DAY NINE
MOVEMENT
Margaret sat down at the computer desk, utterly relieved to finally be out of the hazmat suit she’d worn for fifteen hours straight. She typed commands to call up the new Sanchez samples.
What was that smell? Had someone left food in here? She looked under the desktop, then under the chair before she realized what it was.
The smell was her.
Damn, she needed a shower something fierce. Nothing she could do about that now, though.
She looked at the readout. The latrunculin was working—Sanchez’s crawler counts had fallen. The chemical’s side effects were taking their toll, but he wasn’t in any serious danger. Not yet. She called up a feed from one of the latest samples. It showed three crawlers, still motionless, just as they had been since Murray’s people shot down the satellite. As she watched, one of the crawlers slowly dissolved into little bits, courtesy of the latrunculin.
The second crawler started to disintegrate. Margaret had never seen anything so beautiful in her entire life.
And then…
…then the last crawler twitched.
She stared, wondering if she’d imagined it, hoping she had. It twitched again, kept twitching. It reached out, looking for something to grab. A dendrite arm locked onto the surrounding muscle tissue and pulled.
The crawler was crawling again.
The intercom buzzed.
“Margaret, you there?” Dan’s voice, urgent.
“I’m here.”
“Something’s up,” he said. “I’m looking at the side-by-side samples. Everything that wasn’t already dead is moving again. They just woke up, all of them.”
THE REBOOT
So many thoughts. So many voices. No organization. No cohesion. Did she know what that word meant? Yes, she did.
Chelsea blinked and opened her eyes. Slivers of early-morning light poured through cracks in the roof and the boarded-up windows. She felt sleepy. She felt sad.
Her special friend was gone.
She needed Chauncey’s wisdom, needed to know what God wanted her to do. She sensed the minds of the soldiers, the hatchlings, the converted. They were all very still. Random thoughts… they were dreaming. No one there to tie them all together.
That’s what Chauncey had provided. He’d made them one.
A sneaking suspicion grew in her mind. What if she could connect everyone? She could replace Chauncey.
He had been God, but he was gone.
Now Chelsea was God.
She sensed all the soldiers, Mommy, Mr. Burkle, the Postman, General Ogden… she sensed the two hatchlings back in Gaylord… and she sensed one more voice, a new voice, very faint, very weak, but also very close.
The two hatchlings in Gaylord remained prisoners.
Prisoners of the boogeyman.
Chauncey had told her to leave the boogeyman alone. Chauncey had blocked her, but Chauncey wasn’t around anymore.
And besides, no one could tell Chelsea what to do. She wasn’t afraid of the boogeyman. God shouldn’t be afraid of anyone.
Could she block the boogeyman, like Chauncey had done? Maybe, but it would take time to learn how, to experiment. If she couldn’t block him fast enough, the boogeyman would come for her.
Unless she got to him first.
She summoned General Ogden. It was time to put the pieces in place for his contingency plan, just in case the boogeyman escaped.
PERRY HEARS AGAIN
I’m going to kill you.
It started as a mental tickle, or maybe a ringing. Something faint. At first he wished it away. He just wanted to sleep.
You will scream… and scream…
The ringing grew louder. He heard a voice but couldn’t register it. What he could register was a serious hangover. Holy God, did his head hurt.
…and scream.
Perry sat up and tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. The movement produced a metallic sound. The bed felt wobbly. Both hands held his head as he looked around. He wasn’t in a bed. He was on an autopsy trolley in the examination room. Someone’s idea of humor? Well, yeah, that was kind of funny.
The mental tickle grew. With a sinking sensation, he recognized the feeling.
Chelsea.
Are you afraid?
She’d grown stronger. His breath came in short gasps. He was afraid.
I’m gonna get you, boogeyman. Maybe I’ll make you shoot yourself…
Fuck. Fuck-fuck-fuck.
Perry’s hand shot to his waist, to the holster. The .45 was there. His hand gripped the cool handle. He didn’t draw it, just held it.
Soon, boogeyman…
He hadn’t experienced her this clearly before. The intensity shocked him. It felt as if her every little emotion was the most important thing that could possibly happen. And yet behind the intensity lay a curious blankness, the feeling that she wasn’t good, or evil.
Chelsea didn’t know what good and evil were.
She would do whatever she wanted, without remorse, without conscience.
Soooooon…
Perry had to find her. Find her and help her.
He jumped off the trolley and ran to find Dew.
CRAVING McDONALD’S
Private Alan Roark parked the Hummer on the shoulder of North Chrysler Drive. He hopped out. So did Private Peter Braat, who carried the map. They both walked to the back bumper and looked at the massive overpass.
“Fuck,” Peter said. “That’s a lot of road.”
Alan nodded. It was a lot of road.
To their right, three lanes of I-75 heading north, then just past it three more lanes heading south. Those six lanes slid under the overpass of another six-lane highway, this one M-102, also known as Eight Mile Road. The sound of tires whizzing over wet pavement combined with hundreds of passing engines to create an almost riverlike, tranquil babble.
“That’s a lot of lanes,” Peter said.
Alan nodded again. “Yep. Sure is.”
He turned and looked into the back of the Humvee. He’d already counted what was back there five times, but God was in the details, so he counted again.
“Seems like a long ways off for a perimeter,” Peter said. “We’re ten miles away from the gate. How are we gonna hold a perimeter ten miles out with just two fucking platoons, you know what I mean?”
“The general knows what he’s doing,” Alan said. “So does Chelsea. They’re bringing in the other two platoons from Gaylord, so we’ll have that. Besides, the bigger the area we control, the harder it is for them to find Chelsea.”
Peter nodded. “Makes sense, I guess. Still, I wish we got to do the airport thing.”
“Willis and Hunt got that one.”
“I know,” Peter said. “I hate those guys. We should have got that gig. Let’s just hope we make it back to watch the angels come through. That will be such a glorious moment.”
“Truly,” Alan said. “But if we don’t see it, I’m sure it’s all part of the plan.”
Peter nodded, slowly and solemnly. “Okay, so we’ve seen these roads. Where is our spot?”
Alan pointed up to Eight Mile. “We’ll just drive up there and get to work.”
“Easy peasy,” Peter said.
Alan nodded. “Easy peasy bo-beasy. Let’s go. We’ll just drive around and see if we get the call. You hungry?”