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Seventy-three days after the power went out, two men were lowered by rope onto the hospital helipad. They introduced themselves as Dr. McCaffrey and Dr. Thorpe, both in civilian clothes, both carrying black duffle bags—no masks, not even gloves.

Thorpe was in his early forties, McCaffrey a little older. McCaffrey was short, with a biting smile and dense brown hair that looked like a wig. Thorpe’s beard was nearly as long as most of the men’s beards at the hospital, but better kept. He had a strong frame that slid down the rope ladder with ease, and he stood among the welcoming party with an expression like a shy child on his first day of school.

The air above swirled with the sounds of the support aircraft, jet fighters and attack choppers that covered the drop. McCaffrey’s smile faltered when he saw the filth and squalor of the grounds.

The area was surrounded with a fortification of hurricane fence, some sections topped with barbed wire, some with razor wire. The tents were still up... barely. Both of the large medical tents had rips, and their cloth rippled like the bodies of enormous kites in the helicopter’s downdraft. The grass and pavement were strewn with campfires, and people in their underwear washed themselves from buckets suspended on the tree trunks. Everywhere the doctor looked, dirty, suspicious faces looked back. This homeless camp had poured up to, and inside of, a hospital like a lava flow of grime and desperation.

Dr. Dave White and the others brought them into the cafeteria. He had originally planned for them to meet outside, but the wind and clouds made the inside of the hospital bearable, and the cafeteria would allow a more intimate setting. Fluorescent lights lit the hallways.

“We have to make the most out our gas generator,” Dr. White said, “while the gasoline we can find on the island will still burn. If you don’t mind, it’s this way.”

“He left to make contact with the city officials. I’ll tell you as soon as he gets back.”

People filed in behind the new arrivals, as quiet as if they had all arrived late for a church service. Over two hundred of them crowded into the room and sat on the benches, or chairs, or floor, or just stood.

“Okay,” he started. “So, I’m sure you all know that the crisis stage is almost over—lots of noise, lots of school closures, and a few outbreaks that kept us busy. Now, everything is going back to normal. Well....” He rubbed his hands together. “Now it’s time to finish this thing off. I know everyone is probably wondering when we’ll administer the vaccine, and I can tell you that it will be very soon—within the next few days. When Dr. Morenz gets back, my colleague and I will need to... go over a few specific matters. After we iron out the loose ends, we can start planning for the evacuation of the island.”

At this, he stopped and looked over the room, waiting for applause that started slow, but picked up to a satisfying roar.

“I can tell you a little about what we’ve learned. Bontrager’s Disease is a nasty little bugger, but I suppose all of you knew that already. It’s a virus, communicated through bodily fluids—blood, and if you will excuse the children, uh, intimate contact. You can’t get it from sneezing or touching a door knob. The virus itself is initially harmless, if you can believe that.”

He waited for a reaction, but the room full of grimy faces stayed perfectly silent.

“The disease itself is a secondary component. We had a heck of time figuring it out. Lonnie Hofstadter at the Atlanta office really had the breakthrough. It... it... it....” He stumbled with growing animation. “It produces a chemical when attacked by human T cells, which passes through the blood-brain barrier and works on the brain’s ability to excrete waste products. Parts of the brain, particularly in the cortex, begin to suffer damage, and very quickly one will notice a loss of normal mental faculties, such as memory loss and changes in mood. What happens next is fascinating. I wish you had electricity here in the cafeteria.” He peered at the stoic Dr. White and smiled awkwardly before continuing on. “I could show you a 3-D model. What happens is that, as the more complicated functioning of the forebrain fails, the more primitive regions of the brain stem take over and become dominant. Decision-making changes, such as fight or flight. Of course, a few of the victims of Bontrager’s experience a state of prolonged agitation we call ‘excited delirium.’ They undergo certain visible changes, as decreased blood flow to the facial area turns the lips purple, and lack of autonomic response causes red-eye in most cases. These effects gave some people the idea that they were zombies.”

