Invasive by Chuck Wendig Read Free Book Online Page A

software.”
    â€œFingerprints?”
    â€œI might remind you he seems to be missing those, since an unholy colony of demon ants nibbled them off.”
    â€œYou might still be able to find them. Ez found bite-and-stinger marks on a few individual swatches of skin. Go through the skin samples. One by one. See if you can rescue a fingerprint.”
    â€œThat’s grisly. I like it. I’ll get the lab geeks on the job.”
    A rustle down below. Hannah leans over the short stone wall framing this part of the overlook. A rangy coyote slips out of the brush, loping along. It looks up and sees her. It watches her watching it. A moment of recognition between them, then the coyote moves on.
    â€œWhat else did you find?”
    â€œFound more boot prints leading down to the lake. The print is one size down from the victim’s Lowas. The gait is off-kilter, too. Sometimes it leans in on the outside of the foot. Sometimes has a tilt inward.”
    â€œHuh. Okay.” Same boot, but not on the victim’s feet? It’s an answer that only conjures more questions. “Something in the gait, then. Ill-fitting shoes. Or a physical disability, maybe.”
    â€œWe’ll keep on it. Just wanted you to have the update. Feels like not much, but we’re getting closer. And we’ll get you closer, too. Arca will open up to us somehow. Even if we have to pick up a battering ram to make them do it.”
    But she doesn’t want a battering ram. She wants a scalpel. “I’ll talk to you later, Agent Copper. I’ll call you if I think of anything. And send me a photo of that container!” She hangs up her phone, waits for the e-mail from Copper, but her signal isn’t robust enough to download any image. Above her head, the vultures are gone. A plane draws contrails across the sky like a pair of chalk lines.

    Back at the hotel she pulls up the e-mail. Sees not one photo of the container but several. Some of the photos are washed out, but they serve her purposes: The container is a metal box. Lined with rubber and what looks like Styrofoam. Inside the container are chambers separated out by plastic dividers. Hexagonal. Like honeycombs for bees, if the bees were the size of a rat.
    That night, she does dinner with Ez at a nearby taco joint, and she shows the entomologist the photos. “Looks like a cryo container,” Ez says. “We use them sometimes.”
    â€œYou do?”
    â€œYeah. Ours aren’t exactly like that—the honeycomb design is different. Ours are cylindrical. This is custom, maybe. But the overall idea is the same. They probably had smaller containers inside those chambers. Around the cylinders you pack in liquid nitrogen. The dry vapor keeps everything chill; then when you open it—boom, thaw. And the buggies warm up.”
    â€œLike they’re hibernating?”
    â€œAlmost. More like suspended animation. Easy enough with antsor other buglets. Bigger animals are still a challenge, though I’m pretty sure someone figured out how to cryo-freeze a pig and revive it.” She looks down at her taco and raises a curious eyebrow. “Now I want a pork taco. You into al pastor ?”

    Hannah’s heading back to the hotel—walking, because the evening is cooling down and night is bleeding into the sky and the happy (if idiotic) voices of students from the university carry—when her phone rings.
    She answers it. “Hi, Mom.”
    â€œYou haven’t called.”
    â€œI know. I’m sorry. It’s this case.”
    â€œThis case. That speaking engagement. An appointment. A conference. We’ve stopped expecting that you’ll make any time for us. For your father.”
    â€œHey, can I talk to him?”
    A hesitation. “He’s resting.”
    â€œIs he?” That would be strange. He usually stays up watching all the late-night shows. “Is it the medication? Oh, right, it can’t be.” A