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  Malcolm laughed. “You, puke? That’ll be the day. Say, you going to bang that CDC chick? Montana?”

  “Montoya.”

  “Right, Montoya,” Mal said. “The way this case is going, we’re going to see a lot of her. She’s pretty hot for an older chick.”

  “I’m fifteen years older than her, at least, so if she’s ‘old,’ that means I’m ancient.”

  “You are ancient.”

  “Thanks for pointing that out,” Dew said. “Besides, Montoya is one of those educated women—far too smart for a grunt like me. Afraid she’s not my type.”

  “I don’t know who is your type. You don’t get out that much, man. I hope I’m not your type.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Because if I am, you know, that’s going to make my wife nervous. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.”

  “Knock it off, Mal,” Dew said. “We can wallow in your rapier wit later. Let’s get on point. It’s party time.”

  Dew’s earpiece hung around his neck. He fitted it into his ear and tested the signal.

  “Control, this is Phillips, do you copy?”

  “Copy, Phillips,” came the tinny voice through the earpiece. “All teams in position.”

  “Control, this is Johnson, do you copy?” Malcolm said.

  Dew heard the same tinny voice acknowledge Malcolm’s call.

  Malcolm reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small leather business-card holder. Inside were two pictures, one of his wife, Shamika, and one of his six-year-old son, Jerome.

  Dew waited. Malcolm usually did that before they talked to any suspect. Malcolm liked to remember why he did this job, and why he had to always stay sharp and cautious. Dew had a picture of his daughter, Sharon, in his wallet, but he wasn’t about to pull it out and look at it. He knew what she looked like. Besides, he didn’t want to think about her before he went on a mission. He wanted to insulate her against the kinds of things he had to do, the kinds of things his country needed him to do.

  Malcolm snapped the card holder shut and tucked it away. “How’d we get this choice gig again, Dew?”

  “Because good ol’ Murray loves me. You’re just along for the ride.”

  Both men stepped out of the Buick and walked toward Martin Brewbaker’s small, one-story ranch house. An even two inches of snow covered the lawn and the sidewalk. Brewbaker’s place was near the corner of Curtis and Miller, just off the tracks in Toledo, Ohio. It wasn’t rural by any stretch, but it wasn’t packed in, either. The four lanes of busy Western Avenue kicked up plenty of noise—not enough to drown out Screamin’ Frank Sinatra, but close.

  In case things got crazy, they had three vans, each filled with four special-ops guys in biowarfare suits. One van at the end of Curtis where it ran into Western Avenue, one at Curtis and Mozart, and one at Dix and Miller. That cut off any escape by car, and Brewbaker didn’t have any motorcycles registered on his insurance or DMV record. If he ran north, across the freezing Swan Creek, the boys in van number four parked on Whittier Street would grab him. Martin Brewbaker wasn’t going anywhere.

  Did Dew and Malcolm get biowarfare suits? Hell no. This had to be kept quiet, discreet, or the whole fucking neighborhood would freak out, and then the news trucks would come a-courtin’. Two goons in yellow Racal suits knocking on the door of Mr. Good Citizen had a tendency to shoot discretion right in the ass. Not that Dew would have worn the friggin’ thing anyway—with the shit he’d been through, he knew that when it was time to check out, you were checking out. And if things went according to plan, they’d isolate Brewbaker, bring in gray van number one real discreet-like, toss his ass in and haul him off to Toledo Hospital where they had a quarantine setup ready and waiting.

  “Approaching the front door,” Dew said. He spoke to no one in particular, but the microphone on his earpiece picked up everything and transmitted it to Control.

  “Copy that, Phillips.”

  This was their chance, finally, to catch a live one.

  And maybe figure out just what the fuck was going on.

  “Remember the orders, Mal,” Dew said. “If it goes bad, no shots to the head.”

  “No head shots, right.”

  Dew hoped it wouldn’t come down to pulling the trigger, but somehow he had a feeling it would. After weeks of chasing after infected victims, arriving to find only murdered bodies, moldering corpses, and/or charred remains, they had a live one.

  Martin Brewbaker, Caucasian, age thirty-two, married to Annie Brewbaker, Caucasian, twenty-eight. One child, Betsy Brewbaker, age six.

