Patient Zero (21 page)

The DMS Warehouse, Baltimore / Tuesday, June 30; 9:58 P.M.

RUDY AND I walked down the corridor together. Church had lingered to speak with Hu. I looked at my watch. “Hard to believe this is the same day, you know?”

But he didn’t want to talk about it out in the corridor. I asked a guard where our rooms were and he led us to a pair of former offices across the hall from each other. My room was about the size of a decent hotel bedroom, though it had clearly been repurposed from an office or storeroom. No windows. Functional gray carpet. But the bed in the corner of the room was my own from my apartment. The computer workstation was mine, as was the big-screen TV and La-Z-Boy recliner. Three packed suitcases stood in a neat row by the closet. And on top of my bed, head laid on his paws, was Cobbler. He opened one eye, found me less interesting than whatever he was dreaming about, and went back to his meditations. We went inside and Rudy sat down on the recliner and put his face in his hands. I poked inside the small halffridge they’d provided and took out a couple of bottles of water, and tapped him on the shoulder with one. He looked at it and then set it down on the floor between his shoes. I opened my water, drank some, and sat on the floor with my back against one wall.

Rudy finally turned to me and I could see the hours of stress stamped into his face and the unnatural brightness of his eyes. “What the hell have we gotten ourselves into here, cowboy?”

“I’m sorry you got dragged into this, Rude.”

He shook his head to cut me off. “It’s not that. Well, it’s not
all
that. It’s the whole      ”—he fished for the word—“
reality
of this. It’s the fact that something like the DMS exists. That it
has
to. It isn’t that we learned about some supersecret organization. Hell, Joe, there are probably dozens of those. Hundreds. I’m enough of a realist to accept that governments need secrets. They need spies and black ops and all of that. I’m a grown-up, so I can deal with it. I can even accept, however unwillingly, that we live in post-9/11 times, and that to some degree terrorism is a part of our daily lives. I mean, find me a stand-up comic who doesn’t make jokes about it. It’s become ordinary to us.”

I sipped more water, letting him work through it.

“But today I’ve seen things and heard things that I know      I
know
 
    will forever alter my world. On 9/11 I said, as so many people did, that nothing would ever be the same again. No matter how much we all settled back into a day-to-day routine, no matter how indifferent we become to what color today’s terror alert is, it’s still true. That was a day like no other in my life. Today is hitting me as hard as 9/11. Maybe harder. You know what I did? I spent ten minutes in a toilet stall crying my eyes out.”

“Hey, you’re human,” I began, and again he cut me off.

“It’s not that and you know it, Joe, so don’t coddle me. You want to know why I cried? It wasn’t cultural angst any more than it was grief for all those people who died at the hospital the other day or in Delaware this afternoon. Eight times as many people died in the earthquake in Malaysia last month. I didn’t cry over that. Millions of people die every year. I can have sympathy but any grief—any genuine personal grief—would be borrowed. It is no more a true life-changing expression than the heightened sense of concern a community feels for a kid who falls down a well. Two months later no one can remember the kid’s name. Your life doesn’t pivot on that moment. It can’t, because otherwise the process of making each human death personal would kill us all. But this      this is truly a life-changing moment. That’s not even a question. I’ve been marked by it. As you have. As everyone here at the DMS has. I don’t know how many of these people you’ve met but I had the whole tour and I see it in everyone’s eyes. Church and Major Courtland hide it better; but the others      what I see in their eyes is going to be in my eyes when I look in the mirror. Not just for a while, but from now on. We’re all marked.”

“Yeah, I know, Rude, but it’s not like we’re talking the Mark of Cain here.”

He gave me such a long withering look that I wanted to squirm. “No? Look, I’m not pointing a finger at any country, any faith, any political party. This is a failing in the whole species.
We,
the human race, have committed a terrible and unforgivable sin; and before you embarrass us both by asking—no, I’m not having a Catholic moment. This is far more fundamental than church or state. This is ours to own because we know better. As a species, we
know
better. We really do understand right and wrong, same as we really do grasp all the subtle shades of gray. We have had thousands of years of religious leaders, philosophers, free thinkers, and political scientists explaining the cause and effect of destructive behavior. You’d think by now, at the point where we are this technologically advanced and where communication between all races is not only possible but globally instantaneous, that we’d have learned something, that we’d have benefited from all those previous mistakes. You’d think we’d have become more forward-thinking and farsighted. But we’re not. With computer modeling we can virtually look into the future and see how things will go if we follow these courses, and yet we don’t do a thing to change direction. Maybe the true human flaw is our inability to act as if the next generation matters. We never have. Individually maybe, but not as a nation, not as a species.”

