Chicago
DAY SIX
MEN WITH GUNS
“Hey, Margo,” Perry said. “Aren’t you going to say hello? That’s what you’re supposed to say at this point — hello.”
Her mouth moved.
“Hello, Perry.”
Perry Dawsey smiled.
The bomb screamed its war cry of descent. Margaret tried to take a step forward, but couldn’t move her foot. She looked down. What little blacktop remained atop the decades-old brick street had melted, all shiny and black, a stinking, gravel-strewn mess that trapped her like an ancient animal in a tar pit.
Hot wind whipped madly, making roofs sag and smolder. Her blue hazmat suit slowly dripped off her, running down her body to puddle along with the liquid tar.
Perry drew in a deep breath through his nose, seeming to soak up the hot wind and the fetid air. He looked around.
“This is where I caught Chelsea,” he said. “The voices stopped, but you know what? It didn’t matter. Those things were already inside of me. Nothing I did made any difference. I shouldn’t have fought them, Margo — I should have welcomed them.”
Her suit melted away, leaving her naked. Stabbing pains rippled across her skin, the hard sensation of long needles sliding into her muscles, her organs.
Perry frowned. “Margo, what’s wrong?”
“It hurts,” she said. “Bad.”
He nodded knowingly. “I think they’re moving to your brain. I know you don’t want to lose control, but it will be okay.”
The pains grew worse, driving to her bones, through her bones and into the marrow inside.
“I… I’m not infected,” she said. “The tests… I took the tests…”
Perry reached out his right hand, cupped her naked breast. His skin felt icy cold, a knife-sharp contrast to the blast furnace that roiled around them.
“The Orbital traveled across the stars,” he said. “It could rewrite our DNA. It could turn our bodies into factories that made the things it needed. Did you think it wasn’t smart enough to make changes, Margo?”
Her skin bubbled like the street’s boiling tar. She fell to her knees.
Perry stood over her, gently stroking her head. Her scalp came away in bloody, wet-hair-covered clumps that clung to his huge hand.
He squatted in front of her, put a finger under her chin, lifted it until she looked into his blue eyes. Then, he gave his finger the smallest flick — her jaw tore off, spiraled away.
Perry smiled. “Did you really think it wasn’t capable of beating your silly little test?”
A shudder brought her awake. She sat up, pulled the blankets and sheets tight around her. She was alone in the tiny bunk room.
She was on the Coronado. She was here with Tim, with Clarence, with Paulius and his SEALs.
She was safe.
Or was she?
Outside that door stood a man with a gun — a man who would murder her if her next test blinked red.
And Clarence… she couldn’t trust him. He’d worked with Cheng to keep her out of the project until it was too late, until Cheng got all the credit. Tim Feely had also helped Cheng, gone behind Margaret’s back, sabotaged her work. She had put her life on the line and the three of them — three men — had conspired to push the only woman out, to make sure she got no credit. No, not three, four, because Murray had to be part of it.
Now that breweries were kicking out millions of bottles of Feely’s yeast — and how convenient the strain was named after him and not her — did Murray even need her anymore? Maybe that man outside with the gun wouldn’t stay outside for long. Maybe he was already planning on how to put a bullet in Margaret’s brain, maybe he was…
Her thoughts trailed off. Her paranoid thoughts. Perry had been paranoid. All the infection victims had been.
Paranoia.
A sore throat.
A headache… body pains.
She had all the symptoms.
The incubation period was around forty-eight hours. Her suit had been ripped during the battle, but that was just twenty hours ago — even if she had contracted the infection, she wouldn’t be showing symptoms yet. She couldn’t be infected… could she?
No, she couldn’t, because she’d ingested Tim’s inoculant and introduced his modified yeast into her system. That should have killed the crawlers long before they could reach her brain.
A knock at the door.
“Margaret?”
Klimas. Coming with another test.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak.
The door opened. Klimas stepped inside, a smiling assassin with a black eye.
No preliminaries; he just offered the box. And why not? The drill was old hat. Klimas knew she wasn’t infected. She’d tested negative so many times already.
But how could that be?
Her hand reached out on its own, took the box. She didn’t want to die, not like this, not with a bullet to the head…
She ripped open the foil, used the cool, wet cotton to clean her finger. She pressed the tester against her fingertip, felt the tiny sting of the needle punching home.
Yellow… blinking yellow… slowing… slowing… slowing…
Green.
Klimas nodded. “Good to go. Thanks.”
He took the blinking test and the empty box from her, then walked out. He shut the door behind him.
Margaret’s body shuddered with both relief and terror — she was alive, but she was infected. Had to be. But why hadn’t it turned red…
Did you think it wasn’t smart enough to make changes, Margo? Did you really think it wasn’t capable of beating your silly little test?
She shook her head.
“No,” she whispered. “Oh God, no.”
Cantrell… he’d tested negative over and over again, but when he’d escaped his cell he’d come after her, tried to kill her. Cantrell… the one with the genius IQ, just like her. He’d been infected the whole time, right under their nose.
The Orbital had created a new organism — an organism that the test didn’t detect.
And she had it.
She had to tell someone, warn everyone. She had to tell Klimas… but if she did, he’d kill her on the spot. If she didn’t, she’d convert, become one of them. But maybe she wouldn’t… this new organism, it was untested, un-proven. Maybe she wouldn’t convert.
And, maybe she was just being crazy… the test turned green, not red, GREEN.
She was okay. She wasn’t infected.
She wasn’t.
A PRAYER FOR THE DYING
Murray sat on a couch in the Oval Office. In front of him was a table loaded with neat folders. Beyond that, a chair that held President Blackmon. They were alone.
They had spent the last hour in the Situation Room — along with Admiral Porter, the secretary of defense and a few other big hitters — debriefing about the second naval disaster to occur on Lake Michigan in the last six days. At the end of that meeting, Blackmon had asked Murray to join her.
For the first thirty minutes of that second meeting, her personal staff had been present, helping plan and explain the logistics of the immunization effort. It was the largest public health effort in the nation’s history, so there were a lot of logistics.