7 Sykos

by Marsheila Rockwell

  So far—­on paper, anyway—­Hank Light was a pure psychopath.

  A commotion outside tore her attention away from her data. Had Light escaped, or Warga? Had the fence been breached? Fallon couldn’t think of any possibilities that weren’t bad. Davidson still hadn’t come inside, even though Ramirez had been gone for a little while. She and Romero exchanged glances, then simultaneously started toward the door.

  She stepped outside. Davidson and some others were running toward the main gate. Her gaze followed their path, and she saw what was causing the fuss. A Stryker was rolling in through the gate. When they’d left, they were painted in olive drab, but this one looked like it had been attacked by graffiti artists—­it was splashed liberally with what appeared to be gallons of red paint, and plastered with . . . well, what, she couldn’t tell from here.

  She hadn’t taken very many steps toward it when she realized that the paint was actually blood, and the rest were parts.

  Fallon looked beyond the carnage-­encrusted Stryker, but she couldn’t see the other tactical vehicles anywhere.

  The Stryker slowed to a stop, but soldiers on the ground frantically motioned to the driver to keep going. The vehicle stuttered, as if the driver was unsure, but then it started rolling again. The soldiers directed it into one of the new infield buildings that looked like a big garage. The sliding door was thrown open, and the Stryker moved inside. Fallon heard sounds she couldn’t identify. She started toward the garage, along with Romero and most of the troops who were outside. By the time she reached it, doors banged shut, and locks were thrown.

  She saw Davidson standing outside the garage, and stopped beside him. Following his gaze, she looked into the brightly lit space. The Stryker sat inside what looked like a giant terrarium. “What is that?”

  “Quarantine chamber,” Davidson said.

  “A quarantine chamber big enough for a tank?”

  “It’s not a tank, it’s a Stryker NBCRV.”

  “I wasn’t being literal.”

  “ ’Course not, sorry.”

  The vehicle’s hatches opened, and soldiers emerged. The last one out was Specialist Briggs. He looked thirty years older than when he’d left. He was too far away for Fallon to be certain, but she thought his eyes looked shadowed. Haunted.

  By now, General Robbins and a ­couple of assistant SecDefs had shown up, along with Ehlers, Thurman, and some of the other top dogs. Book was there, too, but he hung back from the rest, spying her and navigating through the throng to stand beside her, where he seemed to feel more comfortable. Fallon nodded at him before returning her attention to the bigwigs.

  They congregated close to the glass—­or Plexiglas, she couldn’t be sure—­and gathered around what she realized now was a microphone. A squeal of feedback, quickly cut off, told her that the inside of the glass was miked, too. The soldiers stood on the other side from the brass, ready to make their report. But before Briggs could speak, Robbins’s voice boomed out, carrying over the murmuring crowd and the all-­but-­abandoned track.

  “Where the hell are the other Strykers?”

  Silence descended as Briggs answered.

  “Gone, sir.”

  “What was that, Specialist?”

  “They’re gone, sir,” Briggs repeated, louder this time, though Fallon was sure everyone had heard him just fine before. “Destroyed, their crews dead.

  “We’re the only survivors.”

  CHAPTER 15

  67 hours

  Book wasn’t sure if it was his own gasp he heard, Fallon’s, or a collective shocked intake of breath from the entire crowd. Then everyone seemed to start talking at once.

  “Did you hear? No survivors . . .”

  “ . . . is that even possible? Those things are armored up the ass . . .”

  “ . . . can take out a Stryker, what good is a fence going . . .”

  “Ten-­HUT!”

  Book wasn’t sure which officer had barked the command—­it would have been beneath Robbins—­but suddenly, every soldier, inside quarantine and out, was standing with heels together, chests out, heads high, and mouths closed.

  Into that silence, the general spoke.

  “Give me your report, Specialist.”

  Book was close enough that he could see Briggs nod, but not so close he could see the other man’s eyes or make out his expressions. As the soldier began relating his tale in a voice just this side of the grave, Book found that he was glad.

  “Yes, sir. Things were pretty quiet once we went outside the wire. Sergeant Kenton was in the lead Stryker, relaying intel back to us. There wasn’t much movement in the residential areas, but we could feel ­people watching from behind shutters and curtains. Not so different from being on a convoy in the sandbox, really, except we didn’t have to worry about getting fu—­sorry, sir, I mean, we didn’t have to worry about encountering any IEDs.

  “Didn’t start to get hairy until we were on the highway, heading into downtown. There were cars pulled off onto the shoulder, sitting in the divide, just stopped in the middle of the lanes, but we were able to navigate around them. Or through them.

  “Then we got to the tunnel.”

  Book wasn’t from Phoenix; he had no idea what the significance of Briggs’s statement was, but he saw Fallon wince, and even some of the local soldiers around him shifted uncomfortably. He understood enough about combat strategy to realize it was a chokepoint, and that screamed ambush. Years of playing MMORPGs in his downtime were good for something, it seemed.

