Infected

Margaret shuffled to her station, her mind spinning with possibilities and a new level of fearful respect for the mystery organism.

It had seemed so obvious — unbelievable and awe-inspiring, but still obvious — that this was an organism bioengineered to make people violent and unpredictable. Now, however, she wasn’t so sure. There was something else to the mystery, something that a theory of high-tech terrorists didn’t explain.

"Hey, Margaret, bring me the camera." She looked back — Amos stood next to Brewbaker’s hip. All parts of him were being consumed by the black rot, but some spots weren’t quite as advanced. The hip was one such spot. She grabbed the camera from the prep table and handed it to Amos.

He pointed to the hip, to the little lesion they’d seen earlier.

"Margaret, look at this." He knelt down and took a picture.

"I see it. You already showed me."

"Yes, but do you see anything different?"

Margaret sighed. "Amos, no more drama, please. If you’ve got something to say, say it."

He said nothing. Instead he stood, fiddled with the camera, then stood shoulder to shoulder with her so they could both see the camera’s small screen. The screen showed a close-up of the lesion, a tiny blue fiber sticking out of it.

"So?" Margaret said. "We’ve got s.h.i.+t to do before his body is goo, Amos."

"That’s the picture we took when we first saw it," he said, then hit the advance b.u.t.ton on the camera. The picture changed. "And that is the picture I took just now."

Margaret stared. The two pictures looked exactly the same, except for one thing — the second picture showed not one fiber, but three, a small red one, a small blue one, and the original blue one, which was three times as long as it had been before.

Even though Martin Brewbaker was dead, the fibers were still growing.

19.

HUMP DAY

By noon the d.a.m.nable things started itching again, and Perry had to wonder if he should see a doctor. But it was just a little rash, for crying out loud. What kind of a wuss goes to see a doctor for a little rash? If you don’t have self-discipline, what do you have?

He’d always been a very healthy person. He hadn’t vomited from a non-alcohol-related incident since the sixth grade. While others succ.u.mbed to the flu, Perry would suffer only a runny nose and a slightly queasy stomach. While

Perry had been twenty-five when Captain Cancer finally claimed Jacob Dawsey, the toughest sonofab.i.t.c.h this side of Brian Urlacher. Prior to that last trip to the hospital, from which Jacob Dawsey never returned, he had missed only one day of work in his entire life. That day came when Perry broke his father’s jaw.

Perry had returned home from late-season football practice to find his father beating his mother. Snow had been falling on and off for a week, enough to cover the spa.r.s.e gra.s.s with patchy white, but not enough to acc.u.mulate on the dirt road that led up to the house — the road glistened with cold wetness.

His father had thrown his mother off the front porch, into a slushy puddle, and was in the process of whipping her with his belt. The scene was nothing new, and to this day Perry had no idea why he snapped, why — for the first time in his life — he fought against his father’s incessant rage.

"Gonna show you who’s in charge, woman," Jacob Dawsey said as he brought the belt down with a crack. "Give you women an inch and you take a mile! Who the h.e.l.l do you think you are?" Even though his father had spent all his life in northern Michigan, he had the faintest trace of a drawl. It colored his words, making h.e.l.l sound like hail.

At the time Perry was a high-school soph.o.m.ore, six-foot-two, 200 pounds and growing like a weed. He was no match for his father’s six-foot-five, 265 pounds of solid muscle. But Perry rushed him anyway, hit his father with a flying tackle that carried them both into the tattered front porch. Rotten lattice shattered around them.

Perry got up first, screaming, snarling, and hit his father with a heavy left hook. That blow broke his father’s jaw, but Perry only found that out later. Jacob Dawsey tossed his son away like so much rubbish. Perry jumped up to press the attack. His father grabbed a shovel and proceeded to give Perry the worst beating he’d ever suffered.

Perry fought like he’d never fought before, because he was sure he was going to die that day. He landed two more shots on his father’s jaw, but Jacob Dawsey barely flinched as he brought the flat of the shovel down again and again.

The next day the pain was too much for even the mighty Jacob Dawsey. He went to the hospital, where the doctors wired his mouth shut. When his father returned home, he called his son to the kitchen table. Black-and-blue, cut in a dozen places, Perry could hardly walk after the shovel-beating, but he sat at the table as his father scrawled out childish writing on a piece of paper. Jacob Dawsey was only semiliterate, but Perry could make out the message.

Can’t talk, broke jaw, said the scribbled writing. You fought like a man. Proud of you. It a s.h.i.+t world, you got to learn to survive. Someday you understand, thank me.

What had been f.u.c.ked up — like, really f.u.c.ked up beyond belief — wasn’t the beating itself. It was the look in his father’s eyes. The look of sorrow, of love and the look of pride. The look that said, "This hurt me more than it hurt you," and not because of the broken jaw. His dad saw the shovel-beating in the same light a sane father might see a spanking — something unsavory that had to be done as a parenting responsibility. Jacob Dawsey didn’t think he’d done anything wrong — in fact, he thought he’d done the right thing, the responsible thing, and although he hated hurting his only begotten son, he’d do what had to be done to be a good father.