Infected Read online

  That left eight.

  Once past that obstacle, the roots quickly dug deeper, slipping beyond the epidermis, into the dermis, then through the fatty cells of the subcutaneous layer. Receptor cells measured changes in chemical content and density. Underneath the subcutaneous layer, just before the firmness of muscle, the roots began a phase change. Each of the eight roots became the center for a new organism.

  The second stage ensued.

  This rapid growth had depleted the seeds’ food stores. Now nothing more than used delivery vehicles, the little husks fell away. Under the skin, second-stage roots spread out. They weren’t like roots of a tree or any other plant, but more akin to little tentacles, branching out from the center, drawing oxygen, proteins, amino acids and sugars from the new environment. Like biological conveyor belts, the roots pulled these building blocks back to the new organism, fueling an explosion of cell growth. One of the seedlings ended up on the host’s face, just above the left eyebrow. This one couldn’t draw quite enough material to fuel the second-stage growth process. It simply ran out of energy. A few of the seedling’s parts kept growing, assembling, automatically drawing nutrients from the host and creating raw materials that would never be used—but for all intents and purposes this seedling ceased to be.

  That left seven.

  The surviving seedlings started building things. The first construct was a microscopic, free-moving thing that, if you had an electron microscope handy, looked like a hair-covered ball with two saw-toothed jaws on one side. These jaws sliced into cell after cell, tearing open the membrane, finding the nucleus, and sucking it inside the ball. The balls read raw DNA, the blueprint of our bodies, identifying the code for biological processes, for building muscle and bone, for all creation and maintenance. That’s all the DNA was to the balls, really; just blueprints. Once read, the balls returned this information to the seedlings.

  With that data the seven knew what needed to be built in order to grow. Not at a conscious level, but at a raw, data-in and data-out machinelike state. Sentience didn’t matter—the organisms read the blueprints, and knew what to do next.

  The seedlings drew sugars from the bloodstream, then fused them, a fast and simple chemical weld that created a durable, flexible building material. As the building blocks accumulated, the organisms created their next autonomous, free-moving structures. Where the balls had gathered, these new microstructures built. Using the growing stores of the building material, the new structures started weaving the shell. Without fast shell growth, the new organism might not live five more days.

  It needed that long to reach stage three.

  4.

  A CASE OF THE MONDAYS

  Perry Dawsey threw back the heavy bedspread and mismatched covering blankets, exposing himself to the sudden grip of winter-morning chill. He shivered. The part of his brain that always beckoned him to sleep, to set the alarm for another fifteen minutes, tugged at him. A mild hangover didn’t help his resolve.

  See? the voice seemed to say. It’s cold as hell this morning. Crawl back under the covers where it’s nice and warm. You deserve a day off.

  It was his morning ritual; the voice always called, and he always ignored it. He stood and shuffled the four steps from his bedroom to the tiny bathroom. The linoleum greeted his feet with unwelcome cold. He shut the door behind him, started up the shower, and let the bathroom fill with deliciously warm steam. As he stepped into the nearly scalding water, the nagging morning voice faded away, just as it always did. He hadn’t missed a day of work—or even been late—in three years. He sure as hell wasn’t going to start now.

  Scrubbing himself roughly, he came fully awake. His left forearm flared up with a tiny itch; he absently scratched it with his thick fingernails. Perry shut off the shower, stepped out, grabbed a rumpled towel that hung over the shower-curtain rod and dried himself. The steam hung like a wafting cloud that bent and drifted with his every movement.

  The bathroom was little more than a closet with plumbing. Just inside and to the right of the door sat the small Formica counter that held the sink, its once-white porcelain stained with rusty orange from a combination of hard water and an ever-dripping spout. The countertop had about enough room for a toothbrush, a can of shaving cream and a shrunken, cracked bar of soap. All the other necessities resided in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror mounted above the sink.

