Morning. The sun cast pinkish-gold light beneath the ceiling of clouds. John Isaacs looked at the Earth's private star through the window of the Bell. In minutes, the sun would rise higher, or the Earth would turn its shoulder, and they'd be on nothing but gray daylight and sputtering rain. They were nearly to Infinity. Isaacs, Thomas West, four men who called themselves scientists, four others. It was six forty-five.

"Hey, Isaacs, you got a crucifix there? You praying?"

Isaacs turned toward the man who'd asked, Burns, one of the "others." One of Tom West's advisors or one of Isaacs' leg men, depending on who wanted to know. Not a big guy, but solid. Dependable. "Not quite," Isaacs said. He held the object up so that it caught the sunshine through the helicopter's oval windows. It was a thin tube about three inches long, transparent, filled with a deep red liquid and hanging from a silver chain.

"What's-- Is that blood?"

"Yep."

"You datin' Angelina Jolie or what?"

"Gal who gave me this'd make Angelina Jolie look like a puddy tat."

Burns chuckled. "Sick-- You're a sick bastard, you know that?"

Isaacs nodded, smiled. "Blood is the life, man. Keep it close to my heart, keep it warm." He winked at Burns, tucked the phial under his shirt, next to his skin.


Morning. This time it was definite: a helicopter, approaching.

"Selena, d' you hear--?"

Jim spoke before he was fully awake. He opened his eyes, rolled onto his back, found himself looking up at a ceiling that wasn't timbered and roughly plastered. He found himself alone as well. The bedspace beside him was cool and empty.

"Right." He sat forward, pushing sleepy air out of his lungs. The clock on the nightstand read 6:50. The sun'd be getting up; he should be up then, too. He was nearly on his feet when someone rapped at the door.

"Hold on--"

He pulled on his sweater, padded over barefoot. A soldier waited on the other side of the door. He had a rifle slung on his shoulder by a leather strap, and he carried a metal dining tray.

"Breakfast, sir," he said. He looked like one of those Army ads at the back of an American comic book. One of the "of-ones," jaw of stone and all. His voice was as expressionless as his face.

"Where's Red, then--?" Jim asked amiably, looking past him into the hall.

"Your breakfast, sir." The soldier pushed the tray at him. "Let me know when you're through."

It wasn't a relative of the previous night's dinner, and that was a fact. Oat porridge, dry toast, two plastic packets of grape jam, black coffee. Behind his closed door Jim ate, finished, cleaned himself up a bit, an odd cold feeling building in his chest. He opened the door. His soldier was right outside. He'd unslung his rifle; now he didn't quite bring it to bear on Jim.

Ah, Christ--

"Ready, sir?"

Jim swallowed, looking at the barrel of the gun. "My friends-- The two ladies I came with. Hannah and Selena. Where are--"

"This way, sir."

Jim went where the rifle barrel told him. He saw no one he knew when he left his room; very few people were about. Another pair of bullish soldiers were at the duty desk. He and his soldier traveled the taupe hall to a set of lifts; they rode downward three floors; they exited into a hall of powder gray. Jim preceded the rifle barrel to a metal door with a small glass window reinforced with mesh. On the wall beside the door was stenciled the phrase Isolation Lab 1. Jim felt his breath shorten.

"What th' fuck is goin' on--?"

"Debriefing, sir. In here, please."

If it was or had been a lab, it had been stripped of anything characteristically scientific. No beakers, no flasks, no Bunsen burners, no cluttered black workbenches. Just a metal table and two metal chairs. Jim entered, and the soldier closed the door behind him. He heard a bolt click to between the door and the wall.

He waited. There was a clock, at least, high up on the wall. Jim stayed on his feet; he waited. The clock's black hands semaphored from seven-forty-five to nine-fifteen. He began to watch the door; he kept his knees unlocked. What in the hell had they been led into--?

A knock. Jim started. The door opened slightly; a man's voice called cheerfully: "Hey, you decent in there--?"

Jim said nothing. The owner of the voice entered. Tall fellow, strongly built, dark business suit, silk tie in purples. Receding dark hairline over a hangdog face, blue eyes under heavy lids. He grinned at Jim.

