Code Zero

by Jonathan Maberry

  It was a sound that did not belong in an Indian restaurant. Or on the River Walk. Or anywhere in San Antonio.

  It was a roar.

  Not like a big cat. Donald had heard cougars roar, and this was lower, deeper, more powerful than that. This was like the gorillas he’d seen when he visited the zoo in Philadelphia.

  But the San Antonio Zoo didn’t have gorillas.

  All of this flashed through his head in the time it took to twist around in his seat and look.

  There were no gorillas there, of course. This was a restaurant. That would be silly.

  But the man who stood in the doorway looked kind of like an ape. Massive sloping shoulders, huge chest and arms, thick black hair standing stiff and wiry on his head. And there was something clearly simian about his face. It was very … well, apelike.

  The man wore a black tank top with a symbol printed on it that Donald didn’t know. A capital letter A surrounded by a circle. A for what? What team was that? Was it a school? He didn’t know.

  Donald’s thoughts were falling all over one another, trying to find an exit from confusion into understanding. Everyone in the restaurant sat in shocked stillness, each of them struggling to make sense of it, too.

  Two other people stood behind the ape-looking man in the tank top. A couple of girls. Chinese or something, Donald couldn’t tell. They each held a small portable video recorder.

  The big man opened his mouth and roared again.

  The sound was so ridiculously loud that it shook the whole place. And it jolted the diners out of their shocked silence. Some of the women screamed. Some of the men cried out in surprise.

  One man got to his feet. He was big, too, though well dressed in a very expensive summer-weight suit. Donald thought the man had the air of someone who was used to handling things. Tough-looking.

  “Okay, pal,” said the man, “time to dial it down and hit the road.”

  The guy in the tank top said nothing. He smiled, though, and to Donald that smile was every bit as scary as that freaking roar.

  Then the ape-guy swung a punch at the diner in the summer suit. Donald saw the look of surprise on the diner’s face, but also saw him whip an arm up to block the punch. The incoming blow hit the blocking arm—and bashed it aside like it was nothing. The punch struck the diner on the side of the head. Even from twenty feet away Donald heard the wet-sharp sounds of bones breaking inside the diner’s arm and head. The diner’s head jerked sideways and lay almost flat on his opposite shoulder; it stayed there as the man’s knees suddenly buckled and he fell like a bag of disconnected pieces onto his table. The man’s date screamed.

  Everyone screamed.

  The ape-man reached out and grabbed the screaming date by the throat, tore her out of her seat, lifted her above his head, and threw her across the room.

  The last thing Donald saw was the screaming, flailing, flying woman slam into Amanda Shockley with so much force that another wet-sharp crack filled the air.

  Then a shadow fell across Donald.

  He never saw the hands that grabbed him.

  All he saw was Amanda falling, falling, her lovely eyes rolling up, her soft lips open.

  And then the world dissolved into red and black and then nothing.

  Morro Bay, California

  Three men who surviving witnesses later described as “looking like gorillas” got out of a Humvee that had been driven all the way up to the front doors of the Morro Bay Aquarium. A fund-raiser was under way to raise money and awareness of sea lion conservation. A trio played light jazz, and two hundred people with checkbooks and an interest in conservation mingled, drank, ate little crab puffs, and chatted.

  Until the three men showed up.

  They piled out of their Humvee and without a moment’s pause barged through the doors and attacked the crowd. They did not have guns or knives. They used no conventional weapons at all. Instead they picked up people and used them like clubs to batter anyone they could hit. They tore arms and legs out of their sockets—a feat the medical examiner would later argue in court as a physical impossibility—and beat people to death with them. This was refuted, of course, by video footage to the contrary. The exact source of the footage was never determined.

  Of the two hundred people at the fund-raiser, one hundred and sixty-one escaped. The others, including all three musicians and seven wait staff, did not.

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  The Hangar

  Floyd Bennett Field

  Brooklyn, New York

  Sunday, August 31, 3:23 p.m.

