“I’m not dead yet,” I breathed. Then I shouted it at the top of my lungs. “I’M NOT DEAD YET, YOU HEAR ME? YOU GOT THAT? SO BRING IT ON! BRING! IT! ON!”
I shouldn’t have said that.
45
I looked at my hands gripping the wheel and noticed the sores there had crusted over and were pulsing to the rhythm of my heart. A huge one on my knuckle itched horribly, and I started to scratch it, out of defiance, I guess (I’ll show them I can scratch the itch!). My nail barely nicked the surface and the scab tore off. Clear liquid seeped from the wound and my heart quickened, not from the sight of the pus, but from the squirming gray-bodied, black-headed creature that rose from the little pool, twisting this way and that in the air, as if shaken from a sound sleep. I watched it in horror for a second, then took my hand off the wheel and held it under Op Nine’s nose.
“What is that?” I asked.
“A maggot, I believe.”
I could taste the corn dog on my tongue as I yanked the rearview mirror toward my face. Fighting the nearly overwhelming urge to throw up, I gently ran my fingertips over my cheek.
The scabs burst open and a stench crowded my nostrils, that same smell I had noticed in the hotel room, the smell of decay—I was rotting from the inside out.
I screamed and Op Nine shouted, “Alfred!” as I slammed on the brakes, sending the car into a spin, until our rear wheels hit the grass on the edge of the road, w
hich slowed us down enough to keep the car from flipping.
As soon as the car stopped, I hit the button to raise the door. I fell out onto the moist grass, on my hands and knees, retching. The fog wrapped itself around me and the car looked ghostlike in the shroud of mist.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, pulling me back.
I leaned against Op Nine’s chest, crying and cursing. My hands flailed at my face until he grabbed my wrists and forced my arms down.
“Alfred,” he said into my ear. “Alfred, tell me what to do. Just tell me what to do.”
They will consume us, Op Nine had said in the briefing. They will consume us.
I looked into his face, the kindest, ugliest face I think I’ve ever seen. “Home,” I croaked. “Get me home.”
46
He helped me back to the car, but it was hard going because he was weak, I was big, and neither of us looked forward to hitting the road again. I sank into the passenger seat and he took the wheel, while I sat on my hands to keep myself from tearing open any more boils.
I glanced at the speedometer: forty-five mph.
“Faster,” I murmured. The rank smell rising from my pores was making me dizzy and it took every bit of willpower I had to keep from giving in again to the nausea.
I watched the needle creep up to sixty.
“Faster,” I said.
“Alfred, in these conditions . . .”
“We’re running out of time!” I shouted. “And time’s the only condition that matters now!” Then I shut up because the screaming hurt my throat. The needle hit eighty-five and kept inching higher. He squinted through the windshield, as if his squinting would somehow penetrate the white cloak around us.
My right arm twitched as I fought the urge to reach into my pocket, pull out the semiautomatic, and blow his hound-dog head off. It was like the feeling I had in the Taurus that night outside Mike’s house, but ten times stronger and I fought it in silence for a few miles.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said finally. “Something you should know.”
He nodded.
“I’ve been getting these urges to, um, hurt you. Kill you.
It’s almost more than I can stand.”
He glanced at me.