He stared for several seconds. “Now that’s disturbing,” he said softly.

“That’s what we’ve been telling you,” said JT tightly.

Bell turned and gave them both a quizzical look, then he unlocked the door.

“What the hell are you doing?” demanded Dez, taking a step toward him.

Bell gave her a sad, disapproving shake of his head as he stepped back, raising both arms, holding the .45 with two fingers out and away from his body as a dozen men in black BDUs and helmets with ballistic shields came swarming into the store. They carried M16s and shotguns and nine millimeters and they were all yelling.

They took Thom Bell’s gun away from him and pushed him to the floor.

A SWAT officer pointed a shotgun at Dez’s face. “Officer Fox, you are under arrest. Hold your arms out from your side … do it now!”

“What the fuck are you assholes doing! We’re police officers, goddamn it—”

Two officers closed on her, spinning her, taking her weapons, forcing her to the ground. JT bellowed like a bull, but he hit the deck next to her.

Dez knew every dirty trick in the book. She twisted as they forced her down and pulled one leg free and used it to kick one of her attackers in the shin. He crashed to the ground next to her, and suddenly there were six pairs of rough hands on her, slamming her chest-down onto the linoleum floor. Dez screamed and fought and cursed them to hell and back.

“Officer Fox,” growled the SWAT sergeant, “I need you to shut up and stop resisting or I will tase you.”

“Fuck you, you faggot! I’ll shove that Taser right up your—”

She felt a sudden sting and then a prolonged, searing burn. Her whole body went rigid and then shuddered with convulsions as thirty thousand volts flooded through her.

The world went blood red and then velvet black. Dez tried to scream, she tried to fight, but all she could do was fall.

She heard JT calling her name from a million miles away.

She heard someone yell, “Catch her!”

She heard her own twisted scream.

She felt her head hit something. The counter, the floor—she couldn’t tell—but it opened a big dark hole in the world and Dez Fox fell into it.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

GREEN GATES 55-PLUS COMMUNITY

Trout shoved the pistol into the waistband of his jeans. He stood in front of Volker, looking down at the doctor with undisguised contempt. “Listen to me you piece of shit. We’re going back to Stebbins. If one person is infected, if one single person dies because of what you did, I’ll make sure every newspaper in the world runs this story with you as the villain.”

Volker leaned back from Trout’s intensity, but there was some defiance in his blue eyes. “You were there to report on a man being killed by pumping poison into his veins, Mr. Trout. You profit from such stories. The public loves to read of such things. Should I believe that you’re naïve enough to think that we are not all monsters? Each in our own way.”

“Save that crap for a jury, asshole.”

“Or is it that you’re so arrogant,” Volker continued, “that you believe that your moral worldview supersedes all others? Can you tell me that you would not have executed Homer Gibbon, or even tortured him a little, knowing what you know of the horrors he inflicted on women and children?”

“Yeah, sure, I might have even enjoyed waterboarding the fucker,” snarled Trout. “That’s not the point. I wouldn’t have risked using radioactive water to do it, though. There’s revenge, and there’s primal satisfaction, and then there’s risking the health and wellbeing of others just to satisfy your own bloodlust. Don’t try to put me on the same playing field as you, Volker. As far as I see it, with the destructive potential of what you shot in Gibbon, you are every bit as bad as Gibbon. You’re every inch the monster he is.”

Trout’s blood roared in his ears.

Volker shook his head and turned away.

“I hope you rot in hell,” Trout whispered.

Then he turned and ran for the door. Goat lingered a moment longer, staring at Volker but unable to express the horrors that screamed in his head. He spat on the floor in front of the doctor, then followed Trout.

The Explorer roared down the lane, burning through the rainwater to leave skid marks on the asphalt. Trout and Goat both had their cell phones out, punching numbers as fast as they could.

* * *

In the wreck of a Stebbins County police cruiser, lost under a seat amid a jumble of spent shell casings, Dez Fox’s cell phone began ringing. The ringtone was from a Dwight Yoakum tune. The phone rang four times and then went to voice mail.

Dez’s message was: “You got the machine. Leave a message and a number. If I don’t call back, your message wasn’t interesting.”

When Trout heard the call go to voice mail, his heart juddered in his chest. “Come on, Dez … come on.”

At the beep, he said, “Dez, I need you to call me back right away.” He paused, trying to word a message that she wouldn’t immediately delete. “I got a reliable tip that someone infected with a dangerous disease is in town. Call me now!”

