Code Zero

by Jonathan Maberry

  The press was relentless. Asking the hard questions, tearing apart everything the president said, chewing at the edges of his credibility. Collins tried not to fidget, aware that the press—and the American people—would be scrutinizing him for complicity, for guilt, or for distance. He wanted to convey distance while at the same time looking like he wasn’t a rat deserting a sinking ship. It was delicate, and he gave every movement, even subtle changes of facial expression, serious thought.

  At that moment, the NBC correspondent was asking which provisions of law allowed the president to order troops to open fire on the “sick and wounded” in the Brooklyn subway.

  Ouch, thought Collins, that one’s going to leave a mark.

  The president paused before answering, letting his famous penetrating stare do some of his work while he organized his answer. He had scripted answers for a lot of questions, but so far the man had gone off-script a dozen times. Trying for the personal touch, relying on genuineness and spontaneity to reconnect with a truly hostile audience. Every reporter in the place, even those who were friends of the administration, smelled blood in the water and they wanted to tear him apart. Careers were being made today, or would be if their program of attack journalism played out in their favor. This question was a killer and it was the fulcrum on which everything turned. Collins didn’t know how the president would handle it.

  “I would like to be able to tell you that the video which was broadcast today was a total fabrication, that no such tragedy occurred and that I played no part in the decision to use lethal force. However, I promised the American people that I would tell them the truth, and that I will do. That I am prepared to do.”

  He paused and his dark eyes moved slowly across the sea of faces.

  Good luck selling it, asshole, thought Collins.

  The president stood very straight, his head high, eyes clear. “Since the tragedy of 9/11 our nation has been engaged in a so-called War on Terror. That war is ongoing. It has never gone away. It makes the headlines less often even when bombs explode in our cities. We, as a society, have lived with terrorism for nearly a generation. It has become a regular part of our lives, and even though it is a part of our shared American lexicon, too often we forget to consider its nature or its scope.”

  The press grew very quiet, and Collins could see some doubt on their faces. This wasn’t going the way they expected and they, like he, didn’t know where the president was going with this.

  “Many people seem to believe that we have won the war on terror, that groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda are on the run. They continue to be threats,” said the president, “but there are greater threats out there, dangerous enemies whose identities are not household names. These enemies wage a constant war against the American people and our ideal of freedom and democracy. The weapons they bring to bear are often far more sophisticated than are commonly associated with terrorist groups or cells. Exotic bioweapons, genetic weapons, designer pathogens, weaponized diseases designed for the purposes of ethnic genocide, and other threats of equal complexity. To some, these weapons may appear to be the stuff of science fiction, but I can assure you they are not.

  “The only way to oppose such weapons and to insure the safety of the American people, our country and our allies, was to form a group under special charter. That group is composed of some of the most brilliant scientific minds of our time and the most elite and courageous special operations forces gathered from the SEALs, Marine Force Recon, Army Special Forces, FBI Hostage Rescue, the ATF, SWAT, and other groups. These men and women are the best of the best and it is their job to fight this war on terror with every weapon we can put into their hands.”

  Holy shit, thought Collins, he’s outing the damn DMS. He’s actually going to use the DMS to save his own ass.

  The president spoke for several minutes to a stunned audience. He did not name names, but he gave a general description of the Department of Military Sciences. And he described some of the bioweapons the DMS had tackled.

  “Mr. President,” said a reporter, “don’t you think the American people have a right to know more about this organization?”

  The president fixed him with a considering stare. “In a perfect world there would be no secrets and no need for secrets. In that perfect world our enemies could not use knowledge about the inner workings of our covert special forces against us. In a perfect world all battles would be fought on a level playing field and according to a set of rules. This is the twenty-first century and there are no rules of fair play and good sportsmanship. Precious documents like the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Human Rights mean less than nothing to our enemies. The tragedy that occurred yesterday was not the result of a military coup, it was not an example of excessive force by a corrupt administration, nor was it military or police brutality. What happened yesterday was a tragedy. The terrorist who calls herself Mother Night released one of the world’s deadliest pathogens into that subway car. That pathogen infected and killed every single person. All of those deaths, every one of them, can be laid at the feet of this enemy of our country. What was shown on the video was a distorted version of a terrible, painful, but necessary response.”

  He called the surgeon general up to describe the function of the seif-al-din pathogen. He was frank, calm, precise, and terrifying.

  Then the president returned to the podium. “It’s sometimes difficult for us to grasp the realities of this disease because its very nature is one of deception. The parasites that drive the pathogen manipulate the central nervous system of the victims, making their bodies move and act in an aggressive manner. But in that state, at that stage of the disease, the person who once inhabited that body is dead. That person has been murdered by the cowards who released this disease. Because this disease is one hundred percent communicable and the mortality rate is also one hundred percent, the only possible response—the only safe, sane, and moral response—is to destroy the central nervous system. That is what the people of our joint specials forces team did. It was a tragedy for everyone involved. For the victims of the disease, our innocent brothers and sisters murdered by these terrorists; and for the brave members of our Special Forces.”