Rudy rubbed his eyes.

“Today,” he said slowly, “I watched video proof of the criminal indifference of the human race. People who are certainly intelligent enough to know better have created a weapon so destructive that it could destroy the entire human race, and why? To further a religious or political view. If this was the act of a single person I’d say that we’re dealing with psychosis, a fractured mind      but this is a deliberate and careful plan. The people involved have had sufficient time to think it through, to grasp the implications. And yet they continue with the program. Today you saw them experimenting with children.
Children.
” He sighed. “They know better and they still don’t care. If there’s a better description of the Mark of Cain I haven’t heard it.”

“That’s them, Rudy. Not us.”

“No, no,” he conceded tiredly. “I know that. It’s just that I don’t trust that our government is any wiser. Or any government. We did, after all, invent the bomb; and we’ve experimented with bioweapons and germ warfare. No, cowboy, we all bear some trace of Cain’s mark. All of us, whether we’re directly involved at the policy level or not.”

“Some of us are trying to do something about this shit, Rudy. Let’s not paint everyone with the same brush.”

He sighed. “I’m tired, Joe      and I’m not attacking you. I’m feeling my way through this.” He looked at me for a long time. “But, you’re marked, too. Not with guilt, but with the awareness of the beast that lives in all of us, in every human heart. The awareness is in your eyes. I’ve played poker with you; I know that you can hide it better than me, better than most. Better than Grace Courtland. Not as well as Church. Point is that you carry the same mark as everyone else here. As I do.” He made a grimace that was his best attempt at a smile. “It’s a bonding experience. We’ll always be linked by this shared knowledge. All of us linked by the human race’s most recent demonstration of its absolute bloody-minded determination to commit suicide.”

“Like I said, not everyone’s part of the problem, Rude. Some of us are trying our damnedest to be part of the solution.”

He gave me a bleak and weary smile. “I hope that’s not bravado, cowboy. I sincerely hope you believe that.”

“I do. I have to.”

He closed his eyes and sat there for a long minute saying nothing, but every few seconds he let out another long sigh. “I haven’t had near enough time to process this yet. If I’m going to be of any use I’m going to have to get my own ducks in a row. I mean      I’ve been kidnapped, had a gun to my head, found out that terrorists have an actual doomsday weapon      you’d be surprised how much of that we don’t cover in medical school.”

“Not even in shrink school?”

“Not even in shrink school.”

We sat with that for a bit. “Church told me that you’ve signed on to the DMS. Why’d you go and do
that
?”

Rudy gave me a wan smile. “Because Church asked me to. Because of what happened at St. Michael’s. Because of you. And because I
know
. Not only the secrets, Joe      I know the truth of all of this. I’m marked. That makes me a part of this from now on. If I don’t do something to contribute to the solution I think I’d go mad.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I hear you. But how do you feel about being on the ‘team’?”

“That’s too complex a question for a simple answer. On the surface I guess I appreciate the opportunity to do some good for the people who are in turn trying to save the world.”

“And below the surface?”

“I know where your morals are, Joe. You’re too reasonable to have a red state/blue state agenda. You’re much more of a right and wrong personality, and that works for me. I think Church may be built along some of the same lines. So, I guess that one of the strongest rays of hope I see in this whole thing is the fact that what we have standing between us and a destroyed future are three people—Church, you, and Grace Courtland—who actually see the way the trend is going and are in the position to do something about it.”

“That’s a lot to put on our shoulders, brother.”

“Yes,” he said, “it is.” He rubbed his eyes. “We all have so much to do. You have to be a hero. I have to get my act together so I can help everybody else keep
their
acts together. And Church and Courtland have to do whatever it is that they do.” Rudy got up and patted me on the shoulder. He looked a little bit more like his old self, but I knew that there was a lot of road still to travel. “I’m going to try and get at least an hour’s sleep. You should, too.”

