The Noise

by James Patterson

  Aside from the clothing, the cabinets around the sink were bare.

  There was a small air-conditioning vent near the ceiling, not large enough for either of them to fit. The door was made of steel. Four cameras looked down at them, one in each corner. Each camera had a harsh red eye that blinked every other second. She tried not to look up at those.

  Sophie’s skin felt warm but not hot like earlier, and Tennant told herself that was good. She was still sweating, though. Not as bad, but still…hopefully that was her body forcing out the poison, fighting this nasty, evil thing growing within her.

  “Help me, Tennnnant. I die. I to die. You watchin’ me to die.”

  The words drifted up from Sophie’s lips so quietly, at first Tennant thought she imagined them. Then Sophie’s eyes opened. Narrow slits, as if unable to look out upon the harsh lights from above.

  “Sophie?” She brushed the hair from her sister’s forehead with her fingertips and touched her again. Without a thermometer, it was difficult to be sure, but she felt even cooler. With a damp paper towel, she wiped the sweat away and dried her skin. The telltale glisten of perspiration didn’t return. “Can you hear me?”

  Sophie’s eyes opened a little more. Her dilated pupils shrunk, focused, found Tennant. “Where we?”

  “They took us to an Army base somewhere in Washington, I think. How do you feel?”

  Sophie’s head slowly turned from one side to the other, taking in the small room. She pressed her eyes shut again, as if in pain. “Annnna Shimm calling. Calling sooo loud, Tennnnnant.”

  Tennant gently slapped her cheek. “Stay with me, Sophie.”

  When her sister’s eyes opened again, they didn’t seem so red. The yellow was gone, too. “You look much better.”

  “I dying. I need to go, Tennnant. I don’t go…I die.”

  Tennant shook her head. “No. You need to fight this.”

  “Her voice beautiful, like music. Like Ma’s records. Beautiful music. She need me, my Annna Shimm.”

  “You need to stay here with me,” Tennant insisted.

  Sophie’s eyes grew wide. “Noooo. You go with me. You run with me. You run with Annnna Shiiim. All run with Anna Shim.” She turned her head again and faced the sink. “Sooo thirsty.”

  Tennant tugged a paper cup from the dispenser on the wall, filled it, and brought it back to Sophie. She helped hold her head up so she could drink.

  The cracks in her sister’s lips had healed some. They weren’t bleeding anymore.

  Sophie tugged at the leather straps on her arms. “Take these off. I nooo hurt you. Not no more. Okay now.”

  She did seem much better, but Tennant wasn’t sure she could trust her. There was no place for her to go, though. They were locked in. No doubt soldiers right outside the door. More beyond that.

  Tennant unfastened Sophie’s right wrist, let the strap fall to the side of the gurney. When her sister made no move to hurt her, she undid the left one, too. Sophie rubbed both her wrists as Tennant undid the straps on her ankles.

  Sophie rolled to the edge of the gurney and sat up. She flexed her feet and rolled her head on her stiff neck. Her gaze settled on one of the cameras. She slowly turned and found the others, then smiled at Tennant. “We poke out their eyes now.”

  Chapter Sixty

  Tennant

  Sophie slid off the edge of the gurney and dropped to the floor. She padded across the tile on her bare feet and looked up at the underside of one of the cameras. The fingers of her tiny hands flexed and curled into fists. She slowly shifted her weight from her left foot to her right and back again, her body swaying. Tennant could hear her breathing, this thick, raspy sound as phlegm and mucus caught in her throat.

  All went suddenly silent.

  In a blur, Sophie’s knees bent and she leaped. How she was able to jump so high was lost on Tennant, but somehow her sister shot nearly straight up, curled her fingers around the wiring between the camera and the wall, and tore it out as her weight brought her back down to the floor. The second camera, the third, the fourth, they all came apart with equal haste and by the time Tennant’s eyes found Sophie again, she was standing at the sink, shuffling again—right to left, left to right—agitated, growing faster.