“Well, these zombies can be rendered harmless. We’ve found that lessening stimulus—just putting them in a warm saltwater pool and turning down the lights—prevents nearly all of the aggressive behaviors.” He turned to where Dr. White stood with his arms folded. “You should be able to come up with something for any patients you currently have in your care while waiting for relief. And—” He shouted back to the crowd. “—speaking of relief, I’m sure you all have plenty of questions. So, not all at once, please—”

McCaffrey said, “There are a few different options. Most likely by pontoon bridge to a waiting camp on Boca Chica, then off to freedom once everything is clear.”

“Hopefully very soon. We’ll know more in the next few days, maybe two weeks.”

McCaffrey nodded. “Of course... of course they do. You guys are all going to be famous when this is over—interviews on the evening news, book deals.”

“Like yours? No. Oh no. Lots of fear, mostly over nothing. It’s too hard to spread. The worst—and this is a funny story—was on this little catamaran that left off your island before the navy arrived. It had at least five or six infected on it and.... Maybe this isn’t the best story for a room with children.”

Dr. McCaffrey didn’t seem to think anything of the steady stream of questions, but after Margaret Lawrence asked about cases outside of the United States, missed her line, and corrected herself, the one called Dr. Thorpe did.

Reagan Castaneda gave the scratching-his-scalp signal, and when Dr. White saw it, he clapped his hands.

“All right,” Dr. White said. “That’s about all we have time for now. Dr. Morenz should be back any minute, and a lot of you need to get to work on the evening meal, and the rest need to get back to their assigned chores. Maybe we can trouble the good doctor for a few more questions after dinner.”

To his right, at the end of the conference table, Ruth Hutchins, the white-haired gastroenterologist, answered with a troubled sigh. “I left them at 206 to drop off their bags. They should be with Rose and Nurse Reed by now, getting the tour. We’ve got at least an hour still.”

“They die,” Artis Buehl cut in from the other side of the table, “and they die this afternoon. The only choice we need to make is how.”

“If we’re talking murder,” said Mary Stratton, “I think I will wait outside.”

“Not like that, Mary,” he said, softer than before. “The island will do it for us. They clearly haven’t got a clue how bad it is. We put them in a car, send them into Old Town, and let The Dragon take care of them.”

“Oh God, Artis, they’ll want at least one of us with them,” said Dr. Alicia Nguyen, a thirty-two-year-old pediatrician, whose face was now set with haggard lines that made her look forty-two. “And just who are we sending off to be executed this time?”

Dr. White lifted his hands for silence. “Let’s take a moment. What did we learn in there?”

“We learned that the Republic hasn’t come clean,” said Terry Miller, slender, balding, early fifties, with a laugh that everyone in the room could understand. “They’ve been feeding them a line of bullshit for at least the last two months.”

Dr. White sighed. “It explains why we haven’t seen more of a military response, and I suppose it only confirms what many of us suspected. They’re totally in the dark. They think we have a few cases of Bontragers. They have no idea what it has become.”

“I mean it, Artis. They have to know. Someone in authority has to know. I say we tell the two doctors.”

Next to Mary Stratton, Randy Fenton, a nurse nearing fifty, pointed to the man who had not yet spoken. “What about him?”

Reagan Castaneda was not seated. He leaned against the wall by the door of the third-floor conference room. He looked at Dr. White, but kept his arms folded defensively. “One doctor, not two. The other guy is something else.”

Dave White nodded. “Military intelligence... Delta force... something. I agree. That guy is here to gather intel.”

“Which is why it has to be tonight,” said Buehl. “And I don’t buy that one of us has to go with them. We play it cool. We act like we’re trying to keep an eye on them—like we’re hiding something—and I bet they go out there by themselves just to get away from us and find out what we’re keeping secret.”

Terry Miller nodded, and Dr. Nguyen’s eyebrows arched with interest as she considered the possibility.

She seemed to wilt, her shoulders collapsing inward, but her voice held steady. “My daughter, all that is left of my family, is on this island. I don’t want to die any more than anyone else here, but I would rather that than letting those... things... off of this island. I could not live with myself if I knew that it spread onto the mainland, maybe around the world, because the people with the guns and the bombs didn’t know what it was when they still could have done something.”

“We vote. We vote, and this shit,” said Buehl, pointing behind his back to Reagan, “does not get a vote this time. He doesn’t have a department. He’s not one of us, and he’s just going to go along with whatever Mary says anyway.”

Buehl huffed, grabbed his chair, and violently set it back in its place before roughly dropping back onto it.

