Oh, God, no, she thought. FEMA MOVES HEAVY EQUIPMENT THROUGH ILLINOIS AT 3 AM: What are they preparing for? [ctrl.org, 3/20/05]

There are SWAT teams ready to storm the building. You still have a chance to come out of this in good shape if you're willing to release some hostages. The words blasted against the brick face of the hospital and rebounded off into space. No answer was forthcoming. The sheriff's deputy switched off his bullhorn and turned to shake hands with Clark and Vikram. He was a big man, clearly a weightlifter in his off hours. He had a blonde crew cut and dark deep-set eyes. You're from the Army, huh? I didn't know we rated that kind of attention. The deputy looked dazed. He was out of his element here-his town had always been a quiet place, one of a thousand Californian hamlets between San Francisco and Los Angeles where nothing ever happened. Now he was overseeing an actual hostage crisis. A complete breakdown of the social pecking order.

We're just here as advisors, Vikram soothed, giving his biggest smile. He asked about the boy's tattoos. The deputy seemed grateful for the diversion but was too riled up to give more than one word answers.

Clark wasn't particularly frosty himself. He very, very much wanted this to be a wasted trip. He wanted to go back to Colorado safe in the knowledge that the thing, the bug, the virus or whatever it might be was wholly contained in Florence.

He forced himself to relax by grabbing his keys in his pants pocket until the jagged edges bit into the ball of his thumb. The discomfort helped him focus. He studied the layout of the denied perimeter the sheriff's office had created. The hospital was a three story building studded with windows. On the side that faced the street it had only a single entrance, a wide lobby of automatic doors leading into the emergency room. Blue and red light flashed across the glass: the deputies had formed a wedge with their patrol cars, a covered forward position for the negotiation phase.

Beyond the doors darkness filled the building like a fluid. Clark saw occasional flashes of motion in there but he could never make out any details. Just inside the emergency room, illuminated only by the police lights, he could see what looked like a leg-the wrinkled sole of a foot, the bumpy shape of an ankle-as if someone had collapsed in the shadows. There, Clark said, pointing it out. Do you see that? It looks like a man down. Can you get someone in there to retrieve casualties?

The deputy glared at Clark but then he looked away and lifted his radio handset to his mouth. He uttered a few quick strings of police code numbers and after a moment three SWAT troopers in full armor emerged from a truck behind them. Two of them took up station in short range of the entrance while the third conspicuously put his weapon down on the ground and advanced. He kept his hands in plain view as he ducked under a flapping cordon of caution tape and advanced on the doors. No weapons fire or any other indication of resistance came from the hospital so the trooper moved in closer and then slipped quickly and silently through the glass doors.

Clark couldn't see him after that. This is SWAT Two, 10 -97, he heard crackling over the deputy's radio. 11-44. Clark knew that code-it meant possible fatality. Oh, man, th e trooper said, his breath heavy as it roared out of the radio. Oh, man, it's just a leg, it's been torn off...

Is there anyone else in there? the deputy asked. Anybody alive? He looked like he might be sick.

10106, the trooper insisted, asking them to stand by. I see six, maybe more males-it's very dark, they're approaching my position.

Clark stiffened. He squeezed his keys until the pain made him wince. Get your man out of there now, he demanded.

The deputy waved at him is dismissal. SWAT Two, are they armed?

SWAT Two here, negative... 10-6, okay, okay, one of them tried to grab me... The radio crackled with silence. Vikram put a hand on Clark's shoulder and he realized he'd been about to jump up and run inside. He let out a deep breath and then sucked in a new one when the door of the hospital slammed open.

Fuck, fuck, fuuucckkk! SWAT Two screamed as he came barreling out, the severed human leg clutched in one hand. The trooper dashed to cover as the doors slid open again and three badly wounded men came staggering out.

Blood covered one's face. Another wore no shirt and Clark could see he'd been disemboweled. The third's left arm dangled at his side, the skin flayed off down to the elbow. They made no sound at all as they limped toward thefleeing SWAT trooper. They didn't even look up when the deputy demanded that they halt.

A firearm went off very close to Clark's head and he instinctively ducked. When he looked again the three injured men were spinning in place, the dark craters of bullet wounds tearing open their flesh. Hold your fire! Clark shouted but the deputy bellowed over him, demanding that the SWAT team fire at will. What are you doing? Clark demanded. Those men are unarmed! They need medical attention!

The deputy set his m outh in a hard line. He studied Clark's face for a moment, then turned away to spit on the ground. I have had just about enough of this shit, he said. I don't care if they've got rabies or ebola or what the fuck ever-six of my men are in that hospital right now and who knows how many civilians and I know just one thing. This. Ends. Here. He pointed at the ground to emphasize his point.

