Code Zero: A Joe Ledger Novel

by Jonathan Maberry

  Faustino plucked her radio from her shoulder and keyed the mike to call dispatch. The connection was bad and polluted by static, but she reported the situation and asked for orders. The delay in response was so long that Faustino was worried that the connection had been lost. Inside the train, the pounding was getting louder, more urgent.

  Dawes stared up at the shapes like a man transfixed.

  “How come nobody’s saying nothing?” he said.

  Faustino held the radio to her ear to hear what the dispatcher was trying to say.

  “… ordered to return … station…”

  “How come none of them people are saying nothing?” demanded Dawes.

  “Dispatch,” growled Faustino, “you’re breaking up. Repeat message.”

  The reply was almost totally garbled. Faustino was able to pick only four words out of the mess, but those words were enough to chill the blood in her veins even more than the sound of that awful moaning.

  “… biohazard … do not approach…”

  “Dawes!” she shrieked as she holstered her gun, grabbed her partner by the arm, and dragged him backward.

  “What the fuck—?” he barked, surprised by the violence of her grab.

  “Sonny, they told us to get back.”

  “There are people in there.”

  “They said it’s a biohazard situation.”

  That shut him up and he allowed himself to be dragged back to the midpoint of the tunnel’s curve.

  Suddenly he was backpedaling, scrambling as fast as he could to get away from the train. “Oh God oh God oh God!” he said in one long continuous breath.

  They retreated all the way around the bend and then another hundred yards, both of them panting like dogs, running forward and then backward, too scared to really think.

  “What … what is it?” gasped Dawes as they slowed to a trembling stop.

  She shook her head and once more the radio was filled with useless static. “I don’t know, I don’t know. Some kind of toxic thing. They didn’t say what it was. The connection’s fucked.”

  He gripped her sleeve. “Christ, you think it’s a terrorist thing? Anthrax or some shit?”

  Faustino shook her head. Not in denial, but in fear that he might be right. Now it all seemed to make sense; a brutal and broken kind of sense. The moans, the lack of verbal communication.

  Then they froze as they heard new sounds. Not from the train. Behind them. They whirled, guns up and out.

  These sounds were different. Loud, insistent. Boots crunching on the ground, splashing through water. The creak of leather, the rattle of metal, the whisk-whisk of clothing.

  And shouts.

  Human voices.

  The a dozen figures came pelting out of the darkness. A full SWAT team in Kevlar and body armor, helmets and guns, lights and shouting voices. They spotted Dawes and Faustino. One of them—a man with sergeant’s stripes—stopped and pointed his rifle at them.

  “Holster your weapons,” he shouted. “Do it now.”

  Numbly, Faustino and Dawes slipped their Glocks into the holsters at their hips. They identified themselves and stood with their hands well away from their guns.

  The SWAT team surged past, running at full speed down the tunnel toward the train, which was still hidden by darkness farther along the track.

  “Officer Dawes,” said the sergeant, “Officer Faustino, did you approach the train?”

  “What?” said Faustino. “No, we—”

  “Did you go inside the train?”

  “I told you, we didn’t—”

  “Did you encounter anyone else down here?”

  “What’s going on?”

  The man pointed his rifle at her head. “Did you encounter anyone down here? Anyone at all?”

  “Get that rifle out of my fucking face.”

  The sergeant’s hands were rock steady, the black eye of the gun barrel relentless in its stare. “I won’t ask again, officer,” he said.

  Faustino and Dawes exchanged a look.

  “Don’t look at your partner, officer,” warned the sergeant. “Look at me, and tell me if you encountered anyone or spoke to anyone since you came down here.”

  “No,” said Dawes hastily. “No one, man. Just us. And this is as far as we got.”

  The gun barrel moved from Faustino to Dawes. “Be sure, officer.”

  Faustino swallowed a lump in her throat that felt as big and rough as a pinecone.

  “What’s happening?”

