Contagious Page 64

Gutierrez nodded. Murray almost ran out of the room.

WAKE UP, MOMMY

Chelsea stood at the foot of her parents’ bed eating a Crunch Bar Eskimo Pie. It was only 8:00 A.M., and this was her third Crunch.

Mommy and Daddy didn’t get to make the rules anymore.

Try to wake them up. But don’t use words.

“For real?”

Speak to me with your thoughts.

Sorry, Chelsea thought.

My connection is going to be the strongest with you. You will help me talk to the rest. Now try to wake the mup.

Chelsea took a bite of ice cream, swallowed it, then concentrated.

Wake up, sleepyheads.

Nothing happened.

Try again. Don’t be nice, Chelsea.

You know how when you get angry, when you scream, your voice gets louder?

Yes.

Thoughts work the same way. Have your parents ever done anything to make you angry?

Chelsea’s smile faded away. Why shouldn’t she have all the ice cream she wanted? Why wouldn’t Daddy let her get her ears pierced? And why couldn’t she get a puppy? She wanted a puppy. That just wasn’t fair.

Maybe Daddy needed protection, but he also need to stop being bad.

Chelsea focused again.

Wake up, Daddy . . . or I’m going to spank you.

Daddy sat up fast, fully awake. He just stared at Chelsea. She had never seen Daddy’s face look like that before. His mouth was open and his eyes were all wide.

“Did you say something, honey?”

He absently scratched at his left arm. A big orange scabby thing came off in his hand. Without taking his eyes from his daughter, he tossed the scabby thing away and started scratching again.

I told you to wake up or I would spank you.

Daddy stopped scratching. His right hand just sort of hung on his left shoulder, frozen in half-scratch.

“That’s what I thought,” he said in a quiet voice.

Chelsea turned to stare at Mommy. Wake up, Mommy.

Mommy lifted her head, then set it back down, rolled over and groaned.

“Oh, I’m so hot,” she said. “Bob, tell Chelsea to stop screaming and go back to bed. She made me so goddamn sick.”

Daddy kept staring. “Uh, Candy? Uh . . . you better wake up.”

“I’m not kidding, Bob,” Mommy said in her Daddy Is So Stupid voice.

Chelsea dropped the ice cream stick on the floor.

Mommy, you get out of bed or I’ll make Daddy spank you.

Mommy sat up slowly and pulled the blankets right under her chin.

She stared at her daughter, face full of confusion.

“Chelsea,” Mommy whispered, “am I hearing you . . . in my . . . my head?”

“Get up, Candy,” Daddy said. “Please. She’s making me want to . . . to punish you.”

Mommy looked at Daddy and started to cry. She wasn’t getting up.

Chelsea had told her to get up.

Daddy, Mommy is being a bad girl.

Mommy shook her head. Daddy got out of bed and walked out of the bedroom. Chelsea stared at Mommy as they listened to Daddy walk downstairs, open a drawer in the kitchen, then walk back up. When he came into the bedroom, he was holding Mommy’s heavy spanky-spoon in his shaking hand.

Mommy, this is going to hurt Daddy more than it hurts you.

Mommy just kept shaking her head and crying until Daddy really got going. Then she started to scream.

THE NEED FOR SPEED

Colonel Charlie Ogden looked over Corporal Cope’s shoulder. They both stared at a computer screen showing a map of Gaylord, Michigan.

“Lot of roads in and out of that town, Colonel,” Cope said.

“Noted,” Ogden said. “What’s the population?”

“Over thirty-five hundred, sir. That’s a lot of people to manage with one company.”

“I’m thinking the same thing,” Ogden said. “But we have state and local police helping. How long a flight for the C-17s?”

“About an hour, sir,” Cope said. “Plus an hour to load up and another to fly. We could have X Company offloaded and ready to deploy in under three hours.”

“Call the pilots and the platoon leaders,” Ogden said. “They don’t pay us to have our bags packed for nothing. We scramble now. I want to be offloaded in two and a half, not three.”

“Yes sir.”

Cope left the desk and started making calls. Ogden sat down and studied the map. The airport was right in town. The hatchlings had made that mistake in Wahjamega as well, building a gate so close to a landing strip that Ogden had landed his troops only a couple of miles away from the target.

Cope was right—there were a lot of roads. First glance showed about twenty ways out of town, not counting the highways I-75 and M-32. No real choke points. Ogden could have the police handle the highways, keep a lower profile that way, but he wasn’t going to put a couple of cops on each back road. The infected were just too dangerous for that. He’d need to put a roadblock on each small road, stationed with at least four men.

The smaller roads were mostly paved rural routes through farmland, although there were a lot of vehicle-capable dirt trails that wound through wooded areas. And then the woods themselves, where people could just walk out and avoid the roads altogether. His men would be spread fairly thin to cover it all.

“Cope,” Ogden said.

“Sir?”

“Call Captain Lodge and activate Whiskey Company. We need them for this. We’ll leave Yankee and Zulu companies at Fort Bragg. Best to have a reserve that can react fast, in case we’re tied up in Gaylord, don’t you think?”

“Are you asking my opinion, sir?”

“No,” Ogden said. “It’s a rhetorical question.”

“In that case I agree with whatever you say, Colonel.”

“That’s what I like about you, Cope, you’re so opinionated. Now make the calls.”

“Yes sir.”

Chapter end