by Jeff Carlson

* * * *

Since his first story for Asimov’s—”Gunfight at the Sugarloaf Pet Food & Taxidermy” (January 2007)—Jeff Carlson has gone on to become an internationally bestselling author and a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award with his Plague Year trilogy. The third book in this series, Plague Zone, will be out in December from Ace. Free excerpts from Jeff’s work, as well as videos, contests, and more, can be found on his web site at www.jverse.com. His new tale for us brings police officer Julie Beauchain, whose dangerously hot holiday season leads her to...

Someone was smart enough to call her. Even with the Army and DHS on scene, the governor had tapped her personally. Miss Beauchain? he said on the phone. The job couldn’t have been any dirtier, but that kind of compliment was better than cash, neck rubs, or beaches, so Julie grinned as she turned into the moist stink of the bugs.

“Watch the ceiling!” she yelled.

“I’m more worried about the floor,” Highsong said.

Julie waved her TI gun as she hit the stairs, glancing back at him through the office space. “The ceiling is hot—”

Highsong wasn’t moving. “We’re three stories up,” he said. “If the floor lets go, you won’t be so excited about making our bonus.”

He wouldn’t have stopped her any faster if he’d smacked the wide part of her jeans. Julie froze, then turned on the fourth step, exasperated—in part because he was twenty feet away. A dozen low cubicles separated them. Highsong could be as stubborn as a rock, but the truth was they made a fine pair. Julie was aware that they both looked out of place in this well-organized call center, dragging guns and packs into the maze of desks. He was six and a half feet of Irish/Cheyenne, a mix almost as exotic as her own African/Arabic/French ancestry, and lean and firm in comparison to her curves.

“It’s not about the money,” she said.

“Isn’t it?”

“It’s about doing well.”

“Then why is your radio off ?”

“We don’t need help.”

“Always the superhero.”

Watching him, Julie shifted beneath thirty pounds of sensors and other gear. She never felt the weight when she was running—only when they stopped to rest in the late July heat—and the mischief in her heart grew as she took in Highsong’s posture. Spine straight. Arms folded. His protectiveness made her happy, so she flirted with him by stamping her feet up and down two stairs in a spontaneous little salsa dance. Maybe she put more hip into it than necessary. Ba boom bang bang. Her thoughts were like a drum. I love you.

“Seems safe,” she said, lilting the words.

“If you fall through—”

“You wish.”

Highsong’s mouth twisted as he fought with a smile and won. His scowl deepened. Then he started toward her through the cubicles. “Just be careful,” he said.

Julie laughed. “They haven’t made a bug yet that’s got more brains than—Aaah!”

The stairwell exploded overhead. Julie fell. In the first seconds, the avalanche was only noise, a stampede of footsteps and crashing boxes, but then she was overwhelmed by hundreds of small, shiny objects and cardboard and a leaping man. He was Caucasian. Brown hair. Brown beard. He wore a backpack even larger than her own.

“Run!” he screamed.

Julie tumbled into an unladylike heap on the floor, her elbows and knees spread to catch herself. Instead, the man squashed her flat when he put his shoe on her pack. Everywhere, the small trinkets clattered down the stairs—silver balls and red balls and gold stars—and Highsong shouted behind her. He might have tried to intercept the man. Julie heard someone bang against a desk, another shout, and a sharper crash.

She yelled, “What the—”

Then she got a face full of bugs. The stairwell was buried in winged termites. They were slick, yellow, damp, stinking. Julie shrieked and clawed both hands across her mouth.

“Yuck!”

Blinded by the swarm, she tried to get up. Someone grabbed her shoulder. Highsong. No one else would have waded into the bugs for her—but he was still supporting her when he slipped, yanking her sideways. Julie bounced off the wall. Highsong hit the floor. She landed on him.

Fortunately, the termites were dispersing. Julie spat in disgust and looked around, not unhappy with her position on Highsong’s chest. There were bugs in his hair and bugs on the floor and Julie giggled to shake off the lasting sensation of creepy little feet against her skin. But it was too hot to stay together. The office building was stifling in the summer sun, so she patted his arm affectionately and began to roll aside.

Highsong grabbed her waist. “Wait. You okay?”

“Hey!” Julie said, not fighting too hard.

His free hand went to the absurd junk on the floor, distracting her as he lifted a clump of trinkets—a glittering blue-and-white ball, a plastic snowman, and a red-nosed toy reindeer. Julie wrinkled her eyebrows in confusion. Highsong smiled. “Merry Christmas,” he said. Then he kissed her.

