"I guess not." He looked at them heavily. "Thing is, I don't know how my superiors would like me bein here at all. I don't think they would. So when those guys come here, you don't let them know I tipped you, right?"

"What guys, Officer?" Vic asked.

"Health Department guys," Joe Bob said.

Vic said, "Oh Jesus, it was was cholera. I cholera. I knowed knowed it was." it was."

Hap looked from one to the other. "Joe Bob?"

"I don't know nothing," Joe Bob said, sitting down in one of the plastic Woolco chairs. His bony knees came nearly up to his neck. He took a pack of Chesterfields from his blouse pocket and lit up. "Finnegan, there, the coroner-"

"That was a smartass," Hap said fiercely. "You should have seen him struttin around in here, Joe Bob. Just like a pea turkey that got its first hardon. Shushin people and all that."

"He's a big turd in a little bowl, all right," Joe Bob agreed. "Well, he got Dr. James to look at this Campion, and the two of them called in another doctor that I don't know. Then they got on the phone to Houston. And around three this mornin they come into that little airport outside of Braintree."

"Who did?"

"Pathologists. Three of them. They were in there with the bodies until about eight o'clock. Cuttin on em is my guess, although I dunno for sure. Then they got on the phone to the Plague Center in Atlanta, and those guys are going to be here this afternoon. But they said in the meantime that the State Health Department was to send some fellas out here and see all the guys that were in the station last night, and the guys that drove the rescue unit to Braintree. I dunno, but it sounds to me like they want you quarantined."

"Moses in the bullrushes," Hap said, frightened.

"The Atlanta Plague Center's federal," Vic said. "Would they send out a planeload of federal men just for cholera?"

"Search me," Joe Bob said. "But I thought you guys had a right to know. From all I heard, you just tried to lend a hand."

"It's appreciated, Joe Bob," Hap said slowly. "What did James and this other doctor say?"

"Not much. But they looked scared. I never seen doctors look scared like that. I didn't much care for it."

A heavy silence fell. Joe Bob went to the drink machine and got a bottle of Fresca. The faint hissing sound of carbonation was audible as he popped the cap. As Joe Bob sat down again, Hap took a Kleenex from the box next to the cash register, wiped his runny nose, and folded it into the pocket of his greasy overall.

"What have you found out about Campion?" Vic asked. "Anything? "

"We're still checking," Joe Bob said with a trace of importance. "His ID says he was from San Diego, but a lot of the stuff in his wallet was two and three years out of date. His driver's license was expired. He had a BankAmericard that was issued in 1986 and that was expired, too. He had an army card so we're checking with them. The captain has a hunch that Campion hadn't lived in San Diego for maybe four years."

"AWOL?" Vic asked. He produced a big red bandanna, hawked, and spat into it.

"Dunno yet. But his army card said he was in until 1997, and he was in civvies, and he was with his fambly, and he was a fuck of a long way from California, and listen to my mouth run."

"Well, I'll get in touch with the others and tell em what you said, anyway," Hap said. "Much obliged."

Joe Bob stood up. "Sure. Just keep my name out of it. I sure wouldn't want to lose my job. Your buddies don't need to know who tipped you, do they?"

"No," Hap said, and Vic echoed it.

As Joe Bob went to the door, Hap said a little apologetically: "That's five even for gas, Joe Bob. I hate to charge you, but with things the way they are-"

"That's okay." Joe Bob handed him a credit card. "State's payin. And I got my credit slip to show why I was here."

While Hap was filling out the slip he sneezed twice.

"You want to watch that," Joe Bob said. "Nothin any worse than a summer cold."

"Don't I know it."

Suddenly, from behind them, Vic said: "Maybe it ain't a cold."

They turned to him. Vic looked frightened.

"I woke up this morning sneezin and hackin away like sixty," Vic said. "Had a mean headache, too. I took some aspirins and it's gone back some, but I'm still full of snot. Maybe we're coming down with it. What that Campion had. What he died of."

Hap looked at him for a long time, and as he was about to put forward all his reasons why it couldn't be, he sneezed again.

Joe Bob looked at them both gravely for a moment and then said, "You know, it might not be such a bad idea to close the station, Hap. Just for today."