  Dew had heard Martin’s call to Captain Jinky. But even with that crazy recording, they weren’t sure yet. This guy might be normal, no problems, just liked to blast his Sinatra on eleven.

  I tried so…not to give in,

  I said to myself, “This affair never will go so well.”

  “Dew, do you smell gasoline?”

  Dew wasn’t even halfway through the first sniff when he knew that Malcolm was right. Gasoline. From inside the house. Shit.

  Dew looked at his partner. Gas or no gas, it was time to go in. He wanted to whisper to Mal, but with Sinatra so fucking loud he had to shout to be heard.

  “Okay, Mal, let’s go in fast. This asshole probably wants to light the place on fire like some of the others. We have to take him down before he does that, got it?”

  Malcolm nodded. Dew stepped away from the door. He could still kick a door in if he had to, but Mal was younger and stronger, and young guys got off on that shit. Let the lad have his fun.

  Malcolm reared back and gave one solid kick—the door slammed open, the deadbolt spinning off inside somewhere, trailing a few splinters of wood. Mal went in first, Dew right behind.

  Inside the house, Sinatra roared at a new level, so loud it made Dew wince.

  In spite of a warning voice that comes in the night,

  And repeats, repeats in my ear,

  A small living room that led into a small dining room, then a kitchen.

  In that kitchen, a corpse. A woman. Pool of blood. Wide-eyed. Throat slit. A brow-wrinkled expression of surprise, not terror…surprise, or confusion, like she’d passed on while looking at a Wheel of Fortune puzzle that really had her stumped.

  Mal showed no sign of emotion, and that made Dew proud. Nothing they could do for the woman now anyway.

  Don’t you know, little fool, you never can win,

  Use your mentality, wake up to reality.

  A hallway that led deeper into the house.

  Dew’s feet squishing on the brown shag carpet. Squishing because of the thick trail of gasoline that made the carpet an even darker brown.

  Mal and Dew moved in.

  First door on the right. Mal opened it.

  A child’s bedroom, and another corpse. This one a little girl. Six years old, Dew knew, because he’d read the file. No look of surprise on that face. No expression at all, really. Just glassy-eyed blankness. Slightly open mouth. Blood all over her tiny face. All over her little Cleveland Browns T-shirt.

  This time Mal stopped. The girl was the same age as his Jerome. Dew knew, right then and there, that Mal would probably kill Brewbaker when they found him. Dew wouldn’t stop him, either.

  But this wasn’t the time for sightseeing. He tapped Mal on the shoulder. Mal shut the girl’s door behind him. Two more doors: one on the right, one at the end of the hall. The music still blared, offensive, overpowering.

  But each time that I do, just the thought of you

  Makes me stop, before I begin,

  Mal opened the door to the right. Master bedroom, no one there.

  One door left. Dew took a deep breath, nose filling with gasoline fumes. Mal opened the door.

  And there was Martin Brewbaker.

  Mal’s theory back in the car turned out to be prophetic—there was one crazy Caucasian in that house.

  Wide-eyed and smiling, Martin Brewbaker sat on the bathroom floor, legs straight out in fr
ont of him. He wore a gas-soaked Cleveland Browns hoodie, jeans, and was barefoot. He’d cinched belts around both legs, just above the knee. In one hand, he held an orange lighter. In the other hand, a nicked-up red hatchet. Behind him sat a red and silver gas can, lying on its side, its contents making a glistening wet puddle against the black and white linoleum floor.

  ’Cause I’ve got you…under my skin.

  “You’re too late, pigs,” Brewbaker said. “They told me you’d come. But you know what? I’m not going, I’m not taking them. They can fucking walk there themselves.”

  He raised the hatchet and whipped it down hard. The thick blade slid through skin and denim just below his knee, crunched through his bone, and chonked into the linoleum floor, severing his leg. Blood sprayed all across the floor, mixing with the pool of gas. His severed leg and foot sort of flopped on its side.

  Brewbaker screamed, an agonizing scream that drowned out Sinatra’s jamming orchestra. His voice screamed, but his eyes didn’t—they kept staring at Dew.

