Several MHI employees had been out when the monsters had appeared, including some of our most experienced people and our entire Las Vegas team, who had actual houses to sleep in, but Holly was the only member of my team outside the quarantine. “I left her a message but she didn’t answer. I’ll try again.” Trip pulled out his phone, then frowned at it. “That’s not good. I’ve got no service.”

My phone was also showing no signal. I checked my radio. “Com check. Can anybody hear me?” Nothing but static. “They’re jamming us. Damn it, Julie called it.”

Trip put his phone away. “I figured you’d be used to that by now.”

“She likes to remind me. What do we have to work with?”

“About half the companies have thrown in with us. The other half are off doing their own thing. Some of them were staying at other hotels, so we’ve got about three-quarters of the conference attendees here. Of the half that are with us, half of those actually like us, and the other half know that since we’ve got more locals we have the most ammo. Milo and some of the Australians are putting together an equipment inventory. Those guys over there…” Trip nodded toward another group that had come up with a map of the hotel, “are dividing everyone up into two-man teams and figuring out how to patrol this whole place.”

“Assuming the phenomenon happens again…”

“We get on it fast. You want to let it spread out and get really big before we find it next time? Didn’t think so. That group over there is collecting all the brainiacs. They’re trying to figure out what’s happening and how to stop it.” There were a dozen Hunters in that group, including Lee, Paxton, and Cody from MHI. Cody was actually writing equations on a dry-erase board. Julie hadn’t been kidding about him. “Another group is acting as go-betweens with the non-Hunter guests. Turns out one of our guys, Tyler Nelson from the New York team, knows all about the psychology. He said he would get them calmed down. He helped talk down Hugo’s girl too.”

“Nelson? Any relation to the Doctors Nelson?”

“Their grandson,” Trip said. “Small world, huh? Following in the family footsteps, got a degree, practiced, then got bored. Now if I ever have kids I’m going to encourage them to do something safe.”

“Look how well accounting worked for me…”

“Hey, do what you need to do fast, because we’re going on patrol in ten minutes. We’re going to clear this place, room by room. Shoot. I just realized without radios that is going to get a lot more complicated.”

“Don’t worry.” I patted Abomination. “We’ve got other ways of making noise.”