Hap looked at him, scared, and tried to remember what all his reasons had been. He couldn't think of a one. All he could remember was that he had also awakened with a headache and a runny nose. Well, everyone caught a cold once in a while. But before that guy Campion had shown up, he had been fine. Just fine.

The three Hodges kids were six, four, and eighteen months. The two youngest were taking naps, and the oldest was out back digging a hole. Lila Bruett was in the living room, watching "The Young and the Restless. " She hoped Sally wouldn't return until it was over. Ralph Hodges had bought a big color TV when times had been better in Arnette, and Lila loved to watch the afternoon stories in color. Everything was so much prettier.

She drew on her cigarette and then let the smoke out in spasms as a racking cough seized her. She went into the kitchen and spat the mouthful of crap she had brought up down the drain. She had gotten up with the cough, and all day it had felt like someone was tickling the back of her throat with a feather.

She went back to the living room after taking a peek out the pantry window to make sure Bert Hodges was okay. A commercial was on now, two dancing bottles of toilet bowl cleaner. Lila let her eyes drift around the room and wished her own house looked this nice. Sally's hobby was doing paint-by-the-numbers pictures of Christ, and they were all over the living room in nice frames. She especially liked the big one of the Last Supper mounted in back of the TV; it had come with sixty different oil colors, Sally had told her, and it took almost three months to finish. It was a real work of art.

Just as her story came back on, Baby Cheryl started to cry, a whooping, ugly yell broken by bursts of coughing.

Lila put out her cigarette and hurried into the bedroom. Eva, the four-year-old, was still fast asleep, but Cheryl was lying on her back in her crib, and her face was going an alarming purple color. Her cries began to sound strangled.

Lila, who was not afraid of the croup after seeing both of her own through bouts with it, picked her up by the heels and swatted her firmly on the back. She had no idea if Dr. Spock recommended this sort of treatment or not, because she had never read him. It worked nicely on Baby Cheryl. She emitted a froggy croak and suddenly spat an amazing wad of yellow phlegm out onto the floor.

"Better?" Lila asked.

"Yeth," said Baby Cheryl. She was almost asleep again.

Lila wiped up the mess with a Kleenex. She couldn't remember ever having seen a baby cough up so much snot all at once.

She sat down in front of "The Young and the Restless" again, frowning. She lit another cigarette, sneezed over the first puff, and then began to cough herself.

CHAPTER 4.

It was an hour past nightfall.

Starkey sat alone at a long table, sifting through sheets of yellow flimsy. Their contents dismayed him. He had been serving his country for thirty-six years, beginning as a scared West Point plebe. He had won medals. He had spoken with Presidents, had offered them advice, and on occasion his advice had been taken. He had been through dark moments before, plenty of them, but this ...

He was scared, so deeply scared he hardly dared admit it to himself. It was the kind of fear that could drive you mad.

On impulse he got up and went to the wall where the five blank TV monitors looked into the room. As he got up, his knee bumped the table, causing one of the sheets of flimsy to fall off the edge. It seesawed lazily down through the mechanically purified air and landed on the tile, half in the table's shadow and half out. Someone standing over it and looking down would have seen this:

OT CONFIRMED.

SEEMS REASONABLY.

STRAIN CODED 848-AB.

CAMPION, (W.) SALLY.

ANTIGEN SHIFT AND MUTATION.

HIGH RISK/EXCESS MORTALITY.

AND COMMUNICABILITY ESTIMATED.

REPEAT 99.4%. ATLANTA PLAGUE CENTER.

UNDERSTANDS. TOP SECRET BLUE FOLDER.

ENDS.

P-T-222312A.

Starkey pushed a button under the middle screen and the picture flashed on with the unnerving suddenness of solid state components. It showed the western California desert, looking east. It was desolate, and the desolation was rendered eerie by the reddish-purple tinge of infrared photography.

It's out there, straight ahead, Starkey thought. Project Blue.

The fright tried to wash over him again. He reached into his pocket and brought out a blue pill. What his daughter would call a "downer." Names didn't matter; results did. He dry-swallowed it, his hard, un-seamed face wrinkling for a moment as it went down.

Project Blue.

