I felt bad just leaving her there, rotting in the sun, covered in flies, so I managed to pick up my stretcher and sort of lay it on top of her. It wasn't as ideal as a blanket, but it covered her face and I was glad about that.

I gave her a little nod of respect and slowly made my way toward the plane in my slipper socks.

4.

Five Days Earlier Hospital Regional Rio Grande City of Rio Grande Tierra del Fuego Province Argentina Jose Morales rose from the bench and tossed the remains of his tepid cup of coffee into the trash bin. Two tall men walked down the hall toward him. One white, one black, both dressed in dark blue suits. In the small city of Rio Grande, they stuck out like two sore American thumbs. They could only be the two US Marshals he had been ordered to meet at the hospital.

As they approached and made eye contact, he nodded and held out his hand. "I'm Inspector Morales."

The white one shook his hand with too firm of a grip. "Deputy Marshal Briggs," he said. Briggs nodded at his partner. "This is Deputy Marshal Jones."

"Welcome," said Morales as he shook hands with Jones. "I trust you're here about our guest of honor?"

"That's correct, inspector," replied Briggs. "May we see him?"

"I'll get you as close as I can. This way."

They followed Morales out of the lobby and pa.s.sed two uniformed officers before stopping at a door littered with caution signs. They took turns looking through the window at the sleeping patient in the room.

"That's your boy," said Morales. "This is as close as we can get without suiting up in one of those s.p.a.ce suits. Wouldn't do much good anyway. He's been unconscious since they arrived."

Jones removed a notepad from his breast pocket and flipped through the pages. "According to the officer I spoke with on the phone, they brought him in by helicopter and identified him by first name only. Howard. They claimed he was a prisoner from the International Experimental Rehabilitation Facility on Desolate Island."

Morales nodded in agreement.

"The only Howard from the prison records is Howard Bell. That's got to be him," Briggs added, nodding toward the window.

Jones looked at the list of names written down in his notes. "Ronald Baker, Lisa Hammond, and Elizabeth Clark. All American citizens. Are they still in town? We'll need to get statements from them."

A look of confusion flashed across the inspector's face.

"Problem?" asked Briggs.

"Forgive me, I thought you already knew," stammered Morales. "They're all dead."

"What?"

"That's why your fugitive is in isolation. Everyone who flew in on that helicopter got sick shortly after arrival. The first one to go was the Clark woman."

Jones looked at his notes again. "She was the one who claimed this man was accompanied by another inmate who killed her husband. She said Bell received his injuries by fighting off some sort of wild animal?"

Morales chuckled. "Alien. She said it was an alien. She was pretty sick when we interviewed her. Running a fever. Probably didn't know what she was talking about."

"The others didn't verify her story?"

"The dead husband, sure, but this alien was destroyed in a toolshed fire. It burned to the ground and the others weren't there at the time. They said the guy that killed her husband was pretty messed up though. Whatever burned to death in that shed apparently killed him first."

Briggs dismissed it with a wave of his hand. "We'll let the Federal Bureau of Prisons worry about what happened on the island. All we're concerned with is securing the prisoner."

Before Morales could respond, the doors at the end of the hall flew open and a group of people dressed in bright yellow HAZMAT suits rushed in. Some of them were carrying a.s.sault rifles.

"Gentlemen, you need to leave this area immediately and come with us," one of them commanded with a m.u.f.fled voice behind his face mask.

"What in the h.e.l.l is going on?" Briggs asked.

He grabbed Briggs by the arm and attempted to pull him toward the door. "United States Army. You need to follow us, sir!"

Briggs ripped his arm away and flashed his ID. "Hold on, d.a.m.n it! We're US Marshals, and we're not going anywhere until I get some answers."

"Sir," said one of the men as he pushed his way forward through the soldiers. "I'm Dr. Michael Schmidt from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. This entire hospital has been shut down and quarantined. I'm afraid you'll have to stay in the building until further notice. We're authorized to lock down this hospital by any means necessary. Do we need to have you surrender your weapons or will you cooperate?"

Briggs and Jones looked at each other. Morales performed a sign of the cross.

5.

It felt like I walked a hundred miles by the time I reached the plane wreckage. The sun was out in full force again and I was feeling pretty weak. I don't think I mentioned the humidity yet. You know that corny cliche: It's not the heat so much as the humidity? You've got that right. I was already soaked with sweat from just hanging out on my stretcher. Now that I was on the move, I was really soggy.

I knew one thing for sure. I needed water p.r.o.nto or I was going to be in big trouble. On my way to the plane, I realized I hadn't taken a p.i.s.s since I woke up, and I still didn't feel the need to. That was a bad sign. I was also starting to get a major headache. Also bad.