I said that I would but knew that I wouldn’t. There was too much to do and the clock was ticking. I stood in my doorway and watched him shamble off to bed. I felt impossibly tired and was just turning to go back inside when a door banged open at the end of the hall and a white-faced Dr. Hu yelled two words that sent a chill of terror through me: “Room Twelve!”

Behind him I could hear the sudden staccato of automatic weapons fire.

The DMS Warehouse, Baltimore / Tuesday, June 30; 10:21 P.M.

I TORE DOWN the hallway toward the open door. Gus Dietrich was coming out of his room dressed in boxer shorts and a beater. He saw me running and opened his mouth to say something but then I grabbed Hu and shoved him out of my way. Hu hit Dietrich and they fell together through Dietrich’s open doorway. I ran into the hall and cut left. My quarters were pretty close to the loading bay and I got to the bay door before any of the armed guards. There was a knot of confused techs and staff milling around at the bay doorway and I bellowed at them to clear a path.

“Got your back,” I heard Bunny say as he skidded into the bay right behind me. Top Sims was right behind him.

I turned to the crowd. “Everyone out—
now
! Close the door and kill that fucking alarm!”

They backed out of the room as the three of us hurried past rows of trailers. When we reached Room 12 what we saw stopped us in our tracks. The machine gun emplacement was deserted, the big gun still smoking, the floor littered with shell casings. I could only see one of the four guards—or, what was left of him. His body was bent backward over the low wall of sandbags surrounding the gun, his throat completely torn away. There were small pools of blood everywhere and spatters from what looked like arterial sprays. Whatever had happened here had happened fast and mean.

We moved up quick and quiet. Bunny scooped up an MP5.

“This is getting to be a long damn day,” he muttered as he checked the magazine. “It’s out.” He patted down the dead guard and found a fresh magazine.

“On my six!” I whispered and I could feel him come up behind me. Top flanked us. He’d picked up the dead guard’s handgun and was fanning it to cover all the corners. Someone in the crowd must have had some authority because the alarm died, leaving its banshee echo bouncing off the walls.

“Check your targets,” I said softly. “We don’t know who is infected or how many hostiles we have.”

We paused in a tight knot and listened. There were scuffling sounds from two directions: behind the trailer and inside.

“I’ll take the inside,” I whispered. “You two around the sides.”

“This is messed up,” said Bunny.

“No shit, farmboy,” snarled Top. “Let’s go.” They faded off to my left, heading down the length of the trailer as I moved onto the bottom step of the double-wide. The door to Room 12 was open and I could see figures moving inside. I saw another weapon on the deck, a Glock nine, but the slide was locked back, so I ignored it as I leaped up onto the top step. I was in a hurry but the cop in me was always watching and I flicked a glance at the door. No visible signs of a forced entry or forced exit. Even though I had no time to worry about that it still bothered the hell out of me.

I braced myself and stepped into the trailer. Inside it was a charnel house. Two lab-coated doctors lay in broken twists of limbs; beyond them three people dressed in hospital gowns were sprawled in pools of red. The prisoner we’d taken at the meatpacking plant had been in a surgical bay that was in a screened-off section of the trailer, but the screens had been torn down and the prisoner’s throat had been completely torn away. The doctors who had been working to save his life were dead. The air smelled of cordite and the coppery stink of blood. Each of the corpses had been shot repeatedly in the head. In the very back of the trailer was a fourth patient and he had one of the soldiers down and was tearing at him with broken teeth. The soldier was screaming and flailing his arms to fend off the attack and I couldn’t yet see if he’d been bitten, or if so how badly.

I went straight for the walker.

There wasn’t time to shout orders or to fall back and wait for reinforcements. Maybe more help was coming, but I didn’t know, and I had to trust that they’d handle things outside. I concentrated on the walker who was trying to kill this terrified young man.

