Contagious (15 page)

are going to be spending some quality time together while you heal up from this. Can you make it back to your room?”
Perry struggled to his feet. Margaret tried to assist, but he was so heavy she felt like a little girl pretending to help rather than making any actual difference. She found a bottle of ibuprofen in the first-aid kit.
“Take four of these and just go to sleep, okay? I’ll come and check on you later.”
He took the bottle and hobbled to the door. He opened it, then turned back.
“Tell Dew I need to see him,” Perry said. “Tell him it’s important, and that . . . and that I won’t give him any more trouble.”
“Can it wait until tomorrow morning? I want you asleep.”
Perry thought for a second, then nodded. He held up the bottle, gave it a single shake as kind of a salute, then limped toward his room.
She did want him asleep, but she also didn’t want to risk a second round of fighting. Perry acted different,
defeated,
but Dew probably hadn’t calmed down yet, and any number of insignificant words might set the two men off again.
The only reason Perry Dawsey was still alive was that Dew Phillips wanted him to be.
Margaret needed to make sure Dew didn’t change his mind.
THAT CAN’ T BE GOOD
As the Jewell family slept, the changes began.
The new seed strain behaved much like the one that had infected Perry Dawsey. At first, anyway.
Demodex folliculorum
—tiny mites that live on every human being on the planet—found the seeds. Since the seeds looked and smelled like the pieces of dead skin that made up
Demodex
’s only food, the mites ate them. Protein-digesting enzymes in the microscopic arachnids’ stomachs hammered away at the seed coats, breaking them down, allowing oxygen to penetrate and germination to occur.
And also like Perry’s infection, this round began in many microscopic piles of bug shit.
Each activated seed pushed a filament into the skin, penetrating all the way down to the subcutaneous layers. At the bottom of the filament, receptor cells measured specific chemical levels and density, identifying the perfect spot for second-stage growth.
Unlike Perry’s strain and those that came before it, these filaments released one of two chemicals into the bloodstream:
Chemical A if it was a hatchling seed, similar to the ones that infected Perry Dawsey and Martin Brewbaker.
Chemical B if it was the new strain.
The chemicals filtered through the host’s circulatory system. After a short time, the filament measured the levels of both A and B. This produced a simple majority decision: if there was more Chemical A, the hatchling seeds continued their growth and the new strain seeds shut down. If there was more Chemical B, the inverse occurred.
As it turned out, Bobby Jewell was the only one with more standard hatchling seeds. Five of his seven infections, in fact, were the same thing that had infected Perry.
Betty, Donald and Chelsea Jewell would have the honor of incubating the new strain.
From this point the two strains followed almost identical growth patterns. Second-stage roots reached out to draw material from the subcutaneous environment: proteins, oxygen, amino acids and, especially, sugars. Both strains harnessed the host’s natural biological processes to create new microorganisms. There were the
reader-balls
—cilia-covered, saw-toothed, free-moving things designed to tear open cells and examine the DNA inside, analyzing the host’s biological blueprint like a computer reading lines of software code. There were the
builders
—they created the flexible cellulose framework that in the original strain would become triangles. There were the
herders
—microorganisms that swam out into the body to find stem cells, cut them free and drag them back to that framework where the reader-balls would slice into them and modify the DNA.
The new strain added to this list. It modified stem cells to produce tiny, free-floating strands of a strong, flexible micro–muscle fiber. These fibers would self-assemble, binding together in specific, collective patterns. While Bobby Jewell’s body dealt with the activities of reader-balls, builders and herders, his daughter, brother and niece would have to deal with the newest microorganism.
Chelsea, Donald and Betty would feel the effects of the
crawlers
.

CRAWL
Perry Dawsey’s seeds had come from batch thirteen. His triangles hatched in seven days. Due to constant design improvements, the seeds of batch seventeen needed only five.
Five days is an engineering marvel of self-organization, a testament to some seriously advanced technology. Consider it an upgrade to the old strain.
For the
new
strain, however, five days seemed like an eternity. Whereas Perry’s structures had to build many complex parts, the new structures produced only one thing.
Microscopic strands of modified human muscle.
Hacked
muscle.
Each strand contained muscle cells, of course, but also tiny neurotransmitter secretors and a complex crystalline set of molecules capable of both sending and receiving rudimentary signals.
