Code Zero

by Jonathan Maberry

He hit the stop button and stumbled backward from the scanner, kicking his chair over with a crash, heels slipping on the floor in his haste.

  “Red light on four!” he yelled. “Red light on four.”

  There was instant motion, the slap of shoes on the hard floor, shouts as Secret Service agents hustled in his direction.

  “Step back from the scanner,” ordered the lead agent even though Cantu was already as far back as he could go.

  Within minutes the mailroom was cleared as were adjoining offices in that part of the mail processing center. Dozens of people flooded in, however. Police first, then within minutes agents from Homeland arrived. Soon techs in hazmat suits descended on the center accompanied by squads of supervisory personnel.

  The bag was removed from the scanner and placed very gingerly into a portable steel biocontainment unit. The scanner was draped in chemically treated cloth and the entire area was sprayed with a ferociously dangerous antibacterial, antiviral agent.

  The biocontainment unit was loaded onto a specially designed truck, and it roared off with heavy support from Secret Service and Homeland officers in riot gear. The motorcade went lights-and-sirens to a facility in Arlington where scientists and technicians waited.

  The bag was offloaded, scanned again for explosive devices, and when it was conclusively determined that nothing was going to blow up, the bag was opened and the contents each placed in a separate biohazard container. The pieces were then scanned by a much more acute BAMS unit, and although several pieces of mail were deemed to have secondary contamination, the techs quickly identified an envelope that they separated out. It was a standard white greeting card envelope sealed with clear adhesive tape. No bulges, no metal or plastic components. The envelope was moved to a special containment chamber and a scientist used Waldo gloves to slit the envelope open and remove the card. A Hallmark card.

  On the front of the card was a photo of a field of flowers that rose up to the crest of a gently sloping hill. Beyond the hill were trees and puffy white clouds. In flowing script across the top of the card were the words So sorry for your loss. It was obvious that the sentiment was printed as part of the card’s professional design.

  The card had no preprinted message inside. Instead there was a handwritten note.

  Payment in kind.

  Seems only fair.

  Hugs and kisses,

  Mother Night

  Inside the card, compressed between the cardboard covers, contained by the heavy grade envelope and tape, was a fine-grained white powder.

  High-res digital images of the card, envelope, and message were sent to the Secret Service and Homeland. Laser scans of the card were initiated to capture any fingerprints. Small samples of the card, the envelope, and the tape were taken for separate analysis.

  But that was secondary to the rush to analyze the white powder.

  The BAMS unit had provided a preliminary identification, but the techs at the Arlington lab were able to discover much more about it. So much more that the BAMS reading was later viewed as “inadequate.”

  Yes, the BAMS unit correctly identified it as Bacillus anthracis.

  Anthrax.

  But that description did not and could not fully describe the bacterium in that powder. It was like nothing the Arlington lab had ever seen. A mutation of anthrax so virulent that it was terrifying.

  Data and samples were flown by armed couriers to military laboratories at Fort McNair in D.C. and Fort Myer in Virginia, next to Arlington Cemetery.

  The information about the terrorist attempt was shared with the national security advisor, who requested an immediate audience with the president and vice president. When the president’s chief of staff asked why the vice president’s presence was requested, the answer was simple, though frightening and inexplicable.

  The letter had been addressed to the vice president.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Fulton Street Line

  Near Euclid Avenue Station

  Brooklyn, New York

  Sunday, August 31, 1:24 p.m.

  Officers Faustino and Dawes stood listening to the darkness. Listening to how wrong it was. The moans came rolling down the line, louder now. Stranger.

  They were not moans of passion or disappointment. Not moans of defeat or frustration.

  The moans were filled with hunger. Faustino knew that, even though she could never explain to herself or anyone else why she knew it. Her reaction and the understanding that came with it was purely primal. This was the sound of a hunger so deep, so vast that it could never be assuaged.

  The two officers pointed flashlights and guns into the darkness but did not take another step toward that sound.

  No way.

  “What is that?” said Dawes in a voice that trembled with fear.

  Faustino took several long, steadying breaths before she reached for her shoulder mike. She keyed the button and called for dispatch.

  Got static.

  Got nothing else.

  The moaning was continual.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” whispered Faustino. She glanced up at one of the small security cameras with its steady red light. It reminded her of a rat’s eye. “I wonder if anyone’s watching.”

  Dawes waved at the camera. “Hey! Anyone there?”

  Of course there was no answer.

  Faustino stepped in front of the lens. “This is Police Officer Maureen Faustino and Officer Sonny Dawes. We’re down in the subway tunnel near Euclid Avenue. The lights and power are off down here and we’re not getting radio reception. If anyone is watching this, please contact our department and tell them officers are requesting backup.”

  She gave some additional information, including their estimated position in the tunnel and their badge numbers.

  The red light remained fixed and uninformative.

  In the darkness the echoes of the terrible moans were growing louder.

  “Oh, man,” complained Dawes, “what the hell is that?”

