Infected

So Dew had walked a circle around Building B. He’d found nothing, so he’d walked around again, staring at the ground the whole time. He

walked back to Dawsey’s car; disturbed snow in front of the hood indicated that someone, probably Dawsey, had stood there not too long before.

All the footprints in front of the car were from a left foot. You had to look very closely to see that detail, but once he saw it, he couldn’t unsee it. Dawsey, crippled leg and all, had stood right there. h.e.l.l, he’d probably watched Vanderpine enter his apartment building.

Dew squatted in front of the car. His cold knees throbbed at the effort.

The CIA’s lead agent has arthritis, he mused. There’s something you don’t see in the movies.

Crouched in front of the beat-up, rust-speckled Ford, Dew looked at the door to Building B. He felt an unexpected surge of adrenaline — Dawsey had been in this same spot. Dawsey had watched the two cops enter the building, watched the door shut behind them, and then he... he did what?

Dew looked around his position, trying to see the terrain through the eyes of an infected man. On his left was Washtenaw Avenue, the main road that shuttled traffic between upscale Ann Arbor and low-rent Ypsilanti. It was full of ever-present thirty-five-mile-per-hour traffic. If he’d gone that way, someone would have noticed the hopping man.

Dawsey wouldn’t have wanted that. Too much noise, too many people. Dew looked to his right, down the apartment complex’s road. There were more apartments. A s.h.i.+tload more apartments. Almost no traffic, curtains and shades all drawn against the winter cold, n.o.body looking, n.o.body walking. That’s what Dawsey wanted. It was quiet, it looked full of hiding places — bushes, shrubs. The cop army had searched all of those hiding places and found nothing, not even a footprint or snow knocked off a bush branch.

But it was the dead of winter — why hide in a snow-covered bush when you could hide in a nice warm apartment? That’s what Dawsey had seen. He had just committed a brutal murder, then watched two cops enter his building. Dew reminded himself of the raging paranoia exhibited by all the victims. Dawsey had watched the cops go in, known they were coming for him,

Dew came out from the hiding spot, grunting as he stood, his knees complaining against the unkind treatment. He walked toward Building G. Despite the fact that his pulse raced like a high-octane engine, he moved with deliberate slowness, examining the ground with a renewed focus.

BURN, BURN, YES YA GONNA BURN

The one on his back was going to be the toughest. Perry had explored Fatty Patty’s cabinets and found a cigarette lighter, two bottles of wine, three bottles of Bacardi 151, and half a fifth of Jack Daniel’s. He’d already knocked back a whole bottle of wine; a buzz rolled thickly through his head. It wasn’t a Wild Turkey buzz, but he’d chugged the entire bottle, so the real kick was probably still brewing in his gut.

Three left: his back, his left forearm, and his b.a.l.l.s.

For what he was about to try, he wanted to be very, very drunk. There was no clever way to remove the Triangles, and the risk seemed

greater than ever. The Triangle on his forearm might be close to the artery. The one on his back was right over his backbone — its barbed tail could be wrapped around his vertebrae. Pulling that one out might injure or even sever his spinal cord. The one on his nuts, the one he’d managed to not think about for days... well, he’d just have to get a lot drunker first.

He wasn’t certain he could pull any of them out, but he could kill them where they grew. They’d rot, sure, but if his plan worked, he would dial 911 and head straight for an emergency room. Let the doctors figure it out. The Soldiers wanted to whack him and stop the Triangles from hatching; maybe if there were no more Triangles, the Soldiers wouldn’t kill him. Maybe maybe maybe. They might kill him anyway, but they might keep him alive so they could interrogate him. Even if they took him prisoner so they could probe his mind with their secret machines and TVs that could read thoughts, he’d still be alive.

And, most important of all, he would have killed those motherf.u.c.king Triangles. Then, even if the Soldiers brought him down, no one could ever doubt that he died like a Dawsey.

He wasn’t going out as a human incubator. He wouldn’t let them win. A painful fever seemed to grip his muscles. His joints ached with the dull kick of a ba.s.s drum. The rot. The rot from his shoulder, his a.s.s, spreading to other parts. He could fight the Triangles, maybe, but how could he fight black bile rot flowing through his blood?

The gig was up. Time to s.h.i.+t or get off the pot.

The sleeping hatchlings filled the apartment with clicks and pops. A Garth Brooks song filtered faintly through the floor from the apartment below. In his own mind, all was quiet, not a peep from his own Triangles.

Perry stuffed the lighter into his front pocket, grabbed the liquor bottles and his butcher’s block that held his knives and his Chicken Scissors. He hopped clumsily for the bathroom.

Burn, burn, yes ya gonna burn.

THE FED

Dew knelt, staring at the spot in the snow. He thought he’d imagined it at first, the frenzied creation of a tired mind and tired eyes. As he stooped down to look closer, he knew it was real.

A tiny, dark pink streak on the pavement’s thin snow. It was small, only about a half inch long and less than an eighth of an inch wide. Wisps of fine powder almost covered the mark.

Dawsey had fallen, right here. Dew looked back to Dawsey’s car; if you drew a straight line from the rusty Ford through the blood spot, that line pointed directly to the door of Building G.