by Scott Sigler
Blood streaked down both legs, pouring from where a penis should have been.
Nightmarish above all this were the face and the eyes, eyes that stared straight out with both the cold, intense look of the predator and the wild, panic-stricken flight of prey. A mouth that couldn’t decide between a snarl or a scream, a mouth that hung open, lips curled up to show teeth that gleamed a Colgate white in the afternoon sun.
Dew saw all this in less than two seconds. A brief instant where details stood out like raised letters on a brass nameplate.
That look. That expression. Just like Brewbaker. Just like the man who’d killed Mal.
One .45-caliber slug and Dawsey’s head would evaporate in a cloud of blood and brains. Somebody had to pay for Mal’s death, and this crazy fucker would fit the bill just fine.
Dew aimed for that psychotic smile.
His finger tightened on the trigger.
Dawsey kept coming.
One shot, one shot…goddamn it, Mal, I miss you.
But Dew had his orders.
He dropped his aim and pulled the trigger.
The bullet smacked into Dawsey’s right shoulder and spun him around like a rag doll. He almost made a full spin before he crashed to the ground, his steaming blood melting into the dirty driveway snow. The map fluttered to the ground.
Dew lowered his weapon and started to move forward, then stopped short. He stared, disbelieving, as Dawsey scrambled back up to stand on his one good leg. His expression hadn’t changed, not one lick, no surprise or agony visible among the tumult of emotions that rippled across his face. Huge muscles twitching, a grin of wide-eyed madness chiseled on his face, hopping on one powerful leg, Dawsey lunged toward Dew.
Dew raised the .45. There was one place he could shoot that the kid wouldn’t get up.
“You sure are one tough bastard,” Dew said quietly, then pulled the trigger.
The round smashed into Perry’s knee, the same knee that had ended his football career. The once-broken patella disintegrated into a bouquet of splintered bone. The bullet ripped through cartilage before it bounced off the femur and exited through the back of his leg along with a misty cloud of blood.
Perry crumbled. He fell face-first onto the snow-covered pavement and slid to a halt only a few feet from Dew. This time he didn’t get up. He stared at Dew, breathing heavily, the insane death-grin plastered on his face.
And his penis was still clutched in his fist.
Dew gently stamped out the flaming map, then picked it up. Keeping the barrel trained on Dawsey’s grinning face, Dew looked at the map. It was burned through in places, but the red line running from Ann Arbor to Wahjamega was still clearly visible. Also in red, a strange, Japanese-looking symbol.
Dew looked at Dawsey—the same symbol, scabbed over and bleeding in places, was carved into his arm.
Dew held the map so Perry could see it.
“What’s here?” Dew demanded. “What the fuck do you want with that pissant town? What’s this symbol mean?”
“Someone’s knockin’ at the door,” Perry said in a singsong voice. “Somebody’s ringing the bell.”
86.
FREE RIDE
Three gray vans closed in on Dew and Perry, sliding to a halt on the packed snow. Like ants rushing from a mound, biosuit-covered soldiers poured out. The police in the area moved toward the vans, but kept their distance from the bizarrely dressed men carrying the squat, lethal FN P90s.
Margaret and Clarence were the first to reach Dawsey and Dew. Clarence pulled his Glock sidearm and tried to cover the damaged man, but Margaret dashed in and knelt next to his charred body, her knee dipping into the steaming pool of spreading blood. She tore her eyes away from the severed penis clutched in his hand.
He was still breathing, although for how long that would last she couldn’t say. She’d never seen a human being so messed up yet still alive. She didn’t see any triangles on him, but with all the blood and the third-degree burns it was hard to tell. Yet he was alive, and that, at least, was something she could work with.
She almost jumped when he spoke.
“Somebody’s ringin’ the bell,” Dawsey said. “I gotta go to Wahjamega. Do me a favor, open the door, and let ’em in.”
Margaret swallowed hard. She could barely believe her eyes—this ravaged man, whose blood was turning the slush as red as a Slurpee, talked through a smile of sheer madness.
