Patient Zero

by Jonathan Maberry

I had a shit feeling it wasn’t drugs.

  I wasn’t there for that. My target was the White Flame and whatever they were going to do. I’m not law enforcement, I’m an occult bounty hunter. Fancy way of saying I hunt monsters for a living. Regular criminals I leave to the people who signed up for that.

  But I’m not an asshole, I was going to take that pack out of play no matter what.

  One of the skinheads pulled a duffel bag from the bed of one of the trucks and carried it over toward Big Jolly when the first creep of magick slid across the back of my neck.

  One of my guns was out and in my right hand.

  The magick rolled around me like a sticky fog in a shitty nightclub, that machine-generated bullshit that just coats your skin with a layer of chemicals that feel like movie popcorn butter. I couldn’t get a pinpoint on it, my ability is a bastard like that, all impression and slippery sensory clues, nothing specific, all of it wildly inconsistent, like spidey-sense that’s drunk. Sometimes it pisses me off, but it’s saved my ass more than once.

  The White Flame was in the house, doing some magick shit, but I didn’t know what yet.

  The skinhead with the duffel bag unzipped it and held it open. It was full of crumpled money.

  Big Jolly nodded and began swaying forward, holding out the backpack.

  That’s when the cultist tried to cut my head off.

  I felt it more than saw it, the long wavy blade swinging out of the dark. I jerked away and dropped, my head hitting the vat in front of me, flashing a sharp jolt of pain across the backs of my eyes, but the flame knife missed me. I rolled, eyes watering, to find a cultist wrapped in black cloth swinging the blade back toward me.

  My finger twitched three times and the .45 kicked three times, spitting lead into the center of him. He kept swinging, the flame knife dropping as he did, but it was just momentum. He was gone before he fell.

  My ears buzzed inside as I turned back around, the reactionary earplugs I had in shut down from the boom of my pistol.

  The meeting area had become a bloodbath.

  Two dozen black-clad cultists had dropped from the shadows and began cutting people down. Already one of the skinheads lay on the floor, sliced open from throat to hip. His killer knelt beside his twitching body, shoving his hands in the open wound, drawing them out covered in blood and gore, and then using that blood to write out weird symbols on the cement floor.

  Two of Big Jolly’s men had fallen as well, cultists beside them, painting with their blood.

  Every line they scrawled, the magick in the air began to close around me, tightening like a noose.

  Big Jolly sat on the ground clutching the backpack, his last man standing over him and using the Mini-14 to keep the cultists off his boss. He fired in three-round bursts, but his eyes were so wide they looked as though they would pop out and he couldn’t hit anything at all. Slowly the cultists closed in.

  The remaining rednecks had guns out, shooting everywhere.

  In the back of my skull came that twinge about not having a vest, but I was already moving and so I ignored it and concentrated on picking targets.

  I dropped the cultists who were drawing symbols first, ending whatever fuck-shit spell they were conjuring. One bullet per, easy to hit because they weren’t moving. The rest of them weren’t standing still.

  Shooting people isn’t easy, especially when they are hopped up on drugs or magick or both, in service to their ancient blood cult leaders. You’re flinging a few ounces of lead at them, riding a fucking explosion; just get a few degrees off target and you’ll miss entirely.

  Still moving forward, I took three more cultists before my slide locked back.

  Thumb the magazine release, let it fall, and have another one in before it hits the ground.

  Practice.

  In that three seconds, the cultists took the other rednecks.

  Cut them down, hit their knees, and began drawing in their blood while the rest turned toward Big Jolly and his last henchman. I hit them from behind just as they closed in, slamming my body into cultists as I fired into them at point-blank range. I was too close, didn’t aim, just shoved the gun forward and pulled the trigger.

  I pushed my way through as Big Jolly’s henchman caught a flame knife in the gut and folded in on himself. The cultist that stabbed him pulled the blade out with a hard jerk that split the man just above his hips. A gout of blood splashed onto the cement, spattering up on Big Jolly. The cultist immediately dropped to his knees and began painting in the gore and the guts.

