Infected (44 page)

“Yes sir. Margaret and Amos are with me. They’re ready.”

Dew pulled his .45. Adrenaline surged through his veins. His pulse raced so fast he wondered if a heart attack would take him down before Dawsey could.

CONJECTURES

Racal suits were not built with comfort in mind. Margaret Montoya sat in the back of gray van number two, along with Amos and Clarence Otto. Both men also wore the bulky suits. All they had to do was put on the helmets, pressurize and they were ready to battle with whatever bacterium, virus or airborne poison Perry Dawsey might spew forth.

Only Margaret knew it wasn’t a bacterium, and it wasn’t a virus. It was something different altogether. Something…
new.
She still couldn’t put her finger on it, and it was damn near driving her mad.

“So this couldn’t be natural,” Margaret said. “We’d have seen it somewhere.”

Amos sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Margaret, we’ve had this conversation already. Several times.”

He sounded exasperated, and she couldn’t blame him—scientific curiosity or no, her mouth had run nonstop for hours. There was an answer here, if she could only get a handle on it, somehow talk it out.

“We don’t know it hasn’t been seen before,” Amos said. “Just because it hasn’t been recorded, that doesn’t mean it’s not known somewhere in the world.”

“Maybe that holds true with a regular disease, something that makes people sick. One sickness is much like the next. But this is different. These are triangles under people’s skin—there would have been
something.
A myth, a legend,
something.
”

“You obviously don’t think it’s natural,” Otto said. “So you agree with Murray? That it’s a weapon?”

“I don’t know about a weapon, but it’s not natural. Someone made this.”

“And leaped
decades
ahead of any known level of biotech,” Amos said patiently. “This isn’t cobbling together a virus. This is creating a brand-new species, genetic engineering at a level that people haven’t even theorized yet. The meshing of new organic systems to human systems is perfect, seamless. That would take years of experimentation.”

“But what if it’s not designed to build those systems, the nerves and the veins?”

“Of course it’s designed to do it,” Amos said. “It built them, right?”

Margaret felt a spike of excitement, a brief flicker of insight. There was something here, something she couldn’t put her finger on.

“Yes, it built the nerves and vein siphons, but we don’t know if it was designed to build
those
specifically.”

Otto shook his head. “I just don’t follow.”

“Blueprints,” Margaret said. “What if the initial seed, or spore, or whatever, is designed to read blueprints, like the instructions built into our DNA?”

Amos stared at her with a mixture of two expressions—one said,
I hadn’t thought of that,
and the other said,
you’re taking the fuck-nut bus to Looneyville.

“Go on,” Amos said.

“What if this thing
reads
an organism? Figures out how to tap into it, grow with it?”

“Then it doesn’t need people,” Otto said. “Why wouldn’t we have seen this in animals?”

“We don’t know it hasn’t infected animals,” Margaret said. “But maybe there’s something else going on here, more than pure biology. Maybe it needs…intelligence.”

Amos shook his head. “Needs intelligence for what? This is all conjecture, and besides the fact that you are obviously one crazy bitch, who would make an organism like that?”

The pieces started to fall into place for Margaret. “It’s
not
an organism,” she said. “I think it’s a kind of machine.”

Amos closed his eyes, shook his head and rubbed the bridge of his nose all at the same time. “When they commit you, Margaret, can I have your office?”

“I’m serious, Amos. Think about it. What if you had to travel great distances, so great that no living organism could survive the trip?”

“So you’re talking even longer than a plane trip to Hawaii with my mother-in-law.”

“Yes, much longer.”

Otto leaned forward. “Are you talking
space travel
?”

Margaret shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe you can’t send a living creature across space for as long as it takes to get from Point A to Point B. But you can send a machine. An unliving machine that consumes no resources, and has no biological process that could wear out over time. It’s just
dead.
”

“Right up until it turns on,” Amos said. “Or hatches or whatever.”

“The perfect infantry,” Otto said. “An army that doesn’t need to be fed or trained. You just mass-produce them, ship them out and when they land they build themselves and gather intel from their local host.”

Amos and Margaret stared at Otto.

“Okay,” Amos said. “For the sake of a crazy science bitch and a gungho junior spy that’s watched too many movies, let’s say you’ve got this ‘weapon.’ What good does that do you? You send these things across the universe, stopping on Vulcan for a couple of brews, of course. But why?”

“Two reasons,” Otto said. “The first is recon. Gather intel on the environment, the people, the opposition. Maybe that’s why it’s not in animals, because…” His voice trailed off. He couldn’t finish the thought.

“Because if it can read DNA, maybe it can read memories,” Margaret finished. “It needs the cultural context to know the threats, to know what can stop it.”

Agent Clarence Otto beamed at her. He nodded slowly. That smile of his was almost enough to take her away from this insanity, and she found herself smiling back.

“Why don’t you two just fuck and get it over with already?” Amos said. “If we can lose the flirting for a moment, I’m still not convinced. Your ideas don’t really make sense. In Margaret’s fantasy land, these things are here because Alf can’t make the trip himself. So why are their little machines gathering intel?”

“Intel is the first reason,” Otto said. “The second is to use that intel to create a beachhead. Establish control of a defensible area so you safely receive reinforcements.”

The van fell quiet for a few moments. A sense of dread filled the air. Finally, Amos spoke, fear ringing clear through his sarcastic tone.

“Otto, if you don’t mind, I like you better when I think you’re just a dumb-ass CIA agent,” he said. “How about you leave the science to us and have a nice cup of shut the fuck up?”

