Patient Zero

by Jonathan Maberry

  Top took the shot. The cue smacked the cue ball right in its sweet spot, sending the white ball careening across the table—to tap the eight ball ever so gently on its left edge.

  Just hard enough to spin it into the side pocket it had rested beside.

  “Nice!” Bunny shouted, crowding in close for a high five. Still, he and Top had worked together too long for Top not to notice how the younger man’s jaw had set, and how he’d positioned himself just a bit farther away than you’d expect for a buddy congratulating you on a good shot.

  But the perfect distance if you were both about to throw down on someone.

  So yeah, Bunny had made the newcomer, too.

  And his crew. Because the other two members of the trio loomed right behind the speaker. And again they had spaced themselves professionally. These guys weren’t about to get caught unawares.

  “Good shot,” the first man said. “So, about that game?”

  Top straightened and studied the guy, leaning on his cue as he did. “I didn’t catch your name, friend,” he said slowly.

  “Call me Mac,” the man replied. He didn’t offer his hand. “And you’re Top, Bunny, and Warbride. Echo Team.”

  Beside him, Bunny stiffened. Warbride, who’d come around to flank Top’s other side, tensed as well. But Top schooled himself not to react. “Seems you know more about us than we do about you,” was all he commented. Inside, though, he gauged distances, angles, kill spots. It was just like pool, really. Only deadlier.

  “Oh, we do,” Mac agreed. “We know all about you.” He made a show of turning and looking around the bar. “Nice place. Clever, too. Who’d think to look for you guys here? What, you’ve got the main base down below, is that it?” Top had a top-notch poker face, but Bunny and Warbride were more expressive, and Mac laughed at their reactions. “Whoops, sorry, was that a big secret? My bad. Oh, hey, and—surprise!”

  He stepped suddenly to one side, and the man to his left already had something aimed at Top, something that looked more like a small video camera than a gun. Top stiffened, unable to dodge as a red beam played across him. But it didn’t hurt. It didn’t even tickle. In fact, it didn’t feel like anything at all. What the hell?

  The one on Mac’s right had played a similar beam across Bunny, who also looked angry, surprised—and both relieved and confused when he realized he wasn’t hurt.

  Somewhere behind him, Top heard shouts of panic. The other bar patrons, he guessed. They’d seen Mac and his friend pull what looked like guns, and that was enough to send any normal person running for the door. Good. It meant fewer civilians to worry about.

  “Okay,” Top said slowly. “This has gone far enough.” He straightened, and released the cue with his right hand to reach around behind him. “I suggest you three get the hell out of here before—” But he faltered as his fingers grasped empty air.

  His gun was gone!

  Mac grinned. “I know, right?” he said conversationally, his two buddies smiling with him. “Crazy stuff. There’s a whole scientific explanation for it—something about isotopes and ions and ores and breaking atomic bonds and whatever—but the dummy version is, we aim it at you, all your metal goes away. Poof.” His grin sharpened, like a wolf’s. Or a shark’s. “Which leaves you totally unarmed. You were saying?”

  Top frowned. Something about that tickled his memory—making him think back to a previous encounter with high-end combat vets decked out with beyond-cutting-edge gear. “You’re Closers,” he guessed, and knew he’d gotten it right when Mac stiffened, his grin curdling just a little.

  Beside him, he could practically feel Warbride’s fury. They’d faced the Closers before, shortly after she’d joined the team. Top-notch mercs whose gear all came from Majestic Three, a crazy think tank that specialized in next-gen military gear. The Closers were tough as they came, and often augmented themselves. Their gear presented as practically science fiction, it was so advanced.

  And now they’d tracked down the three of them, and taken away their weapons.

  Swell.

  That didn’t mean Echo Team was going down without a fight.

  Top forced his shoulders to slump a little, his whole body to droop. “Crap,” he muttered, ducking his head.

  Then he slammed the cue forward with his left hand.

  It banged hard against the pool table, not damaging anyone or anything. The sudden impact brought renewed screams from the few bar patrons still left, however—and made Mac and his men jump.

