“Okay, Montoya, you get your little chat,” Murray said. “But if that doesn’t turn up anything, we need alternatives. Give me something to work with.”
“The excess neurotransmitters create a biochemical disorder,” Margaret said. “Based on what we’ve seen of living hosts, they suffer symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, possibly complete with intense hallucinations. Based on reported behavior, the hosts’ paranoia is quite acute, with elaborate threats and conspiracies, but I’m sure that doesn’t just happen overnight. There’s probably a buildup process, an amplification of paranoia. These hosts may be looking for help in the early stages, but according to what we’ve seen in the five known cases, they are very suspicious and tend to stay away from institutions like hospitals and doctors. We have to make ourselves available to these calls for help.”
“How do we do that?” Murray asked.
“We could run ads in the paper. Vague ads, things that might appeal to the host’s paranoid nature, but wouldn’t attract attention from anyone else. Perhaps businesses with the name Triangle or something like that, something the hosts would see and instantly associate with. Paranoids construct elaborate fantasies about the world around them. If we play into likely fantasies, we might draw them in.”
Murray nodded. “Newspaper ads are good. It will take a little time to create a fake business and we have to avoid anything unusual that might draw the press, but we’ll get it going. What other ideas do you have?”
Otto cleared his throat. “Excuse me for interrupting, sir, but most people don’t get their news from papers anymore, they get it from the Internet. You can set up a web page and have it indexed so the major search engines will find it. The Net is anonymous, so a host might surf it for information on the growths. They can contact you right from the web page.”
Murray’s nod picked up speed. “Yes, yes I see your point. I’ll get people on it right now. We’ll come up with some different ways to attract the hosts. What else have you got, Doctor?”
“That’s about it,” Margaret said. “The triangles decompose so fast we haven’t been able to get a good, clean look at one. We either need a live host or one that’s only been dead for an hour at the most-and I stress, Murray, the need to see a live host above all other possibilities. That’s the only way we’re going to learn more.”
31.
Perry stepped out of the shower into the steam-filled bathroom, toweling off lightly and feeling oddly peaceful now that all his senses (and his wayward memory) had returned. It might well have been the longest shower of his life, and it was worth every second. His head pain had faded to a mere whisper of its former screaming strength. He was hungry. Really hungry. Cleaning up the bathroom would have to wait until he’d hit the fridge. Some Pop-Tarts would hit the spot, for starters.
The strange thing was how he didn’t itch anymore. In fact, now that he thought about it, he hadn’t itched a bit since waking up on the floor, except for a scratchy growth of bright red beard that itched plenty.
Trying to keep his newly clean feet from stepping in the gunk on the floor, he moved over to the steam- covered mirror. He used his hand to clear a patch. The water-beaded reflection showed beard growth, looked like two days’ worth.
Jesus…just how long had he been out?
Wrapping a towel around his waist, he walked into the living room and turned on the TV. Channel 23, the Preview Channel, always listed the time and date in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.
It was 12:40 P.M. But it wasn’t Thursday, December 13. It was December 14.
Friday.
He’d been unconscious since returning home from work on Wednesday. Somewhere in the vicinity of forty- eight hours. Almost two full days.
That wasn’t passing out, that was a fucking coma. Two days? He’d lain in a pool of his own vomit for two days? No wonder he was so hungry.
Perry grabbed his cell phone. Sixteen messages waited for him. Most of them probably from Sandy, wondering if he planned on showing up for work.
Work. Counting when he’d been sent home, he’d missed two full days of work. He was probably fired by now. There was no way he could stroll in at 1:00 P.M. on a Friday. What a great story this would be: “Sorry, boss, but I tripped in my own bathroom, clunked my head on the toilet seat and slipped into a coma while lying in a puddle of my own sick.”
Perry sat down on the couch and sorted through the messages. Sure enough, two were from Sandy, seven were from Bill, the rest hang-ups from telemarketers. Four of the work messages were from Thursday. Bill sounded concerned. On the final message from Friday, Bill said he was coming over to see if Perry was all right.
Perry erased the messages. He turned off the phone’s ringer; the last thing he wanted to do was talk to anyone, even Bill. Perry moved to the front door. Sure enough, tacked to the outside was a note.
Two days. He’d missed two days of work. What the hell would Dear Ol’ Dad have said about that? Nothing good, Perry knew that for certain. He’d make it up to Sandy. If he had to work double shifts and weekends for the next three months with no overtime, he’d make it up. Concussion or no concussion, there was no excuse for missing that much work. He couldn’t just call her. That would be cowardly. He’d drive in right away and take his medicine face-to-face. After, of course, he got his ass to the hospital.
His stomach growled. He had to get some food first.
In minutes his last two eggs were frying up in a butter-coated pan. The smell drew loud grumbles from his stomach and made his mouth water. He dropped two pieces of bread into the toaster, then crammed a third piece in his mouth and chewed ravenously.
Before the eggs finished cooking, he reached into the cupboard, pulled out the last of the Pop-Tarts and wolfed them down. The toast popped up as he slid the eggs onto a plate. He jammed a piece of toast into the first yolk, and took a big, satisfying bite. His stomach rumbled again-happily, this time-as he finished off the first egg and raised his toast to puncture the second yolk.
Then he froze, half-chewed food hanging in his mouth.
The round, yellow-orange yolk glistened, surrounded by a bed of white. Orange. Orange that at one time had been a baby chicken, growing in a shell.
Growing. Growing. Growing.
Grown.
The toast dropped to the floor. It landed butter side down.
What the hell had he been thinking, eating a pile of eggs and worrying about work when he still had these fucking things inside him? He pulled back the towel’s edge to examine his thigh, exposing the wound that had helped knock him out cold for two straight days. The shower had cleared away the dried blood, leaving fresh pink scar tissue with only a small, dark red scab-pebble in the middle. The wound looked healthy. Normal. The whitish growth that had caused his itching was long gone.
It was gone…but the others weren’t.
He sat at the kitchen table and pulled his right knee to his chest, getting a good, close look at his shin.
The orange-peel skin was gone. What had taken its place didn’t make him feel any better.
Where a circle of thick, pebbly, orange skin had once been, a peculiar triangle now lay. A triangle that was under his skin. Each of the triangle’s sides was about an inch long.
The skin covering the strange triangle had a pale bluish tinge to it, the same color as the blue veins in the underside of one’s wrist. But it wasn’t really his skin. There was no break in the skin that wrapped around his leg, that covered his whole body for that matter, but somehow what covered the blue triangle just didn’t seem to be his. It felt tougher than his own.
Near each of the triangle’s three points was a quarter-inch slit pointing to the triangle’s center. They reminded Perry of the slits in a homemade apple pie-if, of course, apple pie were triangular, made of human skin, and held a bluish tinge.
What the fuck was it?