A hacked strand by itself was worthless. It could wiggle . . . and that’s about it. It could also send and receive “I am here” signals, which was key because the strands weren’t designed to work by themselves.
The “I am here” signals drew them together, almost like the last individual bits of cereal floating on top of your milk. The bits just float there, until they get close, and then surface tension yanks them together. When a strand detected an “I am here” signal from another strand, it wiggled toward it. The wiggling strands reached out to each other, touched and intertwined. Now their signal was twice as strong, drawing more strands, and so on.
A normal human muscle cell by itself is useless. Many cells working in unison, however, produce complex movement. The hacked strands followed a similar logic—the whole proved greater than the sum of the parts. When the hacked-strand collections reached a certain size, about five hundred microns wide, the “I am here” signal shut off.
A micron is one one-
millionth
of a meter. Five hundred microns is five ten-thousandths of a meter, or about two-
hundredths
of an inch. Damn small, but you can still see something like that with the naked eye.
If you could have looked inside the bodies of Chelsea Jewell, Donald Jewell and Betty Jewell, you would have seen something rather disturbing, something that looked very much like a human nerve cell. On one end, a long, thin axon. On the other end, branching dendrites spreading out like the tributaries of a river.
But in a regular nerve cell, the dendrites don’t latch onto other nerve cells, muscle cells and membranes, and they certainly don’t reach out and
pull
.
Regular nerve cells, you see, don’t
crawl.
The crawlers implemented a very simple navigation system: cause pain. This was a practical strategy, not a sadistic one: the human body is wired to give pain messages the highest priority. The crawlers’ stretching dendrites reached out, locked onto axons, then released a chemical that mimicked normal pain signals. Some nerves ignored this message—those were the
efferent neurons,
the ones that carried signals from the brain to the rest of the body. Also called
motor neurons,
they let the brain do its thing, controlling muscle reactions and bodily functions. The nerves that did
not
ignore these messages of pain, but instead replicated them and passed them on to the brain, those were the
afferent nerves.
Once the crawlers identified afferent chains, they grabbed, and pulled, and crawled. Every three or four nerves, they released the pain signal again, measured the results and kept moving.
Eventually their crawling would lead them to the brain.
UNKIE DONNY DEPARTS
Fluffy snow blew lightly in all directions, flying into Chelsea’s eyes and tickling her nose.
She didn’t feel good. She felt kind of hot, achy, and she had some little bumps on her hands. Those hurt a bit, but didn’t itch or anything. She held her daddy’s hand as Unkie Donny and Betty got into Unkie Donny’s car. Betty blew her nose into a pink Kleenex, then put her head back on the car seat and closed her eyes. She didn’t feel good, either.
Unkie Donny shut the driver’s door and rolled down the window. He coughed hard, a rattling sound in his chest, then stuck his hand out of the window toward Daddy. Unkie Donny’s breath billowed out as he talked.
“Little brother, thanks for having us,” he said to Daddy. “And thanks for the gift that keeps on giving.”
“Oh, put a sock in it,” Daddy said. “You imported the creeping crud from Pittsburgh. I’m not shaking a hand you just coughed in.”
Unkie Donny’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Chelsea took a step back. Unkie Donny suddenly looked kind of scary.
“I’m just teasing,” Daddy said. “Relax, big brother.”
Unkie Donny stared for a few seconds, and then his face softened. He blinked a bunch, like he was waking up or something.
“Sorry, man,” he said. “I . . . I guess I really took that the wrong way.”
“Meds?” Daddy said.
Unkie Donny nodded. “Took them. Honest.”
“Cool,” Daddy said. “We’ll come down to Pittsburgh sometime soon.”
Unkie Donny’s eyes narrowed again, then opened again. He shook his head the way a puppy would.
Mommy stepped forward and leaned in the window to give Unkie Donny an awkward hug. “Drive safe,” she said. “This storm is supposed to turn into freezing rain. The roads are full of downstaters, and the traffic is going to be terrible. Watch out for the drunks.”
She backed out of the window. Unkie Donny smiled and nodded.
Mommy went around the other side of the car to say good-bye to Betty. Unkie Donny looked right at Chelsea. He held out his hand.