  The sergeant studied her for a moment, then lowered his gun. “Listen to me,” he said in a more human tone, “we received a call saying that a biological agent had been released on that train. It’s happening.”

  “What’s happening?”

  The SWAT sergeant shook his head. “We’ve been hit again.”

  Neither Faustino nor Dawes had to ask what that meant. This was New York. It would take a lot of years before the events of 9/11 had to be explained.

  The sergeant pointed a finger at the two cops. “Get the fuck out of here now. Get back to Euclid Avenue Station. Make sure nobody comes down here. Do you understand me? Nobody.”

  He did not wait for their answer, did not flinch or respond to their outraged protest. Instead he ran into the tunnel, and a few moments later they heard another gun open up.

  Faustino drew her pistol.

  So did Dawes.

  And for a moment they stood facing the direction of the gunfire.

  “What the hell’s happening?” asked Dawes. He sounded absolutely terrified.

  All Faustino could do was shake her head.

  Together, guns raised and pointing, they began backing away. Soon they turned and ran for the lights of Euclid Avenue Station.

  They hadn’t gone two hundred feet before a new sound tore through the chatter of gunfire and the dreadful moans. These sounds were sharper, higher. Far more horrible.

  It was the sound of men in great fear and great pain … screaming.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  The Hangar

  Floyd Bennett Field

  Brooklyn, New York

  Sunday, August 31, 1:28 p.m.

  Rudy Sanchez came running into the Tactical Operations Center just as all hell was breaking loose. He spotted Aunt Sallie and Mr. Church, who were each speaking hurriedly into telephones. He rushed over to them, and as Church disconnected a call, Rudy touched his arm.

  “Dios mio, is it true?” cried Rudy. “Is it true?”

  Church gave him one moment of a hard, flat stare.

  “I pray that it is not, doctor.”

  “But—?”

  “But I fear that it is.”

  Church turned away to make another call. And another.

  Rudy, helpless and impotent, could only stand and stare.

  And pray.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Surf Shop 24-Hour Cyber Café

  Corner of Fifth Avenue and Garfield Street

  Park Slope, Brooklyn

  Sunday, August 31, 1:28 p.m.

  I stood in the street, watching the police and paramedics do their job. I was shirtless, and the left leg of my trousers had been slit from ankle to hip. Bloody bandages were wrapped and taped in place. I felt sore, angry, and older than my thirty-odd years. Someone had brushed the glass out of Ghost’s fur and wrapped some gauze around his legs and chest to staunch the flow of blood from a dozen shallow cuts.

  A dozen yards away, Bunny sat in the open back of an ambulance while a nervous EMT picked glass and wood splinters out of his back. Top stood watching, his face an unreadable stone. The EMTs had argued with them both, wanting to transport them to the local E.R. instead of doing much on site, but we flashed the right ID and pulled rank and they stopped arguing. Apparently, calls had been made to hospital administrators, the fire commissioner, and the police commissioner. Resistance crumbled, wheels were greased, but no one was happy about it.

  I’d recovered my cell phone, but there were no new messages from “A.” No
thing from Junie either. I kept fighting down the urge to scream.

  I wanted to grab my woman and hit the ground running. Take off for some tropical spot that was ten thousand miles away from gunfire and explosions and senseless death.

  Instead, Top, Bunny, and I were watching forensic techs take photos of people we’d killed.

  Young people.

  Kids.

  My earbud buzzed and Nikki was there.

  “Cowboy,” she said quickly, “we have assets at the desired location. Bookworm is okay. Repeat, Bookworm is safe and sound.”

  Bookworm was the codename Top had given Junie last year.

  I sagged against a parked car and actually had to fight back the tears. “Thank God.”

  “Everything’s okay there. She’s fine. Really.”

  I was so dazed that I had to scramble to remember Nikki’s call sign. “Thanks, Firefly.”

  “But I have to tell you, Cowboy,” she said, “there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on.”

