Just short of eleven-thirty, Piotr left the shuttle at the mechanics' shed, crossed back to the chopper hangar. He carried a paper bag packed with tinfoil-wrapped sandwiches; in a welled cardboard tray, he balanced two lidded paper cups of black coffee. He passed through the opening between the main doors, walked between the matched rows of Bells. No clattering, no swearing, no sound at all echoed forward from the Super Lynx. Andrej must have taken a break. Finally.

"Andrej," he called, walking. "Come and eat."

The side door on the Lynx was open. Piotr set the bag and the coffee tray on the deck just inside, stepped back to the base of the maintenance ladder, looked up. It was automatic; he'd nearly come to think of the chopper's top as Andrej's quarters. "Andrej! Food!"

From inside the chopper, a sound. Rustling, a low moan. Piotr leaned inside the chopper, looked aft. On a rainy day, the lamps chain-suspended from the hangar's high ceiling seemed that much more distant, that much more ineffectual. Very little of their light reached the interior of the Lynx. Piotr saw flight-suited legs stretched straight, saw a shadowy torso propped against the back wall of the passenger cabin.

"Andrej--?"

He stepped inside, moved toward the body. His own frame blocked some of the light coming through the door, but he could see clearly enough: Andrej. Of course it was. His eyes were closed; his head was tipped down and to the left. He was breathing deeply, roughly.

Piotr hunkered down before him, reached to shake Andrej's ankle. He paused. No. Let him sleep. He can eat later. There also was the matter of Hannah and her friends, but that, too, could wait the space of a nap. Neither Piotr nor his black-tempered co-pilot, bunking in the utilitarian insides of the Lynx, had had much sleep during the last night or, for that matter, during the previous night, after the chopper had developed a problem in its gearbox and been towed to its roost here in the hangar. A rested Andrej would be a clearer-thinking Andrej. Very likely a less foul-mouthed Andrej, too. Piotr began to rise.

Then he caught the smell. Alcohol. By Andrej's side, on the deck of the chopper, lay a flask. It was plain silver; it was capped; before he picked it up, Piotr knew what it contained: wheat vodka.

"On duty, Andrej," he said quietly. "At least you won't be flying today."

He straightened, returned to the chopper's side door and the sandwiches. He seated himself in the door, his feet nearly touching the floor of the hangar, and unfolded the top of the sandwich bag. Behind him, Andrej stirred.

"Come eat something before your head begins to ache," Piotr said. "These sandwiches don't look half bad--"

He turned, handing back the bag.

Andrej was right there. Right there. His mouth was open in a silent snarl. His eyes were blood-red.

He flailed in seconds through the space separating him from Piotr: Piotr shouted in shock, threw himself sideways. Andrej followed; his teeth closed on the air where the right side of Piotr's face had been; he bowled into Piotr, and the two of them pitched out of the chopper, onto the hangar floor. Piotr landed hard on his back. Andrej was above him, snapping and clawing. Piotr caught his wrists, and Andrej's teeth came right at his face.

Piotr released Andrej's right hand, blocked Andrej's biting mouth with his left forearm. Andrej's teeth locked on the fabric of his flight suit, bore down with terrific pressure on the skin of Piotr's arm.

No--

Andrej was still clawing at him, but Piotr's awareness was focused now on that one bite-sized oval of flesh on his arm. Kevlar reinforced the fabric of his flight suit, but the cloth was still cloth: it was giving way, the weave was unraveling. He was seconds away from infection. Seconds.

He looked back and about, desperately. More the fool, he wasn't wearing his sidearm. A weapon: something, anything. Nothing. Nothing on the floor. Seconds passed--

He looked again at Andrej, realized: Andrej still wore his tool belt.

The stupidest thing, the least instinctive thing he would ever do: Piotr released Andrej's left hand, reached desperately for the yellow handle pocketed in Andrej's heavy leather belt. Andrej clawed his face. Piotr shouted in pain and fear.

The screwdriver came free in his hand.

He swung it as hard as he could at Andrej's head. Wide: the blade scraped Andrej's scalp, deflected. Piotr nearly lost his grip; he pulled his arm closer; he swung again, harder.

The blade thudded into Andrej's temple, buried itself there. Andrej arched back, his teeth ripping free of Piotr's sleeve, and toppled to the floor.

