The King of Plagues jl-3

by Jonathan Maberry

  The Saudi gave a thin smile. “None of us are what the world thinks we are.”

  Gault turned to him. “Even you? Why pollute your own name, then? Everyone knows your face—”

  “Do they?” interrupted the Saudi. “People know what they’ve been led to believe. You see this face, this beard, these clothes … but do you see the dialysis machine that the world press insists I’m dependent upon? Do you know for sure that this beard is real? Or that under this beak of a nose I don’t have a smaller one that has been carefully reshaped? Or … is the face beneath the makeup the real one and this exterior merely special effects? How do you know that I’m even a Muslim? I could as easily be a Christian or a Jew or a Buddhist or even an agnostic or atheist. You wonder how it is that I am here in this country when every airport security person in the world knows my face. I ask, are you sure that I have ever been out of this country since 9/11? Or that a surgically altered twin is not making videotapes for me in a cave somewhere? Is any of this true? Or real? I am, after all, the King of Lies.”

  “Your people would tear you to pieces if they got so much as a whiff of this,” Gault said.

  The Saudi shook his head. “My ‘people’ are all here in this room.”

  Gault leaned back and folded his arms. With narrowed eyes and pursed lips he studied the Kings. “Well, well,” he said softly.

  Toys gestured to the empty throne on the dais. “Who’s that for?”

  “Ah,” said the King of Gold, “that is for the Goddess. It was the Goddess who gave birth to the Seven Kings. It was her idea.”

  “It was a family idea,” corrected the American. “We cooked it up together and we brought in the first of the other Kings.”

  The Frenchman turned and bowed. “Indeed, my friend, and I meant no insult. Everyone here honors your contributions.”

  “So … what is my role?” interrupted Gault. “You say that I’m to be the new ‘King of Plagues.’ It sounds wonderful and flattering, but in practical terms, what does it mean? If your goal is to destabilize rather than destroy, then you surely don’t want a global pandemic.”

  “God, no!” laughed the Frenchman. “We want a scalpel, not a sword.”

  Toys looked at Gault, saw how those words cut delicately into him. A scalpel, not a sword. How beautifully phrased to appeal to Gault’s vanity. How sweetly it matched his hungers, his passions. They know him too damn well.

  Gault nodded slowly.

  “Then let us seal this in sacred honor,” said the King of Famine.

  They all stood and placed their hands over their hearts. Sebastian Gault and Toys exchanged a brief look and then did the same. The room quieted and one of the Consciences must have touched a rheostat, because the lights dimmed to a soft glow that extended no farther than the table.

  “Sebastian Gault,” asked the American, the King of Fear, “do you pledge your life to the Seven Kings of the New World Trust?”

  Without a second’s hesitation, Gault said, “Yes, I do.”

  “Will you keep the secrets of the Seven Kings of the New World Trust?” asked the Israeli, the King of War.

  “I will.”

  “Will you share your truths with the Seven Kings of the New World Trust?” asked the Saudi, the King of Lies.

  “I will.”

  “Will you share your secrets openly with the Seven Kings of the New World Trust?” asked the Russian, the King of Famine.

  “Yes, I will.”

  “Will you trust your fortune to the Seven Kings of the New World Trust?” asked the Italian, the King of Gold.

  “I will. Freely and completely.”

  “Will you forswear all other allegiances in favor of the Seven Kings of the New World Trust?” asked the Frenchman, the King of Thieves.

  “All but one,” said Gault. “I have long ago placed my life and trust in the keeping of my friend Alexander Chismer. Toys. As long as he is part of this deal, then I agree with my whole heart.”

  Toys looked up at Gault’s face, surprised at his words. Surprised and more touched than he would have ever admitted.

  “Toys is your Conscience,” said the Saudi. “You speak for him with this oath, and he is oath bound to us as are you.”

  Everyone turned to Toys, who was shaken by everything that he was hearing, and his voice was charged with emotion: “I will always be with Sebastian.”

  There were appreciative nods all around.

  The King of Fear said, “Sebastian Gault, do you pledge your life to the Seven Kings of the New World Trust?”

  “I do,” said Gault, and as he said it he felt tears burning in the corners of his eyes.

  “Then,” said the Saudi, “welcome to our brotherhood. All hail the King of Plagues!”

  In the small room the applause was thunderous.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Fair Isle Research Endeavor

  The Hot Room

  December 18, 3:06 P.M. GMT

  Mikey and I entered the codes and swiped the keys. If he thought there was anything odd about what he was doing or if he wondered why he was doing it, he said nothing. His eyes were almost completely glazed, though, and the bleeding was worse.

  “I’m sleepy,” he said. He leaned against the wall inside the air lock, and as the big door swung shut behind us he slid down and sat on the floor. He looked at me for a moment and I searched for some flicker of awareness, some spark, but there was only the vacuity created by the disease that was consuming him. He lay down on his side, curled his arm like a pillow, and rested his head. His eyelids drifted shut, long lashes brushing round cheeks, and he went to sleep. Blood pooled on the floor around him.