  Just past the countertop was the toilet, the other side of which almost bumped up against the tub. The bathroom was so small that Perry could sit on the toilet and touch the far wall without leaning forward. Used towels of various unmatched colors hung from the towel rack, the shower curtain and both sides of the doorknob, creating a rainbow terry-cloth contrast to the lime-green walls and scratched tan linoleum floor.

  A small digital scale, dented and pockmarked with rust, was the only decoration. With a sigh of resignation, he stood on it. The bottom LED of the “ones” digit never lit up. It made the last digit look like an A rather than an 8, but it didn’t hide his weight: 268.

  He stepped off the scale. Another itch—this one on his left thigh—hit quickly, like the bite of a mosquito. Perry twitched with the sudden discomfort and gave the area a solid scratch.

  He finished toweling off his hair, then stopped suddenly, jerking his hand away. Something hurt above his left eyebrow—that angry-dull pain of accidentally hitting a big zit.

  With his towel he wiped steam from the mirror. A shadow of bristly red beard covered his face. Bright red beard and straight blond hair, the strange distinctive mark of Dawsey men for as far back as Perry knew. He wore his hair shoulder length, not for style, but rather because it helped hide the striking facial resemblance he shared with his father. The older he got, the more the face in the mirror looked like the one face he wanted most to forget.

  “Fucking desk job. Making me a fat boy.”

  He focused his attention on the eyebrow zit. It looked sort of like a zit but also looked…strange. Small, gnarled red bump. It felt odd, like a teeny bug was biting or stinging him.

  What the hell is that?

  He leaned forward, skin almost touching the mirror as his fingers prodded the painful spot. Firm, solid skin, with something really small sticking out of it. The something was…black, maybe? A tiny speck. He dug at it for a second with his fingernails, but the spot hurt. Probably an ingrown hair or something like that. He’d try to leave it alone, let it firm up and deal with it later.

  Perry reached for the shaving cream. He always took a good look at himself before shaving and brushing his teeth, not out of vanity but rather to see just how much further along his body was toward Old Fogey-Ville.

  Back in college his body had been hard, chiseled, six-foot-five, 240 pounds of muscle befitting his All–Big Ten linebacker status. In the seven years following the knee injury that ended his career, however, his body changed, gradually adding fat while depleting unused muscle. He wasn’t overweight by anyone else’s standards, and his body still drew plenty of looks from women, but Perry could see the difference.

  He shaved, slapped some mousse in his hair and brushed his teeth to complete his repetitive morning preparation. Perry dashed out of the bathroom into the cold apartment. He dressed quickly in jeans, an old AC/DC concert T-shirt and a warm San Francisco 49ers sweatshirt. Finally protected against the cold, he headed to the kitchen nook (he could never think of it as a “kitchen,” he’d been in houses with a “kitchen,” this six-by-eight-foot alcove stuffed with a stove, cabinets and a fridge was and would always qualify as nothing more than a “nook”).

  He reached for the cupboard containing the Pop-Tarts, then arched his back in sudden surprise as another itch, this one burning and almost painful, erupted on his spine just below the shoulder blades. Perry reached a hand up over his shoulder and under his shirts to dig at the spot.

  He scratched the itch into submission, wondering if he had contracted a rash or possibly suffered from dry skin caused by the arid winter air. Perry pulled d
own the box of Pop-Tarts and pulled out one of the two-tart silver foil packets. The stove’s digital clock read 8:36. Cramming a cherry Pop-Tart into his mouth, Perry walked the two steps to his computer desk and started stuffing papers into his beat-up, duct-tape-patched briefcase. He’d meant to get some work done over the weekend, but the Chiefs and Raiders had played on Saturday, and then he’d spent all day Sunday watching the games and SportsCenter. He finished up Sunday night with a trip to the bar to watch the Lions get their asses kicked, as usual. He snapped the case shut, threw on his coat, grabbed his keys and headed out of the apartment.

  Three flights of stairs later, he exited the building and entered the knife-slash cold sting of December in Michigan. It felt like a thousand tiny pinpricks on his face and hands. His breath billowed wispy-white.