  “I know, I know. Gettysburg and Lexington…”

  “That’s the tip of the iceberg. There’s stuff going on all over the country. Lots of weird violence. Vandalism and arson. Stuff like that. And the phrase ‘burn to shine’ keeps showing up everywhere there’s something bad happening. It’s on walls, spray-painted on the street. They even brought a guy into an E.R. in Akron with it carved into his skin. They think it was done with a razor blade. We’re still trying to make some sense of it. If this is terrorism, then no one’s taking claim except indirectly. There was that Mother Night video and now all this.”

  “Burn to shine,” I said. “A call to action.”

  Circe was right.

  “Everything’s chaotic. And even if it is Mother Night, then we can’t find a pattern to it.”

  “Keep trying. Look, what about the digital prints we sent from here? You get any hits on our shooters?”

  “Only two of them are in the system, Cowboy. Serita Esposito and Darius Chu. Both have juvenile records. Esposito was arrested twice for hacking. First offense was an intrusion into the computers belonging to her bank in order to add funds to her debit card. She was fourteen at the time and the intrusion went unnoticed for eleven months. Two-year suspended sentence and community service, plus appropriate fines and restitution. A couple of years later she hacked Delta Airlines to obtain first-class tickets to Paris for her and five of her friends. She was arrested upon her return to the States and is—or rather was—awaiting trial.”

  “Only seventeen,” I said, feeling even older.

  “She fired on you, Cowboy,” Nikki said.

  “Small comfort.”

  Nikki sighed. “I know.”

  She didn’t know. Like all of Bug’s team, she was support staff and never once set foot in the field. But she meant well.

  “What about the other one?” I asked. “The boy? Chu, was it?”

  “Let’s see … he’s a Canadian citizen and, according to Montreal police, is in custody awaiting trial for armed assault.”

  “I can pretty much guarantee he’s not in prison,” I said, watching them zipper him into a body bag.

  “The prints match a suspect arrested in Montreal following the nonfatal shooting of a member of the Canadian Parliament. However, the photo you sent does not match the person in jail, and apparently neither do that person’s fingerprints. The Canadians are trying to determine how the swap was made, and the person in custody as Chu refuses to talk. I’ll have to go deeper and—”

  Suddenly, Nikki’s voice vanished and was replaced by a three-note alarm signal. Then Church’s voice was in my ear.

  “This is Deacon for Cowboy, do you copy?”

  “Go for Cowboy.”

  “What is the status of your team?” he said, and he sounded stressed and hurried. “Give me the short answer.”

  Now was not the time to complain about cuts and scrapes. Even a lot of cuts and scrapes.

  “We’re still at the cyber café, but we’re good to go,” I fired back. “What’ve you got?”

  Seemingly out of left field, Church said, “Have you heard about the event in Brooklyn?”

  “Other than this one?”

  “In the subway,” he said. “The C train.”

  “No.”

  I could hear him take a breath.

  “Scramble your team,” he said. “We have a Code Zero.”

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Surf Shop 24-Hour Cyber Café

  Corner of Fifth Avenue and Garfield Street

  Park Slope, Brooklyn

  Sunday, August 31, 1:31 p.m.

  Code Zero.

  There are no words more terrifying to me, either in my private lexicon or in that used by the Department of Military Sciences.

  Hearing those words punched me in the solar plexus.

  It stabbed me in the heart.

  A big, dark ball of black terror expanded inside my chest.

  We have different codes for the various kinds of threats we face.

  Code E is an Ebola outbreak.

  Code N is a nuke.

  But Code Zero …

  God.

  That was used only for a specific kind of horror that I hoped was gone forever from my life and from this world.

  “Wh-hat?” I stammered. “How?”

  Church told me about the C train and the SWAT team that went down into the tunnel. I held my phone up so I could watch the video feed. It was herky-jerky and tinted green from night-vision equipment. The ghostly shape of the big silver train rose out of the darkness as the SWAT officers swarmed toward it. I could see that the windows of the train were cracked and some of them had been smashed outward. People wriggled through the shattered windows and filled the tunnel.

