Code Zero

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Or anything like Hammer suits,” said Montana. “Pretty sure Timberland doesn’t make biohazard versions of their shoes.”

  Dunk said, “They could have hazmat suits on with the booties tucked into their shoes.” He paused, frowned, shook his head. “No, that’s stupid. Sorry.”

  “Well,” said Bunny, blowing out a breath as he looked around, “this is either very good or very, very bad.”

  The good would be if the bad guys just wanted to steal the pathogens without immediately releasing them. The bad would be if they were on a suicide mission and didn’t give a fuck about protective equipment.

  Top, who was always in the same gear as me, touched my arm and said, “If these jokers came down here to die for the cause, then why try for anonymity with the new shoes? I think they’re here to take the Ark, not open it.”

  It was a glimmer of hope. But a little hope can be like a splinter in the mind. It can lure you into believing in a positive outcome, and that can take the edge off your skills.

  “We’re not making any assumptions,” I said to the team.

  We were in a small dummy office that held two desks, a water cooler, and a file cabinet. Enough for appearances. A door marked “Employees Only” hung by one hinge. The lock assembly had been torn out by a savage kick. The footprint on the door wasn’t huge—maybe size ten—but whoever had delivered that kick knew their business. Single kick, too.

  We went through into the next room and then wasted five minutes checking and clearing the administration offices that comprised the rest of Level One of the Locker. As we passed from room to room the stink of cordite clogged the air, and the gun smoke was almost thick enough to block out the sheared-copper smell of blood.

  Almost.

  There was simply too damn much blood.

  Bug’s intel said that there were fourteen support staff members working in the Locker’s topside offices.

  We found all fourteen. With the nine in the store this added up to the twenty-three cooling thermal signatures.

  Twenty-three people whose lives had ended. Unexpectedly, terribly.

  In bits and pieces.

  Body parts were strewn around on the floor. Some of the secretaries and staff members were sprawled across their desks, their bodies torn open in a final indignity worse than rape. The walls were spattered by arterial sprays. Blood dripped from the overhead fluorescents.

  “Christ’s balls,” murmured Ivan.

  Bunny said, “What the fuck?”

  You’d think that people like us wouldn’t or couldn’t be shocked by yet another example of man’s potential for appalling brutality. You would be wrong.

  “Berserkers?” mused Bunny.

  “Got to be,” said Top.

  Bunny waggled his combat shotgun. “Glad I brought my boom-stick.”

  “Jefe,” said Lydia, “how many ways are there out of this place?”

  “Two,” I said. “This way and a service corridor.”

  “Okay, ’cause I’m only seeing footprints going into this elevator. I haven’t seen anything coming out.”

  I nodded and tapped my earbud. “Cowboy to Ronin.”

  “Go for Ronin,” said Sam.

  “Any movement from the service exit on the east side of the building?”

  “Negative.”

  “Very well, but get close and tell me exactly what you see,” I said.

  There was a rustling sound and then Sam said, “Okay, I’ve got eyes on it. Confirming that it’s undisturbed. Exterior screws are intact.”

  “Lift the cover plate.”

  The service corridor was a tunnel big enough to wheel parts down. From the outside it looked like a big electrical junction box, the man-sized ones that county power companies put up. But those doors opened to reveal a cubicle in which were the same kind of high-tech hand and retina scanners we had down here. And there were several levels of security behind that, including a length of reinforced corridor that could be filled with fire at a moment’s notice.

  “Everything is intact,” he reported. “No one’s come out this way. Even the weeds are undisturbed. Your bad guys are still inside.”

  In light of all the vicious slaughter, that news should have scared us. But I felt a weird little smile carving its way onto my face. I avoided meeting the eyes of the others, or even looking at their faces. They’d be wearing the same killers’ smiles. It was an ugly thing to see on the faces of good people.

  I looked at the main security doors that provided access to the elevators. The built-in scanners—hand, retina, and keycard—were junk. Wires dangled from what was left of them.