  Jamming the second Pop-Tart into his mouth, he walked toward his twelve-year-old, rust-shot Ford, praying to the Great Gods of Piece-of-Shit Cars that the old girl would start.

  He slid behind the wheel (he never bothered to lock the car, who the hell would want the thing?) and closed the door. The frost-covered windows filtered the morning sun in icy-white opaqueness.

  “Come on, sister,” Perry mumbled, his breath curling up and around his head. He gave a small grunt of victory as the old car coughed to life on the first try. Perry grabbed the ice scraper and stepped out of the car, only to have yet another itch stab at his right ass cheek like a sandpaper needle. He reflexively grabbed at it, which made him lose his balance and landed him butt-first on the parking lot. Digging his fingers through the jeans and roughly scratching the spot, Perry felt the seat of his pants dampen with melting snow.

  “Yep,” Perry said as he stood and brushed himself off. “It’s definitely a Monday.”

  5.

  ARCHITECTURE

  The shells grew in size and durability. Still too small to see with the naked eye, it wouldn’t be long before they could not be missed. The same tiny, cell-like devices that built the shells used the available material to start making what went under the shells—a framework that would comprise a new organism, a larger organism.

  A growing organism.

  The seedlings built their third and final free-moving microstructure. Where there had been “readers” to gather the DNA blueprints, and “builders” to make the shell and the framework, now came the “herders.”

  The herders washed out into the host’s body, seeking very specific kinds of cells—stem cells. The DNA blueprints showed that these were what the seedlings needed. The herders found these stem cells, then cut them free and dragged them back to the growing framework. First the herders cemented the stem cells to the framework with simple chemical bonds, then the reader-balls moved in.

  The saw-toothed jaws sliced into the stem cell, but gently this time. Microfilaments bare nanometers across slid into the stem cell DNA. Slid in, and started making changes.

  Because the “readers” weren’t there just to read…

  They were also there to write.

  The stem cells were not conscious. They had no idea they had just been enslaved. They did what they always do: grow new cells. The new cells they produced were only slightly different from those they had been originally designed to build. Those new cells spread out through the growing framework, adding muscle and other, more specialized tissues.

  What arrived as a microscopic seed had hijacked the host’s body and used the built-in biological processes to create something foreign, in a way far more insidious than even a virus.

  And while the seedlings had no concept of time, their mission would be complete in just a few short days.

  6.

  THE DAILY GRIND

  Perry walked into American Computer Solutions (ACS to those in the industry) at seven minutes to nine. He jogged through the building, catching and throwing hellos as he headed for his cubicle. Sliding into his chair, he tossed his briefcase on the gray desktop and started his computer. It chimed, seemingly in happiness at escaping the purgatory of “off,” and started through its RAM checks and warm-up cycles. Perry glanced at the wall clock, which was placed high enough that all could see it from their cubicles. It read 8:55. He’d already be working away when the clock struck 9:00.

  “Thought I was going to get you today,” said a woman’s voice behind his back. He didn’t bother to turn around as he opened the briefcase and pulled out the unorganized wad of paper.

  “Close but no cigar, boss,” Perry said, smiling a little at the daily joke.

  “Maybe next time.”

  “Samir Cansil from Pullman called,” the woman said. “They’re having network trouble again. Call them first thing.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Perry said.

  Sandy Rodriguez left Perry to his work. Most of ACS’s customer-support staff arrived a few minutes late, but Perry was always on time. Sandy rarely addressed the staff ’s tardiness problem. Everyone knew she didn’t really care if people were a little late, as long as they didn’t abuse that privilege and got their work done. She didn’t care, and yet Perry was always on time.

  She’d given him a chance when he had no job, no references and an assault conviction on his record. No, not just an assault—an assault conviction on his former boss. After that incident he was sure nobody would ever hire him for white-collar work again. But his college roomie Bill Miller had put in a good word at ACS, and Sandy had given Perry a shot.

