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“They’re bitten!” he bellowed. “They’re infected.”
The adults stumbled to a halt, their fear and uncertainty warring with their basic humanity.
The little black girl with the pink clips had fallen down and she lay still and unmoving on the floor five feet away from Trout. Her wounds no longer bled, and as he stared the blood around the bite marks changed. At first the bright red seemed to fade to a paler pink, but that was an illusion created as thousands of tiny white worms seemed to explode within the mess. The process was so damned fast that it was like watching a movie speeded up. First there dots of white and then they expanded before his eyes before finally bursting open as worms. Then within seconds those newborn worms began seeding the blood with new eggs, which swelled and burst, continuing a cycle that seemed impossible. Except that it was going on, right there, right in front of his eyes. Volker’s monster at work.
The worms excreted an oily black substances whose nature Trout could not even guess, and soon the blood became as black as motor oil. Totally polluted, totally corrupted.
Then the little girl’s eyes opened.
She and Trout lay five feet apart. A child and a man. Both of them trapped inside a nightmare.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
TOWN OF STEBBINS
ONE MILE INSIDE THE Q-ZONE
Back in the Humvee, Sam took the radio booster unit, removed a small cable, and plugged it into his cell phone.
“I thought everything was jammed,” said Boxer.
“Special line,” explained Sam. “For emergencies. Have to keep the conversation short, though, because it’s not all that secure.”
Sam punched a number and was not surprised when it was answered halfway through the first ring.
“Are you inside?” asked Scott Blair. The connection was very bad, but workable.
“Affirmative,” said Sam, “and I have two things to report. First, there are definitely Zees at large within the area. Does that match your latest intel?”
Boxer mouthed the word “Zees.”
Blair said, “On-site command reports that the last Zees are being dealt with.”
“That sounds like the bullshit it is, sir,” observed Sam. “We found three without even looking. That tells me there are more, and probably a lot more. Between terrain and the storm, no ground search can make reliable claims.”
“For what it’s worth, even S.Z. agrees,” said Blair, careful not to name General Zetter over an open line. “He has requested ten thousand additional units be shipped to his warehouse. ETA two hours.”
Ten thousand new troops. Sam whistled. “Not soon enough,” he said. “And that brings me to the second thing. The checkpoint we passed was manned by a couple of kids who couldn’t keep anyone out of anywhere. S.Z.’s using two-man teams on the roads, and the roving patrols between checkpoints are a joke. They couldn’t keep kids out of a candy store. If the whole area hasn’t already been breached, then it’s a matter of time.”
Blair cursed.
“Listen to me,” said Sam, “I don’t know or care what you have to do to convince the Big Man that the current response is inadequate. Seems to me that everyone is proceeding like this thing is over, but it’s not going to take much for this thing to go into the shitter. If it helps any put me on the phone to the president.”
“It’s worth a try,” said Blair. “But now I have something to tell you. H.V. is dead.”
It took Sam a second. H.V.
Dr. Herman Volker.
“Ah … shit. Tell me he at least left the accounts.” He leaned on the word.
“That is a negative. Zero accounts.”
Sam watched lightning fork in the sky. “Where does that leave us?”
“With a mission change,” said Blair. “I need you to scrap the science trip and proceed to the secondary source. It’s all riding on that. Do whatever you have to do.”
The line went dead and Sam put the phone away. He told the others what Blair had said, and explained that the secondary source of Volker’s information was in the possession of Billy Trout.
