Contagious Page 33

At 6,250 feet the probe pa.s.sed through the cloud layer. It identified a target zone and shot northwest. To the Orbital and the probe, one place was the same as the next. On human maps, however, this place had a name.

It was called g.a.y.l.o.r.d.

At 1,500 feet the probe completed its final instruction. It sent a charge through every particle that turned off the static bonds.

The probe didn’t explode. It disintegrated, changing from a solid machine one second to a cloud of grains the next, grains that would spread as they fell and never draw an ounce of attention. The disintegration also released the seeds.

Over a billion of them.

A light southwesterly wind dispersed the seeds like a trail of thin smoke. Each breathy gust spread them farther, some sailing off on a lone journey, some driven in cl.u.s.ters like translucent contrails or intangible ghost-snakes.

The seeds spread.

The seeds fell.

The vast majority of them would land on ground, water or snow. They would sit there until the elements damaged their delicate internal machinery and they simply became lumps of inanimate matter. A few might get lucky and sit around long enough to wind up on a host, but the odds were against them. Of course, that was kind of the point in releasing a billion seeds at a time—even with s.h.i.t odds, a few were still going to land in a suitable place.

One of the expanding, ethereal seed trails drifted near a house on the outskirts of g.a.y.l.o.r.d, close to Highway 32. This house was the home of the Jewell family.

The Jewells had had their fill of snowmobiles and basketball, it seemed. Bobby, Candice, Chelsea, Donald and Betty were hard at work on the winter ritual of building a snowman.

Donald even made Bobby promise not to give the snowman a b.o.n.e.r, something Bobby had done since they were kids. He always sculpted a prodigious member and called the snowman “Sir d.i.c.ksickle.” Funny? h.e.l.l yes. But hardly appropriate now that Betty was sixteen. Besides, Chelsea was well into the age where Bobby would have to start acting like a grown man rather than a kid trapped in an adult’s body.

The strand of seeds rose and fell on the light breeze. Dipping to the ground, half of them hit the snow and stuck, doomed to a frigid end. The other half caught the wind coming off the snow and cruised along almost horizontally with the ground.

Donald finished rolling up the snowman head and had Betty help him lift it. It was packed pretty tight, but you never knew if these things would hold when they came off the ground. Besides, Betty was being “too cool” to wear mittens, so having her pick up a big block of ice and snow seemed rather fitting. Bobby wore only a T-shirt and jeans, which didn’t really help show Betty the need for proper winter clothing. They’d probably both catch a cold, and Donald would have the last laugh. The only problem with that was that Chelsea wanted to be like her cousin and had also tossed her gloves aside. If Chelsea caught a cold, Donald would be pretty p.i.s.sed at Betty.

They successfully set the head on top as Chelsea danced in place, hands clutching a big orange carrot. Her puffy baby-blue snowsuit made her look quite chubby. The carrot was the final stroke in the annual snowman masterpiece (who, sadly, would be Sir d.i.c.ksickle only in spirit this year), so naturally the honor fell to the youngest.

Just as Bobby reached down to pick up Chelsea and lift her so she could place the snowman’s carrot nose, the invisible cloud of microscopic seeds whipped through the Jewell family.

They missed Candice entirely.

Bobby’s T-shirt proved to be a disastrous choice—he caught seven on his left arm.

Donald was turned just so and inhaled three of them into his nose. Two more landed on his left hand.

Betty’s hat and thick black hair acted as a defense of sorts, trapping the seeds in the wool or amid her hair-sprayed locks. The wind whipped around her head, however, and four landed on her left cheek. One fell off as soon as it hit, but she would still have to deal with the three that stuck fast. If she had been wearing gloves, she would have at least avoided the one that stuck on her left hand.

Little Chelsea had the worst luck of all. She made a hole in the snowman’s head with her left thumb, then jammed the carrot in with her right hand. As she twisted the carrot, driving it deeper, setting it in real good so it wouldn’t fall off, fifteen seeds landed on her clammy, exposed skin, sticking fast to the backs of her hands, her palms and her fingers.

Still laughing, the family finished the snowman and applauded. Chelsea made everyone give her smoochies. Mmmmm-ahhhh! Mmmmm-ahhhh!

Then they all went inside.

LAYIN’ DOWN THE LAW

Room 207 had become the de facto ops center for the Glidden/Marinesco installment of Project Tangram. A little extra money and hotel management magically made the bed disappear, replacing it with a wooden table and chairs from the restaurant. Add a smaller table for a row of four briefcases that opened up to be computer/phone stations, and you had an instant office. At the moment the office contained Dew, Baumgartner, Milner and Amos. They were handling various cleanup aspects of the McMillian situation. Amos was only there for the free doughnuts, but that was to be expected.

The really sensitive communications still took place in the Margo-Mobile, but there was only so much room in there. Dew wanted to finish debriefing everyone, make sure he hadn’t missed anything. He also had to keep tabs on local law enforcement and the media.

Local police were almost always a snap. Despite jurisdictional squabbles, cops were all in the game for pretty much the same reason, and it wasn’t to get rich. If you told city cops, county cops or even state police that there was some s.h.i.t going down, s.h.i.t you couldn’t actually talk about, but it was real serious and that it was over, people were safe . . . well, ninety-nine times out of a hundred they’d let it go. And for that one-in-a-hundred liberal p.r.i.c.k who wouldn’t let something slide? He always had superiors who would play ball, put pressure on the guy to let things lie. Sometimes not even that worked. In those cases Dew would give a last warning, a final face-to-face chat. He’d tell the guy that his whole life was about to turn into a steaming pile of donkey s.h.i.t, that his reputation was about to be trashed, and if push came to shove he’d be facing some trumped-up charge that would end his career in law enforcement.