Code Zero

by Jonathan Maberry

  Mother Night estimated that the lobby was packed with four thousand people. The fire codes were a joke. Thousands more shouted from the balconies.

  The costumes changed as the day faded and night came on. There were fewer kids and a lot more booze. Costumes got smaller, more risqué, occasionally obscene, always delightful.

  Strolling among them was such fun. Especially once the crowd began to get her costume. People with toy guns pretended to shoot her. The kids dressed in hoodies immediately fell into step behind her, appointing themselves as her entourage. She knew that her beauty and skimpy costume were as much a draw as her “character.” By playing Mother Night on this weekend, in this town—with the destruction of the CDC the buzz everywhere—she was a walking cause célèbre. Cameras flashed, flashed, flashed.

  It was so delicious. Even the people—and there were many—who thought that her costume was in bad taste and far too soon, reacted to her. Their disapproval and contempt was evident on their faces, in their shouts, in the fact that they followed her in order to berate her. Once the crowd was aware of her, everyone reacted to her in one way or another.

  Everyone.

  She constructed a haughty half-smile interspersed with flashes of a broad “yes-we’re-all-in-on-it” grin.

  It was so thrilling.

  To be out in public as Mother Night.

  What surprised her was how long it took for any of the police officers to approach her. Most of them gave her a glance and turned away. It made her wonder if some of them had lost colleagues in the current wave of chaos. Poor babies, if they did, she thought.

  Lots of people wanted to take photos with her, and she stood smiling with them, striking an imperious pose.

  People wanted her autograph, and she signed convention programs, newspaper headlines, T-shirts, and even skin.

  People began offering to buy her drinks, and she let them. They toasted her, and she toasted chaos, and everybody raised their glasses and shouted the word.

  Chaos.

  Then she turned to one of the teenagers in the hoodies.

  “You, minion, come here … Mother wants you.”

  He obeyed as if he truly were her minion, and that made the crowd laugh. He came and dropped to one knee before her, head bowed like a samurai waiting on the pleasure of his daimyo.

  “Hold this,” she said, handing the leash of her slaves to him.

  She signaled another of the hoodie crowd, and he imitated what his friend had done, the way sheep will so quickly and reliably follow each other even into a bog. Mother Night shrugged out of her backpack and handed it to the second of her new minions. He extended his arms and held the pack while she rooted through it. Mother Night removed a double handful of chocolates, each wrapped in colorful plastic. She tossed them to the crowds and they went crazy grabbing at them, snatching them out of the air, playing a vicious tug-of-war when two people grabbed one at the same time. Mother Night laughed and laughed. She scooped out more and threw them, wildly and sometimes with precision toward a specific person whose costume she admired. Hands reached for the treats. Some hands reached past the candy to try to touch her, so she obliged and danced her fingertips along theirs, gracing each of them with the gift of contact.

  Contact with her.

  Then she removed one last thing from her bag. A pair of scissors with big, happy, pink plastic handles. She snipped them in the air a few times.

  “Okay, monkeys,” she yelled, “who wants to help me free my slaves?”

  The crowd roared.

  Chapter One Hundred and Twelve

  Peachtree Center Avenue

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Sunday, September 1, 3:55 p.m.

  When Officer Feingold received the call from dispatch he thought it was a change of assignment. He and Daniels had been outside for hours and it had been a long, hot day in the unrelenting August heat. The dispatcher told him to leave Daniels in charge of traffic control and that he was to report to his supervisor, a sergeant who was around the corner. He was told to do this quickly but without causing undue alarm.

  He understood the wisdom of that. No one reacts well to the sight of a policeman running down the street.

  “You going to be okay?” he asked Daniels.

  “Yeah, let me know what’s up.”

