“Would you mind if I swabbed the inside of his mouth?”
“Why?”
“His genetic material will help us to understand the disease that killed him.”
“He’s dead. Isn’t it ruined?”
“There’s a chance. Hopefully not.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter now.”
I set my pack on the bench at the end of the bed. Fished out a sample collection kit: a plastic vial and a six-inch, cotton-tipped swab.
The dead man’s mouth was closed, and I was hoping rigor mortis had already come and gone. Otherwise, I’d have to cut a piece of skin from a finger.
Thankfully, his mouth opened with minimal effort. I slipped the swab between his teeth and scraped the inside of his cheek, then stowed the swab inside the plastic tube.
“Am I going to die too?” the woman asked.
Her voice so soft.
Brimming with fear.
I walked over to her.
“Are you having similar symptoms as your husband?”
She shook her head. “But I don’t feel right.”
“In what way?”
“Every night, I have the worst body aches. It feels like my bones are splintering apart inside of me.”
“What else?” I asked.
Tears glistened in her eyes again.
“My memories have changed.”
“How?”
“It’s like…all these moments with Chris keep washing over me. I see them with perfect clarity now. Clearer than I’ve ever seen them. Clearer than I’ve ever remembered anything.
“We met thirteen years ago at this bar in Bozeman. I could tell you every word we spoke. Every feeling I had. I can’t draw, but if I could, I could show you what Chris looked like that night, right down to the stubble on his chin. The way one tuft of his hair stood up. I could tell you how he smelled. How it felt like home. How I knew that night I would spend the rest of my life with him.”
She looked up at me with pleading eyes.
“I never thought it would end like this.”
I wanted to help her, to ease her pain.
But I was buzzing with a mix of excitement and horror.
Excitement at the discovery of this woman who showed the same, early upgrade symptoms—though with a faster onset—that I’d experienced after the ice bombs detonated in that Denver basement.
Horror at what it meant.
The teenager in the viral video had mentioned experiencing body aches, and while that had fueled my suspicion and pushed me to come here, this was the confirmation I’d been seeking. Or at least as close to it as I could hope to get before I ran their DNA through my sequencer.
I knelt down in front of her.
I said, “Would you mind if I took a swab of your mouth?”
“Why?”
“I’m just trying to understand what’s happening.”
She nodded.
I grabbed another cotton-tipped swab and swiped some mucus from the inside of her right cheek.
“What will you do with it?” she asked.
I went over to the bed and took a black Sharpie from my sample kit, marked the plastic tube containing her sample with “her/no illness.”
“I’ll analyze your DNA alongside your husband’s. Try to understand why he got sick and you got better.”
“Better?” she asked. “This doesn’t feel better.”
“Fair enough. But you will live.” I shouldered the pack, said, “Please consider walking up to tent city and getting help for your jaw.”
I opened the door, stepped out into the hall, glanced back into the room.
“I met your brother at a checkpoint in Hinsdale today. David. He’s worried about you. He wanted to talk to you, but they won’t even let highway patrol into the city. He wanted me to tell you he loves you.”
She was crying now.
“I’m very sorry for your loss, Tiffany.”
I closed the door and headed down the stairs, already mapping my route out of town, back to the van.
As I reached the foyer, something slammed into me with the force of a truck.
I cratered into the wall.
My gun hit the floor.
An elbow caught me on the jaw—stars and blackness.
I didn’t even know what I was fighting, didn’t know how I’d been caught so completely off— Because this person had been upgraded like me.
Another blow plowed into my stomach. I doubled over, gasping.
Suddenly I was seven feet off the floor, lifted as if I weighed nothing.
And thrown—sailing through the air for .85 seconds.
Crashed to the hardwood floor at the edge of the kitchen.
I could hear myself groaning. I was able to shove most of the pain aside, and raising my head, I saw a man at the foot of the stairs lifting my H&K off the floor.
He wasn’t wearing a respirator, which could mean he knew this wasn’t a contagion in the traditional sense.
I heard footsteps on the second floor.
He heard them too, glanced up the stairs, raised my pistol, waited, then fired.
Tiffany tumbled down the stairs and came to rest at his feet. He released my gun’s magazine, ejected the round in the chamber, and fieldstripped it as he walked barefoot toward me, the pieces of my pistol clattering to the floor.
The man was approximately thirty-five years old. Clean-shaven. Square-jawed. Shoulder-length hair. Wearing jeans and a tight polo that barely contained his bulging arms. He was a few inches shorter than me, wide through the chest and shoulders, narrow at the waist, with the intimidating build of a wrestler.
He was upgraded for sure, but he hadn’t mastered control of his microexpressions yet. He might as well have been screaming at me how much he loved violence and inflicting pain—the worst kind of person to encounter with an upgrade.
He carried no weapon that I could see.
I stayed down, letting him come closer.
Thoughts fired at the speed of light.
How did he find me here?
Simple.
He was expecting me.
He’d done the same Google Earth reconnaissance I had, determined the Milk River was the best way into town, the field I had crawled across the safest approach.
And he had waited for me to show.
I’d messed up.
Been so intent on finding the best way into a quarantined city that I had failed to consider that someone of my intelligence would have identified the same route.
I should’ve chosen the second-or third-best option. Or at least been remotely prepared for this potential outcome.
But that was all beside the point now.
When he was within four feet, I launched myself at him.
He simply stepped out of the way.
I shot past, falling, then struggled to my feet, ripping off my respirator for a better field of vision and letting my backpack slide off my shoulders.
He looked at me, tucking his hair behind his ears.
“Hi, Logan.”
I could feel my mind running a search, trying to match this voice to every human being I’d ever encountered.
As if reading my thoughts, he said, “We’ve never met.”
“How long have you been waiting for me?” I asked.
“Three nights.”
“Where?”
“Abandoned car in the junkyard.”
I’d walked right past him.
“My sister here?”
He just laughed to himself as I scrambled to determine if he was here to kill or capture me.