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Once they were inside the long open s.p.a.ce of the Globe building, there was no subtle strategy, no effort to capture a hatchling alive, only the brute force of twenty-five p.i.s.sed-off soldiers, one old CIA agent with a bad hip and one former all-American linebacker with two b.u.m knees.

The fight didn’t last long. Only a few of Ogden’s men remained alive, and most of them were already wounded. The hatchlings attacked, of course, but they had no cover and were quickly mowed down by concentrated fire.

Perry killed three of the little f.u.c.kers himself.

Each shot felt better than the last, a tingling trip of adrenaline ripping through his body. He’d killed the infected because they needed to die—killing hatchlings was just plain fun.

All eyes had been focused on the soldiers, their guns, the hatchlings. When the last hatchling fell, s.h.i.+vering in its sickening death throes, Perry and the others took in the ma.s.sive brown and green construct arching to an apex some twenty feet high. Strands of the brown material ran from the arches up to the roof’s metal framework forty feet above, supporting some of the construct’s weight.

And past the gate, a white and brown Winnebago. From inside, even through the jamming, he sensed the infected.

“She’s in there,” Perry said, and pointed.

Dew shouldered his M4 and opened up on the Winnebago. Within seconds, four other men unloaded on it as well. s.h.i.+ny dots appeared as bullets tore through the thin walls. One tire popped, then another.

Dew stopped firing and put in a fresh magazine.

“Secure the building!” Nails called. “No prisoners, make sure they’re dead, and do not touch the bodies. And find Ogden! I want to p.i.s.s on his f.u.c.king corpse.”

The men spread out.

Perry walked right under the gate toward the Winnebago. Behind him he heard Dew.

“Murray, we have the building, abort bomb run,” Dew said. “Repeat, abort bomb run, keep the F-15s on-station, just in case. We’ll rig the gate to blow manually.”

Perry kept walking. He held his .45 tight but was careful to keep his finger off the trigger. The Winnebago had so many holes it looked darkly comical. He stepped toward the small side door.

Blood leaked from it.

Dew kept shouting. “Nails! I want C-4 at the base of every arch, and don’t be stingy with it on those other parts.”

Perry stared at the blood dripping from the bottom of the RV’s door, lightly pattering onto the dirty, cracked concrete below.

More commotion behind him, Nails screaming, men yelling back and forth, but little of it registered in Perry’s thoughts.

He still sensed that other presence, but barely—the jamming had grown during the firefight, so bad now that it was almost all gray again.

This was it. It had to be.

He opened the bullet-ridden door and looked inside.

A body, but not Chelsea. A man in a postal worker’s uniform, dead and still oozing blood onto crinkled plastic that partially covered the narrow floor.

Perry leaned over the body and quickly looked around.