  But he didn’t understand why a place that would be an obvious spot for an ambush in a real war would be one in a battle against violent individuals with a penchant for grey matter. It wasn’t as if the Infecteds could act in any coordinated fashion. Moreover, he still couldn’t understand why they would even bother with a heavily armed vehicle if there was easier prey in the vicinity. And there had to be easier prey, downtown in a major metropolitan center.

  “Some of us suggested going around, but Sarge wanted to go straight through. Didn’t want to waste time looking for another route. So we put the headlights on, slowed down, and started through, his vehicle taking point, mine bringing up the rear.

  “The east side of the tunnel was still open, but as we went in, it was clogged with more and more cars. Sarge’s Stryker was able to push the smaller vehicles out of the way, but it was slow going.

  “And then we ran into ­people.”

  Briggs’s voice had grown quieter as he spoke, and it was almost comical to see the soldiers still standing at attention straining forward to hear. Book thought he could probably topple them like dominoes without too much effort, but figured the brass would frown on that. Still, he couldn’t hide a small smile at the incongruous thought, which earned him an odd look from Fallon.

  Great, now she’s going to think I’m a psycho, too.

  His fledgling grin died in infancy, and he looked back toward the garage quickly.

  “They were all grouped together between some stopped cars, standing over something. Someone. We weren’t supposed to stop, but they were blocking the way, and Sarge figured someone was hurt, maybe couldn’t be moved. So he ordered a halt and sent Haskins and Phelps out. Phelps had taken some nursing classes before joining up, so Sarge thought he’d be the best one to assess the situation.”

  Even at this distance, Book could see the greenish cast to the specialist’s skin, the horrified look on his face.

  “They had their guns ready, but . . . they thought they were dealing with ordinary ­people—­hurt, scared, maybe, but on our side. We all did.”

  “Idiots,” Fallon murmured under her breath. Book shot her a glance; she was shaking her head and frowning the way ­people watching a horror movie often did, her face awash in a mixture of frustration and dread.

  “They got about five feet away and could finally see what the crowd was
looking at. Phelps described it to the rest of us, whispering over the com—­several children sitting around a woman’s body. The car closest to them had the driver’s door open, and the windshield was starred and bloody on the inside where someone—­Phelps thought the woman—­had cracked her head open when the car rear-­ended the one in front of it.

  “He said it looked like the kids had pulled her out of the car and sat down to make a picnic out of her brain. They’d picked her brainpan clean. When he said that, Haskins turned around and threw up.

  “And that’s when the rest of them took notice.”

  Not even military discipline could keep the crowd from moving forward, hanging on Briggs’s every word. Book moved with them, Fallon beside him, one of the soldiers who had been assigned to watch her—­Romero, if he remembered correctly—­on her other side.

  “They swarmed Haskins and Phelps before either one of them could get off a shot. We could hear them shouting and screaming over the com. Sarge was blasting into them with the M2, but it was too late. Phelps and Haskins were . . . just . . . gone.”

  “What do you mean, ‘gone,’ soldier?”

  It was the first time General Robbins had spoken since Briggs had started his story. Book couldn’t see the general’s face, but he thought the man’s voice sounded gruffer than usual.

  Book didn’t really think Briggs’s word choice needed elaboration—­it was pretty obvious the two soldiers had died horribly—­but when he saw the specialist, who’d been on the verge of tears, straighten and collect himself, the analyst understood what Robbins was doing. Bringing the soldier out of the memory, back to the present. Back from the edge of hysteria. His respect for the general rose a notch.

  “Sorry, sir. Um, they died, sir. Were killed by . . . the Infecteds. Torn apart.

  “Sarge ordered a retreat, but he was in the lead. By the time the rest of us could reverse course, the Infecteds had left Haskins and Phelps behind and started toward their vehicle. Sarge was able to take out some of them with his fifty-­cal, but most of them just wouldn’t go down, and they made it to the Stryker and started climbing on it.

  “I don’t know how they figured out how to get in—­maybe it was just like a big metal skull to them, and they just kept at it ’til they cracked it open. But somehow they got the rear hatch open and got inside. Sarge was in there, and Cooper. We heard gunfire, screams. One loud report that I think was . . . was Cooper offing himself. Then we just heard grunts, and growls, and . . . slurping noises.”

  Book glanced at the gore on the Stryker and gave silent thanks that he hadn’t yet eaten.

  “But Sarge had the last laugh,” Briggs was saying. “I guess he managed to pull the pin on a grenade before they got him, because all of a sudden there was this roaring sound over the com, and we could feel the ground shake as we hightailed it out of there. Corporal McCann was in the second Stryker—­now the last one—­and he got eyes on Sarge’s vehicle. What was left of it was up against the side of the tunnel, wheels still turning even though it couldn’t go anywhere. The top hatch was blown off, and the rest was smoke and flames and body parts.

  “Corporal Healy was in charge now, and she ordered us to take the first exit when we got out of the tunnel and take surface streets the rest of the way. And no more stopping, no matter what.”

  Briggs looked up then—­he’d been staring at the floor for most of the tale except when Robbins spoke to him directly.