  There was nothing I could do. Not a goddamned thing.

  I wanted to scream, to pound my fists on the walls. But all I could do was continue, to go on, go deeper into this madness.

  God help the first person I caught up with who was part of this thing.

  I pressed the controls on the other side of the air lock. A simpler oneman system. The locks clicked, the air pumps hissed, the disinfectant spray blasted me, and the light went from red to green. Funny. Green is supposed to mean that it’s safe to proceed. I cut a last look back at the boy. Safe.

  Inside my head the Warrior screamed for blood.

  The inner door opened and I stepped into a surreal world. The room was large, much bigger than I expected, and there was a massive steel vault in the center of the floor, surrounded by very thick curved glass of the kind used in commercial aquariums. Inside this “fish tank” standing in a loose line around the vault were twenty-eight people in hazmat suits. Each faceplate was covered with strips of white surgical tape except for a narrow eye slit. The suits were pressure inflated so that they all looked like that Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and the suit material was opaque, so except for height it was impossible to tell the men from the women, and even that wasn’t certain. They were identical. All traces of race, age, and gender were smoothed to a homogenous and alien sameness.

  No one held a gun.

  “Step out of the air lock.” The voice came through the lab’s PA system. It was a man’s voice. American accent. However, if someone in the fish tank was doing the talking I couldn’t tell.

  “I’m good right here,” I said.

  “Step out of the air lock or I’ll shoot one of these people.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “You don’t believe me?” He sounded way too calm, given the situation. I guess I did, too.

  “Sure I do, but I’m not going to give you a new target.”

  “Having an attack of the jitters?”

  “No, I’m having an attack of common sense.”

  He actually laughed at that. But the laugh was sharp and twisted like he had barbed wire in his throat.

  “Are you Dr. Grey?”

  A pause. “Yes.”

  “You haven’t asked about your son.”

  Another pause. Longer this time. “Is he dead yet?”

  “You knew he was sick?”r />
  “Yes.”

  “Did you infect him?”

  Seconds ticked by.

  “Yes,” he said, and now I could hear the strain in his voice. It was like bending close to a piece of steel and seeing the tiny stress fractures.

  “Why?” I asked, my voice as calm as I could make it.

  “I did it to save him.”

  “Well, nice fucking job, Einstein. That poor kid just bled out in the air lock.”

  The PA system was bad, full of distortion, but I could hear his ragged sobs.

  “I did it to save him!” he cried.

  “From what?”

  No answer.

  “Listen … Dr. Grey,” I said, “let’s stop dicking around here. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to do all this, and to get me here. If you have a list of demands, or you want to make some kind of statement, then I’ll listen. But you have to make a show of good faith.”

  “Faith?”

  “You have to let some of these people go. Give up a few hostages. Show me that you’re at least willing to be reasonable.”

  “No,” he said in a voice that sounded as vague and distracted as his son’s had been. “No … I think we’re well past the point of being reasonable.”

  “No, we’re not. There’s still time to—”

  “There is no time. Time ends here, ends now.”

  “Bullshit. If that was the case, then why send for someone from Homeland? Why go to such elaborate lengths? If you have some political or social statement to make, then this is not the way to be heard.”

  The people in the room shifted nervously. I stayed crouched down behind the heavy door, trying to find my target. Still nothing. Or was there? At the far end of the fish tank, one of the figures had shifted position, but she did it very cautiously. It was a small figure, almost certainly a woman, and she slowly raised her arm so that her forearm lay across her midsection. Her hand was curled into a loose fist, but as I watched, she uncurled her index finger. It took a second for me to process it, but then I realized that she was pointing to a spot outside the tank. I deliberately turned away, sweeping my eyes and gun in a wide arc as if covering the room, but when I swept back toward her she was still pointing. She even twitched her hand a little to emphasize her meaning.

  “This isn’t about politics,” said Grey. He muttered something else after that, but it was too low for me to hear. A remark to himself. I think he said, “At least I don’t think it is.”

  I surreptitiously cut my eyes in the direction the woman indicated and saw a row of gray filing cabinets lining the far side of the Hot Room. There were several of them and from where I stood I couldn’t see what was beyond them, but if someone was on the other side, they’d be able to see the fish tank and my reflection in the glass. It couldn’t have been a large space, and there wasn’t enough cover for someone to stand behind it. But … was someone sitting on the floor? Yeah … there was enough cover for that.

  Gotcha.

  “Then what’s it about, Doc? Give me something so I can help you.”

  “I don’t need help!” His voice was thicker. More tears, or had he been exposed to the pathogen as well? The big clock in my head went tick-tock.

  “Then tell me what you do need.”

  “I need you to step out of the air lock. I swear I won’t hurt you. But I need to see you. I need to look into your eyes.”

  “And why would that be?”

  “Because I need to know if I can trust you.”

  “Trust is a funny request from someone who just killed his kid.”

  “I could have vented the Ebola into the atmosphere,” he said. “I didn’t have to warn anyone. I didn’t have to bring you here. I could have made this much worse.”

