Infected (39 page)

As soon as he saw the face, the oily sensation damn near overwhelmed him. Now he knew what it was—he somehow
sensed
the presence of another host. Before she even said a word, Perry knew she was infected.

“Who are you?” she asked.

He couldn’t miss the tinge of hope in her voice, hope that this man had come to save her.

Perry spoke in a calm voice. “I live in this complex. My name is Perry. Let me in so we can talk about what we’re going to do.”

Through the crack of the door he could only see two inches of her face, but it was enough to show she wasn’t convinced.

“Are you from the government? From…
CSI
?” Fear hung from her words. Perry felt his patience running thin.

“Look, lady, I’m in the same fucking boat you are—I’ve got the Triangles too, okay? Don’t you feel it? Now open the door before someone sees us and calls the Soldiers.”

The last word struck home. Her eyes opened up wide as she took in a quick hiss of breath, and held it. She blinked twice, trying to decide if she should believe, then shut the door. Perry heard the chain slide free. The door opened, and she looked at him expectantly, hopefully.

Perry hopped in quickly, shoved her out of the way, then slammed the door shut and locked it (chain and deadbolt and even the shitty lock on the knob, thank you very much). He turned around with a light hop—and found himself staring at a huge butcher knife poised only a few inches from his chest.

He put his hands up lightly, at shoulder level, and leaned away from the blade until his back hit the door.

A mixture of emotions etched her brown eyes, anger and fear predominant above all else. If he said one wrong word he’d find that knife buried in his chest. She was a tall woman, about five-foot-seven, but fat pushed her weight to around 170 pounds. She wore a yellow housecoat with a green and blue flower pattern. It hung on her, like a hand-me-down four sizes too big. The Triangle Diet Plan had done wonders for her as well—she must have been at least 225 before she was infected. Fuzzy gray bunny slippers adorned her feet. Her blond hair, pulled back into a messy ponytail, looked out of place against her middle-aged face, a face that radiated fear and hopelessness.

He was much bigger than she was, but he wasn’t taking any chances. One thing he’d learned on the playground early in life was that fat people were strong people. They didn’t look it, but carrying all that extra weight made for powerful muscles that could be surprisingly quick at things like punching or grabbing—or stabbing.

“Jesus, lady, put the knife down.”

“How do I know you’re not with the government? Let’s see some ID.” Her voice quavered, as did the knife’s point.

“Come on,” Perry said, his temper steadily creeping higher. “If I was from the government, do you think they’d send me out with government ID? Use your head! Tell you what—let me roll up my sleeve, okay? I’ll show you.”

He slowly dropped his backpack to the floor, wishing he’d left the top open so he could quickly grab his own kitchen cutlery. But if he tried for it, she might panic and stab him.

Perry pushed up his sleeve.

The wave of overflow excitement hit him like a severe drug rush.

That’s her that’s her.

She’s going to hatch soon,

that’s her.

“Oh my God.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “Oh my God, you’ve got them, too.” The knife fell to the carpet.

Perry closed the distance with one short hop. He caught her with a big overhand left that slammed her cheekbone. Her head snapped down and back. She cried out a little as she fell to the floor. She laid sobbing and motionless on the pale yellow carpet.

Stop it now stop it

now Now NOW!

Perry winced at the pain from the mild mindscream. He had figured that would happen, but at least he’d gotten in a good lick first. You had to show women who was in charge, after all.

“Bitch, if you ever pull a knife on me again I’ll carve your fat ass up.” The woman sobbed with pain, terror and frustration.

Perry knelt next to her. “Do you understand me?”

She said nothing, her face hidden in her arms, fat shaking like a Jell-O mold.

Perry gently stroked her hair. She cringed at his touch. “I’ll only ask you one more time,” he said. “If you don’t answer, I’ll put my boot in your ribs, you fat fuck.”

She looked up suddenly, tears streaming down her face. “Yes!” she screamed. “Yes, I understand you!”