“Come here, dolly,” he said. “Say good-bye to me.”
Chelsea shrank back. Why did Unkie Donny want to touch her? Was he going to do something to her?
“Honey,” Daddy said, “go say good-bye to your uncle.”
Unkie Donny smiled. Chelsea blinked a few times. It was Unkie Donny—why would she be afraid of him? He loved her. Chelsea let go of her daddy’s hand and ran up to the car door. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed Unkie Donny on the cheek.
“Bye-bye, Unkie Donny.”
“You be a good girl, okay?”
Chelsea nodded. He seemed . . . different. So did Daddy. So did Cousin Betty. The only one who didn’t seem different was Mommy. Why was that? Maybe Chelsea didn’t need to fear Unkie Donny at all—maybe she needed to fear Mommy. Mommy might get the spanky-spoon.
Chelsea leaned in and whispered in Unkie Donny’s ear. “When we come see you, can you take me to get my ears pierced?”
Unkie Donny laughed, then touched her cheek. “I’m afraid that’s up to your dad.”
Chelsea loved the way Unkie Donny smiled at her. Just like Daddy did.
Unkie Donny was a lot like Daddy. Chelsea wished he would come by more often. He knew a lot about the Deeeee-troit basket-ballll.
Unkie Donny’s face wrinkled up. He gently pushed Chelsea away, then coughed so hard his head almost hit the steering wheel. He coughed again, then leaned back and laughed a little. He waved his hand at his face, like he was trying to cool off.
“I’m going to get you for giving this to us,” Unkie Donny said to Daddy.
“I hope we get home before it really kicks in; I’ve got a feeling this is going to be a humdinger.” “If you get sick, just be safe and get a hotel,” Mommy said. “Don’t be a stubborn bastard like your brother.”
“Candice, come on,” Daddy said.
Chelsea knew that Daddy was pointing at her, even though she couldn’t see him do it. He did that when Mommy used the bad language.
“Aw, crap, sorry,” Mommy said. “Okay, guys, you get going—and
drive safe!
”
Unkie Donny rolled up the window and backed out of the drive. As he drove away, Chelsea poked at the little bumps on her hands.
Mommy knelt down in front of her. “Honey, are you okay?”
What did Mommy mean by that? Maybe she meant . . . nothing. Chelsea did feel really hot. Mommy was just trying to take care of her. Chelsea shook her head.
“Okay, baby,” Mommy said. “Let’s get you out of this cold air and back to bed.”
“Me too,” Daddy said. “I feel wrecked. Let’s hit the sack.”
The Jewell family walked inside the house.
MALE BONDING STRATEGIES
Dew Phillips knocked on Perry’s door.
“Come on in.”
Dew did so and shut the door behind him. Perry Dawsey looked like hell. A red and black scalp line ran through his blond hair. Another such line ran down his forehead in an angle from above his left eye almost down to the bridge of his nose. His lips were horribly swollen. The left eye was pure red dotted with a blue iris.
Dawsey was sitting on his bare mattress, elbows resting on his thighs, head hung low. He held a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey American Spirit.
“Where the fuck did you get that bottle?”
“You get your per diem, I get mine,” Perry said. “Had another bottle in the trunk of the ’Stang, but it broke.”
Dew casually pressed his right arm against his right side, feeling the comforting bulge of the .45 under his jacket. He’d gotten lucky fighting Dawsey, and he wasn’t about to push that luck—if Dawsey attacked, Dew was going to shoot him.
“How you feeling?” Dew asked.
Perry raised his head. The blond hair hung in his face.
“I feel like someone hit me in the head with a table leg,” Perry said. “And the mouth. And back. And thigh. And look at you—I can tell by that little Band-Aid that I really fucked up your world.”
Dew’s hand went to the small Band-Aid on his forehead. The cut from hitting the table hadn’t even required a stitch.
“If it’s any consolation,” Dew said, “I can still barely move my arm.”
“Why, do you have arthritis? I didn’t even land a punch.”
“You grazed me,” Dew said. “That’s all it took. Look, I’m not going to lie to you—my patience is at its end. You hurt any more of my men, I’m going to shoot you. If you come at
me
again, I’m going to shoot you. In the leg if I have time, in the face if I don’t. We need you real bad, but I’m not about to take one for the team, if you catch my drift.”
