Contagious

Once they were inside the long open s.p.a.ce of the Globe building, there was no subtle strategy, no effort to capture a hatchling alive, only the brute force of twenty-five p.i.s.sed-off soldiers, one old CIA agent with a bad hip and one former all-American linebacker with two b.u.m knees.

The fight didn’t last long. Only a few of Ogden’s men remained alive, and most of them were already wounded. The hatchlings attacked, of course, but they had no cover and were quickly mowed down by concentrated fire.

Perry killed three of the little f.u.c.kers himself.

Each shot felt better than the last, a tingling trip of adrenaline ripping through his body. He’d killed the infected because they needed to die—killing hatchlings was just plain fun.

All eyes had been focused on the soldiers, their guns, the hatchlings. When the last hatchling fell, s.h.i.+vering in its sickening death throes, Perry and the others took in the ma.s.sive brown and green construct arching to an apex some twenty feet high. Strands of the brown material ran from the arches up to the roof’s metal framework forty feet above, supporting some of the construct’s weight.

And past the gate, a white and brown Winnebago. From inside, even through the jamming, he sensed the infected.

“She’s in there,” Perry said, and pointed.

Dew shouldered his M4 and opened up on the Winnebago. Within seconds, four other men unloaded on it as well. s.h.i.+ny dots appeared as bullets tore through the thin walls. One tire popped, then another.

Dew stopped firing and put in a fresh magazine.

“Secure the building!” Nails called. “No prisoners, make sure they’re dead, and do not touch the bodies. And find Ogden! I want to p.i.s.s on his f.u.c.king corpse.”

The men spread out.

Perry walked right under the gate toward the Winnebago. Behind him he heard Dew.

“Murray, we have the building, abort bomb run,” Dew said. “Repeat, abort bomb run, keep the F-15s on-station, just in case. We’ll rig the gate to blow manually.”

Perry kept walking. He held his.45 tight but was careful to keep his finger off the trigger. The Winnebago had so many holes it looked darkly comical. He stepped toward the small side door.

Blood leaked from it.

Dew kept shouting. “Nails! I want C-4 at the

Perry stared at the blood dripping from the bottom of the RV’s door, lightly pattering onto the dirty, cracked concrete below.

More commotion behind him, Nails screaming, men yelling back and forth, but little of it registered in Perry’s thoughts.

He still sensed that other presence, but barely—the jamming had grown during the firefight, so bad now that it was almost all gray again.

This was it. It had to be.

He opened the bullet-ridden door and looked inside.

A body, but not Chelsea. A man in a postal worker’s uniform, dead and still oozing blood onto crinkled plastic that partially covered the narrow floor.

Perry leaned over the body and quickly looked around.

Chelsea wasn’t there.

No, no-no-no... Chelsea had been the moving signal. She was gone.

“Perry!” Dew yelled. “Get your a.s.s out here!”

Perry shut the door and turned back to the others.

The gate was glowing, like white frosted gla.s.s illuminated by countless tiny, slow-moving, high-powered bulbs. It lit up the warehouse interior, filling it with a beautiful glow.

Perry walked up to the gate. He could already feel the heat. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. A biological jewel glowing with light drawn from a million stars. Texture like a rough tree trunk. A smell like leftover barbecue. Emotions of love, admiration, even awe, they rolled through him, too strong to deny.

Perry saw it, felt it and sensed it all at the same time. The vibration. The opening. The spongy green door from his dreams of six weeks ago, an eternity ago. A connection from infinite distance, the threads of the universe binding, entwining, coalescing into something that blended all existence. Purity.

“Nails, how much longer?” Dew said. “It’s one-fourteen. This thing opens up in sixty seconds.”

“Almost there, sir!”

Perry stroked the gate one last time. It wouldn’t be long now. He left his hand there, feeling the growing heat.

“Okay, it’s ready!” Nails screamed. “Moooove out! Go-go-go-go-go!”

Men sprinted out of the ware house. Perry marveled at their energy, their intensity. Someone hit him on the shoulder.

“Stop staring at their a.s.ses, kid,” Dew said. “Let’s go.”

Dew hobble-sprinted toward the door. Perry followed, barely needing to jog to keep up. They ran out and across the field. He tried to concentrate as he ran, concentrate on the fading sensation that had to be Chelsea Jewell. What direction? He couldn’t tell.

Nails’s men squatted in a wide, loose circle, each man facing out, guns at the ready. Nails pulled a small black plastic clicker from his breast pocket.

“Fire in the hole,” he said, then clicked the clicker three times.

The walls of 1801 At.w.a.ter blasted outward at the base. The last surviving bits of gla.s.s shattered, along with the plywood that covered most of the windows. Pieces of the roof shot into the sky, trailed by thick tendrils of expanding black smoke. The building collapsed upon itself, hundred-year-old brick walls falling in and down. A second later, rolling smoke and dust billowed out, obscuring everything.

“Holy s.h.i.+t,” one of the men said, laughing. “That’s awesome.”

“c.r.a.p,” Dew said. “I sure hope there’s nothing contagious in this dust.”

He pulled out his satphone. “We got it, Murray.”

Perry felt her, just a bit, the last trailing of sensation. Chelsea. Moving, still blocking him...