The plane was a small jet. It was about the same size as one of those commuter puddle jumpers that are only wide enough for two seats on one side of the aisle and one seat on the other side. It actually wasn't in bad shape, as far as plane crashes are concerned. I can only base that opinion on the footage I've seen on TV, but it wasn't burnt to a crisp or completely destroyed. The burning smell from the night before must have come from one of the engines. Most of the right wing (is that starboard or port?) and a good portion of the fuselage on that side were destroyed by fire. Some of the vegetation in the area was still smoldering.

I think it came in hard, a.s.s first, because the entire back part of the plane was gone. It broke off on impact and was sitting in a crumpled mess twenty feet or so behind the rest of the fuselage.

I carefully crept up to the back end of the plane, making sure I didn't step on anything sharp in my booties. I had a clear line of sight all the way up to the c.o.c.kpit door. It looked like the plane was set up as some sort of ambulance with wings. It was a big mess from the crash of course, but I could see all sorts medical-related items scattered around.

I crawled inside and immediately saw a pile of IV bags that must have fallen out of a cabinet. I picked up one and the crystal-clear liquid inside looked absolutely lovely. The label read .9% Sodium Chloride Injection, USP. I feel pretty stupid about it now, but at the time it made perfect sense. You get an IV when you're dehydrated and need fluids, right? Since I had no idea how to start an IV, I popped a hole in the bag and took a taste. Yes, I know, sodium chloride is salt, and guess what? It was pretty salty. Even at .9%. I tossed the bag on the floor, trying to ignore the irony, and kept scavenging.

Despite all the c.r.a.p scattered around, there weren't too many useful items. I spotted some gauze pads and tape, which I made a mental note of for later, and kept looking. As I got closer to the c.o.c.kpit door, I started searching a few cabinets and finally hit pay dirt. In one of the drawers was a cache of goodies you would give a patient after drawing blood or just something to keep them happy.

I found a handful of graham cracker and saltine packets, a few Jell-O tubs, and six glorious single-serving apple juice containers. I ripped off the top of one of the juices and greedily sucked down every last drop. Four seconds later, every last drop exited my body in the form of violent projectile vomit. Brilliant move, genius.

After a few dry heaves, I sat down to rest. As my stomach settled, I took a chance and drank another cup. I sipped very slowly this time, savoring each mouthful, and I kept it down.

As I felt my energy increasing from the simple act of calorie intake, I surveyed the rest of the plane. It provided decent shelter and for that night, at least, would be much better than sleeping outside again. I thought of my dead lady friend and the beast that visited me and shivered. To this day, I don't know what it was. If I think about it at night, my imagination eventually transforms it into a ten-foot-tall jungle version of Big Foot.

I reached over and searched a container nearby. Another great find. It was a small a.s.sortment of over-the-counter bottles, but what really got me excited was a brand new bottle of ibuprofen. I popped the top and swallowed four pills with the remainder of my juice cup. It wasn't much, but I figured at the very least it might help ease the pain in my wound and kill my headache.

I got to my feet and decided to check out the c.o.c.kpit. The door wouldn't open, and I noticed the frame was kinked from the crash. The door itself looked a little flimsy, so I took a step back, grabbed onto the counter, and gave it a good kick.

The door opened, hit something, slammed back shut, and then opened an inch or so before stopping. The split second it was wide open revealed two bodies. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but it still made my heart skip a beat.

I slowly pushed it open again. There was one guy, the pilot I'm guessing, still sitting in one of the seats. He was wearing a HAZMAT suit like the woman outside but his hood and mask were off. It looked like the nose of the plane had crumpled up on impact and he was crushed between the seat and the control panel.

The other guy was lying on the floor. He was also wearing a HAZMAT suit. I'm not sure if he was thrown from his seat after the crash or what, but it was obvious to me, even through the hood and mask, that he died from ma.s.sive head trauma. I won't get into the gritty details, but his skull hit something and that something won. Practically the entire floor was covered with his blood.

These bodies hadn't been getting direct sunlight, but they were pretty ripe so the flies still found them. I stood there just for a second then headed for fresh air before I risked throwing up my pain pills and apple juice.

Before I turned away, I noticed a pair of headphones with a microphone were sitting on the floor. I knew the radio was a long shot, but it would be stupid of me not to try, don't you think? I took a couple of deep breaths and headed back in.

The floor was sticky under my feet from the congealed blood and I fought back a gag. I had to crouch down, getting way too close to one of the bodies, to reach the headset under the seat. Of course, it had blood on it, just like practically every surface in there. Did these guys have a jugular slicing contest to see who could spray the farthest, or what?

I wasn't thinking such witty thoughts at the time, just trying really hard not to freak out, throw up, or cut my own jugular to put myself out of my misery.

The headset was attached to one of those curly cables like on a telephone. I traced it to where it was plugged into the control panel and my hopes of reaching out and touching someone evaporated. The radio mostly consisted of an LCD display which was dark. I tried the only two k.n.o.bs, one for "squelch" and one for "on/off/vol," but they didn't do any good. I dropped the headset to the floor.