She was yelling. It was as if she wanted to piss him off, was
trying
to piss him off. Women. Give ’em an inch and they take a mile. Her tear-streaked face reminded him of a glazed doughnut. No room in life for tears, woman, no room at all.

He continued to stroke her hair, but his voice took on an icy-cold quality. “One more thing. If you raise your voice above conversational levels again, you’re dead. And I mean there’s no question about it. Cross the line with me again and I’ll fuck you with that butcher knife of yours. Do you understand?”

She just stared at him with a pathetic look of disbelief and utter helplessness. Perry held no sympathy for her. She was weak, after all, and in a violent world only the strong survive.

Perry’s voice bubbled with anger. He talked slowly, each word clearly defined. “Do. You. Under. Stand.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I understand. Please don’t hit me again.”

She looked so pitiful—blood trickling from her cheek, fear in her eyes, her face lined with tears. She looked like an abused woman.

Like his mother looked, after his father had finished with a “lesson.”

Perry shook his head hard. What the hell was happening to him? What was he becoming? That answer was simple—he was becoming what he
had
to become to live. Only the strong survive. He stared at the woman, fighting to push his guilt down somewhere deep, somewhere he didn’t have to deal with it. The Perry that had controlled his aggression for ten years…there was no more room for that person.

He wiped the tears from her face with a gentle touch. “Now get your fat ass off the floor and make some food. Feed us, we’re hungry.”

He felt excitement well up fresh and strong. The Triangles knew food was on the way; it made them happy. Very happy. The emotion was powerful, so powerful that Perry couldn’t help but feel a little of their happiness himself.

OVERTIME

Dew stared out the Buick’s window, watching the flurry of police activity outside, the big cellular phone pressed to his ear. By the looks of things, he’d arrived maybe ten minutes too late.
So close.
The missed opportunity made him boil inside.

“It’s a really, really big SNAFU, Murray,” Dew said. “Fucking locals are everywhere, and more on the way.” He could almost see Murray’s face turning red.

“Did the rapid-response teams go in?” Murray asked. “Why don’t they just take over?”

“They didn’t go in at all,” Drew said. “They called me first and I waved them off. You think it’s a bad situation now, try bringing in eight P90-toting goons wearing biosuits and watch the press jizz all over themselves.”

“Oh for God’s sake,” Murray said, his voice tired and ragged. “The press is already there?”

“Yeah. The local cops were first on the scene. Press picked it up on a scanner, maybe. We didn’t have a chance at information control. The cops are keeping the media at a distance, but there’s no way we can go in without being seen by at least three network news teams.”

The radio and TV stations had already been buzzing with news of Kiet Nguyen’s murder spree and subsequent suicide. News didn’t get any bigger than that, unless, of course, the cops mounted a manhunt for a former University of Michigan linebacker who’d left a mutilated corpse in his apartment. With those two murder stories flying, coverage of a gas explosion that had killed a mother and son had disappeared completely.

“Remember, the Dawsey kid was a major celebrity in this town,” Dew said. “Bunch of fucking liberals here in the media, they’re giddy to see a football player live up to billing as a creature of violence. This isn’t D.C., Murray, this is Ann Arbor, Michigan. This is a long-haired, pot-smoking little college town. A fugitive killer football player is their story of the decade, and the
guv-ment
trying to cover it up is icing on their hippie cake.”

“Dew, considering the situation, do you see any way we can bring Dawsey in alive?”