* * * *

What had the other man been doing in the building? This part of town was supposed to be clear, but some hold-outs had stayed to fight the bugs themselves. There were also looters, thrill-seekers, and other assorted fruitcakes. The man was probably stealing as much as he could carry. He was about the twentieth unauthorized person they’d seen today.

Julie rubbed a bruised elbow as she and Highsong worked to kill the termites. It was messy. The bugs were in the walls and file cabinets and a translucent squirming mass of yellow bodies burst from an easy chair in one office. The air was hazy with winged termites and dust. They had a hard time finding the nest. Julie used her thermal imaging gun to locate the worst pockets in the walls as Highsong created some breathing room with his glue sprayer. They laid down bait and pheromone beacons.

As it turned out, there were already three queen colonies. Heterotermes aureus machovsky moved fast—too fast for an eleven syllable name. Julie called ‘em machos for short, like nachos, even though their creator’s surname was pronounced ma CHOV ski. Lance Machovsky. His babies were smaller than most termite species but acted as though they bled methamphetamine.

The bugs had ravaged most of the building’s top floor, which seemed to be dedicated to management offices and storage for discontinued items. In back, endless boxes had slumped to the floor, chewed apart by the machos, leaving flecks of bright wrapping paper and cardboard and what appeared to be eighty-six billion Christmas ornaments and other holiday goodies like pint-size Marys and Santa Clauses. Julie crunched through the debris with an alarming sense of guilt.

“Is this going to put us on the nice list or the naughty?” she called back to Highsong, wincing at each krnnch and pop of snowflakes, elves, and holly beneath her boots.

“You know which list you’re on,” he said.

* * * *

They were dumber than pigs to mix work and romance, of course. Julie’s grandpa would have said Never poop where you eat, with stronger language, but Julie Beauchain and William Highsong had been partners in the Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks before they were lovers. Neither of them wanted to quit the job. Putting in for a transfer would have created another problem, most likely moving one of them too far across Montana to see each other regularly. So they had rules.

Rule Number One: Keep your clothes on during your shift.

“Stop it!” Julie said, laughing as she skipped away from Highsong outside the office building. But he caught her easily. The sidewalk was empty. The road was empty. Julie let Highsong take her prisoner again and they nuzzled right there beside an abandoned car for anyone to see, no matter how filthy they were with grime and sweat.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” he said.

“Next building,” she said.

“That guy could’ve broken your neck.”

“And you let him go.”

“That’s right.” Highsong touched the sensitive skin behind her ear and Julie shivered.

“This is business, not pleasure,” she said, even as she ruined her own attempt at severity with a wink. She loved to encourage his playful side—was that the Irish in him or the plains-riding Cheyenne?—and she felt especially glad for it now. The silence was worse than the bugs.

Missoula, Montana, was hardly a major metropolis with a population of sixty thousand, but it seemed larger in the preternatural quiet. As far as she could see, the downtown blocks were lifeless, resonating only with the sound of distant helicopters. She smelled smoke and gasoline.

“Let’s move,” she said. “We’re behind schedule.”

“Yes, sir.”

That earned him a whack and another approving kiss. The truth was that Julie wore the pants in their relationship. At least she liked to think so. Highsong was hardly a cliché TV Tonto, yet he seemed content to follow her lead, in part because her head was just louder than his. Most of their gadgets were Julie’s inventions. Their notoriety was also due to her tech skills. Two days ago, every public servant in Montana had been called into duty at all levels—city, state, and federal—but few Fish, Wildlife & Parks rangers like themselves were actually in combat.

Missoula had been under DHS quarantine for thirty-plus hours as the 4th Infantry and units of the National Guard tried to control the infested areas. Martial law was in force across most of Big Sky Country and neighboring Idaho.

“Scanning,” Julie said as she tried the glass doors of the next building. The ground floor was retail, a coffee shop and a women’s clothing store. Both were locked. Very few people had obeyed the requests by DHS to leave their businesses and homes unsecured. No problem. Highsong took his prybar to the coffee shop door and they were in.

Julie was already fairly sure the place was clean. Even sitting still, machos ran hotter than normal termites—and these bugs never sat still. Her TI gun had only penetrated through the windows into the front room, but if there were machos anywhere in the coffee shop, she would have picked up movement or trails outside where the bugs were squeezing through the slightest gaps around the windows, doors, or vents. That was how they’d tagged the office building next door. H. aureus machovsky was voracious. Even with more than enough dry wood or paper to sustain a colony, the machos always sent scouts to expand their foraging area.

Julie and Highsong swept the back rooms of the coffee shop, then moved to the clothing store. Minutes later, they broke into the first of eight apartments on the floors above. It was hot work. Their grid consisted of two full city blocks, which they were expected to clear before sundown, so the pace was relentless. Sweep each room. Leave bait if suspicious. Chart their maps. Keep moving.

