The Dragon Factory

by Jonathan Maberry

  Grace hit the ground and her gun slid away from her. Hecate looked from Grace to the fallen pistol and was caught in a split second of indecision. Grace tried to focus her eyes, but there were two of everything. Even so she did not hesitate. He kicked hard and swept Hecate’s feet from under her, and as she fell Grace rolled sideways toward her gun. Hecate sprang into a catlike crouch and lunged again, but Grace had her gun now. She fired from point-blank range and the bullet tore through Hecate’s stomach.

  “No!” cried Cyrus as his daughter was flung backward.

  Grace struggled to her knees and pointed the gun at Cyrus.

  “Step away from that fucking computer!” she ordered.

  Someone began pounding on the office door and then came gunshots. Grace could not tell who it was—Special Forces, the Russians, the Berserkers—and she couldn’t risk it.

  “Step away or I will kill you!” Grace yelled. Her head injury was making her sick, and the double vision was getting worse.

  Cyrus hesitated. His eyes were wild, mouth open, drool beginning to drip from his lower lip.

  “You can’t,” he implored. “This is everything I’ve worked for my whole life. This is the purpose of my life!”

  “Move away from the keyboard. . . .”

  “You idiot . . . you’re white! What I’m doing will be the saving of the entire race. Don’t you understand that? This for the survival of the white race!”

  Grace’s eyes narrowed to icy slits. Her hands were trembling, but her voice was firm. “And this is for the survival of the human race.”

  She pulled the trigger.

  There were two blasts.

  The first caught Cyrus Jakoby high on the left side of his chest and spun him against the wall.

  The second blast, which happened in almost the same instant, struck Grace Courtland in the back.

  The impact threw her forward to the edge of the desk. She hit it hard and collapsed to her knees. Shocked beyond understanding, she turned and saw a shape emerge from the shadows of the closet.

  Conrad Veder. He held his smoking pistol in his hand and raised the barrel to point at Grace’s head.

  Chapter One Hundred Thirty-One

  The Dragon Factory

  Tuesday, August 31, 3:06 A.M.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 32 hours, 54 minutes E.S.T.

  I fired three shots, two at the Berserkers, hitting one of them in the head, and then I pointed the gun at the door and blew the lock off. I threw my shoulder against it and saw a sight that nearly tore the heart out of my chest.

  Grace was on her knees, half-collapsed over the front of a big office desk. In the pale glow of a laptop screen I could see that she was covered in blood. Her face was painted red; her back was slick and wet. Hecate Jakoby was crawling slowly along the floor toward the desk and she, too, was bleeding. Otto Wirths lay dead on the floor, and Cyrus Jakoby was climbing back to his feet, blood streaming from his arm and chest.

  And one person stood on his feet.

  I knew him as Hans Brucker and Gunnar Haeckel. But those men were dead. This was an exact copy. Another clone. And he held a pistol in his hand.

  “Joe . . . ,” said Grace in a ragged whisper. “The code . . .”

  The assassin shot her.

  I think I screamed. I don’t remember. I could feel the gun buck in my hand. I saw the assassin duck backward into a closet, saw splinters rip loose from the doorjamb. I staggered into the room, screaming as Grace slid down to the floor.

  I wheeled into the doorway of the closet, but it was empty. There was an open trapdoor in the floor and splashes of blood all around it. I’d hit him. But he was gone.

  I spun back into the room and shot Cyrus Jakoby in the stomach. He fell backward and collapsed. Hecate stretched up a long arm from the floor toward the laptop. I shot her in the head. My slide locked back, my gun empty.

  I could hear the Berserkers coming.

  If I had any chance of saving Grace I had to do something. I looked wildly around. There was an adjoining office, and I stumbled to it. It was almost identical to Hecate’s. Probably her brother’s. I staggered back to Grace and pulled her to her feet. She was nearly unconscious. I grabbed the laptop with the other hand and somehow dragged us all into the next room. I eased Grace down into a chair and then rushed back, scooped her gun up off the floor as the Berserkers began crowding into the room. I shot the first one in the forehead, but I could see that there were more of them in the hallway.

