Year Zero (38 page)

“You died,” repeated Nathan Lee. “What do you remember after that?”

“Everything that there is to remember.”

All in all, from cradle to cross, it was a sterling performance, straight out of the Gospels. “Someone scripted him,” said Nathan Lee. They were back to that again.

“But who? Why bother?”

“Someone with lots of time. It must have taken weeks, or months, to school this guy. He’s got the story down cold. And all the quotes are in Aramaic. Whoever it was had a good command of Aramaic. That rules out Ross and the other guards. Maybe it wasn’t an insider. A visitor, maybe? From the outside.”

“I don’t know,” said Izzy. “Someone might be able to override the security system once or twice. But not for weeks at a time.”

“Maybe he wasn’t prepped here.” Nathan Lee began flipping through 2YZ-87’s file again. “He was warehoused in South Sector for half a year before getting transferred here. It’s possible someone wired him with this Christ stuff while he was down there.”

Izzy shook his head. “You make him sound like an act of sabotage. A car bomb. You’re saying someone rehearsed him for his Jesus role, then planted him in our midst, and then waited all these months to trigger the mischief? That’s just so intricate. So premeditated.”

“The best forgeries usually are,” said Nathan Lee. But he was merely keeping up his end of the wild theory. Izzy was right. It was farfetched.

“Why set him off now?” asked Izzy.

“I don’t know.”

“Why have you waited to reveal yourself?” Izzy asked the clone. “Why tonight?”

Eesho’s face relaxed. Easy question. He raised a finger. “The Apocalypse has arrived.” He reminded Nathan Lee of that Frenchman in Kathmandu, calmly certain.

“People have been predicting apocalypses since the beginning of time,” Nathan Lee responded. “Tell him, every time the sun goes down at night, someone preaches doom. Which apocalypse does he mean?”

Eesho replied at length. “He said he sees the plague in our eyes,” Izzy translated. “He said, the Lord God has brought an extraordinary plague upon us, a great and lengthy plague, a deadly illness. All the diseases of Egypt, plus diseases that we’ve never heard about, so that all of us will be destroyed. This is because we haven’t obeyed the Word. Now our tribes will wither. They’ll lose all memory of themselves, and that’s the worst kind of death. It is the end of time.” He finished,
“That
apocalypse.”

“Okay, who told him about the plague?”

“Maybe he’s just blowing smoke,” said Izzy. “He does have an attitude.”

“No, he knows. Someone got to him. Might as well ask him who.”

Eesho answered, “The voice of God.” He pointed upward, and for an instant Nathan Lee was sure he was pointing at the speaker mounted flat in the ceiling.

“But you cried out that God has forsaken you. Why?”

“I cried out because I am upon my cross,” Eesho replied mildly, “and I am in my misery.”

Nathan Lee gave him a hard look. “What is it you want?”

It was a stupid question, really. The man was a prisoner. He would want what any prisoner wants. Freedom.

Abruptly Eesho squeezed his eyes shut. He held out his opened palms and began rocking forward in quick bounds, mumbling prayers. Nathan Lee had seen it before, elsewhere, from the Wailing Wall to Rongbuk. It was the kind of rapid-fire chanting that ascetics around the world used to erase demons from a busy mind. Nathan Lee was, to him, nothing more than background noise.

I
T WAS JUST AFTER DAWN
when Nathan Lee emerged from the basements of Alpha Lab. He went to the rooftop, and sunlight was creasing the edges of the mesa. A crowd of several thousand was gathered on the street.

They stood quietly on the road, very civil, no jostling. Here and there people were chatting across the yellow Crime Scene tape with the Pro Force troops in black uniforms. A lady was handing Styrofoam cups of coffee across the tape. They were all on the same side out there. They were neighbors.

Miranda came up behind him. “It’s posted all over the Net. Everyone’s talking. It’s taking on a life of its own. How did it go in the dungeons?” She saw his face. “You look…defeated.”

“Tired, that’s all. He gets stronger by the word. More complicated.”

“You didn’t put a dent in him,” she summarized.

“He’s a piece of work,” said Nathan Lee. “He didn’t go off message once. If you buy the Book, you’d buy him.”

“Do you?”

“Of course not,” he said. “This guy doesn’t buy himself. He seems astounded by all our attention. I think Jesus Christ is a total alien to him. The real messiah was supposed to be a military leader rising up from among the people and striking down their conquerors, sort of like Conan the Barbarian. He acts amused that we’re even listening to this myth of a wandering healer who got nailed to a cross. He’s got the whole routine down, mastered all the parts. But he’s all Word, no gritty reality. His story’s too perfect. Somebody rehearsed him. I’m convinced of it.”

