Scott Sigler: Contagious

Tad’s shivering brought him out of it.

He rolled on the grass, wondering if he was already dead. His shoulder hurt real bad. He didn’t feel dead—he was still moving. When people jumped out of windows on TV, they hit the ground and didn’t move. He rolled to his butt. Cold water seeped into the seat of his jeans.

Tad slowly stood. His legs hurt real bad, too. He took a deep breath, the rain and bits of ice splashing inside his wide-open mouth. He looked up, at the second-story window open to the night sky. Weird—it seemed like such a big drop from up in his room, but from down here it was about as high as a basketball hoop.

It didn’t matter how high it was or it wasn’t. He was out. Out of the house.

Okay, so he wasn’t dead… but he wasn’t going back in there, either.

Tad ran. His legs hurt, but they worked, and that was enough. He sprinted out to the side of the road and turned left. He pounded down a sidewalk cracked by tree roots and slick with slush.

He sprinted hard. He looked up just before running headlong into a man.

A huge man.

Tad stopped, frozen on the spot. The man was so big that Tad momentarily forgot about the house, his mom, his dad, his sister, even little Sam.

The man stood there, lit by a streetlamp that formed a cone of mist and light and wind-whipped, streaking rain. He looked down out of glowering blue eyes. He wore jeans and a wet short-sleeved, gray T-shirt that clung to his enormous muscles like a superhero costume. Long blond hair matted his head and face like a mask. A big, baseball-size twisted scar marred the skin of his left forearm.

The giant man spoke. “Are you…?” His voice trailed off. His eyes narrowed for a moment. Then they opened, like he’d just remembered something very cool. “Are you… Tad?”

Tad nodded.

“Tad,” the man said. “Do you feel itchy ?”

Tad shook his head. The man turned his right ear toward Tad, tilted his head down a bit, as he might have done if Tad was whispering and he was trying to hear.

“This is important,” the man said. “Are you sure ? Are you really, really sure you’re not itchy? Not even a little?”

Tad thought about this carefully, then nodded again.

The man knelt on one knee. Even kneeling, he still had to bend his head to look Tad in the eye. The man slowly reached out with a giant’s hand, placing his palm gently on Tad’s head. Thick fingers curled down around Tad’s left temple, while a thumb as big as Tad’s whole fist locked down on his right cheek.

Tad kept very, very still.

The man turned Tad’s head back and to the right.

“Tad, what happened to your eye?”

Tad said nothing.

“Tad, don’t piss me off,” the man said. “What happened to your eye?”

“Daddy hit me.”

The man’s eyes narrowed again.

“Your daddy hit you?”

Tad nodded. Or tried to—he couldn’t move his head.

The man stood. Tad barely came up to his belt.

The man let go of Tad’s head and pointed back the way Tad had come. “Is that your house?”

Tad didn’t need to look. He just nodded.

“How did you leave?”

“Jumped out the window,” Tad said.

“Run along, Tad,” the man said. He reached behind his back and pulled out a long piece of black metal, bent at one end. Tad recognized it from when he and his family were on that trip to Cedar Point last summer, when Dad had to fix a flat.

It was a tire iron.

The man walked down the road, heading for Tad’s house.

Tad watched him for a few seconds. Then he remembered that he was running away, and what he was running away from. He sprinted down the sidewalk.

He made it one block before he stopped again. Who knew that running away would have so many distractions? First that great big superhero man, now a car accident. A fancy red and white Mustang and a little white hatchback, smashed head-on. The Mustang’s trunk was open. The little white car’s driver’s-side door was also open. The inside light of the hatchback lit up a man lying motionless, his feet still next to the gas pedal, his back on the wet pavement.

The man had blood all over his face.

And he was holding a gun.

There was another man in the passenger’s seat, not moving, leaned forward, face resting on a deflated air bag.

Over the pouring rain and the strong wind, Tad heard a small voice.

“Report!” the voice said. “Goddamit, Claude, report!”

Tad knew he should just keep running. But what if his parents came after him? Maybe he needed that gun.

Tad walked up to the man lying on the pavement. Rain steadily washed the blood off the man’s face and onto the wet-black concrete.

“Baum! Where are you?”

The voice was coming from a little piece of white plastic lying next to the man’s head. It was one of those ear receivers, just like they used on Frankie Anvil, his favorite TV show. Maybe this man was a cop, like Frankie.

Cops would take him away, protect him from Mom and Dad.

Tad looked at the earpiece for a second, then picked it up. “Hello?”

“Baum? Is that you?”

“No,” Tad said. “My name is Tad.”

A pause.

“Tad, my name is Dew Phillips. Do you know where Mister Baumgartner is?”

“Um… no,” Tad said. “Wait, does Mister Baumgartner have a big black mustache?”

“Yes! That’s him, is he there?”

“Oh,” Tad said. “Well, he’s lying on the ground here, bleeding and stuff.”

“Shit,” Mr. Phillips said. “Tad, how old are you?”

“I’m seven. Are you the police?”

A pause. “Yeah, sure, I’m a policeman.”

Tad let out a long sigh. The police. He was almost safe.

“Tad, is there another man around, a man named Mister Milner?”

“I don’t know,” Tad said. “Is Mister Milner like, really, really big?

“No,” Mr. Phillips said. “That’s someone else.”

“Oh,” Tad said. “Mister Milner might be the short guy in the passenger seat, but he looks dead. Can you send someone to get me? I’m not going back home.”

Mr. Phillips spoke again. This time his voice was calm and slow. “We’ll send someone to get you right away. Tad, listen carefully, that really big man you talked about… is he there with you now?”

“No, he’s gone,” Tad said. “I think he’s going into my house.”

“Your house?”

“Yes sir. I live right down the street.”

“Okay, hold on to that earpiece. We’ll use it to find you. Give me your address, and then whatever direction you saw that big man walking, you run the opposite way. And run fast.”

The elevator opened at the bottom level of the West Wing. Tom Maskill and Murray Longworth walked out. Murray had made many trips to the White House in the past thirty years, of course, but none this significant, and none with this caliber of an audience: the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the secretary of defense, the chief of staff and, of course, the president.

There were actually two Situation Rooms under the White house. The first one could handle about three dozen people. That was the one seen on TV shows, in movies and in newscasts.

They walked right by it.

Tom led him through mahogany doors into the smaller of the two Situation Rooms. Like its more famous counterpart, this room sported mahogany paneling and nearly wall-to-wall video screens. This one, however, was more discreet. One mahogany conference table ran down the middle of the room, six chairs on either side. Very few people even knew that this room existed—it was mostly for situations unfit for public consumption.