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forward. O ne arm dropped from the side of the bed, and the comforter fell from her face.
    David stumbled backwards into the dresser.
    Marta’s eyes were open, bulging with unnatural convexity. The skin surrounding them was spotted with an eruption of capillaries like red claws grasping her eyeballs. Her once-blue irises were nearly devoid of color, now a cloudy matter dotted with a few crimson bubbles. Liquid within liquid. Along her cheeks were two trails of blood, starting at her nostrils and soaking her pillow.
    David retracted, vomited . He caught the telephone cord hanging off the dresser with his elbow. The phone toppled to the floor. He picked up the receiver.
    There was n o dial tone.
     
     
    He exploded out onto the street.
    The countryside was covered with death. Bodies of sheep, rigid and misshapen with rigor, were strewn in every direction. Images of hell burned in their popping eyes. From Marta’s inn to the hills beyond Stenness, the land was entirely wet, wooly death. Morning mist twisted off the earth li ke apparitions dancing over putrid decay.
    He heard a scream. A voice swallowed by the wind.
    Where did it come from? There was someone else alive.
    David ran across the road, his mind foggy, his body stumbling over the sheep carcasses. He leaped onto the porch of the neighbor’s house. His fists pounded the door.
    The handle was locked.
    Grabbing a wicker chair from the porch, he smashed open the living room window. Glass shattered with a terrible crash, falling over him, cutting him. He heard the scream again. He was definitely not alone. He climbed through the window. Up the staircase, he hurdled two, three steps at a time. Panic gave way to dizziness, and with one misstep, he fell and his left knee split apart against the top step. He dropped to the floor, grabbing his leg, trying to ease the searing pain of exploded ligaments. His kneecap dislodged, the bone was misaligned from the rest of his leg.
    With a groan, he forced himself to stand.
    He limped into the nearest bedroom. A young girl was tucked under frilly sheets. Her hair was a frizzy mess loosely pinned to one side with a pink barrette. Blood trailed from her nose and ears. Her eyes were wide like Marta’s.
    The scream throbbed in his ears.
    Where was it coming from?
    There was another bedroom down the hall. Inside, a man and woman were dead. Their sanguine fluid soaked the sheets.
    David fell against the wall, his chest heaving.
    Again, the scream. This time louder, piercing his mind.
    He tore downstairs, back through the broken glass, and out into the street. His knee refused to bend. Pain shot up his leg as he forced himself forward. Down the road. Past Marta’s, spinning this way and that. The only sound now was the biting northern wind.
    Finally, a nother shriek, louder than the last.
    It caused him to stumble and fall. His hands scraped against the asphalt. He hugged his injured leg. Blood soaked into his pants.
    The scream circled his head, twisted around his body, and strangled his throat. It enveloped his heart and then pierced it. His logical mind sifted through the chaos, until he shuddered with startling clarity.
    The scream was his.
    And th ere was no one left to hear it.

Chapter 10
    SUNDAY 1:55 p.m.
    Orkney Island, Scotland
     
    “Almost done,” Marek said, making mi nor modifications on his laptop.
    Thatcher squinted, wishing she ha d remembered her sunglasses.
    The uncommonly sunny day cast blinding light off of Sonja’s chrome. Their sonic pulse generator, a dome-shaped conductor that siphoned into a long cylindrical tube, was positioned on a mount the size of a truck bed and facing west. She was aimed at an array of transducers and microphones that monitored frequency, pressure, and amplitude over a 6-mile area.
    Thatcher stretched her neck until it cracked. She hated it when people did that, but standing over dead birds for fourteen hours meant it was well-earned. Her temples were still throbbing from the strange