“Convince them,” Miranda said, gesturing at the crowd. “It’s Wednesday morning. They’re supposed to be going to work.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“We don’t need a white paper with footnotes. We’re at risk from an illusion,” Miranda said. “Unplug him.”

“I doubt very many of them believe a bit of it.”

“My lab is surrounded by a police line,” she fumed. The crowd offended her, Nathan Lee saw. Or threatened her. It wasn’t their numbers, which were manageable, nor their fervor, which was meek, nor the hour, which was breakfast. For most of them, work didn’t start until eight. But they were scientists. They simply didn’t belong out there.

“He’s wearing a mask, Miranda. I can’t take it off. He’s going to have to take it off himself.”

“You’re going too easy on him. They’ve become your comrades.”

Nathan Lee didn’t know what they were to him, not patients, not subjects. But not comrades. “I don’t think so. Especially not this one. Before this morning, I never spoke to him.”

“You’re too close to see it,” she said. “It’s like the Stockholm syndrome, only in reverse. Instead of the captive identifying with his captor, you’ve made yourself one of them.”

“That was the whole strategy. It’s how Izzy and I got inside.”

“It’s gone on too long.” She headed for the door. “I want this over with.”

“What are you doing, Miranda?”

“We’re making a mistake, dealing with him at his level,” she said. “Let him deal with us at ours.”

By the time he reached the elevators, she had already descended. He went to the cells, but Miranda had taken Eesho, with Izzy, to the cloning floor. Nathan Lee returned to the elevator and punched the button.

They were in the incubation chamber when he arrived. Eesho was in shock. His world—the steel cell and their yard of plain walls—was suddenly stripped away. In the blue light of this birth factory, he was faced with a genesis beyond his imagination.

Nathan Lee hadn’t visited the incubation chamber in months. The cloning had largely stopped. Only one of the chamber tanks was occupied. The fetus—a nearly complete man—hung suspended in fluid.

“Tell him,” Miranda was saying to Izzy. She had hold of Eesho’s arm, forcing him up against the Plexiglas. She was ferocious. This was personal. Nathan Lee had never seen her like this.

“Tell him what, Miranda?” Nathan Lee said quietly. “He’s already terrified.”

Eesho was staring into the tank. Humidity streaked his face. Upside down in his fetal sac, the unborn clone was waking to them. The lids of his eyes opened. He stared at Eesho.

“God didn’t make him,” Miranda said to Eesho. She stood a head taller than the clone. “And God didn’t make you. I did.”

But still Eesho would not renounce his words.

T
HAT SAME AFTERNOON
, Nathan Lee got a call. “Pack your mule bag,” the voice instructed.

Time collapsed. Years had passed, but it could have been yesterday.
Pack your mule bag.
The call to arms.

“Ochs?” Nathan Lee ground the phone against his ear, as if to trap the words. Years of being crowded with rage. Nathan Lee had given up trying not to be changed by his hatred, half hoping the fire would burn itself cold. The plastic made a snapping noise. He loosened his grip on the phone. “Where are you?”

“Nowhere you can reach me,” Ochs said.

“South Sector,” Nathan Lee told him.

“Do you know how unpleasant it is to have you lurking out there?” Ochs asked.

Nathan Lee backed off. He took a breath. “We need to talk, David.”

Ochs wasn’t fooled. “You need to listen.”

“Where is she?” Nathan Lee snarled.

“All things in their season.”

What season? “The plague is everywhere,” he said.

“I’m taking over,” Ochs told him.

“Taking over what?”

“Your inquisition. Your enquiry, whatever it is you’re doing to the prisoner. You’re leaving, and I’m coming out of the bushes. I’m taking over your job. You’re not qualified.”

Nathan Lee was taken off guard. All these months he’d been waiting to find the man, and now the man had found him. The muddy waters began to clear. The professor of Biblical antiquities wanted the clone, of course. Ochs must have been chewing his liver all these months, watching while Nathan Lee brought the Year Zero tribe to life. The Jesus controversy would be irresistible to him. Then another thought occurred to Nathan Lee. “You’re the one,” he said.

Ochs faltered. “The one?”

“You stuffed his head with this craziness.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It was your voice pouring scripture into his ear.”