  Rudy intercepted me as I approached the conference room. He shook my hand and held it as he asked, “How are you, Joe?”

  “Shaken, not stirred,” I said.

  “This isn’t a time for jokes.”

  “No,” I said and sighed. “It really isn’t. But I got nothing else right now.”

  He studied me with his one dark eye. “No, don’t do that. Tell me how you are.”

  My instinct was to bark at him like a stray dog and tell him this wasn’t the time or place for a therapy session. But I understood where he was coming from. He was the DMS house shrink and I was a senior operator. One who had just come back from two gunfights and might have to do more violence tonight or sometime too damn soon. So I took a breath and nodded.

  “I’m halfway to being freaked out,” I said quietly. “There’s enough adrenaline in my bloodstream to launch a space shuttle, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to sleep again. All I can see are the faces of ordinary people as I gun them down—women and children, old people, civilians with no part in this.”

  “You do know that—”

  “Yes,” I interrupted, “I know that they were infected, that they were already dead. I know that, Rude, and you know how much that helps? It helps about as much as a fresh can of fuck you.”

  “Take it easy, Joe.”

  “Don’t tell me to—”

  He placed a hand on my chest. It was such an oddly intimate a thing to do that it snapped the tether that was pulling me toward rage. He stood there, fingers splayed, palm flat, one eye fixed on mine. And I heard it then, like an audio playback. There was a note of genuine panic in my voice. Not quite hysterical but close enough to feel the heat.

  I closed my eyes and nodded. Rudy removed his hand.

  “It must have been dreadful down there,” he said quietly.

  “Everyone keeps saying that.”

  “I imagine so. Have you spoken with the others on your team?”

  “We weren’t feeling all that chatty.”

  “Joe, look at me,” he said, and I opened my eyes. There was compassion in his expression, but also something harder, sterner. “Have you, Captain Ledger, senior DMS field commander, spoken with the members of your team?”

  I sighed. “Fuck.”

  This wasn’t the first time someone had called me on this, on being so wrapped up in my own reaction to the horrors of the war fought by the DMS that I forgot that this wasn’t a solo drama. Everyone was feeling it, being changed by it. I’d even thought about that fact while we ran, but I’d stumbled right past the moment where leadership—real leadership—might have made lasting difference to my team. Especially to the three newbies.

  “I’m an asshole.”

  Rudy shook his head. “We’re all experiencing shock. When you have a chance, do what you know you have to do to ameliorate this. As I will when this is over. Like most things, Cowboy, psychological survival is as much an inexact science as it is a work in progress.”

  “I will,” I promised. “And when we have time I’m going to give you full permission to crack my head open and start swatting flies.”

  Aunt Sallie seemed to materialize out of nowhere. “When you two fellows are done with your circle jerk, would you mind joining us for the briefing?”

  With that she blew past and entered the big conference room.

  Rudy smiled and smoothed his mustache. “What a charming woman. Haven’t I said it a hundr
ed times?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “she’s a peach.”

  But before we followed her I asked, “Rudy—you’ve been here all day. Can you tell me what’s going on? Is this all Mother Night? If so—what does it mean?”

  He shook his head. “We’ve been wrestling with that all day. Nearly everything that’s happened indicates that these events are connected, but no one has been able to establish a pattern. Even MindReader hasn’t come up with a clear picture and that’s what it was designed to do, look for patterns.”

  “Well, Mother Night’s rant on the Net this morning seemed to be about anarchy…”

  “Seemed to be, yes,” he said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? If there’s no pattern then wouldn’t that pretty much fall under the heading of anarchy? From what Nikki told me on the way over here, that A and O anarchy symbol is popping up all over the place. Maybe we can’t find a pattern because there isn’t one to find.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, “but the fact that she seems so organized argues against the anarchy model.”