“You can’t buy a work-out like this,” Julie gasped at the top of three flights of stairs. She hoped Highsong would smile and say You don’t need the exercise, babe.

The big lunk just nodded and said, “No kidding.”

Julie laughed. He gave her a quizzical look—yet as much as she liked to argue, there wasn’t time. She would bring it up again in the shower, though, he could be sure of that.

“You’re some date, Highsong,” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

I love you, she thought, but she was careful with those words, hoarding them to herself. It was better to joke. That was how their relationship had begun, light and easy, and for the most part Julie was okay if it stayed that way. Except she was crazy for him. Who was she protecting?

“Scanning,” she said as she approached the next building.

Inside, they refilled their canteens in a men’s room sink and snacked on the sodium-laced Buffalo Wing chips and bland cheese sticks they found in a break room, scavenging like the machos. Unfortunately, their packs were nearly empty of beacons and bait. Soon they’d be forced to hoof it back to their FW&P jeep, which they’d left down the block.

They emerged into the late afternoon sun with less than two-thirds of their quota done. Julie’s disappointment made her mad, which seemed to heighten her senses. She felt on stage in the empty city. Maybe that was why she noticed the change in the air. There were voices around the corner of the nearest intersection.

“You hear that?” she asked. “Either we’ve got more civvies who should’ve evacuated or there’s another bug team poaching our grid, and I don’t want ‘em making any kills that are ours. Let’s get in their face.”

“We could use the help.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“Let’s just call it in,” Highsong said, but Julie marched away from him. They could have driven, but their jeep was in the opposite direction, and Julie wanted to surprise the other group if possible.

She was still two buildings from the corner when the voices turned to screams. “Look out!” a man yelled as Julie broke into a run, the TI gun swinging in one hand. Her pack jostled against her shoulders. Highsong passed her and she doubled her effort, cursing under her breath. What she wouldn’t give for legs that long.

He beat her to the intersection. Then they froze. The five men and women in the street were unauthorized persons, that much was clear. No uniforms. No gear. They’d also dropped a lot of money when they panicked, breaking away from the doors of a check cashing operation. Machos rushed from another entrance to the building as if the two-story structure had opened its mouth and breathed. The fog was an evil yellow. Great tendrils of bugs swept over the paper bills on the street and absorbed the screaming people.

Three of them made it to their pick-up truck, beating madly at their hair and faces. They left a duffel bag and their friends behind in the swarm.

“Jimmy!” a women shrieked from the pick-up.

“Freeze!” Julie yelled. They ignored her. The engine roared and the full-size Dodge Ram lurched toward Julie and Highsong through the bugs, trying to intercept one man. The other guy had charged in the opposite direction.

Neither Julie nor Highsong had any real weapons, so Julie faked it. Her thermal-imaging gun looked like a Martian death ray with its stubby barrel and a side-mounted display as round as a dinner plate. Julie pointed it at them, shoving it forward in a classic gunman’s stance. Someone inside the pick-up shouted. The vehicle jerked.

Highsong blasted them with his glue sprayer, hosing down the windshield and the open passenger door and the schmoe they were trying to rescue. The schmoe fell down, coated in a sticky gray mess full of hundreds of bugs. At the same time, the pick-up swerved again—its driver blind—then submarined magnificently into the streetfront of a laundromat, sending glass through the sky. Alarms went off. The neon TOPWASH sign slipped and then detonated against the truckbed.

“Holy crap,” Highsong said.

Julie had almost lost track of the fifth bandit, the one on the far side of the bugs, but he flinched and looked back at the noise. She saw his brown hair and beard and recognized the extra large pack.

“That’s the same guy from the Christmas place!” Julie yelled, running toward the billowing swarm.

Highsong caught her arm. “Let him go,” he said.

“What!?”

“These people are hurt. I need help.”

Julie glanced at the moaning schmoe in the street and the dazed bandits inside the truck. None of them had fled in the same direction as the fifth guy. Was he even with them? “Highsong, we can’t let him get away! Something’s not right about—”

“Get on the radio or I’ll glue you myself,” he said.

The state police and 4th Infantry platoon who responded came in two patrol cars, two gun-mounted Humvees and a half-ton Army truck. Julie was taken aback. She wouldn’t have expected more than the patrol cars even if they’d captured Butch Cassidy and the Hole in the Wall gang.

