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“Holy s.h.i.+t,” Dew said. “That’s it. It’s f.u.c.king airborne.”

“Wind-borne,” Margaret said.

“Wind-borne, right,” Dew said. “So what about the other hosts that are outside of this pattern?”

“Could be a number of things,” Margaret said. “They could have pa.s.sed through the wind curve at just the right time, could have been another . . . I don’t know . . . another gust that carried the spores to other areas. This curve doesn’t account for everyone, but it accounts for half of them. It’s statistically significant, no question.”

Clarence turned in his chair to face her. “But what does this really tell us? I mean, wind can blow all over.”

Perry spoke before Margaret could. “It gives us a projection based on wind speed and the distance between infection points. From there we can potentially extrapolate a vector path and possibly even a range for potential release-point locations. Combine this data with hosts from the other infection locations, maybe you can reduce the search area for the release point. What Margaret is saying is that Colonel Ogden was right, it’s a satellite. This weather a.n.a.lysis might tell us where to look for it.”

Margaret smiled and nodded at Perry. He winked at her.

“College?” Dew said.

Perry nodded. “College.”

“Perry,” Margaret said, “can we do that here?”

Perry shook his head. “That takes way more computational power. You have simple wind-direction history, sure, but you need to extrapolate that against the distance between infection points, air temperature, humidity . . . and probably a bunch of other s.h.i.+t I don’t even know. It’s a whole different ball game from what I just showed you.”

“Let’s kick this back to Murray,” Clarence said. “See if he can put it in front of some of his most brilliant minds the nation has to offer.”

“f.u.c.k yes he can,” Dew said. “He’ll have the National Weather Service and climatologists and G.o.d knows what on this faster than you can hum ‘Oh! Susanna.’ ”

Clarence kept staring at Perry. “I might have been wrong about the dumb-jock stereotype,” he said. “You’re pretty G.o.dd.a.m.n smart.”

Perry didn’t look away from his monitor. “Naw, you were right about the stereotype. It just doesn’t apply to football. You have to be smart to be good at football, because it’s complicated.”

He turned and smiled at Clarence. “The dumb jocks play basketball.”

Perry turned back to face the monitor.

Clarence shook his head, and Margaret just laughed.

CHELSEA IN CHARGE

Chelsea Jewell slowly woke. Her head hurt real bad. She wanted her mommy.

No, that wasn’t right. She had to watch out for Mommy. Mommy might want to hurt her. Chelsea wanted her daddy. Daddy was still okay.

And yet that wasn’t right, either. She didn’t want her daddy . . . she wanted to protect her daddy.

She wanted to protect what was inside of Daddy.

Are you awake?

She looked around the room. Where had that voice come from? She couldn’t see anybody.

Are you awake?

“Yeah,” Chelsea said. “Where are you?”

I am very far away.

“Oh,” Chelsea said. “Then why can I hear you?”

Because you are special. You are the only one there who can hear me.

“Mommy and Daddy can’t hear you?”

Not yet.