  Feingold patted her on the shoulder and headed up the street, moving at a brisk walk that was not quite a run. As he neared the corner he saw other officers converging on the same spot. He followed them around the corner and nearly jerked to a stop. There were four trucks parked in a row, engines on and idling, while lines of National Guardsmen were off-loading dozens of sawhorse barriers. Down at the far corner Feingold could see other trucks being similarly off-loaded. The crowds that passed glanced curiously at the soldiers and cops, but when one of the passersby—a young black woman dressed as Lieutenant Uhuru—asked what was going on, a huge white man who looked like an oversized California surfer said, “Getting ready for the parade.”

  “Parade?” laughed the young woman. “That was this morning.”

  “Different parade,” said the surfer, and he gave her a big, white-toothed smile. One of the soldiers, a slender Latina, punched the big man in the arm and said something in rapid-fire Spanish. The young black woman shrugged and walked on.

  Feingold found his sergeant-supervisor, who was preparing to address several dozen cops. “What’s with the barricades, Sarge? Did I hear something about a parade?”

  A man in poorly fitting black BDUs answered his question, and it was immediately clear that he, not the sergeant, was in charge. The man looked around to make sure that there were no civilians within earshot before he spoke.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “We have reason to believe that the woman who calls herself Mother Night may be somewhere here at DragonCon. As soon as we’re set, we are going to shut down all streets leading into or out of Peachtree Center. You will work in pairs and when the signal goes out, every team will move into position at the same time with the barricades to block the streets. The trucks will then take up position behind the lines of barricades, and the National Guard will establish defensive positions between the vehicles, the barricades, and the walls of the corner buildings. That’s a whole lot of people moving all at once. We need to snap the lid shut on this area and we need to do it without mistake.”

  “Excuse me,” said an officer, “but is there a bomb threat here?”

  The soldier, who had neither name tag nor rank insignia, said, “We have to assume that as a possibility, but our major concern right now is a biological threat. You saw the videos of the Brooklyn subway. That was a biological attack.”

  He then told the officers about something called the seif-al-din; and about what it did.

  “This is not a drill,” he concluded, “and it’s not a joke.”

  “What about the people inside?” asked the same officer. “How do we get them out?”

  “Once we seal the area we’ll have filter points at each corner. The crowd will be directed to those points and we’ll evaluate them and process them through as quickly as we can.” He held up a small device. “You all know what a BAMS unit is, well, this one is portable. We have thirty of them here and another hundred on their way.”

  “People are going to freak,” said another officer.

  “Yeah, they will, so it’s your job to manage that. Announcements will be made inside each hotel asking people to return to their rooms or, if they are not booked at the hotel where they are when this goes down, they will be asked to sit down and await further instructions. The exact wording is being worked out and it will sound better than what I just said. But overall, crowd control is critical, not just to save lives but also to give us a chance to find—”

  “I saw her,” said Feingold, and instantly every pair of eyes turned to him.

  “What?” demanded the soldier.

  “I—I mean I think I saw her,” stammered Feingold. “Mother Night. I think I just saw her go into the Mar
riott not ten minutes ago. Oh God!”

  Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen

  Grand Hyatt Hotel

  109 East Forty-second Street

  New York City

  Sunday, September 1, 3:55 p.m.

  The stranger kept walking forward, his gun barrel against Junie’s stomach, forcing her backward to the bed. There was a sound suppressor screwed onto the barrel, which gave him an extended reach.

  “Please,” said Junie. “Please, don’t.”

  For a moment the man appeared confused and then alarmed. Then he smiled. “What, you think this is a rape? Christ, lady, do I look like a rapist? God. Don’t be so rude.”

  “I—I—”

  He jabbed her with the gun. “Where’s your cell phone?”

  Without meaning to, Junie’s eyes flicked toward the bed. He spotted the cell, nodded to himself.

  “You have anything else? iPad? Laptop?”

  She said nothing, unsure as to the kind of answer he wanted, or which answer would keep her safe. He solved the problem for her by raising the pistol so that the barrel touched her cheek below her left eye.

