Dew smiled and nodded. “Now you’re getting it. Let them ponder what just happened. We’ll come back later and see if we can make any progress.”

“Do we have to kill another one?”

Dew shrugged. “One can always dream. I imagine that’s enough personal growth for one day. Come on, made of mean, you need a beer.”

DANDELIONS

Margaret stared at the flat-panel monitor mounted on the wall of the narrow autopsy room. The picture showed a split screen of two microscopes, the right side containing the powder from one of John Doe’s pustules, the left containing a tissue sample from Officer Sanchez’s hand.

“Oh man,” Dan said. “That is so totally f.u.c.ked up.”

The sample from Officer Sanchez’s hand showed motion similar to what she’d seen in Betty Jewell’s blackened facial sore before the girl killed Amos. It looked like a moving, crawling nerve cell. Who knew how many of those things were in Sanchez’s system, creeping toward his brain. Maybe they were already there.

The samples from John Doe’s pustules looked similar, but different in one key way. Where the crawling nerve cell looked flexible and streamlined, John Doe’s pollen looked fuzzy. It moved only when it landed on something, and then with an awkward stiffness that spoke of an internal rigidity.

Under high magnification she saw the cause of that fuzziness—hundreds of tiny cilia-like hairs sticking out from the stiff dendrites. It reminded Margaret of a fluffy white dandelion seed.

“So this is how it spreads,” she said. “It rides air currents until it lands on a host.”

“Then it burrows in somehow,” Dan said. “And once under the skin, it becomes a crawler just like the one on the left. Good G.o.d, what would the range be on this thing?”

Margaret didn’t want to consider the answer, but she already knew it. “Depends on the winds,” she said. To think that the difference between a localized infection and a pandemic might be nothing more than a good, strong breeze . . .

She wished Amos were with her. He was the parasitologist. He would have quickly created working theories on range and contagion mechanics. But Amos was gone, gone because of the very things that moved up there on the screen.

“Let’s run the tests now,” she said. “Give me all the samples.”

Dan went to the wall screen and typed in commands. The flat-panel’s image changed from one set of side-by-side pictures to twenty-five sets, five rows of five spreading a checkerboard across the screen.

They had identified twenty-five possible cures to kill the crawlers. Now they could try all of them on crawlers and dandelion seeds at the same time.

Multiple caustic solutions, heat, cold, antibiotics, Sanchez’s own white blood cells and six kinds of chemicals that might damage the cytoskeletal structures.

Somewhere in those twenty-five options was a way to save Officer Sanchez and stop this whole thing in its tracks.

There had to be.

“All right,” Margaret said. “Let’s find out what kills these little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.”

OGDEN SEES TRAILERS

Charlie Ogden watched the Winnebago’s little TV. Every word the newscaster said seemed to increase his anger, his desire to kill the enemies of G.o.d. If only he’d arrived sooner, stopped Jenkins from making that McDonald’s run.

“This is footage from this morning,” the newscaster said. “Police were investigating two bodies found on Orleans Street. We have unconfirmed reports that one or both of these bodies had the flesh-eating bacteria that has been found in several places in Michigan, including g.a.y.l.o.r.d, where it caused at least two deaths. Homeland Security has elevated the alert status to orange, although they say there is no evidence of terrorist involvement. The no-fly zone over Detroit is still in effect, and we will bring you live aerial pictures as soon as that ban is lifted.”

Ogden turned off the volume. He just stared at the image of Orleans Street, dozens of police, white CDC vans, and two semi trailers.

Chelsea’s lovely voice in his head: Why does this make you so angry?

He pointed to the screen, his fingertip tracing an oily mark on the gla.s.s.

“These two trailers,” Ogden said. “It means they found Jenkins. The people in those trailers, Chelsea . . . they work for the devil.”

Are they coming for us?

Not yet. They couldn’t. Sending troops to a town like g.a.y.l.o.r.d was one thing; a major city was a different story.

“I think we have enough time,” Ogden said. “We just have to make sure we stick to the timeline. You’re sure the gate will open exactly when you say it will?”

When Mickey’s big hand is on three and his little hand is on one.

Thirteen-fifteen. Just eighteen hours away.

That spot is only a few blocks from here. If the trailers make you angry, destroy them.

“They moved them,” Ogden nodded. “I sent Sergeant Major Mazagatti out in street clothes, and the trailers are gone. They have to be around here somewhere, but we can’t send people out to search. It’s too risky.

The longer we stay quiet and unnoticed, the better.”

You’re so smart, General.

He felt his face flush red. “Thank you, Chelsea.”

But tomorrow, once things begin, we should find the trailers and kill the people inside.

Ogden nodded. “Absolutely, Chelsea. I’ll send Mazagatti and my personal guard to make sure it happens. We just have to find them first.”

MACH 10

Captain Patrick “P. J.” Lindeman felt ridiculous G-forces smash him into his seat, and he wondered if his a.s.s would explode.

Well, not his a.s.s per se, but the HTV-6Xb hypersonic fighter in which his a.s.s was currently sitting, the same fighter that had that same a.s.s hurtling through the night sky at Mach 10.

Mach motherf.u.c.king 10.

Seven thousand miles per hour.