  “Okay,” I said, tapping my earbud again, “Ronin, put a blaster-plaster on the grille and find cover. You’re our eyes topside. If you see anything hinky—I don’t care if it’s a bobcat walking with a limp—put it down.”

  “You got it, boss,” he said. “Me and Ghost will watch your backs.”

  I heard a soft whuff in the background.

  “Green Giant,” I said, “let’s get those doors open.”

  Bunny applied a magazine-sized blaster-plaster to the heavy doors. “Ready.”

  We moved away and hid behind desks.

  “Fire in the hole!” yelled Bunny as he triggered the detonators. Bigger the bomb, bigger the boom. The steel double doors blew apart, open like the petals of a flower to reveal an elevator shaft. No car.

  “Gear up,” I said, but everyone was already rigging rappelling equipment. I did a quick look down the shaft and saw nothing but concrete, greasy cables and a few small utility lights. The hole was so deep we couldn’t even see the top of the car.

  Top dug into his pack, removed a lime green tennis ball, and let it drop. Then he flipped open the small tactical computer strapped to his forearm and tapped keys. The tennis ball was filled with several small sensors packed in Styrofoam beads. We watched the meter count off the distance of the drop.

  “All the way down,” Top said again.

  A series of numbers flashed across the screen, giving us ambient temperature, negative elevation, motion detection, audio, and thermals. But the meters had nothing to read. No sound, no movement, and no heat signatures for anything human or animal.

  “Hellboy,” I said to Ivan, “you’re on point. Drop to within fifty feet and if you hear anything drop a flash-bang. Once you’re down, give us a shout.”

  Bunny anchored him with a powerful hand on Ivan’s belt that allowed him to lean out and clip on to the main elevator cable. He gave Bunny another nod, adjusted his gear, then stepped out into the shaft and was gone.

  Top and I leaned out to watch him rappel down with practiced ease. At fifty feet he stopped, reported all clear, and went down the rest of the way. Lydia went down next. Then Top, Bunny, and me. The newbies followed.

  We crouched atop the car and bent to the access panel to listen.

  We heard nothing at all.

  “Dead down there,” said Ivan.

  Bunny gave him a withering look. “Really bad choice of words, dude.”

  Ivan colored. “I meant … no gunfire. Nobody yelling.”

  I removed the access panel and we pointed lights and guns into the car. Nothing.

  No, not exactly nothing.

  There was a dripping red handprint on the wall by the control panel.

  “Listen up,” I said quietly, “we go down, open the doors, and then make our way into the facility. We have to assess the situation and react based on what we encounter. There are a lot of civilians down there.”

  “We hope,” said Dunk.

  “Yes, we hope.”

  “Mission priorities?” asked Top.

  “It’s all about the Ark,” I said. “We have to protect it at all costs. The civilians down there are secondary to that, though if the Ark is safe, then we do whatever we can to protect and evacuate the staff.”

  “Rules of engagement?”

  “Nobody pulls a trigger unless you have no choice. Return fire and protect yourself, but don�
�t approach this as a target-rich environment. We want to protect the staff and we want to take prisoners. Check your BAMS units, but make sure someone’s watching your ass whenever you do. If you so much as encounter a common cold germ you sing out.”

  They said, “Hooah.”

  I tapped Ivan’s shoulder and nodded to a junction box on the wall. The door hung open and wires trailed out like guts. “See if you can fix that, see if you can get this elevator in operation.”

  He nodded and unclipped a toolkit from his belt.

  To the others I said, “Let’s do it. We all go in, we all come out.”

  “Hooah.”

  One by one we dropped into the car. Lydia and Ivan took up stations to either side of the double doors as I took a shooter’s stance off center of the opening, my Beretta up in both hands.

  I gave Lydia a nod and she pressed the button to open the doors.

  They parted and rolled back and Dr. Van Sant stood there.

  He was smiling.

  Laughing.

  His clothes were disheveled, his thin hair messy, and there was a streak of blood on one cheek. But he was laughing.

  He held a bloody fire axe in trembling hands. He stared at us in shock for a moment, then a single laugh burst from his chest.