“Why would I do that?” For a moment, Ochs sounded…humble.

Nathan Lee didn’t put another thought into it. He didn’t care. They were trading places, the inside for the outside. Ochs could have the clone. “Where is she?” Nathan Lee said.

“Everything’s arranged,” said Ochs. “You only need to go.”

“Where?”

“She never really knew you existed, you know. She was only four when you disappeared. Lydia got rid of any pictures of you.”

“Have you spoken with her?”

“Trust me.” And because he knew that was ludicrous, Ochs added, “You’ll be bringing Lydia in with you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“It was too soon. Conditions weren’t right. I had to hold you in reserve.” Ochs made no sense.

“So Grace is alive,” Nathan Lee’s voice flattened. It was like sediment coming to rest.

Ochs heard his dead calm. “Good,” he approved. “I think it’s finally time for your journey, Nathan Lee. It’s time to bring them in from the storm.”

O
CTOBER 10

N
athan Lee had heard of deck sweeps. They were legend, and the raiders who descended to the ground level—or deck—lived in their own camp on the furthest edge of South Sector. You never saw them in Los Alamos. It was said they were too brutal to mingle with ordinary people.

Floodlights lit the airfield. By the time Nathan Lee joined them, most of the three platoons were in their moon suits and variously armed. Some carried rifles or shotguns. Others had nets, chains, aluminum baseball bats, and collapsible poles. They eyed him coldly. Their hair was white from the decon chemicals.

Nathan Lee understood their hostility. He didn’t belong. They had their own code. He was nothing to them. He didn’t mind. He was going to bring his daughter home.

Suiting up was complicated. Riggers helped with the equipment. A wiry man with quick fingers worked on Nathan Lee. He rattled off the factoids. “This is your second skin for today, a Tevlek biohazard rig, fourth generation, brand new. Use once, throw away. We don’t recycle around here.”

Nathan Lee pulled a pair of steel-toed fireman boots over the outside of his plastic-wrapped feet. They came up to his knees. “It’s mean down there,” the rigger said. “Avoid the sharps. Broken glass. Pieces of metal. Bone tips, they’re the worst, auto-contagious, right? Think fast. Move slow. Place your feet. Anything that can put a hole in your rig, keep away from it.”

“How many times have you gone down?” asked Nathan Lee.

“Me? Are you kidding?”

Nathan Lee triple-gloved: latex under latex, under ribbed Kevlar. The rigger fitted him with a headset to wear inside his hood. The band was filled with soldiers talking to soldiers. He harnessed Nathan Lee with a respirator unit that sterilized every breath with ultraviolet light.

“This is your camel back.” He draped a bladder with shoulder straps along Nathan Lee’s spine. “It holds two gallons of water. You’re going to get hot and hungry inside the suit. It’s important to stay hydrated. Water discipline. Every fifteen minutes, take a sip from this.” He held the tube running from the camel back to Nathan Lee’s lips. “It’s a glucose and protein mix. Did they screen you for claustrophobia?”

They had not. There had been no time for any preparation. “I’ll be fine,” said Nathan Lee.

“Right. Things will feel a bit tight once you’re sealed in. Add heat, hunger, and dehydration, and by the end of the day you’ll want out of the rig. Whatever you do, do not remove your equipment. We take care of that for you at decon. Sometimes a troop will lose it in the field. All it takes is one bad second. Take off your helmet and that’s all she wrote.” The rigger tugged hard at his straps. “We’ll know if you break the seal on your helmet. Be your own master. Don’t self-destruct.”

He laid out the contents of a field kit: a quart bottle of bleach to splash on any punctures, a roll of duct tape to patch any holes, a hand pump to siphon fuel, and a GPS receiver to track his coordinates. The kit held no first aid equipment. The message was clear. No casualties allowed. One cut, one nick, and you were a write-off anyway.

“Hey,” a soldier shouted over, pointing at his ears, “channel four.”

“You got a private call,” said the rigger. He switched Nathan Lee’s wrist dial to channel four. Nathan Lee wanted it to be Miranda. Instead it was Ochs.

“Ready for the abyss?”

“Where am I going?”

“Patience, son. Let’s not spoil the suspense.”

Everything was wrong with this. Ochs was setting him up, he was sure of it. But what choice did he have? Ochs had the power of a secret over him, and Nathan Lee was helpless against that. “You could have sent me off months ago. I would have gone.”

“I told you, it was too soon.”

“Too soon for what?”

