Parts of the data were old, scans of handwritten documents dating back to the early 1970s. Other parts were very recent, as new as five days ago, which meant that it was one day before Homer Gibbon had been given Lucifer 113 instead of the drugs meant to kill him during the court-mandated lethal injection.
Two days before Homer Gibbon woke up in the mortician’s suite at Hartnup’s Transition Estate.
Three days before the army dropped their fuel-air bombs.
Four days before Pittsburgh was overrun and subsequently burned.
Five days before the mass outbreaks that turned Manhattan into a war zone. Before Paris was carpet-bombed by the French Air Force. Before the prime minister of Great Britain ordered all of the bridges spanning the Thames to be blown.
Five days before the Air Force began exploding missiles packed with payloads of raw Reaper over Philadelphia, St. Louis, Detroit, and a dozen other cities. Each bomb was precisely timed to detonate in the path of prevailing winds that would carry it over large portions of the most densely populated areas.
That was today. The Reaper mutagen was in the wind now and soon they’d all know if it would slow Lucifer’s spread. Or, if God had any mercy left for His children, stop it.
Price’s team had worked without sleep for days. Reading Volker’s information, making sense of what was clearly the work of a man who was both brilliant and insane.
An actual mad scientist.
Price had tried to laugh at that, to find one moment of comic relief in which the irony would vent some of the crushing tension. But he couldn’t. When he’d tried to laugh he cried instead.
Scott Blair kept calling. Over and over and over again, demanding answers.
Demanding hope.
Price’s cell rang again and Price snatched it up with a snarl and very nearly smashed it on the floor. Instead he pushed the green button with a trembling thumb.
“P-Price…”
There was no immediate reply.
“Hello?”
The only thing he heard from the other end of the all was the sound of someone quietly weeping.
“Mr. Blair?” said Price gently. “Scott…?”
He heard a sniff and then Scott Blair’s voice. “Price … Jesus Christ, what have you done?”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Before Blair could answer someone screamed. Price and everyone turned away from their line of computers and saw one of the techs—a woman whose name Price couldn’t remember in that moment—standing before the bank of TV monitors on the far wall. She wrapped her arms over her head and sank slowly to her knees. She kept screaming.
Each of the monitors was set to local news in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Detroit, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Newark, Omaha, Chicago, and Miami. The cities with the largest populations where there were outbreaks. The cities most heavily hit by Lucifer. The cities over which Reaper missiles had been detonated a handful of hours ago.
Until now there had been a pattern to the outbreaks. A predictable speed.
Until now there had been a splinter of hope buried in Dick Price’s soul.
Until now.
In those areas where Reaper was interacting with Lucifer, the rate of infection had shot up. The degree of murderous ferocity had doubled. Tripled. The reporters on the ground were letting the pictures tell the story that they were no longer able—or perhaps willing—to report.
The cycle of bite to infection to death to reanimation was now so much faster.
Too fast.
Way too fast.
The infection was out of all control.