He looked at the other blank monitors, and then punched up pictures on all of them. 4 and 5 showed labs. 4 was physics, 5 was viral biology. The vi-bi lab was full of animal cages, mostly for guinea pigs, rhesus monkeys, and a few dogs. None of them appeared to be sleeping. In the physics lab a small centrifuge was still turning around and around. Starkey had complained about that. He had complained bitterly bitterly. There was something spooky about that centrifuge whirling gaily around and around and around while Dr. Ezwick lay dead on the floor nearby, sprawled out like a scarecrow that had tipped over in a high wind.

They had explained to him that the centrifuge was on the same circuit as the lights, and if they turned off the centrifuge, the lights would go, too. And the cameras down there were not equipped for infrared. Starkey understood. Some more brass might come down from Washington and want to look at the dead Nobel Prize winner who was lying four hundred feet under the desert less than a mile away. If we turn off the centrifuge, we turn off the professor. Elementary. What his daughter would have called a "Catch-22."

He took another "downer" and looked into monitor 2. This was the one he liked least of all. He didn't like the man with his face in the soup. Suppose someone walked up to you and said: You will spend eternity with your phiz in a bowl of soup You will spend eternity with your phiz in a bowl of soup. It's like the old pie-in-the-face routine: it stops being funny when it starts being you.

Monitor 2 showed the Project Blue cafeteria. The accident had occurred almost perfectly between shifts, and the cafeteria had been only lightly populated. He supposed it hadn't mattered much to them, whether they had died in the cafeteria or in their bedrooms or their labs. Still, the man with his face in the soup ...

A man and a woman in blue coveralls were crumpled at the foot of the candy machine. A man in a white coverall lay beside the Seeburg jukebox. At the tables themselves were nine men and fourteen women, some of them slumped beside Hostess Twinkies, some with spilled cups of Coke and Sprite still clutched in their stiff hands. And at the second table, near the end, there was a man who had been identified as Frank D. Bruce. His face was in a bowl of what appeared to be Campbell's Chunky Sirloin Soup.

The first monitor showed only a digital clock. Until June 13, all the numbers on that clock had been green. Now they had turned bright red. They had stopped. The figures read 06:13:90:02:37:16.

June 13, 1990. Thirty-seven minutes past two in the morning. And sixteen seconds.

From behind him came a brief burring noise.

Starkey turned off the monitors one by one and then turned around. He saw the sheet of flimsy on the floor and put it back on the table.

"Come."

It was Creighton. He looked grave and his skin was a slaty color. More bad news, Starkey thought serenely. Someone else has taken a long high dive into a cold bowl of Chunky Sirloin Soup.

"Hi, Len," he said quietly.

Len Creighton nodded. "Billy. This ... Christ, I don't know how to tell you."

"I think one word at a time might go best, soldier."

"Those men who handled Campion's body are through their prelims at Atlanta, and the news isn't good."

"All of them?"

"Five for sure. There's one-his name is Stuart Redman-who's negative so far. But as far as we can tell, Campion himself was negative for over fifty hours."

"If only Campion hadn't run," Starkey said. "That was sloppy security, Len. Very sloppy."

Creighton nodded.

"Go on."

"Arnette has been quarantined. We've isolated at least sixteen cases of constantly shifting A-Prime flu there so far. And those are just the overt ones".

"The news media?"

"So far, no problem. They believe it's anthrax."

"What else?"

"One very serious problem. We have a Texas highway patrolman named Joseph Robert Brentwood. His cousin owns the gas station where Campion ended up. He dropped by yesterday morning to tell Hapscomb the health people were coming. We picked him up three hours ago and he's en route to Atlanta now. In the meantime he's been patrolling half of East Texas. God knows how many people he's been in contact with."

"Oh, shit," Starkey said, and was appalled by the watery weakness in his voice and the skin-crawl that had started near the base of his testicles and was now working up into his belly. 99.4% communicability, he thought. It played insanely over and over in his mind. And that meant 99.4% excess mortality, because the human body couldn't produce the antibodies necessary to stop a constantly shifting antigen virus. Every time the body did did produce the right antibody, the virus simply shifted to a slightly new form. For the same reason a vaccine was going to be almost impossible to create. produce the right antibody, the virus simply shifted to a slightly new form. For the same reason a vaccine was going to be almost impossible to create.

99.4%.

"Christ," he said. "That's it?"