Triple Threat - James Patterson Page 0,67

have a new safe destination. And we don’t have any weapons.

All we’ve got is a wrecked government Jeep with a quarter tank of gas. A single nasal injector with an antidote that might work. And each other.

The most important thing of all.

“What do we do? We run!”

Scooping up my son and pulling my wife along by the hand, we rush to the Jeep still parked not far from the lab entrance. We pile inside and peel out.

By the time we get off campus, we spot another cluster of feral humans coming from the other direction—the Strip, its famous casinos and hotels all scarily dark. One of them wears the uniform of a hotel housekeeper. Another, a burly bald man wielding a shotgun, has on the shiny black suit of a casino bouncer.

They catch sight of our speeding Jeep and decide to pursue. As they pick up speed, the bouncer fires at us, spiderwebbing our rear windshield with buckshot.

“Go faster, Oz!” Chloe shouts from the backseat.

So I do. And soon we’re whizzing down one of the city’s wide boulevards, littered with trash and abandoned cars and the occasional non-feral person running for his or her life.

We seem to have lost the second pack of rabid humans, but more keep popping up around every corner. A Chinese tourist hurls a concrete cinder-block at us with incredible strength, leaving a divot in the hood. Even a feral Elvis impersonator leaps in front of the Jeep and bashes one of the headlights with a baseball bat.

“Merde!” Chloe exclaims. “Goddamn you, Oz! I said faster! Why can’t you ever do anything right?”

“Hey, I’m trying my best here!” I call back to her, almost more freaked out by her angry tone of voice than by the rabid humans we’re trying to avoid.

When I suddenly realize…holy shit…

I turn around in my seat to look at Chloe. Her forehead is drenched. Her cheeks are deep crimson. She’s holding Eli in her lap, but clutching onto him so tightly that his skin his turning white—and she’s digging her nails into his flesh a bit, making him cry.

Please. God, no…it can’t be…

Chloe lets loose a bloodcurdling primal roar and grabs me from behind.

She—not Sarah—is the one who’s been going feral!

Our car fills with screaming and mayhem as Chloe attacks me like a maniac, clawing at my face and neck from behind, quickly drawing blood.

Stunned, Sarah and David scramble to yank her off while I try to keep the car moving and under control. We swerve wildly—sideswiping a telephone pole, scraping the roof of an overturned tour bus, just narrowly avoiding being hit by a flaming Molotov cocktail hurled by a feral human on a rooftop I can’t even see.

As the fight continues—me resisting and struggling and gurgling on my own blood—I see David pull the nasal injector from his pocket. He rips off the cap with his teeth, yanks Chloe’s head back by her hair, jams the injector up her nostril, and depresses the trigger.

Chloe gasps and screams. She starts to writhe and seize, shaking horribly and frothing at the mouth. It’s an awful, agonizing sight…

But it’s over in just a few seconds.

Chloe releases her grip on me and slumps back in her seat. Slowly, her breathing and complexion return to normal. Her muscles relax.

Before our eyes, she becomes a healthy human being again!

“What…what just…did I…?” is all she can manage to croak.

“It’s okay, Chloe,” I whisper, tears of relief streaming down my bloodied face.

Sarah, David, little Eli—they’re overwhelmed as well.

I refocus on the road ahead. I press down on the gas even harder and squeal onto a highway on-ramp.

Behind me, through my rearview mirror as we drive farther and farther away, I can see columns of smoke rising. Sin City’s been turned into a war zone.

But at least we saved my wife.

And thanks to our antidote, we might save humanity, too.

“It’s okay, baby,” I say again. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

Epilogue

RAVEN ROCK MOUNTAIN COMPLEX

BLUE RIDGE SUMMIT, PENNSYLVANIA

“As of today, Madam President, the vaccination rate stands at seventy-three percent. That includes all major urban populations of one million or more—”

“What about the remaining twenty-seven percent of Americans, Dr. Freitas?”

President Hardinson glares at Freitas, who’s one of the many advisors, military leaders, and scientists—Chloe and I among them—seated around this giant polished conference table. He gulps.

“We’re working on it, ma’am.”

He can say that again.

Over the past three months since we developed the antihistamine antidote to human pheromonal rabidity, or HPR, as I’ve dubbed it, in that musty Las Vegas lab, I’ve