Scott Sigler - Contagious

So many thoughts. So many voices. No organization. No cohesion . Did she know what that word meant? Yes, she did.

Chelsea blinked and opened her eyes. Slivers of early-morning light poured through cracks in the roof and the boarded-up windows. She felt sleepy. She felt sad.

Her special friend was gone.

She needed Chauncey’s wisdom, needed to know what God wanted her to do. She sensed the minds of the soldiers, the hatchlings, the converted. They were all very still. Random thoughts… they were dreaming. No one there to tie them all together.

That’s what Chauncey had provided. He’d made them one .

A sneaking suspicion grew in her mind. What if she could connect everyone? She could replace Chauncey.

He had been God, but he was gone.

Now Chelsea was God.

She sensed all the soldiers, Mommy, Mr. Burkle, the Postman, General Ogden… she sensed the two hatchlings back in Gaylord… and she sensed one more voice, a new voice, very faint, very weak, but also very close.

The two hatchlings in Gaylord remained prisoners.

Prisoners of the boogeyman.

Chauncey had told her to leave the boogeyman alone. Chauncey had blocked her, but Chauncey wasn’t around anymore.

And besides, no one could tell Chelsea what to do. She wasn’t afraid of the boogeyman. God shouldn’t be afraid of anyone.

Could she block the boogeyman, like Chauncey had done? Maybe, but it would take time to learn how, to experiment. If she couldn’t block him fast enough, the boogeyman would come for her.

Unless she got to him first.

She summoned General Ogden. It was time to put the pieces in place for his contingency plan, just in case the boogeyman escaped.

I’m going to kill you.

It started as a mental tickle, or maybe a ringing. Something faint. At first he wished it away. He just wanted to sleep.

You will scream… and scream…

The ringing grew louder. He heard a voice but couldn’t register it. What he could register was a serious hangover. Holy God, did his head hurt.

…and scream.

Perry sat up and tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. The movement produced a metallic sound. The bed felt wobbly. Both hands held his head as he looked around. He wasn’t in a bed. He was on an autopsy trolley in the examination room. Someone’s idea of humor? Well, yeah, that was kind of funny.

The mental tickle grew. With a sinking sensation, he recognized the feeling.

Chelsea.

Are you afraid?

She’d grown stronger. His breath came in short gasps. He was afraid.

I’m gonna get you, boogeyman. Maybe I’ll make you shoot yourself…

Fuck. Fuck-fuck-fuck.

Perry’s hand shot to his waist, to the holster. The .45 was there. His hand gripped the cool handle. He didn’t draw it, just held it.

Soon, boogeyman…

He hadn’t experienced her this clearly before. The intensity shocked him. It felt as if her every little emotion was the most important thing that could possibly happen. And yet behind the intensity lay a curious blankness, the feeling that she wasn’t good, or evil.

Chelsea didn’t know what good and evil were.

She would do whatever she wanted, without remorse, without conscience.

Soooooon…

Perry had to find her. Find her and help her.

He jumped off the trolley and ran to find Dew.

Private Alan Roark parked the Hummer on the shoulder of North Chrysler Drive. He hopped out. So did Private Peter Braat, who carried the map. They both walked to the back bumper and looked at the massive overpass.

“Fuck,” Peter said. “That’s a lot of road.”

Alan nodded. It was a lot of road.

To their right, three lanes of I-75 heading north, then just past it three more lanes heading south. Those six lanes slid under the overpass of another six-lane highway, this one M-102, also known as Eight Mile Road. The sound of tires whizzing over wet pavement combined with hundreds of passing engines to create an almost riverlike, tranquil babble.

“That’s a lot of lanes,” Peter said.

Alan nodded again. “Yep. Sure is.”

He turned and looked into the back of the Humvee. He’d already counted what was back there five times, but God was in the details, so he counted again.

“Seems like a long ways off for a perimeter,” Peter said. “We’re ten miles away from the gate. How are we gonna hold a perimeter ten miles out with just two fucking platoons, you know what I mean?”

“The general knows what he’s doing,” Alan said. “So does Chelsea. They’re bringing in the other two platoons from Gaylord, so we’ll have that. Besides, the bigger the area we control, the harder it is for them to find Chelsea.”

Peter nodded. “Makes sense, I guess. Still, I wish we got to do the airport thing.”

“Willis and Hunt got that one.”

“I know,” Peter said. “I hate those guys. We should have got that gig. Let’s just hope we make it back to watch the angels come through. That will be such a glorious moment.”

“Truly,” Alan said. “But if we don’t see it, I’m sure it’s all part of the plan.”

Peter nodded, slowly and solemnly. “Okay, so we’ve seen these roads. Where is our spot?”

Alan pointed up to Eight Mile. “We’ll just drive up there and get to work.”

“Easy peasy,” Peter said.

Alan nodded. “Easy peasy bo-beasy. Let’s go. We’ll just drive around and see if we get the call. You hungry?”

“I could go for some McDonald’s,” Peter said. “I have the biggest craving for it lately. That, and I can’t stop jonesing for ice cream on a stick.”

“You too? Man, that’s weird. I never liked ice cream before, but now I wanna fucking bathe in that shit. Let’s eat.”

They got back in the Hummer. Alan waited for traffic to clear, pulled onto the road and headed north, looking for the golden arches.

Take some lumpy shit from horses, the smelly kind that’s peppered with half-digested hay. Mix that with gravel. The jagged kind. Now cover it all in kerosene and light it on fire.

That’s what it felt like inside Dew Phillips’s skull. He’d slept on the floor of the computer room, right after Baum and Milner convinced him it would be funny to put a passed-out Perry Dawsey on the autopsy trolley.

Well, that was kind of funny.

A headache like that and a hyperactive Perry Dawsey jabbering a mile a minute? A match made in hell.

“Perry, you gotta talk slower,” Dew said. “Seriously, my head.”

“Yeah, mine too,” Perry said.

“There’s a difference. You and Baum and Milner, you’re all young. I’m old enough to know what will happen if I drink that much, which means I’m old enough to know better.”

“You seemed to be down with it last night.”

Dew nodded and instantly regretted doing so. “Last night I was awash in the glory of victory. And now that it’s morning, my head feels like ass, and you’re telling me that victory was no victory at all?”

“She’s talking to me,” Perry said. “She says she’s gonna kill me.”

“Where is she?”

Perry shrugged. “South.”

“How far south?”

“I don’t know,” Perry said. “Could be Ohio, could be Indiana, fucking Kentucky for all I can nail it down.”

“So how do we find her?”

“Like before, I guess,” Perry said. “We start driving south till I feel it getting stronger, then we go in that direction. The signal is fucked up, though. I feel something moving south, something big, and something even stronger beyond that. We should start driving right now.”