  Which gave Top the half second he needed to grab the nearest pool ball—the fifteen—and hurl it like a fastball right at Mac’s head.

  He tried to dodge, and almost made it, but he was too close to evade it completely. The ball, which had been aimed square at the center of his forehead, instead smacked the Closer in the right temple, hard enough that Top thought he heard it crack bone. Mac dropped like a sack of potatoes. His two men grabbed for their guns.

  Which was when Bunny gripped the side of the pool table with his massive hands, gave a mighty heave, and flipped the entire thing over on its side. The other two Closers both danced back, narrowly avoiding losing their toes. The fallen Mac wasn’t so lucky, and a heavy, ominous snap and a wet squish arose as the table landed on some part of his anatomy.

  Top didn’t waste time standing around feeling sorry for the guy. He dropped into a crouch behind the table, joined by Bunny and Warbride. They immediately cast about for anything they could use as a weapon.

  Unfortunately, they didn’t have a whole lot on hand.

  “Now can we call it in?” Warbride demanded, phone already in her grip. She’d hit the rapid-call for the Pier even before Top had finished nodding, but a second later she scowled. “No signal—they’re jamming us,” she reported.

  Of course they were. Top sighed. It was, after all, exactly what he’d do.

  “Okay,” Bunny said, ducking a little lower as the two remaining Closers opened fire, their bullets alternately slamming into the heavy slate of the pool table and shooting past above their heads. “So we’ve got two Closers on us, both heavily armed, and we’ve got no weapons and no way to call for backup. That about cover it?”

  Top started to answer, but stopped as something to the side caught his attention. “No,” he answered, fighting the urge to rub at his eyes. He knew what he’d just seen. “Five Closers, all heavily armed, and us with no weapons.” He gestured, and his two teammates both looked in that direction, to where three more Closers approached from the bar’s rear corner.

  “Crap,” Bunny muttered. “Where did they come from?”

  “I don’t know,” Top answered, “but they weren’t there a second ago. Literally—I looked up and suddenly there they were.”

  “Teleporters?” Warbride shook her head. “Yeah, that fits.” It did, too—it explained why all night they’d been seeing the Closers for just a second, or hearing them, and then nothing. “Which means they could call in as many as they want. We’re hosed.”

  “We would be,” Top said slowly, “except for one thing.” He waited a second to make sure he had his teammates’ attention. Then he grinned. It was his slow, nasty grin, the one he reserved for right before delivering a serious ass-kicking. “These fuckers are messing with Echo Team. Which means they’re about to find out what being hosed is all about.”

  “Hooah,” Bunny replied, matching his grin, and Warbride echoed him. “You got a plan, boss?”

  Top nodded, his mind already ticking elements into place. “I do, yeah,” he replied. “You ain’t gonna like it—but I guarantee those Closers’ll like it even less.”

  Warbride laughed. “Then let’s do it,” she said. “Those fuckers owe me a belly-ring.”

  * * *

  A lull settled around the place. Top guessed that the Closers had exhausted their first volley. Now they waited to see what Echo Team did next. None of the shots had penetrated the heavy pool table, but that didn’t mean a ricochet couldn’t have gotten lucky, even if there weren’t an
y groans or cries to confirm a hit. So they waited.

  Quiet hung over the bar. Any remaining patrons had fled as soon as the shooting had started. If any of them had called the cops, they were still a ways out. Not a hint of sirens.

  Top pointed a finger at Bunny, who nodded back. The big man tensed his muscles, gave a mighty heave—and, with a terrible screech, the pool table practically jumped across the room, slamming into the wall on the other side with a resounding crash.

  The Closers had been spaced out facing it, with three right in front and one to either side. Of the three, one managed to get clear completely. Another had the heavy table slam into his ankle as he fled, hard enough to crush the bone there and to spin him around.

  The third one, the man in the center, was still fully behind the table when it hit the wall. A wet sound erupted as the two heavy surfaces smushed him between them like jelly on a sandwich.