“You guys seem to think that they’ll nuke us if we come clean,” said Dr. Hutchins with a voice that growled like a chain-smoker. “I almost want to tell them just to see the looks on their faces, but I don’t guarantee the Army pushes the button just because they get wind of our true situation.”

“Yes, we all know you would, but boys with guns sometimes think that they can solve almost anything. Even if they know the extent of the infection, I’m wondering if they will still believe they can solve it with planes and a few soldiers.”

Artis smiled a tired smile. “Yeah, well, it would be fun to see that little bastard’s face when he finds out what he just rappelled down into.”

When it was over, Artis and Reagan rounded up a group of orderlies and found the two visitors on the roof, looking at the pigeon cages and the communications tower. The one called Dr. Thorpe’s face fell when he saw the men coming for him.

They walked the two men down into the conference room, McCaffrey promising every kind of retribution. He stopped speaking when he saw the grim faces looking up at him, and the enormous map of the island that covered the table. They were instructed to sit, with Artis and Reagan standing behind them, along with one of the armed orderlies. The others stood outside the dimly lit room in the hall.

“Dr. McCaffrey,” Dave White began, “before we get started, I want to tell you that we have taken a vote, and although it was close, we have decided not to kill you.”

“This,” said Dr. White, pointing to the map, “is what is left of Key West and Stock Island. The flags represent confines. I’m sorry... that’s what we call the places where groups have barricaded themselves. Not sure how it got that name. Confined. Places of confinement. It’s what the Republic people were calling them—”

“Where the hell is Morenz? What about... what about the patient on Trumbo Point?”

“Dr. Morenz died four days ago.” He waited while the implications set in. “Trying to make it to Trumbo Point. We’ve made two more attempts to cross the channel and reestablish contact with the Republic Confine. Both have failed. We’re trapped here, Doctor.”

“No, you don’t. While you were getting a handle on the outbreak on the mainland, things here took a sharp turn for the worse. Over a third of our people have died in the last two months. We’re going to explain why, but first, let me make a few introductions. These are the department chairs: starting next to me is Dr. Ruth Hutchins, who is over our triage and extended care.”

“Dr. Nguyen is currently over immediate stabilization. Terry Miller is over engineering, and is the reason that our main building still has very limited power.”

“Nurse Fenton is in charge of medical equipment, and has overseen the hospital’s transformation from normal medicines to the sorts of things we do now.”

“Think slapping honey on the wound and getting a few puffs off a joint for the pain,” interjected the nurse. “Try not to get hurt too badly.”

“Of course, you’ve already met Mr. Artis Buehl. He’s the head of our external operations. You’ll have to excuse his rough demeanor. Mr. Buehl is the fourth man to hold that post in the last two months. None of the others has lived longer than three weeks. It will be Mr. Buehl’s three-week anniversary this Friday. And this lovely lady to my right is Mary Stratton. She has worked miracles with our food distribution, and you can thank her for your dinner tonight. Now,” said Dr. White, adjusting his posture, “what is really happening on this island? Essentially, it is our recommendation that you bomb both Key West and Stock Island down to the bedrock.”

“God, you idiots. You mindless idiots. You’re not in some zombie movie. This is a disease. It has—”

Buehl smacked the wall behind him with a fist, the impact echoing through the room. “Now you listen to me, you limp-dicked little can of cat shit.”

“While you fuckers have been having a fine ol’ time sticking people in salt baths, we kinda ran out of food.”

“You didn’t give us any bullets, Ass Clown!” Buehl erupted. “Everybody except your friends on Trumbo have been starving. They couldn’t get things under control, even stopped getting the food out. So guess what?”

“Shut up, Doc. This little piece of work thinks he’s not in zombie movie. Bontragers. Get ’em in the dark. How stupid are we? Well, guess what they did when the food ran out? A man gets hungry enough, the man next to him looks mighty tasty. And your little Bontragers? That ‘not so easy to get’ got a whole lot easier to catch when they started eating each other! And when their brains went all soft, the last thing they were thinking about was how hungry they were, and how nice a big ol’ chunk of human meat would taste.”

McCaffrey shrank in his seat, visibly recoiling from the tirade taking place directly above him.