  I retreated to Paris’s office, slammed and locked the door. There was a security crossbar on the door and I dropped it in place. Almost immediately the Berserkers began pounding on the door. The whole frame shook. I knew it wouldn’t hold.

  I staggered over to Grace. There was harsh white light coming in through the window. One of the soldiers outside had set off a flare. Gunfire was constant.

  Grace was slumped in the chair. She had been shot twice in the back, and the exit wounds on her stomach and chest were dreadful. I tore off my Kevlar and ripped my shirt to rags to staunch the flow of blood. Her head lolled and for a horrible moment I thought she was gone, but when I pressed my fingers against her throat I could feel a pulse. It was weak, but it was there.

  “Grace” I said, pitching my voice sharply enough to wake her from the stupor of shock. “Grace, stay with me, babe . . . come on . . . stay with me.”

  She opened her eyes a little and licked her lips. “That’s . . . Major . . . Babe . . . ,” she said with a smirk.

  “Yes, it is, honey; yes, it is.”

  The pounding on the door was incessant.

  “Joe . . . the laptop . . .”

  It was on the desk and I pulled it close. There were two words in a little gray box.

  Message sent.

  “Grace . . . did Cyrus send the code?”

  “I—don’t . . .” Her voice disintegrated into a fit of coughing. Blood flecked her lips.

  “Grace, honey, stay with me. Help’s on the way.”

  I hoped to God that I wasn’t lying to her. I could hear helicopters in the air now, which meant that help was arriving from outside the EMP blast zone. Soon hundreds of troops would be landing. But was it all for nothing?

  “Joe,” she whispered, “listen. . . .” She reached up with a weak hand and gripped the front of my shirt, tried to pull me close. “Joe—if the . . . code . . . was sent . . . there’s . . .”

  She broke off into another fit of coughing. I used another strip of cloth from my shirt to dab the blood from her lips. I wanted to scream. I wanted to do anything to get out of this room, to get her to a medic.

  “. . . Joe . . . if the code was sent . . . there’s still time.”

  “What do you mean, Grace? How can we stop it?”

  “Cancel. . . . code. . . .” More coughing, more blood. “Cyrus knows. If not . . . MindReader. . . .”

  The Berserkers were knocking plaster out of the wall. The whole room shook.

  “Take the flash drive . . . to Bug . . . tell him.” Her eyes drifted shut.

  “Grace, come on . . . don’t do this to me. Don’t leave me. . . .”

  Her eyelids fluttered open. “I’ll . . . never leave you. . . .”

  But she did.

  Her eyes closed and she settled against me. Her head lolled forward and she died right there with her cheek pressed against mine. I screamed her name. I screamed and screamed until I tore blood from my own throat.

  But all the screams in the world could not bring her back from the infinite sea of darkness in which she now swam. I could actually feel her leave. It was like a whisper against my lips. Her last breath, exhaled as I held her.

  I pulled her against my chest and rocked her back and forth as one by one all of the lights that held back my personal darkness flickered and went out.

  Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Two

  The Dragon Factory

  Tuesday, August 31, 3:08 A.M.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 32 hours, 52 m
inutes E.S.T.

  I crouched in the dark. I was bleeding and something inside was broken. Maybe something inside my head, too. Grace lay in my arms and yet she was gone.

  I was gone, too.

  Slowly, with infinite care and gentleness, I slid from the chair and laid her on the floor. I straightened her arms and legs, and I bent and kissed her forehead and eyes and her lips. For a long moment I knelt there with my head on her chest, praying that I could hear that noble and loving heart beat once more.

  But all I heard was silence and the screaming madness that was boiling inside my own head. The door was barred, but the Berserkers were going to get in. I knew that.

  I got to my feet. I had Grace’s gun. I released the magazine and checked the rounds. I had three bullets left. Three bullets and a knife.