“That’s your call, L.T.,” Dew said. “You have to appreciate just how many cops are looking for him. There’s a dead body in his apartment—they’re not just going to stop looking just because I tell them we’re on the case. They want Dawsey, and they want him bad. If he’s in any kind of advanced state of infection, the cops might see his growths. If they capture him, expect
someone
to get a camera on him and a boatload of reporters fighting to know why he killed a man. If he’s arrested, and we can’t get to him right away, the triangles might make national news before the night is out. If the reporters see triangles, that SARS bullshit won’t cut it. Cops take Dawsey alive it blows this whole thing wide open.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I recommend we take him out ASAP,” Dew said. “And we get the local cops in on the action. They’re just looking for an excuse to pull the trigger. Maybe we connect Dawsey to Nguyen. I’ll tell them Dawsey probably has an explosive vest, or a biowarfare agent, whatever. I’ll make sure there are clear orders to shoot Dawsey on sight, but to stay away from his body until our crews can remove him.”

“Margaret needs a living victim.”

“So we get the next one,” Dew said. “If you want to keep this secret, I told you what we need to do.”

Dew waited through a long pause. L.T. had a hell of a decision to make.

“No,” Murray said finally. “She needs that kid alive. It’s more important than secrecy. Whatever it takes, bring him in alive.”

“That’s not going to be easy,” Dew said. “The locals are really on edge.”

“Then we connect Dawsey to Nguyen. I’ll take care of it from our end. We’ll inform the local cops, you just validate the story.”

“What story?”

“That Dawsey has knowledge of a terrorist bomb, that he absolutely must be taken alive no matter what the cost. Bring him in alive, Top.”

Murray hung up. Dew ground his teeth. Murray’s plan would work, and Dew knew it. The cops would do whatever it took to get Dawsey alive.

Dew alternated his time between looking out the window at the army of police and looking at digital photos of Dawsey that Murray’s people had transferred to the big cell phone. One was Dawsey’s most recent driver’s-license photo. Another was a close-up from Nguyen’s painting of the human arch—where the other faces writhed in terror and agony, Perry’s scrunched in raw rage. Additional photos came from the kid’s college football days.

Dew focused on one such picture, a typical preseason publicity shot from Dawsey’s sophomore year.

“You are a big fucker, ain’t you, kid?”

In the posed picture, late-summer sun blared down on his maize and blue uniform. Most times these shots showed a kid’s best smile, but this one was different. Dawsey smiled, sure, but there was something else, something around the eyes that bespoke a savage intensity. It was almost as if Dawsey’s very being vibrated aggression, as if he couldn’t handle putting on the pads and
not
hitting something.

Maybe it was the pic, maybe it was the fact that he’d seen the kid play on TV. Dawsey had been a rare one, a veritable beast who dominated the game every time he set foot on the field. Kid played meaner than a bull with a cattle prod up his ass and a rat trap snapped on his nuts. It was a damn shame, really, the knee injury that ended Dawsey’s career. Dew remembered seeing that on TV, too. Dew had watched men blown in half by land mines, men impaled with giant splinters from trees hit by artillery fire, men decapitated and twitching, rotten and bloated, yet there was something about watching the super-slow-mo replay of that kid’s knee bending ninety degrees the wrong way that had made Dew’s stomach almost rebel.

He stared hard at the picture, memorizing every detail of Dawsey’s face. Big boy, sure, big and strong and mean and dangerous, sure, but that’s why man invented guns. Fuck Murray’s orders—being an All-American didn’t make you Superman, and a bullet in the head would bring “Scary” Perry Dawsey down just as it would anyone else.

Someone had to pay for Malcolm’s death. Dawsey was as good a target as any.

THE COUCH DANCE

Perry sat on a pale yellow couch that looked brand-new, sinking back into the apartment’s welcome shadows. He always found it strange to be in another Windywood apartment. With an identical floor plan but different furniture and decorations, it was as if his apartment had been taken over and redecorated with watercolor seascapes, matching curtains, lace doilies and enough country-art knickknacks to gag a camel.

He munched on a chicken sandwich, cautiously peeking between the slats of the venetian blinds. He’d lucked out with Fatty Patty’s apartment; from her window he could see the flurry of activity in front of his building. Seven cop cars—five local and two from the state police—threw a visual cacophony of red and blue lights against the pitch-black night.