Yoshida handed Nic a card, one of the goons slid the door shut, and they drove off. Nic stumbled his way inside, heading toward the quarantine area. Along the way, at an end-cap display, he saw bottles of extra-strength Tylenol.

“Manna from heaven,” he said, popped open one of the bottles and downed four of the pills dry.

When he reached the quarantine, he saw Carter speaking with Bristol, Edgar, and another man in a yellow hazmat suit. The space smelled like fog coming off the Hudson, with a slight tinge of the fertilizers and charcoals which had previously been stacked in the Walmart garden center.

“Nic!” Carter immediately said and grabbed him by the shoulder. “You’re either very stupid or very brave, kid. I’ve been worried about you.”

“First of all, definitely stupid, not brave. Second, Yoshida roughed me up a bit, but when I didn’t give him any info, he decided to cut me loose. Told me to give you a message.”

“Let me guess, something along the lines of stay the hell out of his way.”

“Pretty much. He knows you have the hard-drive fragments. Said if you recover even one file and don’t contact him immediately, then he’ll charge us all with treason. Maybe he’s right. I think we’re all in a bit over our heads here. Where’s Burke?”

As if in answer to the question, he saw a figure in a yellow hazmat suit running down one of the plastic tubes toward the decontamination shower. The yellow suit quickly pushed into the airlock, was sprayed down, and rushed toward them, pulling his headgear off along the way.

Burke looked at Nic in confusion, but then seemed to dismiss any questions. Instead, he said, “Where’s that blonde woman? The one with the scars on her neck. The one they let go with the second message.”

“She’s in the manager’s office across the store,” Edgar said. “Our sketch artist is working with the three uninfected ladies to get a composite of our bad guys. What’s wrong?”

Burke battled to keep his breathing under control and explain. “Remember how I proposed early on that one of the hostages could be working against us. It’s her. It’s the blonde. The one who can’t talk. She’s on their side. She’s the big one’s wife.”

“The manager told you all this?” Carter asked.

“Some. Mostly came from extrapolating several data points.”

Edgar grabbed for his radio and said, “Officer Stine, do you copy?”

No reply.

“Officer Stine?”

Edgar’s thin face scrunched up, and he said, “Sometimes the drawings take a while, but he should have been done by now. And he’s not answering his radio, which definitely isn’t like him.”

Burke pressed his palms against his eyes and started wheezing, each breath fast and labored.

“They’re all dead, and it’s my fault,” he said.

Nic checked his holster. Yoshida had returned his weapon but had taken all of his ammunition.

“Give me your extra magazines,” Nic said to Edgar. “I’ll take a few of the uniforms and go check on them.”