Contagious (21 page)

INTERFERENCE
Chatter
.
That really was the best name for it. Perry heard chatter again. Coming from the south. South and . . . east? Yes, the east.
Somewhere out there, triangles were waking up.
So far he’d heard only snippets of thoughts, just a few syllables. The triangles didn’t know
how
to talk yet. They had to learn that from their hosts’ memories.
How many were out there? Perry couldn’t tell. He could never tell for sure.
He’d picked up a few wisps that morning. Like smelling something in your apartment, something you smelled only if you turned a certain way, and then it was gone. And you
know
that smell, because you’ve smelled it before. You just can’t remember what it is. It was that kind of familiarity.
Familiar, yet different. There was something else in those wisps. Something
less
random. More powerful, maybe?
Perry knocked on the door to Room 207. Dew answered.
“Hey Perry,” he said, and smiled, almost as if Dew were happy to see him. “Come on in.”
Perry followed him into the room. Baum and Milner were there, as was Amos, who had a bagel in one hand, a stack of papers in the other and a laptop sitting on his legs. Baum and Milner stiffened. Amos’s eyes immediately shot to the door. As soon as Perry moved into the room, Amos dropped the bagel, shut the computer and ran out.
“Damn, that little guy is twitchy,” Dew said.
“Yeah,” Milner said. “Can’t imagine why.”
Perry stared at the smaller man. “Milner, I’m standing right here if you’ve got something on your mind.”
Baum laughed. “You sure you want some? You look a little roughed up from your last go-around.”
“Baum, shut the fuck up,” Dew said. “If you think you can take Dawsey, I’ll be happy to move all this stuff out of the way and you two can have at it.”
Baum stared at Perry and said nothing.
Perry couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was Dew sticking up for him? Well, not
sticking up,
exactly, but calling Baum out to back up his mouth.
“Well?” Dew said to Baum.
Baum shook his head. “I’m good.”
“Then keep your pie-hole shut,” Dew said. “Milner, you too. Now, Perry, what have you got for us?”
“I’m hearing chatter,” Perry said quietly.
All three men perked up.
“Where?” Dew asked.
Perry shrugged. “Not sure yet. Southeast is as close as I can get.”
“Michigan again?” Dew asked. “Maybe Ohio?”
Perry shrugged once more.
“So why haven’t you gone after it?” Milner asked. “Got in your fancy car and headed out.”
“Because he and I have come to an understanding,” Dew said. “Perry’s part of the team now.”
Milner laughed. Dew shot him a
you’re already on thin ice
glare, and Milner’s smile faded.
“What’s it sound like?” Baum asked, his disdain for Perry suddenly gone.
“Can you pick out any names? Places?”
Perry shook his head. “Not yet, but it’s getting stronger.”
“Just have a seat, kid,” Dew said. “And relax, it will come like before.
We’ll get everyone loaded up and head in that general direction.”
Perry limped to a chair and sat.
And right then, the chatter . . . changed.
“Something’s wrong,” Perry said. “It’s getting . . . quieter all of a sudden.”
“Concentrate,” Dew said. “Maybe you have to focus?”
“Doesn’t work like that,” Perry said. “It’s always on. I don’t have any control over it. It’s fading. I can’t hear the chatter. What I hear now sounds . . . well, it sounds kind of gray.”
He looked at Dew. “It’s gone. I can’t hear them anymore.”
DR. DAN COSTS AMOS TWENTY BUCKS
The V-22 Osprey helicopter passed over the highway at a high altitude, then turned 180 degrees. It dropped closer to the ground and came in for a landing in the parking lot, putting the rest-stop building between it and the road.
As the chopper set down, Margaret saw the familiar sight of two nondescript semi trailers parked in parallel. They had a different paint job from the ones she’d left behind in Glidden—brown and dented, another flavor of faux–shabby industrial. Aside from the plastic extension connecting the two trailers, no one would have given them a second glance.
“I wonder if they got last year’s model,” Amos said. “The MargoMobile lot must be jumping this time of year.”
The trip here had been a whirlwind. Once word came down that two bodies had tested positive for cellulose, Dew kicked the operation into high gear. Margaret, Amos, Clarence, Gitsh and Marcus were in the air within fifteen minutes. Murray ordered radio silence for the trip—he wasn’t taking any chances. An hour and a half later, their Osprey was touching down at this rest area in Bay City, Michigan.
