Contagious

“OmahG.o.domahG.o.d!”

He ignored the missing fingers, the blowtorch sensation. What else could he do? He ignored them and yanked the door open and scrambled out of the car. His blackened fingers fell off his lap and bounced on the icy pavement. The rain had stopped. Donny ran straight for the nearest s...o...b..nk, now a shriveled thing all crusted with ice. Crying, screaming, he kicked at it with his foot to break the crust, then jammed his blackened hand through the hole and into the snow. His hand burned. He had to cool it off, but the snow didn’t make it any better.

Another cough hit, this one deep, from way inside his stomach. Hot blood gushed into his mouth. He tasted chunks of something rotten, chunks that burned his tongue. The whole mess spilled onto the icy white s...o...b..nk, covering it with bright red and wet black. Donny Jewell fell over on his side. Pain overwhelmed him, jabbing into his body from every possible angle.

He just wanted to go to sleep again.

The next cough yanked him into a fetal position. More red and black sprayed out of his mouth. Something inside broke. He knew it, not from increased pain, but when his stomach muscles seemed to suddenly relax, like he’d been curled up by a rubber band that had just snapped.

He could still hear his daughter screaming.

The last thought he had was a hope that her face would clear up in time for senior pictures.

CHEFFIE

Cheffie Jones awoke to find himself under the living-room carpet.

He had two infections. One on his left collarbone, one just under his Adam’s apple. The skin between them had blackened and sagged, the necrosis spreading toward his face, down his chest and deeper into his throat.

Before he died, Cheffie had just enough time to flip the carpet back and wonder why he hurt so bad. While he’d slept, the apoptosis had weakened his carotid artery, which gave way at that exact moment. Just one tiny hole at first, enough for blood to squirt out into the blackened sludge surrounding it. He was in so much pain he didn’t even notice the difference. The first pinhole became a second, then a third, and then blood pressure against the thin artery wall ripped open a hole the size of a pencil eraser.

Blood sprayed all through his throat. A few thin jets pushed out through the black rot, but most of it just shot around inside his body. He gurgled as he breathed it in. Blood filled alveoli and soon reduced the ability of his lungs to draw oxygen.

He couldn’t scream, because his vocal cords had dissolved right before his carotid gave way. He managed to stumble to the front door and open it; then he fell. He tried to crawl, but it wasn’t very effective—Cheffie hadn’t been in good shape to start with, and without oxygen his muscles shut down right quick. He got to his knees, struggled to get one hand out the front door, then fell again.

Cheffie Jones stopped moving. He had drowned in his own blood.

The apoptosis chain reaction continued.

THE SONOFAb.i.t.c.h

The Orbital rearranged the probability tables and ran scenario after scenario. The child’s mind had produced a clear signal. She might be strong enough to carry out the new strategy’s next phase. And if she wasn’t strong enough, the other child might be. He wasn’t as well devolped as Chelsea, but he was coming along fast. Both of them together would provide all the ground-based brain power the Orbital needed to direct the protectors.

Unless, of course, the sonofab.i.t.c.h found them, as he had found the rest.

Biofeedback from the new strain showed the Orbital that cultivating muscle fibers from each host was too risky. Too much potential of harvesting damaged stem cells.

A problem with a simple solution—the children would become the vector. The children had successfully developed modified muscle fibers, fibers that could split on their own, reproduce. Introduce those fibers into new hosts, and the infection would spread.

That solved one problem—creating protectors—but a second, equally significant problem remained: how to stop the sonofab.i.t.c.h. The Orbital hadn’t been built for situations like this. The creators hadn’t programmed specific instructions on how to handle a host-turned-hunter.

Killing him was the obvious strategy, but that hadn’t worked yet. Hosts from each of the last three batches had tried and failed. Not only failed, they had died in the process, removing their potential hatchlings from the build phase. Sonofab.i.t.c.h was human, he could die, but targeting him was too risky.

The simulations rolled on, and one strategy continued to show the highest probability of success—just keep the sonofab.i.t.c.h away.

Could the Orbital block just one host from the communication mesh? Yes, it decided it could. It would be difficult, taking up much of the Orbital’s ability to process communication for the rest. The female child host could be modified. She could act as the central communication bridge, freeing up enough of the Orbital’s processing power to locate and block the sonofab.i.t.c.h.

If he couldn’t hear, he couldn’t find the new gate.

BIG SAMMY’S BAR

Margaret hadn’t given the computer-room chairs a second thought until Perry sat in one. He’d opted to stand at first, but his little grimaces made it obvious his knees were killing him. Margaret pulled the I am your doctor trump card and ordered him to sit. Put an ironing board in front of him with a plate of turkey on top, and he would have looked like a grownup forced to sit in one of the kiddie chairs at Thanksgiving.

She sat in the chair to Perry’s right, Dew in the chair to his left. Clarence stood behind Margaret, his body radiating tension. Everyone noticed Clarence’s vibe except Clarence himself.

Amos, of course, was nowhere to be seen.

“I really don’t like to talk about this,” Perry said.

Dew grabbed Perry’s left shoulder and gave it a supportive shake. “All the more reason to get this done quick and get it done right,” he said. “Besides, what else are you gonna do with your time? Go lift some weights?”