  Sophie leaned in, gripped the water pipe under the sink, and yanked it free. A metal ring and chunks of plastic blew out across the floor as water sprayed out with a loud hiss from the damaged pipe—soaking her and her new clothes, spilling out over the tile.

  All of this played out in a matter of seconds, and Tennant found herself standing in a growing puddle of water. She watched as it sprayed out across the room, reached the walls and door.

  Would it fill the room?

  Would they drown?

  Sophie crossed back over to the gurney and stood behind it, her fingers wrapped around the cold steel, her eyes on the door.

  She screamed this horrible, gut-wrenching shrill cry with no end—no pause for breath, no break at all, only a horrible shriek that caused the hair on Tennant’s arms to stand on end.

  The door handle jiggled, the door swung open—one soldier quickly surveyed the room while a second had his eyes down on the ground, watching the water lick at his shoes a moment longer than he probably should have.

  Sophie’s grip tightened on the end of the gurney. She pushed the heavy metal table forward on wobbly wheels and barreled into the first guard, catching him in the gut. He slipped and tumbled back into the second guard, who tried to grab the wall for support but missed. They both fell to the floor in a clatter of guns and limbs, the gurney rolling over the top of both.

  Sophie vaulted up onto the gurney and rolled off the opposite side into the hallway. With a quick glance in both directions, she was gone.

  “Wait!” Tennant cried out after her. She was halfway out the door when one of the guards grabbed her by the ankle. She kicked him with her free foot, connecting with his jaw, then stomped on his forearm.

  He yelped, released her, and she ran off after her sister, moving as fast as she could but not fast enough. She almost missed Sophie turning right at the end of the hallway and disappearing from sight.

  She yelled again as she ran, but that did little good. Her sister moved with impossible speed, a wild animal free of the noose with hunters at its back.

  Tennant rounded the corner an instant after Sophie burst through a metal fire door at the opposite end. Two more soldiers were on the floor in the hallway—one on his back, the other on her side leaning against the wall—both stunned and wide-eyed at whatever they’d just seen. Tennant managed to get around them and to the door before either recovered. As she pushed through the outer door, the cool evening air lapped at her. Although the sun wouldn’t set for several more hours, thick rain clouds choked the sky and blotted out the light, casting everything in a gray haze.

  Tennant looked wildly about and spotted Sophie nearly sixty yards away, running alongside a low concrete building. Her long, wet shirt slapped against her skin. Rather than sway at her sides, her arms were perfectly straight, held down and back. Her fingers were splayed out as if reaching for the ground.

  A loud siren came to life somewhere nearby, then another farther off.

  Footsteps clattered on the tile behind her. A soldier shouted, “Don’t move!”

  Tennant did move. She darted off after her sister, ahead of several people running behind her. Growing up on the mountain, spending most of her time outdoors, she knew she was physically in good shape, probably better than any of the soldiers, but she also knew if she looked back she might trip, or falter. Her sister was at least eighty yards ahead now, the distance growing. Tennant sucked in air, willed her body to work harder. The muscles in her legs burned, her chest hurt. She ignored it all and pressed forward.

  Additional soldiers appeared all around, joining the chase. Tennant caught a glimpse of a Jeep racing toward them between buildings on her right.

  A hundred yards ahead now, Sophie was nearing a chain-link fence, nothing
but forest on the other side. Tall redwoods and thick brambles. The fence had to be at least ten or twelve feet tall, maybe more. It was topped with spools of razor wire, and even from this distance, the large red-and-white signs warning of electrocution were visible, posted every twenty feet or so.

  Sophie hadn’t slowed at the sight of the fence but somehow managed to speed up, and all Tennant could think about was how she had jumped up so effortlessly and destroyed the security cameras. She’d either die trying to get over the fence, or even worse, she’d make it and disappear into those woods. She’d lose her sister forever.

