Chapter 4

Three days later.

The village loudspeakers had been blasting cheerful music since morning.

Meg Lawrence wanted to show off her sow that had just delivered eighteen piglets without a hitch.

And she wanted to remind everyone for miles around exactly where she stood.

So she threw a lavish whole-hog barbecue feast right there in the village square, a full open-house spread.

Thirty tables in all.

Every man, woman, and child in the village had been invited.

The stream of flattery and the clinking of glasses.

You could hear it clear as day two streets over.

I sat inside the clinic.

Staring at the workbench in front of me.

Footsteps came from outside all at once, and then a dull thud.

I lifted my head.

Looked out through the gap in the window.

Jeremy Clayton was holding a cracked plastic basin.

It was full of slop.

He dropped it hard right at my door.

And bellowed at the top of his lungs.

"You hear me in there, you quack!"

"My aunt's in a good mood today, so she's treating you to a nice bowl of food."

"Wouldn't want you starving to death in there and stinking up the place, dragging bad luck onto our village!"

The villagers passing by burst out laughing.

I paid no attention to the cursing and jeering outside. I just bolted the door.

And went back to the workbench.

I checked every reading carefully.

Then took the single vial of special antibody serum on the table.

And portioned it out into more than a dozen sterile syringes.

Then.

I set them in the cold-storage box and locked the code.

Once all of that was done.

I leaned back in my chair.

Lit a cigarette.

And waited for the virus to break out in full.

Out in the village square.

The feast had reached its peak.

Meg Lawrence's face was flushed red.

A cup of whiskey in her hand.

She stepped up onto a red plastic stool and then onto the tabletop.

And bragged loudly in front of the whole village.

"Eat up, everybody, don't hold back!"

"With those eighteen little gold nuggets of mine, plus the few hundred fat hogs I've already got."

"By the end of this year I'll have made a million."

"And then I'll build a three-story mansion right at the head of the village, so everyone can share in the good fortune!"

The crowd clapped and cheered.

And right when the whole place was at its loudest.

A rush of panicked footsteps came from the direction of the village entrance.

Clarence Lambert, a rancher from the neighboring village, came crashing through the crowd, half-stumbling, half-crawling.

And staggered right into Meg Lawrence's banquet table.

He was covered head to toe in mud, one shoe gone, his whole face white as paper.

"It's bad!"

Clarence shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Something terrible's happened, it's all over!"

"Our pigs, every last one of them, they're foaming at the mouth and dropping sick!"