Contagious Page 3

“Hatchlings,” Murray said. “You get a better look, right about . . . now.”

The video grew shaky as the hatchlings suddenly rushed forward to attack. The shot angled sharply before the first creature reached the troops, probably as the soldier shooting the footage dropped the camera. Murray paused it there. John stared at a tilted close-up of a pyramid-shaped creature with angry, vertical black eyes and tentacles for legs.

Again, total silence.

John Gutierrez had made a career out of sizing people up. That innate skill had taken him from mayor to state senator. It had been key in adding Vanessa to his staff. When he met her, he knew. Her skill and ruthlessness had guided him from state senate into Congress, and now the White House. An amazing feat, considering that John was forty-six years old and the nation’s first Hispanic president. John Gutierrez trusted his eyes, his instincts—and those tools now told him that Murray Longworth wasn’t bulls.h.i.tting anyone.

This was real.

“What the h.e.l.l are we dealing with, Murray?” John asked. “You’re not going to tell me these are aliens, are you?”

“That’s our best guess, sir,” Murray said. “The technology is way beyond anything we know. We suspect that the hatchlings are a form of biological machine, designed to build the glowing structure.”

John wanted to kill Hutchins. The former president might as well have left a giant, steaming pile of s.h.i.t on the Oval Office rug. Now the problem rested squarely in John’s lap, and no matter what happened, the public would a.s.sociate this with his presidency, not Hutchins’s.

“Wahjamega,” Donald said. “Wait a minute, that’s where the Osprey helicopter crashed back in December. Eight soldiers died.”

“A cover story,” Murray said. “There was no crash. The eight soldiers died when we attacked and destroyed the gate.”

Donald looked around the room in disbelief, as if he were waiting for Vanessa or John or Tom to say gotcha.

But no one said gotcha.

“Simply amazing,” Vanessa said. She sounded sarcastic, but also quite shaken, and John couldn’t blame her. “The families of these brave men may never know the truth. They died in battle, and we list it as a helicopter crash. How patriotic of us. So what’s happened since then?”

“Dawsey needed serious medical care,” Murray said. “We had him in a VA hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Seems he recovered faster than expected, got access to a computer, hacked into the facility’s database and altered his security status. It’s a bit embarra.s.sing to say, but on January eighth he just walked out.

“The parasites built something in his brain, some kind of mesh structure that lets him track down infected hosts. He found one that had just murdered three people. Dawsey killed the man in self-defense. Before the man died, however, Dawsey discovered the location of another gate, in—”

“Mather, Wisconsin,” Donald interrupted. “The Osprey crash in Mather. Twelve men dead.”

Murray nodded.

“Who knows about this?” John asked. “The whole story, who knows?”

“The Joint Chiefs,” Murray said. “They had to implement President Hutchins’s decision to sequester the soldiers involved and rea.s.sign them to a new unit. The soldiers themselves know they fought something unusual, but very few people know the whole story: Phillips, Montoya, Braun, Agent Clarence Otto—who’s Montoya’s CIA liaison—the CIA director, Hutchins and a few members of his staff.”

“What about the FBI?” Vanessa asked. “The CIA has no domestic police authority. You shouldn’t be doing any of this.”

“The FBI does not have detailed knowledge,” Murray said. “Once again, we were acting on the direct orders of President Hutchins.”

Vanessa stared at Murray and shook her head. John knew she had her sights firmly set on the man: she was going dinosaur hunting. It would be up to Murray to fend off her attacks and to prove his worth.

But how much more did the man need to prove? A behavior-altering human parasite, at least two military operations on U. S. soil that resulted in casualties, what might very well be alien machines . . . and no one knew. The media didn’t even have an inkling. John now understood why his predecessor raved about Murray Longworth.

“We still don’t really know what we’re up against,” Murray said. “We haven’t been able to capture one of those hatchlings alive. The ones we kill disintegrate very quickly, within a few hours. Even the gate material breaks down almost immediately, so that hasn’t given us any information.”

“How do we know that these things are truly hostile?” Donald said. Vanessa and Tom “They attacked our troops, I understand, but could that be a defensive action, to protect this construct long enough for them to . . . I can’t believe I’m even saying this out loud . . . long enough for them to make contact?”

“A race that technologically advanced could initiate at least a rudimentary communication,” Murray said. “The only logical reason they haven’t is that they don’t want to. They build only in remote areas. Why not build whatever it is out in the open? Because if they did that, our military could surround them and prepare for whatever came through. That’s not a problem unless you’re bringing in your own military units. This seclusion indicates they want to insert a.s.sets, a.s.sets that could be vulnerable during the insertion process.”

“A beachhead,” Donald said. “They want to control a landing zone.”

Murray nodded. “That’s our a.s.sessment, Mister Secretary. And finally, look at the behavior of the infected victims. These parasites represent a level of bioengineering we can’t even fathom. Could something capable of utilizing a human host like that accidentally create behavior that makes the host avoid contact with health-care professionals? Or kill people very close to them, people who might see the welts and call for help?”