They waited. It was absolutely quiet for several minutes. Burton looked down the street, at the houses, and the jeep van parked at the other end, in front of Dr. Benedict's house.
The crying began again, very loud now, a frustrated howl.
The two men ran.
It was not far, two houses up on the right side. A man and a woman lay outside, on the sidewalk, fallen and clutching their chests. They ran past them and into the house. The crying was still louder; it filled the empty rooms.
They hurried upstairs, clambering up, and came to the bedroom. A large double bed, unmade. A dresser, a mirror, a closet.
And a small crib.
They leaned over, pulling back the blankets from a small, very red-faced, very unhappy infant. The baby immediately stopped crying long enough to survey their faces, enclosed in the plastic suits.
Then it began to howl again.
"Scared hell out of it," Burton said. "Poor thing."
He picked it up gingerly and rocked it. The baby continued to scream. Its toothless mouth was wide open, its cheeks purple, and the veins stood out on its forehead.
"Probably hungry," Burton said.
Stone was frowning. "It's not very old. Can't be more than a couple of months. Is it a he or a she?"
Burton unwrapped the blankets and checked the diapers. "He. And he needs to be changed. And fed." He looked around the room. "There's probably a formula in the kitchen..."
"No," Stone said. "We don't feed it."
"Why not?"
"We don't do anything to that child until we get it out of this town. Maybe feeding is part of the disease process; maybe the people who weren't hit so hard or so fast were the ones who hadn't eaten recently. Maybe there's something protective about this baby's diet. Maybe..." He stopped. "But whatever it is, we can't take a chance. We've got to wait and get him into a controlled situation."
Burton sighed. He knew that Stone was right, but he also knew that the baby hadn't been fed for at least twelve hours. No wonder the kid was crying.
Stone said, "This is a very important development. It's a major break for us, and we've got to protect it. I think we should go back immediately."
"We haven't finished our head count."
Stone shook his head. "Doesn't matter. We have something much more valuable than anything we could hope to find. We have a survivor."
The baby stopped crying for a moment, stuck its finger in its mouth, and looked questioningly up at Burton. Then, when he was certain no food was forthcoming, he began to howl again.
"Too bad," Burton said, "he can't tell us what happened."
"I'm hoping he can," Stone said.
***
They parked the van in the center of the main street, beneath the hovering helicopter, and signaled for it to descend with the ladder. Burton held the infant, and Stone held the Scoop satellite-- strange trophies, Stone thought, from a very strange town. The baby was quiet now; he had finally tired of crying and was sleeping fitfully, awakening at intervals to whimper, then sleep again.
The helicopter descended, spinning up swirls of dust. Burton wrapped the blankets about the baby's face to protect him. The ladder came down and he climbed up, with difficulty.
Stone waited on the ground, standing with the capsule in the wind and dust and thumpy noise from the helicopter.
And, suddenly, he realized that he was not alone on the street. He turned, and saw a man behind him.
He was an old man, with thin gray hair and a wrinkled, worn face. He wore a long nightgown that was smudged with dirt and yellowed with dust, and his feet were bare. He stumbled and tottered toward Stone. His chest was heaving with exertion beneath the nightgown.
"Who are you?" Stone said. But he knew: the man in the pictures. The one who had been photographed by the airplane.
"You..." the man said.
"Who are you?"
"You... did it..."
"What is your name?"
"Don't hurt me... I'm not like the others..."
He was shaking with fear as he stared at Stone in his plastic suit. Stone thought, We must look strange to him. Like men from Mars, men from another world.
"Don't hurt me..."
"We won't hurt you," Stone said. "What is your name?"
"Jackson. Peter Jackson. Sir. Please don't hurt me."
He waved to the bodies in the street. "I'm not like the others..."
"We won't hurt you," Stone said again.
"You hurt the others .
"No. We didn't."
"They're dead."
"We had nothing--"
"You're lying," he shouted, his eyes wide. "You're lying to me. You're not human. You're only pretending. You know I'm a sick man. You know you can pretend with me. I'm a sick man. I'm bleeding, I know. I've had this ... this ... this..."
He faltered, and then doubled over, clutching his stomach and wincing in pain.
"Are you all right?"
The man fell to the ground. He was breathing heavily, his skin pale. There was sweat on his face.
"My stomach," he gasped. "It's my stomach."
And then he vomited. It came up heavy, deep-red, rich with blood.
"Mr. Jackson--"
But the man was not awake. His eyes were closed and he was lying on his back. For a moment, Stone thought he was dead, but then he saw the chest moving, slowly, very slowly, but moving.
Burton came back down.
"Who is he?"
"Our wandering man. Help me get him up."
"Is he alive?"
"So far."
"I'll be damned," Burton said.
***
They used the power winch to hoist up the unconscious body of Peter Jackson, and then lowered it again to raise the capsule. Then, slowly, Burton and Stone climbed the r into the belly of the helicopter.