Infected

"Hey," Amos said, "what do you make of this?" He stood next to Brewbaker’s hip, one of the places least damaged from the flames. His finger rested beside a small lesion, sort of like a gnarled zit.

A gnarled zit with a tiny blue fiber sticking out of it.

"So he had some acne," Margaret said. "Do you think it’s significant?" "I think everything is significant. Should we excise it and send it out?" She thought for a moment. "Not yet. It doesn’t look like there’s any

decomposition on that spot, and I want to examine it for myself. Let’s focus on the areas that are rotting, as we know we won’t have much longer to work with those, then come back to it, okay?"

"Sounds good," Amos said. He grabbed the camera from the prep table. He leaned in close to the zit, snapped a picture, then put the camera back on the prep table. "Right, we’ll come back to it."

"How much longer until we get the results from the tissue a.n.a.lysis of the growth?"

"We’ll have info tomorrow. I’m sure they’re working through the night. DNA a.n.a.lysis, protein sequencing and anything else that might pop up."

She checked her watch — 10:07 P.M. She and Amos would also be up all night and well into the next day. Had to be. They knew from hardearned experience that they had only a few days before Brewbaker’s body rotted away.

13.

TWO-FER TUESDAY

"Good G.o.d, Perry," Bill said. "Two days in a row. I’ve seen flea-ridden dogs scratch like that, but never a human." Bill, half hung over the cubicle wall, looked down at a madly scratching Perry.

"Of course, I’m a.s.suming you’re human," Bill added. "Scientists still debate that one."

Perry ignored the mild gibe, concentrating instead on his left forearm. He’d pushed the sleeve of his ratty Detroit Lions sweats.h.i.+rt up past his elbow. His right hand looked a blur as he raked the hairy forearm with his fingernails.

"I hear scabies is nasty this time of year," Bill said.

"d.a.m.n thing itches like all get-out." Perry stopped for a moment to stare at the welt. Its texture resembled a small strawberry — if strawberries were yellow and oozed tiny drops of clear

The digging nails left long, angry-red scratches. The scratches surrounded the welt like egg white around an overcooked yolk.

"Gee, that looks healthy," Bill said, then slipped back into his cube.

"It’s no big deal." Perry turned his attention to his screen, which displayed a computer network diagram. He absently reached up and brushed a lock of straight, heavy blond hair out of his eyes.

StickyFingazWhitey: Dude, seriously...nasty. Bleedmaize_n_blue: It’s no big deal, mind yer own. StickyFingazWhitey: G.o.d forbid you just go buy some — oh, dare I speak the word that should never be spoken — MEDICINE?

Perry tried to ignore Bill’s sarcasm. As if the wonderful rashes weren’t enough of a distraction. Perry had been working on the Pullman problem, the same one he hadn’t solved the day before, for more than an

hour. At least he tried to work. The rashes made it difficult to concentrate on customer support.

"Quit being such a macho stud-boy and go buy some Cortaid." Bill hung over the gray cubicle wall like a puppy trying to decipher a new and unusual sound. "You don’t have to go to Mr. Evil Witchdoctor, for G.o.d’s sake, just buy something to help that itch. A disinfectant wouldn’t hurt either, by the looks of things. I’ll never understand why you like to sit in pain rather than partake in the wonders of a modern society."

"Your doctors couldn’t do anything for my right knee, now could they?" "I was at the game, Perry, remember? I saw your knee when I visited you at the hospital. Jesus H. Christ couldn’t have brought that knee back from the dead."

"Maybe I’m just a Cro-Magnon, that’s all." Perry fought the urge to scratch again. The rash on his right a.s.s cheek demanded attention. "We still hitting the bar tonight?"

"I don’t think so, contagion-boy. I prefer the company of at least semihealthy people. You know, those with rubella or smallpox? Perhaps a bit of the Black Death? I’d rather a.s.sociate with them than deal with scabies."

"It’s just a rash, a.s.shole." Perry felt anger slowly swell up in his chest. He immediately fought it down. Bill Miller seemingly lived to irritate people, and once he got rolling he didn’t quit. It would be "scabies this" and "scabies that" for the rest of the week — and it was only Tuesday. But they were just words, and good-natured words at that. Perry calmed himself. He’d already let his temper slip once this week — he’d be d.a.m.ned if he’d insult Bill like that again.

Perry moved his mouse and clicked, magnifying a section of the network schematic. "Leave me alone, will ya? Sandy wants this thing fixed right away. The Pullman people are going apes.h.i.+t."

Bill slid back into his cube. Perry stared at the screen, trying to solve a problem taking place more than a thousand miles away in the state of Was.h.i.+ngton. a.n.a.lyzing computer glitches over the phone wasn’t an easy job, especially with network difficulties where the problem could be a wire in the ceiling, a bad port, or a single defective component on any of 112 workstations. Many times in customer support, he faced problems that would have chewed up Agatha Christie, Columbo and Sherlock Holmes in one big swallow. This was one such problem.