Contagious (25 page)

THE NEED FOR SPEED
Colonel Charlie Ogden looked over Corporal Cope’s shoulder. They both stared at a computer screen showing a map of Gaylord, Michigan.
“Lot of roads in and out of that town, Colonel,” Cope said.
“Noted,” Ogden said. “What’s the population?”
“Over thirty-five hundred, sir. That’s a lot of people to manage with one company.”
“I’m thinking the same thing,” Ogden said. “But we have state and local police helping. How long a flight for the C-17s?”
“About an hour, sir,” Cope said. “Plus an hour to load up and another to fly. We could have X Company offloaded and ready to deploy in under three hours.”
“Call the pilots and the platoon leaders,” Ogden said. “They don’t pay us to have our bags packed for nothing. We scramble now. I want to be offloaded in two and a half, not three.”
“Yes sir.”
Cope left the desk and started making calls. Ogden sat down and studied the map. The airport was right in town. The hatchlings had made that mistake in Wahjamega as well, building a gate so close to a landing strip that Ogden had landed his troops only a couple of miles away from the target.
Cope was right—there were a lot of roads. First glance showed about twenty ways out of town, not counting the highways I-75 and M-32. No real choke points. Ogden could have the police handle the highways, keep a lower profile that way, but he wasn’t going to put a couple of cops on each back road. The infected were just too dangerous for that. He’d need to put a roadblock on each small road, stationed with at least four men.
The smaller roads were mostly paved rural routes through farmland, although there were a lot of vehicle-capable dirt trails that wound through wooded areas. And then the woods themselves, where people could just walk out and avoid the roads altogether. His men would be spread fairly thin to cover it all.
“Cope,” Ogden said.
“Sir?”
“Call Captain Lodge and activate Whiskey Company. We need them for this. We’ll leave Yankee and Zulu companies at Fort Bragg. Best to have a reserve that can react fast, in case we’re tied up in Gaylord, don’t you think?”
“Are you asking my opinion, sir?”
“No,” Ogden said. “It’s a rhetorical question.”
“In that case I agree with whatever you say, Colonel.”
“That’s what I like about you, Cope, you’re so opinionated. Now make the calls.”
“Yes sir.”
Ogden would have felt better using all four companies, but it was just too much to move a full battalion into a small town. Plus, it was prudent to leave two companies of the DOMREC free to react, in case a gate popped up somewhere else. The DOMREC was the only unit that could deploy and be combat-ready anywhere in the Midwest inside three hours. The next-fastest response time would come from the Division Ready Force. The DRF’s mission was to put lead elements anywhere in the world within eighteen hours of an alert. If DRF had to deploy in the continental United States, that would probably cut it down to seven or eight hours, but no way in hell could they be ready to fight in three hours.
When it came to that kind of speed, there was Charlie Ogden’s unit and no one else.
HOW TO DEAL WITH THE DEATH OF A FRIEND
Clarence Otto sat in the modified sleeper cabin of the MargoMobile, Margaret on his lap, her forehead in the crook of his neck and her legs supported by his arm. Her tears and snot dripped onto his jacket. If he noticed, he didn’t seem to care.
She couldn’t stop crying. She wanted to, tried to, but she couldn’t. She’d cried all night until she’d fallen asleep on the computer-room floor, then started again as soon as she woke.
They were driving north to Gaylord. Driving to more death. To more horror.
She was still wearing her scrubs, the same ones she’d slept in, the same ones she’d been wearing under the hazmat suit when Betty Jewell killed Amos Braun.
Killed her
friend
.
A friend she would never, ever see again. She just wanted him back. Why couldn’t he just
come back
?
“I’m so sorry, Margo,” Clarence said as he gently petted her hair. He kept saying that. Maybe he didn’t know what else to say. It didn’t matter
what
he said, really. She was grateful just for the sound of his voice.
She should have been the one to call Amos’s wife. She’d never met the woman, but still, Margaret should have done it. She’d taken the coward’s way out, though—Dew sent a couple of FBI agents to deliver the news.
“I need to get up,” she said. “I have to watch the video from my helmet-cam. Maybe I missed something, maybe I already forgot something when . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“There’s plenty of time to work later,” Clarence said. “You need a rest. Besides, we’re driving. It’s not safe for you to be in the trailer when this thing is rolling along.”
He kept petting her hair.