"I am sorry-- I am sorry as hell to keep you waiting." Another American. He spoke with a drawl. "Few last-minute things to see to upstairs. Couple of transfers, paperwork, you know the drill." He was carrying a briefcase. He swung it onto the table, opened it, took out a micro-recorder and a yellow legal pad. He plucked a pen from the inner pocket of his suit jacket, set it next to the pad on the table. He turned to Jim, stuck out his right hand. "John Isaacs."

"Jim--" Jim shook the man's hand. He was feeling numb. "What's going on here?"

"I'm your lawyer, Jim. Have a seat." He angled the tiny recorder, pushed a button on its case. A red light like an eye lit on its side.

Jim sat, the numbness spreading across his shoulders and chest. "Why do I need a lawyer?"

"Well, that's--" Isaacs grinned, sat opposite him. "That's, uh, pretty obvious, isn't it?"

"I think--" Jim's eyes stung. Where were Selena and Hannah? "I think I don't know."

"You've killed a whole hell of a lot of people, haven't you, Jim?"

Oh, fuck. Jim rubbed at the scar on his scalp. His hand was shaking. "Where are my friends?"

"The ladies are with lawyers of their own."

"You're not British--"

"Hell, I should hope not. British bar's running a little low on manpower right about now. ABA's kindly offered to help out."

"The relief people-- The Americans-- They're sendin' bloody lawyers--?"

"Well--yeah." Isaacs blinked in hangdog offense. "Buddy. Hell. Jim-- I wouldn't argue it if I were you. You do not want to be stuck with some military yutz, not with what you're looking at--"

"An' what the fuck is that?"

"Short form, Jim? You're going to be tried for murder. With luck, we can plead it down to justifiable homicide, maybe even manslaughter. If not, you're gonna hang. So let's start, okay? How many people did you kill?"


Morning. In a hangar whose size was suited better for cargo jets than helicopters, at least to a helicopter pilot's way of thinking, Piotr shouted up at the curses raining down from the top of his chopper-- his, not the loaner he'd been flying yesterday: "Andrej--!"

The curses stopped; tool metal clattered on the chopper's roof. Andrej, his face locked in a scowl, looked down. "What?"

"I am going over to the main building. Find us alternate transport, get us something for breakfast."

"You are going to find that girl."

Piotr smiled. "I will find us transportation."

"Too young--"

"Stop beating the turbine. I will be back soon."

He set off for the hangar's front doors. Behind him, Andrej had resumed his acidic litany atop the Super Lynx. International cooperation at its most efficient: they were still short of parts, the shipment truck not having come from Leeds, and the American mechanics working for Western Star refused to work on a chopper that not only was not one of their clumsy Bell workhorses but was, in their unbiased eyes, Russian property, Denmark and Russia being-- of course!-- interchangeable. At least they hadn't locked Piotr and Andrej out of the mess, too.

He crossed the distance between the hangar and the low mechanics' building. The American army was running a shuttle on twenty-minute intervals between the main gates, the air buildings, and the main building of the complex. He was in luck; the green drab bus was just pulling up as he approached the mechanics' shed. He boarded with two men in grease-stained coveralls.

Another day of rain. They approached the motor pool; two men in black waterproof jackets and two men in fatigues were standing next to a small troop transport vehicle, talking. The bus stopped; the men in the waterproof jackets boarded, seated themselves at the front of the bus. They drove on; the next stop was the main building, the secondary entrance on the east side. The workingmen's doors, not the portal of sandstone beauty reserved for special guests and those of capitalist importance. Inside, Piotr found his way to the area the American army had established as a communications center; he contacted his co-ordinating officer at the base at Leeds, requested transportation for himself and Andrej and their sick Lynx. Half a day at least before Leeds could spare a truck with a tow platform. He spoke his thanks, signed off. Andrej would go from anger to rage.

At least they'd be fed. Piotr made for the mess; en route, he stopped at the duty desk near the dorm halls.

"Excuse me."

