Infected Page 50

By the time he polished off the beans and all the bread, he felt much more himself. His hunger satiated for the moment, his thoughts centered on the rather unique problem at hand. He realized that the Starting Five hadn’t made a peep since he’d started eating.

“Hey,” Perry said. He doubted anything could feel as surreal as talking to Triangles embedded in his body, which apparently talked back to him via his own nervous system.

“Hey, are you there?”

y es w e here

They sounded calmer, far more relaxed than when they’d complained of hunger.

“Why aren’t you talking?” He wanted to hear them talk, both because he wanted to know more about these bizarre horrors and because they had been quiet for days, and when they’d been quiet, they had grown.

wait to eat food

co mes now

That phrase sent a s.h.i.+ver through his chest. He immediately understood the situation. The Triangles were like a tapeworm or something, absorbing the food he digested. Even though he had huge triangular organisms living in his body, he found the internal vampirism even more horrifying.

These critters were anch.o.r.ed into his muscles, tendons and skeleton, and tapped into his bloodstream like a baby cow nursing off a mother’s teat. Anger swelled up inside him, hot and tumultuous and lava-red. But as the anger brewed, so did a realization.

They couldn’t eat unless he did, which meant they weren’t feeding on him. The good news? They’re not eating you from within. The bad news? They’re growing inside you even faster thanks to a highly nutritious porkn-beans buffet. He felt violated, like the victim of some horrible, biological rape.

He grew more aware of the pain in his body. His head hurt. His leg hurt. His stomach felt a little queasy. His eyes kept closing. He wanted to crawl into bed and give up, forget about the whole thing and let fate run its s.a.d.i.s.tic course.

He made it as far as the couch, hopping carefully on his one leg before easing himself onto the welcome and waiting cus.h.i.+ons. The couch seemed to caress his body, sucking away his stress, taking it, perhaps, under the cus.h.i.+ons with the dirt and loose change. Maybe he’d die in his sleep, but he couldn’t stop sleep from coming.

37.

GONNA NEED A STEAM CLEANER FOR THAT

Dew smelled it right off.

Unmistakable. Unforgettable.

The smell of death.

Faint, just a touch coming on the wind. It was still early, but he knew

from hard-won experience that in a few hours that smell would grow until the neighbors caught a whiff or two.

“Control, this is Phillips. Clear odor of decomposing human body coming from Nguyen’s house. I need to move in right now.”

“Understood, Phillips. Move in. Support teams are in position.”

Dew walked up the unshoveled sidewalk, feet crunching on a combination of snow and salt crystals. Ann Arbor, Michigan. Home to forty thousand college kids, many crowded into big, old, beat-up homes like this one. A single-family dwelling that in 1950 was a hallmark of middle-cla.s.s success, housing Mom and Dad and a pa.s.sel of kids, now held a half dozen students, usually more, packed in two to a stinky, beerstained room.

There wasn’t a sound coming from the house. The university had just let out on break, the fall semester closing only two days earlier. Still, even with the break, he could hear a basketball game blasting from the house on his left and on his right. TV blaring, drunken kids singing fight songs and screaming at the television. But the one in the middle? Nothing.

He tried the handle. Locked. He peeked in a window, but it was boarded up from the inside with plywood. A quick check showed that all the windows were boarded up.

Dew was tired of f.u.c.king around. Just plain tired of it. He stood in front of the door, drew his .45, reared back and gave it a solid kick. It took two more, but the door finally swung open.

And the smell rolled out like Satan’s breath.

Dew swallowed, then stepped inside.

“Jesus,” he said. He wasn’t a religious man, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Phillips, Control here. Are you okay?”

“I’m pretty f.u.c.king far from okay,” Dew said quietly, his microphone picking up every sound. “Send in all three teams, right now. Come in quiet and hot. Three civvies dead by small-arms fire, perp probably still inside. And call the body wagons, we got a big haul here.”

In the living room alone, Dew counted three bloated bodies. Despite their greenish skin, swollen stomachs and the flies swirling around them, he recognized that each had a gunshot wound to the head. All of them had their hands and feet tied. They had been executed. Probably three or four days earlier, maybe a day or two before the end of the semester — with cla.s.ses over, and more than half the students heading home, the kids in this house wouldn’t have been missed.

“Where are you, you little f.u.c.king gook?” Dew said. He knew it was a bad thing to think, a bad thing to say, but the kid who did this was Vietnamese, and he was right about the age of the ones Dew used to kill back in the jungle. Well this one was getting his ticket punched, and right f.u.c.king now.

Four men in Racal suits and carrying P90s entered the house behind him, silent despite the bulky material. Dew used hand signals, telling them to spread out through the first floor. He sent a second four-man team into the bas.e.m.e.nt, and took the final team with him upstairs. The house remained deathly quiet. He could hear the game, faintly, from both of the houses next door. The cheer-to-roar told him the Wolverines had just thrown down a serious dunk.

Dew led the walk up the creaky stairs. Up there, somewhere, was an infected jibbering madman. Like Brewbaker, but this one had a gun.