Infected

Two days. He’d missed two days of work. What the h.e.l.l would Dear Ol’ Dad have said about that? Nothing good, Perry knew that for certain. He’d make it up to Sandy. If he had to work double s.h.i.+fts and weekends for the next three months with no overtime, he’d make it up. Concussion or no concussion, there was no excuse for missing that much work. He couldn’t just call her. That would be cowardly. He’d drive in right away and take his medicine face-to-face. After, of course, he got his a.s.s to the hospital.

His stomach growled. He had to get some food first.

In minutes his last two eggs were frying up in a b.u.t.ter-coated pan. The smell drew loud grumbles from his stomach and made his mouth water. He dropped two pieces of bread into the toaster, then crammed a third piece in his mouth and chewed ravenously.

Before the eggs finished cooking, he reached into the cupboard, pulled out the last of the Pop-Tarts and wolfed them down. The toast popped up as he slid the eggs onto a plate. He jammed a piece of toast into the first yolk, and took a big, satisfying bite. His stomach rumbled again — happily, this time — as he finished off the first egg and raised his toast to puncture the second yolk.

Then he froze, half-chewed food hanging in his mouth.

The round, yellow-orange yolk glistened, surrounded by a bed of white. Orange. Orange that at one time had been a baby chicken, growing in a sh.e.l.l.

Growing. Growing. Growing.

Grown.

The toast dropped to the floor. It landed b.u.t.ter side down.

What the h.e.l.l had he been thinking, eating a pile of eggs and worrying about work when he still had these f.u.c.king things inside him? He pulled back the towel’s edge to examine his thigh, exposing the wound that had helped knock him out cold for two straight days. The shower had cleared away the dried blood, leaving fresh pink scar tissue with only a small, dark red scab-pebble in the middle. The wound looked healthy. Normal. The whitish growth that had caused his itching was long gone.

It was gone... but the others weren’t.

He sat at the kitchen table and pulled his right knee to his chest, getting a good, close look

The orange-peel skin was gone. What had taken its place didn’t make him feel any better.

Where a circle of thick, pebbly, orange skin had once been, a peculiar triangle now lay. A triangle that was under his skin. Each of the triangle’s sides was about an inch long.

The skin covering the strange triangle had a pale bluish tinge to it, the same color as the blue veins in the underside of one’s wrist. But it wasn’t really his skin. There was no break in the skin that wrapped around his leg, that covered his whole body for that matter, but somehow what covered the blue triangle just didn’t seem to be his. It felt tougher than his own.

Near each of the triangle’s three points was a quarter-inch slit pointing to the triangle’s center. They reminded Perry of the slits in a homemade apple pie — if, of course, apple pie were triangular, made of human skin, and held a bluish tinge.

What the f.u.c.k was it?

Perry’s breath came in rapid, short, shallow gasps. He had to get to a hospital.

His father had gone into a hospital. His father had never come out. The doctors didn’t do a f.u.c.king thing for his father. Jacob Dawsey spent the last two months of his life slowly shriveling up on a hospital bed, good-for-nothing doctors sticking him full of needles, poking and prodding and testing. All the while his barrel-chested, 265-pound father shrunk to a six-foot-five, 150-pound living mummy, a character out of some childhood nightmare.

Perry had gone into the hospital once himself, right after that Rose Bowl injury to his knee. d.a.m.n doctors were supposed to be able to fix anything. Turned out they couldn’t. Months later a second set of specialists (and there’s always plenty of specialists for an All–Big Ten linebacker, thank you very much) said the first doctors had screwed things up, that Perry might have continued his career if they’d done things right.

But this wasn’t a blown knee. This wasn’t even cancer. Cancer was a semi-living ma.s.s of flesh. The thing he’d pulled out of his leg had been alive, it had moved on its own.

And there were six more. Six more that had grown unhindered for two days, while he’d been unconscious. It had only taken three days for the things to go from a little rash to a squirming horror, and another

forty-eight hours to transform into these bizarre triangular growths. What the h.e.l.l might they become in the next twenty-four hours? The next forty-eight?

Perry rushed to throw on the first clothes he could find, grabbed his keys and coat and headed for his car.

Hospital time.

Definitely hospital time.

32.

CALLING DR. CHENG, CALLING DR. CHENG

Margaret waited for Dr. Cheng to come to the phone. She didn’t like to be made to wait, but it was hard to be upset when Agent Clarence Otto’s strong hands worked her bunched-up shoulder muscles. She was still in the director’s office, except now she was sitting in the big-girl’s chair. Murray was on his way back to Was.h.i.+ngton. Amos was taking advantage of the downtime to get some sleep in one of the hospital’s empty rooms.

Cheng was a bit of a bigwig at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta. She didn’t know the man from Adam, but she had to admit it was fun to hear people at the main CDC office jump when she called. One phone call from Murray opened a lot of doors.

"This is Doctor Cheng." Margaret shook her head slightly. She’d expected an Asian accent. This guy sounded like he was from Bakersfield.

"Doctor Cheng, Margaret Montoya."