Clark shook his head sadly. This was where it would truly begin. In the red and blue light the three men jittered and danced as the SWAT team, their eyes vacant as they tried to walk forward through the hail of gunfire. Clark knew that look. It was the same one he'd seen at ADX-Florence.

"He was just leaning against the ... standing there, he looked kind of confused and every once in a while he would knock on the door. With his fists, you know, maybe he was trying to break it open but... he wasnt my husband, not anymore... I didnt know what to do!" [Caller on the "Buzz Linklee Show", 1290 AM KKAR, Omaha, 3/19/05]

On the snowy roof of the Skye house Dick sipped at his coffee and tried the police again on his cell phone. When that didn't work he tried his office, and finally his sister in Montana. No signal, not even a bar. It had been that way since the first time he'd tried but he couldn't seem to just put the phone away.

Remember, Bleu said. You have to go for the head. The brain, sure. Otherwise they don't so much as feel it. They had some moonlight, which was good, and plenty of guns, also good, and they were up on the roof and had pulled the ladder up behind them which was the best idea ever as far as Dick was concerned. It was also freezing cold and they couldn't go down until all of the climbers were dispatched. Bleu had a leg of mutton on a string that she dangled over the edge of the roof. Fishing for dead people.

The thought made Dick laugh and he wiped at his face as he chuckled, rubbing away the paste of dried saliva there. His mouth had dried out like a piece of jerky. Gnugh, he moaned as he scratched at his leathery tongue. She stared at him and he realized he was being inappropriate. Sorry, he mumbled.

He wasn't doing so well with the fear. Don't be sorry. Be ready. It sounded like something she might have told her son. Her dead son. Her dead survivalist son-well, he hadn't survived the walking dead, had he? Dick wanted to giggle again.

When I say be ready', that means you should check your weapon there, sport. Bleu clomped over to the other side of the roof. Her hobnail boots had cracked some of the shingles and Dick was afraid to follow her over there. Instead he worked the action of the Weatherby rifle and checked that there was a round in there. Of course there was. He'd put it in himself under her supervision. He was the shooter because his eyes were better but she knew all about guns and she didn't really need him. He could just leave. His car was waiting for him just over the ridge. He just had to get past two or maybe three ghouls.

There! Come on already, get your shot lined up! Bleu was p ointing out into the sighing pines, one boot stamping repeatedly on the shingles. Dick tried to bring the rifle up to his face and nearly dropped it in the process.

Okay, okay, he told himself, calm down. Just calm the fuck down.

Do you see him? She's leaning on that tree. It's a perfect shot. Dick nodded -he did see something kind of human-shaped-and brought the scope to his eye. Let his night vision adjust until the image cleared. Yes. A human figure, dark against the snow. The climber in question had been a woman once, judging by the shape of her hips. Now she looked like a rotting pumpkin perched on top of a sportswear mannequin. The scientist in Dick rose to the top, trying to understand what he saw and it made sense, sure. Being frozen all winter hadn't preserved the climbers as much as liquefied them: when ice crystals formed in their muscle cells the sharp apices of the crystals had shredded the cell membranes, turning the climbers flaccid and gooey. He remembered the one he'd fought with. Putrefaction hadn't weakened them at all.

Immaterial. The only thing that mattered was the shot. He tried to remember his time in the Boy Scouts. He had passed the requirements for the marksmanship merit badge. Seat the rifle, line up the shot, adjust for windage-

Take the shot al-fuckingready! Bleu howled.

Dick fired spasmodically. The magnum round hit the tree a few inches above the climber's head. The wood exploded, showering the dead woman with pulpy fragments and splinters of bark. Bleu didn't credit the climbers with too much mental wattage but it looked like they understood what it meant when the tree you were leaning on exploded. Without looking back the climber slumped off into the darkness.

It had taken them three hours to pick one shot and he missed. Dick wiped at his mouth again. He didn't feel so good. New Flux Generating Step Identified in the Metabolic Pathways of Human Prion Protein (PrPsc) [New England Journal of Medicine, 11/6/04]

Nilla watched the three men get cut down by the SWAT team through the Venetian blinds in the cafeteria. Her blood wasn't circulating in her veins anymore but it went cold anyway. They weren't asking questions down there. They weren't trying to help people. The police were just slaughtering anyone who came out.

Maybe not just anyone. Maybe live people got a pass. Nilla was undead and she knew she would be on the short list for the firing squad. She had to get out-she had to escape the hospital somehow.

