The Gemini Virus Read Online Free PDF

looked like an overinflated toy. The arms were almost comical in their Popeye-esque exaggeration, the foot like a child’s “monster foot” bedtime slipper. And her bloated face seemed as though one poke with a needle would blow it to pieces.
    The balloonlike blistering was ubiquitous, many of the larger examples lying as flat and flaccid as downed parachutes. Others dangled from her body like little price tags. The calico coloring ranged from black to purple to lavender. Neither Dugan nor Teague had any way of knowing the lavender was the result of Milligan’s blood vessels literally melting under her skin, a late-stage symptom of the disease that was already taking up residence through their own systems.
    As the initial shock wore away, they began noting other details. First, the room was freezing —at some point Milligan put an air conditioner in each of the two windows and cranked them up. Then there was the puzzling “crimson ring”—a spattery line of dark red coloring that ran, unbroken, in a roughly circular pattern around the room. Teague figured it out first and nearly lost his own lunch as a result—bodily fluids of one kind or another flying off Milligan’s rotating corpse for God only knew how long. But the most horrific feature, by far, was Milligan’s neck—wrapped in a woolen scarf and tied in a knot that had grown increasingly tighter, it now shared roughly the same circumference as an ordinary garden hose. This, the two men realized, was the reason Milligan’s head hung down at such a sharp angle. A few more hours and it would’ve detached and zoomed off somewhere.
    Dugan got to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He took one more look at everything, then could look no more. He reached in and closed the door, then said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

 
    ONE
    “Okay, this is one I’m sure you’ll like,” Beck said confidently, advancing through the songs via the button on the steering wheel. “This was one of my favorites when I was a kid.”
    “Back in the late Pliocene?” his passenger asked.
    “I was born in the early Holocene. Now, listen.”
    As Beck cruised north on Connecticut’s I-91 with the rented convertible’s top down, his ID badge flipped and bounced against his chest. It read MICHAEL BECK, EPIDEMIOLOGIST , and right under that, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL, ATLANTA GA .
    The song began quietly, a simple drumbeat accompanied by silvery high notes in a playful intro. Then a call-and-answer segment featuring bass, sitar, and piano. Finally, Robbie Dupree’s eternally soulful voice delivering the first line.
    “It’s called ‘Steal Away.’ It was a huge hit when I was a kid; the DJs loved it. It gets airplay even now and is included in movie soundtracks once in awhile. Not so bad, right?”
    He glanced over in time to see her roll her eyes, which made him smile. She’s heard me prattle on about this before—“The Lost Age of Melody,” I call it, back when songwriters ruled the music business and hits had hooks you couldn’t get out of your head .
    “Yeah, it’s great. I’m totally blown out of my seat.”
    “Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.” He sang along with the chorus in a voice that was good enough for private use but would surely earn the wrath of the American Idol judges . “And this guy’s new album is terrific. I’ve played it a few times for you.”
    “Well, it’s certainly better than that other stuff you like … what do you call it? Exotica?”
    “Like lying on the beach in Hawaii with a mai tai in your hand. Pure bliss. Martin Denny, Les Baxter, Arthur Lyman…”
    “Yawn.”
    “Lyman was the best.”
    “But it’s all so lightweight, ” she said.
    “That’s what’s great about it. The music you listen to … my God, it makes you want to grab a machine gun and start thinning out the neighborhood.”
    She turned to him with a smirk. “That’s what’s great about it.”
    “Ahh, right.”
    She went