  That happened in one second. In the next second, the hatchet came up again and went down again, severing the other leg, also just below the knee. Brewbaker tipped backward, the now-missing weight throwing off his equilibrium just a bit. As he rolled back, his stubby legs sprayed blood into the air, onto the bathroom counter, onto the ceiling. Dew and Malcolm both instinctively raised an arm to block the blood from hitting them in the face.

  Brewbaker flicked the lighter and touched it to the floor. The gas flamed up instantly, igniting the puddle, shooting down the wet path down into the hallway and beyond. Brewbaker’s gas-soaked hoodie snapped into full flame.

  In a blur of athletic motion, Mal holstered his weapon, whipped off his coat and rushed forward.

  Dew started to shout a warning, but it was already too late.

  Mal threw his coat on Brewbaker, trying to smother the flames. The hatchet shot forward again—burying itself deep in Mal’s stomach. Even over the Sinatra, Dew heard a muffled chlunk and knew, instantly, that the hatchet blade had chipped the inside of Mal’s spine.

  Dew took two steps into the flaming bathroom.

  Brewbaker looked up, eyes even wider, smile even wider. He started to say something, but didn’t get the chance.

  Dew Phillips fired three .45 rounds from a distance of two feet. The bullets punched into Brewbaker’s chest, sliding him backward on the blood-and gas-slick floor. His back slammed into the toilet, but he was already dead.

  “Converge, converge! All units move in, man down, man down!”

  Dew holstered his weapon, knelt, and threw Mal over his shoulder. He stood with strength he didn’t know he still possessed. Brewbaker burned, but the flames hadn’t spread to his right arm. Dew grabbed Brewbaker’s right hand, then stumbled down the flaming hall, carrying one man and dragging another.

  2.

  THE RAW AND THE COOKED

  Dew staggered out of the burning house. Winter air cooled his red face, while inferno heat singed his back through his suit.

  “Hold on, Mal,” he said to the bleeding man on his right shoulder.

  “Hold on, ace, help’s on the way.”

  Dew slipped on the unshoveled sidewalk and almost pitched into the snow-covered lawn, but he recovered his balance and made it to the curb. He crossed the street, stumbling like a drunk, then slid Brewbaker’s body into a shallow snowbank, where it hissed briefly like a match dropped into a stale drink. Dew knelt on one knee and eased Malcolm onto the ground.

  Mal’s once-white shirt was a sheet of red around his stomach. The hatchet had gone in deep, deep enough to cut through intestines. Dew had seen wounds like that before, and he didn’t have much hope.

  “Hang on, Mal,” Dew whispered. “You just remember Shamika and Jerome, and you hang on. You can’t leave your family alone.” He held Malcolm’s hand, which felt hot and wet and was covered with puffy burn blisters. The screech of tires split the air as several nondescript gray Chevy work vans slid to a stop. The van doors opened; a dozen men dressed in bulky chemical-weapons gear leaped onto the slush-wet pavement. They brandished compact FN-P90 submachine guns and moved with practiced precision, rushing to set up a perimeter around Dew and Malcolm, around the burning house. Some of the men rushed to Malcolm’s side.

  “See, buddy?” Dew said. His mouth was inches from Malcolm’s ear.

  “See? The cavalry is here, you’ll be at the hospital before you know it. You just hang on, brother.”

  Malcolm let out a groan. His voice sounded whispery, like windblown paper scraping against dirty concrete.

  “That…asshole…dead?” Malcolm’s lips, or what was left of them, barely moved when he spoke.

  “Fuckin’-A right he is,” Dew said. “Three in the ticker, point-blank.”

  Malcolm coughed once, sending a wad of thick, dark blood shooting out onto the snow. The men in chemical-warfare suits hurried him to one of the waiting vans.

  Dew watched as the soldiers loaded Brewbaker’s smoldering corpse into another van. The remaining soldiers moved Dew to the last van, half helping him, half pushing him. He got in, heard the door shut, then heard a small hiss as the sealed van became negatively pressurized. Any surprise leaks would let air in, not out, in case Dew was contaminated with the unknown spore. He wondered if they’d have him in the airlock again, watching him for days on end, waiting to see if he showed the few known symptoms or—even better, kiddies—developed new ones. He didn’t care, as long as they could help Malcolm. If Malcolm died, Dew didn’t think he could forgive himself.