  “Lie to me and I blow a hole through your head,” he said quietly. “Tell me the truth, the day goes a whole different way.”

  “Laptop … over there.” She made a small, vague gesture toward the desk. “What are you going to do to me?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he moved around her and scooped her cell off the bed, then backed up until he stood by the desk.

  “Just these two? Nothing else? No?”

  She shook her head.

  “Good. Now go sit on the bed.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then obeyed.

  “I have to do something and while I’m doing it I want you to stay right there. If you move I’ll kneecap you. Understand? Good.”

  He pocketed the cell and tucked the pistol into the waistband of his trousers, then he stepped halfway into the hall, looked up and down, and dragged the two bodies in, one at a time. Then he took a newspaper from the desk, opened it, and laid it on the hall floor over the spilled blood. There was surprisingly little, but Junie knew that corpses didn’t bleed. The two men had single bullet holes in their heads. No exit wounds. She understood what that meant, too. Assassins used small-caliber weapons like .22s because the bullet lacked power to exit the skull and instead bounced around to do fatal damage. Less mess, too. The gun this man carried was a silenced .22.

  The man closed the door, hooked the wheeled chair from the desk, pulled it to the middle of the floor, and sat. He removed his pistol, unscrewed the sound suppressor, pocketed that, and laid the gun on his thigh. He removed her cell phone from his pocket and weighed it in his hand for a moment, and then tossed it onto the bed. It landed near Junie but she dared not touch it.

  “Here’s the thing,” he said. “If this had gone a different way you’d have never met me. Plan A was for me to put a bullet into your head from across the street. Not here, but at FreeTech. Bang. Single shot, your brains are one of those splash paintings by that guy. What was his name? Jackson Pollock. That was Plan A.” He took a deep breath and raised his eyebrows for a moment before exhaling. He removed an object from his pocket and held it up between thumb and forefinger. “Plan B is I come here and use this on you.”

  The item was a syringe filled with green liquid.

  “Personally, I don’t dig this whole thing. I already have enough monsters in my head, you dig? No? Doesn’t matter. The thing is that Mother Night thinks there’s a chance your action hero boyfriend may actually survive all of the stuff she has planned for him. Guy’s a wild card, so I can see her point. So she wants him to have a really interesting homecoming, if you follow me. Yeah,” he said, smiling, “I can see you do.”

  Junie stared at the syringe. Her mouth was totally dry and her heart felt like it was going to burst from her chest.

  “But,” continued the little man, “I’m not a bad guy. Not really. Not completely, anyway. I personally think you should get a choice. You’re a nice lady, and this isn’t about you anyway.”

  “Please don’t…”

  “So, the choice is this. You get to pick the way this ends. This way,” he said, holding up the syringe, “or this way.” He held up the pistol.

  “God, please.”

  “God ain’t part of this conversation, miss. It’s just you, me, and a choice. Mother Night didn’t authorize me to give you this choice. This is me being a nice guy.” He smiled. “So what’s it going to be?”

  “You don’t understand,” said Junie. “It’s not about me. I … I’m pregnant.”

  Chapter One Hundred and Fourteen

  Marriott Marquis Hotel

  265 Peachtree Center Avenue

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Sunday, September 1, 3:56 p.m.

  The crowd jumped and roiled around Mother Night, and she laughed to see them writhe. She held the pink plastic scissors over her head, waggling them back and forth. The action made the underside of one breast peek deliciously from beneath her cutoff shirt. Men and women hooted and whistled.

  “I need a volunteer!” she called, and they pressed forward, all of them totally caught in the moment even though none of them had any idea of the payoff to this game. It didn’t matter. The world seemed to be going crazy and this was their reality. The rolling, endless party that was DragonCon and this beautiful, sexy, wild woman.

  “Me! Meeee!” cried a girl dressed as an anime character with fuzzy pink cat ears. She was closest and her voice soared through the din. “Me!”

