Perry nodded. “Okay, that will work, but what about their cars?”
“All the cars registered to the Jewells burned up in their garage.”
“So they took someone else’s car?”
Dew nodded. “Probably. They had three snowmobiles registered, two of those are gone. If they stashed them in the woods somewhere, we won’t find them for weeks. So maybe they did take someone else’s car, but this whole town just evacuated—we have no way of knowing what cars should be here and what cars were taken by the evacuees. We can search neighboring houses for signs of a struggle, though, maybe get lucky and find a body. But if we don’t find one, there’s no way to connect them to a specific vehicle.
“Bottom line? The Jewells got out. All we can do now is circulate their pictures and hope they fuck up.”
THE TOWER OF POWER
Performance far beyond projections.
The Orbital measured the growing abilities of Chelsea Jewell. Not only was her communication ability developing faster than expected, it showed signs of immense power—eventually more powerful than even that of the Orbital.
Reasons for this remained unclear. The crawlers in her skull continued to divide and grow, adding length to the dense mesh that melded with her brain. The denser the mesh, the more processing power, and yet there was something more. Triangles could interface with a human brain, use it for their purposes, but Chelsea was human to begin with. No need for informational conversion or translation. Her thoughts were a native tongue. All she needed was a connection, which the crawlers provided.
How strong might she become? The Orbital did not know. What mattered was that her development was ahead of schedule. She would handle most of the communication, the organization, allowing the Orbital to focus on blocking the sonofabitch.
STRANGE THINGS ARE AFOOT…
Mio, Michigan, is a tiny town about thirty-five miles southeast of Gaylord. Mr. Jenkins’s Winnebago stopped at a gas station in Mio to fill up and to pick up a passenger by the name of Artie LaFrinere.
Artie had heard Chelsea’s call, but since he was outside the checkpoints, he drove to Mio, ditched the car, then walked to the gas station and waited. To be precise, he waited near the gas station, because Artie LaFrinere didn’t look so hot.
Four days ago Artie had gone tobogganing with his friends. He lost control of the toboggan, slid into the woods and plowed into a drift. Artie’s friends laughed at him as he wiped snow out from under his jacket and the crack of his ass. Unfortunately for Artie, that snowdrift had been a landing pad for a big gust full of seeds, which—of course—wound up all over his belly, his back and yes, the crack of his ass. Artie didn’t know it, but he was now a world record holder with his thirteen triangles. He coughed up blood every fifteen minutes or so. He didn’t talk much. Everyone understood. They welcomed him into the Winnebago and made him as comfortable as possible.
Artie was actually the second passenger: they’d picked up Harlan Gaines on Country Road 491 just outside of Lewiston. He and his four triangles were getting along just fine. With Mr. LaFrinere’s thirteen, plus Mr. Gaines’s four, Daddy’s five and Old Sam Collins’s three, Chelsea had twenty-nine dollies in the Winnebago.
Only four to go! Math was one of her favorite classes.
Chelsea sensed one more dolly daddy out there, a man named Danny Korves, trying to make his way to meet up with the Winnebago. She also sensed something even more exciting—free-moving dollies that had already hatched weeks ago, sneaking across the countryside, trying to reach her. She told them where to go, but since they could only travel at night and they had far to run, she doubted if they could make it in time. Everything would come down to Mr. Korves. Chelsea pushed out to him and told him that he had to reach her no matter what the cost.
She just might have enough dollies to build that gate, and that made her happy. Another thing that made her happy was that Mr. Jenkins had bought all the Nestlé Crunch Eskimo Pies the Circle-K gas station had in its little freezer. The Winnebago was still in the parking lot. Everyone sat in the back, enjoying that yummy ice cream on a stick.
Mommy and Daddy only got one bar each.
“We can’t stay here for long, Chelsea,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Pretty soon they’ll find out that the bodies in the house aren’t you and your parents.”
“What are you talking about?” Mommy said. “Won’t they burn up?”
Mr. Jenkins shook his head. “House fires don’t get hot enough for that. When they find out the bodies aren’t yours, the cops might start looking for you guys. You’ll be wanted for murder, probably. Depending on how bad they want you, they’ll run vehicle registrations for all your neighbors, figuring maybe you stole a car or took a hostage. Cops might be looking for this Winnebago before too long.”
“Is that for sure?” Mommy asked.
Mr. Jenkins shrugged. “You guys left three bodies in a burned-out house. Not like it’s an unpaid parking ticket.”
“How long do we have?” Mommy asked.
Mr. Jenkins shrugged again. “I couldn’t say. But I can say we should get the ’Bago off the road as soon as we can.” He rattled the map, his finger tracing their route. “We’re on Highway 33 right now. We can take that to Highway 75, which will get us there after dark.”
Chelsea crawled under the map and into Mr. Jenkin’s lap. They looked at it together. She pushed the route out with her mind, telling the remaining dollies and Mr. Korves to meet them along the way, or at the end.
“Mister Jenkins, if we go that way, will we see any more soldiers?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I hope not. They scare me. I know we had a good plan, honey, but I think we also got lucky.”
Chelsea nodded. “Me too. But if we do see them, we’ll just deal with them, so they better not try to stop us.”
STAREDOWN
This time Clarence Otto was by her side. He had a gun on a nylon cord hanging around his neck, because a holster really didn’t work with the biohazard suit.
When Margaret looked into the containment cell, she almost wished she had a gun herself.
Inside those clear walls, another woman was strapped to the autopsy trolley. Naked. She had a blue triangle on her left breast, one on her right forearm and one on her right hip.
Almost three months of work, all the insanity, all the violence, and this was the first time Margaret had seen a live triangle. After seeing so many dead ones, she had thought she knew what to expect—black eyes staring, blinking.
But she’d never thought about them staring at her. Their blinking made it so bizarre. It made them look… real. She wished Amos could have been here to see it. A live triangle meant they were that much closer to stopping this nightmare.
The woman was unconscious. She had enough meds in her to make sure she stayed that way. At least Margaret hoped. Betty should have stayed under, too, and look how well that had turned out.
Margaret looked at the touch-panel display mounted on the door. Bernadette Smith. Age twenty-eight. Mother of three. Well, not anymore. Now she was a mother of one and a widow—she’d killed her husband and slit the throats of her two daughters, one age five, one age three, before bundling the dead girls into the backseat of her Saab.
What would this woman be like after they removed the triangles? Perry still carried the guilt of murdering his best friend. How would this woman live with the knowledge she’d killed her husband, her own children?