One of the men at the duty desk was speaking with a red-headed American corporal, who seemed to be detailing a handover of duties following a pending transfer; the other looked up at Piotr with unfriendly close-set eyes.

"Sir?"

"I am looking for someone-- a young woman. A teenager. Blonde hair. She arrived here yesterday with two friends."

"Civilians, sir?"

"Yes. My co-pilot and I landed them here."

"No one by that description bunking here at this time, sir."

Piotr's shoulders tensed. "I am-- I do not understand--"

The desk officer looked ready to rise. He was armed, of course; his rifle seemed suddenly uncomfortably near at hand. "We have no one by that--"

"Wait." The red-headed corporal broke from his conversation with the second desk man. "You're looking for Hannah, aren't you?" he said to Piotr.

"I, uh-- Yes. Yes, sir."

The corporal looked at him assessingly, his ginger brows approaching one another over sharp blue eyes. "Danish navy, are you?"

"Yes, sir. Piotr Kalinovich, seconded to the army command at Leeds. Awaiting transportation with my co-pilot and our-- grounded helicopter, sir."

The word he'd been thinking was one of Andrej's, one several degrees warmer than "grounded." The corporal smiled briefly. "Room 116, last time I checked." He frowned at the man who'd claimed ignorance. "She's off for debriefing now, but she and her friends-- they should be back in the common areas by fourteen hundred hours, at the latest."

"Thank you, sir."

Piotr left the desk; some ten meters on, he passed a man in a dark business suit who stood looking back the way Piotr had come. He found himself disliking the fellow's expression-- cold and focused and flat; he silently chided himself for mistrust. But the tension remained in his shoulders; he paused, turned back, saw the man speaking into a walkie-talkie.

The man turned, still speaking, and looked right at him. Piotr's jaw clenched. He swallowed, moved on. Not paranoia, no. Something untoward was happening. Something that involved Hannah, Selena, airsick Jim. He suspected, with a tight feeling deep in his gut, that their rescue had been nothing of the kind.

And he'd brought them here.


You're a fella, you're not supposed t' cry.

How could things go arse-up so bloody quickly? They'd survived; they were out of danger; they were safe. And saved. A bloody helicopter came for them, didn't it? The world outside, beyond England, had gone on, as safely and soundly as the modern world ever went. The helicopter came-- they'd laid out a bloody invite for it, hadn't they, in letters four meters tall-- and a pilot looking for all the world like Dan Dare had flown them--

Here.

The pilot. Piotr. Flown them right to hell, hadn't he? Bloody hell. Bloody fucking Russian--

"Jim."

Jim blinked, looked up. "Yeah, I-- Uh, yeah. What was the question?"

The man called John Isaacs looked at him benevolently. "You need a break, Jim? We can take a break."

"No."

"Good. Okay. So we're in Manchester-- you're in Manchester, you and the girls, and you hook up with a band of British soldiers under the command of one Major Henry West. They're holed up in some big old mansion. You with me, Jim?"

"How-- how do you know this?"

"Military, Jim. Military procedure. Major West, he kept a journal, didn't he? All the boring daily details, all the comings and goings. You're right there in print, the three of you. You turn up one day; Major West and his guys, they take you in. And the day after that-- pfft!" Isaacs opened his palms. "So come on, Jim, tell me: what happened there in Manchester?"

Jim fought to keep his jaw steady. "I'm not tellin' you fuck-all."

"Uh. Okay." Isaacs' brows rose; he settled back in his metal chair, tapping with his pen-tip on the legal pad. "Okay. How about one? Mitchell."

"Who--?"

"Guy they found-- Maybe I better explain. About two weeks ago, an inspection team enters that big old mansion in Manchester. Find a hell of a mess, yeah-- they expect that-- holy hell of a stink, too. But it's military, right? So they can't just shovel up the bodies and pack 'em off to a fire pit somewhere. They gotta inspect. Sad fact of death, Jim: John and Jane Q. Public, plague hits, and they're a pile of ashes in a damn hole dug with a bulldozer. You put uniforms on John and Jane Q., though-- you add those uniforms, and it's private body bags, cozy drawers in a mortuary, the whole nine yards.