  He paused.

  “Now, imagine for a moment what they felt. Imagine how they felt. Having to open fire on what appeared to be their fellow citizens. Imagine the pain and the horror they felt.” He shook his head. “Those soldiers are victims, too. They have had injuries inflicted on them in this war. Emotional hurt that they will have to carry with them for the rest of their lives.”

  Another pause. Even Collins held his breath.

  “I am going to play a five-second clip from that incident. As you will see and, more important, what you will hear is a false audio track overlaid onto the actual audio. You will see that Mother Night intended to use this video to make everyone who watched it complicit in her attempt to drive us apart. We were able to separate that false soundtrack, and you’ll hear it and then the original.”

  He nodded to a technician and a movie screen slid noiselessly down from the ceiling. The lights dimmed and the video began.

  However, it was not the video from the subway.

  It was something radically different, and only later would the White House cybercrimes team be able to determine that it was planted in the system using a type of computer intrusion alarmingly similar to MindReader.

  The video was clearly taken from a camera mounted on a bedpost, and it was equally clear that one of the two people in the video was unaware that a camera was rolling. That was evident because no sane person would say the things he said.

  “… and you’re sure you can get that video out to everyone?” asked the man.

  “Of course,” said the woman.

  “It’s got to go every-fucking-where. I mean it. I want the American people storming the White House with pitchforks and torches. I want them to hang that sanctimonious motherfucker by his balls. And then, by God, I am going to take this country back t
o its roots. Even if I have to roll tanks down Broadway, I’ll do whatever I have to do to bring America back on track. Born in fire, reborn in fire.”

  “Oh,” said the woman, “you know what I think. Sometimes you have to burn to shine.”

  There was more, but by then the video had done all the damage it could do.

  The man in the video was William Collins.

  The woman was Mother Night.

  They were naked, in each other’s arms.

  When the lights came on, everyone looked to where Collins had been standing, but he was gone.

  The Secret Service eventually found him. It was the sound of the single gunshot that drew them to the spot where Collins lay, the barrel of a pistol in his mouth. His suit was blue, his shirt was white, and his blood was bright red.

  Chapter One Hundred and Sixteen

  Marriott Marquis Hotel

  265 Peachtree Center Avenue

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Sunday, September 1, 4:00 p.m.

  When I heard the screams I knew we were too late.

  I was already running toward the Marriott, pistol in my hand, a swarm of shooters behind me. People came running out of the hotel. Some of them were in costume, some weren’t. No one looked hurt but that didn’t mean anything. Not really. Even a small bite would do it. Or blood in their eyes or mouth. We’d have to trust to the techs at the barricades to make judgment calls. God help anyone who had so much as a cold sore, because no one was getting a break today. We were in hell, and nothing good happens in hell.

  Top and Bunny flanked me as I raced toward the Marriott entrance, and the rest of Echo was seeded through the crowd. People screamed when they saw us and they scattered like birds. Some of them ran back up the steps to the hotel. Others ran to the Hyatt and more ducked down behind cars. A few stood there, stupid and immobile with shock, as people with guns ran past them.

  Overhead, I could hear the choppers coming. We had every military bird we could muster. Sixty-three helos. Apaches, Black Hawks, Vipers. All of them heavy with missiles and rockets, machine guns leering out of side doors. Behind and in front of me the National Guard was slamming the barricades shut. The crowd surged toward them and I prayed the barricades would hold.

  The crowds flooding out of the hotel were like a tidal surge and we had to fight our way up each step, bashing people aside. Some of them were so intensely terrified that they didn’t even react to the guns in our hands. They just wanted out.

  Yeah, and we were trying to get in. How smart were we?

  Bunny got in front of me and literally smashed people out of our way. We finally got inside the hotel and that’s when we realized just how bad things were.

  People lay bloody on the ground, trampled by the panicked crowds. Some of them were clearly dead. Others lay crippled and screaming.

  Down the hall and around the corner the screams were even louder, though, and we fought our way through the human tide. We were battered and struck and careened into and tripped by people who were so much less afraid of us and our guns than they were of whatever was happening inside the atrium.

  I realized suddenly that Top and Bunny were no longer with me. Somehow, the crowd had separated us. Ahead, though, I could see a woman standing on a marble wall, waving her arms and shouting at the crowd. Mother Night—but too far away for me to take a shot. All around her was a scene that my mind refused to connect with the real world. After everything I’ve seen, this was too much, too far, too strange. People dressed in Starfleet costumes, people dressed as Dorothy Gale and her companions, people dressed as characters from video games I couldn’t even name, were eating each other.

  It was already far too late.

  There were scores of infected.

  Hundreds.

  And more people died every moment, dragged down and bitten, their flesh torn away, blood everywhere. Screams and pain everywhere.

  Horror everywhere.

  I tapped my earbud. “Echo Team, look for Mother Night. If you see her, take the shot.”

  If there were any replies, it was too loud for me to hear them.

  I jumped up onto the lip of an abandoned information desk, trying to understand the pattern of this. Trying to see Mother Night.