They had been through this. “It’s like the old days. Trust me. Stay tuned. Obey me, and the world will be right again.” Ochs cut the communication.

The rigger duct taped Kevlar gloves to Nathan Lee’s wrists and the boots to his knees, and layered plastic armor over his elbows and chest and knees. Finally he sealed him shut inside the helmet. There was a slight rush of air. Nathan Lee’s ears popped. He could hear over the radio, but the external world was muffled. When the rigger patted his head, he felt far away. Nathan Lee gave a thumbs-up. The rigger saluted him.

Three troop carriers and a big cargo helicopter waited. The pilots wore moon suits, too. They looked like astronauts ready for motocross. Passing the cargo bird, Nathan Lee saw empty cages in the cavernous bay.

The helicopters plunged north off the high mesa. The soldiers sat strapped in the hold and the air turned chill. They passed high above the valley. Nathan Lee saw the pueblo he’d gone through on his way to Los Alamos, long ago, it seemed. But the tank was gone, and the square looked deserted. Further on, he spied campfires along the Rio Grande. People were walking along the highway.

“Pilgrims,” a voice said over his headset. It was the crew chief. “Word spread fast. They started showing up yesterday.”

“Where are they from?”

“Locals. Out of Chama and Española and Tres Piedras. Milagro Beanfield types.”

The helicopters sprinted between ancient volcanoes and across old seabeds, then took a right through the Rockies to follow the front range. Not a car moved along the black thread of I-25.

They swept past Colorado Springs, and the dawn spotlighted towering mountains and glassy office towers. Red sandstone fins flashed beneath. Nearby, Nathan Lee knew, the seat of federal government was burrowed deep inside Cheyenne Mountain. Like King Arthur, the President and his administrative heads and Congress and the Supreme Court were hibernating until the day their dead nation came to life and called for them again. On his way to Los Alamos last summer, the place had been a beehive of trucks passing through battalions of sentinels, stocking democracy’s keep. Now it was still.

The aspens were turning. The hillsides blazed with gold and red leaves. Past the Air Force Academy, they came to a flat hilltop girdled by tank traps and razor wire. Small white radar dishes tracked their approach. The helicopters landed to refuel.

As the fuel tanks filled, so did Nathan Lee’s bladder. He knew better than to ask. No potty breaks in the plague zone. He looked around at his stoic companions, and recalled stories of sickly Crusaders who kept riding even with diarrhea leaking down their saddles. He sat in his warm urine without expression.

Then they were airborne again, hurtling due north.
Denver,
he guessed. The sun inched higher upon the flat plains. As far as his eye could see, unharvested wheat and corn and rampant tall grasses had gone to seed. Their rotor blast flushed animals. A herd of horses galloped with their shadow like dolphins leaping. Denver it was. They made a beeline for the neat, geometric skyline. Soldiers began checking their weapons and suits. The door gunner grew alert.

They flashed east across vacant suburbs. White bones lay scattered on the streets. Dark flocks of birds were circling for food. Nathan Lee’s dread crept. It was no longer summer here. America had become Asia.
What was Ochs sending him into?

A dozen plague victims stood clustered on a golf course by a pond. Their pilot broke from the group and looped lower for a view. Bodies floated facedown in the nearby water like balloons resting on the surface. None of the living took notice of the helicopter. Most had unconsciously shed their clothing in the heat of past days. On this cold morning, they dumbly faced the light.

From this height, Nathan Lee could see paths worn in the grasses. Then he saw the dogs. They were house pets, mostly bigger breeds: golden retrievers, dalmations, black labs, sturdy mutts. Packs had taken up residence on different sides of the human herd. Fido had deep instincts. Nathan Lee had seen hyenas and wild dogs in west Kenya set up shop the same way, picking off the strays at whim.

The pilot hovered thirty feet off, scanning the faces. Through the chrysalis of infected tissue, their teeth showed like famine grins. Nathan Lee could see the dark clumps of viscera.

“No kids. No pregnant,” said the pilot. “Am I missing anything?”

“Nothing here,” the crew chief verified.

The helicopter sprang onwards.

For the next twenty minutes, that was the pattern. They would spot a group standing in a parking lot or playground or among the crashed cars, descend, scrutinize, and move on. They reached Coors baseball stadium, skeletal, but pretty with its iron lattice work. Crossing America, Nathan Lee had learned that stadiums across the country had been used to quarantine tens of thousands of victims. But Coors stood empty, except for a few slumped bodies in the bleachers. Either Denver’s collapse had happened too quickly for authorities to react, or they had seen the futility of quarantine. Nathan Lee’s helicopter came to rest in center field.

