Infected

  FEED NOW

  The command sounded like a cannon exploding inside his head. His eyes shut tight. His teeth ground in reaction to the pain.

  FEED NOW

  Perry let out a small, choked groan, he couldn’t think straight, he couldn’t grip what he needed to do to

  FEED NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW

  “Shut the fuck up!” Perry shouted as loudly as he could, his voice a deep, guttural blast of pain and anger. “We’ll eat, we’ll eat! Just stop screaming in my head!”

  okay feed us now okay

  feed us now now now

  Like the return stroke of a bowstring after release of an arrow, his mind snapped back to normal. A single tear trailed down his cheek. Their shouting had been so intense he’d been unable to move, almost unable to speak.

  now Now Now

  Perry jumped up as he heard their intensity start to creep higher. He’d hopped the eight hops to the kitchen before he gave it a second thought, his body acting from fear of that pain.

  He was snapping to attention like a soldier under orders, not thinking, only doing as he was told, like some good little Nazi carrying out the master plan. Jawohl, Herr Kommandant. I’ll kill the Jews and the Gypsies and the Czechs because I have no mind of my own, and it’s okay because someone told me to do it. He was a robot, a remote-controlled servant. It humiliated him, somehow dug away at his pride as a man. A man, after all, was in charge of his own destiny, not at the whim of some slave driver, some controller.

  He tried to console his damaged pride by telling himself he was very hungry and would have eaten anyway—it wasn’t because the Triangles had told him to. But that was bullshit. Right now he felt like a puppet on a string, doing a funky little dance each time the Starting Five tweaked at one of his nerves. Worse than a puppet—he felt like he was ten years old again, jumping with fear every time his father spoke.

  Still had the Ragu. He fished it out of the fridge and pulled a box of Rice-A-Roni from the cupboard. He was almost out of food and would have to shop very soon. Wouldn’t that be a hoot? The condemned man, dying of some freaky parasite, pushing a cart at Kroger’s and picking out the last meal he would cook for himself. Now that’s a liberal death row.

  A flash of cooking inspiration came to him as he put the Rice-A-Roni back and grabbed the half-full bag of Cost Cutter rice. No noodles, but the Ragu looked just too darn good to pass up. Fishing a measuring cup out of the cupboard, he set a pot to boil.

  now Now now

  The words drifted menacingly through his head.

  “Just hold your horses. Dinner’s going to be ready in about twenty minutes.”

  now now now

  “It’s not ready yet,” Perry urged, his voice pleading. He poured the Ragu into a mismatched pot and set it to simmer. “Like I said, you’ll just have to wait a few minutes.”

  The lumpy noise probed at his brain.

  what is a minute

  sonofabitch

  “A minute. You know, sixty seconds.” It seemed so obvious it was difficult to explain. It was odd the Triangles wouldn’t know the concept of time. “Do you know what a second is? What time is?”

  second no time yes

  That reply came back fast, with only a touch of lumpy noise. They knew what time was. He’d have to illustrate “a second.” He looked at the clock on the stove—if they could see that, it would be easy to explain.

  “You can’t…” A chill washed over him, cutting off the question. Suddenly he wasn’t sure if he wanted an answer. “You can’t…see…can you? See through my eyes?” He hadn’t given much thought to exactly what these bastards could do. They could “read” his mind, in the literal sense, so could they pick up and read optical impulses from his brain? Pick them off in midstream?

  no we cannot see

  The answer was a relief, but a short-lived relief, cut in half by the rest of the answer:

  not yet

  Not yet.

  They were still growing. Maybe they were simply going to take over his mind, pushing Perry’s own consciousness out of the way one step at a time. Maybe they were slowly choking out his brain, just as a gangly, fibrous weed in a garden methodically robs sustenance from a rose. The rose may be beautiful, glowing and soft, but the weed…the weed is the survivor, the one that grows in harsh soil, rocks, bad weather, low light. The one that faces impossible conditions and not only survives, but flourishes.

  Perry was suddenly quite sure he knew what was happening—the Triangles were growing into him, taking over his body and his mind, keeping the shell, leaving the outside world none the wiser. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was the typical Hollywood script. And why not? It made sense. Why send armies and conquer the earth when you could slowly replace the human race? More efficient, more economic. Neater. Tidier. No messy bodies to clean up. Better even than the infamous neutron bomb that killed all the people and left the buildings standing.

  Soon they’d tap in to his eyes. What next? His nose? Hell, maybe they were already smelling the rice simmering on the stove. Or maybe his mouth—they could speak to him through his own voice. Then what? His muscles? His very motions? Just how efficient were the little bastards?

  And how long were they going to be little? Maybe they weren’t separate at all. Maybe they were just different parts with different missions. Living jigsaw-puzzle pieces all planning on connecting in the swinging-singles Triangle bar known as Perry’s Place.

  A warm flash of fuzzy noise interrupted his doom-and-gloom thoughts.

  how long is a second

  how long is a minute

  how long

  Perry desperately wanted to avoid that mental screaming, that insistent chain saw of Triangle demand grinding through his thoughts.