  And there she was, dressed like one of those fantasy characters in Japanese comics. Little-girl clothes recut as a statement of sexuality. I’d always thought that kind of thing crossed the line into some publicly acceptable species of pedophilia, a Lolita lust for the comic book crowd. Never my thing. I like my women grown up. Never had a desire to troll for sex on the school yard. But Mother Night was playing it up. She stood on a high marble wall, well above the grasping hands of the dead, dancing, waving her arms, laughing at the carnage she’d wrought.

  It was at that moment that I realized Bug and Rudy had been right about her and I’d been as wrong as Aunt Sallie, Church, and Hu. Until that moment I’d been looking for clues to her endgame. The chaos in the streets had to be a distraction for something else. The bombs, the release of the pathogens, the videos, all of them had to be carefully planned components of some grand scheme. I’d become even more certain of it when we realized that Mother Night was Artemisia Bliss. She was the master strategist; someone as brilliant and calculating as her had to be working toward a goal every bit as big, as evil, as devastating as what the Jakobys and Hugo Vox had planned.

  Had to be.

  Nothing else made sense. Even Hitler had a damn plan.

  But now I knew what Rudy had understood all along. He’d told us about it at her trial. Maybe Bliss herself had told Aunt Sallie and the others during her initial job interview. I read a transcript of that session, heard her talk about suicide attempts, about the need to stand out. To shine.

  And hadn’t Mother Night told us over and over again?

  Sometimes you have to burn to shine.

  The whole world was watching now. The subway video was probably playing on every TV and computer monitor in the world. The bombs had been like finger snaps, making people turn to listen. The controlled releases of the plagues had set expectations of her power. The destruction of the CDC and the total pathogenic pollution of the Locker were not the result of bungled attempts to secure the bioweapons. She already had what she needed. She used the CDC to kill Samson Riggs and tried to killed me and Echo at the Locker. Perhaps if the Warehouse in Baltimore hadn’t been destroyed last year, resulting in all DMS field offices tripling their security, she might have tried to take out the Hangar.

  Maybe she knew that she couldn’t take on Mr. Church and Aunt Sallie in head-to-head battle. Or, more likely, she left them alone so they could be her witnesses. The most important witnesses. Sure, there have to be witnesses for something to have importance. Church and the others had to see her win and know that they lost. That was the end of the equation.

  That was her endgame right there.

  So what was this? What was it Bug and Rudy thought was going to play out here?

  Sometimes you have to burn to shine.

  If you’re the one who’s burning, what’s left afterward?

  Only the memory of that brilliant light.

  Mother Night stood above the crowd, literally atop the wall, and figuratively as the conductor of the mad symphony playing out below.

  I raised my pistol and fired at her. Handguns are great at close range but they suck ass beyond fifty yards and she was all the way across a sea of the living, the dying, and the hungry dead. I fired anyway.

  For a moment I thought the gods of war had granted me their grace, because she jerked sideways. Then I realized that the bullet had hit the wall nearby and she flinched from the point of impact. She crouched, looking wildly around, and I think she spotted some of my people fighting their way through the crowd. A moment later she was gone, leaping down behind the wall, out of sight.

  So I did the same thing, jumping from the information counter and diving into the crowd. I was still mostly in an area of screaming people caught in a human gridlock
as they fought to flee and in their panic became the enemies of survival for everyone. Bodies lay trampled everywhere. Small knots of people huddled together in corners. I saw several people standing stock-still, their eyes glazed, colorful candy wrappers in their hands. No idea what that was all about, but I had a bad feeling I’d find out.

  Here and there were pockets of resistance. A bartender held his ground behind the counter and used heavy bottles of top-shelf alcohol as clubs, smashing them over the heads of a mass of infected who were trying to crawl past him to get at several cowering patrons. A fat man in chain mail was swinging a sword, except that the sword was still in its sheath, held in place by a peace bond. Even so, he swung the weapon like a cudgel and he laid about him with a will. There were several dead or crippled walkers piled around him. Thirty feet past him, three police officers stood back-to-back in a shooting triangle, firing at anyone who came near them.

  But these pockets could not last.

  Did not last.

  I saw one of the cops begin to reload an empty pistol, and in the few seconds it took for him to drop his magazine and swap in a new one, a teenager in a dark hoodie threw himself at the cop in a tackle that knocked all three of the officers down. Four more infected piled atop them.

  Somewhere off to my left came the big boom of Bunny’s combat shotgun. Again and again. Then more gunfire to my right and behind me. Echo Team and the rest of the shooters. But the crowd was so thick I couldn’t see any of them.

  I began fighting my way toward Mother Night. I needed to stop her. She was the driving force for everything that was happening and I needed to switch her off.

  I tried to push my way toward her, but a new surge swept me sideways.

  I thought I heard someone speaking through my earbud. I pressed the bud deeper into my ear and caught some of it. “… streets secure … crowd surge … need more trucks to block…” Then a note of rising panic. “They’re out! They’re out! I have walkers on … oh God!”