  Mother Night smiled at her. A big, wide, wonderful smile. She hooked a finger under the girl’s chin, lifted her face, and kissed her on the tip of the nose. “You win.”

  Then she handed the scissors to the girl.

  The crowd thundered its appreciation, though there were cries of disappointment threaded through the noise.

  Mother Night made a twirling gesture to the boys in hoodies and they spun the slaves around in a full circle. Once, twice, again.

  “Snip, snip!” yelled Mother Night, and she stepped aside to give the girl in the fantasy costume access to the slaves. Their hands were tied with strips of red cloth.

  As she approached, the girl pretended to be grossed out by the wounds all over the slaves, but it was all comedy and every time she made a face the audience laughed harder.

  “Snip, snip, snip,” said Mother Night.

  The girl flourished the scissors—and received cheers—then she turned and gently inserted the blades between the bound hands of one of the slaves. The cloth was wet, the slave was struggling, and it took a bit of doing to cut through the material. But suddenly the bonds fell away and the man’s hands were free. He swayed as if very drunk.

  “Now take off his hood and give Prince Charming a big kiss!”

  Lots of hoots and rude comments followed that.

  The girl with the fuzzy cat ears blushed, a hand to her mouth, as she tentatively reached up, took hold of the pillowcase that had been used as a hood, and with a great dramatic flourish whipped it off.

  And screamed.

  The face below was slashed and hacked and covered with blood. His skin was pale, his eyes dull and empty.

  The crowd gasped and stepped back.

  Then they cheered even louder, shouting their praise of the great, lifelike, professionally accomplished zombie makeup.

  There were shouts of “The Walking Dead!” and “George Romero is God!”

  The applause was massive, it shook the walls and rose high into the atrium. People on balconies threw confetti and colored scarves and anything else they had. Mother Night moved out into the center of the floor, waving at them, encouraging them, ignoring the guards who told her to dial it down. There was no dialing this down. It was like Mardi Gras times ten, and the whole place shook with laughter, yells, and applause.

  The girl with the fuzzy cat ears grinned and blushed, and it was all so wonderful, so much fun.

  Until the man she
had just freed grabbed her by the shoulders, yanked her forward, and tore out her throat with his teeth.

  Most of the crowd did not see it, could not hear it, did not know it for almost five full seconds. Then, like ripples from a stone dropped into water, the yells of the crowd turned to screams. Mother Night flicked out a switchblade and slashed the bonds of the second slave, whipped off his hood, and shoved him toward the boys in the hoodies. The dead thing, which had once been one of Bill Collins’s assassins, snarled and flung itself at the boys. Biting. Tearing.

  The girl with the fuzzy cat ears sank to her knees, blood pouring from her throat. In her veins, in her flesh, the infection was already taking hold. The seif-al-din had been engineered to work at blinding speed. Nature could never have created it, only science twisted to awful purpose could have done this.

  Before her mind and body were truly dead, the infected girl with the fuzzy cat ears snaked her hands out, grabbed the arm of a woman who was trying to help her, and sank her teeth into the soft flesh of her inner arm.

  Mother Night cried out in nearly orgasmic joy.

  This was power.

  This was her victory.

  The end of everything started right here, with her as the zero point, the center of the new big bang, the author of this red madness.

  Inside her head the old, unevolved voice cried out, but that voice went unheard and unheeded.

  Around Mother Night the slaughter began.

  Chapter One Hundred Fifteen

  White House Press Room

  Washington, D.C.

  Sunday, September 1, 3:57 p.m.

  Vice President William Collins stood a few feet behind the president and to his right. The posture he affected was intended to convey a separation between the commander in chief and himself—head bowed, hands clasped in front of his body, positioned to the extreme edge of what would be the televised image. The attorney general, Mark Eppenfeld, stood next to him. On the other side of the podium were the director of Homeland Security, the secretary of state, and the surgeon general.