Scott Sigler - Contagious

The plasma ball was really the whole point of the nuke, to create instant, scorching temperatures that would kill every spore, and it worked like a charm.

The rest of the nuke’s effects were a bit of unavoidable overkill.

The Renaissance Center stood less than a mile from the detonation point. Star-hot heat radiated down, turning metal, glass and plastic into boiling liquid. Some of these liquids evaporated instantly, but the building didn’t have time to completely melt and burn.

The shock wave came next.

The explosion’s power pushed the air around it outward in a pressure wave moving at 780 miles an hour, just a touch over the speed of sound and twice the speed of an F-5 tornado, the most powerful wind force on Earth. The wave smashed into the melting glass, metal and plastic of the RenCen, thirty-five pounds per square inch of overpressure splashing the molten liquid away in a giant wave and shattering the still-solid parts like a sledgehammer slamming through a toothpick house.

The RenCen’s main tower had seventy-three stories, the four surrounding towers thirty-nine stories each. Less than three seconds after detonation, all of it was gone.

The shock wave rolled out at the speed of sound, losing energy as it moved. It shattered Comerica Park, home of the Tigers, ripping the concrete stands to pieces and hurling chunks of them for miles. In the days that followed, three seats from Section 219, half melted but still bolted to their concrete footings, would be found in the parking lot of Big Sammy’s Bar in Westland, twenty miles away. The curved white roof of Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions, caved in like an eggshell stomped by a fat man.

A mile outward from the detonation point, the pressure wave smashed any building smaller than ten stories, broken pieces flying farther outward in a lethal, hurricane-class shrapnel cloud of brick and wood and metal and glass.

That same pressure wave picked up cars and flung them like Matchbox toys, spinning them through crumbling buildings, each Ford or Toyota or Chrysler its own whirling missile of death. As far as a mile away, the blast knocked burning cars onto their sides and roofs.

Detroit wasn’t the only city to feel the effects. Across the river the fireball scorched most of Windsor. The shock wave tore through the city, leveling houses as far as a mile from the shoreline.

Everywhere people died. The lucky ones, close to the detonation point, evaporated in the initial flash, their shadows instantly burned onto sidewalks and walls. One woman was in the middle of drinking a Coke—the flash vaporized her, leaving a perfect silhouette with arm bent, head tilted back, can in hand. Farther out from the detonation point, you didn’t vaporize; your skin just bubbled as the sudden heat caused the fluid in each cell to boil, expand and burst the cell membranes. Survivors would later describe the feeling as being dunked deep into a vat of boiling water. Most of those who lived through the initial fireball effects died from the pressure wave or were killed by building wreckage and various car parts traveling at five hundred miles an hour.

If you lived through all that, you had to deal with second-and third-degree burns, burning buildings and dead as far as the eye could see.

And if you lived through that, your body would feel the effects of radiation for years to come. The cancer rate in southeast Michigan would skyrocket.

The initial blast caused an estimated 58,000 deaths. Another 23,000 died within days as a result of burns and shock-wave-related injuries. Combined, the blast caused 81,000 deaths. In the five years that followed, another 127,000 would die of persistent injuries, cancer and other radiation-related causes.

In those years, through all the scandals and congressional inquiries and public outcry, President John Gutierrez, his staff, the Joint Chiefs, Murray Longworth, Margaret Montoya and Clarence Otto would ask themselves every day…

Was it worth it?

As brutal as it sounded, it was.

They had destroyed the spores, killed Chelsea and brought down the Orbital. They still didn’t know what was supposed to come out of those gates, what the angels really looked like and what damage they might have caused.

They didn’t know, and thanks to those who gave their lives, they never would.

In the weeksafter the explosion, as FEMA, Homeland Security and a dozen other agencies and charities converged on the Motor City and its suburbs to help the survivors and bury the dead, two small, manned submarines began picking up the only solid enemy remains.

The pieces of the Orbital.

Nine hundred feet below Lake Michigan’s rough surface, the Orbital’s wreckage lay spread across the lake bed, a collection of twisted, warped and broken rubble.

One piece, however, remained mostly intact. This object had been engineered to survive such crashes, to endure almost any type of damage in order to ensure delivery of its contents.

That particular object was about the size of a soda can.

My “First Reader:” You always take one for the team.

“Team Sigler:”

• Julian “Tha Shiv” Pavia and the hard-workin’ cats at Crown Publishing. Y’all make this a fun party.

• Byrd “The Natural” Leavell for constant support, guidance and story instincts.

• Scott Christian and J. C. Hutchins for vital advance reads that helped iron out some pesky wrinkles. You guys are nails.

• Mae “RDQ” Breakall for being my brain.

• Paul “Pulsar” Rogalinski, programming assassin.

• Arioch Morningstar, audio production machine.

Research and guidance:

• Jeremy “Xenophanes” Ellis, my friend and amazing science adviser. This book wouldn’t have happened without your brilliance.

• Doug Ellis for help with BSL-4 procedures.

• Paul Blass and Bill DeSmedt, who provided much-needed help with orbital physics.

• “Slow-Lane-Express” for teaching me about semi-tractors and trailers.

• Robert W. Gilliland, Major, USAF, for in-depth Air Force knowledge and many years of friendship.

• Chris Grall, U.S. army veteran, for all the tactics, weapons, details and culture.

Thanks to all the men and women of the U.S. military for all that you do and all that you sacrifice.

EXTRA-SPECIAL THANKS WITH SPRINKLES ON TOP:

A most heartfelt “thanks a frickin’ lot” to Joe Dumars, president of Basketball Operations for the Detroit Pistons, for trading Chauncey Billups to Denver shortly after this novel went to the printer. At least now I can say that Dumars made me look like an idiot…

And finally, to my die-hard fans, aka “The Junkies.” All of this is for you. The novel you hold in your hands brings us closer to the Sigler Ascension. Spread the faith, for soon the plaid tanks will roll…

E-mail the author at: scott@scottsigler.net.

Crown Publishers

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2008 by Scott Sigler

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York

www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Sigler, Scott.