The arrests derailed them from their bug hunt. Julie hated to give up on her grid, but the police sergeant wanted their statements and the platoon captain dispatched his men into the infested building. “I guess that’s enough fun for one day,” Julie said to Highsong, leaning close as she watched the cuffed, bruised, and bandaged robbers led into the back of the truck. “Um. Wanna take a bath?”

“Yep.”

No nonsense. That was what she liked about him. Lord knew she generated enough malarkey for the two of them. Is that why you haven’t asked me to move in with you? she wondered as they got into the sergeant’s patrol car. One of his men would drive their FW&P jeep back to HQ.

The outskirts of the business district looked like a war zone. Five huge fires crackled in the Wal-Mart’s parking lot, sending smoke over the city like winter clouds. Civilian truck rigs and Army vehicles jammed the streets, forcing Julie’s escorts to stop and start through the traffic—empty trucks leaving, full trucks arriving.

Ash ticked against the windshield as she stared out, biting her lip. All of the incoming rigs were swaddled in ungainly fat bulges of plastic. The soldiers unloading the trucks wore respirators, goggles, and jackets despite the summer heat. Others patrolled the lot with glue guns and flamethrowers.

They were burning Christmas trees—hundreds upon hundreds of Christmas trees. The whole scene looked like a demented Satanic fantasy. Say something funny, Julie thought, but her mind had gone blank. She loved Christmas. Growing up, the holidays were the best times in her life, when she and her mother visited her cousins in Tampa and Mom put on a convincing veneer of normality, drinking less, hugging her more, even joining in for carols and cooking and corny old movies like It’s A Wonderful Life.

Watching the trees ablaze was like incinerating those memories. Worse, Julie knew this was one of the smallest burns in Montana. Rumor was there were uncontrolled fires in wide swaths of forest just east of Missoula on the Continental Divide. This hell consisted of a tiny number of trees. By the last count she’d heard, barely a thousand had been reduced to charred stumps on the Wal-Mart’s flat asphalt lot. These trees had been cut from city parks and open spaces—not only to be destroyed but tested for termite samples.

Each pyre had a white tent set beside it. Technicians in yellow protective gear strode back and forth from the incoming trees and their tents with clippers, jars, chem kits, rakes, nets, spectrometers, and laptops.

“It’s like Plan 9 from Outer Space,” Julie said at last, turning in her seat to keep her eyes on the Wal-Mart as they broke through the heavy traffic.

“You all right?” Highsong asked.

He must have heard the slightest hitch in her voice, which left Julie both unsettled and pleased. “Sure,” she said. “I’m great. Hungry. Can’t wait to get out of these clothes.”

That drew a glance from the cop at the wheel, a white guy with freckles. Julie smiled to herself, feeling better.

The trees aren’t my fault, she thought.

Headquarters was in a preschool around the corner, which seemed goofy, but the school offered a neat space with lots of tables for the DHS and military officials who were running the show. They’d also wanted to be close to their field labs.

As soon as the cop parked his car, Julie hopped out and beelined inside, looking for Agents Coughlin or Reaves. Once again she felt that jarring sense of the surreal. Hard-voiced men and women sat among laptops and radio gear, surrounded by rainbow-colored charts of the ABCs, the solar system, and smiling cartoon dinosaurs.

She found Reaves first, a tall, thin man with thick wheat hair. He was on the phone but Julie said, “We have a problem.”

Reaves recognized her without a second glance. He covered his phone with one hand and nodded. “Hey, sure, we heard about your little gang of banditos. Nice work. Just help the cops and I’ll do what I can to keep the paperwork to a minimum. Thanks.”

“No. Listen. I need property records and access to your criminal database.”

“What?”

“I’m onto something bigger than robbery,” she said. “Can you help me with the records?”

It was a place to start. How were the two buildings linked? The saboteur might be attacking rival businesses in order to destroy the competition—or was it personal? Maybe he was nothing more than a disgruntled employee. Julie’s instincts said no, but they needed to test that theory, too.

Reaves frowned at her. “What exactly are we talking about here, Miz Bo-Chain?”

“Someone’s planting bugs in the city.”

“You mean bringing them in?”

“Yes.”

Reaves lifted one hand and shouted across the room. “Leber! Hey, Leber!”

The other guy was white, too. They were all white, except for the Hispanics and blacks in the Army and a few Asians and Hispanics among the federal agents. Montana was not a diverse state, certainly not like Florida. Julie was accustomed to being the only black woman for miles around. New acquaintances usually stumbled over her Bayou name, mostly in an effort to get it right but sometimes only to mock her. Missus Boo-Kayne. Miz Boy-Shane. That the governor had pronounced it correctly spoke of his willingness to invest in her, but Julie always felt the stigma of being an outsider.