Piotr lay shaking. He looked at his left forearm: where Andrej had bitten him, the fabric was wet with saliva, torn and pocked with toothmarks. He scrambled to his feet, unfastened his flight suit with shaking hands, shrugged and struggled out of the upper half. Seconds passed. Seconds. He looked closely at the skin of his forearm: tiny indentations, both sharp and blunt, pocked and reddening--

God--

No. He looked. No.

No blood. He wasn't bleeding; his skin was unbroken.

Then he felt the stinging in his right cheek. He reached up, and his fingers came away tipped with blood. He choked at the sight. Could it spread like that? Saliva, blood: that he'd heard. Dear God. If there were a cut on one of Andrej's fingers-- Christ, the man was one for gnawing his nails-- what? Ten seconds? Nine--?

He stumbled past Andrej's body to the chopper, pulled himself inside. His automatic hung in its holster on the wall of the cabin just behind the pilot's seat. He unholstered it, flipped the safety, put the barrel to his temple.

Five.

Should he know it by now, if he were infected?

Four.

The second beyond, would he still have the will to pull the trigger--?

Three.

Would it hurt--?

Two.

I am sorry, Hannah--

One.

One.

One.

Nothing. He was holding his breath; he chanced inhaling. Nothing. He exhaled. He closed his eyes, and tears squeezed between his lids. He let his right hand, his gun hand, fall to his side. Another breath: nothing. No shrieking pain, no heat, no rage. He was still Piotr Kalinovich.

For a long moment, he stood like that, simply breathing, shaking, his eyes closed. Then he re-safetied the automatic, went to the door of the chopper, leaned weakly against the frame. Andrej was sprawled at wrong angles, very still. The blood from his temple was pooling beneath his head.

An anger that had nothing to do with the rage virus began to build in Piotr's mind. He and Andrej had been nowhere near sick areas; Hannah and Selena and Jim were healthy. In the time it had taken Piotr to contact their liaison at Leeds and find them food, someone had murdered Andrej and transformed him into a tool with which to murder Piotr. And this went beyond murder to pure psychosis: no sane person would intentionally unleash infection.

What to do--?

He would not trust the Western Star personnel, and he had more than a passing suspicion that the American army personnel at Infinity Base were not to be trusted, either. He needed to be away from here-- where? Leeds was the first and most obvious answer: his liaison there, Lieutenant Tracy, seemed a decent enough man. But what would he make of Pilot Kalinovich's refugees? For Piotr wasn't leaving Infinity without Hannah, Selena, and Jim: that was a fact. Andrej had called it a character flaw, and one likely to get his big dumb pilot damaged or killed: a soft spot for strays.

"We brought them here," Piotr said quietly. He looked at Andrej; if Andrej had sat up and called him a fool, Piotr wouldn't have been surprised. He had yet to adjust to the fact of the man's death.

Alright. Plans. Piotr shook his head, hard. If they traveled to Leeds, the Army command there would contact Infinity, and Infinity would simply request the return of its three special guests. Lieutenant Tracy, meanwhile, would see fit to return to the Danish navy a pilot who'd not only lost his co-pilot (the inquest into Andrej's death would follow shortly) but who had co-opted (read: stolen) the vehicle that brought him and his wayward friends to Leeds.

So Leeds was out. Perhaps it was time to go home.

First: a flight suit uncontaminated with virus-laden saliva. Piotr bundled up his damaged suit, hid it. He thought also of hiding Andrej's body; he decided against it. He then went to find a charged tow cart-- still the Western Star mechanics kept clear of this hangar: no work to be done here, all the birds healthy but for the sick Super Lynx belonging to those damned Russians, and no heavy call for transport heading north. So he had his pick of choppers.

He chose a Bell 212 in Western Star blue and white, parked near the front of the hangar. Its maintenance list was clear; it was fueled. Piotr dragged the tow cart between its skids. Then he transferred from the Super Lynx to the Bell anything that might be of use: a medical kit, a flare gun, a collapsible ladder, packets of survival rations, Andrej's automatic, ammunition. Andrej's flask, too: Piotr slipped it into a leg pocket.

When he finished, nothing remained but the waiting. He would move after the sun set, after the base settled in for the night. He found an access ladder leading to the catwalks below the hangar's high metal ceiling; from one of those catwalks, he swung himself into the rafters; in the shadows, he waited.


