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impassivity and the strange reality moaning and hissing right in front of him. “What am I supposed to tell people, McDonald? Huh? Am I supposed to tell the leader of the free world a dead person just stood back up and tried to bite the guy cleaning up his body?”
    Kell stood abruptly, towering over Jones. He thrust a hand toward the isolation booth. “You know what this is. It's your fucking job to tell them what happened. A man died, and thanks to my research, which was taken without my approval and used by idiots , his dead body reanimated and became uncontrollably violent. You've seen the movies. You damn well know what this is. So if you have to call the president and tell him a bunch of scientific jargon that convinces him we accidentally made zombies a real thing, that's what you do. Every test I've run over the last three days indicates we're all infected with this same version of Chimera. Which means as soon as the incubation period is finished and it reaches total saturation within a host, this is going to start happening to other people.”
    Jones stared at him, mouth open and teeth clenched in a snarl. “I can't believe you just said that word. Fucking zombies? Really?”
    Kell slammed a fist into the wall beside him. “ I can't believe you're still here talking to me about this. Get on the goddamn phone and maybe we can get ahead of this thing before it turns into a total clusterfuck.”
    For a moment both men were caught in the magnetic grip of a stare that neither seemed willing to break. Jones was frustrated and angry that the situation was spiraling badly out of control. Kell, on the other hand, saw the larger picture. The variant was now a plague, and everything he knew told him it was probably global by now. A matter of time before the first person outside containment died and came back. The thought sent a chill through his spine, but it filled his entire body with overwhelming rage as well. This was his work, perverted.
    Jones, faced with nearly three hundred pounds of pissed-off scientist, looked away first. He knocked on the door, and Sandy came in.
    “ Kill that thing,” Jones ordered, then left the room.
    Sandy unholstered his weapon and took aim through one of the holes in the wall. He turned his head and met Kell's gaze. “I understand you were friends with this man, sir. You may want to leave the room.”
    Kell shook his head. “I told him I'd help him. I should be here for the end.”
    Something like approval danced across Sandy's face before the level stare of a killer took back over.
    Sandy took aim and fired expertly through the small hole. Three shots in the chest, clustered in a space less than two inches across. Other than to stumble back slightly under the impact, David's corpse didn't seem bothered.
    “ Holy shit,” Sandy said. “I just shot him through the heart three times. How...”
    Kell's mind raced, and he fell into a habit from his teens—muttering to himself as he worked out a problem.
    “Chimera had to have infiltrated every system to have gained this kind of control. Started out in the nervous system, and obviously it has control of the body...” He snapped his fingers at Sandy, who was looking dazed, to get his attention. “You're going to have to damage the brain. If that doesn't work, then we're in way more trouble than we can handle.”
    Trembling slightly, the other man took a deep breath and raised his weapon. He shuffled to the right to get a better angle through another of the ventilation holes. Kell wanted to turn away but couldn't; he had prepared himself for the horror of watching his friend fall the first time. When he hadn't, detached curiosity took over.
    Sandy's finger squeezed the trigger.
    The hammer fell forward, forcing the firing pin into the casing of the bullet. The primer fired, igniting the powder, and the resulting explosion of gas propelled the .40 caliber copper-jacketed round through the hexagonal rifling of the barrel.
    The journey