  “Dr. Van Sant,” I began, “I am Captain Ledger, DMS, and we’re here to—”

  That was as far as I got before he screamed at the top of his lungs and tried to bury the axe in my skull.

  Chapter Ninety-five

  The Locker

  Sigler-Czajkowski Biological and Chemical Weapons Facility

  Highland County, Virginia

  Sunday, September 1, 11:42 a.m.

  “Captain—watch out!”

  Lydia shoved me hard and I staggered sideways as the axe blade whistled down with incredible force and speed. It gouged a huge chunk out of the poured linoleum floor and rebounded, staggering Van Sant.

  He was laughing all the time. Bloody bubbles popped at the corners of his mouth.

  Lydia and I hit the deck and rolled over; I pushed her away and kept rolling until I was on fingers and toes. Bunny rushed the doctor and then had to suck back his stomach to keep from getting sliced open. The others crowded back and put guns on Van Sant.

  “No!” I bellowed. “Do not fire. He has the bypass codes. I repeat do not fire.”

  Van Sant kept swinging at Bunny, driving the big young man backward. Bunny was fast for all his size, and he ducked and dodged until he got the timing right, then he stepped inside the arc of the next swing, grabbed the shaft of the fire axe with both hands, and with a savage grunt tore it from the scientist’s grip. There was absolutely no pause between that action and Van Sant’s response; he instantly lunged forward and clamped his jaws around Bunny’s muscular wrist.

  Bunny screamed in pain and backed away, trying to wrench his arm free. There was a note of hysteria in the big man’s voice.

  Lydia shrieked in terror and threw herself at Van Sant, hammering the doctor’s face with a vicious flurry of punches. Van Sant’s face disintegrated under the assault. I saw blood and teeth fly as the doctor reeled backward. He lost his hold on Bunny, but as he fell back there was a long streamer of protective material clamped between his teeth.

  The doctor, far from subdued, suddenly whirled, grabbed Lydia by the hood, and slammed her face-forward into the wall. A crazy, high-pitched cackle of laughter bubbled continuously from him.

  Noah shifted around to take a kill shot and I slapped his barrel down.

  “We need him, goddamn it,” I barked.

  “He’s going to kill—” began Noah but then Van Sant shoved Lydia at him and laughed as they crashed into me and we all went down.

  That’s when Top made his move, sliding in sideways between Van Sant and us to deliver a brutal side-thrust kick to the doctor’s knee. The bones broke with gunshot clarity, but as Van Sant fell he took Lydia with him. He snapped at her like a rabid dog and then slammed her head down against the ground. Once, twice.

  I pushed myself off the wall, grabbed Van Sant by the collar, and hauled him backward. He snarled and whirled toward me and suddenly I had teeth lunging for my throat.

  “Fuck this,” growled Top, and he swung the stock of his M14 around and smashed it into Van Sant’s face. More bones broke, the doctor’s left eye socket lost all shape, his body trembled at the edge of terminal shock.

  And yet …

  He did not go down.

  He did not slow down.

  He leaped at Top, clawing at the visor of his hazmat suit, biting the air because he couldn’t yet bite the flesh.

  Van Sant and Top hit the wall side-by-side and collapsed to the floor. Top was unable to bring his barrel to bear, so he used the gun as a bar to keep the deranged scientist from trying to bite.

  There was a krak!

  Van Sant was plucked away from Top and knocked into the wall. His head no longer looked like a head. He collapsed down, his rage and his madness and that awful laughter stopped.

  Stopped.

  We all lay there for a broken moment.

  Dunk stood ten feet away, a smoking rifle in his hands.

  He said, “I … I had to…”

  And the access codes were lost to us. And all I could say was “I know.”

  The moment seemed to freeze around us into a tableau of impotence, horror, and violence. Top and I were covered with blood. Lydia was dazed, hanging at the edge of consciousness. Montana and Noah crouched over her. And Bunny stood apart, the sleeve of his Hammer suit hanging in tatters, a hand clamped over the spot where Van Sant had bitten him.

  We all stared at him.