Now that my conscious was clear and I knew for certain that I couldn't call for help, I went back to my little food supply. I took out a Jell-O cup since dry crackers didn't seem like a good idea at the moment. I enjoyed my cherry-flavored Jell-O and took stock of my situation. It didn't look too good. I survived after being impaled by that alien back at the island. That was good. I survived the plane crash but the three people I was with didn't. Good and bad. I had no idea where I was, and despite the handful of snacks, I had no food or water. Really bad.

I not only didn't know where I was, but also I had no idea where I had been, or where I was going. What in the h.e.l.l happened to me? There's no way this plane could have taken off from the prison camp island. I must have been on the mainland. Most likely South America, and that's probably where I was now. That seemed to make the most sense. And what's with the HAZMAT suits? I could only imagine it had something to do with the disease back at the farm. I'm still not sick from that, so maybe they were flying me someplace to have me studied.

Whatever. None of that really mattered now. All I needed to do was work on staying alive. The one thing I picked up from any kind of survival book or show was to stay put and wait for help. That seemed like a pretty good choice for now. I figured somebody had to have seen the plane go down. If not, people in charge of such things knew the flight path and would know where to look. It could have been the sugar rush from the Jell-O, but I suddenly felt very optimistic. I would be fine.

The light was starting to fade outside and I was suddenly very tired of my disgusting hospital scrubs. I noticed some lockers close to the c.o.c.kpit and checked them out. Inside were two small overnight bags, so I looked for a change of clothes. I tried on a pair of jeans that were a little loose in the waist, but otherwise not a bad fit. Even better was a couple of pairs of bright white clean socks. There were two pairs of shoes, one from each bag, but neither were my size. One was way too small and the other too big. I guessed that maybe two or three sock layers would do the trick if I needed to do any serious walking. For now, I was planning on only a few steps once my rescue helicopter arrived. A Michigan State T-shirt completed my ensemble.

I was dressed in clean duds and feeling a little better but still pretty weak and tired. With night falling quickly, I cleaned up my st.i.tches with an alcohol pad and put on a fresh gauze pad and taped it into place. I cleared off a bench and collapsed on it for the night. A little hard, but better than a stretcher next to a corpse any day.

The last rays of light signed off for the day and a symphony of nocturnal bugs and critters started up. Now that I was relatively safe and comfortable, it was actually sort of peaceful. For the first time in a long time I didn't have to worry about getting shanked in the middle of the night by a fellow inmate or, more recently, getting ripped in half by an alien. If I tried really hard, I could almost imagine I was sleeping next to an open window at a tropical resort. I tried to clear my head and relax but I could feel my recent optimism slowly fade as nagging doubts about that helicopter crept into my thoughts.

6.

Ten Days Earlier Hermes Quijada International Airport City of Rio Grande Tierra del Fuego Province Argentina Ron pulled Lisa aside as the medics carefully loaded the prisoner into the back of the ambulance. "Hey, if you want to ride with Liz, I can take a cab and catch up with you at the hospital," he told her.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'll need to gas up the bird anyway. Go ahead. Thanks to all these extra trips, we're going to burn up all the grant money this year just on fuel alone."

"For a hero, you sure do a lot of bellyaching, old man," Lisa joked. "You probably saved that guy's life by flying him in, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm a real Boy Scout. Just keep an eye on Liz, okay? I'm worried about her."

Lisa jogged back to the ambulance and Ron gave Liz a little wave before the ambulance doors closed.

Ron arranged to have the helicopter's fuel tank topped off. In order to sign the sale order, he borrowed a pen from the man behind the desk. Ron handed the pen back and the man absently put it in his mouth as he ripped a copy of the receipt out of the ledger and handed it to Ron.

What the man behind the desk didn't know was that Ron's hand was covered with an extraterrestrial pathogen. This very hardy and aggressive microorganism was already thriving on Ron Baker's palm. It really flourished when it made the journey from the pen to the fuel jockey's warm, moist mouth.

In a few hours this man would finish his shift, go home, kiss his wife on the mouth, and his five-year-old daughter on the cheek. He'd help his bride prepare dinner, and by the end of the night all three of them would be contagious. They'd spread the bug the next day as the girl went to school, the wife back to her job in a produce market, and the man back to the airport.

Meanwhile, Ron Baker pulled up to the front of the local hospital in a taxi and handed the driver his fare. He headed inside to look for Lisa and Liz.

The exposed taxi, along with its driver, who had just tucked the germ-covered bills into his money pouch, went to the Gran Hotel La.s.sere to pick up Bill Richardson of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Bill had just closed a deal an hour earlier and was looking forward to telling his boss the good news. Synko Medical Products, Inc. would soon be the exclusive provider of alcohol prep pads and disinfecting wet wipes in every medical facility in Rio Grande. After a two-week trip of flying all over Argentina, Bill was more than ready to go home. He was running late, but if he made it to the airport on time he'd be home in Tulsa to see his kids before they headed off to school.