  The pounding on the door was like thunder. I knew the door wouldn’t hold.

  They would get in.

  The code had been sent. I pulled the flash drive from the computer and put it in my pocket. Somewhere the Extinction Clock was ticking down. If I was still in this room when it hit zero, more people would die than perished during the Black Death and all of the pandemics put together.

  I thought I could stop them. We—me, Church, the DMS . . . Grace—we thought we could stop them.

  Now it was down to me or no one. I had to get the flash drive to Bug, and I prayed that he and MindReader could read the codes on the drive and send whatever cancel signal could be sent. It might even be a fool’s errand. But Grace had died to get us this far, and with her last breaths she’d given me this task.

  If there was any kind of justice in the universe, then a sacrifice so bravely made could not—should not—be in vain.

  It wasn’t our fault we came into this so late. They chased us and messed with our heads and ran us around, and by the time we knew what we were up against the clock had already nearly run its course.

  We tried. Over the last week I’d left a trail of bodies behind me from Denver, to Costa Rica, to the Bahamas. And now Grace Courtland was dead.

  The pounding was louder. The door was buckling, the crossbar bending. It was only seconds before the lock or the hinges gave out, and then they’d come howling in here. Then it would be them against me.

  I was hurt. I was bleeding.

  I had three bullets and a knife.

  I got to my feet and faced the door, my gun in my left hand, the knife in my right.

  I smiled a killer’s smile.

  Let them come.

  Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Three

  In Hell

  Tuesday, August 31, 3:09 A.M.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 32 hours, 51 minutes E.S.T.

  When the door burst open there were five of them.

  I used three bullets and killed three of them. Head shots. I would like to think that some force steadied my hand. I don’t know. But I killed the first three through the door.

  When the fourth one climbed over the bodies I met him with a knife to the throat. I stabbed him a dozen times. I was screaming. He was screaming, too, trying to back away. I crawled out after him and killed him.

  The last of the Berserkers came at me and hit me. I felt my cheekbone break. I felt teeth buckle in their sockets. I don’t know what kept me on my feet. I don’t know what put the power in my arm to slash him across the throat. Over and over again.

  I blacked out for a while, and when I could think again I was covered in blood and the Berserker was . . . ruined.

  I staggered across the office to the desk and then shambled around it.

  Cyrus Jakoby lay on the floor. He was bleeding from several gunshot wounds. All were serious. None were fatal. That was a shame. For him.

  He looked up at me, at my face, into my eyes, and he saw something that tore a scream from him. Maybe it was in that moment that he recognized the implacable, heartless, relentless monster that his victims had always seen in him. Maybe he realized that he was tethered to life by only one slender thread.

  He knew the cancel code.

  He knew that I would not, could not, kill him as long as he had it.

  He thought that he could bargain with that.

  He should have looked deeper into my eyes.

  I stood over him, covered in blood—some of which was Grace’s—and I showed him my knife.

  I never had to ask him for the code.

  In the end, he gave it willingly.

  But not easily.

  Epilogue

  (1)

  Six days later I sat in a wheelchair in a chapel outside of Baltimore. Grace Courtland had no family in England. Mr. Church had appealed to her government to let her rest here near her friends. They argued, but Church got his way.

  Everybody came. I don’t know how many thousands of people showed up. Grace Courtland was probably the most famous person in the world. The beautiful government agent who saved the world from the Extinction Wave. It was headlines; it was a Hollywood dream story. Books would be written about her; movies would be made. Most of it would be a fiction cooked up by Church’s PR people. There are too many villains—the world needs a hero.

  My name was left completely out of it, which was only right. Ditto for the DMS. Homeland and a few other agencies were handed the credit while Church erased all traces of our involvement from every database. The key players knew the truth, and that was all that Church needed to keep the DMS in place. No one in government would dare go after us now.

  I thought about these things as I sat in the chapel a dozen feet from where Grace lay in state like some warrior queen.