“Leber, this is Bo-Kayne,” Reaves said. “She says she saw someone bringing bugs into the city. I want to know where they hit, how hard, and why. Look at our DTs again. Get me something fast.”

“Sure,” Leber said. “Come over to my station.”

DTs weren’t a new thought for Julie, either. The media was rife with speculation that domestic terrorists had released the machos despite announcements to the contrary by government officials. These white boys in their five hundred dollar suits had all the answers—they said they knew who’d created the termites and why—but Julie didn’t trust them. Not entirely.

Highsong joined her in the HQ as Leber walked her through the same questions half a dozen times, challenging everything they’d seen. That was his job. He was a federal investigator. Leber wasn’t condescending but he didn’t take her at her word, either. Too often, he doubted her. Was she imagining it? Yes, she had a problem with authority that could be traced all the way back to her mother, ol’ bourbon brains, and her father, who’d skipped when she was five. That wasn’t the issue. Julie preferred to think she was simply a perfect fit for the American West, loaded with independence, spirit, and know-how.

For example, it was deeply quixotic for her to make fun of Dr. Lance Machovsky’s name, but Julie had been suspicious of this whole plate of worms since the DHS briefings, which, well, had been too brief.

“You’re certain you saw the same man?” Leber said, trying again to deflect her.

“Yes. Look.” Julie was losing her temper. “Someone’s either trying to take out the competition or settling a grudge or both, and they don’t care who else gets hurt.”

“I understand your concern,” Leber said.

She fumed while he tapped blandly at his computer. Was he delaying her? Why? Maybe they just didn’t want her causing a fuss. DHS seemed to specialize in turning out these smooth, unflappable men, who, in turn, conveyed only calm and confidence to the public.

DHS said the termites were just one of many gene-splices under development by private and government bio research teams in response to the agriculture industry’s issues with blight and pests. Global warming would increase crop threats throughout the twenty-first century. Manmade attacks were also a real possibility, and DHS and the White House officially—quietly—supported efforts to meet such dangers.

Machovsky worked for DawnTech. The field test they’d chosen first was directed against a comparatively humble foe, so-called pine rust, a fungus that had decimated Montana’s holiday economy for three years running. It infected blue spruce and every species of fir—in other words, the most popular Christmas trees in the nation. Between the blockades and the lawsuits out of California, Oregon, and Colorado, where the rust had spread with imported trees and seeds, Big Sky Country was taking a huge beating. Nurseries made up 15 percent of Montana’s economy. Not all of them were Christmas tree farms, of course, but the entire industry had suffered.

Heterotermes aureus was a desert termite. It could not survive in the damp, cold north, not for long—not even in the summer. That was its failsafe. Machovsky had crossed his bugs with the black fly and with the rust itself. Fly genes accelerated the machos’ metabolism. The rust genes meant they were dependent on the fungus as a nutritional source. H. aureus machovsky was intended to pick and choose its way through a diseased farm at a hysterical pace, then weaken and collapse after exhausting the supply of rust-sick wood.

Breed fast, spread fast, die fast. That the machos could survive without the rust was a surprise adaptation. Whoops.

“So what happens next?” Julie asked, gesturing at Highsong and herself. “We want to help—before this guy brings more bugs inside the quarantine. We both know the city, and we’re good with our hands. Can you put us on the team?”

“I’ll be in touch,” Leber said.

“When? Today?”

“I’ll be in touch,” Leber said.

* * * *

It was a brush-off. Julie and Highsong left headquarters with no answers. She was only generating more questions, such as where did the saboteur get not just one queen colony, but several? How would he gather thousands of bugs in order to pack them into the city? One man alone couldn’t collect and preserve a colony.

Julie didn’t like the over-reaction to the gang of bandits, either. Yes, an entire Army division was in-state, but there were also sixty thousand refugees and the fires and a pandemic on their to-do lists. No one had twenty men to spare unless they were nervous about what she and Highsong might uncover at the site. Who was worried? The feds? Somebody local? Could she trace the orders to send a full platoon back into the tangled chain of command?

As soon as they were outside, Julie pulled her iPhone and tapped in a Los Angeles-area number, gazing up through the ash. It only rang once.

“Beauchain?” A young man.

“Em, you’re going to like this,” she said.

His voice rose in pitch. “Am I hallucinating or are you calling me on a cell phone?”

“Listen, I just—”

“Idiot.” He hung up.

“Oh boy.” Julie turned to Highsong and slung her arm around his waist, feeling tired and lost and glad to have him. “We should just go back to my place,” she said.

“Nah.” Highsong squeezed her. “Let’s get in some trouble first.”

