Monster Nation(23)

Jesus f*cked a duck, indeed.

Clarkgrabbed the bridge of his nose and pinched. He was trained for this. As part of his being named the RAID officer forColorado he had been required to complete an eight-week course in crisis response to biological warfare incidents. It was time to manage this thing. Time to prioritize. What did he need?

'I need flight schedules,' he said weakly, and Vikram pulled a note pad from his pocket. 'We at least need to start looking at epidemiology. I need crew lists and passenger manifests, we'll track down as many people as we can'God, I hope none of those flights were headed to non-aligned states, we'd never catch them. I need to talk to the administrator for FEMA region IX and the localGuardCO , not just the AG, I''

A flash-bang concussion grenade went off right inside the Emergency Room andClark stopped in mid-sentence. He looked up to see SWAT teams pouring out of the hospital, their black Kevlar and their iridescent blue-blocker goggles making them look like demons pouring out of a crack in the side of Hell. Something major was happening.

'Naam,'Vikram breathed, taking his God's name in vain butClark thought maybe the time was right for that.

He opened the door of the patrol car and stepped out into the hospital's loading zone. The sheriff's deputy came marching toward him but he held up a hand for patience. He watched the SWAT teams fall into close ranks in two lines facing the emergency room doors at forty-five degree angles. They moved flawlessly, as a unit. As crazy as they might have become, as desperate, they had not forgotten their drills. They were assembling a perfect firing formation. A kill zone. They expected something big and bad to come out of the hospital at any second.

The doors opened and a skinny blonde girl walked out.

She had her arms up, trying to surrender. She looked terrified. She also had a truly gruesome wound on her neck and what looked like bloodstains on her chin and chest. Her lips were shaking. They were blue.

'Please,' she said, her voice thick with fear. 'Please, don't kill me.'

The SWAT team leader threw a hand signal at his men and the troopers swarmed her, some holding back to keep her in their weapons' sights, others streaking in with riot control batons to knock her legs out from under her. They got her hands behind her, fastened together with a thin plastic zip-cuff. Expert hands frisked her, pulling open her white lab coat to show she wore nothing underneath. When it was established that she was unarmed two troopers grabbed her by the arms and yanked her away from the glass doors and over to a clear patch of ground by some shrubbery. The sheriff's deputy loped over to look at her while the SWAT teams shifted position again to keep the doors covered.

Clarkcouldn't help himself. He stepped in between the deputy and the girl. 'The infected persons I've seen couldn't talk. They were physically incapable of it,'Clark insisted. 'You have to take this woman into custody. Certainly she needs to be monitored. You don't need to hurt her. At the very least that's going to end in a law suit. At worst it'll mean criminal charges filed against you.'

'I've seen enough of them. I know what they look like and how they act. We can't let even one of them get away.' The deputy nodded at his underlings.

The girl shivered and sobbed as a SWAT trooper leveled his weapon at her forehead.

'Who are you?'Clark asked her, trying to humanize her in the deputy's eyes. He wouldn't give up until she was actually dead'he owed her that much, after standing by and just watching the bloodshed all night. 'What's your name?'

'I' I don't know,' the girl said. 'I've lost my memory, I can't remember!' She sobbed again. Mucus leaked from her nose and eyes. It was dark and thick with congealed blood. Oh, no,Clark thought, oh, no. He'd been wrong'she was one of them.

'Do it,' the deputy coughed. He turned away. The SWAT trooper clicked off the safety of his firearm and steadied it with his free hand, inspected the weapon to make sure it wouldn't jam.

The girl vanished. Right beforeClark 's eyes. Or rather' he felt as if a particle of dust had fallen into his eyes and he tried to blink it away and when his vision cleared she was nowhere to be seen. She must have made a break for it. Yet when he looked around he saw only confused-looking men in riot gear. The SWAT trooper fired a few desultory rounds at the bushes where she'd been kneeling but clearly he didn't know what to target. The deputy's face was set like stone.Clark felt a flutter of panic in his stomach.

The girl had vanished into thin air.