Margaret hadn’t known there were more MargoMobiles. Even with his inner circle, Murray still had secrets inside of secrets. In fact, now she wondered just how many MargoMobiles existed. Certainly made sense to use multiple units—driving the first set from Glidden would have taken ten hours. Even moving them using cargo helicopters would have cost valuable time. With multiple units and multiple crews, Murray could lock down infection sites much faster.
Margaret and her team hopped out and headed straight for the brown trailers. A man stood outside, wearing an air force uniform covered with a heavy blue jacket and a hat that flopped warm-looking flaps down over his ears. The man snapped a taut salute.
“Captain Daniel Chapman,” he said.
“I’m not military,” Margaret said. “Neither is anyone else here.”
The salute vanished. “Good. I hate saluting.” He stuck out his hand.
“Doctor Chapman. Call me Dan. Nice to meet you.”
Margaret returned the shake. “Doctor Margaret Montoya. This is Doctor Amos Braun and Agent Clarence Otto.”
“Agent of what?” Dan asked as he shook the men’s hands.
“Agent to the stars,” Clarence said with a smile. “It’s really not important, don’t you think?”
Dan nodded and held up one hand, as if to say,
Sorry I asked, I should have known
.
He led them into the MargoMobile’s computer room. It looked exactly the same as the one she’d left back in Glidden, save for air force logos on the flat-panels and a coffee-mug ring or two on the counter. Dan waited until Margaret sat, then stood behind her. Amos sat in the chair next to her, while Otto seemed to fade away into the background. How he could manage to do that in a five-by-ten-foot room, Margaret couldn’t say, yet he did it just the same.
“We have two cases of infection,” Dan said. “Donald Jewell, age forty-two, from Pittsburgh, and his daughter, Betty, age sixteen. Of course, I’m not allowed to know exactly
what
they’re infected with. I just follow the procedures assigned to me. I’m happy to play along, but please don’t feed me the company line about necrotizing fasciitis. If, however, you should choose to let me know what the hell is going on, I won’t complain.”
“What if that knowledge means you’ll be sequestered for months?” Amos asked. “That, or shot because you know too much?”
“Then I might complain a little,” Dan said. “But I’ve always been a bit of a whiner.” He pointed a small remote at the computer and clicked a button.
Up on the screen, the air force logo disappeared, replaced by a picture of a man lying on icy pavement. He was in front of the rest-stop building right outside the trailer. The man’s clothes hung on his skeletal frame. A black skull stuck out from a loose collar, and something black had stained the pavement around him.
“This is Donald Jewell,” Dan said. “Security-camera recordings show he pulled in to this rest area yesterday at approximately thirteen hundred hours. There was a pretty solid storm at the time, freezing rain, so no one reported seeing him get out of his car. Not sure how long the body sat there before someone came across it. Best guess, ten minutes. The guy who found the body called 9-1-1. State troopers were on the scene within fifteen minutes.
“Did they touch anything?” Margaret asked.
“Trooper Michael Adams used surgical gloves to check for a pulse,” Dan said. “Finding none, he removed the gloves, left them on the spot, and had no further contact with the body. The daughter was still in the car. She refused to let Adams in. He saw sores on her face, so he called for an ambulance. She wouldn’t allow paramedics inside the car, either. At that time, the paramedics performed the swab test on the corpse. My team was stationed in Detroit, so the CDC called us. We were actually the ones to remove the girl from the car.”
“How long have you been in charge of this rig?” Amos asked.
“Three weeks,” Chapman said. “We haven’t had much to do, to tell you the truth.” He put his shoulders back, puffed up his chest and spoke in a deep voice. “Just play with the equipment and wait for a call. If you don’t get that call, it’s good news. If you get it, just be ready do do whatever it takes.”
Margaret had to stifle a laugh. Dan was doing a dead-on impression of Murray Longworth.
“That’s uncanny,” Amos said.
“Thanks,” Dan said. “You should hear my Gutierrez; it slays. Anyway, after the paramedics called the CDC, Trooper Adams and his partner evacuated the rest area and shut it down. They followed all the instructions, line by line. Sharp guys; they were pretty impressive. They took pictures.”
He reached over Margaret’s shoulder and clicked the computer keyboard.
A series of shots flashed on the wall monitors, showing Donald Jewell’s initial stage of decomposition, then gradually shifting to his current state.
“Wow,” Clarence said. “Those guys saw a lot. Any worry about them talking?”
Dan threw his shoulders back and puffed up his chest again. “It’s taken care of. They understand the gravity of the situation and the importance of secrecy.”
“Seriously,” Amos said. “That’s creeping me out.”
“I’d laugh,” Clarence said, “only I’m sure Murray has a camera in here somewhere and he’s watching.”
