The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton Page A

“there was that report from the flybys, and those films of a man alive down here. One man in white robes.”
    “You think he’s still alive?”
    “Well, I wonder,” Stone said. “Because if some people survived longer than others—long enough to dictate a taped speech, or to arrange a hanging—then you have to ask yourself if someone maybe didn’t survive for a very long time. You have to ask yourself if there isn’t someone in this town who is still alive.”
    It was then that they heard the sound of crying.
    At first it seemed like the sound of the wind, it was so high and thin and reedy, but they listened, feeling puzzled at first, and then astonished. The crying persisted, interrupted by little hacking coughs.
    They ran outside.
    It was faint, and difficult to localize. They ran up the street, and it seemed to grow louder; this spurred them on.
    And then, abruptly, the sound stopped.
    The two men came to a halt, gasping for breath, chests heaving. They stood in the middle of the hot, deserted street and looked at each other.
    “Have we lost our minds?” Burton said.
    “No,” Stone said. “We heard it, all right.”
    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,