Contagious by Scott Sigler Read Free Book Online Page B

sitting with the psycho who had just butchered his family, but as soon as he was safe, he fired up the air-raid siren. There’s just no figuring kids.

“Both of you, get that baby out of here,” Dew said to the soldiers. “Get him in a van and keep him there. I’ll send a guy to check him out. Doc Braun, real short, you’ll know him when you see him.”

The men left, leaving Dew alone with Perry.

Dew started to shiver from his wet suit and shirt. The weather in Wisconsin was much like the weather in Michigan—both fucking sucked, and both made his bum hip ache.

“Any others?” Dew asked.

Perry pointed to a place inside the kitchen. Dew carefully walked to the living room’s edge, leaned in a little and looked around the corner.

Another corpse, a man, lying on the floor in front of the refrigerator. A big dark spot covered the crotch and legs of his jeans. He was the source of the shit smell.

Three more hosts, dead. Murray Longworth was going to crap a canary when he found out. Three murders. Just like that. And Dawsey sat at the table, sipping a Bud.

It would be so easy to just put a bullet in the psycho’s head.

Perry pulled a second beer from the six-pack and tilted it toward Dew. Want one? the gesture said.

“Drink up while you can,” Dew said. “If Baumgartner and Milner are dead, I don’t care how important Murray thinks you are.”

“Were those the dumb-shits following me in the little white car?”

Dew nodded.

Perry shrugged, drained his beer, then opened the one he’d offered Dew.

“Control, this is Phillips,” Dew said. The microphone in his earpiece picked up the words and transmitted them to a control van some five or six blocks away.

“Copy, Phillips,” the tinny voice said.

“Status on Baum and Milner? Anyone find them yet?”

“Let me check,” the voice said.

Dew waited.

Dawsey took a long swig. “I bet you want to shoot me. I bet you want to kill me.” He tossed the gold Budweiser cap up and down in his free hand.

“Maybe I just want to help you,” Dew said quietly.

Perry grinned and nodded. “That’s pretty good.”

The tinny voice returned. “Baumgartner and Milner are alive. Agent Revel says they’re roughed up a little but will be okay. Ambulance en route. Their car and Dawsey’s Mustang are totaled, by the way.”

Dew put his .45 back in its shoulder holster.

Dawsey smiled. “I told you not to have anyone follow me, Dew. I could have killed them if I wanted do.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Dawsey? We’ve told you a million times we need a live host.”

“I’m not a soldier,” Perry said. “Your orders don’t mean dick to me.”

“We need information, you murdering piece of shit. These people had information.”

“I have all the information you need,” Perry said. He cleared away the beer bottles, revealing a ring-stained map spread across the table. His sweeping hand also brushed aside a clump of hair that had fallen off the tire iron, leaving a long, bloody arc on the paper. He wiped his hand on his pant leg.

“The next doorway is northeast of here,” Perry said. “Across the border into Michigan. Nearest town is called Marinesco. That’s where these people were going. If anyone else around here is infected, that’s where they’re headed, too, or they’re already there. That’s the information you really need, and now you have it, so why would you need these losers alive?”

“Losers? That one you snapped in half couldn’t be more than five years old.”

“Sure,” Perry said. “And any knife he could pick up, he’d put it right in your belly. Why do you need him alive?”

Dew ground his teeth. “Because the eggheads say so, that’s why.”

Perry nodded. “Right. They need to watch someone suffer. They need to watch someone go crazy. They need to watch someone go through what I went through, right?”

Dew said nothing.

“You’re stuck with me, old man,” Perry said. “I’m the only one who can hear them. I’m the only one who can find them. My ass is made of gold.”

Dawsey was