Dan started nervously looking around the room. “Oh man, for real?”
Margaret reached back and tugged Dan’s sleeve. “Relax, he’s kidding.”
At least she hoped he was kidding.
“Run the pictures again,” she said.
Dan did.
“How often did they take these?”
“Every fifteen minutes,” Dan said. “Just like your instructions specify.”
Amos and Margaret exchanged a glance.
“What is it?” Clarence asked.
“This guy decomposed more rapidly than anyone we’ve encountered,” Amos said. “Twice as fast as before, maybe even faster.”
Clarence grimaced. “How about the others? We have names and addresses of everyone who was here at the time or came after?”
Dan nodded. “The troopers got everyone’s ID, license plates, registrations, the works.”
“Clarence,” Margaret said, “we need to have Murray get agents to every one of those people and run the swab test.”
“Yes ma’am.” Clarence moved to the third computer chair and grabbed the phone.
“But Margo,” Amos said, “it’s not contagious.”
“Not from host to host,” Margaret said. “But the McMillians were infected later, remember? Whatever the vector is, it might be persistent, lying on clothes or hair. And looking at these pictures, the disease
has
mutated, at least to some extent—as far as we know, now it
could
be contagious.”
Amos nodded. “Better safe than sorry, I suppose.”
“Everyone followed precise biohazard procedures,” Dan said. “We treated it like it was a strain of ebola that could do a stutter-step, fake you out, then jump in your pants if you weren’t careful. Mister Jewell’s remains are in the Trailer B body locker. Each piece of clothing is in a separate biohazard container, in case you want them.”
Otto put the phone on his shoulder and looked back at Amos. “Twenty bucks says Doctor Dan put each sock in a separate bag.”
“You’re on,” Amos said.
Dan smiled. “I even labeled the sock bags
left
and
right.
Sorry, Doctor Braun.”
“Call me Amos, you incredibly diligent and overwhelmingly anal-retentive young man.” Amos pulled the folded twenty from his pants pocket and handed it over to Otto without looking away from the screen.
The young doctor impressed Margaret. “For someone who has no idea what’s really going on, you did a hell of a job, Dan,” she said. “Looks like we’re ready to rock. Let me see pictures of the girl’s remains.”
Dan seemed surprised. “Didn’t you get the reports on your way in?”
Margaret shook her head. “No, radio silence the whole way. Why? What’s with the daughter’s corpse?”
“She’s not a corpse, she’s alive,” Dan said. “She’s in the containment chamber.”
ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT’S ME CHELSEA
A conversation was taking place.
One half of this conversation hovered forty miles above the Earth, straight up from the diseased oak tree in Chuy Rodriguez’s backyard.
The other half sat on the floor of Chelsea’s bedroom. On her left rested a pile of Barbies, Bratz and other dolls. On her right sat a similar but smaller pile. As she talked, she would pick up a doll from the pile on the left, take off all its clothes, hold the doll in her lap, then draw on it with a blue Sharpie.
She drew little triangles.
They were
very
pretty.
She finished with a doll, put it on the pile on the right, then grabbed another with her left hand.
“Chauncey, do you like ice cream Crunch bars?”
I have never had one. I could not eat them.
“Oh,” Chelsea said. “Then what do you eat?”
The Orbital directed some processing power to answering this. Being inanimate, it had endless patience for her questions, which was fortunate, because the questions indeed seemed endless. Most often it simply didn’t know the answer. It had accumulated a good bit of knowledge from the triangles’ interfacing with dozens of human hosts, but it still took time to make associations between language and fact.
I eat gravity.
“Oh,” Chelsea said. “Is it good?”
The Orbital worked to associate her use of the word
good. Good
meant many things to humans. It could mean a self-profession of capability. It could mean the socially acceptable course of action. It could mean a field goal. The Orbital searched to compare it with food consumption. Many stored host images came up, things like barbecued chicken, chocolate, cake, mashed potatoes. That is what she meant. Without the gravity processors, the Orbital would plummet to the Earth, so it applied the correct definition and answered.
Yes, it is very good.
“Oh,” Chelsea said. “Chauncey, who is your favorite Detroit Piston?”
I do not know.
“Oh,” Chelsea said. “Chauncey, are you God?”
The Orbital accessed images. An elderly human with a big white beard. A younger human with long hair and a short brown beard. Glowing heads. Love. Hatred. Divine intervention into human lives. Punishment. Wrath. Destruction. The Orbital cross-referenced these images against cataloged emotional responses, and determined that this was something it could potentially use to motivate hosts.