"So this team, they go on in, and they're looking, and what they're seeing doesn't look entirely plague related. See, Jim, it's pretty easy to tell who got mauled by the infected. This guy, Mitchell, he wasn't mauled. Marvels of forensic science, yeah? He's laid out on this bed upstairs, almost like he's takin' a nap, and the forensic guys, they know the infected don't leave anyone napping, right? They take him back to the lab, get a better look, and what they find is this-- and this is their wording, not mine: 'an almost methodical breaking of his facial bones'-- almost like someone took a Mike Tyson jackhammer to his puss. And here's the kicker: backs of his eye sockets were broken out. Kinda like someone lobotomized him with their thumbs. Grabbed onto his head, just latched on like a vise, and 'pop.' Coroner said it was savage, man. Methodical and savage." He paused. His eyes could see-- Jim could feel it-- his eyes could see right into Jim's skull. "You gonna be sick, Jim? You need a bucket?"

"No."

"Okay, then. Okay. Come on, buddy. Tell me what happened to Mitchell."

Jim was sitting outside himself. His body was made of lead; his voice was quiet and stable. "We had t' get out of there."

"Why was that, Jim? They were soldiers; couldn't they protect you?"

"They tried t' kill me."

"Why would they do that, Jim?"

"'Cause they wanted th' girls. Selena an' Hannah. They wanted to, uh-- They wanted--"

"What, buddy?"

"West was givin' 'em to his men to-- Ah, fuck--" Jim swallowed around a knot aching in his throat. "We had t' get out of there. T' place was crawlin' with infected. They were all over t' house--"

"Jim: shh. Come on. West was gonna let his guys rape Selena and Hannah: that's what you're telling me?"

Jim looked at him. "Sounds crazy, don't it? I know it does. Sounds right insane. I mean, we thought they'd-- what you said: they're soldiers, yeah? They ought t' protect us."

"Life during wartime, man. Sometimes it gets ugly; sometimes it gets uglier than that. So Mitchell, he--"

"He had Selena."

"'Had.'"

"Yeah. He-- he was gonna-- She was okay, yeah? She was still okay, but he had her, an' we had to--" Jim stopped; his voice hitched in his throat; he pushed fingers tearing-hard into the hair above his left temple. He felt it: the shock of Mitchell's back hitting the wall, the impact of the blows jolting up his own right arm, warm liquid thick as gelatine collapsing and edges sharp and cracking against his thumb-tips as Mitchell shrieked beneath him. "I don't know what happened. I started hittin' 'im. We had t' get out of there, yeah--? I never-- I woulda never killed anyone."

Isaacs cleared his throat softly. "I believe you, Jim. I do. We got one more, then we can take a break, okay? One more, okay?"

Jim pulled the heel of his right hand up his face, caught an eyeful of tears. "Right. Okay."

"West. Major West. You know what happened to him?"

"I, uh--"

Something beeped under Isaacs' side of the table. "Hold on, Jim." Isaacs leaned back, pulled from his jacket pocket a black and red handset, raised it to his mouth. "Isaacs."

John-- A man's voice in a pocket of hiss. We've got an end here--

Isaacs shook his head. "You want to speak English, Burns. I'm with my client."

One of the rescue pilots, Russian guy, he was just here looking for the girl.

"Hannah? You don't say. He still there?"

Think he's stopping off in the mess.

"Okay. That's cool. Sit tight; I'll be right up. Isaacs out." Isaacs slipped the handset back into his pocket, got up. He smiled at Jim. "No rest for the wicked, huh? I'm lead counsel for you guys; I gotta go see what this flyboy wants. Relax. I'll have 'em bring you a Sprite, cup of tea or something. Be right back, okay? You're doing great."

He patted Jim's shoulder, left the lab. The door-bolt clicked to behind him.


"Anyone else think we ain't gonna make it to Leeds?"

From his bouncing perch in the rear of the transport truck, Corporal Jeffries fixed Corporal Wallace with half a smile, half a frown. "What do you mean, we ain't gonna make it to Leeds? These roads've been clear for weeks."

