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The sonofab.i.t.c.h took a step forward and kicked, swinging his hips into the blow. Stephen made a little staccato sound when the foot connected, a half-cough, half-squeal. His small body shot across the room like it had been fired from a cannon. With a sickening snap, Stephen’s right side slammed into the edge of the kitchen table. The impact tilted the table back, spilling beer bottles onto the linoleum before it rocked back to level. Stephen’s body, still bent at an odd angle to the right, hit the floor.

The boy’s little fingers twitched a bit, but other than that he didn’t move.

Thadeus reached the counter, yanked open a drawer and pulled out a butcher knife.

Yessss kill him KILL HIM!

He turned to face the man murdering his family, but as he did, he saw a flash of spinning black, then his head filled with a sudden darkness and pain. He fell to the floor, blinking, thoughts slipping in and out. He tried to spit. A chunk of tooth barely escaped his lips and hung on his right cheek, plastered there by blood and saliva.

Get up, get up!

A hand around his neck, lifting him.

His feet, dangling.

Kill him, KILL HIM!

His breath . . . non ex is tent.

Thadeus opened his eyes. The man-monster’s face was only an inch away. Two days’ growth of reddish beard. A snarl. Thadeus stared into blue eyes wide with madness.

“You shouldn’t hit your kids,” the man said.

Thadeus heard an approaching siren, but it was too late. The hand around his neck might as well have been an iron vise. It squeezed, slow and steady.

“It’s okay,” the man said. He smiled. “I’m here to help you.”

Breathe! said the voice in his head, the same voice that had made him kill his only daughter. Fight! You have to breathe!

Thadeus felt his bladder let go, felt the heat of p.i.s.s filling his underwear and jeans, then felt his sphincter offer up the same betrayal. Even in the act of dying, he somehow had a flash of embarra.s.sment.

He would’ve liked to have said one last thing. He would’ve liked to tell the voices in his head to stick it where the sun don’t s.h.i.+ne, but he couldn’t make any noise at all save for a tiny, hissing gurgle.

THE MARGOMOBILE™

Margaret Montoya, Clarence Otto and Amos Braun sat in comfortable seats in the customized sleeper cabin of a semi tractor-trailer. The ma.s.sive eighteen-wheeler rolled north along Highway 13, followed closely by a second, outwardly identical rig. The two trailers, designed to work together as one unit, were worth about $25 million and had come to be known collectively as the “MargoMobile.”

The three sat biggest to smallest, a cross section of cultures—Clarence’s chocolate skin and tall, muscular bulk on the left; Margaret with her long black hair and Hispanic complexion in the middle; and the diminutive, oh-so-Caucasian Amos on the right. Those two men const.i.tuted one half of Margaret’s team. The other half drove the rigs. Anthony Gitsham handled this one, Marcus Thompson drove the other. Murray’s single-minded mission to keep “those in the know” to the absolute minimum had landed Gitsh and Marcus this choice a.s.signment, thanks to their rather unique set of skills.

Both men had logged at least a hundred hours driving a semi, had medical-a.s.sistant training, combat experience and—the big one—hands-on experience with biohazard procedures and gear. Gitsh had driven army rigs in the Mideast and traded small-arms fire a few times, but Clint Eastwood he was not. Clint wasn’t as pale, wasn’t as skinny and didn’t have a ’fro that made him look like a white Black Panthers wannabe from 1974. Marcus was something of a study in contrast to Anthony, with his deep black skin, shaved head and enough wiry muscle for both men. Marcus’s combat experience, apparently, was rather extensive. He didn’t talk about it, and no one asked. From what Margaret could gather, being a.s.signed to drive a truck and lug around rotting corpses that might or might not be fatally infectious . . . well, that was like a vacation for Marcus. Maybe it was why he whistled all the d.a.m.n time.

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