  I kicked him in the face, making him snap back and lie flat on the ground in the puddle of blood. I spun, boots slipping on the wet cement, and found my gun locked back and empty again.

  This is where Joe Ledger comes in.

  He strode in through the bay door like the fucking Terminator, spine straight, shoulders locked, and holding an M4 carbine pressed to his cheek. With each step he took, he popped a cultist. Double-tap motherfuckers.

  Head shots almost every one.

  The cultists began falling around me like Pentecostals at a tent revival.

  One came by me like liquid shadow, and I turned just in time to see him disappearing into the shadows.

  Holding the backpack.

  When I turned back I was face-to-face with the barrel of a semiautomatic rifle.

  * * *

  The man on the other side of it stood in the ring of people he had just killed, their blood drying on his boots, and kept his gun pointed at me.

  “What are you going to do now, Cowboy?” I said.

  The eye of his I could see opened in surprise. “What did you say?”

  “You might be surprised to know that this isn’t the first time I’ve had a gun pointed in my face.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  I weighed my options. I could’ve said the OCID, but it’s a shadow organization and I’m more an independent contractor than an employee. I went with, “Freelance. What about you?”

  “Department of Military Sciences.”

  “Military? That explains the G.I. Joe vibe.”

  He lowered the rifle and sniffed. “Freelance explains the Dog the Bounty Hunter vibe.”

  “You saved my ass a minute ago, so I’ll let that slide.”

  “Wasn’t an insult, just a reference. Like yours.”

  Keep telling yourself that.

  Behind me, Big Jolly sat crying, big chest rolling with strangely muted sobs that lifted his entire upper body with their intensity. He began to roll over to climb to his feet. The man swung his rifle that way.

  “Stay on your ass until I tell you to move.”

  Big Jolly nodded and rolled back onto his ass. His suit squelched in the blood puddled around him.

  Moving deliberately, I pulled another magazine from the row of pouches under my arm and reloaded. The man just watched me with flat eyes, not raising the rifle. Locked, cocked, and ready to rock, I slid the gun back into its holster.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Deacon Chalk.”

  “Seriously?”

  I get that sometimes. “Yeah, it’s the South.”

  “I know a guy goes by Deacon.”

  “I don’t go by it. That’s my name.”

  “He’s a prick sometimes.”

  “Then he’s half stepping. I was born an asshole and just got bigger.”

  He looked up at me. “Joe Ledger.”

  “Pleased to meetcha.”

  He let go of the rifle, and it slid around his body on the strap to hang behind him. He’d be able to have it ready in a blink. He nudged one of the dead cultists with the toe of his boot. “So, Deacon, what’s going on with these ninja-looking assholes?”

  “White Flame,” I answered.

  He grunted. “I didn’t know they had moved down here.”

  “Yep, everybody comes to the South.”

  “Muggy here.”

  I shrugged. “Be glad it’s not pollen season.”

  His hand
swept, indicating the dead bodies. “Hell of a welcome.”

  “Just for you,” I said. “So what are you doing here?”

  “Got wind Big Jolly here was trying to sell a suitcase nuke to the Heritage Militia, which I assume are these four examples of the laces-and-braces battalion. They planned to use it to kick off a race war. Thought I’d spoil their action.”

  “Fuck.”

  “What?”

  “One of the White Flame assholes got the backpack from chubs and took off before I could stop him.”

  Ledger’s face went dark and he stepped around me, moving with purpose toward Big Jolly. Three steps and he was on the fat man, dropping to one knee and grabbing Jolly’s hanging jowl. Jolly screamed and Ledger yanked on the flesh between his fingers. “Shut the fuck up.”

  Jolly quit screaming as if his throat had been slit.

  Ledger leaned in and growled, “Don’t lie, not even a little. Is that nuke real?”

  “I … I … I didn’t make it!”

  Ledger jerked Jolly’s face hard to emphasize each word. “Is. It. Real?”

  “Yes! Yes, it’s real! It’s real!”