The cold lump in her chest wouldn’t go away.
“If only . . . I could have . . . gotten his helmet off sooner,” she said quietly, her sobs breaking up her sentence.
“You know that’s not true,” Clarence whispered. “She cut his artery. There was nothing you could have done.”
“But I . . . was in charge. It’s . . . it’s my fault.”
She felt Clarence shaking his head, his chin rubbing softly against her hair.
“You’re smarter than that, Margo. I know you’re going to try and blame yourself, because that’s the kind of person you are. You want to take everything on your shoulders. But blaming yourself for his death is stupid, and you know it. That girl had enough drugs in her to knock out an elephant. She had shown no signs of violent behavior. Hell, her hands were
strapped down
. No one could have seen it coming. In fact, if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s
mine,
because I’m responsible for protecting you both. I wasn’t even in the room.”
“But we told you to stay out of our way,” Margaret said. “Too cramped in there with an extra body. If . . . if you hadn’t been in the computer room, watching it on the monitor . . .”
“I can override any order you give me if I think your safety is at risk. I could have stayed in the autopsy room. If I had, Amos would still be alive.”
Margaret sat up and looked at him. “Don’t do that, Clarence. It’s not your fault!”
“I know. And it’s not
yours,
either.”
Another sob grabbed her body, grabbed it and shook it. Amos was
dead.
Who was going to look after his daughters? Had the FBI agents delivered the news yet? Would his family ever know the truth, or was Murray already dealing another cover story? Amos Braun deserved a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom—his family would get a lie about a lab accident and an insurance payout.
“We can look for blame all day,” Clarence said. “That’s not going to bring him back. All it’s going to do is take our focus away from the job at hand. More people are going to die, Margo, you can bet on that. More good people like my boy Amos. It sucks to say, but we can grieve him all we want once we beat this fucking thing. You want to place blame? Place it where it belongs. Place it on this infection. That’s what killed Amos, not me, and not you.”
Another set of sobs hit, but this time she finally forced them into submission. Clarence was right. This disease had taken Amos, taken all the others. If she could stop it, if she could
kill
it, that was the greatest tribute she could pay to her friend.
“You know what’s funny?” Clarence said.
“What?”
“I finished up twenty bucks ahead. He’d be so pissed if he knew I won.”
Margaret couldn’t believe Clarence could joke at a time like this. Then she thought of Amos’s face when he took the twenty from Otto, or the scowl when he had to hand it over. For some reason she pictured him looking down on both of them, pointing and laughing.
And despite the pain, she laughed a little herself.
MR. BURKLE THE POSTMAN
John Burkle was a bit behind. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor the gloom of night, but notice how no one ever listed
nor horribly rotted blackened corpses
as one of the things that could keep you from your appointed rounds.
John had called 9-1-1, then waited for the ambulance and cops to arrive. He couldn’t say for sure if it had been Cheffie in that house. Cheffie was the only one who lived there, but that black . . .
thing
. . . could have been anyone. The paramedics had even given John some test for flesh-eating bacteria, which—thank God—turned out to be negative. He’d gone home after that, a bit shaken up by the whole ordeal, which meant that today he had a double load of mail to deliver.
He stuffed shopper coupons and magazines into the mailbox, shut it, drove back onto the road and checked his next batch.
The Jewells.
It was insane to think that flesh-eating bacteria had hit Gaylord of all places. Nothing happened in Gaylord, which was exactly why John Burkle loved it so much.
He pulled up to the Jewells’ mailbox and put in two days’ worth of mail. He started to drive away, then stopped when he saw Bobby Jewell walking down his long, tree-lined driveway. Bobby was carrying his little daughter, Chelsea, who was waving a letter. What a doll that one was. All those blond curls. If she turned out to be half the looker her mother was, the girl was going to break some hearts when she got into high school.
“Hey there, Chelsea,” John called. “Got some mail for me?”
“Yes sir, Mister Postman!”
About ten feet from the truck, Bobby set Chelsea down. She ran forward, holding the letter up as if it were an object of great importance. Little kids were such a hoot—something as mundane as mailing a letter could carry newness and excitement.
“Here you go, Mister Postman!”
John took the letter with affected importance. “Well, thank you very much, young lady.”
Chelsea actually curtsied. John just wanted to eat her up.
“You’re welcome, Mister Postman. My daddy wants to show you something.”
