Peeps

I barely glimpsed her before she struck, barreling out of the darkness and crashing into me, as hard and solid as a suitcase full of books. The impact knocked my breath away and threw me to the ground. Long fingernails raked my chest, shredding my hazmat suit. I blindly swung a fist and co

“Patricia!” I shouted, half guessing, and she hissed at the sound, scrambling away from the anathema of her own name. I was right—it was Joseph’s wife. The light came from behind her now, igniting a shimmering halo of feathers wound into her hair and sticking to her skin. With her long fingernails and half-starved face, she looked like a human partly transformed into an awful bird of prey.

She readied herself to spring at me.

“ ‘I’ve got friends in low places,’ ” I sang—the only Garth Brooks song that came to mind. The refrain halted her long enough for me to tear the shredded hazmat suit the rest of the way open.

Patricia Moore stared at my chest in horror; the jolly country singer stared back.

“Oh, yeah!” I said. “She’s my cowboy Cadillac!”

Her eyes widened and she screamed, spi

Another anathema awaited her there: her husband, faceup on the floor. I turned and scrambled deeper into the darkness, sweeping the dirt floor wildly with my palms. Where was my damn flashlight?

My racing brain wondered how long she’d been tracking me. Had she followed me from downwind since I’d dropped into the tu

Suddenly my knuckles grazed hard metal, sending the flashlight’s cylinder rolling farther into the darkness. I reached out, grasping blindly, and at that moment my ears split with Patricia Moore’s scream—fear for her husband and horror at the sight of his beloved face, mixed up in one terrible cry that echoed through the tu

My hand closed on the flashlight.

She was already headed back, loping toward me on hands and knees, growling like a wolf.

I covered my eyes with one hand, turned the flashlight on her, and switched it to full power. Her feral grunts choked off, and the tu

A moment later, I flicked it off and opened my eyes. Against the sunlight streaming down the shaft, I could see Patricia Moore crouching in the center of the tu

I set the flashlight on low and found my duffel bag, only a few yards down the tu

Perhaps Patricia had despaired, thinking that her husband was dead, or maybe it was too much to keep fighting in a world that included my rendition of “Cowboy Cadillac.” But for whatever reason, she didn’t move a muscle as I approached across the feathered floor.

I reached out and jabbed her in the shoulder. She winced as the needle hissed, lifted her head, and sniffed the air.

“You’re one of Morgan’s?” she asked.

I blinked. My vision was still spotted with tracers, but her expression seemed thoughtful, almost curious. Her voice, like Sarah’s, was dry and harsh, but the way she said the words sounded so reasonable, so human.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“You’re sane?”

“Um … I guess.”

She nodded slowly. “Oh. I thought you’d gone bad, like Joseph.” Her eyes closed as the drug took effect. “She says it’s coming soon…”

“What is?” I asked.

She opened her mouth again but fell into a heap without making another sound.

Maybe I should have headed back to the surface to rest up, reload, and share my revelations about the parasite’s new tricks. Maybe I should have waited right there for the transport squad, brought them in by GPS and cell phone.

Both of my captives had been so unpeeplike—Joseph facing the orange late-afternoon sun as if the light didn’t faze him, Patricia speaking so clearly once she’d identified my scent.

Are you sane? she’d asked. Yeah, right. I wasn’t the one living in a tu

But it reminded me of the way Sarah had changed after I’d cornered her, asking about Elvis, peering into my eyes without terror. Maybe I should have mentioned this to someone right away.

Maybe I should have wondered more about what was coming soon.

But I didn’t wait around. I still had a peep cat to catch.

After handcuffing Patricia Moore, I called the transport squad, giving them precise GPS coordinates for the captives. They wouldn’t even have to disturb Ma

They didn’t need me, and with a high-priority work order from the Mayor himself in hand, it made perfect sense to follow the tu

Under the swimming pool again, I listened to the echoes bouncing down the shattered drain. The basement overhead sounded the same—still just a few dozen rats squabbling and skittering among the feathers. The brood hadn’t returned, and nothing had touched the cat food I’d left behind.

I wondered how far down the tu

The slope grew steeper, descending as the tu

Then another sound floated up the tu

Just how smart was this thing?

The echoes of the cat’s cry suggested a large open space in front of me. The push of the breeze at my back had strengthened, and the pulsing beat of the exhaust fans grew more distinct.

Then I felt something, a trembling in the earth. Unlike the rumbling of the fan, it was building steadily under my feet, until it made the stones in the tu

Then the rumble peaked and began to fall away, fading into the distance, just like … the sound of a passing train.

Chip had been right. The PATH tu

But the earth-shaking passage had left something visible up ahead—strands of stirred-up dust hung illuminated in the air. Flicking the flashlight off, I saw shafts of light filtering into the tu

The tu