Infected

"That a town?" Dew asked as he picked up the evidence bag holding the map. The b.l.o.o.d.y fingerprints were still wet enough to smear the plastic. The words This is the place were scrawled on the map in handwriting so bad it was barely legible.

"Yeah," Mitch.e.l.l said. "About, oh, ninety minutes or so from here."

"You notify Wahjamega police to be on the lookout?"

"They don’t have any — town is too small — but we let the Tuscola County Sheriff ’s department know, yeah. h.e.l.l, every cop in the state is on the lookout anyway."

Dew nodded approvingly. Maybe something, maybe nothing, as

Mitch.e.l.l had said. Dew leaned more toward the "something" side — it didn’t take a genius to figure out Dawsey hadn’t circled Wahjamega on a whim. The map didn’t show much in the way of civilization around the town. In fact, it looked like there might be a s.h.i.+tload of trees.

Trees.

Deep woods, even.

As soon as he got out of this apartment, he’d have Murray’s boys

focus the satellite coverage on Wahjamega instead of Ann Arbor.

The brown-polyester-wearing Bob Zimmer wove through the crowded apartment, dodging the photographer and another cop before stopping in front of Dew and Mitch.e.l.l.

"This just gets better and better, Phillips," Zimmer said. "I just talked to the governor. Again. FBI says Dawsey and the Vietnamese kid were working together — they found a bunch of emails. Homeland Security raised the alert level to f.u.c.king red, to ‘severe.’ Dawsey has knowledge of a bomb."

Dew nodded. "I told you someone else might be involved in those murders. We figure it was Dawsey."

"To think there’s a cell right here in our midst," Zimmer said. "And why didn’t someone bother to pick up a f.u.c.king phone and let us know there’s terrorists in town?" His eyes showed doubt, as if his bulls.h.i.+t meter was going off, but they also showed he’d follow through. Bulls.h.i.+t or no bulls.h.i.+t, Bob Zimmer wasn’t taking any chances with the safety of his men or his town.

"Nguyen was what we call a sleeper, Bob," Dew said. "He’s just another foreign college student. He stays quiet until he’s needed, then boom. Only we don’t think he’s operating under directions, we think he just snapped. Somewhere along the line, he or his buddies recruited Dawsey."

"Why the h.e.l.l

"We don’t know yet," Dew said. "Maybe he was bitter at ‘the man’ because he worked some s.h.i.+t computer job and didn’t pull in millions in the NFL. It doesn’t f.u.c.king matter. Dawsey might know about a bomb — we don’t know where it is, we don’t know what it is. We have to get to him and fast."

Zimmer stared at Dew. "I’ll tell you right now, I don’t like this," he

said. "We’ve got nine people dead, at least one killer is on the loose, and there’s a G.o.dd.a.m.n bomb out there somewhere. I can’t help but think we could have prevented this if you’d let us know you were watching this Vietnamese kid."

"We had to see who would contact him, who would supply him," Dew said. "It was a sting, Bob, but it went bust. The key thing to remember is we don’t want anyone else getting killed. And if you want to save lives, just make sure your men know exactly what they’re dealing with. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make some calls."

Dew walked out of the blood-splattered apartment, leaving Bob Zimmer to grind his teeth in frustration.

DEAR OLD DAD

His shoulder pulsed with a deep, steady, low-frequency throb. His a.s.s echoed the beat. This internal-rotting thing was getting serious.

He had no idea how close his own Triangles were to hatching. The areas where he still had them — middle of his back just below the shoulder blades, left forearm, his left t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e — had stopped itching or hurting. A brief glimmer of hope flashed in his head that they might be dead, that they had just pa.s.sed on in their sleep like some beloved grandpa. But that was bulls.h.i.+t.

He’d rather have the itching back than what he felt right now. The spots felt numb. Completely numb. Something in his mind flashed "localized anesthetic." He wondered if they were doing so much damage that the pain would have incapacitated him, shut him down, so they had to block the pain, letting him continue normally, letting him pursue those all-important duties of eating, of avoiding the Soldiers.

He shuddered, remembering the black tentacles snaking underneath Fatty Patty’s skin minutes before the hatching. She hadn’t looked as if she were in pain or any discomfort at all. Perhaps she’d felt this same numbness. Perhaps she’d been numb for days. The real problem was he had no concept of the timetable.

When his slumbering Triangles awoke, how long before they started screaming in his head? How long before their final death-song?

He didn’t have the luxury of waiting. He had to a.s.sume that when they awoke, he’d lose his last chance to purge them from his body. On top of that, the Columbos were outside, and it would only be a matter of time before they figured out where he was. Dawn was about to break. They’d see him when he made a run for it. They probably had bugs in every apartment anyway, listening, doing their Big Brother gig. Spy satellites could be searching for him right now, X-ray vision peering through the walls and ceiling, seeking him out.

"I don’t know if you can hear me, Daddy, but I know you’re right," Perry said. "Time to s.h.i.+t or get off the pot. Time to show them who’s the strong one — time to show them all."