  “Bunny…?” Top asked softly.

  He looked down at the hand he was using as a patch. “Oh, God…”

  Chapter Ninety-six

  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  Special Pathogens Branch

  Building 18

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Sunday, September 1, 11:48 a.m.

  Jacen Rolla knew that this was going to be his story. He was the first reporter on scene and he’d been sending in regular sound bites to his editor at Regional Satellite News. His cameraman told him that four of those sound bites were already getting serious airplay on the networks. For a second-stringer like Rolla that was God whispering to him that his time had come.

  He’d done two other stories at Building 18—one during an anthrax scare last March and again for a zombie apocalypse bit for Halloween. He knew the best place to stand so that the complex would loom behind him. He had his jacket and tie off, sleeves rolled up, and hair ever so slightly mussed, as if he’d been in the trenches all night. It was the kind of image that sold Anderson Cooper during Katrina. A no-nonsense reporter who cared more about the story than good grooming or personal safety.

  All of which was pure bullshit, but it played so damn well on TV and the Net.

  The cameraman gave him the nod and Rolla pitched his voice to convey authority, concern, and a hint of the ominous.

  “We can now confirm that a SWAT team from Homeland has entered Building Eighteen, and there are reports of gunshots coming from inside the facility.”

  That was unconfirmed by any source, but Rolla knew shots when he heard them, even if they were muffled by walls and doors. There were also flashes from inside the building, and if they weren’t muzzle flashes then he’d eat his microphone.

  Because there was nowhere else to go with the immediate story, Rollo began a recap of the Mother Night campaign of terrorism—his verbiage—in which he connected dozens of events. Much of it was conjecture and wild guesswork, but Rollo was absolutely dead-on when he made his assumptions. Of all the news coverage during those events, in retrospect, Jacen Rollo’s was the most accurate, both in chronology and supposition.

  It was the kind of gut-instinct journalism that all reporters wish they had. The kind that Rollo was unaware that he possessed. Suits at the various networks were watching his coverage and taking no
te. So was a huge portion of the American TV-watching population.

  It was therefore later estimated that more than sixty million people saw him blown to bloody rags when Building 18 exploded.

  Chapter Ninety-seven

  The Locker

  Sigler-Czajkowski Biological and Chemical Weapons Facility

  Highland County, Virginia

  Sunday, September 1, 11:50 a.m.

  Top scrambled to his feet and pushed past me. “Talk to me, Farmboy. Are you bit?”

  Bunny stared at his arm.

  “Are you bit?” Top demanded, and as he said it he brought his rifle up.

  Pointing it at Bunny.

  Ivan gaped at Top. “What the fuck are you—?”

  “Stay out of it,” I warned. To Bunny I said, “Top asked you a question.”

  Bunny gulped in a huge lungful of air and as he exhaled I could hear him shudder at the edge of tears. Panic was a howling thing that screamed in his eyes.

  “It … it d-didn’t break the skin,” Bunny said, tripping over it. “The arm pads…”

  We all wore Kevlar limb pads over the Hammer suits. They’d deflect a bullet but they were for shit against knives. I doubted it, because I’ve seen Ghost rip through similar padding on hostiles more than once.

  “Farmboy … you know we got to see that bite,” said Top gently, though he didn’t lower the gun.

  “I’m telling you, man, it didn’t break the skin.”

  “You know you got to show us.”

  “Boss,” said Ivan, “check your BAMS.”

  I did.

  I wished I hadn’t.

  The orange glow had deepened. It was almost red.

  Bunny’s eyes flared with panic. “What’s in the air? Christ, what’s in the air?”

  Ivan held his unit out and turned in a slow circle, letting the little intake motor suck up particles. When he checked the reading again I heard him make a small, sick sound.

  “Shit,” he said. And that was all he needed to say.

  “But the air … the contaminants…”

  Top and I just looked at him.

  “Show me the motherfucking arm,” said Top through gritted teeth.

  There were tears in Bunny’s eyes. Even through the plastic visor I could see them. It took about a thousand years, but he finally raised his hand to expose the bite.