“Open up that fucking green door, you fucking bitch!” Dawsey’s thick hand shot out fast-fast and grabbed her Racal suit, pulling her down until his lips mashed against her visor, spreading blood and spit on the clear plastic. His wide, insane eyes were just an inch from hers.
“Somebody’s knocking at that fucking door!”
Clarence smashed the butt of his Glock against Dawsey’s cheek, opening up yet one more wound. Dawsey flinched but kept snarling, his eyes burning with the fury of pure insanity.
“Hit him again!” Dew screamed.
Clarence whacked Dawsey twice more in rapid succession. The big man’s grip relaxed, and he fell back to the ground, eyes half-lidded, the smile still on his face.
“You okay, Doc?” Clarence asked.
Margaret fought to regain her composure, her breath coming in irregular gasps. For a second she’d been sure Dawsey would rip right through the suit and tear her throat out. He was so fast, and so damn strong.
“I’m fine,” she said. She stood and waved over two soldiers who waited with a stretcher.
She could only imagine what that poor man had gone through. What kinds of thoughts could make a human being self-inflict that kind of damage? Margaret wondered if he’d provide any answers.
She couldn’t know what terrors awaited in the months to come. For Perry Dawsey, the infection was over. For the rest of the world, it was only the beginning.
87.
THE JUMPER
It had all happened so fast that wisps of smoke still curled from the freshly fired .45. Dew had done his job yet again, but he didn’t feel any better. He was no closer to discovering the parties responsible for this horror, for killing his partner. Dew said nothing, kept a grip on his weapon, watched Clarence Otto direct the rapid-response team as they set up a small perimeter around Dawsey.
A third-floor window shattered outward. Dew looked up, saw the flame tongues billowing out, greasy black smoke roiling toward the sky. But he saw something else, something burning, something falling. A brief flailing comet, whipping, ropelike extensions making it resemble a flaming medusa’s head.
The thing hit hard against the snow-covered pavement, flames seeming to splash outward before they roared upward again. He stared, disbelieving, the back of his mind already making a connection that his conscious thoughts refused to allow. The flaming thing stood, or at least tried to stand, burning, boneless legs supported a body all but obscured by jumping flames. There was a small screech, a pitiful thing, the sound a weak woman makes when she feels severe pain.
A thin trail of fluid shot from the thing to land in a steaming, boiling black streak on the dirty snow. The creature shuddered once more, then popped, flaming pieces scattering across the parking lot. The pieces burned brightly like wreckage from a crashed airliner.
Suddenly Margaret was at his side, her protective helmet gone, her black hair hanging about the biosuit, an ashen look of dread on her face.
“Now it makes sense,” she said quietly. “Oh my God now it all makes sense. Dawsey, the others—they’re just hosts for these things.”
Dew let his mind make that connection, let himself accept the unimaginable. This was no time to start doubting the obvious, no matter how fucked up the obvious might be, and he still had a job to do. The sound of approaching men tore his attention from the dwindling bits of flame. Cops were coming on the run, local boys, state troopers, at least a dozen, with more probably a few steps behind.
Dew turned to Otto and the biosuited agents. All of them stood with guns at the ready, casting snap-glances all ar
ound the parking lot, looking to see if there were more of the nightmarish creatures.
Dew barked orders in his booming sergeant’s voice. “Get Dawsey in the van! Squad Three, police those pieces and do it now! Move move move!” The soldiers scurried to obey Dew’s commands. He turned to face the cops, who closed on the burning building. He stepped forward, thinking of what bullshit to say, thinking of a way to explain the creature, but the cops rushed right past the burning pieces and through Building G’s main door.
Bob Zimmer sprinted up to Dew, his eyes on the flames shooting from the broken third-floor window.
“Did you get him?” Zimmer asked.
“Yeah,” Dew said. “I got him. He’s dead.” The cops hadn’t seen the falling creature. Or if they had, they hadn’t made sense of it; perhaps they were too far away. Or perhaps, his conscience nagged him, perhaps they were too worried about the people in the burning building to care about something peculiar but obviously not human falling from the third-floor window.
