Scott Sigler - Infected

Margaret, Amos and Clarence Otto stared at the photomural. Clarence had had the painting blown up to three times the original size, so that Nguyen’s nightmarish vision took up an entire wall.

They’d all caught a few hours of sleep from around 2:00 A.M. to 5:00 A.M., then it was back to work. After two hours of staring at the mural, staring and thinking, Margaret still felt groggy despite five cups of nasty hospital coffee. Amos, as usual, looked none the worse for wear. Neither did Otto. Margaret hated them both.

Amos stood right in front of the photomural, his nose just inches from the wall. “How did Nguyen know these people?” he asked.

Margaret stared and thought hard about the question. “I don’t think he knew these people at all,” she finally said.

Amos looked at her and crossed his arms. “What, you’re saying that the kid was a psychic or something?”

Margaret shook her head slowly, but kept her eyes fixed on the painting photo. “No, I don’t think so. Not psychic, but something like psychic. Something beyond the science we know.”

Where she could identify and match, she had taped the life-size pictures of the infestation victims’ faces next to their life-size spot on the painting.

Blaine Tanarive.

Charlotte Wilson.

Gary Leeland.

Judy Washington.

Martin Brewbaker.

Kiet Nguyen.

There was an indefinable horror in seeing the real faces taped next to Nguyen’s ghastly, painted renditions. Horror, yes, but that horror paled in comparison to the math.

Those six faces, she knew.

There were eleven other faces that she did not.

So there were more. At least eleven more. And who knew how many beyond that? The thing made of those bodies seemed to expand far beyond the frame. How many other faces would be on the rest of the…the…what was it? An arch? No, there were multiple arches.

The construct.

Why was she focusing on that? Why did she feel the need to name it? Was it significant?

Margaret slowly walked backward, taking in the painting. Her eyes traced the arch, trying to imagine where the other end of it would logically fall.

The construct would be huge. The two arches alone would be at least twenty-feet high.

Arches. Made out of human parts.

“Clarence,” Margaret said quietly, “get me Dew on the phone. Now .”

Perry woke all at once, sitting straight up with eyes wide open. His sleeping mind had been searching his thoughts, not unlike the way the Triangles searched his gray-matter database, looking for an answer to the problem at hand. While sleeping, his brain had found a keyword to clutch, a distant beacon of hope in a dark flatland of despair.

That word was Internet.

How stupid he’d been to call on the phone, rummaging through the Yellow Pages trying to find Triangle this or Triangle that. How could the Soldiers make themselves known in the Ann Arbor Yellow Pages? America was a big fucking place. And who was to say that this Triangle infection epidemic was limited to the United States? It was probably global. And if you wanted to communicate with people all over the world, you needed a global medium. Not television, not radio, not phones, not newspapers-if you wanted to keep something quiet but let people know you were out there, there was only one answer, the only true global medium: the Internet.

He moved to rub the sleep from his eyes and suddenly had to bite back a scream as he rolled onto his scorched ass. He couldn’t see the window in the living room, but the brightness of the apartment told him he hadn’t been asleep long. If he ever got out of this alive, he’d buy himself a brand-new bed. Something he couldn’t afford. Something so comfortable he’d never want to get out of it again. Something that was better than sleeping on linoleum floors.

The Four Horsemen were still out; he could feel them sleeping. Except…they weren’t the Four Horsemen anymore, were they? Perry managed a malicious smile even though every inch of his body seemed to voice complaint. They weren’t four anymore, he was sure of it. They were three. What would he call them? As if there could have ever been any doubt.

The Three Stooges were all that remained. That made the score Perry Dawsey 4, Fucking Triangles 3. Perry wouldn’t quit until he got the shutout.

He fumbled his way to his feet (correction, “foot”) and hobbled to his Macintosh. Less than sixty seconds after he awoke, the Mac chimed its startup tone and began the boot process. Startup programs came to life, including his email and instant-message clients.

Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He was on the Internet every damned day, for crying out loud. That’s where the answer lay, that’s what it was all about. He started up Firefox and went right to Google. He didn’t think it mattered what search engine he used; the government would make sure that the Triangles’ home page was easily found by those who knew what to look for.

His email client finished loading and immediately chirped at him. Sixty-four emails. He chanced a quick peek at the in-box.

FROM:

SUBJECT:

Bill Miller

Where the hell are you?

Bill Miller

Dude, get back to me! It’s not about the Cincinnati bowtie.

Branston Gumong

Hey dude top brands available for u

Peter Hurt

All top medications at top price

Pussy GalOR-e

Hot wet teen snatch, just 4 U!

Bill Miller

If I was that kid, I would breast-feed until I was 17 or 18

Mister T. Minga

You are huge cock for your woman?

Ithaca Tang Shen

Director of the Contracts Award and Review Department

A friend

Nigeria fortune waiting to be made

Bill Miller

Dine at just one American pink taco stand!

Bill Miller

A pond would be good for you (these are good movie lines, dammit, Stop ignoring me)

“Jesus, Billy, get a life.”

It went on and on. A quick count showed sixteen messages from Bill. Sure, Perry hadn’t been to work, but wasn’t that a little…stalkerish? Why was Bill trying so hard?

He’s trying to contact you because he’s your friend, dumb-ass. But what if there was more to this? What if Bill was…was supposed to be keeping an eye on him?

You’re getting crazy paranoid, Perry old boy, knock that shit off and focus.

He had to concentrate on the web search. That’s where the answer lay-it had to.

He typed in “Triangles.”

He would have never thought there would be so much stuff. The entries were numerous: tons of Wikipedia shit, math up the ass, sites focusing on the “Triangle Area” in North Carolina, and of course several on the Bermuda Triangle. Perry breezed through them, giving them little more than a cursory once-over.

He typed in “triangles” and “infected.”

Finally he found it. Fifteen pages into the search. To a normal person, it wouldn’t have looked like anything out of the ordinary. But to Perry, the letters on the screen glowed with hope.

Triangles -You are not alone

We are here to help you. This page has all the information on dealing with your condition and making you better. www.tomorrowresearch.com-5k- Cached – Similar pages

Not alone.

Not alone!

His hands shook with excitement; he finally knew-really knew -that someone could help him. People knew about the parasites slinking their tails through his body.

He clicked on the entry. Perry stared with wide eyes, his pulse hammering both in his head and his wounded shoulder, his breath pinched tight in his chest.

Big letters at the top of the page read “You are not alone.” The layout was stark and simple, not enough graphics to interest the casual browser should he stumble onto it. To Perry, however, the page was a godsend. Right under “You are not alone” was a Triangle-it was the image embedded in his own skin, a stylistic rendering of the horror that sent tendrils throughout his body, and yet it was something he’d seen all his life. It was the pyramid from the back of a one-dollar bill, its eye glowing green at the top. This pyramid, however, showed three glowing eyes at the top, not just one.