Hap looked at him, scared, and tried to remember what all his reasons had been. He couldn't think of a one. All he could remember was that he had also awakened with a headache and a runny nose. Well, everyone caught a cold once in a while. But before that guy Campion had shown up, he had been fine. Just fine.
The three Hodges kids were six, four, and eighteen months. The two youngest were taking naps, and the oldest was out back digging a hole. Lila Bruett was in the living room, watching "The Young and the Restless." She hoped Sally wouldn't return until it was over. Ralph Hodges had bought a big color TV when times had been better in Arnette, and Lila loved to watch the afternoon stories in color. Everything was so much prettier.
She drew on her cigarette and then let the smoke out in spasms as a racking cough seized her. She went into the kitchen and spat the mouthful of crap she had brought up down the drain. She had gotten up wrath the cough, and all day it had felt like someone was tickling the back of her throat with a feather.
She went back to the living room after taking a peek out the pantry window to make sure Bert Hodges was okay. A commercial was on now, two dancing bottles of toilet bowl cleaner. Lila let her eyes drift around the room and wished her own house looked this nice. Sally's hobby was doing paint-by-the-numbers pictures of Christ, and they were all over the living room in nice frames. She especially liked the big one of the Last Supper mounted in back of the TV; it had come with sixty different oil colors, Sally had told her, and it took almost three months to finish. It was a real work of art.
Just as her story came back on, Baby Cheryl started to cry, a whooping, ugly yell broken by bursts of coughing.
Lila put out her cigarette and hurried into the bedroom. Eva, the four-year-old, was still fast asleep, but Cheryl was lying on her back in her crib, and her face was going an alarming purple color. Her cries began to sound strangled.
Lila, who was not afraid of the croup after seeing both of her own through bouts with it, picked her up by the heels and swatted her firmly on the back. She had no idea if Dr. Spock recommended this sort of treatment or not, because she had never read him. It worked nicely on Baby Cheryl. She emitted a froggy croak and suddenly spat an amazing wad of yellow phlegm out onto the floor.
"Better?" Lila asked.
"Yeth," said Baby Cheryl. She was almost asleep again.
Lila wiped up the mess with a Kleenex. She couldn't remember ever having seen a baby cough up so much snot all at once.
She sat down in front of "The Young and the Restless" again, frowning. She lit another cigarette, sneezed over the first puff, and then began to cough herself.
BOOK I CAPTAIN TRIPS Chapter 4
It was an hour past nightfall.
Starkey sat alone at a long table, sifting through sheets of yellow flimsy. Their contents dismayed him. He had been serving his country for thirty-six years, beginning as a scared West Point plebe. He had won medals. He had spoken with Presidents, had offered them advice, and on occasion his advice had been taken. He had been through dark moments before, plenty of them, but this...
He was scared, so deeply scared he hardly dared admit it to himself. It was the kind of fear that could drive you mad.
On impulse he got up and went to the wall where the five blank TV monitors looked into the room. As he got up, his knee bumped the table, causing one of the sheets of flimsy to fall off the edge. It seesawed lazily down through the mechanically purified air and landed on the tile, half in the table's shadow and half out. Someone standing over it and looking down would have seen this:
OT CONFIRMED
SEEMS REASONABLY
STRAIN CODED 848-AB
CAMPION, (W.) SALLY
ANTIGEN SHIFT AND MUTATION.
HIGH RISK/EXCESS MORTALITY
AND COMMUNICABILITY ESTIMATED
REPEAT 99.4%. ATLANTA PLAGUE CENTER
UNDERSTANDS. TOP SECRET BLUE FOLDER.
ENDS
P-T-222312A
Starkey pushed a button under the middle screen and the picture flashed on with the unnerving suddenness of solid state components. It showed the western California desert, looking east. It was desolate, and the desolation was rendered eerie by the reddish-purple tinge of infrared photography.
It's out there, straight ahead, Starkey thought. Project Blue.
The fright tried to wash over him again. He reached into his pocket and brought out a blue pill. What his daughter would call a "downer." Names didn't matter; results did. He dry-swallowed it, his hard, unseamed face wrinkling for a moment as it went down.
Project Blue.