* * * *

Her place was a cot in a big tent surrounded by big tents where DHS was housing civilian law enforcement groups on the north side of town. Highsong had been assigned to a men’s tent nearby, but they walked to his pick-up truck instead, which hardly offered any more privacy, lost in a sea of vehicles that other cops, rangers, firefighters, and workmen were using as sleeping quarters and offices. People were everywhere in the vast parking lot.

“You pervert,” Julie said.

Highsong didn’t react, opening the cab and waving her inside. His laptop was squirreled away behind his seat. He gave it to her and scratched her back as she typed at the machine. DHS had wi-fi over most of the camp. It was sluggish with traffic, but that was good. Julie’s emails would be like one little mouse in the on-going circus.

It’s your favorite idiot, she typed.

Forgiven. I’ve seen the news. You’re stressed. What’s up?

I need some background, she typed. Can you poke around for me?

Poking is my middle name.

Em was a friend she’d made on the usenets, trading tech advice and buyer tips. She was pretty sure he didn’t actually live in Los Angeles. For all she knew, he was right here in Missoula or in Maine, Milan, or Moscow, but he’d weathermanned his lines through L.A. for cover. He said he was wanted by the FBI. That was probably just geek posturing, but Em was good at what he did.

Julie typed up the two buildings’ addresses and a run-down on Machovsky. Maybe her hacker buddy would draw some connections she couldn’t.

He didn’t test her patience. A mere twenty minutes passed. If she was worth her weight, she would’ve jumped Highsong or at least smooched a bit, but she wasn’t nineteen anymore, she was thirty-four, and it had been a long day. They both napped. Other people came and went through the parking lot, shouting, banging doors, as Julie curled on the long bench seat with her head on Highsong’s thigh. Then his laptop chimed.

You’re neck-deep in slime, Em emailed. A lot of DawnTech’s records are sealed. FEDERALLY sealed. Ready for the good news?

“Oh boy,” Julie said. There’s good news? she typed.

Em dumped a handful of files on her. Enjoy, he said. I’m out. You don’t know me.

“Oh boy,” Julie said again.

DawnTech was so familiar with termites because they’d been experimenting with the bugs as a clean energy source. Termites could produce as much as two liters of hydrogen from digesting a single piece of paper. The highly specialized microbes in their digestive tracts made each bug an efficient bioreactor, which was why Julie’s TI guns worked so well.

It was also why Em thought gene-spliced termites could be used as living firebombs. A mating pair might infiltrate enemy territory—tiny, insignificant, organic, untraceable—then breed until they hit critical mass. Termites made love three times a day, Em noted, and some of DawnTech’s funding came from DARPA, which meant the Pentagon. Top secret.

“Where did you say you knew this guy from?” Highsong asked, reading over Julie’s shoulder.

“Okay, so some of it’s nuts.”

“Some of it?”

“Here’s the good news. Next file. Look at this.”

The first building where they’d met the saboteur held the national ordering center and sales offices of Holiday House, a billion dollar name in Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Easter supplies. The embargo on Christmas trees had halved their earnings in past years. More interestingly, the same parent corporation that controlled Holiday House also owned the second building and more in Missoula. Em hadn’t been able to draw a link between that corporate blind and DawnTech, but he suggested it was obvious. Who else could be supplying the saboteur with bugs? According to Em’ numbers, the whole thing was an insurance scam. They were infesting their own business holdings and testing an insanely lucrative weapons program at the same time.

Highsong just shook his head. “How do we get into stuff like this?” he asked.

“Oh my god. You can say that again.”

“You, uh, you want to tell Agent Leber?”

“No.” Julie met his eyes and said, “No. This is our city.”

* * * *

They slipped back into Missoula as dusk fell. Driving Highsong’s truck through Army lines was easy enough. They had ID and their partly completed chart and maps. “We’re just trying to finish up,” Julie told the lieutenant who inspected her DHS-issued pass, and it wasn’t a lie. She wanted revenge.

Things got more complicated after dark. To start with, they worked without lights. Worse, there were only two of them, and Em had provided four addresses to stake out. Highsong suggested splitting up, but Julie said no. The city was quieting down, but there were still looters and Army patrols and God Knew Who Else poking around. It was better to stick together. If they got bored, maybe she’d get up the courage to offer him a key to her house. Too bad the first hour was anything but dull as they raced from site to site with his headlights off, rifling through the truckbed for their packs, TI guns, and other gear.

Once they crunched over an abandoned bike lying in the street. Another time they nearly flattened a stray dog. Julie wanted to go after it. She had a soft spot for animals, but Highsong convinced her to stay on mission.