“Take your ass across the channel and see what happens. They come out of the God damn woodwork! They get all amped up and they get you on the ground and they start eating you. They fucking eat you! There’s no mercy. There’s no quarter. There’s just a mindless killing machine clawing at your skin and tearing pieces out you with his God damn teeth!”

Buehl stopped, not because of Dr. White, but rather because he was spent, breathing hard, his eyes welling with tears.

McCaffrey swallowed. “Why don’t you go in a vehicle? Something they can’t get into?”

McCaffrey looked a question, and mouthed the word ‘Ones’ as if trying to think of what it could possibly mean.

Dr. Nguyen lifted the map and pulled out a little stack of pictures from beneath, all of them rough, printed on plain paper. She spread them like a poker hand in front of McCaffrey and Thorpe.

“We were told that... that one of the potential infected patients was showing a different set of symptoms. We were supposed to see the patient. We had to rule out the possibility of a different strain.”

Thorpe reached out and lifted one of the pieces of paper, a picture of a man, big, jeans, no shirt, his body blackened with char.

“We call that one ‘Colossus’,” Dave White said. “One of our number, a man named Wietzner who was already nearly dead, delivered a container of homemade napalm right up to that one and ignited it.” He nodded at the crude photograph. “We estimate he has third and fourth degree burns over nearly two thirds of his body.”

“No, Doctor, he is not. We’ve tried everything. We’ve thrown everything at them. Every time, they just keep on going.”

Thorpe set down the one he was holding and picked up another, looking at the one covered with tattoos on the end out of the corner of his eye.

“The one you are pretending not to notice we call ‘The Dragon.’ He seems to be the leader.”

“Spell it!” Ruth Hutchins scoffed. “Spell it out and I’ll believe you.”

Dave White continued. “We think he was a part of the SEAL training program formerly housed here on the island. He’s killed more of us than any of the others.”

“He’s a tricky one to get close to. Also, we’ve never seen him pick up a car.”

Then it was McCaffrey who laughed, a pained sound of skepticism trying to peek its way through the fear. “Get real. You had me going, you really did. Now I know you people are crazy.” He flinched as Buehl leaned into him. “And get this asshole off of me!”

Dave White held up a hand to command calm. “I really don’t care what you think, Doctor. I lost hope of ever seeing this island return to normal a long time ago, and with what I’ve seen in the last four months, death sounds like a comfort.” He nodded to the picture that Thorpe now held, the closest of any of them to a portrait—tall, athletic build, thinning hair, long in the back, and eyes that flickered with life. “We call him ‘Lucifer’—not as big as Colossus, not as deadly as The Dragon, but make no mistake.... Meet him once and he’s the one that you’ll see in your nightmares. He has a penchant for killing his victims in... unusual ways.”

“Why can’t you kill them?” Thorpe asked in a breathy voice without looking up.

“They don’t hold still for head shots or stay in one place while you decapitate them. The rest makes sense in light of the overall symptomatology. When you think about why we humans die from physical injuries, often it has more to do with the body’s response than with the injury itself. Most traumas are, strictly speaking, survivable. Of course, the cerebral effects of Bontrager’s seem to disable the body’s responses. They don’t go into shock, or even seem to feel pain at any but the most detached levels. We’re not trying to kill them as much as annihilate them. We’re still hoping that Colossus will succumb to the secondary effects of skin loss and tissue damage eventually, but it’s been ten days and, as far as we know, he’s still moving.”

“We’ve identified nine, total. We’ve photographed seven. We haven’t been able to take a picture of ‘Jones’ or ‘Mr. Gray’ just yet.”

“They have to be something that’s understandable even if screamed. Other than that, it is something of an organic process.”

“Recruiting?” Dave White glared at Thorpe. “Let’s call it what it is, Captain, or Lieutenant, or whoever you really are? All men, all fighting age... he seems to be adding at the rate of roughly one a week. The gestation period is normally around two weeks or just a little longer, so it would appear that he is infecting, and doing whatever indoctrination process that bonds all of them to him, in manageable increments, maybe two at a time.”

“Indoctrination process?” Thorpe set down the picture he’d been holding and focused on breathing normally. “They didn’t tell us, those sons of bitches.”

