“You seem very well informed,” Regan said. “For a liberal arts major.”
“I told you, I like science. And I’ve been accused of a lot of things—”
“Paranoia, stubbornness, a general unwillingness to entertain the opinions of others . . .” Adam said.
“—but none of those things are stupid,” Red said with a glare. “I know that no vaccine was developed for this disease, so don’t lie to me and tell me that you’re immune. And you’re not wearing masks, so that toy over there is not taking blood because you’re worried that we’re infected. You’re worried about something else.”
Regan and Sirois exchanged glances. Regan seemed to be weighing what to say next.
“The infection is manifesting differently in this sector than it is everywhere else,” Regan said. “Because of that we do the blood test. We perform it on ourselves as well. I promise you that it really is a blood test and not a secret government tracker.”
“What’s it testing for?” Red asked.
“The presence of certain agents in the blood,” Sirois said.
“I told you, I like science, so if you explained to me what you were looking for I would probably understand,” Red said slowly. She was thinking it through now. “Whatever it is you’re looking for isn’t contracted like this cough that’s killing everyone, is it? That’s why you’re not bothering with masks. It’s not airborne.”
Regan slowly shook his head side to side.
Red looked at Adam, and then back at Regan and Sirois. Sirois still had the blood-testing gun up in what Red thought of as a drawn position, like he could lunge at her any moment and stick it into her exposed arm.
“Is it . . . ?” She stopped, took a breath, because the whole thing was crazy, even crazier than some blood-spattering cough that killed everyone and also because once she said it out loud she knew Adam was going to whoop because it was his theory and he was right. “Is it some kind of parasite? Is it nesting inside people?”
“That’s right!” Adam said. “I told you that was some Alien shit coming out of people.”
“What have you seen?” Regan said, and took a step forward, looming over both of them. “Tell me now.”
The change in him was instant and astonishing. Gone was the professor pose, the kindly soldier. He wasn’t even the barking stereotype he’d pretended to be when he first walked into the barren grocery store. This was a hunter, a killer, a man accustomed to getting his way and doing whatever it took to get it.
“People with their chests busted open,” Adam said in a hurry, like he was trying to get the words out before Red told him not to say anything (which she certainly would have done because she still didn’t see the value in sharing information with people who wanted to lock them up).
“And tracks on the floor,” he continued, despite her side-eye glare. “There’s two of the bodies in this store, if you hadn’t noticed the smell.”
“We find this smell everywhere,” Sirois said. “Because of the victims of the Cough that have been left behind.”
“Two bodies with open chests?” Regan asked, and when Adam nodded he said, “Show me.”
Some kind of parasite, Red thought as they all trooped obediently in the direction of the bodies. Not an airborne disease like the Cough. But where did it come from? And how did people get infected?
At least the bodies have distracted Regan for now. Maybe I can get away without being implanted by the tracker gun.
For she still believed that it was implanting something rather than testing—the idea of an instant blood test result within that little machine seemed more like science fiction than reality.
You don’t think planting trackers is just as sci-fi? Red, when are you going to stop thinking that stuff you read is real? This was Mama’s voice, of course—the voice that told her to stop letting her brain run away hand in hand with her overactive imagination.
Stop worrying about the gun and start worrying about how you’re going to get away, Red thought.