It was a busy place. The soldiers knew what they were doing. Sentinels with machine guns scoped the outside streets from the top bleachers. One team set up a satellite dish and uplinked with Los Alamos, another cleared bodies and debris from the delivery gate. Nathan Lee loaned a hand where the chore was obvious. Otherwise, he stayed out of the way. He listened to the radio chatter over his headset, then tried channel four.

Ochs’s voice was waiting for him. “Welcome to the Mile High City.”

“It’s bad here,” said Nathan Lee. He wanted encouragement.

“If it wasn’t bad you wouldn’t be there,” Ochs said. “They learned not to bother with the early-stage cities. Too much insanity. Gun nation. Weirdos. Survivalists with a beef. Family groups trying to defend their loved ones.”

“You said Grace was alive.” In fact, Ochs had not said it. Nathan Lee wanted more.

“Stay with me,” Ochs said. “I’m tracking your coordinates. I’ve got a map. We’ll find them together.”

The soldiers left the pilots on guard and departed. Carting jerry cans of gas, the platoons exited onto the streets and went carjacking. Denver was SUV heaven. In pairs, the soldiers fueled and hotwired their vehicles of choice, and drove off.

Nathan Lee was left alone. From high above, papers floated out of shattered skyscraper windows. He found a Toyota with a good battery and keys in the ignition. The engine turned over with what was left in its gas tank. There was enough headroom to accomodate his helmet. It would do. He got out and poured part of his jerry can into the gas tank. All told, he had enough fuel for a round trip of sixty miles or so.

Ochs played navigator with a computer map. Nathan Lee followed his directions. Where the avenues were clogged with dead cars or had flooded with water, Ochs found him alternate routes.

Together they reached a cozy neighborhood landscaped with poplars and Japanese blood grasses. Compared to the tangle of highway metal and burned malls, this was a quiet haven. A car lay overturned on one lawn. Another stuck partway out of a closed garage door. To the very end, men had needed the feel of a steering wheel in their hands. If they couldn’t drive fate, at least they could drive a Ford.

“1020 Lakeridge Road,” Ochs spoke in his ear. “Used brick, split level. A weathervane with a rooster.”

“There it is.”

“Tell me what you’re seeing,” said Ochs. “You’re my eyes.”

Nathan Lee was grim. “What am I doing here?” In two hours of tortuous driving, there had not been one sign of healthy survivors. Carcasses and wandering angels, yes. Otherwise, it was a wild goose chase. Or a trap.

“Go inside,” Ochs said. “Talk to me. I want to know everything.”

Nathan Lee turned the voice off. He went to the front door between waist-high Kentucky bluegrass. A nylon flag with a butterfly jutted from a porch mount. A terracotta sun hung by the door. Wind chimes rustled.
Home Sweet Home,
said the mat.

He knocked on the door. His gloved fist didn’t make a sound. His motions were dense and slow. He heard himself breathing.

The door was unlocked. Inside, the house looked ready for
Better Homes and Gardens.
Lydia’s touch. Flower petals had fallen to colorful powder on the white doily under a vase. The house looked lived in, but not lived in enough. It was too tidy. There were no daily messes. No temporary piles. No pairs of little sneakers shucked by the door. Everything was arranged. Like a shrine.

The Suzuki book on the piano had Grace’s name printed on the cover. Her fingers had touched the keys. Nathan Lee could barely hear the notes under his gloved fingers.

The evidence mounted. Artwork from Alameda Elementary was taped to the refrigerator: a bird, a tree, a house with little girls watering flowers. Her signature in capital letters. The freezer held melted popsicles.

Nathan Lee’s breathing grew louder. He tried not to think. She had been here.

A bulletin board on the wall: family snapshots. There was Lydia beaming her 100-watt smile beside a sturdy burgher of a man with a prosperous belly. Lydia had landed herself a provider, no more globe hoppers. No more losers. The husband even resembled her brother. They looked self-content. Nathan Lee scanned lower.

Grace was missing two lower teeth. A straw hat shadowed her eyes. Nathan Lee’s hand moved over the snapshots, finding all the Graces, speaking her name each time inside his helmet. By a waterfall, at the swimming pool, on a mountain trail with a basket of tiny strawberries. She had her mother’s smile and Nathan Lee’s narrow face. For the most part, she was her own woman.