“They told you they were dealing with something new. True, they left out how quickly our situation is deteriorating. I don’t suppose they were ready to be blown to smithereens—certainly you can understand—but we’ve decided that the time for cloak and dagger has passed. If someone doesn’t stop this... quickly... you may not have enough soldiers in your cordon to stop them.”

McCaffrey shook his head. “They don’t group up. I’m telling you this isn’t zombies. They attack each other as easily as they attack healthy subjects. We can use drones to locate them and take them out one at a time.”

“You’re still talking about type Ones. Type Twos think, organize, plan, execute, and learn from their mistakes. They modify and use equipment. We think they’re the ones that took out the last of the city’s power grid. They can go into the excited delirium state and come right back out again. At will.” White paused to let that sink in. “The Republic’s people say that they saw The Dragon three months ago, longer than any of our type Ones have survived.”

McCaffrey grinned like a mad man. “This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. You’re a damn liar. It doesn’t work like that. Bontrager’s doesn’t work like that. You hit the wall and you die. That’s what happens. Every time. Sixty-eight days... the longest anyone has ever gone. Sixty-eight days and his brain had turned to mush. The profile you’re describing is impossible. Even if it somehow has evolved to slow the rate of tissue loss, it wouldn’t make any sense.” He shook his head furiously. “You’d be dead. You’d all be dead.”

“If they ever attack the hospital, we don’t hold out much hope, but we’ve drilled for the possibility. You two may have noticed the rope ladder coiled next to the pigeon cages. About thirty of us have volunteered to stay and try and hold them on the lower floors, while we evacuate the others to the roof and get them down and to a rally point. So far they have not chosen to directly attack ours, or any of the other, confines. We have no idea why.”

Dave White shrugged at Thorpe. “The delirium seems to take something out of them. If they do it once, you won’t see that one again for a couple of days. They plan for this. A normal team for them is three, so even if we could find their hideout, we would still have to deal with the other six. There is clearly still some loss of mental faculties for a Type Two. Their behaviors are coordinated, but erratic, and of course, at the end of the day, we are still talking about flesh. Destroy the soft tissues and you destroy the creature. It can be done, we’re sure. The young man standing behind you fought The Dragon in single combat and forced him to retreat.”

“If we had the numbers, the firepower, we might have a chance, but we don’t have any of those things. So the way I see it, the United States has two choices: they can either send a division of troops in, expecting serious casualties, or they can bomb the island back into the stone age.”

McCaffrey looked over each and every face in the room, and shook his head. He began to speak, but stopped and chuckled to himself.

They made the call from the rooftop. The islanders left them alone, but Miller had rigged an intercom speaker by the signal tower, and Dr. White and the others listened in.

Much worse than we thought.

They call them type Twos.

Clearly a different strain.

Yes, the target is still alive and he seems to be gathering others.

The survivors don’t believe they can hold out much longer.

You’ll need time to debrief the secretary.

Of course. We will await further instructions.

The locals are extremely hostile.

If we don’t answer your call assume we are dead.

That night, the two visitors ate with the others, and then went to the room they’d been given and closed the door. At intervals, they could hear McCaffrey’s shouts down the hall.

By the next morning, they still had not received their “further instructions.”

Reagan and Ricky went with the morning crew up to the fishing inlet, and stood guard with two others while a group of workers set the nets in waist-high water. The two of them stood under the waxy leaves of a sea grape tree while watching a trail through the grassy area, which gave way to rocks, which gave way to water.

Reagan turned to greet Thorpe, who was walking down the trail. “What the fuck do you want?”

Thorpe stopped a few feet away. Dressed in jeans, khaki shirt, and a light pullover jacket that obscured whatever weapons he now carried, he looked all around. Narrow, predatory eyes took in the terrain. “I’d like you to put down that gun. I don’t usually talk to armed men.”

Reagan slid the .45 back into its holster. “Neither do I,” he said, looking at the Thorpe’s waist. “So piss off. Doctor.”

“If I give you my name and tell you what I’m really doing here, will you at least tell me what you saw when you fought The Dragon?”

“Would you believe me?” Reagan scoffed and turned back to the men and the nets.

“No promises. Did you believe McCaffrey when he told you we didn’t have much trouble on the mainland?”

