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After connecting their own helmets, Gitsham and Marcus unzipped the outer body bag and pulled it off. Marcus put it in a red disposal chute marked with a bright orange biohazard logo. They repeated the process for the second bag and put the child’s body on the table.

Margaret couldn’t suppress a shudder. His Milwaukee Bucks s.h.i.+rt had slid up around his armpits. Dawsey’s kick had smashed at least eight of the boy’s ribs, caving them inward like so much broken pottery. The child’s spine was snapped on the right side of the eighth thoracic vertebra, bending him at nearly a ninety-degree angle to his right. A mask of pure rage had frozen on the boy’s face, a wide-eyed, teeth-bared snarl that broadcast absolute hate even in death. She had seen faces like that too many times. The faces of the infected.

“Gitsh, get a sample in the microscope right away—I want to see the level of decomposition—then prepare the injections. Marcus, bring me the swab-test prototype.”

“Yes ma’am,” Marcus said.

“Recorder on,” Margaret said. A green light flashed in the upper right-hand corner of her HUD, signaling that everything she said and saw was being recorded in the control room.

“I’m online, Margaret,” Clarence said, his voice in her earpiece. “I have the other bodies in the second trailer. Amos is checking out the baby, but he looks fine. Did you run the test prototype yet?”

“Hold tight, I’m doing it now.” She held out her hand and Marcus gave her a small white electronic device the size of two packs of cigarettes joined end to end. He then opened a thin foil packet and pulled out a four-inch plastic stick, the last half inch coated with damp fabric. She slid the fabric end along the boy’s gum line and against the inside of his cheek.

The triangles harvested sugars common in the human body and used them to make cellulose, a material found only in plants. The cellulose formed a construction material that allowed the triangles to grow into hatchlings. Her theory was that some of the cellulose would leak into the bloodstream and eventually permeate bodily fluids, including saliva.

The prototype had few controls. The primary feature was a row of three square lights near the top: orange, green and red. She slid the plastic swab into a matching slot in the handheld device, and the orange light flashed, indicating a test in progress. The next indicator would be the green light, showing no trace of cellulose, or the red if the material was present in concentrations greater than one might find in a random gra.s.s stain.

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