  “Shit,” muttered Faustino. “C’mon, Sonny, we have to find out.”

  They stood where they were for another minute. The hungry moans bounced off the walls and were amplified by distance and fear and cold concrete.

  “Fuck this,” said Dawes. “I think we need to get our asses back to Euclid Station and see if we can get a signal. Or use an emergency phone. Something.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed.

  They didn’t move.

  “Shit,” Dawes said after another minute.

  “Shit,” agreed Faustino.

  They began moving forward. Not toward Euclid, but farther down the tunnel. Toward the moans.

  Their feet crunched softly on the walkway, the sound battered to insignificance by the moans. The tunnel curved around, and from the intensity of the sounds they knew that the train had to be right there, no more than twenty yards away. There were more of the small security cameras mounted on the wall. Faustino had a weird feeling about them, but right now they were the least of her concerns.

  The officers paused again, whispering to each other the way cops do, stating proper procedure, assigning right-and-left approaches, reminding themselves that they were in control of the moment.

  It usually worked.

  It didn’t work now.

  Like a pair of frightened children they crept around the bend in the tunnel, keeping their flashlight beams low so as not to signal whoever was inside the train. They saw their light gleam on the silver rails and then reflect dully from the steel body of the last car. The blocky lines of the train, the letter C in the window.

  There was no one outside the car.

  But there was so much noise coming from inside.

  The moans.

  Those terrible moans.

  And other sounds they hadn’t heard before. Dull thumps. From inside.

  Like weak fists pounding on the doors and windows.

  Inside.

  Faustino slowly raised the beam of her flashlight and the glow climbed over the
metal skin to the big panes of glass on either side of the rear door. The glass was cracked. Spiderweb faults were laced outward from multiple impact points. Behind the glass, darkened figures moved. The pounding sounds continued and Faustino realized that the people inside were banging on the glass.

  Cracking it.

  Breaking it.

  Trying to get out.

  “Jesus Christ,” yelled Dawes, “they’re trapped.”

  He suddenly broke and ran forward, leaping down from the service walkway.

  “Hey!” he called at the top of his voice. “New York Police. We’re here to help you. Just calm down and we’ll get you out.”

  Behind him, Faustino stood her ground. Her flashlight beam still covered the rear of the car, sparkling along the fissures that continued to spread out from the damaged glass.

  There was color on the inside of the glass.

  Red.

  Blood red.

  For a moment she thought that the people had injured themselves trying to break out of the crippled train. But that made no sense. The rear door wasn’t locked. Anyone could open it.

  Anyone.

  The pounding continued, despite Dawes’s yells.

  The moaning got louder.

  More insistent.

  Hungrier.

  As Dawes raised his leg to climb onto the back of the train, Faustino shouted a single word.

  “No!”

  Chapter Forty-three

  The Hangar

  Floyd Bennett Field

  Brooklyn, New York

  Bug lunged for the phone. Not the regular phone, or the one connected to the Tactical Operations Center. He grabbed a slender black one that automatically made a call when the handset was picked up. Bug waited through two rings that seemed to take an interminable time, then the call was answered.

  “Bug,” said Mr. Church.

  “It’s happening again!” cried Bug. “Oh sweet Jesus they’re back!”

  “What’s happening? Calm down and—”

  Bug pounded the keys that would send the feed to Mr. Church.

  “They’re back,” Bug said in a strangled voice.

  There was a profound silence on the other end of the line.

  Then, “Where did you get this? Where is this happening?”

  Bug told him.

  “Spin up the system,” growled Church. “Put all teams on maximum alert, recall all off-duty personnel. Do it now.”

  “Already doing it,” Bug said. His fingers flew across the keys.

  Chapter Forty-four

  Office of the Vice President

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  Sunday, August 31, 1:25 p.m.

  Boo Radley laid several folders on the vice president’s desk.

  “These are the latest reports on the Mother Night video,” said Radley. “As you’ll see, the task force hasn’t locked anything down yet, but they’re following some promising leads. We reached out to the DMS for assistance, hoping that they’d do some deep searches for us with MindReader.”

  “Is the Deacon stonewalling us as usual?”

  “Actually, sir, they’re not.”

  Collins raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “They’ve been unusually cooperative today, and it’s because of their help that we’ve gotten as far as we have.”

  “Hm,” grunted Collins. “Keep that back-and-forth going, Boo, but make sure that when we get something solid we have the first men through the door. I want our cuffs on these hacker assholes, not the DMS’s, you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear, sir,” said Radley with a cold little smile. “I took the liberty of passing along a similarly worded message to our division heads.”

  “Nice.” Collins set the top folder aside and opened the second. “What’s this? The anthrax thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are we with that?”

  “It’s too soon to be anywhere, sir, but the president has thrown his full support behind the investigation and that’s greased the wheels a bit.”

  “As well he should.”

  “Agreed, Mr. Vice President.”

  Collins leafed through the file, then slapped the cover shut. “Christ, I want this psycho bitch found. I want her head on a pole.”