Reagan turned his head until he could see Thorpe out of the corner of his eye. “We get news on the radio. We know what’s happening.”

“Oh no you don’t. Everyone is under government control on this. The press is working off of official releases. So is McCaffrey. There are only a couple of people at the CDC who know the true body count.”

Reagan smiled and turned. Then he frowned down at the little boy looking back and forth between the two. “What are you doing? Watch the tree line. How many times do I have to say it?”

“Douglas Haney, sergeant first class, United States Marine Corp,” said Thorpe.

Reagan met his eyes. “You’re a marine? That’s all? Not one of this guy’s old SEAL buddies, or maybe a special CIA agent trained from birth after the hospital told your parents you died? You’re a jarhead?”

When Reagan started to laugh, Thorpe said, “You just get me close to him. The gun I’m carrying is special.”

“Yeah, it’s going to feel special when he shoves it up your ass and pulls the trigger, let me tell you.”

“He was kinda busy killing my friends when I jumped him. And don’t think for a second we’re going to line up for this guy so you can take your shot.”

“The story I heard was that it was just you and one other, and the other was already hit. So were you.”

“No, no, no... one for one. I told you I caught him off guard. So far, all I’ve gotten out of you is that you’re under-qualified for your job. It’s your turn.”

“Okay,” said Thorpe, with a series of curt little nods. “When Bontrager—the guy, not the disease—died, his girlfriend was infected. By the time they found her, she had infected 44 people that they know about so far. In turn, those people infected a total of around 2,000. So far. They called her The Succubus. So you guys aren’t the only one giving some of them names. I’ll let you figure out how she got hers for yourself with Little Man down there.”

“No shit. All right, all right. Yeah, I was hit.” Reagan lifted his shirt above the scar on his stomach. “Are we right about him? Was he one of the SEALs?”

“He was. Not just any of them, either. He wasn’t just here for training. He was the trainer, supposed to be some kind of a legend. And that was before he got the superman disease. That’s why I’m a little curious about the amazing Reagan Castaneda who can beat someone like that with his bare hands.” He gave a friendly shrug. “You know how stories get bigger every time someone tells them.”

“Yeah, I do. I’m a grown up. It’s normal. You’re nine. When little kids cuss, it’s creepy as hell.”

The marine kneeled down until he was face to face with the boy. He pointed out into the water. “Ricky, you must be one brave little boy to have made it through all this. Tell me how you get the fish.”

Ricky pointed to the trail and said in English, which had lost all but a hint of his native accent, “We drag the bodies down the trail. That’s why so much of the grass is gone. Then we put heavy stuff in their pockets and sink them in the water. The nets go on top of the bodies and the fish come because the bodies make the water stink.”

“We get lobsters too. I like lobsters. This one time, we caught a shark. Really. Want to see my pistol?”

Thorpe frowned up at Reagan. “But you don’t want him to cuss, because that’s creepy.”

Ricky stopped... for a second. “Can I tell him about how Kris got scared of the shark when the nets came up, and shot it?”

“No. We never call Krissy ‘Kris’ because when we start talking about Kris, it makes me break out in hives, and when ‘Kris’ starts acting like she’s in charge of the commandos, we ignore her and wait outside.”

Reagan glared at the boy. “Every confine has its security people. The hospital has two groups—the orderlies who handled most of the stuff inside, and the Conch Commandos, who handle everything outside. Commando has been a tough gig. Kris.... God damn it, now you’ve got me saying it. Krissy is the... I don’t know... wait, you know what? I do know. Krissy is like the guy in every spy movie in the back of the room, with all of the spy techies sitting in front of their screens, who yells stuff that everybody else already knew. She’s the... the—”

“Killer,” said Reagan. “This little fluff ball named Cleo that I got for the kid, because your old Navy buddy almost killed him and I thought he could use some cheering up. I told him to call it Killer as a joke, but Mein Kampf down here couldn’t say ‘killer.’ He made it sound like ‘Kibler,’ which turned into ‘Keebler Elf,’ which turned into ‘Keebs’.”

“Krissy Stratton, daughter of Mary Stratton, heir to the Stratton estate if it still exists, and Bontrager’s girlfriend didn’t dry-hump it into a pile of overpriced bricks. A college freshman that used to sit around with her sorority sisters and make fun of everybody that wasn’t rich enough or pretty enough, until she caught a bullet in the face and then just laid around all day feeling sorry for herself.”

