He hung up and plucked the wire from his ear, stuffing it into his jacket pocket and following the man a few dozen yards away. The patient slowed for just a moment, turning his head as though aware of his pursuer.

“Captain Redfern?” said Jim.

The patient continued around a corner and Jim followed, only to find, when he turned the same corner, the hallway empty.

Jim checked door signs. He tried the one marked STAIRS and looked down the narrow well between half flights. He caught sight of an IV tube trailing down the steps.

“Captain Redfern?” said Jim, his voice echoing in the stairwell. He fumbled out his phone as he descended, wanting to call Eph. The display said NO SERVICE because he was underground now. He pushed through the door into the basement hallway and, distracted by his phone, never saw Redfern running at him from the side.

When Nora, searching the hospital, went through the door from the stairwell into the basement hallway, she found Jim sitting against the wall with his legs splayed. He had a sleepy expression on his face.

Captain Redfern was standing barefoot over him, his johnny-bare back to her. Something hanging from his mouth spilled driblets of blood to the floor.

“Jim!” she yelled, though Jim did not react in any way to her voice. Captain Redfern stiffened, however. When he turned to her, Nora saw nothing in his mouth. She was shocked by his color, formerly quite pale, now florid and flushed. The front of his johnny was indeed bloodstained, and blood also rimmed his lips. Her first thought was that he was in the grip of some sort of seizure. She feared he had bitten off a chunk of his tongue and was swallowing blood.

Closer, her diagnosis became less certain. Redfern’s pupils were dead black, the sclera red where it should have been white. His mouth hung open strangely, disjointedly, as though his jaw had been reset on a lower hinge. And there was a heat coming off him that was extreme, beyond the warmth of any normal, natural fever.

“Captain Redfern,” she said, calling him over and over, trying to snap him out of it. He advanced on her with a look of vulturelike hunger in his filmy eyes. Jim remained slumped on the floor, not moving. Redfern was obviously violent, and Nora wished she had a weapon. She looked around, seeing only a hospital phone, 555 the alert code.

She grabbed the receiver off the wall, barely getting it into her hand before Redfern attacked, throwing her to the floor. Nora kept hold of the receiver, its cord pulling right out of the wall. Redfern had maniacal strength, descending on her and pinning her arms hard to the polished floor. His face strained and his throat bucked. She thought he was about to vomit on her.