“I’ll . . . I’ll behave,” Perry said. “You whipped me fair and square.”
Dew marveled at the phrase. It sounded like something Dew would have said in
his
childhood after a fight. But that had been over fifty years ago. Kids today weren’t like that: they didn’t trade punches, then shake hands and call it good. Nowadays they talked shit and found a gun. Dew felt a surprise spike of admiration for Perry.
“I’d hardly call beating you with a table leg fair,” Dew said.
Perry shrugged. “I outweigh you by like sixty pounds. If I’d got my hands on you, I think I would have killed you. Besides, it doesn’t matter
how
you win, as long as you win.”
Silence filled the room for a few moments.
“So,” Dew said, “you’re not looking for a rematch?”
Perry stared at the wall for a few seconds, then spoke slowly, thoughtfully.
“Not very many people can take me out. There’s you, and . . . there was one other person that’s ever done that. I don’t want a rematch. I’ll play ball.”
Dew nodded. He let himself hope that maybe he’d finally gotten through. “Okay, kid. Let’s start from the top. You told me that something had changed. What changed?”
“The voice.”
“The voice. You said they hadn’t said any words yet. Can you hear any now?”
Perry shook his head. “No. If I’m close enough to an infected, I can hear words, but when I’m far away, it’s more like a sensation. Images, emotions, stuff like that. Sometimes I can get a grip on it, sometimes it’s like a half-whisper in a crowded room. The more infected there are in one place, the stronger the sensation. You can only pick out little bits and pieces, maybe enough to get the gist of a conversation, you know what I mean?”
Dew nodded.
“Now there’s the same bits and pieces, but there’s a different . . . intensity. I don’t know how to describe it. Sort of feels like . . . like you were down by twenty-one at the end of the half but you adjusted your blitzing strategy, you shut them down, and your offense scored twice to cut it to seven, and there’s three minutes left, and you’re
so excited,
because if you get just
one more stop,
your offense can tie it up or even win it. And that’s hard to do, right? But you feel like it’s destiny, it’s going to happen for sure. You’ve got the momentum. You think you’ve got them figured out, and the win is . . . is . . .”
“Inevitable?” Dew asked.
Perry snapped his fingers, pointed at Dew and smiled. The smile looked ghastly on his stitched, swollen lips.
“That’s it,” Perry said. “It’s inevitable. That’s what it feels like.”
“So this voice of God says, or feels like, it’s . . . uh, mounting a fourth-quarter comeback?”
Perry nodded. “Yeah, that’s pretty close.”
“So what happens next?”
“I don’t know,” Perry said. “Maybe it actually
is
the voice of God, and if we get to heaven, he’s going to kick us in the Jimmy and send us packing.”
“There ain’t no heaven,” Dew said. “And there ain’t no God. ’Cause if there is some all-powerful deity, he sure is one mean fucker. He likes to let good people die and bad people live. And, apparently, he likes to infect former football stars with things that eat them up from the inside.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Perry said, and took a long swig of Wild Turkey.
“We’re in a bit of a pickle here, boy,” Dew said. “Maybe you should stop drinking.”
“Maybe you should
start,
” Perry said. “I killed my best friend, cut off my own junk, and I’m some kind of psychic call-in line for these things. And
you
? Dude, you’re dropping bombs on
America.
You’re in charge of fighting honest-to-God
aliens
. Ask me, that’s a pretty good reason for a snort or three.”
Perry held out the bottle. Dew looked at the nasty scar on Perry’s left forearm. War scars, that’s what Perry had.
Dew accepted the bottle. The kid was right. Dew took a long swig. The bourbon tang was a welcome sensation, a friendly memory of distant times when he could just have a drink and relax. He knocked back another long pull, then handed the bottle to Perry.
Perry drank. “You got something you got to do?”
“I’m doing it,” Dew said. “Margaret asked that we stay here a little longer, give you a chance to rest. So until we leave, getting you to be more cooperative is kind of my main job.”
Perry looked at the chair. Dew wasn’t sure, but he thought the kid turned a little red. Like he was embarrassed or something.
“You, uh . . .,” Perry said. “You want to . . . sit down and . . . shoot the shit?”
Perry offered the bottle again. Dew took it, sat down and had another long swig.