hungry for the next man in line, and the next.

The soldiers slowed, then stopped. Hands went to throats, to eyes, to ears. They scratched at themselves. They clawed. They screamed. They fell. They writhed and kicked.

The cloud billowed past Margaret, tiny spores covering her airtight suit.

Tears rolled down her face. This was it, this was the final stage. There had to be millions of the spores. Sanchez had caught the disease from a tiny puffball, maybe a thousand spores landing on his hand, and even though he’d washed the hand immediately, it hadn’t mattered—the stuff penetrated almost on contact.

Every one of these men, including Dew, including Perry, was already infected with a dose at least a thousand times more concentrated.

She looked away from the men, looked at the air around her. The pollenlike dust drifted away, a grayish cloud carried by the wind. The spores were already starting to fall, but only slightly—they might travel a mile or more before they finally came to rest.

A mile would carry them into downtown Detroit, even beyond, spreading them across the tens of thousands of panicked citizens trying to hide from gunfire. Spores were far smaller than bullets, far more dangerous, and from those spores there was no place to hide.

People stumbled out of the house. The hostages. Clawing at their eyes and throats and ears, running in any direction, every direction. It wasn’t just the wind that could spread the contagion—these people would take it much farther.

How many of them would leave the city in a panic? Find a car, a way out, and just start driving? How many would travel three or four hours before they fell asleep?

And how many of those would change into another gasbag, like Chelsea’s mother?

She saw other civilians, stumbling out of buildings where they had hidden, hands rubbing desperately at eyes, digging at exposed skin. They ran in a panic, aimlessly scattering in all directions.

“Clarence, does your HUD say anything about suit integrity?”

He said nothing. He just stared at the carnage.

“Clarence!”

“Uh . . . no, nothing about suit integrity.”

Thank G.o.d. He was safe.

“We have to get out of here,” she said. “We have to get to the decon trailer at the football field. Can you drive that motorcycle parked in front of the building?”

“Yeah, but what about Dew? Perry? We have to help them.”

Margaret swallowed. Dew writhed on the ground. Perry just lay on his back, barely moving. She wanted to go to them, but the cold, mathematical part of her brain knew the score.

“We can’t help them,” she said. “Do what I say, and do it now. If you don’t, the world is f.u.c.ked.”

Clarence looked at her, then looked back at the men crawling across the ground, at the people running into the city. It seemed to click home for him. He closed his eyes tight. Tears dripped down his cheeks. He opened his eyes, grabbed her hand and ran for the motorcycle.