The Noise

by James Patterson

  Was, Martha had thought, but she didn’t say anything.

  Harbin hadn’t touched much of his food. She caught him staring up at the clock on the back wall.

  In less than an hour, the horde would reach Gresham, and they had no idea how to stop it. She felt like they should still be in the lab, but she wasn’t sure what else she could do. She needed a quick break to regroup her thoughts. She needed sleep, too, but that certainly wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

  “We should take some food back for Sophie,” Tennant suggested. “Other than whatever she got through those IVs, she hasn’t eaten at all. Even the devil’s got to eat.”

  On the screen of the iPad, Sophie’s head jerked up. Her eyes darted anxiously about. Her nose wrinkled as she appeared to smell something.

  Dr. Fitch appeared at the open doorway. He was slightly out of breath, as if he’d run there. He looked at both Harbin and Martha. “Lieutenant Colonel Fraser is back. You need to come with me.”

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Martha

  The three of them followed Fitch out the cafeteria to the Jeep he’d left running just outside the building. Harbin climbed in front, Martha and Tennant in back. Tennant had brought her extra roll and the remains of the brownie. She held them both out to Martha, who shook her head.

  The girl made quick work of them before frowning down at the iPad on Martha’s lap. “No signal.”

  She was right. The screen had gone blank. “Maybe it will pick back up once we get inside.”

  Harbin instinctively reached for a seat belt, realized there weren’t any.

  Martha asked, “Where are they?”

  “Hangar off Tarmac 12. Hold on.” Fitch dropped the Jeep into drive and they shot forward, loose chunks of blacktop crunching under their wheels.

  Night had settled over the base, and with it came an icy air. Part of her was thankful to be outside, away from the sterile stillness of the lab. The other part listened to the various noises all about, wondering when one of them might turn against her.

  The base was larger than she had first thought. It took them nearly five minutes to get to the tarmac. As they rounded a corner and the open runways came into view, she spotted one of the helicopters about a quarter mile away, surrounded by bright lights and about two dozen people bustling about. At least half had weapons drawn. The other half appeared to be dragging something out of the cargo area and down a ramp at the back.

  My God, they got one.

  The Jeep skidded to a stop. Fitch left it running. “Come on.”

  Martha told Tennant to stay put and climbed out the back.

  They found Fraser barking orders up at the soldiers on the helicopter ramp. There were three of them, each holding the end of a nylon cord and pulling it tight. At the center was a man in ragged clothes and one shoe, a torn net twisted around his frame. A broken zip-tie hung from his left wrist. His head swiveled as he glared at each of them with bulging eyes. Dark blood stained the sides of his face, and spit flew from his lips. Aside from deep, ragged breaths, he was oddly silent.

  “Slow! Keep the ropes tight! Guide him down!” Fraser shouted. To Fitch, he said, “We put six darts in this one on the way back. That’s on top of the three it took to bag him.”

  “That’s—”

  “Ninety ccs of midazolam over the past hour,” Fraser finished for him. “Barely slowed him down. Pissed him off more than anything.” They reached the bottom of the ramp, and Fraser pointed to the hangar behind him. “Put him next to the other two.”

  “You captured three?”

  Fraser shook his head. “We got four. Come here.” He quickly went up the ramp and disappeared inside the helicopter.

  They followed after him. In the back corner was another net. Half the white nylon was stained red. Someone had tossed a green tarp over it but only covered about half. Beneath it all was a woman, probably in her fifties. The left side of her head was caved in, one eye ruptured, her wrists and ankles zip-tied. Martha knelt and checked for a pulse she didn’t expect to find. The woman was obviously dead. Her skin was still hot to the touch, though. If she was anything like the ones they had back at Zigzag, her temperature would continue to rise. “What did you do to her?”

  “We didn’t do anything to her. Right after we got her secured, she started banging her head against the floor. We hit her with a few more darts, but like that other guy, that just aggravated her and she beat her head harder. There was nothing we could do.” He dropped the tarp back over the woman.

  Fitch let out a sigh. “We may still learn something from her.”

  Fraser turned on him, his face filled with frustration. “I sure as shit hope so, Doctor, because this little exercise of yours cost me the lives of thirteen men, and I can guarantee you, the ones who came back won’t be the same. Not ever.” He smacked the side of his head. “I can still hear them—we all can—that damn noise, their screaming, whatever the hell it is. It’s stuck in here. It’s not as loud as it was when we were near them, but it’s still there. I can’t get it out. And hearing it like that, all faint somewhere in the back of your head? That may be worse than hearing it at full volume. It’s like someone following you into an alley, the way your skin crawls, or being trapped in a dark room with a mosquito. That feeling you get. You know they’re close, you know they’ll attack, you just don’t know when. I want it out of my head.”

  “We’re doing what we can.”

  Fraser pulled his sleeve up and looked for a watch that wasn’t there. “What time is it?”

  Martha didn’t have to look, she could feel the seconds ticking away. “Ten after nine. We’ve got about fifty minutes before they reach Gresham.”

  He looked over her shoulder at Tennant, still back at the Jeep. “What have you learned?”

  She didn’t have to answer. He could tell from the look on her face.