  “Yeah, fair enough, Rude, I’ve been wondering about that since the jump. So, what label do we put on her?”

  “Definitively?” mused Rudy. “I really wouldn’t want to commit to anything. But on the level of intuition, assumption and the kind of paranoid cynicism I’ve been cultivating since we joined the DMS…?”

  “If not anarchist, how does the label ‘terrorist’ fit?”

  He gave another shake of his head. “That’s too easy and too broad. Knowing Circe has taught me a lot about how inexact a word that is. We’ve come to use it as a blanket term in much the same way that during the Vietnam War we called the indigenous people ‘gooks’ and in Somalia everyone was a ‘skinny.’ They are dehumanizing and demonizing labels that help to engender an aggressive-responsive attitude, but there is no genuine political insight in their use. To our enemies in al-Qaeda we are terrorists. Except in instances of psychopathy, terrorism is a biased view of a tactic that is implemented to achieve an end.”

  “Noted. So, what does that make Mother Night?”

  “I don’t know. To determine what she is requires that we know something about her, and I confess, Joe, that I don’t. Is she an extremist prosecuting an agenda? If so, for which political party, nation, religion, or faction? Is she a criminal, or part of a criminal empire? Is she a charismatic psychopath or a cult leader? We simply don’t know.”

  “Got to be political,” I said. “We know about her connections with the cyberhackers from China, Iran, and North Korea.”

  “We know that she was interacting with a cell, Joe, and the members of the cell were from those countries. However, I spoke to Mr. Church about this at length today and he said that neither the State Department nor the CIA have been able to definitively connect those nine men in Arlington with active operations in their native countries. And remember, those nations denied involvement in their actions.”

  “Which they would.”

  “Certainly, but that might just as easily suggest that Mother Night knows and understands the political process, the habit of denial, the subtleties of communication through diplomatic channels…”

  “If that’s the case, Rude,” I said, “she’d have to be really well versed in behind-the-scenes politics, and I’m not talking about what she could crib from old DVDs of The West Wing.”

  “I don’t think we can discount that possibility, Cowboy. Since this whole thing began I’ve developed quite an appreciation of her intelligence.”

  “You said there were two reasons you didn’t buy this as pure anarchy. What’s the other?”

  “It’s sideways logic, so you’ll think I’m losing my marbles.”

  “That’s a past-tense observation, brother.”

  His smile was small and fleeting. “Well, anarchy is by nature a lack of structure, correct? It’s an attempt to separate life from structure and procedure, allowing the infinitely creative potential of chaos to dominate.”

  I nodded.

  “So why isn’t Mother Night creating chaos?”

  “Christ, Rudy, I thought you said you were following the fucking news. The whole country is going ape-shit out there and—”

  “Is it? In its strictest philosophic form, anarchy is less about bomb-throwing and abandonment of rules and more about social justice, a breaking down of current corruption in order to allow a new and just system to emerge. In spirit, both the French and American revolutions fit that view. And if there was even a hint of a true political agenda in Mother Night’s actions, I might buy that that’s what we’re seeing. An attack on a dystopic political landscape. However, things as they are today appear to fit the more popular interpretation of anarchy as the absence of government, a state of lawlessness, a society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without a governing body. And yet Mother Night is a leader figure, and to do the things she’s accomplished necessitates a well-formed and well-run organization. In order to maintain the kind of secrecy needed to have avoided a MindReader search or detection by the CIA, her organization must be tightly administrated, and the members need to follow precise sets of rules. That is not anarchy, Joe. That’s not chaos.”

  “So … what is it?”

  But before he could answer, Aunt Sallie leaned her head and shoulders out of the conference room doorway. “Now!” she growled.

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  FreeTech

  800 Fifth Avenue

  New York City

  Sunday, August 31, 3:26 p.m.

  Junie Flynn and the other members of her board did no work at all on matters pertaining to their new organization. Instead they sat around the conference table gaping at the spectacle unfolding on the big-screen TV.