Bill made it to the terminal only to find out his flight was delayed two hours. He fed his disappointment with a few Jack and c.o.kes at the bar. In the meantime, he infected Maria and Armando Covas of Madrid who sat next to him. They would transfer flights in Rio de Janeiro and board a flight to Spain with two hundred and eighty-seven other pa.s.sengers. By the time their plane touched down at Barajas Airport nine hours later, almost all of their fellow pa.s.sengers and the flight crew would be infected. The crew would board new planes the next day and infect those pa.s.sengers as they flew out of the international airport to destinations all over the globe.

Bill Richardson didn't get to see his kids before they left for school. By the time he got home he no longer cared. After using up three tissues to staunch a nose bleed in the cab, he felt so miserable that he just wanted to go to bed. Bill never made it to work to report to his boss on his successful trip, but it didn't really matter. By the end of the week, so many of Bill's coworkers called in sick that the management at Synko decided to shut down the company until things got back to normal.

7.

I didn't get much sleep that night. Between the rock-hard bench, the sweltering heat, and the constant hara.s.sment from mosquitos, it was a miserable night, to say the least. I must have dozed off shortly after sundown, but a nightmare woke me and I was pretty much awake after that.

When it was light enough to see, I had breakfast of an apple juice and a graham cracker packet. I was tempted to eat everything in my little stash, but I knew it was probably a good idea to ration it. I popped a couple of ibuprofens for my wound and exited the plane to stretch my legs a little and take a pee.

I have to admit, by this time I was starting to feel anxious. I kept thinking of a hunters' safety video I watched when I was eleven years old. The one thing I remembered was the most important piece of advice the fat guy in the blaze orange told me. Stay put if you get lost. If you remain in the same spot you'll have a better chance of the search party finding you.

The only problem was I was beginning to wonder if I even had a search party looking for me. If the crash site was close to a town, I would've expected some curious people to have found me by now. The smoldering jet engine wasn't producing much smoke now, but right after the crash, it should have been visible for miles. Easy enough signal to follow.

And what about the flight path? I have no idea why we crashed, but unless we went way off course, I'd think it would be easy enough for the eggheads in charge of such things to figure out where we crashed. They could at least ballpark it.

I'd been keeping an ear out and hadn't heard the slightest hint of a plane or helicopter. I didn't want to admit it then, but I also noticed I hadn't seen any jet trails from commercial flights in the sky at all. Not one. Since it didn't have anything to do with my immediate situation, I tried to ignore it.

So, on one hand, I wanted to listen to the fat guy in blaze orange, but I couldn't shake the uneasy feeling of not knowing what was beyond the trees. What if a road was only thirty feet away? What if the only thing between an umbrella-laced drink at a beachside bar and me was a twenty-minute walk? Dammit, Google Earth, where are you when I need you?

I walked the perimeter of the clearing, keeping as much distance from the stretcher-covered woman as I could. The only thing I saw through the trees were more trees. The sun cleared the treetops and the morning was turning out to be especially miserable. Already sweating profusely, I made my way back to the plane to get some shade and pick through the wreckage again. I didn't expect to find anything new but I needed to do something to keep my mind occupied.

G.o.d I needed a drink.

I checked and rechecked drawers, cabinets, and containers. I was convinced I missed a bottle. I would have been happy with one of those tiny airplane bottles full of Schnapps. I was on a G.o.dd.a.m.n airplane! Where was the booze?

Lucky me. My first flight in years and instead of a commercial liner with a drink tray, all I've got is a pile of useless IV bags that'll only make me more thirsty and probably give me the s.h.i.ts. It's just as well. I was feeling pretty vulnerable at the moment and if I did find some hooch, I probably would have given in to temptation. Nothing like a plane crash to get you off the wagon. Or is it on the wagon? I never could get that stupid expression straight. I reminded myself that the root cause of all this mess was my alcoholism, but it didn't make me feel any better.

I sat down on the bench and ripped the lid off one of my apple juices, slamming it in one gulp and not caring. I crumpled the cup, tossed it across the plane, and put my head in my hands. I felt like I was going crazy.

When I caught a whiff of the rotting mess in the c.o.c.kpit, I knew enough was enough. My decision was made. Even though I had no idea what was out there, and I had a good chance of getting even more lost, I was tired of sitting around feeling sorry for myself. Time to leave.

I spent the rest of the day gathering anything that might be remotely useful and preparing for my journey. Despite the weakness from not enough food, the ache in my gut, and the sweltering heat, it felt good to have a goal. Good to be doing something. Anything. One more night in the plane. I'd be out of there the second dawn broke.