  Ledger pushed Jolly away and stood. “We have a fucking problem.”

  No shit, Sherlock.

  * * *

  It took longer to hike to the car than it should have because Big Jolly moved like a conversion van with two broken axles. I’d parked a few streets over from the warehouse, about a half mile away. Big Jolly was a florid color of purple and soaked through with sweat by the time we got there. Ledger had pulled some zip ties from somewhere by his belt and cinched Jolly’s hands in front of him. There was no way he could have done it behind him, not as big as he was. After much huffing and puffing on his part, we turned the corner and there it was, long and lean and badass to the bone. My car. A hopped-up Mercury Comet with a motor that runs like a scalded dog.

  “That’s us,” I said, hitting the unlock button on my key fob.

  “Nice ride,” Ledger said. “Sixty-nine?”

  “Sixty-six.”

  “Nice.” He nodded. “Pretty small back seat.”

  “Two steps ahead of you.” I pushed another button on the fob that popped the trunk.

  Big Jolly protested the whole way, but he went. The car sank four inches as he rolled himself into the trunk. I shut the lid.

  “That’s a big trunk,” Ledger said.

  “It’s a six-body.”

  “Or a one-Jolly.”

  “Yep.”

  * * *

  Ledger put his phone away. I don’t know who he was talking to, someone at the DMS—fucking government agencies and their fucking initials—but his face was grim. I could have called Tiff or Heck over at the OCID, but Ledger wanted to avoid any interjurisdictional logistics, so he called his crew and sent them over pictures of the symbols the cultists had been painting.

  “Early Mesopotamia.”

  “The fuck does that mean?” I asked.

  “It’s where the symbols are from.”

  “That’s a real shit clue.”

  “Yeah, it doesn’t narrow it down. My people will keep cycling through them until they get closer, but for now, four-thousand-year-old symbols are all we have.”

  “Four thousand?”

  “Yeah.”

  I started the Comet with a roar and dropped it in gear. “I know a guy.”

  * * *

  The man looked at Ledger’s phone with twinkling eyes. His thin fingers reached up and adjusted the wire-framed glasses on his face.

  The glasses were all he wore.

  We were outside his house in a small courtyard, surrounded by a tall privacy fence. It sat on a large plot of land outside the metro area that was shared by a commune. Acheron’s Grove was a vaguely Lovecraftian nudist colony run by Philben, the man in front of us.

  He was a late-fifties-style English professor type with slightly stooped shoulders over a not insignificant paunch. A lot of people get uncomfortable being nude, but Philben was as unaffected as a house cat. We’d passed many of his people on our way in, all of them nude, and none of them seemed even remotely bothered by us, no matter their age, shape, or appearance. Philben fronted the money for it all, allowing the free spirits under his care the ability to be free indeed, no job or bills to worry about.

  Philben claimed to be almost four thousand years old.

  Probably full of shit, but there’s always the off-chance.

  “Very interesting,” he said.

  “What do they mean?” I asked. He was my referral, so I felt I should take point.

  He handed the phone back to Ledger and closed his eyes. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that language. Let me process it.”

  While we waited I studied Ledger. He was a stone-faced sonuvabitch, no betrayal of his emotions, if there were any. He could have been an android waiting for someone to turn him on. A woman came in and went to a bookshelf. She was young, late twenties, and comely. A nice figure on her and a pretty face. She adhered to the dress code of the commune and it agreed with her. Because of Tiff, I felt no pull toward her. I didn’t know what Ledger’s romantic situation was, hell, he could be gay, but he didn’t even flick his eyes in her direction.

  After she left with a stack of books under her arm, Philben finally opened his eyes. “I don’t understand.”

  “What don’t you understand?”

  “These sigils are a summoning for an ancient deity named Doar’ Kun Shinnahleth.”

  “English.”

  “Loose translation is the Crushing Eldritch.”

  “Don’t know that one,” I said.

  Philben waved his fingers. “A Sumerian sect worshipped it long ago. It’s an elephantine god who will one day destroy the world by stampeding across it, using its immensity to press humanity into a sweet wine for its consumption.”