  So much death. So much pain.

  And Joe was out there, in the middle of it.

  At one point, Violin got up, walked around the table, took a fistful of Toys’s shirt, and hauled the young man out of his chair. She then raised him completely off the floor with one hand, something Junie didn’t think even Joe could do.

  “Convince me that this isn’t the Seven Kings,” said Violin in a voice filled with quiet menace and frank threat.

  “I—I—”

  Junie launched herself from her chair and grabbed Violin’s arm. She tried to pull Toys from the woman’s grip but it was like attempting to unlock a steel trap. Violin flicked a single, dismissive glance at Junie.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  Violin made a sound of deep annoyance and thrust Toys back into his chair, where he landed in a tangled and disheveled heap. Toys sprawled there, making no attempt to straighten his clothes.

  Very slowly and clearly he said, “I am not with the Seven Kings. I haven’t been for years. I don’t know who is doing this, and if the Kings are involved I don’t know anything about it.”

  It barely mollified Violin. “Do not let me discover that this is a lie,” she warned.

  “I will definitely make a note of that. And if it turns out I’m lying, you have my blessing to rip out my fucking lungs. Fair enough?” said Toys. He sat straight, jerked his shirt into some order, and turned away from her. He did not ask for an apology.

  Violin sneered at him and turned back to the television. There was a knock on the door and two men came in without waiting for a reply. Junie recognized them as security personnel from the Hangar. Reid and Ashe.

  “Ma’am,” said Reid to Junie, “we’re here to escort you to your hotel.”

  Junie turned to Violin. “Joe sent them. Do you … I mean, would you like to join me?”

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Frontierland, Disney World

  Orlando, Florida

  Sunday, August 31, 3:34 p.m.

  Sammy Ramirez always thought he’d either end up in Hollywood or end up in prison. He had that kind of life. Two of his brothers were in jail. Ishmael was doing three to five for armed robbery after he used a plastic gun to steal sixty-two dollars and a can of Red Bull fro
m a 7-Eleven in Miami. Jorge was on his second fall for grand theft auto. The sad part of that was, the car he boosted was a piece-of-shit Chevy Suburban. He couldn’t even get respect for having stolen an Escalade. A Suburban. Jesus.

  Sammy had done a few small crimes, but always stupid little things. He sold some weed in high school. He shoplifted a cell phone charger from a strip-mall CVS. Like that. Peer pressure from his brothers or his friends had been involved every time.

  It wasn’t who he was, though, and it wasn’t who he wanted to be.

  Who he wanted to be was the first major Latin action hero. He had the speed, the reflexes, a little bit of tae kwon do, and the best smile in the neighborhood. He had no trace of an accent and was sure that with a little training and the right breaks, he could be to Latinos what the Rock was to whatever the fuck ethnicity he belonged to.

  That was what Sammy thought about every day. He thought about it when he woke up, he thought about it before he went to sleep. He even prayed about it sometimes. And he thought about it all day at work.

  Sammy Ramirez, star of his own series. Legal Aliens, a cross-border science fiction thing. Yeah, that would not suck. Or maybe something generic where none of it was based on race. Just on good looks, the ability to kick ass on screen, and charisma. Sammy knew he had bags of charisma.

  That’s why the kids loved him so much.

  After all, he wasn’t the only one dressed as a cartoon dog here at Disney, but goddamn it, more kids wanted their picture taken with him than any two of the other Goofys combined.

  Booyah, motherfucker. That was star power.

  Working at Disney was not exactly the most direct route to an action franchise of summer blockbusters, but it was technically acting. Disney called its staff “cast members.” He was working on getting into one of the shows, which was a shortcut to getting an Equity card. That was the plan. Get into Actors’ Equity and then leverage that to get some screen time, enough at least to get a SAG card. That would get him an agent, and an agent could get him some auditions, which would in turn allow him to fire his charisma guns on full auto.