“Oh?” John looked up. Bobby had closed the distance and just stood there. John knew Bobby from summer softball league, but damn, the guy didn’t look good at all. Sunken eyes, pale skin. Looked like he’d lost at least fifteen pounds.
“Hi, John,” Bobby said. “I got to show you the damnedest thing.”
“What’s that?”
Bobby unzipped his coat, reached in and pulled out a rusty red monkey wrench. “This thing is stuck like you wouldn’t believe.”
John looked at the wrench, then looked at Bobby. Why the hell would Bobby show him a stuck monkey wrench? John’s internal alarm went off—what if Bobby looked like crap because he had that flesh-eating shit?
“Uh . . . Bobby, I don’t have time right now.”
“Why’s that, Mister Postman?” Chelsea said.
John automatically looked down at the girl. Even as he did, he knew that it was a mistake. By the time he looked up, the monkey wrench was a rusty red blur. He flinched just before the wrench smashed him on the left side of his jaw. He slid to the right, falling off his seat and into the van. He tried to get to his feet, but they were tangled in the gas and break pedals. Time became a dreamy, slow-moving sludge. He knew that the wrench was coming again, the moment before that metallic hit dragged on forever.
His Taser.
His hands searched for his bag, for the weapon that could save him, but it was too late.
The slow-motion sensation evaporated when he felt a blast on his left ear. His head exploded with concussive pain. The van seemed to spin around him. He tried to get up again, but his arms and legs felt so weak. Then he felt weight bearing down on him; he felt strong, callused hands on forehead and jaw, forcing his mouth open.
He felt a small, hot, wet tongue slide into his mouth.
And then he felt the burning . . .
APPLEBEE’S
Perry Dawsey had never thought normality could seem so surreal.
Or so goddamn
uncomfortable
.
He sat in an Applebee’s in Gaylord, Michigan, waiting for his burger to arrive. Kitsch lined the walls. Some Top 40 shit played on the sound system. There were tables filled with fat men, fat women and fat kids. Dew sat to Perry’s left. Perry sat across from Claude Baumgartner. Baum had lost the metal brace, but his nose was still a mess. Jens Milner, whose eye remained quite black, sat on Perry’s right, across from Dew.
Add in Perry’s nasty facial cuts and they looked like a foursome back from a fight club—a fight club that Dew had clearly won, since all he had was a little Band-Aid on his head.
Baum and Milner just sat there, staring at Perry, not saying a word.
This was another of Dew’s brilliant ideas. Sure! Why the hell not? Let’s sit down for lunch with a couple of guys I fucked up before I walked into a house and slaughtered a family. Why, a lunch like this is so damn normal it should be in a fucking Applebee’s commercial.
“I don’t get it,” Baum said. “Why don’t we just go to the Jewells’ house?” Baum’s right hand hovered near his left lapel, next to his tit. Sometimes it rested on the table, sometimes Baum pretended to scratch his chest, and sometimes the hand just hung there in midair. His hand seemed to orbit around the pistol in his shoulder holster. Perry didn’t mind so much. He kept his own hand on the table’s edge—if Baum made a move, he’d jam the table into the fucker’s chest and drive him right to his back.
Baum kept staring at Perry, staring with that
attitude
. It was hard enough to keep things under control without some motherfucker calling you out with his eyes. Perry wanted to smash his face in, but Dew expected more of him. So Perry would hold it in. For now, anyway.
“We can’t go near the house,” Dew said. “Murray’s orders.”
Milner huffed. “That’s to keep Mister Happy here from killing the family, and you know it. We’ve got the address. Baum and I can go.”
Like Baum, Milner just kept staring. Didn’t anyone teach these CIA guys any manners?
“No way,” Dew said. “We can’t go near it until Ogden arrives and sends some boys with us. Believe me, Murray was
really
specific. Seems the new chief of staff has it in for him. If we show our faces at the Jewell house before Ogden arrives, Murray is screwed. And if Murray is screwed, he’ll make sure everyone at this table is even
more
screwed. Trust me on that. So we might as well get some grub while we wait. And incidentally, Baum, if you don’t get that hand away from your gun, I’m going to shove it up your ass.”
“The gun or the hand?” Baum asked without taking his eyes off Perry.
“Both,” Dew said. “But I’ll surprise you with the order of entry. And quit staring. Jesus. You’d think you two had never sat down to eat with a guy that kicked your ass before.”