  The remaining Closers all darted forward, ignoring their wounded and fallen comrades for the moment to go after the now exposed and presumably defenseless Echo Team.

  The first one to get a clear shot fell backward before he could fire, his forehead caved in by an expertly thrown pool ball.

  The second one slipped on a pool of liquid from a tossed pint glass—before he could clamber back to his feet Warbride leaped on top of him, impaling him through the eye with a broken pool cue.

  The third found himself staring down the barrel of a gun—an all-too-familiar gun, because it was one of their own. Before he could figure out how that had happened Top shot him twice, once in the chest and once in the head.

  Warbride had grabbed her target’s gun from his hands and rolled to the side, clearing the body and coming up shooting. Bunny made the long reach and wrested the gun from his victim, and now Echo Team was properly armed again.

  “Head shots!” Top reminded his teammates. “They’ve got body armor!”

  Echo Team had discovered the hard way in their previous encounters that the Closers wore some kind of fancy micromesh that stopped not only the bullets themselves but also their impact. They’d been cocky tonight, though, and weren’t wearing helmets.

  Only two Closers remained, but they were too experienced to panic at the sudden reversal of fortune. Both ducked down behind tables for cover, and returned fire with Echo Team. In the reflection from a bar mirror Top could see one of them speaking rapidly into a throat-mic. Probably calling in a sit rep and asking for reinforcements.

  Apparently the call didn’t go the way they’d hoped, but it did yield results. Because suddenly the bar fell quiet again, as the two remaining Closers disappeared.

  “Hold your fire!” Top ordered, and all shooting stopped. He scanned the bar quickly. Not only had their last two foes vanished but so had the others’ bodies. “Damn. Clear.”

  Bunny and Warbride nodded. Now that the fighting had stopped, they could hear sirens in the distance. “Stay or go, boss?” Bunny asked.

  Top considered. “Go,” he finally decided. “I’m not in the mood to stand around answering questions.” He looked at the other two. “Let’s clean it up.”

  They both nodded. Warbride grabbed the pint glasses she and Bunny had used, Top’s whiskey glass, and their pool cues. Bunny went behind the bar and found the surveillance system, yanking out the drive. He also retrieved Top’s credit card, which he handed back to him as he returned. Top had collected the fifteen ball he’d thrown at Mac and the ball—the eight, amusingly enough—that Bunny had used on the other Closer. He surveyed the rest of the room, but other than incidental contacts or places where there’d be too many fingerprints to distinguish, they were clean. All that had remained of the Closers were the guns Echo Team had taken off them, and they’d bring those along as souvenirs.

  “Time to move,” he ordered once they had everything. The sirens blared closer now. The three of them headed out the door double time, and were safely around the corner and a block or two away, walking as though nothing strange were going on, by the time the first cop cars arrived.

  Top was already thinking about how he would explain all of this to Ledger.

  * * *

  “So they had some kind of teleporters, and a ray gun that could target and destroy anything metal, and they tracked you to this bar and jumped you two to one, and you handed them their asses?” Ledger asked, leaning back in his chair.

  Top, who stood at ease across from him, nodded. “Yes, sir. No idea how they found us, either. They seemed to think the bar was our base, or at least a cover for it.”

  Ledger nodded and lifted a piece of paper off his desk. “I can answer that.” He waved the paper at Top. “Analysis from Bug and Hu,” he explained, meaning their computer expert and their science director. “You’d mentioned something about sawdust at that site yesterday, the one that was a bust? It wasn’t all sawdust. Some of that was nanites, designed to form a networked tracking signal.”

  “So it was a setup,” Top guessed.

  “Looks that way. They tipped us off, we sent you in, and they basically bugged you so you’d lead them back here.” Ledger grinned. “But I gave you the night off. Maybe it took them some time to lock down the signal, or maybe they were just basing it on the highest concentration, but they saw you three at the bar and figured that had to be our base.”