She tried to run but her legs cramped up instantly when she started to sprint. In pain she hobbled past a room full of nurses and orderlies bent over a bed. She didn't look too closely- she could hear what they were doing.

Out in the hallway she saw heart rate monitors and pulse oxygen readers mounted on IV poles, she saw bad art on the walls, pictures of kittens and houses in New England and, ugh, a streak of blood pointing towards the stairs. She leaned up against a wall, her leg muscles screaming at the workout she was giving them, and sank to the floor below a line of windows that let cold black night air belly in.

This is the police! We're coming in! Everyone needs to be on the floor, now, with your hands in plain view! someone shouted outside, his angry voice electronically amplified. He made it sound as if they would shoot anyone they found inside the hospital. Fear made Nilla's hands shake so much she shoved them in the pockets of her stolen coat.

She got up and followed the blood trail only to find a dead guy in a jumpsuit blocking the doorway, motionless, his head tilted back a little. As if he was expecting to receive transmissions from space.

Move! she said, trying to shove at him. He had a foot on her and maybe fifty pounds. He wouldn't budge. Slowly, excruciatingly slowly his jaw began to drift down and his eyes started to focus on her.

Outside of the hospital she heard rapid gunfire. Short bursts of it that didn't let up:

B-B-BRATTT-B-B-BRATTT-B-B-BRATTT.

She tried shoving the big guy again and finally he looked down at her, saw her. His mouth opened as if he might speak. A glassy rope of drool spilled over his lower lip. He shot out one hand to push her away and knocked her to the floor. She slid over onto her side on the glossy linoleum. He leaned down over her and tried to grab her with hands so big they looked comical. She slipped out of his grasp with more grace than she'd thought she possessed but she knew he would get her eventually.

Something whistled as it came in through the open window and took off the top of his head. Dried-out brain matter showered down on her as fragments of his skull plinked off the wall. Before he could even fall down she ducked around him and into the stairwell. A sniper had shot him without warning-maybe they had seen him attacking her, maybe they were trying to defend her. Or maybe she was the next target.

She took the stairs downward as quickly as she could manage. She kept tripping and having to grab the handrail because she was constantly looking back over her shoulder. She was halfway down when the door at the bottom of the stairwell opened and yellow light streamed in, dazzling her. Something black about the size of a soda can bounced off the floor and she slid to a halt. The canister clattered to a stop and started spewing white smoke. It smelled weird, truly weird and then it made her nose itch. Tear gas? She didn't know what tear gas smelled like. She couldn't go out that way, though-they would be guarding the door. She turned around and started heading back up, back to where snipers lay in wait just outside the open windows.

Nilla only made it a step or two before the lights went out. The police had cut the power.

"This was a test of the Reverse 9 -1-1 Emergency Notification System. You do not need to reply to this call. Please hang up now. This was a test..." [Phone Message received in Butte, MT, 3/21/05] That's it, you idiot. You take the fucking meat! Bleu jiggled the bit of string and the leg of mutton danced in front of the dead woman's ruined eyes. She scrunched up her face and part of her cheek fell away, dangling by a flap of skin. Dick could see the pureed muscles beneath and a hint of bone.

The dead climber reached up and sank her fingernails into the leg. Her hunger vibrated through her, spasms of need pushing her on far more than Bleu's taunt. She sank yellow teeth through the wool and blood dripped on the pine needles below. This is the last one, Dick said. He'd said it so many times it had to be true.

Bleu let go of the leg and the climber fell to the ground rather than let her prize go. She curled around the meat, protecting it from interlopers with her body. Dick leaned over the edge of the roof and fired five shots into her head and neck. Powder burns darkened his pant leg but he didn't care. He was too busy coughing and snorting, getting ready to be sick. When he was done he sat down hard on the roof and breathed heavily, washing out his mouth with stale coffee. That's it, then, he said. You got three of them. At the mine. Then the one we killed in the house. This poor sucker. And the girl I saw. On the road. He nodded. That's six.

I said there might been seven when we found em, Bleu clucked.

But you don't know. You couldn't count them so well in the mine. You said they were crawling all over each other. So you don't know. I sure don't. She stared out at the trees as if by peering hard enough into the murk she could see right through it. Come on, Dick thought. Come on, come on, come on. Any euphoria he had felt earlier was long gone. He just wanted to go home, to get somewhere safe. Hestudied Bleu's face like a kid waiting for a teacher to dismiss class on the last day of school. Finally she nodded and helped him lower the ladder over the side.