  “Fuck.” Fraser stomped out of the helicopter and down the ramp. He ordered two of the soldiers to follow and went into the hangar with Fitch chasing after him.

  Martha waited for all of them to disappear inside. When she spoke to Harbin, she kept her voice low. “Did you see that?”

  “He’s clearly upset.”

  “That’s not what I meant. His eyes are bloodshot, and he was sweating even though it’s what, maybe sixty degrees out here?”

  “You think he’s infected?”

  “He said he still hears the sound. Said his men do, too.”

  Harbin considered this. “We have no way to test, do we?”

  Martha shook her head. “Temperature seems to be the only real indicator.”

  From inside the hangar, Fraser shouted, “Both of you, in here, now!”

  Martha helped Tennant out of the Jeep. “Stay close to us, okay?”

  Tennant nodded.

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Martha

  It was warmer inside the hangar than out, the heat from the day still trapped and hovering in the still air. As the three of them stepped inside, the iPad in Martha’s hand beeped and the screen filled with an image of Sophie. She tilted it toward Tennant. “We’re back on the wi-fi.”

  Tennant only half heard her. Like Martha and Harbin, she was staring at the six chain-link cages standing at the center of the hangar, three of which were occupied. Each cage was freestanding, about eight feet square with about three feet of open space between them. The tops were covered by metal beams in a tight crisscross pattern. The bottoms of the cages were bolted down into the concrete floor of the hangar. Several soldiers patrolled around and between them, walking at a slow pace, weapons ready. Others had been assigned to stand farther away, creating a secondary line of defense should someone get beyond the first.

  All the lights in the hangar were on. In addition to those, large halogen lights on steel racks had been positioned around the cages, the harsh beams pointing inward.

  The three captured runners, two women and a man, each stood on the left side of their cages, all three facing the sa
me direction, their arms motionless at their sides, slowly swaying on their legs. If they noticed them enter the room, they didn’t acknowledge them.

  “Sophie did that, too,” Tennant said. “That back and forth.”

  “They’re facing south, toward Gresham,” Harbin pointed out.

  Martha glanced at the iPad. “So is Sophie.”

  Both of them looked over at Fraser, about twenty feet to their left, but he wasn’t facing south at all. He was leaning forward with both his hands on his knees, his head hung low.

  Fitch was circling around the center cage with a long pole. He stuck the end through the chain link, brought the tip up behind the man inside, and jabbed it against his neck. There was an audible pop, and he yanked the pole away. He didn’t seem to notice at all.

  “Implant?” Harbin asked.

  Fitch reloaded the end of the pole and went to the third cage. “Same as the one we have in Sophie—they transmit vitals and location.”

  Tennant stepped closer. “I know that one.”

  Martha looked down at the girl. “Which one?”

  Tennant pointed at the woman in the cage on the far left. “Rosalin Agar. She’s from my village. Used to work in the pharmacy at Walmart before she came to us. About three years ago.”

  Before Martha could stop her, she started toward the cage.

  “Hey!” Fraser shouted, his hands still on his knees. “Control her, or get her out of here!”

  The sound of his voice froze Tennant midstep, about ten feet from the cage.

  Fraser’s eyes were bloodshot, skin pale. He had yet to clean away the dried blood from his face. When he shouted, a bit of spittle rolled down his chin. He wiped it away with the filthy sleeve of his fatigues. Several of the soldiers looked no better, most likely the ones who had just returned with him.

  Ignoring Fraser, Harbin took several steps closer to the cages, then stopped. “Can…can you hear that? Is it something mechanical in the hangar somewhere, or—”

  “It’s coming from them,” Fraser interrupted. “I don’t know how.”

  Martha heard it then, too, a low hum, nearly imperceptible. As she stepped up beside Tennant and Harbin, the sound grew louder.

  Fitch finished implanting the third tracker and set the pole aside. “Can vocal cords produce a sound that low?”

  Martha didn’t know the answer to that, but it didn’t seem likely. This sound was a deep, deep base. A much lower tone than anything she had ever heard produced by a human, or an animal, for that matter. As she drew closer, she felt it nearly as much as she heard it. This steady hum. Too steady. “To produce sound, vocal cords vibrate, they modulate the flow of air being expelled from the lungs during phonation. There’s only so much air in the lungs, though. At some point, you run out, have to inhale. Even the best singers have to carefully monitor their breathing in order to produce a sustained note. This sound isn’t fluctuating. There’s no break as they inhale. If you look at the way they’re breathing, those quick inhalations and exhalations, the timing is completely off to produce a sound like this even if it were feasible.”

  Harbin considered this, then looked down at the iPad in her hand. “Can I see that?”

  Martha nodded and handed the tablet to him.

  Harbin went to the device settings, made several adjustments, then brought up the camera. He held the screen up and pointed the iPad at the woman Tennant had identified as Rosalin Agar. He held it there for a moment, then turned slightly and pointed the tablet’s camera at one of the halogen lights.

  Martha didn’t understand. “What are you doing?”