  I call them people, but I knew that it was a term applicable only in the past tense. They were streaked with blood, their clothes and skin torn. Their mouths biting at the air, their eyes black and dead.

  The SWAT team reacted to them the way compassionate people will. They tried to help. But I heard the helmet radio feed from command telling them to fall back, to make no contact. Warning the cops of a biohazard threat.

  Some of the cops held their ground, caught by indecision. Some retreated a few paces. A few could not let their compassion for injured fellow citizens outweigh personal safety.

  And that is the horror of warfare in the twenty-first century. Terrorists view compassion as a weakness and they attack it as a vulnerability, making the benevolent pay for their own humanity. The SWAT officers who stepped forward to help were buried beneath a wave of the infected.

  I wanted to turn away from the images, I wanted to smash the phone so I couldn’t hear the screams. There was too long a delay in responding. The gunfire—the awful, necessary gunfire—came much too late.

  The feed ended abruptly when the camera was smashed.

  It brought me all the way back to my first day with the DMS. To the first of horror of this world in which I now live. Code Zero indicated an outbreak of a very specific kind of disease pathogen. A bioweapon of immeasurable ferocity. The people who designed this weapon called it the seif-al-din.

  The sword of the faithful.

  It was nothing that could have ever developed in nature, though each of its components was, to a degree, natural. The core of the seif-al-din was a prion disease known as fatal familial insomnia, a terrible variation of spongiform encephalitis from which a small group of patients worldwide suffered increasing insomnia resulting in panic attacks, the development of odd phobias, hallucinations, and other dissociative symptoms. In its original form it was a process that took months, and the victim generally died as a result of total sleep deprivation, exhaustion, and stress. But Sebastian Gault and his scientist-lover Amirah rebuilt the disease and married it to several parasites and a radical kind of viral delivery system. The infection rate of this designer pathogen is absolute, and it triggers an uncontrollable urge in the infected to spread the disease. It is spread primarily through bites.
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  The infected host lapses into a nearly hibernative state, with most body systems shut down and all conscious and higher mental functions permanently destroyed. Stripped-down parts of the circulatory, respiratory, and nervous systems remain in operation—only enough to keep the host on its feet and able to attack in order to spread the disease.

  Unless you used very precise medical equipment it is impossible to detect signs of life. Heartbeat is minimal, respiration is incredibly shallow. And those tissues that are not necessary to the parasitic drive are not fed by blood or oxygen and therefore become necrotic. What is left is a mindless, shambling, eternally hungry killing machine with an infection rate of nearly one hundred percent.

  A walker.

  A zombie.

  No one had survived a bite; no one came back from infection.

  That was the seif-al-din.

  That was a Code Zero.

  We stopped an intended mass release at the Liberty Bell Center in Philadelphia four years ago. All of our computer models predicted that an outbreak in a densely populated area would result in an uncontrollable spread. If this got out, the world would consume itself.

  Totally.

  Completely.

  Ravenously.

  Dear God.

  All of this—the science, the memories, the horror—flashed through my brain in a hot microsecond after the video ended.

  “Where?” I demanded.

  Church told me. “The infected are still in the tunnel, but it’s only a matter of time before they find their way to the station and then up to the streets. I have a chopper in the air. It will pick you up in Prospect Park. Echo Team will rendezvous with you at Euclid Avenue station, and I’ve called in the National Guard. Every subway exit is being sealed, but I need you to go down there, Captain. I need you to stop this.” He paused for a terrible moment, then added those dreadful words. “No matter what it takes.”

  But I was already pushing past cops and EMTs, yelling for Top and Bunny. Ghost barked as we ran. All four of us were bleeding and hurt but we ran like we didn’t care, like we didn’t have time to be hurt. I could hear the distant beat of the heavy rotors of a military Black Hawk. Prospect Park was only a few blocks from here.

  We piled in the car. I hit lights and sirens and we broke laws as I kicked the pedal all the way down, scattering civilians and emergency personnel in every direction.