Then the waiting began. They’d hidden his truck alongside a bakery across the street from a mortgage broker’s offices, which seemed the most valuable of their four targets.

“What do you think the paperwork is worth if the machos eat it?” Julie asked, holding his hand.

“Everything’s electronic now, isn’t it?” Highsong said. “I think the insurance might pay them more for lost business and damaged real estate than paper files. Maybe they can also play loose with their taxes if a bunch of receipts disappear. I dunno. If they wipe out every place they own, it’s gotta be worth bazillions.”

“And meanwhile the bugs are chewing up other people’s homes. What a bunch of—”

Beep! His radio lit up.

“That’s channel two,” Highsong said. “We’re in the wrong place.”

“Go!” Julie shouted even as he hit the ignition. She figured they had five minutes, even ten, but she didn’t want to miss the kill. In her excitement, she lifted her camcorder from the seat beside her and hugged it like a mad scientist. “Ha! Ha ha ha! We got the son of a bitch!”

Highsong careened through town with his lights on. They were sure their trap was foolproof and unconcerned with scaring their man off. Speed was only slightly less important than getting there alive.

“Whoa!” Julie screamed as Highsong swung around a corner only to find the road peppered with stand-still cars. The fender on her side banged against a white Buick, throwing sparks. The side mirror splintered. Then he pinballed through the other vehicles and slammed on his brakes, squashing Julie’s chest against her seatbelt.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t—There!” Julie flung her door open and dragged her pack onto her shoulders as she ran. Above her loomed one of Missoula’s “skyscrapers,” a six-story office complex with lower buildings on either side.

A dark Lexus hidden in one of the garage entrances must have belonged to their victim. He’d opened the driver door, but it was too late. Their trap had attracted machos from all directions.

The frenzy enshrouding him looked like a nine-foot tornado. He shrieked and kicked inside it, creating brief, man-shaped holes in the gleaming yellow termite storm. One glimpse was enough for Julie to see that his clothes were coming away in shreds.

“Can he breathe?” Highsong yelled behind her.

Who cares? Julie thought. “It’ll be over in seconds!”

Half-blind, disoriented, and naked—and God save him if he was ticklish—the man flailed helplessly against his car as the machos ripped into its luxury interior. Wet masses of bugs surged against the glass.

Julie was jubilant. Got you! she thought, trying to point her camcorder at him as she dashed onto the sidewalk.

But it was too late for her, too.

A long spiral of termites swept away from the bad guy and dimmed the corona of Highsong’s headlights, enfolding Julie in the nasty fluttering swarm.

“Gaaaaaaa!” she shrieked.

They’d obviously hidden their beacons well enough for the man to set off the tripwire in the building’s entrance, and no one but evil-doers should be entering this office complex tonight. The same electrical impulse that alerted Highsong via radio had also opened a handful of chem packets, covering the man with an invisible fog. The machos’ sex pheromones were too subtle for a human nose, even laced with the molecular signature of pine rust, but the bad guy probably heard the beacons pop and then saw Julie’s wiring and radio transceiver.

Unfortunately, neither Julie nor Highsong had noticed the leaking beacon they must have broken or triggered inside his truck. They were coated with sex juice, too, and the machos were in a confused, rapturous craze. The bugs tried to eat anything that was plant-based—like cotton.

Julie grabbed at her top as she dropped and thrashed on the sidewalk, hoping to crush the termites, but it was no good. She was grateful just to get enough air. Then her shirt came apart in her hands and her pants sagged away from her hips. Her bra went next and she staggered up, bewildered and choking.

The bad guy got clear of the swarm first. Maybe he’d lost his keys. Maybe jumping into the bug orgy inside his car was too horrible to contemplate. Either way, his pale white hiney broke into a sprint down the street, each cheek shining in Highsong’s headlights.

“Don’t move or I’ll shoot!” Julie shouted, swimming through the machos after him. Highsong was on his feet, too, but tripped over the ragged fabric of his jeans. Julie was lucky her pants had separated completely—and her nylon shoes were intact. It was only by the grace of God that she’d worn her leather jacket, which survived. Otherwise she would have been wearing less than a stripper, and she wasn’t a small girl. She felt herself bounce as she charged after the bad guy, armed only with her camcorder. What if he had a gun?

“Julie!” Highsong yelled.

The canisters left beside the bad guy’s car were vital evidence—could they trace this equipment back to the people who’d packed more termite colonies into those steel tubes for him?—but she wanted this lunatic to pay personally for what he’d done, so she didn’t stop.

The naked chase was on.

They quickly left the headlights, but the bad guy wasn’t getting enough sun. His back had some color, yet his buttocks were like round little ghosts churning in the night. He ran like he still had a few bugs where it counted.