  Less than twenty seconds after the vans had screeched to a halt, they tore down the street, leaving the burning house behind.

  3.

  ONE SMALL STEP…

  After a journey of unknown distance, unknown time, the next batch of seeds dropped from the atmosphere like microscopic snow, scattering wildly at the tiniest breath of wind. Wave after wave washed through the air. The most recent waves had been close to success, the closest yet, but still hadn’t caused the critical mass needed to accomplish the task. Changes were made, new seeds released. It was only a matter of time until things were right.

  Most of the seeds survived the feathery fall, but the real test was yet to come. Billions died at the touch of water or the kiss of cold temperatures. Others survived the landing, but found conditions unsuitable for growth. A scant few landed in the right place, but wind, or the brush of a hand, or perhaps even fate, swept them away.

  A minuscule percentage, however, found conditions perfect for germination.

  Smaller than specks of dust, the seeds tentatively held their place. Rigid microfilaments ending in Velcro-like hooks helped each seed stay fast to the surface. With the fortuitous landing began a race against time. The seeds faced a nigh-impossible task of attaining self-sufficiency, a battle for survival that started with a minuscule arachnid.

  A simple mite.

  Demodex folliculorum, to be precise. While microscopic, a Demodex is larger than the dead skin upon which it feasts. So much larger, in fact, that it can ingest a tiny flake in a single bite. The mites hide in hair follicles, mostly, but sometimes at night they slide out and crawl around on the hosts’ skin. They are not some parasite found only in dirty Third World countries where hygiene is a luxury, but on every human body in the world.

  Including the host.

  The host’s mites lived their entire, brief, skin-gobbling lives without ever leaving his body. In their incessant feeding frenzy, some of the mites came across the seeds—which looked suspiciously similar to flakes of human skin. The mites gobbled up the minute seeds; just another mouthful in an endless and bountiful banquet of dead flesh.

  The mite’s digestive system hammered at the seed’s outer coat. Protein-digesting enzymes, called proteases, ate away at the membrane, breaking it down, weakening it. The membrane ruptured in several places but did not dissolve completely. Still intact, the seed passed through the mite’s digestive tract.

  And that’s where it
all began, really—in a microscopic pile of bug shit.

  The temperature hovered around seventy degrees much of the time and often reached eighty degrees or more with suitable cover. The seed needed such temperatures. It also needed certain measures of salinity and humidity, which the host’s skin unwittingly provided. These conditions triggered receptor cells, turning the seeds “on,” so to speak, and preparing it for growth. But there were other conditions that had to be right before germination could occur.

  Oxygen was the main ingredient in this recipe for growth. During its long fall, the airtight seed coat prevented any gases from reaching the contents contained within, contents that—were it biological—might have been called an embryo. The Demodex mite’s digestive system, however, ravaged the seed’s protective outer shell, allowing oxygen to penetrate.

  Unthinking, automated receptor cells measured the conditions, reacting in an exquisitely intricate biochemical dance that read like a preflight checklist;

  Oxygen? Check.

  Correct salinity? Check.

  Appropriate humidity? Check.

  Suitable temperature? Check.

  Billions of microscopic seeds made the long journey. Millions survived the initial fall, and thousands lasted long enough to reach a suitable environment. Hundreds landed on this particular host. Only a few dozen reached bare skin, and some of those expired before ending up in bug feces. In all, only nine germinated.

  A rapid-fire growth phase ensued. Cells split via mitosis, doubling their number every few minutes, drawing energy and building blocks from the food stored within the seeds. The seedlings’ survival depended on speed—they had to sink roots and grow protection in a soon-to-be-hostile environment. The seeds did not need leaves, only a main root, which in plant embryos is called a radicle. These radicles were the seeds’ lifeline, the means by which they would tap into the new environment.

  The radicle’s main task was penetrating the skin. The skin’s outermost layer—composed of cells filled with tough, fibrous keratin—formed the first obstacle. The microscopic roots grew downward, slowly but incessantly pushing through this barrier and into the softer tissues beneath. One seed couldn’t break that outer layer. Its growth sputtered out, and it died.