Contagious (5 page)

He’d avoided Tasers. Their range was just too short for his comfort. If electricity even worked on the hatchlings, he had that covered with the ShockRounds.
He’d brought the less-lethals assuming that the hatchlings would behave the way they had in the last two engagements—once the fighting began, they would rush the ground troops and force hand-to-hand fighting. He hoped the lead hatchlings could be taken down with a less-lethal, then the rest could be slaughtered with concentrated conventional fire.
But this time the hatchlings didn’t attack.
Ogden watched the construct. The little monsters moved around the structure itself, scuttled across the ground surrounding it, but they didn’t come out to engage. One by one they shuddered as bullets tore through their plasticine skins. Gouts of their purple blood looked gray through the night-vision goggles, spraying on the ground in stringy strands before the hatchlings collapsed into twitching heaps. If any of those bullets were ShockRounds, they punched through the hatchlings just like normal ammo.
Why the hell weren’t they fighting back?
He had a bad feeling he knew why—another trap. Something new. He had no choice but to push forward and hope his attack plan allowed enough flexibility to react when that trap was sprung.
Corporal Cope lowered the handset and held it against his chest.
“Colonel, First and Second platoons report no resistance. Nothing is coming out to attack. They estimate enemy forces are down to maybe five or six individuals.”
“Order immediate cease-fire of lethal weaponry,” Ogden barked. “Less-lethals move in slowly. Sticky guns first, but tell them to also try the Shock-Rounds and see if they have any effect. All squads are to try and take one alive. Tell the squad leaders no lethal fire unless they specifically order it.”
The last shots echoed through the woods as soldiers stopped firing the M4 carbines and M249 squad automatic weapons.
Ogden turned to face Mazagatti. “Sergeant Major, let’s move in. I want to see this thing up close.”
“Sir,” Mazagatti said, “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t say that it’s a stupid idea for you to get that close. Again. Sir.”
“Understood,” Ogden said. “I’m feeling lucky. Again. Proceed.”
Mazagatti flashed hand signals to Ogden’s personal squad. Ogden drew his sidearm and followed. Corporal Cope trailed a step behind and to the right, radio at the ready.
With the gunfire gone, Ogden heard the nonlethals: the
whoosh
of the foam guns and the normal-sounding reports of ShockRounds. He followed the platoon to within seventy-five yards of the construct before he ordered all platoons to halt. First Platoon was only forty yards away now; a quick sprint would take them right into the construct.
Ogden saw the hatchlings scurrying around inside the glowing arches. Triangular bodies, three tentacle-legs that looked like muscular black pythons. The point of the shortest hatchling would come up just to his knee, the tallest one to his chin.
The sticky foam seemed to be working, reducing two hatchlings to weakly wiggling lumps on the muddy ground, unable to pull those tentacle-legs loose. He counted another five hatchlings moving freely, but they didn’t engage. Did they fear the weapons? Were they aware that the less-lethals might isolate them? If so, why didn’t they at least run north? Why didn’t they try
something
?
Ogden again sensed a trap—the enemy wasn’t behaving rationally or consistently with the previous two encounters. But trap or no trap, he had his orders.
“Corporal Cope, tell First Platoon to move in. Capture the enemy by hand.”
Cope spoke into his handset and relayed the orders.
Thirty-five yards ahead, Ogden watched a line of men rise up and silently walk forward. The three foam-gunners led the charge, each flanked on the immediate left and right by comrades carrying M4s. The rest of each respective squad fanned out on either side of this lead element.
Ogden watched. The hatchlings seemed to sense the advance. They clustered tighter around the base of the smallest arch.
First Platoon closed to thirty yards. Then twenty. The line of men rushed forward through the snow, moving in. . . .
A spark flashed somewhere beneath the hatchlings, at the base of the arch. Was this it? Was it opening up?
Another flash, then a steady glow backlit the hatchlings. This new illumination showed only at the base of one arch. It flickered, jumped, then Ogden recognized it for what it was—fire.
Blue-flamed, not orange, but fire nonetheless. The flames crawled up the arch as if it were made of tinder, shooting along the curve almost like a flamethrower.
All five of the free-moving hatchlings jumped into the flames, igniting themselves. They scampered toward the stuck hatchlings, setting them aflame before running into the other arches and the loglike things, spreading the blaze. Within seconds the whole construct danced with crackling blue flames.