  Still pointing the camera at the light, he said, “When plugged into alternating current, AC, halogen bulbs flicker. Albeit, very quickly. Somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and twenty frames per second. I adjusted the iPad camera to the lowest setting of twenty-nine frames per second, and if you look at the screen, the flicker is visible. The human eye detects nearly one thousand frames per second, which absolves that flicker, renders it undetectable to us by blending so many images together, but when you limit the images, things change.”

  Martha looked at the screen and saw what he was talking about. On-screen, the bulb flickered like a fast strobe, but if she looked directly at it, she couldn’t see that. The light seemed steady. When he turned the camera back on the woman, Martha understood what he was getting at, although she had no idea how such a thing was possible. “They’re vibrating?”

  Harbin nodded and slowly panned over the other two.

  On-screen, the motion was barely visible but it was visible, their bodies moving so quickly they had a soft shimmer around the edges. They appeared slightly out of focus.

  Martha only stared. “I thought the camera on Sophie was older, or maybe dirty. I never considered…” she looked back up at the three people captured from the horde. “Their bodies are producing the sound through this constant vibration. We couldn’t really hear it with Sophie alone, but three make it audible.”

  Fitch was nodding. “Imagine hundreds of thousands. Body mass, size, age, all of those things would be factors in the pitch. Each person would create a unique vibration and add to the whole.”

  “We have less than an hour,” Fraser said from the far side of the cages, his voice a mix of pain and rage. “Unless you can tell me how we’ll use this information to stop them, it’s meaningless. A waste.”

  Harbin and Martha exchanged a glance. Then Harbin turned the iPad toward Fraser, lined him up square in the center of the display.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Martha

  Fraser wasn’t vibrating, but he understood what they were doing. “Satisfied?”

  Martha looked up from the screen. “This could be a breakthrough. A way to identify the infected.”

  “I’m not infected. This feels more like some kind of hangover from the exposure. It’s pretty clear who the infected are. We don’t need a test, we need a cure.” He crossed over to a cart of medical supplies someone had brought in, checked several labels, and took a handful of ibuprofen. He tossed the bottle to one of the other soldiers who didn’t look much better than he did before turning his bloodshot eyes back on Martha and Harbin. “Whatever the noise did to me will pass. I’ll worry about me and my team. You need to focus on them. Find a way to stop them.” He gestured toward the three captured runners, all three still facing south. The movement of their legs reminded Martha of a jogger stuck at a traffic light. If she opened one of the doors, would they bolt out? She was certain they would.

  The one closest to her mumbled something, but she couldn’t make it out. The others started, too. All three turned slightly, faced the open hangar door.

  Fitch stepped closer to the center cage with the man inside and tried to make out what he was saying. “Pollen? Tabran? Itabran? Pollen Itabran? Maybe pull, not pollen. Sounds like they’re all saying the same thing.”

  All three grew more agitated. Their voices grew louder, angrier. Their movement increased—from a gentle sway to a more desperate shuffle. The man banged his head against one of the steel support posts. His forehead started to bleed from a cut above his right eye.

  Martha retrieved her iPad from Harbin and switched back to the video feed of Sophie. Her fists were clenched and she was also shuffling in place, inches from the wall. Unnerved. Like the others, she no longer faced south. Her lips were moving, and when Martha turned up the volume, Sophie’s voice blended with the other three—all of them repeating the same phrase in unison.

  The man banged his head again.

  The soldiers had grown tense, their fingers nervously playing over the triggers of their weapons. Several stepped closer to the cages, and the ones near the outer doors closed ranks.

  “Doctor…” Fraser said softly, stepping closer to Fitch. “If you think we need to hit them with sedation darts, give the word. We can’t risk them hurting themselves. We don’t have the time to get more. I don’t know if I can put my men through that again.”

  “No
t yet,” Fitch replied. He retrieved an iPad from the cart with the medical supplies, clicked through several screens, and studied the display. “This is incredible. Body temp on the older female has risen from 102 to 105 in under a minute. Her blood pressure is through the roof. She shouldn’t be conscious, let alone active, even in such a diminished cognitive state.”

  The woman Tennant had called Rosalin Agar ran toward the side of her cage, cracked against the metal, and bounced back. The other two started doing it, too. The moment they regained their footing, they ran again. On his third attempt, the man in the cage beside her got his hand caught between his torso and the chain link of the cage. When he impacted, three of his fingers bent back, and Martha was certain she heard them snap. He didn’t seem to notice, just ran again.

  Two soldiers came through the hangar door, pushing a gurney with the body of the dead captured woman on it. The sight of her set them all into a frenzy. They began screaming. The hum emanating from their bodies grew louder; Martha felt the vibration creeping over her skin, like ants crawling on her back and neck or a low electrical current. All of them screaming—“Pull! Itabran! Pull! Itabran! Pull! Itabran!”

  “Get that body out of here!” Martha shouted at the soldiers.

  The two men quickly turned and wheeled the gurney back out the door, but not before one of them tossed a wallet to Fraser.

  All three captured runners began to calm. On-screen, Sophie did, too, her frantic movements returning to more of an aggravated sway.

  Fraser had the wallet open and was holding up the woman’s driver’s license. “Her name is Paulita Brannan. That’s what they’re all repeating. Paulita Brannan.”