Bouncing, Julie began to fall behind. Cold, she hollered in frustration: “Freeze! I said freeze!”

The world went supernova. In front of them, the street flared with two dazzling floodlamps and the 4th Infantry pinned the bad guy with fifteen rifles, several glue guns, and a bullhorn. “HALT! PUT YOUR HANDS UP! THIS IS THE UNITED STATES ARMY AND YOU ARE—” The voice turned away. “They’re not wearing any clothes,” it said before swinging back again at full volume. “YOU’RE UNDER ARREST!”

Julie caught up with the bad guy as he stood motionless in the brilliant light, casting a thin shadow like a rat with his hands crossed over his goodies. Behind her, Highsong’s truck joined the scene but stopped when the bullhorn shouted again. “HALT!” A dozen soldiers ran forward, their smooth helmets bobbing through the glare. Julie tried her best to pull her jacket down past her waist, but she was more interested in making sure the bad guy saw her grin.

It was the same brown-haired dude from before.

“Gotcha,” she said.

* * * *

The soldiers were a security detail assigned to two neighboring banks. They didn’t have any blankets or tarps on hand, but one man gave Julie his pants, earning a round of hoots and commentary that doubled in volume when she thanked him with a chaste kiss.

Minutes later, DHS came down on their location like a ton of horse puckey. No less than twenty agents pushed in among the soldiers, taking their catch and isolating Julie and Highsong. That was okay. Julie had already passed her camcorder to the corporal without any pants and asked him to keep it safe for her—and to smuggle it to the CNN crews outside of town if she didn’t return for it. The digital Sony not only contained the machos’ assault of the bad guy and Julie’s pursuit but also the interviews she’d taped earlier with Highsong and herself, explaining everything with detailed maps, Em’s documentation, and property records. Highsong had already uploaded the same files to YouTube, though he’d kept the videos private and inactive for now.

The easy part was done. Agent Reaves brought them to the medical tents for their scrapes and bruises and then to the cafeteria for a hot meal, playing the good cop to the hilt—and Julie and Highsong were as sweet as butter, chatting him up like long-lost family. They’d violated a federal quarantine by reentering Missoula, but they’d also nabbed the villain. Depending on how Reaves decided to play it, they would sink or swim. Finally the claws came out. Reaves wanted all the information they had, their sources, an oath of silence, and their voluntary resignation from the bug teams. Julie grinned and made her counter-offer.

“Nah,” she said. “I think DHS should give us a public commendation for our valor above and beyond the call of duty.”

“We can press charges.”

“We’ll lawyer up and dump our videos on the net for the world to see how DHS is testing their bioweapons programs on innocent civilians.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Organic firebombs. We know DawnTech is in bed with the Pentagon.”

Reaves stared at her.

“We don’t want to pee on your parade,” Julie said. “We’re good Americans. We’d prefer not to make noise about your bug programs, but we will to protect ourselves if we have to. Which we shouldn’t. We’re heroes.”

Reaves slowly held out his hand. “You need a medal with that commendation?” he asked, and they shook on it. Julie laughed.

But the next morning she and Highsong were covered in sweat and bugs again. The termite war continued. At least they seemed to be getting ahead of the machos with no one bringing new colonies into the city. She was more aggravated by the fact that four days passed before Reaves called to follow up.

Julie had to dig her phone out of her pack when it rang, setting aside her TI gun and an Army radio.

“Beauchain?” Reaves said, getting it right.

The bad guy was a low-level assistant in Machovsky’s research facilities. He’d spilled like a leaky bag. Working from his confession, DHS uncovered ties between DawnTech’s board of directors and the ownership of Holiday House. Apparently business was down. Way down. More and more Americans were secularizing Christmas and buying all sorts of inane junk—blow-up lawn dolls, roof displays, plastic trees—but competition for those spiking sales was brutal and Holiday House lost their price margin when their tree sales went down the toilet.

Someone had decided to cut corners, take advantage of the machos’ outbreak, and kill the business and all of its subsidiary holdings. That was the extent of the scheme, Reaves said, no federal involvement, no Men in Black weapons programs, nobody but the usual suspects—a few inept corporate masters with their eyes on fat pay-offs instead of hard work. People were going to jail. Holiday House would be sued to the ground.

Julie was almost disappointed when she hung up the phone, standing beside a gluey patch of termites on a smoke-ridden Missoula street. “It’s over,” she told Highsong. “There’s no conspiracy. Reaves has everything sewn up tight.”

“Maybe next time,” he said, smiling as he roughly embraced her.