  Worse than murdering your own kid? I wondered, but he was right. If a strain of fast-acting airborne Ebola reached England or the Continent …

  “If you want to earn my trust, Doc, why not let some of the hostages go?”

  “No!” he snapped with abrupt ferocity. “No, they stay.”

  “And you want me to become a hostage, too?”

  “No,” he said, and maybe it was the distortion of the PA system, but he sounded genuinely surprised. “No, don’t you get it? This isn’t about you! I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t even know you.”

  “But you do know these people. Aren’t they your friends? Your colleagues and co-workers?”

  “Exactly!” he said as if he’d just made a point.

  He sneezed. I heard it through the PA system and I heard it in the room. He was definitely over behind the filing cabinets.

  “I don’t have much time,” he said. “God … Mikey.”

  “Where is your wife, Dr. Grey?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Is she dead, too?”

  “Yes,” he said after a long pause.

  “Help me understand this. You take your co-workers hostage and yet you kill your own family?”

  “I won’t explain over the com system.”

  Seems that my options dwindled down to just one.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m going to stand up and step out of the air lock. If this is an ambush, believe me when I tell you that I’m better at this than you are. If I see a gun in your hand I will shoot you dead.”

  “I won’t shoot you.”

  “Same rules apply if I see a trigger device. You’re not winning friends here.”

  “No,” he said, “I expect not. Monsters don’t have friends.”

  That was a comforting statement.

  “Coming out,” I called, and I let my gun lead the way as I straightened and eased out of the air lock. The hostages all took an involuntary step back as I fanned the pistol barrel across them. I had the file cabinets in my peripheral vision, and I was ready to bust a cap in absolutely anything that moved.

  Suddenly I heard a ripping sound to my right and knew for certain now that he was there. There were no shots, no further sounds.

  I had my pistol in a two-handed shooter’s grip and I moved low and fast, checking every corner, and when I reached the wall of filing cabinets I took a breath and then whirled around.

  Dr. Charles Grey sat on the floor. He held a beaker of some evil-looking liquid in his left hand. His pistol lay next to his right thigh. The hood of his hazmat suit was gone, torn open and partly off, which explained the tearing sound I’d heard. His face was puffed and red from crying, but he wasn’t sick. Not yet. He’d been waiting for me to arrive before subjecting himself to the Ebola pathogen.

  He looked up at me with eyes that were filled with a devastating sadness. The microphone fell from his hand.

  “Help me,” he said softly. “Please, for the love of God help me … . I don’t want to kill the world.”

  Interlude Twenty-one

  The Seven Kings

  Four Months Ago

  After the oath was given and accepted, there was a party. The Kings and their Consciences left the chamber and went up into the castle, where tables had been set, food laid out, and a thousand candles lighted. There were scores of people—members of the upper-echelon staff, rock stars, politicians, famous artists.

  The American took Gault and Toys aside before they entered the ballroom.

  “Careful what you say in here.”

  “These people don’t know?” asked Gault.

  “Nah. They think this is a party, and most of these lunkheads are professional party people. They jet-set around the world to wherever the party is. Drinking, snorting, and fucking their way through the glitterati landscape. No cameras are allowed and the stuff that happens here never makes it to the press.”

  “Yes,” murmured Toys with a smile, “we’ve swum in these waters for years.”

  The American laughed. “Good point. Then you know the rules.”

  “The only rule is silence,” said Toys.

  “Fucking A.” The American clapped them both on the shoulders and then dove into the eddying waters of flesh and excess.

 
; Gault made to follow, but Toys touched his arm. “Sebastian … are you sure about this?”

  “About what? Getting drunk and getting laid?”

  “I’m being serious here.”

  “Why?” asked Gault. “Why are you even hesitating? I could tell when we were in there that you didn’t like it. Why? This is what we have both wanted forever. All this power has been handed to us.”

  “When you’re done coming in your pants, how about stepping back for a perspective check? Don’t you think this is all too much too soon? And too free?”

  A look of disappointment flickered over Gault’s face. “I understand that you’re still off-balance from what happened with Amirah and the Seif Al Din, Toys. Granted our luck turned bad with that.” He touched the bandages that covered part of his handsome face. “Don’t think that I’ve forgotten, or could ever forget. But sometimes fortune does smile on people. We’ve landed on our feet here. We’ve landed hip deep in gold dust. We’re among friends.”

  “They’re not my friends,” said Toys defensively.

  “Sure they are. They’re my friends and what’s mine is yours. Now stop being a pussy and let’s go get what we deserve!”

  Toys started to protest, but Gault clapped him hard on the shoulder—much harder than had the American—and pulled him into the noise and movement of the party.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The Blue Bell Inn

  Skippack Pike, Blue Bell, Pennsylvania

  December 18, 3:07 P.M. EST

  Rudy stopped at the Blue Bell Inn and asked for a table as far away from other diners as possible. The place was warm and cheery with Christmas decorations and twinkling lights. Rudy barely registered them. He was shown to a corner deuce where he ordered coffee and waited for the server to go away. Then he removed his cell, activated the scrambler, and called Mr. Church.