  “Okay, let’s figure this out.” He talked quickly, hoping to prevent any agitation. “See, a minute is sixty seconds, and a second is a very short piece of time.” The fuzzy noise seemed stuck on a high-pitched buzz—as he talked, they searched the database to keep up with the meaning of his words. “And a second is, like, this long…here, I’ll count to five using seconds. Pay attention to how long each count is, and that’s a second. One…two…three…four…five.” A flash of childhood memory reared to the surface, the jazzy counting song from the show The Electric Company (one-two-three four, five, six-seven-eight-nine-ten, eleven tweh-eh-eh-elve).

  “That was five seconds, get it?” The high-pitched searching grew louder, followed only by the briefest buzz of a low pitch.

  second is short

  minute is sixty

  seconds hour is sixty

  minutes correct

  All inflection left the Starting Five’s voice. He could only assume that the word correct had been part of a question and not a statement, as there wasn’t even the smallest lilt in the words that echoed through his head. Whatever the reason for their brief digression into spaced-out land, they had returned to their emotionless monotone.

  “Correct.” He’d never mentioned the concept of an “hour.” They had pulled it out of his brain, probably based on its association with the minute and the second. Their ability to scan his brain grew faster and faster.

  It hit him—quite suddenly, with the shuddering force of truth and revelation—that people were just complicated machines. They were no different than computers. The brain was simply a control center and a storage device; when you needed to remember something, the brain sent some kind of signal to recall stored data, exactly like telling a program to open a file. The command was sent, and another part of the computer

  twenty-four hours in

  a day

  looked for data with code that matched the command, found it and sent that information to the processor where it was read and displayed on the screen. The brain was exactly the same thing. Memories were stored in there somehow, some chemical process tied up in the cerebrum or cerebellum or what have you. With the right technology, you could read that stored data as easily as you could read the store
d data in a hard drive, or the stored data on the pages of a book. They were all just mediums for keeping track of simple bits of information that

  seven days in a week

  formed something more complex. But just like matter (compounds, then elements, then atoms, then protons and electrons), everything could be broken down into smaller and smaller parts.

  It was looking more and more like the Triangles were constructed to read those little parts…to be able to fetch Perry’s stored memories off the hard drive he’d been carrying since before his birth: his brain. The sheer

  four weeks in a month

  complexity of the Triangles’ ability was daunting. And they learned quickly; their search times seemed to grow progressively faster. They were also learning not only to pick up the single memory or word he had spoken, but associated words and memories as well. So far it looked like they could only tap into his long-term memory: time concepts, vocabulary, words with images attached in order to define meanings.

  These creatures

  twelve months in

  a year

  had the ability to read his brain like a hard drive, but they had no initial concept of simple things like

  ten years in a decade

  time, or the technology of television, or that voices could be projected, not real.

  Something was missing from this mystery, or perhaps something was just a bit out of place. He still didn’t know what the Triangles were, where they came from or how long he had until they took over his body.

  But maybe he could stop them. Maybe…if he got help.

  The mythical Soldiers were out there, and they knew. They knew about the Triangles. They wanted to kill the Triangles. Fuck up the Starting Five and send them packing. The big question, Perry old boy, the big twenty-thousand-dollar question is who are these “soldiers”?

  This wasn’t Hollywood. There were no Men in Black to save the day with a handsome smile and a witty comment. No X-Files agents crashing through his door to cast plaintive looks his way. No superhero from another planet with a special gun to blast the boogers right out of his body. He didn’t know whom to call, where to go, but there had to be somebody out there.

  ten decades in

  a century

  A sudden thought froze him. If they could scan his brain, how much longer until they could read his active thoughts? And when that happened, what would they do if they knew he wanted to contact the Soldiers? They’d scream so loud his brain would turn to puree, drip out of his ears and dribble out his nose like snot.

  Maybe they were listening right now.

  He had to stop thinking about it. But if he didn’t think about it, how was he going to contact anybody? He couldn’t even think about killing the Triangles—they’d fry him from the inside out first. Cook his brain like a microwave potato. But he couldn’t stop thinking, could he? And if he did stop, if he did tune such thoughts of survival from his brain, then he was surely doomed.

  Stress steadily built up inside him, gaining steam like a wall of bricks crashing down from an exploding building.

  The buzzer on the stove loudly announced that the rice was done. His mind grabbed on to this new distraction like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver, gripping it with all he had, focusing all his thoughts on the thrilling subject of dinner.

  Perry didn’t realize that it was a temporary escape. He didn’t realize that his mind was already beginning to crack and fissure under the stress of the impossible-to-believe situation that unfolded around him and inside him. The floodwaters were slowly rising, inevitable, unstoppable, irresistible—and the high ground would only stay above the waterline for so long.

  39.

  MOMMY’S LITTLE GIRL

  Clarence Otto stopped the car. Cell phone pressed to her ear, Margaret looked out the window at a neat, two-story brick house on Miller Avenue. White shutters and trim. Dead-looking ivy branches covering one side of the house—in the summer that side would be a flat wall of leafy green, the very epitome of old-school collegiate housing.