“Are there still people in there?”
“Probably,” Dew said. “I didn’t get anybody out before Dawsey ran.”
Zimmer didn’t nod, didn’t acknowledge Dew’s comment. He stepped toward the building, directing other cops inside, shouting orders to the first cops emerging from the building escorting confused and scared residents.
The biosuited soldiers were already dousing the pieces and scooping up what bits they could. Dew watched the last of them hop into the vans. Everyone was loaded up except for Clarence Otto and Margaret Montoya. She stared at the building, a blank look on her face. Otto stood by her side, waiting for Dew’s next command.
Dew pointed his finger south, in the direction of the hospital. Otto put his arm around Margaret’s shoulder and quickly guided her to the van that held Dawsey. Dew closed the doors behind them. The vans quietly pulled away, avoiding the confused rush of policemen, then sped out of the parking lot.
Somewhere in the distance, Dew heard the faint approach of sirens: ambulances, the fire department. He looked up at the third floor one last time—the window was all but obscured by the raging fire, flames shooting up at least twenty feet into the sky. There wouldn’t be anything left in that apartment.
Amid the shouting chaos, Dew calmly walked to his Buick. He shut himself inside the Buick and stared at Dawsey’s singed map, at the strange symbol so neatly drawn there. The symbol matched the one carved into Dawsey’s arm. The words This is the place neatly written in blue ink. It wasn’t the same hand that had scrawled This is the place on the map in Dawsey’s apartment. This writing was clean, measured.
The writing of a woman.
“Fuck me,” Dew whispered. Dawsey hadn’t run randomly at all—there had been another infected victim in that apartment, a victim that was likely still in the apartment and burning to a crisp. She’d sheltered Dawsey; they were working together.
It was very possible they knew each other before the infection. They lived in the same complex, after all. But if they hadn’t known each other before contracting the triangles, then that meant victims could somehow identify each other, help each other.
And, more important, if they hadn’t known each other, it was possible they had independently decided that Wahjamega was the place to be. And if that was the case, then the only possible conclusion was that they wanted to go there because of the infection.
Or, possibly, the infection wanted to go there.
Margaret’s words replayed in his head: They’re building something, she’d said.
Dew thought back to the burning creature that had fallen from the third-story window, then scrambled for his big cellular.
Murray answered on the first ring. “Did you get him?”
“We got him,” Dew said. “Alive, exactly the way you wanted him. The stakes just went up. Listen and listen good, L.T. I need men in Wahjamega, Michigan, and I need them now. And none of those ATF or CIA commando wannabes. Make it marines or Green Berets or fucking Navy SEALs, but get me men, at least a platoon and then a division, as fast as they can get there. Full combat gear. Fire support, too. Artillery, tanks, the whole works. And choppers, lots of choppers.”
“Dew, what the fuck is going on?”
“And that satellite, is it redirected to Wahjamega yet?”
“Yes,” Murray said. “It already made a pass. The squints are looking at the images now.”
“I’m going to take a picture of a symbol and send it to you as soon as I hang up. This symbol, that’s what the squints are looking for, got it?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“And I want a surveillance van punched into that satellite, and I want it there in thirty minutes. And a chopper better pick me up in the next fifteen minutes. I don’t care if we have to commandeer the fucking Channel Seven Eye in the Sky, you get me transport ASAP.”
“Dew,” Murray said quietly, “I can’t get you all that so fast, and you know it.”
“You get it!” Dew screamed into the cellular. “You get it right fucking now! You can’t believe the shit I just saw.”
88.
PARTY TIME
It was the third time he’d seen that symbol, only this time it wasn’t scrawled on a map or carved into human skin.
This time it was from a satellite image.