They climbed down as quietly as they could, the pine needles muffling their footfalls. The moon laid down sharp-edged shadows as they made their way between the tree trunks, Dick putting out one hand to slide along the smooth or rugged or rough bark. After the noise and light of the gunshots the world seemed wrapped up in cotton and hidden away somewhere dark. His muscles were jumpy under his skin. He didn't know if there had six or seven either. He just had to get out, all of his excitement turning to cold dread sweat on his back, making the shoulders of his shirt cling to him.

Where the valley turned to hillside and then to the thrust of the ridge Bleu crouched low and put her guns in her belt. The slope came up pretty suddenly and they had to climb their way up instead of walking. It had been easy to get down the track-gravity had helped there-but going up proved far more difficult. Halfway to the top Bleu leaned forward and grabbed at a tree root to steady herself on the broken rock. I don't know we should leave yet. What if the police want to- She stopped and looked down.

What's wrong? he asked. I just stepped in something sticky. Dick looked down to see a moldy hand reach up and grab at her ankle. She screamed as the last climber yanked her downward on top of him. She rocked back and forth trying to get free but he got one near-skeletal arm around her throat and pinned her down. Walters! she shrieked.

Bleu! He pulled out the ice axe and readied himself to strike but he couldn't see any way to hit the dead man without impaling Bleu too. He danced back and forth looking for an opening- and suddenly his feet were sliding on loose shale. Thin sheets of rocks skittered down the slope, pebbles bouncing and flying as he tried to keep his balance.

Walters! Dick threw out his arms to catch himself, letting go of the axe. He shouted out, half in surprise. Bleu, just, just hold on- His feet fell away from beneath him and the hill rolled over as he fell, colliding with the loose rock, sliding, skidding as Bleu and the dead man fell away from him. He got a good view of the dead climber finally andsaw why there'd been so much confusion as to whether there were six or seven of them. The climber who had Bleu was nothing more than a torso, his legs and abdomen torn away leaving a ragged, stringy wound. Dick reached out, trying to grab Bleu's foot, trying to grab tree roots or solid rocks or anything. He had to save her-he had to get back up and save her, but then his head smacked something hard and cold and his vision went all sparkly.

He opened his eyes without remembering ever having closed them. His body rang like a bell. His mouth tasted stale and white-white? Was that a taste? He was pretty sure he'd wet himself. Above him the stars burned hard and cold. He recognized the symptoms of a bad concussion but his thoughts were swimming through him like fishes, no, no, he had to, he had to stop. Stop.

Yes. Just lay there for a while in the soft snow. It didn't feel cold at all. Something noisy and terrifying had been happening and he was pretty sure he had the details written down somewhere if he wanted to look them up but just then, just then he only wanted to look up at the stars. Such a beautiful night in the mountains. Something furry brushed against his hand and he reached out to pat it, to pet it. A dog? No, too fleecy.

He managed to tilt his head so he could look and found himself staring into an eyeball with a horizontal pupil. A sheep's eye. Even after years of working as a livestock inspection agent he had never gotten used to those eyes with their sideways elongated pupils like something out of Stephen King. Still. A sheep was nothing to worry about. He gave this one a professional onceover. He recognized the breed: Barbados blackbelly. She seemed slightly off, though. Yes... her rear legs were tucked in too tight and there were pink patches in hercoat where she'd rubbed herself raw. Scrapie, alright. A damned shame-she looked like a strong animal and she would have to be put down so she didn't infect the rest of the flock. The sheep put out her tongue and licked his hand. He laughed until she nipped him, hard.

Hey there, he said, come on, and he sat up so suddenly the blood rushed right out of his head. He groaned and tried to rub at his temples. It didn't work. The sheep still had his fingers clenched in her incisors. She choked up on his hand and started crushing his fingers with her premolars. Her herbivore's teeth couldn't tear his skin very well but she clearly meant to grind him to paste.

Dick yelled and tried to get up but another sheep, this one missing part of her hindquarters, sprawled across his chest. She weighed two hundred pounds, easily, much more than he could lift-he was trapped. A ram with broken horns got his mouth around Dick's shoulder and clamped down hard. He felt the bones there flex with the pressure. Soon enough they would snap. More sheep arrived. Maybe a dozen. A full flock, all of them showing signs of scrapie.

Bleu had slaughtered all of her sheep-she'd done it herself. She had... she had cut their throats. Bled them. She wouldn't have decapitated them or destroyed their brains. Too messy. Now they were back. Bloody wool obscured Dick's view but as the ram crushed the skin and muscle of his left arm he saw Bleu herself standing before him. Massive chunks of meat were missing from her neck and throat so that her head seemed to float above her body like a baloon on a string of vertebrae. She didn't say anything as she bent over him, pushing her way in amongst the sheep, and picked up his right arm in both of her hands.