Otto nodded, then sat back.

They quietly waited.

A NICE HOT BATH

Perry raised the tiny flame to the rum-soaked hand towel. It caught instantly, bursting into flame with a loud
whoof,
singeing his hand. He whipped the flaming towel behind him like a horse flicking its tail to ward off a swarm of flies. The flames slapped against the bandolier towel’s wet spot.

It, too, ignited instantly, scorching the thin flesh above the Triangle. The flames caught Perry’s hair, which disintegrated in a scalp-searing
whoosh.
The smell of rum, burned flesh and singed hair filled the bathroom.

Scalding pain raged against his back as flames scampered up the towel. He started to stand, his instincts screaming to
MOVE
, to
RUN
, to
STOP
,
DROP
and
ROLL
. His skin bubbled and blistered—he let out a small scream but forced himself to sit back down on the tub. He switched the knife from his left hand to his right.

Letting loose a roar mixed of equal parts pain, fury and defiance, Perry stabbed the blade into his left forearm, right through one of the Triangle’s closed eyes. He knew it went all the way through, because he felt the blade tip dig into his own flesh on the other side. Blood and purple gushed onto his hand, almost making him lose his grip on the knife. With a primitive growl and a sick smile of insane satisfaction, he punched the knife tip in again and again, like a pointed pick into a bowl of ice.

His back continued to burn.

Face contorted with pain, he fell backward into the tub.

There was a quick
hiss
as he landed in the cold water. The fire ceased, but the burning sensation continued. A wave of joy washed over him even as he writhed in agony.

“How do you like that? How the
fuck
do you
Howdy Doody like that
?”

His ravaged arm filled the tub with diluted blood, making the water look like cherry Kool-Aid.

Not done yet, kids,
Perry thought.
No bout-a-doubt-it, got one more round to go.

With his right hand, he squeezed down on his left forearm. He thrashed in the shallow red water, his face twisting into a gnarled mask of agony.

APARTMENT 104

Dew ignored his aching knees and crouched in front of the door to Apartment G-104. His thick fingers worked lock-picking tools with the delicate grace of a ballerina pirouetting across the stage.

The lock clicked with a tiny sound, and Dew silently turned the deadbolt back. He stood, pulled his .45, and took a deep breath.

They’re gonna pay, Malcolm.

He opened the door and slid into an empty living room, devoid of any furniture. He did a fast check to make sure there was nothing in any of the rooms—they were empty as well. He ran out the door into the hall, headed for the next apartment.

THE CHICKEN SCISSORS

Perry lurched out of the tub, bloody water sloshing all over the floor. He grabbed a clean towel, looped it into a granny knot, then bit back the screams as he pulled it tight against his mangled forearm.

He was in serious pain, but he could handle it. Why? Because he had
discipline,
that’s why. His arm bled like a proverbial stuck pig. The towel quickly soaked through with bright red—he didn’t know if he’d hit an artery and he didn’t care, because he’d punched through all three of the Triangle’s eyes. A thin, greasy black tentacle hung from the cut, blood coursing down it to piddle on the floor.

It didn’t matter. He’d be in an ambulance inside of five minutes.

He grabbed the towel’s ends, took a deep breath, and pulled the terry-cloth tourniquet even tighter. A fresh wave of pain erupted from his arm, but he bit back the scream.

The Triangles awoke.

No, not Triangles,
Triangle.

The one on his back was dead, burned to a crispy-crisp, and the one on his arm was sliced in half. Only one remained.

Which meant there really was only one thing left to do.

No bout-a-doubt-it.

stop STOp StoP

FucKEjer Fueklrr

a Shwhoeld

The voice in his head sounded weak, thin, frail. He couldn’t understand many of the words.

“Shouldn’t have fucked with a Dawsey, big dog. You understand that now, don’t you?” He shuffled slowly forward, resting against the sink counter.

bastarty fuckert

fuckert Stope STOPE

Help hELP

“There’s no help for you,” Perry said. “Now you know what it’s like.” The butcher’s block sat on the sink counter. It called to him.

The bathroom door rattled violently. Tentacles slid under the door and squirmed like lunatic black snakes. In jagged disbelief that cut through his hazy vision, Perry watched the doorknob turn.

He launched himself against the door just as it began to open, his right shoulder slamming it closed. He locked the door and took a step back, eyes wide with shock as the black, ropy tentacles continued to worm their way under the door.

He heard the clicks and pops of the hatchlings, but he heard more—he heard their womanly voice in his head, not as strong as the confused pleas of his own Triangle, but strong enough, and desperate, angry. The voices were separate now. They all sounded the same, but were individual instead of the group they had been while still inside Fatty Patty’s body.

So many words crushed together. It was like trying to focus in on one snowflake during a blizzard, but he picked out bits and pieces.

Stop!

Don’t do it!

Sinner!

You’ll burn in hell!

Don’t kill him don’t kill him!

The tentacles pushed and pulled at the door, rattling it, trying to force it open, but they didn’t have enough strength. Perry watched in horror as they slithered in, pulled at the door, slid back under—too many to count, moving too fast to track.

He turned back to the sink. He ignored their pleading voices. They couldn’t get in, and he had unfinished business. He looked at the butcher’s block.

Looked at the Chicken Scissors.

He shook his head, he couldn’t do it. The doctors could cut it out, the doctors could
fix
it!

The sink’s top was at waist level; he reached into his wet underwear to lift his scrotum and rest it on the counter, but when he touched it, his hand instinctively flinched as if he’d just unknowingly grabbed a rattlesnake.