The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. (23 page)

Unfazed, Wu grabbed the throttle and yanked it towards him a notch. The engines in the hallway groaned louder; the train kicked forward, rocking Marco backwards on his feet. Wu waited twenty seconds then upped the speed again. Two minutes later he had the train barrelling at ninety miles per hour. He consulted the mirror and nodded, satisfied.

‘Gone,’ he declared. ‘Quads top out at seventy, even the military grades. He won’t catch up now. He’ll be cursing himself.’

‘But… I mean… he won’t just give up, will he?’ Marco asked.

‘No,’ Wu admitted. ‘He’ll stay on our trail. I suspect he knows who you are, and that you’re tracking Ballard. However, I doubt he knows our destination is Sarsgard, or he wouldn’t need to follow us–he’d be there already. Therefore, we still have the advantage. We’ll abandon the train at San Bernardino, as planned. But I can rig the alerter so the locomotive rolls on without us. He’ll follow the tracks, not realising we’re not onboard.’ Wu sniffed. ‘He’ll find the train crashed at the LA terminal with a million corpses to greet him.’

Marco squeezed his raw eyes shut. The revelations swirled madly around him like sheets of paper in a tornado, and he
desperately wanted to snatch them up, assemble them in proper order. ‘Okay–let me get this straight,’ he said, his eyes snapping open. ‘This guy’s a spy, right?’

Wu flashed an annoyed glance. ‘Foreign operative, yes. I would think so.’

‘On the same mission as us? To kill Roger?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why? Why does everyone want Roger’s corpse returned?’

Wu cocked his head to the side, furrowed his brow. Marco sensed him contemplating an answer, deciding whether to serve up another half-truth or a flat-out lie. At last the sergeant appeared to make up his mind. ‘That’s not all they want.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that killing Ballard is not the end-objective.’

‘Goddamn it,’ Marco declared. He’d had enough. He strode to the opposite side of the control panel and grabbed the throttle, squeezing until his knuckles whitened. He half expected Wu to slap his hand away. Instead the soldier’s eyes narrowed–not a look of surprise, but curious, interested to see what Marco would do next. Marco met his gaze, refused to waver.

‘Enough vague answers,’ Marco said, his cheeks broiling. ‘Remember our deal? Honour system. I gave my report, now it’s goddamn time you gave yours. Or should I stop this train and let our new friend catch up? Maybe
he’ll
be nice enough to explain what’s going on.’

The corners of Wu’s mouth constricted. In the unlit cab his face was more shadow than skin; black, bottomless pits loomed where his green eyes had glinted hours earlier. The two men held their positions at the console, each measuring the other, motionless except for the sway of the train. Finally the alerter’s soft tone broke the quiet.

Ping.

A pause, and then it rang again, and then again–
ping ping ping
–like the bell at the end of a boxing round, instructing the fighters to separate.

Wu’s hand emerged from the darkness around his waist. The deer-horn knife gleamed in the red glow of the control instruments. Without blinking, he rested the blade on the console–slowly, deliberately, inches from Marco’s outstretched wrist.

‘Let go of the throttle, Doctor,’ Wu said.

Marco held tight. ‘Or else…?’

Wu said nothing.

Ping ping ping.
The bell rang and rang. Any moment now the safety brakes would engage automatically and drag the locomotive to a stop.

Ping ping ping.

With an unhurried movement, Wu released the knife and pressed the alerter button with his empty hand. The bell ceased.

‘Let go of the throttle,’ Wu said, ‘so I can tell you important details about Roger Ballard. Details I’m sure you don’t know.’

Marco exhaled. ‘So,’ he said warily. ‘You’re honouring the honour system?’

‘Of course,’ Wu answered. ‘I’ve said so already. Honour is everything to me.’

Marco nodded, unhanded the throttle, flexed his fingers.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Tell me. Why does the world want Roger?’

‘After you moved to Arizona, did you ever hear from Doctor Ballard?’ Wu asked. He sat atop the stool, monitoring the rear mirror.

‘Well, no,’ Marco admitted cautiously. ‘That… wasn’t
something either of us would have wanted. Once I left LA, that was it. I didn’t keep in touch. Not with anyone.’ Slumping against the cold wall, he grunted and slid down to rest his tired ass on the floor. He crossed his knees in front of him and gazed up at Wu like a kid ready for story-time.