He clicked off and tried JT. Straight to voice mail. He left a similar message, hung up, and called Marcia.

The phone rang three times. Four … and then she answered.

“Marcia!”

“Oh … Christ … Billy…” she said. Her voice was weak and she was breathing too fast and too hard. It sounded like she was having sex. “Billy … God…”

“Marcia, what’s wrong? What’s going on there?”

“Billy … I tried calling 9-1-1. They … they didn’t answer…”

“Marcia!”

“It hurts, Billy … oh my god … it hurts so bad. I can’t stop the bleeding…”

The line abruptly went dead.

Trout screamed into the phone. Nothing. He redialed, and got nothing. No voice mail. Not even a ring.

“What was that?” demanded Goat, his eyes filled with fear.

“Marcia. She was hurt. She said she was bleeding and then the line went dead.” He looked at the phone display. “Says the number is unavailable.”

“Oh shit. I called my roommate,” said Goat. “He started to say something about hearing sirens and some gunshots, then nothing. You think the storm knocked the lines down? Or…?”

Trout cut him a brief, savage look. “Try the police.”

Goat hit 9-1-1 and got the regional dispatcher. He put it on speaker and asked to be patched through to Stebbins County. He expected to hear Flower’s voice. Instead a stern male voice said, “Sir, what is the nature of your emergency?”

Instead of asking about the nature of the emergency, the operator asked for his location. Trout hung up.

“What’d you do that for?” asked Goat.

“That was the military,” said Trout. “I’d bet my ass on it. They’re intercepting all the calls to Stebbins police.”

“Oh, shit,” said Goat softly. “Oh shit.”

Trout cut in and out of traffic. Cars blared horns at him but he didn’t even slow down long enough to give the finger. His heart was racing faster than the engine.

Goat licked his lips. “The military … that’s good, right? I mean…?” His voice trailed off. A moment later he said, “We’re in deep shit.”

“I know,” said Trout, and he stepped down harder on the gas.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

WOLVERTON REGIONAL HOSPITAL

“Where is he?”

Irene Compton, the desk nurse, looked up at the intern, who looked about a year younger than her daughter. “Pardon?” asked the nurse with a half smile.

The intern, a petite redhead who could not possibly be out of high school let alone a medical student, was not smiling. “Patient in Sixteen. Chart says he presented with a bite?”

“Oh, that’s Mr. Wieland. One of the farmers picked him up at a gas station and brought him in. We took vitals and put him in … um.…” She punched a few keys on the computer. “Yup … in sixteen.”

The intern, whose name tag read Slattery, narrowed her eyes. “No, he’s not in sixteen. I just came from sixteen. There’s no one there.”

Nurse Compton kept her smile in place. She was well aware that she looked matronly and these interns usually started thinking of her as a mom figure. “Maybe he went to the bathroom.”

Dr. Slattery turned and stalked away. No thanks, no nothing. Nurse Compton watched her slim figure retreat down the hall. “Bitch,” she said quietly.

Dr. Gail Slattery pushed through the double doors leading to the emergency unit. There were two central nurses stations surrounded by rows of curtained bays. Each bay was marked with a number that was painted on the floor and stamped onto a bright plastic disk mounted on the ceiling just outside the curtain tracks. She stomped past bays eleven through fifteen. Most of them were unoccupied. Fourteen had a broken hip, fifteen had a seventeen-year-old skateboarder. Sixteen was supposed to be the bite victim, but wasn’t. The room was a mess, too. Bloodstains on the sheets, pillow on the floor. Open suture kit sitting on a chair.

She snorted and kept going, peering into bay seventeen, also empty, and eighteen, probable torn ACL. The last bay, nineteen, was next to the bathroom. The patient in nineteen was one that Slattery had already seen. Mona Greene. A geriatric with chest pains. Woman was ninety-three, a smoker, and had a history of angina, emphysema, and congestive heart failure dating back to the Clinton presidency. It was a wonder she was alive, let alone able to drive herself here about once every three months for “chest pressure.”

The curtains were drawn, and Dr. Slattery parted them for a quick peek.

She was about to say something, but she froze, her lips parted.

Mrs. Greene was there, sure enough … but so was Mr. Wieland. He was bent over the old woman, and for an odd moment Gail Slattery thought that the man was kissing her. Or whispering something in her ear.