Heat pushed his soldiers back, stopping their advance as surely as a wall.
“Tell the men to fall back and set up a perimeter at fifty yards,” Ogden said. “And don gas masks—we don’t know what kind of fumes that thing might put out.”
It wasn’t an ambush. He had a feeling it was something worse.
Not a trap . . . a
decoy.
STIMULATING CONVERSATION
Dew arrived at Tad’s house only a few seconds behind two unmarked gray vans. The vans parked on the street while he drove his Lincoln onto the wet lawn just before the vans unloaded hazmat-suited gunmen. No one parked in the driveway; they needed to keep that open for the Margo-Mobile.
Dew got out and instantly felt cold rain splattering the bald top of his head. He hadn’t made it fifteen steps before his suit jacket was soaked through. He walked briskly but didn’t run—the two young bucks in full black hazmat suits took care of that. Each toted a compact FN P90 submachine gun, as did their two hazmat-suited comrades who took up positions on the lawn.
One of the young bucks hit the front door with a hard kick, smashing it open. He went in, followed by his partner.
Dew slowly counted to ten, giving the young men time to secure the house. Hearing no gunfire, he walked inside.
The two men were in a living room that stood between the front door and the kitchen. Neither of them moved—they had their P90s pointed at a huge, wet man sitting at the kitchen table.
A man drinking a Budweiser with his right hand and holding a blinking baby with his left.
A tire iron sat on the table. Where it bent ninety degrees, it shone with wetness. A clump of scalp and long brown hair clung to the black metal.
A dead woman lay in the open doorway that led out of the kitchen. Dead, Dew knew, because living people’s heads just didn’t look like that, living people’s eyes didn’t hang open with a blank expression, and living people usually weren’t lying in a big puddle of their own blood.
A dead toddler lay on the ground at the edge of the table, only a few feet from Perry’s canoe of a foot. The kid’s back was broken, his spine bent in the middle at a forty-five-degree angle.
The place smelled like someone had shit their pants.
Dew drew his Colt M1911 pistol. He held it at his side, pointed to the ground. “How did you get in here?”
“Back window,” Perry said. “Only about ten feet up. I can still jump pretty good for a guy who once got shot in the knee.”
Dew ignored the dig. “You crazy fuck. We needed these people.”
“I helped them,” Perry said.
“I wish I could just shoot you and put you out of your misery.”
“Gosh, I
am
awful miserable,” Perry said. “So go ahead.” He took a swig.
“You gonna kill that baby?” Dew asked, as calmly as you might ask someone to please pass the salt.
“No, the baby is clean,” Perry said. He casually tossed the baby toward one of the soldiers. Dew twitched reactively as the child softly arced through the air. The soldier dropped his P90 and awkwardly caught the kid, who started crying immediately.
Crying
loud.
The baby hadn’t cried when he was sitting with the psycho who had just butchered his family, but as soon as he was safe, he fired up the air-raid siren. There’s just no figuring kids.
“Both of you, get that baby out of here,” Dew said to the soldiers. “Get him in a van and keep him there. I’ll send a guy to check him out. Doc Braun, real short, you’ll know him when you see him.”
The men left, leaving Dew alone with Perry.
Dew started to shiver from his wet suit and shirt. The weather in Wisconsin was much like the weather in Michigan—both fucking sucked, and both made his bum hip ache.
“Any others?” Dew asked.
Perry pointed to a place inside the kitchen. Dew carefully walked to the living room’s edge, leaned in a little and looked around the corner.
Another corpse, a man, lying on the floor in front of the refrigerator. A big dark spot covered the crotch and legs of his jeans. He was the source of the shit smell.
Three more hosts, dead. Murray Longworth was going to crap a canary when he found out. Three murders. Just like that. And Dawsey sat at the table, sipping a Bud.
It would be so easy to just put a bullet in the psycho’s head.
Perry pulled a second beer from the six-pack and tilted it toward Dew.
Want one?
the gesture said.
“Drink up while you can,” Dew said. “If Baumgartner and Milner are dead, I don’t care how important Murray thinks you are.”
“Were those the dumb-shits following me in the little white car?”
Dew nodded.
Perry shrugged, drained his beer, then opened the one he’d offered Dew.
“Control, this is Phillips,” Dew said. The microphone in his earpiece picked up the words and transmitted them to a control van some five or six blocks away.
“Copy, Phillips,” the tinny voice said.