Wallace leaned forward, parked his elbows on his gristly knees, glanced out the truck's open back end at the sodden green rolling West Yorkshire they were leaving behind. "I mean, as in I ain't never seen either of those guys drivin' this thing, ain't never seen 'em in the chow line. As in, they transfer the three of us just like that. As in, they're sending all our gear along after us."

"As in, you're paranoid."

"I'm stationed in a country that just went through a zombie plague. I think I'm entitled."

"I believe ya," said Dr. Main. She sat forward, trying to keep her head from knocking against the supports holding up the truck's canvas topper. Twenty years with Western Star, and before today she'd never once been shipped anywhere in a damn open-backed army truck. Two hours ago she'd been eating a steep stack of late-breakfast flapjacks and going over the results of the tests on the blood she'd pulled out of those three kids; one hour ago she'd been told she was being transferred to Leeds. She wasn't even sure if the company could do that, legally or legitimately. Wally and Red, they were enlisted men: they had to go where the guys with more bars on their sleeves told 'em to go. But she was a civvie. Riding in a bucking chopper en route to the North Sea was one thing. Being packed onto a glorified cow truck without even a suitcase holding her skivvies and her toothbrush: now, that was something entirely other. A big damn spooky other.

"Thanks, Doc," said Wally.

"I think you're nuts," Red countered. He looked from Main to Wallace. "You want to run it? Ten bucks says you're nuts."

"I ain't bettin' on this. These guys are up t' no good."

They were all elbows-on-knees now, leaning closer to each other. Red asked: "So what do we do?"

"This thing stops-- and it's gonna stop-- Doc, could you fake a heart attack?"

"Ain't that kinda corny?"

"Could you do it?"

"Yeah, I could do it."

"Truck stops, you fake it. We'll be right behind ya."


One of the advantages of working for The Oil Man: a company car. No damn olive-primer bus for Mama Isaacs' little boy, nosirree: you just get on the shiny black horn in the front lobby and SHAZAM! a pretty blue Subaru, yours for the toodlin', pulls up at the main doors.

The motor pool driver got out; Isaacs got in. He adjusted the mirrors, smoothed his hair, didn't buckle up. Straight-shot drive, just under half a mile, across the shiny tarmac to the hangar where the helicopters lived. Damn Russians. Calling themselves Danish, Swedish, Scandinavian, whatever, sneaky damn bastards. He parked outside the hangar's main doors, the ones big as drive-in theater screens tipped on their sides, and walked on in.

Wasn't hard to find the Russkies' bird. It was the one dark blue Super Lynx in a flock of Western Star Bell 212s and 214s. It was also the only bird with a Russkie on top of it, cussing at an exposed turbine. Isaacs walked over to the Lynx. On the way, he passed a red tool chest; he stopped, found himself a good-sized wrench, wrapped the top of it in a good-sized piece of rag. He held the wrench in line with his right arm, out of sight, continued on.

At the base of the maintenance ladder parked at the Lynx, he yelled up: "Hey, there!"

The cussing stopped; a "What--?" replaced it. A guy with a square head and a blonde Russkie buzzcut looked down from the helicopter's top. "Who are you?"

"John Isaacs, Western Star maintenance. Heard you're short of parts for this thing."

"Damn well about time." The Russkie stepped onto the ladder, climbed down. "Did Pilot Kalinovich send you over--? Where is he--?"

"Think he's gettin' you some chow. Here, I got a manifest for ya--"

"Thank you--" The pilot who wasn't Pilot Kalinovich stepped off the ladder. He turned to Isaacs.

The wrench caught him cleanly in the side of the head. The pilot took one stumbling step and collapsed. With his foot, Isaacs prodded him flat on his back. He knelt beside him, watching him carefully, calmly. Out, not dead. Good. Isaacs set down the wrench. Then he lifted the silver chain over his head, gently pulled the slender glass phial from its resting place against his chest.

"Y' know what they say." He grasped the pilot's jaw, squeezed until the man's lips parted. Then he uncapped the phial, tipped it, let a single thick red drop fall into the pilot's mouth. "Just a dab'll do ya. Sleep tight, buddy."