Four hours after he’d shot Perry Dawsey, Dew Phillips stood next to a Humvee, his booted feet on a dirt road that was frozen solid. A map and several satellite pictures were spread out on the vehicle’s hood. Rocks had been placed on the pictures to hold them in place against the stiff, icy breeze that cut through the winter woods.
Trees rose up on either side of Bruisee Road, trees thick with under-growth, crumbling logs and brambles. Bare branches formed a skeletal canopy over the road, making the dark night even darker. The occasionally strong gust of wind knocked chunks of wet snow from the branches, dropping them on the assemblage below: two Humvees, an unmarked black communications van and sixty armed soldiers.
Around Dew stood the squad and platoon leaders of Bravo Company from the 1-187th Infantry Battalion. The battalion was also known as the “Leader Rakkasans,” an element from the Third Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The Rakkasans were the current Division Ready Force, or DRF, a battalion that stood ready to deploy anywhere in the world within thirty-six hours, regardless of location. The fact that the deployment location happened to be about 620 miles from Fort Campbell, and not thousands of miles across an ocean, made them that much faster.
A pair of C-130 Hercules transport planes from the 118th Airlift Wing had taken off from Nashville less than two hours after Dew’s panicked call to Murray Longworth. Those C-130s landed at Campbell Army Air Field thirty minutes after takeoff. Thirty minutes after that, loaded with the first contingent of the 1-187th, the C-130s took off for Caro Municipal Airport, an active airport not quite two miles from where Dew now stood.
Back at the tiny airport, more C-130s were landing. It would take fifteen or so sorties and several more hours to bring in the entire battalion task force. But Dew wasn’t waiting for the full battalion. With four sorties complete, he had 128 soldiers and four Humvees—that was the force available, and those were the men he was taking in.
Most of those men wore serious expressions, some tainted with a hint of fear. A few still thought this was a surprise drill. These were highly trained soldiers, Dew knew, but all the training in the world don’t mean jack squat if you’d never been in the shit. All the squad leaders, at least, had seen serious action—he could tell that by their calm, hard-eyed expressions—but most of the men carried the nasty aura of combat newbies.
Their leader was the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Ogden. Normally a captain commanded the first company in, but the urgency, the unknown enemy, and the fact that they were operating on American soil demanded Ogden’s direct attention. A gaunt man in his forties, Ogden was so skinny the fatigues almost hung on him. He looked more like a prisoner of w
ar than a soldier, but he moved quickly, he spoke with authority, and his demeanor was anything but weak. His skinniness was also deceiving: he could go toe-to-toe with any of the young bucks in his unit, and they all knew it. Dew could sense that Ogden had seen action, and plenty of it. He was grateful to have a seasoned combat veteran in charge.
“So why here?” Ogden asked. “What’s so special about this place?”
“You got me,” Dew said. “All we know is that there were cases in Detroit, Ann Arbor and Toledo. Wahjamega is easy travel distance from all of those. And there’s a lot of farmland and forest around here, huge tracts of space for them to hide in. We think they’re gathering, either the human hosts or possibly as hatchlings, maybe both.”
On the helicopter ride from Ann Arbor, Dew had talked to Murray and filled him in on what little they knew about the hatchlings. Murray initially demanded that Dew keep the info from the ground troops, as they “didn’t have clearance,” but Dew fought and quickly won that argument—he wasn’t leading men into battle who didn’t know if they might be shooting American civilians or some inhuman monstrosity. Which of the two was worse, Dew couldn’t really say.
“What’s the story on our air support, Lieutenant?” Dew asked.
Ogden checked his watch. “We have three AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, ETA is twenty minutes. A company of the 1-130th Army National Guard out of Morrisville was doing live-fire exercises in Camp Grayling, about a hundred and twenty miles northwest of here.”
“Armament?”
“Each bird has eight AGM-114 Hellfire missiles with HEAT warheads,” Ogden said.
Dew nodded. Twenty-four antitank missiles would make a really big bang. Plus, each Apache had a thirty-millimeter chain gun that could take out an armored personnel carrier from four kilometers away. All in all, that provided exceptional air support for this mission.