‘So then you aren’t aware that Ballard quit his residency. Four months after you left.’ Wu delivered the news without shifting his attention from the window.

‘Roger… quit?’

‘Abruptly. He announced his resignation on the morning of the twenty-eighth of September 2013. Ten minutes later, he was gone. Down to the hospital lobby and out the front door and never returned. Left his diplomas hanging on the wall in his office.’ Wu spoke with the matter-of-fact inflection of a military briefing. Detached, dispassionate.

Roger quit
, Marco marvelled, still absorbing this first detail. Guilt nipped him with sharp little teeth. He should’ve known this information already, should’ve remained better attuned to what he’d left behind. Obviously Roger had been in pain over what happened.

But the truth was, at the time, Marco didn’t give a shit.

And maybe, just maybe, he’d
wanted
Roger to suffer.

‘But why?’ he asked Wu.

‘No reason given. He simply announced he was leaving. And not only leaving the hospital.’
Ping.
Wu swivelled from the window and tapped the alerter. ‘Ballard vanished.’

Marco flinched without knowing why. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I mean, Doctor, that he abandoned his apartment as well. His clothing, his furniture, his belongings, all left behind. Hospital security discovered his blue BMW in the parking garage. Also abandoned. He’d driven in that morning, but evidently departed by another means. Even his bank accounts were discovered untapped. Not a dime
withdrawn. A missing persons report was filed by hospital administrators since, as you know, Ballard had no next of kin to pursue the matter–but mysteriously no action was ever taken, either by the LA County police or the Federal Bureau of Investigation.’

‘Jesus Christ…’ Marco trailed off. ‘So where was he?’

‘From the twenty-eighth of September 2013 onwards, no one knew.’

‘And yet,’ Marco prodded, ‘something tells me Owen Osbourne knew.’

Wu nodded, although his stern expression was not encouraging. ‘Perceptive, Doctor. Yes–Ballard had been recruited in high secrecy by the Department of Homeland Security. Osbourne organised the disappearance and the cover-up.’

‘Great,’ Marco flared. ‘So we’re cleaning up some mess Osbourne made. He pisses all over floor, then sends us out with the mop?’

Unrattled, Wu considered Marco’s remark and then turned once more to the window. ‘It’s a much bigger mess than you think, Doctor,’ he replied at last, gravely. ‘Osbourne was busy cleaning it, too. Which brings us to why we’re here.’

Marco shuddered.
A much bigger mess.
The link between Roger and Osbourne disconcerted him, along with the feeling that he, too, was trapped in the same spider’s web–that the wisp of silk binding Marco to Roger also tied him to Osbourne, weaving them all together into a dizzying circular trap. And somewhere, hidden beyond his understanding, waited the spider–the reason for everything, the logic spinning the web.

And suddenly he guessed what it was.

Jesus, Roger.

Jesus fucking Christ
.

‘Tell me why,’ he said. His throat rasped. ‘Why Roger was recruited.’

Wu placed his hands square on his knees. ‘You seem to know already, Doctor.’

‘The Resurrection.’

‘Yes,’ Wu confirmed. ‘The Resurrection.’

Marco rubbed his eyes, dumbfounded. His fingertips were frigid in the night air, and he could feel rough veins scratching below his eyelids.

‘Osbourne needed a skilled research neurologist,’ Wu continued. ‘Ballard was the best in his field, and so Osbourne selected him to contain the Resurrection.’

Marco blinked, reabsorbing the dim light. ‘Contain? As in “stop”?’

Wu nodded. ‘That was the intent. Before the outbreak.’

‘Hold it–back up again,’ Marco said. He had to slow this down, understand it better. ‘How did Osbourne know about the Resurrection before the outbreak?’

Ping.
The alerter bell sounded, and Wu slapped the button with his palm. He seemed irritated by the interruptions to his narrative. ‘Summer 2013,’ he announced brusquely. ‘Federal agents working for the Department of Homeland Security received reports of an unknown encephalopathy with highly alarming symptoms taking hold in the population of a high-security medical prison–and yes, Doctor, before you ask, it
was
Sarsgard Medical Prison, our current destination. The Sarsgard physicians had never seen anything like it. A near-total neurological shutdown, followed soon after by necrosis and ceased functioning of heart, lung and other major organs. All this while the patient apparently still survived. Of course, it was soon determined—’

‘They actually
were
dead,’ Marco broke in. ‘But they walked around and ate people. You can skip all that, I’ve heard it before. Get to the part about Osbourne and Roger.’