  When she hired him, he swore to himself that he’d never let her down in any way. That included being early every day. As his father used to say, there’s no substitute for hard work. He pushed the sudden and unwelcome thought of his father from his mind—he didn’t want to start the day in a bad mood.

  A full twenty-five minutes later, Perry heard the distinctive sounds of Bill Miller sliding into the adjoining cubicle. Bill was late as usual, and, also as usual, he didn’t give a damn.

  “Morning, sissy-girl,” Bill said, his ever-present monotone drifting over the five-foot cubicle walls. “Didums sleep well?”

  “You know, Bill, I’m a little bit past the ‘I drank more than you’ stage. I’d like to think you’ll grow up one of these days.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Bill said. “Although I did drink more than you, girlie-man.”

  Perry started to reply, but a stabbing itch on his right collarbone stole his voice and replaced it with a slight gasp of surprise. He dug his fingers through the sweatshirt, scratching at the skin underneath. Maybe he was allergic to something. Maybe a spider had crawled into his bed last night and tried to bite its way out.

  He scratched harder, intent on blasting the itch into compliance. The irritation on his forearm acted up again, and he switched his focus to that spot.

  “Fleas?” Bill’s voice came from above, unhampered by the divider walls. Perry looked up. Bill’s upper body leaned over the fabric-panel wall that separated the cubicles, his head just inches from the ceiling. He attained this height by a frequent practice of standing on his desk. Bill, as always, looked immaculate despite the fact he’d left the bar the same time as Perry—which meant he couldn’t have had more than four hours’ sleep. With his bright blue eyes, perfectly trimmed brown hair, and a clean-shaven baby face free of even the tiniest blemish, Bill looked like a model for teenage zit cream.

  “Just a little bug bite is all,” Perry said.

  Bill retreated back behind the divider wall.

  Perry stopped scratching, although the skin still itched, and called up the Pullman file on his computer. As he did, he launched his instant-messenger program—even though people were only a few cubes away, instant messaging often proved to be the preferred method of communication within the office. Especially for communication with Bill, in the next cube, who usually had plenty to say that he didn’t want others in the office to overhear. The IMs let them share sophomoric humor that helped to pass the day.

  He started off the daily ritual with a message to Bill’s instant-message handle, “StickyFingazWhitey.”<
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  Bleedmaize_n_blue: Hey. R we doing Monday Night Football tonight?

  StickyFingazWhitey: Does the Pope wear women’s underwear?

  Bleedmaize_n_blue: I thought the phrase was, “does the Pope wear a funny hat” ???

  StickyFingazWhitey: He already wears a big dress, although my sources say he doesn’t deserve to wear white, if ya know what I mean.

  Perry snorted back a laugh. He knew he looked like an idiot when he did that, big shoulders bouncing, head down, hand over his mouth to hide laughter.

  Bleedmaize_n_blue: lol. Cut it out, I just got here, I don’t want Sandy to think I’m watching YouTube clips again.

  StickyFingazWhitey: How about you watch Popes Gone Wild™ on your own time, mister, you sick, sick man.

  Perry laughed, out loud this time. He’d known Bill for…God, was it almost ten years already? Perry’s freshman year in college had been a tough one, a time when his violent tendencies ran roughshod and unchecked. He’d landed at the University of Michigan courtesy of a full-ride football scholarship. At first they’d roomed him with other football players, but Perry always viewed them as competition even if they didn’t play the same position. A fight inevitably ensued. After his third altercation, the coaches were ready to yank his scholarship.

  That crap may float at other schools, like Ohio State, they told him, but not at the University of Michigan.

  The last thing they wanted, however, was to lose him—they hadn’t recruited him and given him a full ride for nothing. The coaching staff wanted his ferocity on the field. When Bill heard of the situation, he volunteered to room with Perry. Bill was the nephew of one of the assistant coaches. He and Perry met during freshmen orientation, and the two had hit it off quite well. Perry remembered that the only times he smiled during those first few months were when he was around Bill’s irrepressible humor.