  “Sounds kind of fucking ridiculous,” Ledger said.

  Philben frowned. “The Sumerians were given to excess. They did imagine things, make them up from nothing but debauched imaginings. This deity isn’t one of those, it is real, but to try a working focused on it is sheer folly.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “A god of this magnitude, well, it is just impossible to call. You are completely wasting your time.”

  “So, these assholes are spinning their wheels?”

  “Yes,” Philben said, “they cannot conjure this entity.”

  Ledger frowned. “Why do you say that?”

  Philben sighed. “A thing of this size would require a matching sacrifice to call it to this plane of reality. It only responds to bloodshed and death and destruction on a massive scale.”

  “How many would have to be killed?” I asked.

  Philben squinted away at nothing and scratched his face, then his balls, then his face again. “A half a million at least.”

  “Well, fuck,” Ledger said.

  * * *

  We were back in the Comet, zipping up the highway at a high clip and driving right into a brilliant sunset of pink and orange and red. Ledger hung up his phone again.

  “Apparently that’s what my guys needed.”

  “What is?”

  “That this thing revolves around death on a large scale and is an elephant.”

  “An elephant.” I shook my head. “Cults and the shit they think.”

  “They still have a nuke and a shitload of belief. It doesn’t matter how far afield it is after that.”

  “True.” I’m a dyed-in-the-wool, cradle Catholic. I’ve seen a lot of fucked-up shit, but it always reinforces my belief instead of destroying it.

  “So where can we find elephants in Atlanta?” Ledger asked. “The circus in town?”

  “No, but we have a world-class zoo.” Sliding my thumb across my phone, I found Jimmy the Zookeeper’s contact info and hit the green call sign.

  * * *

  The Atlanta Zoo is a different place after hours. Trust me, I once had to hunt down a stray Nosferatu up in there, the p
lace gets kind of weird.

  Maybe it’s that I’m a city guy and all the fake forestry and jungle environs just give me the heebie-jeebies in the dark.

  I was hunkered down beside a display, gun out. Behind me I could hear dull splashing as the alligators and crocodiles and whatever other big-ass lizard they put in a cement holding pond swam around and crawled over each other.

  Every so often one of them would make a low sound, like a grunting bellow that rumbled across the entire area, and it would crawl up in the back of my brain and live there.

  The oppressive taint of magick already had my skin feeling as if I’d been rubbed down with acid, that damn noise really set my teeth on edge.

  “It’s me.”

  I didn’t jump, not on the outside, but I had to clamp down on myself to keep from swinging my gun around. “You are one sneaky sonuvabitch.”

  Ledger grinned. “I’ve cleared the path, but we need to move, now.”

  He turned away silently.

  Jimmy hadn’t answered his cell, so I’d called his wife. She hadn’t heard from him. This sent me and Ledger straight to the zoo. It was after hours, the park empty of patrons and employees, but the moment we turned on the road I felt the magick working that had begun. Because of Ledger we’d infiltrated our way this deep inside without detection. Left to my own devices I would have pulled the Comet up in the gate and driven to the elephant enclosure. It’s my way. I’m not a soldier.

  Joe Ledger is a fucking soldier.

  He acts like one and has the skills of one. I’m a thug. A goddamn gorilla with a purpose. I break shit to do good.

  Usually it works out, but sometimes it has consequences.

  The nightclub I used to own, now burned to the ground.

  Friendships.

  Kat … fuck. It cost Kat everything.

  It cost Tiff her eye.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Give me a minute.

  Pour another shot.

  Okay.

  So, with Jimmy the Zookeeper unaccounted for, the magick so cloying thick in the air I could barely breathe, and all of that guilt I keep shoved in the back of my skull, I followed Ledger’s lead and went into stealth mode.

  We crept along the pathway toward the elephant enclosure. Halfway there Ledger pointed to the ground and we stepped over a black-robed cultist he’d taken out earlier. He knelt and parted the foliage and we were looking into the enclosure from across the way.