Infected

Bob Zimmer sprinted up to Dew, his eyes on the flames shooting from the broken third-floor window.

"Did you get him?" Zimmer asked.

"Yeah," Dew said. "I got him. He’s dead." The cops hadn’t seen the falling creature. Or if they had, they hadn’t made sense of it; perhaps they were too far away. Or perhaps, his conscience nagged him, perhaps they were too worried about the people in the burning building to care about something peculiar but obviously not human falling from the third-floor window.

"Are there still people in there?"

"Probably," Dew said. "I didn’t get anybody out before Dawsey ran."

Zimmer didn’t nod, didn’t acknowledge Dew’s comment. He stepped toward the building, directing other cops inside, shouting orders to the first cops emerging from the building escorting confused and scared residents.

The biosuited soldiers were already dousing the pieces and scooping up what bits they could. Dew watched the last of them hop into the vans. Everyone was loaded up except for Clarence Otto and Margaret Montoya. She stared at the building, a blank look on her face. Otto stood by her side, waiting for Dew’s next command.

Dew pointed his finger south, in the direction of the hospital. Otto put his arm around Margaret’s shoulder and quickly guided her to the van that held Dawsey. Dew closed the doors behind them. The vans quietly pulled away, avoiding the confused rush of policemen, then sped out of the parking lot.

Somewhere in the distance, Dew heard the faint approach of sirens: ambulances, the fire department. He looked up at the third floor one

last time — the window was all but obscured by the raging fire, flames shooting up at least twenty feet into the sky. There wouldn’t be anything left in that apartment.

Amid the shouting chaos, Dew calmly walked to his Buick. He shut himself inside the Buick and stared at Dawsey’s singed map, at the strange symbol so neatly drawn there. The symbol matched the one carved into Dawsey’s arm. The words This is the place neatly written in blue ink. It wasn’t the same hand that had scrawled This is the place on the map in Dawsey’s apartment. This writing was

The writing of a woman.

"f.u.c.k me," Dew whispered. Dawsey hadn’t run randomly at all — there had been another infected victim in that apartment, a victim that was likely still in the apartment and burning to a crisp. She’d sheltered Dawsey; they were working together.

It was very possible they knew each other before the infection. They lived in the same complex, after all. But if they hadn’t known each other before contracting the triangles, then that meant victims could somehow identify each other, help each other.

And, more important, if they hadn’t known each other, it was possible they had independently decided that Wahjamega was the place to be. And if that was the case, then the only possible conclusion was that they wanted to go there because of the infection.

Or, possibly, the infection wanted to go there.

Margaret’s words replayed in his head: They’re building something, she’d said.

Dew thought back to the burning creature that had fallen from the third-story window, then scrambled for his big cellular.

Murray answered on the first ring. "Did you get him?"

"We got him," Dew said. "Alive, exactly the way you wanted him. The stakes just went up. Listen and listen good, L.T. I need men in Wahjamega, Michigan, and I need them now. And none of those ATF or CIA commando wannabes. Make it marines or Green Berets or f.u.c.king Navy SEALs, but get me men, at least a platoon and then a division, as fast as they can get there. Full combat gear. Fire support, too. Artillery, tanks, the whole works. And choppers, lots of choppers."

"Dew, what the f.u.c.k is going on?"

"And that satellite, is it redirected to Wahjamega yet?"

"Yes," Murray said. "It already made a pa.s.s. The squints are looking at the images now."

"I’m going to take a picture of a symbol and send it to you as soon as I hang up. This symbol, that’s what the squints are looking for, got it?"

"Yeah, I got it."

"And I want a surveillance van punched into that satellite, and I want it there in thirty minutes. And a chopper better pick me up in the next fifteen minutes. I don’t care if we have to commandeer the f.u.c.king Channel Seven Eye in the Sky, you get me transport ASAP."

"Dew," Murray said quietly, "I can’t get you all that so fast, and you know it."

"You get it!" Dew screamed into the cellular. "You get it right f.u.c.king now! You can’t believe the s.h.i.+t I just saw."

88.

PARTY TIME

It was the third time he’d seen that symbol, only this time it wasn’t scrawled on a map or carved into human skin.

This time it was from a satellite image.

Four hours after he’d shot Perry Dawsey, Dew Phillips stood next to a Humvee, his booted feet on a dirt road that was frozen solid. A map and several satellite pictures were spread out on the vehicle’s hood. Rocks had been placed on the pictures to hold them in place against the stiff, icy breeze that cut through the winter woods.

Trees rose up on either side of Bruisee Road, trees thick with undergrowth, crumbling logs and brambles. Bare branches formed a skeletal canopy over the road, making the dark night even darker. The occasionally strong gust of wind knocked chunks of wet snow from the branches, dropping them on the a.s.semblage below: two Humvees, an unmarked black communications van and sixty armed soldiers.