“Status on Baum and Milner? Anyone find them yet?”
“Let me check,” the voice said.
Dew waited.
Dawsey took a long swig. “I bet you want to shoot me. I bet you want to kill me.” He tossed the gold Budweiser cap up and down in his free hand.
“Maybe I just want to
help
you,” Dew said quietly.
Perry grinned and nodded. “That’s pretty good.”
The tinny voice returned. “Baumgartner and Milner are alive. Agent Revel says they’re roughed up a little but will be okay. Ambulance en route. Their car and Dawsey’s Mustang are totaled, by the way.”
Dew put his .45 back in its shoulder holster.
Dawsey smiled. “I told you not to have anyone follow me, Dew. I could have killed them if I wanted do.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Dawsey? We’ve told you a million times we need a live host.”
“I’m not a soldier,” Perry said. “Your orders don’t mean dick to me.”
“We need information, you murdering piece of shit. These people had information.”
“I have all the information you need,” Perry said. He cleared away the beer bottles, revealing a ring-stained map spread across the table. His sweeping hand also brushed aside a clump of hair that had fallen off the tire iron, leaving a long, bloody arc on the paper. He wiped his hand on his pant leg.
“The next doorway is northeast of here,” Perry said. “Across the border into Michigan. Nearest town is called Marinesco. That’s where these people were going. If anyone else around here is infected, that’s where they’re headed, too, or they’re already there. That’s the information you really need, and now you have it, so why would you need these losers alive?”
“Losers? That one you snapped in half couldn’t be more than five years old.”
“Sure,” Perry said. “And any knife he could pick up, he’d put it right in your belly.
Why
do you need him alive?”
Dew ground his teeth. “Because the eggheads say so, that’s why.”
Perry nodded. “Right. They need to watch someone suffer. They need to watch someone go crazy. They need to watch someone go through what I went through, right?”
Dew said nothing.
“You’re stuck with me, old man,” Perry said. “I’m the only one who can hear them. I’m the only one who can
find
them. My ass is made of gold.”
Dawsey was completely out of control. Dew understood the kid being messed up, sure. Only five weeks ago, Dawsey had snipped off his own jumblies for fuck’s sake. Dew could sympathize with some anger, some depression, even post-traumatic stress disorder, but
this
?
Still, part of Dew couldn’t shake the thought that if he treated the infected the same way Perry did, his partner, Malcolm Johnson, would still be alive.
“Perry, you have to stop this,” Dew said. “Margaret thinks she can save these people. How can she do that if you keep going apeshit?”
“She can’t save them,” Perry said. He drained the bottle in one pull and opened a third. “Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I’m all the help these
people
need.”
Dew stared at the gigantic man for a few more moments. For the third time—and the second in the past three days—Dawsey had located a construct.
Dew remembered the horror of that first construct. So hot it melted the snow around it. Watching it light up, the whole thing glowing brightly, then the vision of thousands of creatures coming
through
the gate, almost pouring into the woods before a dozen HEAT missiles launched from Apache attack helicopters blasted the thing to bits.
“That’s two new doorways in a pretty short time,” Dew said. “You think there’s more?”
Perry shrugged. “I dunno. I can’t really explain it. I hear—what’s the word you spy guys use? I hear
chatter.
More might be coming. I can’t say. But you better get it in gear, old man, instead of sitting here with your thumb up your ass—I think the Marinesco one is well under way.”
Dew pointed at Dawsey. “You stay
right here.
I’m going to call this in, then I’ll take you back to your hotel.”
“Thanks, Pops,” Perry said. “Oh, and have your peons get my bag out of the Mustang’s trunk. And speaking of Mustangs, I’m going to need another one. Make sure it’s a GT. I’d prefer blue with a silver strip this time, but I’ll take whatever color you can get. I wouldn’t want to be difficult.”
Not only was Dawsey a freak, a killer, he was a smart-ass as well. Dew stared at him, wondering if maybe he should just pull the gun out again and end it.
The gun . . . that brought up an interesting question.
“You had Baumgartner and Milner down,” Dew said. “They’re both packing. Why didn’t you take their weapons?”
He saw something flicker in Perry’s eyes, a flicker that only appeared in the rare, brief instances when he talked about triangles or hatchlings—was it fear?
“Guns are for pussies,” Perry said. “I find a tire iron has more of a Charles Bronson flair.”