Scott Sigler - Contagious

Amos had the menu open in front of him. He could barely see over the top. Dew considered making a crack about a child seat, but he assumed Amos had heard that one a million times. They didn’t get to do this often, maybe two or three days a week. Dew not only looked forward to it, he found time to make it happen. The whole situation had grown so dark, so desperate, that they needed a release. Breakfast meetings provided a rare chance to do something normal, to laugh and joke, even if it was gallows humor most of the time.

“Okay, Margaret,” Dew said. “Give me the rundown on last night’s autopsies.”

She looked up from her menu. “What, here?”

“Yep, right here,” Dew said. “I’m pretty sure the Russkies haven’t bugged Bob’s Breakfast Shack.”

“Russkies?” Otto said. “Doesn’t that phrase show your age?”

“Actually, my uneducated friend,” Amos said, “ Russkies is accurate, since we now have a country called Russia . Commies would be inaccurate, since it’s the USSR that’s no longer around.”

Otto frowned, then smiled. “Say, little white man, don’t you owe me twenty bucks?”

“Aw, crap,” Amos said. “That’s right.” He fished out his wallet and handed over a well-folded twenty.

“What’s that for?” Margaret asked.

Otto pocketed the twenty. “He bet that Dawsey would kill me last night.”

Margaret took in a gasp of astonishment. “Amos! You didn’t!”

“I paid him, didn’t I?”

She shook her head and scowled at both men. “Seriously. That’s not something to joke about.”

“If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry,” Otto said. “Or something like that. I won twenty bucks—what else matters?”

The waitress came to take their orders. They sat in silence until she’d worked the room and left.

“Okay,” Dew said. “Let’s get back on task here. First of all, Margo, congrats on developing that triangle test.”

Otto and Amos both applauded lightly.

Margaret blushed. “Oh, it’s a team effort.”

Amos laughed. “Give it a rest, Miss Modesty. It was all your idea, and it works.”

“What else did you find from the corpses?” Dew asked.

“Nothing completely new,” Margaret said. “Although we refined a lot of our knowledge. Amos and I got great pictures of the parasite’s nerve inter face, the best yet. Same thing for the circulatory tap. I think we’ve pretty much documented how the thing interacts with those systems, although the disturbing part is still the brain interaction. These parasites clearly know more about the inner workings of our brains than we do.”

“What about the vector?” Dew said.

She shook her head. “Still nothing. So much of that comes from interviewing disease victims, finding out what they ate, drank, where they went, who they touched, things like that. The only person who can talk about it won’t talk about it.”

“Goddamn Dawsey,” Dew said. “What about the number of hosts this time? There were three of them, and we had those three old ladies that Perry torched. Any significance to that number?”

“Probably not,” Amos said. “There’ve been cases with just one host, like Perry, or with two and even three. What’s more significant here is that this was one family, living under one roof, so they probably ate the same food, traveled in the same patterns. The three old ladies all lived at the same retirement home. They took walks together every day. That shows that whatever the vector is, it can hit some or all of the people in a specific area.”

“Could they have given it to each other?” Dew asked. “One gets infected, gives it to the rest?”

Margaret shook her head. “All the McMillians’ triangles were at the same stage of development, which indicates they all contracted the disease at the same time. Add to that three people under the same roof who did not have triangles. As far as we can tell, it’s not contagious.”

“Which brings up an interesting point,” Amos said. “The gate was finished, right? Built by hatchlings that had already hatched. So if all the McMillians were at the same stage of development, they must have caught it after the other hosts. Why were they behind the times, so to speak?”

“They were obviously infected later,” Margaret said. “Whatever it is, something they touched, something they ate, the infected members of the family were exposed at the same time. That still doesn’t give us clues toward the vector. Amos, did Tad say anything?”

Amos shook his head. “Turns out he’s been grounded for a while. The parents left him alone at the house a few times. They could have picked it up shopping, running errands.”

“The follow-up FBI team will interview him,” Dew said. “And maybe they can get something when they run the background checks on the McMillians.”

Margaret reached across the table and grabbed Dew’s hand. “Dew, that’s all well and good, but we already have someone who was infected. If Perry would open up, provide us an overview of his behavior in the days leading up to his infection, that would give us something to work with. Can you talk to him again?”

Dew rolled his eyes. “What the fuck is this, International Pile On Phillips Day? I just had this conversation with Murray, thank you very much.”

“Right,” Margaret said. “And what did fearless leader say?”

“He said I have to find a way to reach Dawsey. Sound familiar?”

Margaret leaned forward, both elbows on the table. She pointed her fork at Dew. “You’ve threatened Perry, and that hasn’t worked. You’ve tried tricking him, following him so you could knock him out before he killed the hosts, and that hasn’t worked. Have you tried just being nice to him?”

“Be nice to him?” Dew said, his voice rising. He pointed at Milner and Baumgartner. “Look at their faces, Margo, and then tell me we should be nice to Dawsey.”

Margaret tilted her head to the right. “And what were those men going to do when they caught up with Perry, Dew?”

Dew didn’t say anything.

“Well? Come on, out with it.”

Dew ground his teeth. “They had orders to Taser him.”

“Then what?”

Dew looked away. “Then put him in handcuffs and inject him with a knockout drug.”

Margaret just nodded and smiled. This woman was too smart for her own good.

“ You’ve been nice to him,” Dew said, surprising himself by how petulant he sounded. “Look how far that’s gotten us.”

“Dew, I’m female. Maybe this is a news flash to you, but Perry’s opinion of women in general isn’t all that high. I spent a lot of time with him when he was recovering. I can be nice all day, and he’ll be nice back, but he doesn’t listen to me.”

“That’s sexist,” Dew said. “I’m rather appalled.”

Margaret nodded. “And we don’t have several months of sensitivity training to get through to him. If we’re going to reach him now, a man needs to connect with him.”

“So what the fuck do you want from me, Montoya?” Dew said. “You want me to whip up a game of poker? You want me to take a warm shower with him and hold his hand until the wee hours of the morning?”

“No,” she said. “And stop quoting Clint Eastwood movies. How about you start simple—did you ask him to join us for breakfast?”

Dew just blinked. It hadn’t even crossed his mind.

“Huh,” Otto said. “I never thought of that.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Amos said. “I’m not sitting at a table with that guy. He might mistake me for a breakfast burrito.”

“Maybe a half stack of mini-pancakes, you mean,” Otto said.