Contagious

Her whole team was already dressed in black biohazard suits, completely covering them in airtight PVC material save for their exposed heads and hands. She was so used to the suit that she didn’t give it a second thought anymore. A silly, uncontrollable part of her liked the the fact that it hid the extra weight on her hips.

When it came time to go in, they’d all don the gloves clipped to their belts and the helmets sitting at their feet, pressurize the suits, and they’d be ready to face the latest horrors in an endless, gruesome parade.

Horrors that always seemed to involve one “Scary” Perry Dawsey.

Margaret didn’t know how or why Perry could still hear the triangles. CAT scans showed a network of very thin lines spreading through the center of his brain, like a 3-D spiderweb or a spongy mesh. While she was fighting to keep him alive, she hadn’t dared risk trying to get a sample of the material. Any additional trauma on his ravaged body could have been the final straw. Since he’d regained consciousness, Perry wouldn’t even talk about the incident—it was no surprise he wouldn’t let anyone slide a drill into his skull.

Even if they could get a sample, it probably wouldn’t do them any good—the National Security Agency, the group that handled signal intelligence and cryptography for the government, detected no signals of any kind. The triangles and hatchlings communicated, yet no one knew how. The NSA’s prevailing theory involved some form of communication via quantum tunneling, but that was guesswork at best without a shred of data to back it up.

Whatever the science behind it, Perry’s homing instinct had been the only thing keeping them in the game. Unfortunately, when he found infected hosts, he killed them. First Kevin Mest, who had butchered three friends with a fireplace poker. Perry claimed self-defense for that one, and everyone bought it. His self-defense claim for burning three eighty-year-old women alive? Well, that was a little harder to swallow.

But whatever he had done, however ugly, he found the constructs. Kevin Mest’s death resulted in Ogden destroying the one at Mather. The three elderly ladies Perry had burned to death? Because of them, Ogden was in South Bloomingville

Glidden would be different. Dew had said so. His men, Claude Baumgartner and Jens Milner, were watching Perry at all times. They would deliver live hosts. When they did, she knew she could operate on the infected and successfully remove the parasites.

Murray wanted live hosts for other reasons, reasons that created a bit of a catch-22. He wanted to interrogate the triangles. Good in theory, but Margaret would operate to remove any growths she found. If that killed the triangle but saved a host, too bad for Murray. Her job was to save lives, not keep someone chained up as a parasite interpreter.

Clarence studied a map resting on his knees. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, then let out an exasperated sigh.

“Come on, Margo, this suit is annoying,” he said. “I’m taking it off.”

“Clarence, give it a rest,” Margaret said. “I don’t want to go over this again.”

“But there’s no purpose for this thing,” Clarence said. “Dew has been around dozens of corpses—he hasn’t contracted anything.”

“Yet.”

Amos smiled. “You look like a black Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. It’s not a good look for you.”

“And you look like a short KKK grand dragon who washed his whites with his darks,” Clarence said. He looked at Margaret again. “And what about Dawsey? You fixed him up, you didn’t start growing triangles. This suit is making me sweat, and sweaty is definitely not a good look for me.”

Margaret would beg to differ on that. She’d seen CIA agent Clarence Otto all sweaty, seen him that way up close and personal, been all sweaty herself at the same time, and she couldn’t imagine a better look for him.

Amos laughed. “You serve up a softball about being all sweaty? I’m not even touching that one. Seriously, Otto, you have to make it a little harder to make fun of you two boinking whenever you think no one is looking.”

“That suit will stop microbes,” Clarence said. “But I’m afraid it doesn’t offer much protection against a pistol-whipping.”

Amos laughed again and held up his hands palms out: okay, okay, take it easy.

Clarence talked tough, intimidating gravel voice and all, but over the past three months he and Amos had become fast friends. Clarence Otto was just flat-out likable. Witty, helpful, respectful and with a major streak of deductive common sense, he often put a strategic perspective on Margaret and Amos’s scientific discoveries. As for Amos, his multidisciplinary expertise and sheer brilliance had helped the team stay one step ahead of the infection. More like a half step, maybe, but at least they were still ahead.

At some point in the past three months, both men had revealed a love for basketball. Otto, a former Division III point guard and a lifelong fan of the Boston Celtics, discovered that short, frail little Amos Braun had a wicked outside jumper. Well, calling it a “jumper” was a stretch—he came off the ground maybe three inches when he shot. Amos couldn’t play one-on-one to save his life. At a game of H-O-R-S-E, however, he could beat Otto six times out of ten. Amos was also a lifelong hoops fan, although he preferred the Detroit Pistons, giving the two men plenty to argue about in the many hours when there wasn’t a corpse on the autopsy table.

“Clarence,” Margaret said, “no one has been infected by contact, but that doesn’t mean the disease isn’t contagious. There could also be toxins we haven’t seen yet, or something else that could hurt you. That suit will keep you safe, so it stays on.”

Otto sighed. “Yes sir.”

“You made her this way,” Amos said. “I remember when Margaret was a total pushover. You’re the one that got her on the Gloria Steinem express, all women-libbed and everything.”