Wasn't just Topeka in April: a sea of mud was a sea of mud the world over. Annie's tired feet carried her across the A1 north of Leeds to the air base at Dishforth. In better times, the place would've looked like a college campus: buildings in brick and warm browns, hangars resembling dorms, a football pitch, plenty of trees. But these weren't better times. Before the plague hit, the base had been open to traffic on all sides; now a twelve-foot fence topped with razor wire surrounded the whole mess. Guard towers at the corners, a high double gate on the west side, right where her sore feet were heading. Four young fellows wearing green fatigues and carrying light machine guns watched her walk up. They paced like Dobermans behind the fence, their faces wary, predatory, bored.

"Evenin', fellas," Annie called. "Who's in charge here?"

The smallest of the Dobermans broke from the pack and walked up to the gate. "What can I do for you, ma'am?"

"You can let me in, for starters. Been walkin' most of the day."

"Would you care to identify yourself, ma'am?"

"Annette Main, M.D. Just come from Infinity Base, west of here. What's your name, son?"

"Morris, ma'am." The Doberman called Morris blinked, frowned. "You walked from Infinity, ma'am?"

"Certainly feels that way, Morris. We encountered a spot of trouble on the road, and I need t' speak to the fella in charge. Care t' let me in?"

"'Trouble,' ma'am?"

Oh, for the love of-- "We got--" Annie paused, and it struck her again: Red and Wally were dead. Dead some six hours ago, some twenty miles back. Lord, she was tired. The walk had taken longer than she'd thought it would. At her back, the sun was bellying under the clouds down to the rolling hills. Reddish early sunset light lent a glow to the tops of the Dishforth buildings. "Got a couple of fellas dead back west a piece. Guys who set it up said they were bringin' us here. You need t' let me in."

"Were you attacked, ma'am?"

Annie bit both her lips. "Steve McCloud still in charge here? Major McCloud?"

"Yes, ma'am."

One more "ma'am," Morris, and you'll be sippin' your chow through a straw for the rest of your days. "You want to get on the horn, tell Major McCloud we got trouble over at Infinity. And you want t' be lettin' me in. Now, son."


"Did you ever think maybe we're the monsters?"

Outside the window, all the sounds you never heard in London: tree frogs, crickets, living things whirring and chittering and chirping, noises like a vibrant scrim hanging in the night. The window was open but screened. A pale shadowing of moonlight, a hint of breeze. He was just warm enough, and she was lying on her side next to him.

He pressed his hand over hers, against his chest. "There are no monsters, Selena."

"You sure, Jim?"

"Sure I'm sure. Go to sleep, love."


"'Fraid I've got some bad news, Jim," said John Isaacs.

He'd been gone again, this time for roughly an hour. During that time, two soldiers brought Jim a paper cup of coffee and a sandwich made of processed meat and bleached-white bread. They walked him to the restroom and back again. He looked at the door of Isolation Lab 2 and knew that Selena was no longer behind it. But now that he knew what he had to do, he no longer felt despair. He felt very little at all. He looked at Isaacs calmly. "What's that, then?"

"Things aren't going so hot up top. I gotta say-- let me just say this up front: you've done a hell of a job here today. Very candid. That's great-- that's the best thing-- Honesty. Nothin' like honesty for building a strong case. And, man, I gotta tell ya, that thing with Mitchell--" He shook his head, grinned. "Off the record, but my hat's off to you, Jim. The eyes--? That is hardcore, man. Hard. Core."

Maybe it was the grayish meat in the sandwich. Maybe it wasn't. Jim felt queasy. He kept his voice polite. "What's the bad news, then, Mr. Isaacs?"

"Bad news is, you've got people spooked. Let my super hear a chunk of our chat, and now he's thinkin' you're Jim the effin' Ripper. He knocks heads with the base chief, and the two of 'em, they're sayin' the best thing is to keep you locked up. Looks like you're sleeping in the cellar tonight, Jim."

"In here."

"Right in here. Sorry, man."

"And Selena? Hannah--?"

"I'll tell 'em goodnight for ya, okay?" In his voice, Jim heard a taunt. No: a challenge. Isaacs' expression was friendly, but his eyes were slate-flat.

Jim the effin' Ripper. Slight fella, skinny, quiet. We're the worst ones, aren't we--?

"You do that," Jim said evenly. The muscles in his back and arms and shoulders were tensing.

"I will. See you in the morning, buddy."

Out he went. The deadbolt slithered, clicked. Jim left his chair. He stood against the wall beside the door, slid down to the floor, pulled his knees to his chest.

Really, he felt very little at all.