Scott Sigler - Contagious

“Okay, finish up and hurry back. We need to get the girl done before the live host arrives.”

She’d already completed preliminary autopsies on Candice and Bobby Jewell. Candice had died from a gunshot to the back of the head, well before the fire scorched her body. Bobby had multiple knife scores on his ribs—Margaret couldn’t say for sure yet, not with such a rush job, but odds were he’d also died before the fire burned him.

Gitsh removed the girl’s small corpse and put it on the table. Burn victims and charred flesh. Always such a joy. The human body doesn’t actually burn up in a house fire. To cremate a body, you need fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit for two hours or more. House fires usually hit about five hundred degrees. While some could burn as hot as two thousand degrees, at that temperature the flames usually consumed all available fuel material within a half hour or so. Bobby Jewell’s body had been blackened and charred, but preserved enough for Margaret to find one scorched triangle on his cheek, another at the base of his neck.

She’d been on the case long enough to know the story: Bobby Jewell had contracted the triangles, and as a result he’d killed his family. Then he’d set a fire and committed suicide by stabbing himself repeatedly. Sounded crazy, but she’d seen worse—at least Bobby hadn’t chopped off his own legs with a hatchet. The bullet hole in the back of the wife’s skull fit the murder-suicide profile. Margaret was sure the girl’s cause of death would support it as well.

Gitsh folded up the body bag and put it in the incinerator chute.

Margaret stared at the girl’s body. It was curled up in the fetal position, legs and arms flexed, fists tucked beneath the chin. That didn’t mean the person had burned alive and curled up from the pain—dehydration from fire causes muscles, even dead muscles, to contract, pulling bodies into this posture.

The fetal position wasn’t what held Margaret’s attention, however. What really caught her eye was the size of the body.

She looked at the wall-mounted flat-panel, part of which showed stats on Chelsea.

“Clarence, this is supposed to be a seven-year-old girl?”

“Checking,” Clarence said in her earpiece. “Yeah, Chelsea Jewell, seven years, four months, ten days.”

“How tall is she on the medical records?”

“Ummm… three feet, six inches.”

“This body is bigger than that,” Margaret said. “And the hips are wrong. Gitsh, roll the body onto its back.”

Clarence’s voice in her ear again. “You don’t think it’s Chelsea Jewell?”

Gitsh moved the body.

Margaret took a good look, then shook her head. “Not unless Chelsea Jewell was more like four-foot-two and had a penis. Get Dew on the line, right now.”

“How is Private Climer, Doc?” Ogden asked.

“He’ll be fine,” Doc Harper said. “He was lucky the bullet didn’t hit the bone. Took out a chunk of muscle, though. Colonel, I have to request again that we transfer him out of our area and to the base hospital.”

“Request denied, again,” Ogden said. “Unless it’s a life-and-death situation, he’s not leaving our area until I talk to him. And you just said he’ll be fine, so it’s not life and death, correct?”

“But sir,” Doc Harper said, “you can pick up the phone and have a replacement for him sent from one of the companies at Fort Bragg here in… what, three hours?”

“I don’t need a replacement for him. I need to find out what happened. There’s no way one redneck should have taken out four soldiers.”

“Colonel, we just pulled a.308-caliber bullet out of that boy’s shoulder,” Doc said. “Three hours ago he was facedown on a dirt road bleeding all over the place.”

Ogden checked his watch. “It’s sixteen hundred right now. I want him talking by seventeen hundred, got it?”

“He’s my patient, sir,” Doc said. “As soon as he wakes up, he’s yours, but I’m within my rights to say that I will not bring him out of it early.”

Ogden sighed. Couldn’t have Doc Harper bitching about putting wounded troops at unnecessary risk, not when that general’s star was so close. He’d have to ship Doc Harper out soon, though, get someone else in here who followed orders no matter what they were.

“Who’s with Climer?” Ogden asked.

“Brad Merriman,” Doc Harper said. “The guy they call ‘Nurse Brad.’”

Ogden nodded. He knew Nurse Brad. Good kid. Medic first class, but somewhere along the line the boys started ripping on him for being a “male nurse,” and the nickname stuck.

“You and Merriman both sit with Climer,” Ogden said. “If one of you has to take a crap, the other is staring at Climer to see if he wakes up. And when he does wake up, you call me immediately, you understand?”

Doc Harper nodded and saluted, then turned and walked out.

Charlie didn’t like being such a hard-ass, but he needed answers. Three of his soldiers killed. The only known enemy unit a thirty-one-year-old civilian named Ryan Roznowski who had stolen a mail truck and tried to run the roadblock. The postman assigned to that truck was missing and presumed dead.

Roznowski had four triangles. He also had a wife, who was nowhere to be found, and a house that showed signs of a struggle, including blood on the living-room floor. Charlie knew that triangle hosts were dangerous, sure, killers, no question, but a guy with a hunting rifle setting a postal van on fire, then taking out four trained soldiers? It just didn’t add up.

But it wasn’t all bad news. They had finally succeeded in capturing a live host. Mission accomplished. That’s what made the general’s star a lock, just as long as he didn’t fuck anything up.

But that star would come at a price—more names in his Little Blue Book.

Neil Illing.

James Eager.

Joel Brauer.

If he’d been able to put a full squad at each checkpoint, nine men instead of four or five, those boys might still be alive. Maybe he should have brought the other two companies. No, his plan was solid; it allowed for the maximum situational flexibility under the circumstances. If they’d had more time, if he’d had more men…

If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, what a wonderful Christmas it would be.

He’d write the families later that night. The best part of the job, really, telling some proud mom that her son had died while serving his country.

“Corporal Cope! Get in here!”

Cope was in the tent before Ogden even finished the second sentence. He must have been waiting right outside, just in case he was needed. You didn’t get guys like Cope all that often.

“Sir?”

“Where the hell are my updates on the air search?”

“Nothing so far,” Cope said. “All recon flights came up negative. Satellite squints say the same thing. Doesn’t look like there’s a construct within at least fifty miles.”

Damn it. It had to be out there. Bernadette Smith had tried to escape. So had Ryan Roznowski. How many infected had slipped out, either between the roadblocks or before Ogden arrived? No maps this time: none in Smith’s car or at her house. Same for Roznowski, and the Jewell place was a cinder. No clues.

If they were going to find the gate’s location, once again it was all up to Perry Dawsey.

Dew Phillips sat in the MargoMobile’s computer room. He and Perry had the room to themselves. Gitsh, Marcus, Margaret and Clarence were all in the Trailer B containment cell, locking down a feisty Bernadette Smith.

Dew wanted to hit a certain chief of staff, then rub her face in broken glass and finish up with a nice saltwater spritz on the fresh cuts.