Contagious

Betty waited. She waited until she felt the scalpel slide in again, waited until she was sure she felt it hit her cheekbone.

She waited for that, so she knew exactly where it was.

Keeping her head and body as still as she could, Betty Jewell slid her hand out of the cuff.

Margaret watched Amos’s deft, delicate technique as he cut away the rotting flesh, searching for another crawling nerve.

The high-powered magnifying goggles mounted in front of her visor showed Betty’s open wound with amazing detail, a super-closeup landscape of blood vessels, muscle, veins, bone and black rot. And amid all that, something moving. So tiny. Dendrite-like arms seemed to stretch out like an amoeba’s pseudopods. The arms contracted, pulling the body forward, the tail dragging behind.

Just like the camera mounted in Margaret’s helmet, the magnifying goggles would record their own feed. Judging by the rapid rate of rot, watching that video might be the only way she could study these things because they wouldn’t be around for long.

And neither would Betty, unless they could do something drastic.

“This isn’t like Dawsey at all,” Margaret said. “Unless this is some larval stage, something that was already over before we examined him.”

“You’ve got me,” Amos said. “Wait, here’s another one. Look at that, crawling along the afferent nerve. Let me get it out of there.”

Margaret watched closely. Amos’s scalpel danced around a second patch of black rot, cutting it out in a neat circle.

Then a flash of red. A blur, something that looked huge through the high-magnification gla.s.ses. That sudden movement, like it was flying at her face, made Margaret rear back.

She heard a snap and a gurgling sound.

Margaret whipped her right hand up and under the magnifying goggles, knocking them off her head.

Betty Jewell sat up.

Not all the way up—her right hand remained locked in the cuff, but her b.l.o.o.d.y, skinless left hand waved free, holding a scalpel.

Amos’s gloved hands clutched frantically at his suit-covered throat, grabbing, trying to claw through the black PVC. Blood sprayed against the inside of his visor. Drips of it leaked down the black suit’s outer surface, leaked from the small hole in his suit.

He took a half step back. Betty lunged forward again with the scalpel, her restrained

Betty gathered her strength for another strike.

Margaret grabbed Amos’s shoulders and yanked him away from the trolley. She pulled far too hard for the confined s.p.a.ce—they smashed into the trailer wall and fell to the floor. Amos landed on top. He kicked and kept grabbing at his throat, gloved fingers trying to reach inside the hole and tear it open, but the blood-slick PVC fabric wouldn’t give him purchase.

“Amos! Get off me!” Margaret pushed and pulled at the small man, trying to free her legs.

She looked up to see Betty slide her knees underneath her body. The girl rose up, kneeling on the autopsy trolley, right arm still trapped by the cuff. She leaned toward the cuff, then crossed her skinless left hand over the inside of her right elbow.

“Oh, G.o.d...,” Margaret hissed.

Betty yanked backward, twisting to the right, throwing all her weight against the cuff.

Her right hand slid free. Chunks of sloughed skin fell to the floor with a wet slap. Momentum carried her over the trolley’s left side. She hit the white floor, droplets of blood splattering across the autopsy chamber.

Amos’s movements slowed.

Margaret managed to kick her legs free. She pushed Amos off, then stood, her back against the trailer wall.

Betty leaned her right shoulder against the sink and pushed herself up with wobbling legs. Blood streaked her blue gown, the only clothing on an otherwise-naked body. The right side of her face was mostly cut away, black-and-white cheekbone blazing under red smears, bits of jellyish rot still clinging to what little skin remained.

Margaret just stared. She couldn’t move a muscle. She wanted to run, to scream, but she couldn’t even draw a breath.

Blood dripped from Betty’s skinless fingers. She still held the scalpel in her left hand, cradled it more than gripped it, trying to keep the stainless steel steady against exposed, blood-slick muscles.

Betty smiled. Only with the left half of her face, of course, because the muscles on the right side were mostly gone.

“You bish,” she slurred. “Lesh shee how you like it.”

She shuffled forward, trying to keep her balance, bare feet leaving b.l.o.o.d.y streaks on the white floor.

The autopsy trolley was the only thing separating her from Margaret.

Betty reached down with her right hand and rolled it out of the way. She pulled her hand back, but her right pointer finger stayed behind, stuck to the trolley in a red and black mess of rotted meat and jutting bone.

Betty half-smiled again.

She stood only three feet away.

She took a small shuffle-step forward

Margaret still couldn’t will her muscles to move, not even a bit. Her breath returned in a sucking gasp, then shot out in a ragged scream that sounded impossibly loud inside her suit helmet.

But not so loud that she didn’t hear the gunshot.

The right side of Betty’s head, the undamaged side, exploded outward in a fist-size hole that sprayed blood, brains and bone on the back wall and into the sink. She dropped like a cloth puppet.

“Margaret!”

Clarence’s voice, m.u.f.fled.

“Margaret, are you okay? Did she cut you?”

She turned to his voice. He wore his black biohazard suit. Gitsh and Marcus, also wearing suits, were right behind him. Clarence’s gloved hand held a pistol, still smoking. He knelt by her side, the gun pointed down and away from her.