16

SLIME AND PUNISHMENT

Commander?”

Chris Fry hated being called commander—he had paid for college by going into the navy, and he worked for the sheriff’s department, not on another goddamned submarine. But there wasn’t much about running a county jail that he did like. He’d only taken the job because it was essentially an administrative position. Fry had thought, mistakenly, that the lower personal risk and better pay might be good for his blood pressure and let him spend more quality time with his family.

Right now, though, the prisoners they’d evacuated from the holding area were handcuffed to anything that would hold them down—radiators, desks, benches, tables—and Fry’s men weren’t being too gentle about shutting their screaming charges the hell up. Fry’s title was the least of his worries. “What is it, Deputy?”

“You need to see something.” Deputy Tingle—and Jesus, did she ever get teased for that name—was normally a tough customer, a solid, stocky, no-nonsense officer. Eyes like flint but a soft voice and a calm manner that were good for soothing people no matter what side of the law they were on. But right now, Jackie was showing some cracks. Hell, everybody was losing it. Fry had already had to lock Billings and Alley away in the visitation room because they were scaring everybody with their freaked-out bullshit about some kind of blob thing eating that child molester. His dispatcher, Betty Jean, had snuck out of the building and fled right after relaying the message that they were under quarantine and that the CDC was on their way. Fry was one meltdown away from having a mutiny on his hands. If Tingle wanted to keep something disturbing private, he should probably be commending her good sense.

So Fry just said, “All right,” and followed her.

Fry couldn’t help taking one last nervous look at the holding-area door whose edges were sealed off with duct tape—all those radiation and biohazard drills they’d had to go through after 9/11, and it still came down to duct tape. A memory of that blue Jell-O-like shit oozing between the bars and over the floor shuddered through him again. The image kept coming back, and it felt like a violation each time, like it was pouring through a toxic leak in Fry’s own head. Goddamn if it hadn’t looked like that stuff was moving with intent.

“Some of the guys are saying the government is jamming our cell phones,” Tingle said softly. “To keep us from calling our families and getting word out. They say somebody is trying to avoid a panic.”

That had occurred to Fry too. He’d even thought about nuclear strikes and EMP in the atmosphere, but the lights were still on. “Crazy rumors always start in situations like this.” The words rattled around in his mouth like dried peas. Situations like this? When had Fry ever been in a situation like this? When had anybody? But what was he supposed to say?

“I’m not sure this is what we think it is,” Tingle murmured cryptically as she unlocked the door to the impound room.

Fry followed Tingle in and shut the door behind him softly. There were only three storage racks and a few cabinets in the area—they were a small county—and she led him around a storage rack to where a bunch of spare blankets were bundled on the floor. Tingle went over to the blankets and pulled several of them off … Betty Jean Brown. The dispatcher who’d fled the station. Except she hadn’t, obviously. Fry could see where somebody—Tingle probably—had cut off the restraints that had been binding Betty Jean, but she still wasn’t moving. Breathing, though. Drugged, probably. Or hit really, really hard.

Fry’s hand went to his gun.

Tingle’d had a little more time to think. “Did you actually hear Betty Jean say that we were under quarantine?”

What? No, he hadn’t. That had been … who had that been? Deputy Caldwell. And by the time Fry had gone back to verify it, Betty Jean was gone, and the radio wasn’t working anymore. But Jesus, there had been some kind of goddamn flesh-eating bacteria in the holding area, or hallucination-causing shit in the air, or a toxic waste leak from hell. Sealing off the building made sense. If somebody else hadn’t said the CDC was on the way, Fry would have called them himself.

Wait … that draft …

That was the last conscious thought Fry had until he woke up on the floor, staring at Tingle’s slack face. He tried to move and plastic chafed his wrists and ankles. He tried to scream and realized why his jaw hurt so much. Something was stuffed in his mouth.

Fry’s thoughts didn’t immediately turn to escape. His first thoughts weren’t even about trying to figure out what had happened to him. What Fry woke up to was a wave of despair. He should have given up his badge when he first started realizing that he was feeling too much contempt for the people he had to deal with on the job. When he started becoming more protective and more distant from his family at the same time, like one of the people he had to protect his family from was the person he was becoming. He loved Mary so much. He’d never cheated on her, not once. Their youngest, Gabrielle, would be in college in five more years, and Fry would be up for retirement in six, and he’d just been playing a waiting game, telling himself that he and Mary would reconnect, that it would all be worth it.

That was the first thought that came to him: He’d waited too long.

“Sorry, Commander.” It was Mason Caldwell’s voice. The son of a bitch even had the balls to sound like he meant it. Fry craned his neck and saw Caldwell’s large form crouching above him. Mason was probably Fry’s toughest deputy. Before this, Fry would have said that Mason was also his most dependable. “There really are people on the way to take control of the situation.”

What people? What situation? What the fuck?