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“How much time to evacuate?” Gutierrez asked.

“You can’t evacuate,” she said. “If you don’t do this right now, it’s going to be too late. Look how it converted Ogden’s men, how fast it took over and what it made them do. The spores have already spread all through downtown Detroit. Thousands are infected. The infected will radiate out of the city. These people are terrified. They’re going to get as far from Detroit as they can; you can’t stop them. Some of them will turn into these… gasbags… full of spores. We just watched it happen. The infection will spread everywhere. People will be converted into this collective organism—they won’t be human anymore. If it spreads past Detroit, we’re fucked. Humanity is fucked. You have to act now, Mister President, or it’s out of our hands for good.”

“Where are you?” Gutierrez asked.

“We’re getting on the Osprey at the football field.”

She ran up the ramp. It started to close behind her. Seven men were inside. They stared at her and Clarence, and instantly shied away, shuffling toward the front of the passenger section.

“Margaret,” Gutierrez said, his voice quiet and cold. “Are you sure, absolutely sure this is the only way?”

“I… I am.”

Another pause, then Murray again. “I’m telling the Osprey pilot to take off fast,” he said. “You should be out of range when it goes off. What are the exact target coordinates?”

Margaret stared out for a second. All of Dew’s men were gone. No one to paint the target. There was one way, though, to make sure the nuke hit the right spot.

“Can you get a signal from Dew’s satphone?”

“Yes.”

“Drop it there.”

PERRY MEETS CHELSEA

Perry’s body boiled inside. He and pain were old buddies, but his old buddy was making itself a little too welcome. His second infection, it seemed, would be just as much fun as the first.

He walked through the front door of the abandoned building. Two of Ogden’s men were inside. They’d recovered their weapons. The spores didn’t seem to affect them.

They let Perry pass.

Come to me, my protector.

He walked. The two men followed him, one behind each shoulder. Chelsea was on the second floor. He could sense her, feel her beauty, her power, her divinity. He walked up old stairs that creaked under his feet.

General Ogden said we’d have another hour or so before they shut down the city, so we have to hurry. We need a car. Then we can go for a ride.

He reached the top of the stairs.

Down the hall, standing in an empty, trash-strewn room of the abandoned building, he finally saw her.

Chelsea.

And his heart ached.

“I’m afraid I destroyed the gate, Chelsea.”

You have destroyed many things.

“No gate… what will you do?”

We’re like a new person now. A superorganism. Isn’t that a neat word? Can’t you feel the crawlers working through your body? They will change you even more, Perry. We will escape Detroit, and then you and I will make the whole world play together.

He walked up to her. His feet seemed heavy, each step like dead-lifting a thousand pounds. Every nerve screamed with agony.

She could do it. She could take over the world.

Chelsea Jewell could be God.

You understand now, don’t you? You understand how silly it was to fight all this time? Let’s get a car and go get some ice cream.

Perry smiled down at her. So tiny, so fragile, so beautiful.

He snapped his right arm back into the soldier behind him. A pile-driver elbow smashed into the man’s face, crushing his left cheek and fracturing his right orbital bone. The man on Perry’s left started to raise his M4, but Perry pointed his .45 down and fired twice. Two bullets shredded the man’s foot into raw meat. The man shivered, dropped his gun and instinctively reached for his foot. As he bent down, Perry put the.45 to his head and pulled the trigger.

Perry swiveled right to face the man he’d elbowed. Two shots, both bullets ripping through the man’s chest. Before the body even hit the filthy wooden floor, Perry turned back and reached out.

His big right hand locked on Chelsea Jewell’s throat.

He lifted her. She weighed nothing.

Stop it!

“No.”

No, Perry, NO! Bad Perry!

She didn’t look scared. She didn’t look evil, either. She looked like a spoiled child, a child who did whatever she wanted, took whatever she wanted.

He squeezed a little harder.

Fear crept into those angelic blue eyes, the realization that maybe she didn’t control him.

You have to do what I say! I told you to kill that man, and you did!

“You didn’t make me do it,” Perry said. “I couldn’t let him wind up like me. I had to help him.”

Footsteps rushed up the stairs behind him. Perry turned to face the open door, Chelsea still held out in front of him. The last gunman sprinted down the hall, M4 raised. He skidded to a halt when he saw Chelsea held in the air like a shield.

Perry aimed and fired.

The bullet hit the last man dead center in the forehead. He took one step back, dropped his gun, then lifted his right hand, weakly, as if he wanted to touch Chelsea’s hair one last time.

The man fell backward.

He didn’t move.

Perry looked at Chelsea. So beautiful. He understood that man’s dying gesture of love, of affection.

Why would you kill me, Perry?

Hate tinged her ice-cold eyes.

Cold, like the eyes of a hatchling.

You’re not like anyone else. I can see into your memories, Perry. No one accepted you for who you are, but with me you can be what you were born to be—a killer.

“Maybe that’s what I was born to be,” Perry said. “But it’s not who I am anymore.”

It is, and you know it is. Why help them? What have these people ever done for you?

“One of them was going to take me fishing,” Perry said.

Then he shot Chelsea Jewell in the face.

DEW’S SATPHONE

A soldier handed Margaret a satphone. She just looked at it. Clarence took it and answered.

“Agent Otto here.”

The voice on the satphone was crackling but clearly audible. “It’s Murray. I’ve got Perry. He wants to talk with Margaret.”

Margaret’s body sagged in her seat. Perry was still alive? Not for long, not long at all.

“Okay,” she said, and took the phone.

More crackling, then the deep voice of Perry Dawsey. “Hey Margo.”

She fought back the tears. If she cried too hard she couldn’t speak. “Hey,” she said. “Are you… are you on Dew’s phone?”

“Yeah,” Perry said. “I got Chelsea. The voices have finally stopped, but… I don’t think I’m doing so good. I’ve got those things inside me. It hurts. Bad. I think they’re moving to my brain. Margaret, I don’t want to lose control again.

“You won’t,” she said. “They won’t have time.”

A pause. “Holy shit,” he said. “Are you nuking me?”

“Yes.”

Laughter, cut short by a wet cough, then a groan of pain. “Dew said I’m like a cockroach, that nothing can kill me. I don’t think physics is on my side this time, though.”

Margaret let out a sound that was half cry, half laugh. Her soul hurt.

“Clarence with you?”