  The procession to pass in front of her coffin lasted for hours. The President of the United States sat on my left side. The First Lady sat on my right and held my hand all through it. Most of Congress was there, and ambassadors from over one hundred countries, and the heads of state of those nations that were targeted in the first round of the Extinction Wave. There were Presidents and Chancellors, Queens and Kings. The Air Force did a flyover with the missing-man formation.

  Rudy, Bunny, Top, Redman, and the survivors of Alpha Team and as many DMS operatives as could be spared filled the whole section behind us. No press was allowed within a half mile of the chapel. I think Church asked Linden Brierly for that favor and it was done on behalf of “National Security.”

  Oskar Freund, the son of Church’s murdered colleague, came and sat with us. His government had appointed him to lead an international task force to hunt down the remaining members of the Cabal. This fire may have been lit in Germany in the early twentieth century, but modern Germany was having no part in perpetuating it. They went after the Cabal with a ferocity that sometimes shocked the world press. But global public support for the witch hunt was overwhelming.

  The coffin was closed at my request. If people knew Grace, they should remember her in their own way, not as some mortician painted her. Her casket was draped with the flags of England and the United States.

  I DON’T REMEMBER a lot of what happened after my fight with the Berserkers. Just fragments. A few words and images. . . .

  I REMEMBER BUNNY coming out of the smoke with all of Hardball Team behind him. Bunny was battered and bloody from fighting his way through a pack of Berserkers.

  I REMEMBER BEING carried aboard a helicopter. And I remember speaking into a radio, telling Church and Bug about the cancel code. I remember that the trigger device was smeared with blood. Grace’s and mine.

  I REMEMBER LOOKING out of the helicopter window and seeing waves of U.S. troops surge across the island. Someone later told me that the 164 enemy combatants were killed in the action. That included Russian mercenaries, Dragon Factory guards, and the Berserkers. Someone else told me that the SEALs cleaned up a nest of the scorpion-dogs—Stingers, as we later learned they were called. There was no attempt to take any of the transgenic guard dogs alive.

  I REMEMBER DRIFTING off into a morphine sleep and dreaming that this was all a dream. When I woke up, the hurt was a hundred times wo
rse. Even nightmares are better than some realities.

  THE LINE OF mourners kept moving and the day dragged on and on. I said almost nothing. I folded into myself. The darkness inside was welcoming.

  (2)

  The cancel code Cyrus Jakoby had given me was the correct one. By that point he was beyond lying. When our forces raided the Deck they found the Extinction Clock ticking down. It reached zero at noon on September 1, but the release had been aborted. It wasn’t a James Bond finish with one second on the clock. By the time Bug hacked the system and inputted the cancel code there was still over seventeen hours left. Seems like a lot of time. But it isn’t. They’ll probably change it for the movie.

  The DMS worked with the State Department, Interpol, and other agencies to identify and locate the operatives worldwide who had been ready to release the tainted water and disease pathogens. There was no way to keep the story out of the press. The bigger the witch hunt became, the more leaks it sprang. When the President of the United States went on TV to make an address everyone everywhere stopped to listen. True to his form since taking office, the President was calm, clear, and candid. He told as much of the story as security would allow: eugenics, transgenics, gene therapy, pathogens made from genetic diseases, clones. Measured against the whole, even the fact that Jakoby and Otto were virtually immortal because of gene therapy was less fantastic than the knowledge that the worldwide AIDS epidemic had been deliberate.

  Of course all of this brought out every conspiracy theorist and lunatic-fringe religious nut, and the news shows trotted them out continually. I stopped watching and had the TV in my hospital room disconnected.

  (3)

  During the raid on the Deck the DMS teams found irrefutable proof that the assassin who had killed Grace was named Conrad Veder and that he was one of four clones of a man named Hans-Ulrich Rudel, the most highly decorated Stuka dive-bomber pilot of World War II. Rudel was a king among professional killers and the only person to be awarded the Nazi Knight’s Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds.