Contagious Page 99

The gate: never had the world seen something as perfect, as beautiful.

The sound of small feet crunching on broken gla.s.s drew Ogden’s attention away from the hatchling flurry. It was the little angel, her blond curls bouncing with each step. She held an ice cream bar in each hand.

“h.e.l.lo, General Ogden,” the girl said. “I’m Chelsea.”

He knew this, because hers was the voice he’d heard in his head when he converted, when he’d been planning, driving. Just looking at her filled his heart with love.

We’ve been waiting for you.

She spoke right into his mind, spoke with that voice of love and wisdom.

“h.e.l.lo, Chelsea. I like your motorcycle.”

Then it’s yours. Mister Korves doesn’t need it anymore.

She was love incarnate. She was everything.

We’ve been waiting for our protectors, General. Are you ready to protect us?

She handed him an ice cream bar.

“Yes, Chelsea,” Ogden said. “I’m ready.”

COPS, STARRING SANCHEZ AND RIDDER

Officer Carmen Sanchez had a bad feeling about this one. A report of b.l.o.o.d.y snow and two bodies. He felt grateful for the subzero temperature. Morbid, sure, but dealing with a frozen body was preferable to finding one that had cooked in Detroit’s summer humidity for a few days. Sometimes these calls were c.r.a.p, but after ten years on the force you got a hunch for which ones were the real deal. Sanchez had that hunch now.

The cruiser’s bubble lights flashed as his partner, Marcellus Ridder, pulled off to the side of Orleans Street. Headlights illuminated chewed-up snow.

Snow streaked with frozen red. Streaks that led toward a fence and the trees beyond. And just past the torn fence, two bodies—one black, one white.

Neither of them moving.

Ridder put the cruiser in park and grabbed the radio handset. “This is Adam-Twelve, responding to reports of bodies on Orleans Street,” he said. “We have two men down. Send ambulance and backup immediately. We’re examining the scene.”

A ten-year-old boy had seen the b.l.o.o.d.y snow, found the bodies, then walked to a gas station and called the police. What a ten-year-old boy was doing up at four in the morning, Sanchez didn’t want to know. Strict parenting didn’t always happen in these parts.

Ridder put the handset back in its cradle. They both got out of the car, guns drawn and pointed at the ground. Ridder knelt behind the cruiser’s open driver’s-side door, while Sanchez did the same with the pa.s.senger door.

“Police! Do not move!” Sanchez screamed in his loudest cop voice. “Stay where you are! If you can hear me, kick your right foot!”

Their caution probably seemed silly to most people, because both men looked very, very dead, but this much blood meant weapons, probably guns, and Detroit police do not f.u.c.k around with something like that. Either one of the men might rise up at any second and start shooting.

“I said move your right foot!” Sanchez screamed. That’s the way it usually went—Ridder did the driving, Sanchez did the yelling. To each his own special skills.

“We gotta check them out,” Sanchez said. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Ridder said.

“I’ll take the white guy on the left. Go!”

Sanchez scooted around his door and moved toward the p.r.o.ne white man. He kept his gun pointed at the ground but angled forward, so he would only have to raise it a couple of inches should the man pop up with a weapon.

The Caucasian corpse was overweight, with a frost-lined red beard and brown eyes that stared blankly into nothing. The eyes had frozen open. A small b.l.o.o.d.y hole dotted the right side of his throat. His s.h.i.+rt, especially the collar, looked stiff with frozen blood.

Still-wrapped Big Macs littered the area.

Ridder knelt next to the black guy.

“This guy’s dead,” Ridder said. “No pulse, cold to the touch.”

Sanchez reached down to feel for a pulse, fingers probing under the beard, feeling the fat man’s neck. The skin was cold and firm, but not stiff—the man hadn’t frozen solid yet. Sanchez felt the jawline, reached under it and pressed.

Then a sound like a soft cough.

The sensation that his fingers had popped something, a small bubble.

A thin cloud of gray lifted up and away from the man’s beard.

Only then did Sanchez see it—little blisters on the corpse’s neck, hands, even some on the forehead. He’d popped one, and this gray powder shot out and drifted through the air like fine pollen.

“Aw, f.u.c.k,” he said. “What the f.u.c.k is this?”

He backed away from the corpse, left arm bent, left hand held away from his body. He flung his hand, snapping his fingers outward. The powdery substance flew from his skin and floated in the air.

Ridder looked at him. “What the f.u.c.k happened, Chez?”

“This guy has blisters,” Sanchez said. “I think I touched one. It popped like a puffball or something. f.u.c.king gross!”

He holstered his pistol “Get the first-aid kit. Oh man, this is so f.u.c.king nasty. f.u.c.king a.s.shole probably has AIDS or something. It’s a f.u.c.king AIDS blister. I should have been wearing gloves.”

Ridder ran to the cruiser and opened the trunk. He pulled out the first-aid kit.

Sanchez stopped and looked at the hand for a second, wondering if he actually felt what he thought he was feeling. He was. It wasn’t his imagination, his hand felt hot. Real hot.

“AIDS doesn’t have blisters,” Ridder said as he took a clear plastic alcohol bottle out of the kit.

“Yeah? Then why does this f.u.c.king burn? Hurry up!”

Ridder doused the hand with alcohol, then handed Sanchez some gauze.

“Wipe it off,” Ridder said.

“Oh, ya f.u.c.king think?” Sanchez wiped at the hand.

Ridder opened a belt pocket and pulled out surgical gloves.