  The Jeep blew by Tennant on her right, at least five people inside, maybe six. When the driver caught sight of Sophie up ahead, he gunned the gas and the engine roared. They overtook Sophie, skidded to a stop at the fence line, and the soldiers scrambled out. They formed a line and knelt down. Their guns went up, each pointed at her sister.

  Tennant tried to scream, but she was so out of breath nothing came out but a stuttered gasp.

  A second Jeep raced by.

  Sophie neared the fence—sixty yards.

  Forty yards.

  The second Jeep came to a stop next to the first.

  Twenty yards.

  Sophie sped up. Somehow she managed to find more speed, and Tennant knew she was going to try and jump over.

  Ten yards.

  The first shot was the loudest.

  Although the bullet didn’t strike her, Tennant felt the blast in her chest as if it had. Three more guns went off a moment later in quick succession.

  Tennant watched in horror as Sophie’s legs came out from under her, and she tumbled forward. She hit the blacktop hard and rolled, her tiny body twisting awkwardly as her head cracked against the ground with a sickening thump.

  This time, Tennant did manage to scream. She yelled so loud her vocal cords felt as if someone sliced them with a razor blade. She closed the distance and fell to the ground next to her sister.

  Sophie wasn’t moving.

  Dr. Fitch climbed out of the second Jeep, holding a stopwatch. “Thirty-six minutes. That’s all it took for this little girl to not only recover from the sedatives in her body, but to escape a high-security facility and reach a potential exit. That’s remarkable.” He turned to a woman next to him. She was holding something that looked like a ray gun from a science-fiction comic. “How fast?”

  The woman studied a display on the back. “Thirty-seven miles per hour at the end there and she was still picking up speed!” She looked up at the doctor, her mouth hanging open. “The fastest person on record is Usain Bolt—twenty-eight miles per hour in the hunded-meter. This is extraordinary!”

  Tennant stopped listening. She scooped Sophie up into her arms and pulled her close to her chest. They hadn’t shot her with bullets. Instead, her body was riddled with darts.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Martha

  Martha and Harbin watched the new video for the umpteenth time and tried to wrap their heads around what they’d seen. They were in a small conference room two buildings over from the hangar where they’d met with the president. Fraser was still aboard Air Force One with the others. They’d been told neither of them had a clearance level high enough to remain for the conversation currently taking place.

  This new video had come in about ten minutes before that over a secure satellite feed, and it had everyone spooked, including her.

  They’d tracked the horde from the shopping mall in Herdon, Oregon, to another town about ten miles away. The footage was shaky, taken from a helicopter. Fraser had told them the name of the town, but Martha didn’t remember. It didn’t matter. It might as well have been Anytown, USA.

  The horde came in from the east. First a single runner, then several more, then this flood of bodies. Men, women, children, pressed so tightly together they looked like a single organism bursting out of the woods into the street. They didn’t slow for cars, signs, poles, buildings, nothing. When they encountered an obstacle, they either ran through it, over it, or trampled whatever it was. If someone tripped, if someone got caught up underfoot, they were dead, crushed. The more Martha watched the video, the more she was convinced dying was better than the alternative—joining those who ran. When she froze the picture, she could see the utter exhaustion in their blank faces—the drawn, tight skin of severe dehydration. The yellow jaundice of failing livers. Some ran with broken limbs. One man ran on a bloody stump, his foot gone. Yet, somehow, they were unable to stop. Unable to slow down. And they moved with incredible speed. These people would run until their bodies failed them. While this was terrifying, it wasn’t the worst part. She had rewound the video and played it side by side with the one from the shopping mall several times before she realized the worst part.

  Harbin leaned in closer. “My God, you’re right,” he said softly. “It makes no sense. How can this be happening?”

  Martha had no answer, only watched the video play out again.

  As the horde encountered people from the town, those people joined the runners. Unlike the previous video, there was no hesitation, no panic, they simply dropped whatever they were doing and began to run. Within seconds the giant mass swallowed them whole and grew that much larger.

