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“Not very many people can take me out. There’s you, and . . . there was one other person that’s ever done that. I don’t want a rematch. I’ll play ball.”

Dew nodded. He let himself hope that maybe he’d finally gotten through. “Okay, kid. Let’s start from the top. You told me that something had changed. What changed?”

“The voice.”

“The voice. You said they hadn’t said any words yet. Can you hear any now?”

Perry shook his head. “No. If I’m close enough to an infected, I can hear words, but when I’m far away, it’s more like a sensation. Images, emotions, stuff like that. Sometimes I can get a grip on it, sometimes it’s like a half-whisper in a crowded room. The more infected there are in one place, the stronger the sensation. You can only pick out little bits and pieces, maybe enough to get the gist of a conversation, you know what I mean?”

Dew nodded.

“Now there’s the same bits and pieces, but there’s a different . . . intensity. I don’t know how to describe it. Sort of feels like . . . like you were down by twenty-one at the end of the half but you adjusted your blitzing strategy, you shut them down, and your offense scored twice to cut it to seven, and there’s three minutes left, and you’re so excited, because if you get just one more stop, your offense can tie it up or even win it. And that’s hard to do, right? But you feel like it’s destiny, it’s going to happen for sure. You’ve got the momentum. You think you’ve got them figured out, and the win is . . . is . . .”

“Inevitable?” Dew asked.

Perry snapped his fingers, pointed at Dew and smiled. The smile looked ghastly on his st.i.tched, swollen lips.

“That’s it,” Perry said. “It’s inevitable. That’s what it feels like.”

“So this voice of G.o.d says, or feels like, it’s . . . uh, mounting a fourth-quarter comeback?”

Perry nodded. “Yeah, that’s pretty close.”

“So what happens next?”

“I don’t know,” Perry said. “Maybe it actually is the voice of G.o.d, and if we get to heaven, he’s going to kick us in the Jimmy and send us packing.”

“There ain’t no heaven,” Dew said. “And there ain’t no G.o.d. ’Cause if there is some all-powerful deity, he sure is one mean f.u.c.ker. He likes to let good people die and bad people live. And, apparently, he likes to infect former football stars with things that eat them up from the inside.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Perry said, and took a long swig of Wild Turkey.

“We’re in a bit of a pickle here, boy,” Dew said. “Maybe you should stop drinking.”

“Maybe you should start,” Perry said. “I killed my best friend, cut off my own junk, and I’m some kind of psychic call-in line for these things. And you? Dude, you’re dropping bombs on America. You’re in charge of fighting honest-to-G.o.d aliens. Ask me, that’s a pretty good reason for a snort or three.”

Perry held out the bottle. Dew looked at the nasty scar on Perry’s left forearm. War scars, that’s what Perry had.

Dew accepted the bottle. The kid was right. Dew took a long swig. The bourbon tang was a welcome sensation, a friendly memory of distant times when he could just have a drink and relax. He knocked back another long pull, then handed the bottle to Perry.

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