“The little blonde girl with the scar? I saw her. She’s out of bed now. No doubt about that.”

Reagan shook his head at the distant clouds. “Yes. Yes she is. You see this dog? I have this theory. I got the dog from a young girl, and I’m thinking maybe Keebs got used to having a young girl for an owner, and so the dog used to ignore the rest of us and just mess with her. It would sit on the floor next to her and bark. Then it jumped up onto her bed and....” Reagan took the palm of his hand and made a downward striking motion. “It would just smack her in the face with bottom of its paw, like it was saying, ‘get out of bed and play with me, Bitch.’”

“Nobody was more surprised than me. Trust me. One day, she’s out of bed because Keebs needs to go outside. Next day, she’s messing with the commandos because Keebs needs a decent doggie bed. Next, she’s telling us how to make our runs. Now, she thinks she’s like our manager or something. Buehl lets her write stuff down and make suggestions because his girlfriend dumped him, and because he’s an idiot.” Reagan scoffed. “Still, he better stay alive. I guarantee she’s Doc White’s next choice if he goes down.”

“Well, at least you can still see the humor in things, even with everything going on.”

“I don’t know about humor, but yeah, this place... this freaking place! You’re gonna see things. Trust me.”

“I don’t know what kind of intel they gave you, but I promise, if you live long enough, you’re going to see shit on this island that will give you chills. Weird shit.”

“No, you’re not. You think I’m talking about a rabies-type infection and kids with guns and a sorority chic that starts giving orders. That’s not it.” Any joy and humor that had been there now left Reagan’s smile. “I can’t even tell you the half of it. You’ll think I’m going crazy, but something is happening here. Something... I don’t even know what to call it. That night with The Dragon, he was killing us, killing all of us. Nothing we could do slowed him down. I told the last of the others to make a run for it. I was already shot. I didn’t think I could make it back anyway. I set this trap for him. Didn’t work much better than anything else we tried. Next thing you know, he’s cutting me up with a knife. I got lucky.” He held out his left hand, showing both sides of the livid scar. “When he impaled me, it got stuck, and before he could get it back out I got in one good shot.”

Reagan shook his head. “But he didn’t retreat. The look on his face... I couldn’t make sense of it that night, but I think I get it now. He wanted to stay. He wanted to just stand there and exchange until he beat me down and could lean over my corpse and take a long, slow piss on my dead body. But something else had a hold of him. Something else didn’t think it was worth it. Kill him later. It made him leave.”

“The heck are you talking about? Made him leave? Like mind control? What could have made him leave?”

After a short exhale, he let loose a fragment of laughter. “If it wasn’t the devil... well, I don’t know what the difference would be between that and the devil.”

“What, you didn’t think we just got lucky, did you? We call him that because that’s what he had engraved on the pistol I took off of him that night.”

Reagan pulled the .45 Sig Sauer out of his belt holster and turned it around so that Thorpe could see the words etched into the handle.

The marine stared at the words with his mouth open. “Okay,” he said, finally. “You really did it. I think that makes it my turn again. And there is something you guys should probably know, something I’m pretty sure you would have mentioned if you’d seen it.”

They got the official word that afternoon, and for the rest of the day the hospital council went back and forth with McCaffrey. The government wanted him to examine the patient on Trumbo Point for what the islanders were calling Type Two infection status.

Government: No, a sample of blood or tissue is not enough. We needed a full examination—including behavioral—before starting the vaccination process.

McCaffrey: Will you airlift me to the Republic compound?

Government: No.

McCaffrey: Would you consider an apparatus for airlifting the patient to the hospital?

Government: Absolutely not.

McCaffrey: They say it is not possible.

Government: What about with air support?

McCaffrey: The angry one with the shotgun threatened to stuff my balls in my mouth.

Government: What if we offer food and supplies?

McCaffrey: What kind of supplies?

Government: Weapons and medicine and fuel for the generator, along with air support for their vehicles.

McCaffrey: They’re going to talk to the Republic.

The message was salted down to three sentences. Comm personnel translated it into Morse and took the message up to the tower.