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Dew pointed at Dawsey. “You stay right here. I’m going to call this in, then I’ll take you back to your hotel.”

“Thanks, Pops,” Perry said. “Oh, and have your peons get my bag out of the Mustang’s trunk. And speaking of Mustangs, I’m going to need another one. Make sure it’s a GT. I’d prefer blue with a silver strip this time, but I’ll take whatever color you can get. I wouldn’t want to be difficult.”

Not only was Dawsey a freak, a killer, he was a smart-a.s.s as well. Dew stared at him, wondering if maybe he should just pull the gun out again and end it.

The gun . . . that brought up an interesting question.

“You had Baumgartner and Milner down,” Dew said. “They’re both packing. Why didn’t you take their weapons?”

He saw something flicker in Perry’s eyes, a flicker that only appeared in the rare, brief instances when he talked about triangles or hatchlings—was it fear?

“Guns are for p.u.s.s.ies,” Perry said. “I find a tire iron has more of a Charles Bronson flair.”

Dew stared for a few more seconds, then picked up the map and walked out of the house. As he left, he saw the first of the two Margo-Mobiles pulling up into the drive. When Margaret found out she had nothing to work with, she would not be happy.

WHIPPED

The semi’s air brakes hissed as the tractor slowed and stopped.

The McMillian house wasn’t much to look at, a typical boxy three-bedroom, two-story affair, once-white paint now cracked, peeling and speckled with dark spots of exposed and well-weathered wood. Big yard, old trees devoid of leaves. Two gray vans were parked on the street, and she guessed that the nondescript black Lincoln in the lawn belonged to Dew.

The downpour was actually a welcome break—icy rain would keep curious neighbors inside. A few might peek outside at the commotion, but as long as they didn’t try to cross the perimeter, that was fine.

Gitsh craned around the driver’s seat to look at Margaret, his ’fro bouncing a bit with each movement. “Should Marcus and I go ahead and connect the trailers, prep the examination room, ma’am?”

“Yes, Gitsh,” Margaret said. “Thank you.”

He got out and closed the driver’s-side door. Examination room was a funny phrase. That’s what they all called it, of course, but so far they hadn’t done any examinations—only autopsies. Not exactly ironic, considering that this two-trailer setup had originally been designed for on-site postmortems of infectious-disease victims. If you had an unknown, lethal contagion, it made more sense to a.n.a.lyze the corpses where they died rather than haul them to a Biohazard Safety Level-4 lab. No matter how secure the transportation, you were still at risk of spreading the contagion somewhere along the route. A portable BSL-4 autopsy facility, on the other hand, let you not only a.n.a.lyze the body on the spot but incinerate it as well.

A few seconds after Gitsh shut the driver’s door, the pa.s.senger-side door opened and a soaking Dew Phillips climbed in. Bits of ice clung to his bald scalp and the ring of red hair that circled around the back of his head from temple to temple. He looked tired, wet and p.i.s.sed off.

“One survivor,” Dew said. “An infant boy, in the van on the right. Doc Braun, can you check him out? He’s not infected.”

“How do you know?” Margaret asked.

“Because if he was, Perry would have killed him. Just like he did the three people that were.”

Margaret sagged back into her chair. They were too late. Again.

“I’ll check out the child, Dew,” Amos said. “But I have to wonder why you government types can’t control Mister It Puts the Lotion in the Basket.”