Wu scowled. ‘I’m getting there, Doctor. At the time of these reports, Sarsgard incarcerated a number of international terrorists–three members of the Islamic Jihad Group, one soldier of the Lebanese Asbat an-Ansar, and a high-ranking officer in the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo. As you recall, this was a time of heightened precaution against terrorism in America. The concern–the fear–was that one of the jailed terrorists was a carrier for some biological weapon. An engineered virus, perhaps, or bacteria.’

‘So Osbourne wanted Roger to take a look.’

‘Yes. Osbourne anticipated that Sarsgard was just the beginning–an accidental preview of an impending widespread bio-terror attack. A doomsday weapon to be released throughout America, with no possible way to predict where or when it would happen, or who would deliver the blow. Osbourne needed a vaccine ready or, even better, a cure, when the time came. In the meantime, the events at Sarsgard were a highly guarded secret.’

Marco hung his head, combed his hand through his unkempt hair. His fingers came away sticky with soil and sweat and gummy corpse blood from the day’s kills. Repulsed, he wiped his hand on his canvas pant leg and stood, aching.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Roger disappeared after I left for Arizona. That means, what? He was hiding here six months, trying to figure out what the hell makes the Resurrection tick. Obviously with no luck. It outfoxed him–which, knowing Roger, must’ve been agonising. Millions of people killed by a puzzle he couldn’t solve. And it killed him, too, in the end.’

‘He was close to a solution when he died. That’s why Osbourne needs his corpse.’

‘Yeah. That’s the part I don’t understand.’

‘You will soon, Doctor.’ Wu’s finger hovered over the
alerter button, anticipating the next chime of the bell. ‘The truth is…’ he began, and even the alerter seemed to hold its silence, hushed, awaiting his next words. Wu shook his head gravely.

‘Roger Ballard’s corpse is
not
like any other corpse on earth.’

Marco felt his forehead screw tight, baffled, needing more. Wu obliged him.

‘I’ll explain,’ Wu stated before Marco could ask, his tone once again official, a reporter of facts. ‘During the first rescue attempt at Sarsgard four years ago, Ballard’s lab was overrun by his dead patients. His research was destroyed. All Osbourne had to show for his efforts was a smattering of reports that Ballard had provided prior to the outbreak. Since then, Osbourne has had a team of scientists in the Safe States attempting to create a vaccine, but with no success.’

Marco didn’t see where this was going. ‘Roger’s a tough act to follow,’ he offered.

‘Osbourne would agree with you. He’d been losing hope. But two months ago, that changed.’ Wu paused, as if feeling a change himself. ‘Two months ago, Homeland Security detected a trespass into the encrypted mainframe of their database. A computer break-in. Someone, somewhere, had managed to hack into Roger Ballard’s personnel file. Luckily, as the hack was in progress, the CIA tagged the hacker with an invisible string code. Like an old-fashioned tracking device, allowing them to secretly follow the hacker’s subsequent activity.’

‘Okay… and then?’

‘Within seventy-two hours, the unidentified hacker had
trespassed into several additional government sites, including the US Correctional Department’s private files on Sarsgard. To the CIA, the threat was obvious–espionage, some foreign power digging for information. Seeing what they could learn about the Resurrection, and Osbourne’s attempt to develop a vaccine.’

Marco puzzled, still not getting it. ‘And now they’re looking for Roger… because?’

Wu delivered him a curious look. ‘Before I answer that, Doctor, I should first mention that in addition to the government mainframes, the hacker was also observed breaking into email accounts. A dozen or so. Accounts belonging to former associates of Roger Ballard. Presumably the hacker was looking for information Ballard might have leaked to an outside contact.’

The hair on Marco’s scalp stirred. Something about the way Wu was watching him…

Wu continued, a coy note creeping into his voice. ‘For example, one notable break-in occurred on the mail server for a certain hospital in Arizona. St. Joseph’s.’

Oh, shit.
Marco’s head buzzed.

‘And there,’ Wu said, ‘with the CIA watching, a most incredible discovery was made.’

Oh, holy shit. You have
got
to be kidding me.

Wu nodded. ‘Yes, Doctor. You’ve guessed.’

Marco groaned. ‘Roger emailed
me
?’

‘You’re surprised, understandably. Osbourne was surprised, too, to say the very least.’

‘But–when? I never…’