  In his private thoughts, he smirked and rephrased that as I want her on my pole … again.

  Collins was aware that his inner self was often a twenty-year-old frat boy, but he was fine with that. Kept him young.

  Radley’s cell rang. He looked at it, arched an eyebrow, and excused himself as he stepped a few feet away to take the call. Collins listened to one side of the conversation.

  “… I’m with the vice president,” said Radley. “No, I haven’t heard—Wait, what—? What channel?” With the phone still pressed to his ear, he suddenly crossed to the table, picked up the remote, and jabbed it toward the TV. “It’s on now. Get me everything you have on this. No … I’ll stay here with the vice president. C’mon, get your ass in gear. Get moving on this and give us regular updates.”

  He lowered the phone, looking dazed and sweaty.

  “Now what?” demanded Collins.

  Radley swallowed. “Sir, there’s been an incident on a subway train in Brooklyn.”

  They both turned to the television, which showed a grainy, jumpy, and badly lit image of what looked like a brawl. Radley turned up the volume, and the shrill sound of screams filled the office.

  The voice of the commentator from the local ABC affiliate was rattling on in a tone that was partly normal shock and partly the malicious delight of a news reporter.

  “If you’re just joining us, we have exclusive coverage of what appears to be a deadly riot on the C train in Brooklyn, New York. We must warn you that these images are streaming live. We have not watched them and the content may be too intense for some viewers.”

  On the screen a portly Latina grabbed the arm of whoever was filming the melee with his cell. There was a flash of white teeth, a terrible scream, and then bright red blood spurted from a vicious wound. The cell fell to the floor and a moment later the signal was cut as someone stepped on it.

  The news reporter was caught in a moment of shocked silence, then he dived right in, taking his own bite out of the story. The screen divided into two smaller windows as the footage was replayed while the reporter commented on it.

  “Details are still sketchy but reporters are en route to the C train to bring you up-to-the-minute coverage of this unfolding situation. To recap what we know, there appears to be a deadly riot aboard a stalled train near the Euclid—”

  Radley stood with a hand to his mouth. “My god … what’s happening?”

  Vice President William Collins could feel the shock tightening the muscles of his own face. It was, indeed, shocking to see something like this.

  It was so much more real and messy than he’d imagined.

  Though, he mused, it was every bit as impressive as Mother Night said it would be.

  His mouth said, “Dear God in heaven.”

  His mind said, Nice!

  Chapter Forty-five

  Pierre Hotel

  East Sixty-second Street

  New York City

  Sunday, August 31, 1:25 p.m.

  Ludo Monk’s phone rang and he sat back from his rifle with mixed emotions. Part of him was suddenly disappointed because he wanted to pull the trigger and see what kind of red splash patterns he could paint on the walls. The woman with the blond wig and the others at the conference table were just waiting for his bullets, begging for them, really.

  The other part of him—the part that was responding to the pills he’d swallowed—did not want to pull the trigger. That part of him wanted to find a church and talk to a priest and see what it would take to buy a ticket back from the outer rings of hell. He had money and was willing to make significant donations to have a reasonable priest apply a fresh coat of whitewash on his immortal soul.

  However, the call was from
Mother Night, so he sighed, picked up his phone, and answered.

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “You haven’t taken that shot, have you?”

  “No,” he said sulkily, “you said not to.”

  “Good boy. We’re moving some pieces around on the board. The target may return to her hotel or go to another location. Possibly the Hangar. If so, I want you to use one of the fallback locations for the shot.”

  “Why not now? I can do her right now.”

  “The timing is wrong, Ludo. How many times have I told you, it’s not the target, it’s the timing.”

  He grumbled something to himself. Not loud enough for her to hear.

  “This is a tweak on the model,” said Mother, “and it’s within the operational plan we discussed, so stop bitching. You’ll get your shot. Stay ready and I’ll call back in a few minutes to give you the go order.”

  “Okey-dokey.”

  A sigh on the other end of the line. “Ludo … don’t say okey-dokey.”

  “Sure.”

  The line went dead.

  Ludo lowered the phone. The room was awash in brown shadows intercut with bars of light that sliced through the gaps in the blinds. The rifle waited on its tripod. Calling to him. Flirting with him. Daring him to touch it. Wanting him to.

  Across the street heads waited for bullets.

  Wanting them, he was sure of it.

  “Okey-dokey,” he said to the empty room.

  Chapter Forty-six

  Fulton Street Line

  Near Euclid Avenue Station

  Brooklyn, New York

  Sunday, August 31, 1:27 p.m.

  It was a burst of squelch that saved the lives of Officers Faustino and Dawes.

  A static rasp and then a voice.

  “… your location…”

  “Sonny,” cried Faustino. “Don’t. We got the radio.”

  Dawes stopped with his leg raised to climb onto the back of the car. A few feet above him, darkened figures moved behind the cracked glass. Dawes looked from his partner to the milling shapes, and he lowered his leg and stepped back.

  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.