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The white blades …

The thing wasn’t holding them at all. The blades protruded from behind each wrist, jutted out from torn yellow flesh … and they weren’t blades, they were bones: jagged, pale, as long as its forearm, wicked scythes tapering to hard, sharp points.

Its jeans had shredded at the thighs to make room for rippling muscle, turning the denim into dangling strips of fabric. Its shoulders were broader than any man’s had a right to be, its neck easily thick enough to support the huge head. Long, thin patches of brown hair clung wetly to its scalp, a few more hung in front of its eyes.

It reached up a thick hand, bone-blade pointing to the ceiling, and its fingers pulled down the blue scarf.

… the face …

Cooper’s reality warped and cracked.

“Jeff?”

The monster smiled, showing teeth that had grown wider at the base, and also grown longer, like fangs with the points chipped off.

“COOOO-PERRRR.”

The Tall Man in the red jacket looked at the thing that used to be Jeff. “You know this guy?”

The monster nodded, a motion that made his ma.s.sive shoulders dip up and down as if the thick neck couldn’t quite bend all the way.

The Tall Man seemed pleasantly surprised.

“Well, that’s just f.u.c.king t.i.tties and beer,” he said. He smiled at Cooper. “You can join us. We’re supposed to lie low. Stanton said to find the uninfected and get rid of them, but we’re not supposed to burn or wreck anything.”

That name again. Could it be a coincidence?

“Stanton? Steve Stanton?”

The Tall Man nodded. “Yeah. I actually got to meet him. The others haven’t.”

He said got to meet him as if it was the highest honor anyone could ever hope for.

It all fell into place. It all clicked. Stanton’s machine had grabbed something from the bottom of Lake Michigan. The Detroit incident of five years earlier … the conspiracy theories that some alien s.h.i.+p had been shot down … Blackmon on TV, talking about the medicine … bringing the Platypus aboard the Mary Ellen, and everyone feeling ill shortly afterward … coming to Chicago … the city becoming a living h.e.l.l …

Jeff, getting sick, and now he was … that.

Cooper didn’t know what had happened, but he knew it had started when Steve Stanton walked into JBS Salvage.

So many people dead. A city in ruins. Stanton’s work had killed hundreds, thousands.

But not Sofia … YOU killed her, didn’t you?

Cooper shook away the thought. He had to think, had to get out of this alive. Knowing Jeff had earned respect from the Tall Man. Maybe knowing Steve would bring even more.