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him. He looked down with her and shook his head in a “don’t even think about it” sort of way that was intimidating enough to erase the violent thought from her mind.
    Ray finally found what he was looking for. He had stopped at one of the HS babies that the ward had. He lifted the little pink blanket and pointed. “This one,” he said. Colin Hayes arrived just in time to hear the command. He had been left behind in the scuffle in the hallway. Ray was crazed with adrenaline, and Colin sometimes had a hard time just keeping up. Colin opened a small case and pulled out a rather large needle. He moved toward the child. “What the hell do you people think you are doing?” said the head nurse. “You can’t just burst in here like this!” She struggled against the man in black. “Who the hell gave you the authority?”
    “Sorry ma’am. National Security,” said Ray. He held the small child’s frail arm. Colin began pouring alcohol on a cotton swab.
    “National Security? You just can’t come in here crying National Security!”
    “I’m afraid they can, Nurse Adams,” said the voice coming through the door. It was Dr. Rourke, the head administrator of the hospital. He entered the room accompanied with two more of the men in dark suits. He held in his hand a slip of paper. “Despite their poor manners, these people have the authority to take blood samples from your patients. Please give them your full cooperation.” Dr. Rourke didn’t look well. He didn’t seem too pleased with what he had just said, as if he secretly knew better, but had no choice in the matter.
    Colin finished taking the sample from the first HS baby. By that time Ray had already identified the other two in the ward. Colin repeated his procedure, carefully cataloging and storing each sample in his case. Nurse Adams was not pleased with the events, but there was little that she could do without Dr. Rourke’s backing. “Who the hell do you think you are?” she said out of frustration. “Who do you work for?”
    “Center for Disease Control ma’am,” said Ray, not really paying attention to the question. He had other things on his mind.
    “CDC? You guys don’t look like you work for the CDC. I want to see some credentials.”
    Ray silently looked up at the men in the dark suits. They got the message. They grabbed the head nurse by both arms and politely escorted her out of the maternity ward.
     
    Several hours later, the Miller farm, on the outskirts of Tyler, TX
     
    2 am. Tom sat in the almost complete darkness of his child’s room. His eyes had gotten used to the dark though. He could make out most of the things around him with just the starlight to see from. The nights around here had been getting brighter and brighter as the city moved closer. He remembered being out at night as a kid. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Now he could see the items in the room quite clearly. The mobile above the bed twirled slowly in the light breeze from the open window. The crib lay before him. Inside was his son, motionless, asleep.
    He had been sitting here for almost an hour, immobile in the darkness. Outside the window there was the occasional sound of a cricket, or maybe a car in the distance, but that was it. On his lap he silently stroked a brand new, kid-sized baseball glove. He had gone a little overboard when he found out Lorraine was pregnant and bought a whole bunch of toys for “his boy.” Off in the corner a veritable treasure chest sat, filled with baseball bats, balls of all sizes and shapes, a few toy six-shooters. Toys that little Jim wouldn’t have been able to use for years, even if he had been healthy.
    “Jim,” thought Tom. “My son is named Jim.” When Lorraine first found out that she was pregnant, they had gone through all sorts of ideas for names. She even bought a book. They had settled on James, since it was her father’s name. When the child had arrived so deformed, they seemed to