  “They’re just joining the others—no sound as a trigger,” Harbin said more to himself than to her. His finger traced the screen, hovered over glass storefronts and car windows—unlike the previous video, most were intact here. Anything broken appeared to have been caught up in the path of the horde, not shattered by the sound as a precursor.

  “We don’t know what they’re hearing on the ground,” Martha pointed out. “All you can hear is the damn helicopter in this footage.”

  “Remember what Fraser told us about the private jet over Mount Hood, though. They were in the path of the sound and went down. How is this helicopter able to fly over? The only thing that makes sense is the problem is evolving. The horde itself is now infecting people, not just the sound anymore.”

  “Maybe the horde is generating the sound?” But even as she said this, Martha saw a flaw in her logic—they had a chicken and egg scenario—the sound came before the horde, right?

  There was a loud knock at the doorway.

  Martha and Harbin turned to find Fraser standing in the opening, the lights above casting him in shadows. He stepped into the room, his face long and tired. He looked at them both and slid a tablet across the table. “It’s out. The media has footage. I’m not sure where they got it. They don’t know what to make of it, but images are popping up everywhere.”

  Martha gave Harbin a sidelong glance, then pulled the tablet closer. On one of the news sites, the headline read CROWD STORMS MCDONALD’S and there was a short video clip taken from a camera at the drive-thru. This wasn’t the Volkswagen they’d found in the drive-thru in Barton, but somewhere else. When Martha clicked Play, a rush of people came into frame. They ran around the side of the cars, up and over. The employee working the window had her arm extended when they appeared, holding out a bag—her arm got caught in the rush and snapped backward, cracked against the window frame. She fell back into the restaurant and out of sight.

  From the speakers of the tablet, the noise shrilled out, quickly growing louder. Martha’s fingers fumbled over the mute button and switched off the sound. A moment later, the image went dark, most likely due to camera damage. The video stopped, and she hit the Back button on the browser. The screen filled with search results—hundreds of stories. Many of the headlines claimed it was a hoax, like some kind of flash mob gone wrong. A few others used words like unprecedented and disturbing. Others simply said, What happened?

  “A local network out of Eugene got it first. CNN after that. It’s everywhere now. They’re not sure what to make of it, not yet,” Fraser explained. “Aside from the clip you just watched, there are three others. All taken from security cameras. That seems to be slowing things down a little bit—there’s no cell phone footage. Nothing from camcorders or other devices, onl
y fixed security cameras.”

  “Why is that?” Then Martha understood. The answer was in the video she had just watched with Harbin—anyone close enough to film the horde joined the horde.

  “The sound was captured in the video…that noise,” Harbin said. “It’s muted, distilled, but still painful to listen to, even as a distant recording—at least for me. I can still hear it, like a ringing in my ears. And this pressure similar to the beginnings of a migraine.”

  “Same here,” Martha said.

  Fraser nodded. “Dr. Fitch ran some earlier tests based on the recording we brought back from Barton. The noise brings on severe physical discomfort in everyone who hears it. He documented physiological changes in blood pressure, heart rate, and brain activity. He asked for additional neuroimaging equipment. It arrived about ten minutes ago. He believes the sound induces a reaction similar to one we might feel the moment before a car accident or similar traumatic event, but rather than this being a limited reaction—a microsecond or two—it’s prolonged. The body continues in this heightened state the entire time it’s exposed to the noise.”

  Martha considered this, but it didn’t make sense. “The body couldn’t keep that up. It would be fatal. Like running a car on nitrous for too long, the engine burns out.”

  Harbin pulled the tablet closer and scrolled through all the stories. “This isn’t just the news networks. People are sharing the videos on all the social media sites, probably peer-to-peer with text messages and email, too. If recordings have this detrimental impact, what will happen when people are exposed to it repeatedly from all these different sources?”

  Fraser sighed and tapped his fingers nervously on the edge of the table. “We’re not sure yet. Dr. Fitch is hoping he’ll learn more after extended exposure with the two survivors from Mount Hood.”