  “We got through downtown, though we kept having to detour where the cars were jammed too close. And we kept running into Infecteds, more and more the farther east we got. Healy ordered us to flatten anyone—­anything—­that got in the way, and we did.” He shuddered then, and Book had a sudden flash of the video footage of Light running down that woman and her child in the street. “I mean, we thought they were Infecteds, but . . . they looked just like us, really, so we couldn’t always be sure.”

  “Did anyone think to bring a psychiatrist when they set this place up?” Fallon asked suddenly, jarring Book out of the memory. He looked over at her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A psychiatrist. Briggs and the other survivors are going to need one—­probably half the ­people listening, too. But especially the soldiers. Living through that kind of trauma, when they’re all so young? You’d be surprised at what effects early-­childhood trauma has on ­people. And even later in life, protracted, traumatic stress—­such as combat—­can cause a similar impact. It doesn’t even have to cause PTSD to affect their brain structure.”

  Fallon didn’t say it, but he knew her specialty was psychopathic brains, so he had to assume the changes she was talking about weren’t for the better.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I can look into it.”

  “Do,” she said. “And soon.”

  She turned back toward Briggs, and Book did the same. The specialist was still talking.

  “ . . . though she’d ordered us not to stop, sometimes we had to. Stop, back up, go around. One of those times, Healy’s Stryker got stuck, wedged in between a ­couple of semis we were trying to get past. Before she could get it unstuck, Infecteds on the other side of the big rigs attacked.

  “Healy ordered her crew out, sent them to the next Stryker in line, told them—­us—­to get the hell out of there. She stayed behind, taking a page out of Sarge’s book and lobbing grenades out in front of her Stryker, into the mob of Infecteds. When she ran out of those, she used the top-­mounted MK-­19. When they got too close for that, she used her M4. And, finally, when they were on top of her, she ate her sidearm. But she gave the rest of us time to get away.

  “She saved us,” he said, suddenly earnest as he looked at General Robbins. “She was a hero.”

  “And she’ll get a hero’s recognition, son. You all will.”

  Briggs nodded, seemingly reassured by the general’s surprisingly gentle tone. Then the specialist took a deep breath and continued his horror story.

  “That left us with no one who knew the area and me in charge. GPS said we were more than halfway to the meteor site, with no easy way to get there from where we were. I had to make a decision.”

  Briggs stopped, took another deep breath.

  “I decided to push on. So when Gordon’s Stryker got overrun with his crew and the rest of Healy’s inside, those deaths were all on me.”

  Book hoped Robbins would disagree and disabuse the specialist of his shame, but the general said nothing. And so Briggs continued, his guilt unabated.

  “There was nothing else I could do at that point. The closer we got, the more Infecteds we encountered, and we had just the one Stryker left—­damaged when a grenade bounced the wrong way—­and virtually no ammo. I ordered the retreat. We barely made it back here. As you can see.”

  “You did the right thing, Specialist,” General Robbins said, but from where Book stood, Briggs didn’t look convinced. He nodded anyway, and returned the general’s salute smartly, ever the dutiful soldier. But Book watched him after Robbins turned and barked at everyone to return to their duties, and the young man’s head fell, and his shoulders drooped, as if telling his tale had snuffed out whatever spark had gotten him back to the PIR. Book suddenly wondered how many guns were still in the Stryker, and if any of them still had bullets. He fervently hoped not.

  As the crowd dispersed in response to Robbins’s order, Fallon pushed her way upstream, toward the general and the rest of the head honchos, and Book followed in her wake.

  “ . . . theory’s useless if we don’t have a way to test it. I don’t see what other option we have, except to move up the timetable,” Robbins was saying. He and the others started walking back toward the grandstands, arguing heatedly among themselves, but Fallon hurried and grabbed Thurman and Ramirez before they could follow.

  “What is it, Fallon?” Thurman asked, somewhat brusquely, eyeing the departing group, clearly a
nxious to join them.

  “Never mind them,” Fallon said, pitching her voice low. “Briggs and the others couldn’t get to the meteor, but maybe there’s someone else who can.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ramirez asked. Fallon had her attention, and Thurman’s now, too.

  Fallon smiled, her expression inexplicably giving Book a chill.

  “I have an idea . . .”

  CHAPTER 16

  63 hours

  Thurman hadn’t loved her idea, but Ramirez had been all for it, and the two women had finally prevailed on the DOJ official to put the plan in motion. The first hurdle had been cleared.

  The next hurdle was getting Light and Warga to agree. Fallon didn’t particularly relish having to negotiate with either one of them, but she knew Light would be the more aggressive of the two since he was arguably smarter and already knew they wanted something from him.

  So she’d start with Warga.

  It was past noon when she and Davidson entered the modular building Fallon had come to think of as the Prison Block. She had no idea why the thing had so many cells—­she’d asked Book, and he told her there were twelve—­but she was glad it would be able to house all of her psychos once they got here.

  Her stomach grumbled, and she realized she hadn’t eaten anything today. And that gave her an idea. She turned to the guard stationed inside the door.

  “Have you given the prisoners lunch yet?”