  Amos sat in the backseat, clearly annoyed at the whole process. While he was indefatigable in the confines of a hospital, being outdoors in the cold brought out his surly side.

  “We just pulled up to the girl’s house,” Margaret said into her cell phone.

  “Tell Otto to stay sharp,” Dew said. “I’ve got six bodies over here, it’s spinning out of control. Your backup team is there?”

  Margaret turned in the seat to look back, even though she knew what she’d see. Gray van, unmarked, parked right behind them.

  “It’s here. We’ll let Otto lead, of course, but I think we’re okay—the girl just had the Morgellons fibers, no triangles.”

  “Fine, just stay sharp,” Dew said. “These guys are psychos. And as soon as you’re done, get over here.”

  “What have you found?”

  Dew paused. “Seems our college boy was an artist. I think you’ll want to see this.”

  “All right, Dew. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  Dew hung up without another word.

  “What did he say?” Amos asked.

  “Six more bodies,” Margaret said absently. “The other side of town. We’re heading over there when we’re done here.”

  In the backseat Amos hung his head. This was wearing on him, Margaret knew. Behind his sunglasses, Agent Clarence Otto showed no sign of emotion, but the muscles in his jaw twinged slightly.

  “Are you ready?” Otto asked. She nodded.

  They approached the house, Margaret and Amos keeping two steps behind Otto. Otto knocked on the door with his left hand—his right hand hidden inside his jacket, resting on the hilt of his weapon.

  There was little chance of danger. Cheng’s report showed he had given the girl a careful examination, and would have certainly seen anything resembling a triangle or triangle-to-be. They still had to keep things as quiet as possible—if they kicked in the door to find a perfectly normal family, a little bit more of the secrecy would die, and Americans would be a little bit closer to discovering the nightmare blossoming in their midst.

  Snow covered the ground and the leafless trees. Most of the houses on this street had white lawns, thick with undisturbed snow. Some, like this one, had lawns trampled over and over by tiny feet, the snow’s beauty crushed by the tireless energy of playing children.

  The door opened. In the doorway stood a little angel—blond pigtails, blue dress, sweet face. She even held a rag doll, for crying out loud.

  “Hello, sweetie,” Otto said.

  “Hello, sir.” She didn’t look afraid at all. Nor did she look happy or excited, just matter-of-fact.

  “Are you Missy Hester?”

  She nodded, her curly pigtails bouncing in time.

  Otto’s empty right hand came out of his jacket, slowly dropping to hang at his side.

  Margaret stepped to Otto’s right, so the girl could see her clearly. “Missy, we’re here to see your mother. Is she home?”

  “She’s sleeping. Would you like to come in and sit down in the living room?”

  She stood aside and gestured with her hand. A regular little hostess.

  “Thank you,” Otto said. He walked inside, head turning quickly as he seemed to scan every inch of the house. Margaret and Amos followed. It was a small, simple affair. Aside from a scattered layer of brightly colored toys, the place looked immaculate.

  Missy led them into the living room, where Margaret and Amos sat on a couch. Otto chose to remain standing. The living room gave a view of the stairs, the front door and another doorway that led into the dining-nook area of a kitchen.

  “How about your daddy?” Margaret said. “Is he home?”

  Missy shook her head. “He doesn’t live with us anymore. He lives in Grand Rapids.”

  “Well, honey, can you go wake up your mom? We need to talk to her and to you.”

  The girl nodded, curls jiggling, then turned and ran up the stairs.

  “She seems per
fectly healthy,” Amos said. “We’ll take a good look at her, but she doesn’t seem to show any signs of infection.”

  “Maybe cutting out the threads works in the new strain,” Margaret said. “Morgellons cases have been going on for years without any triangle growths. Something had to have changed.”

  “They’re just being built better,” Otto said. “No disrespect to either of you, but you think too much. Murray hit it right on the head. Sometimes the most obvious answer is just that, the answer.”

  “Occam’s razor does seem to apply,” Amos said.

  “What’s that?” Otto asked.

  Amos smiled. “Never mind. It just means you’re probably right.”

  All three of their heads turned as a little boy appeared in the open doorway to the kitchen. He couldn’t have been more than seven, maybe eight—he wore a cowboy hat, gun holsters on his hips, chaps with fringe and a slightly crooked black mask—the full-on Lone Ranger costume. Otto tensed at the sight of the six-shooters in the boy’s hands, but each had a barrel capped with bright orange plastic. Cap guns. Toys.

  “Hold it right there, pardners,” the boy said. He made his little voice all gravelly, trying to sound tough, but he just sounded cute.

  Otto laughed. “Oh, we’re holding it, Lone Ranger. Is there a problem?”

  “Not if you keep your hands where I can see ’em, mister.”

  Otto raised his hands to shoulder height, palms out. “You’ll get no trouble from me, Ranger. No trouble ’tall.”

  The boy nodded, the very picture of seriousness. “Well, let’s just keep it that way, and we’ll all get along reallllll nice like.”