The trailer was seventy feet long and I cleared the entire length in a couple of heartbeats. Gunfire erupted from outside and the walker froze in place, lifting its head, dead eyes casting around for the noise. While I was still twenty feet back I scooped up a heavy metal clipboard from a table and hurled it side-armed like a Frisbee. It was weighted with a thick sheaf of papers but I put a lot of shoulder into it. It whistled through the air and caught the walker on the side of the head, knocking him against the wall. He lost his grip on the soldier, who slumped down into a whimpering heap. The blow did no harm, though, and the creature instantly whipped its head around, lips peeling back from its teeth, dead eyes blazing. It lunged at me, but I was in full stride now, matching momentum and force with its angle of attack. As it reached for me I used my hands to slap both arms down and then grabbed its throat with my left and used my right to hit it with a palm shot to the temple. I knew I couldn’t hurt it, but my rushing mass slammed it back against the wall and I leaned into the throat grab, feeling the hyoid bone crunch. A normal man would have died right there, trying to suck wind through a throatful of broken junk; but this thing kept snarling. I hit it again, knocking its mouth away from me, and then slammed the side of its head a third time but this time I kept the heel of my palm pressed hard against its temple so that the walker was effectively pinned to the wall with that bloody mouth facing away from me. I wormed my fingers up the side of its head and knotted them in its lank and filthy hair.

I felt it tense all of its muscles to surge back against me, the way an animal will lunge to try and break free of another predator, but that’s what I wanted it to do. As the walker lunged off the wall I dropped back a step and pulled with all my strength. The effect was that the walker flew forward toward me far faster than it intended, and I immediately pivoted my hips so that its mass was accelerated even faster. The creature hit the center point of my turn and then flew past me as if repelled by a force field. My grip on throat and hair created torque and my pivot—plus my full body turn—propelled the walker’s body mass over and past me; but I still held on. There was a crucial point at which its flying mass sailed faster and farther than my grip on its head allowed, and at that precise moment I snapped down like a housewife shaking out a bed sheet. The zombie’s neck snapped with a loud wet crack.

I let go and let it crash down onto an examination table then it toppled lifelessly to the floor.

Outside I heard another crackle of gunfire.

There was a moan behind me and I spun around to see the soldier getting to his knees, one hand clamped to his bleeding cheek. The bite wasn’t big, but it was still a bite. Poor bastard. I saw the moment when the realization blossomed in his eyes. He knew he was a dead man and we both knew that there was nothing I could do.

I pointed at him and put steel in my voice. “Stay here, soldier!” He nodded, but his eyes were bright with tears. I turned and ran to the door of the lab, jumped left, and sprinted to the end of the trailer. Two soldiers, both transformed into walkers, were down, sawed in half by Bunny’s MP5. A second pair of walkers, both of whom looked like medical personnel, were slumped in the shadows by the wall, their heads showing wounds from small-arms fire. Top had his pistol in a two-hand grip as he moved past them.

“Watch!” Bunny yelled as a bloody-faced figure rose up from behind a stack of boxes and drove at me; but I’d already heard it. I turned into the rush and as it barreled toward me I suddenly shifted to one side and chopped him across the throat with a stiff forearm. His head and shoulders stopped right there but his feet ran all the way up into the air the way a tight end will after he’s been clotheslined by a defensive tackle. The walker crashed down onto the concrete and I pivoted to hit it again when Bunny shoved me aside, stamped down on its chest to hold it in place, and put two rounds into its skull.

We both turned to see Top sidestep another walker and chop it down with a vicious side kick to the knee, and by the time its kneecaps cracked to the ground he had the barrel jammed against its temple and fired. The slide locked back after the shot, but the walker fell away into a rag-doll sprawl.

There was a sudden, harsh silence broken only by the fading echoes of the gunfire.

“Top?”

“Clear.”

“Bunny?”

“Clear, boss,” he said almost in my ear. “We got them all.”

I turned and looked up at Bunny, whose face had transformed from its usual boyish humor into something harder and far more dangerous. He closed his eyes, took a breath, and then nodded to agree with his own assessment. “I’m good, boss,” he said after a moment.

Top was looking from corner to corner, checking every shadow, with eyes as cold as a rattlesnake’s. He met my glance and gave me a short nod.

Behind us I could hear the wounded soldier sobbing.