Scott Sigler - Contagious

Mommy nodded once, blond hair bouncing, then turned and strode back into the kitchen just as fast as she’d come in.

“Chelsea is in a bit of a willful stage,” Daddy said to Unkie Donny. “Usually when she doesn’t get what she wants, she throws a tantrum. Seems she’s on her best behavior because you and Betty are here.”

“Be careful,” Unkie Donny said. “Sometimes they don’t grow out of the tantrum phase.”

Betty smacked Unkie Donny on the shoulder. “Knock it off, geezer.”

Unkie Donny laughed, and Chelsea forgot all about the puppy. She watched the men in the pajamas for a second, then grabbed Betty’s hand. “Who’s your favorite player, Betty?”

Betty reached up and stroked her cousin’s hair. “Oh, I don’t know, dolly. I don’t pay that much attention to basketball. If you want to talk about clothes or flowers, I’m your girl.”

The way Betty stroked her hair, it was so nice.

“I like dandelions,” Chelsea said.

“Oh, those are pretty,” Betty said. “Do you like the yellow kind or the white kind better?”

“I like the white kind,” Chelsea said. “I like the way they float and fly.”

Betty agreed with her. Betty always agreed with her, which was very nice. Chelsea had Daddy on her left, Betty on her right, and she was sitting on Unkie Donny’s lap. This was just so awesome.

She watched the men take off the white pajamas. She thought this was the funniest part of basketball. If she took off her pajamas in front of people, she’d get in trouble. She wanted more ice cream. She’d already had one bar, and that was supposed to be it, but Mommy wasn’t in the room.

“Daddy, can I have an ice cream bar?”

“Don’t you mean another ice cream bar, Chelsea? It’s not even noon, and I know for a fact you had one already.”

“Why can’t I have more? I like it.”

“Chelsea!” Mommy shouted from the kitchen. “Do I need to come in there?”

“No,” Chelsea said quickly. “I’ll stop.”

She sighed and fell back against Unkie Donny’s chest again. It just wasn’t fair. She watched the men walk onto the court to start the game.

Forty miles above Chuy Rodriguez’s backyard, the Orbital finished a probability analysis.

The results showed an 86 percent chance of success. Well above the required 75 percent specified in its parameters.

It began to modify the seeds of batch seventeen. It also broadcast a message to the remaining hatchlings, the ones that hadn’t been able to make it to Marinesco or South Bloomingville in time, the ones that were hidden away. It sent the message to the triangles still growing in hosts, from seeds that had blown around for days before making a lucky landing.

The message said, Stay hidden, stay quiet .

Help is on the way.

Perry Dawsey suddenly sat up in his bed. Steam floated near the ceiling. Every glass surface in the room was beaded with water, even the alarm clock that read 4:17 P.M. He still had a hangover, although it wasn’t as bad. Hunger hit him like a wave. Maybe that breakfast place Dew wanted to eat at was close by.

But it wasn’t the hangover that had woken him. It wasn’t the hunger.

It was the voices

Not the same voices he usually heard. Sort of like that, yet different. It danced away from his ability to define it, like having a word right at the edge of your thoughts and not being able to lock it down.

Something had changed. Something big. But it was also something small. Did that even make sense? No, and yet there it was.

He didn’t understand specific words, didn’t even know if the message contained words at all. More like an urge without emotion. The urge made him want to hide, to be quiet, to stay away from anyone.

Hide… and wait.

Perry stood up. The room was a disaster. Beer-soaked blankets in a little mountain on the floor, beer-soaked clothes next to the bed. Oh, for fuck’s sake—he’d thrown up on his jeans. The place reeked.

He walked to his duffel bag and rummaged through it. Shit, all these clothes were dirty. He’d have to get some of Dew’s people to wash them.

Perry did the sniff test and found the least offensive T-shirt, sweatshirt, underwear and jeans. The only score was one pair of clean athletic socks. He carried the clothes into the steam-filled bathroom.

First a shower, then he’d track down Dew.

The probe wasn’t made of solid material. Not permanently solid, anyway. The whole thing was a collection of tiny particles, each smaller than a grain of sand. A special locking shape combined with a static charge made the individual particles act like a solid sheet of material. It was even airtight. Depending on where the bonds were applied to each particle, any shape could be made. This included moving parts like ailerons, containers to hold fuel and nozzles to direct the force created by igniting that fuel. These parts combined to drive the soda-can-size probe through the upper atmosphere and into a thick cloud layer. High winds pulled the probe first in one direction, then the next. It rode with the wind, using the engines more for guidance than for directed flight.

At 6,250 feet the probe passed through the cloud layer. It identified a target zone and shot northwest. To the Orbital and the probe, one place was the same as the next. On human maps, however, this place had a name.

It was called Gaylord.

At 1,500 feet the probe completed its final instruction. It sent a charge through every particle that turned off the static bonds.

The probe didn’t explode. It disintegrated, changing from a solid machine one second to a cloud of grains the next, grains that would spread as they fell and never draw an ounce of attention. The disintegration also released the seeds.

Over a billion of them.

A light southwesterly wind dispersed the seeds like a trail of thin smoke. Each breathy gust spread them farther, some sailing off on a lone journey, some driven in clusters like translucent contrails or intangible ghost-snakes.

The seeds spread.

The seeds fell.

The vast majority of them would land on ground, water or snow. They would sit there until the elements damaged their delicate internal machinery and they simply became lumps of inanimate matter. A few might get lucky and sit around long enough to wind up on a host, but the odds were against them. Of course, that was kind of the point in releasing a billion seeds at a time—even with shit odds, a few were still going to land in a suitable place.

One of the expanding, ethereal seed trails drifted near a house on the outskirts of Gaylord, close to Highway 32. This house was the home of the Jewell family.

The Jewells had had their fill of snowmobiles and basketball, it seemed. Bobby, Candice, Chelsea, Donald and Betty were hard at work on the winter ritual of building a snowman.

Donald even made Bobby promise not to give the snowman a boner, something Bobby had done since they were kids. He always sculpted a prodigious member and called the snowman “Sir Dicksickle.” Funny? Hell yes. But hardly appropriate now that Betty was sixteen. Besides, Chelsea was well into the age where Bobby would have to start acting like a grown man rather than a kid trapped in an adult’s body.

The strand of seeds rose and fell on the light breeze. Dipping to the ground, half of them hit the snow and stuck, doomed to a frigid end. The other half caught the wind coming off the snow and cruised along almost horizontally with the ground.

Donald finished rolling up the snowman head and had Betty help him lift it. It was packed pretty tight, but you never knew if these things would hold when they came off the ground. Besides, Betty was being “too cool” to wear mittens, so having her pick up a big block of ice and snow seemed rather fitting. Bobby wore only a T-shirt and jeans, which didn’t really help show Betty the need for proper winter clothing. They’d probably both catch a cold, and Donald would have the last laugh. The only problem with that was that Chelsea wanted to be like her cousin and had also tossed her gloves aside. If Chelsea caught a cold, Donald would be pretty pissed at Betty.