  “Especially given its name.” Top was glad now that Bunny had picked the place he had.

  “Right. Then they decided to mess around before picking you off.” Ledger actually chuckled at that. “Stupid.”

  Top nodded. “So what happens now?”

  His boss shrugged, though he didn’t look happy about it. “Nothing. It’s not like we know where the Closers operate, or where Majestic Three is right now, or we’d shut them down regardless. They tried for you, you beat them down, that’s that.” He shook his head.

  “Well, all right, then.” Top turned toward the door. “Guess I’ll head home.”

  “Ah, not so fast.” Ledger gave him a sharp not-smile. “You’re going to need to file a report on all this.”

  Top groaned. “Come on, Cap. It’s my night off!”

  “It was,” Ledger agreed. He glanced up at the clock, which read 12:03. “But now it’s morning. Welcome back. Hope you enjoyed yourself.”

  Top grumbled something under his breath that, in most agencies or units, could have gotten him brought up on charges. Ledger just laughed some more.

  But, Top thought as he left the office and trudged down the hall, he had to admit something, even if he never gave Ledger the satisfaction:

  He had enjoyed himself.

  And what amounted to a simple bar fight, albeit one with guns and fatalities?

  For Echo Team, that was a night off!

  Was it worth the paperwork, though? That was the real question.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Aaron Rosenberg is the author of the bestselling DuckBob SF comedy series, the Dread Remora space-opera series, and, with David Niall Wilson, the O.C.L.T. occult thriller series. His tie-in work contains novels for Star Trek, Warhammer, World of WarCraft, Stargate: Atlantis, and Eureka. He has written children’s books (including the award-winning Bandslam: The Novel and the number one bestselling 42: The Jackie Robinson Story), educational books, role-playing games (including the Origins Award–winning Gamemastering Secrets), and short stories. He is a founding member of Crazy 8 Press. You can follow him online at www.gryphonrose.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/gryphonrose, and on Twitter @gryphonrose.

  * * *

  EDITORS’ NOTE: In Jon McGoran’s thrillers Drift, Deadout, Down to Zero, and Dust Up, Philadelphia detective Doyle Carrick confronts frighteningly plausible crimes at the cutting edge of today’s biotechnology. In “Strange Harvest,” he teams up with Joe Ledger to take on a mystery more bizarre than anything he’s ever encountered.

  * * *

  STRANGE HARVEST

  BY JON McGORAN

  The hotel carpet muffled my footsteps so completely that for a moment I wondered if
it wasn’t just blindingly hideous but somehow deafening as well. Then I saw the door to Room 517 ajar and heard drawers and cabinets opening and closing inside. Easing the door open, I saw a broad-shouldered man who was not Melissa Brant searching her room.

  I was supposed to be on vacation, a few quiet days in the Poconos catching up on some much-needed rest while Junie was doing her UFO conference thing, and then eating, drinking, and fooling around with her while she wasn’t.

  The first night had been great. Junie’s friend Melissa, a charming if tightly wound young astrobiologist, was supposed to join us for dinner, but she called to cancel, saying she was on to something really big that she’d be announcing at her presentation in the morning. Junie had put down the phone, climbed on top of me in bed, and whispered that she was on to something big, too, but she’d be keeping it to herself.

  Things had gone great until the following morning, thirty minutes ago, when Junie woke me up saying Melissa had missed her big presentation and apparently disappeared.

  Junie wasn’t one for melodrama, but I had thought she was overreacting. Until now.

  I’m never completely on vacation, completely at ease, but so far that weekend I had been close, content to be “Joe Ledger, Civilized Man,” leaving my darker selves in the background. That was the point of the getaway. The work I do, the things I see, sometimes the Civilized Man at my core gets edged out of the way.

  Like right now. I took out my badge, the one that said I worked for Homeland Security. I didn’t. I worked for the Department of Military Sciences, or DMS. There was no badge for that.

  As I entered the room with my gun out and my badge held high, the Cop inside me told the Civilized Man, I’ll take it from here.