The Noise

by James Patterson

  They didn’t react to his mention of the name aloud. Martha wasn’t sure they even heard him—they were listening to something else entirely. All three shifted position again, their gazes returning to the south. Their voices dropped low, became a soft mumble.

  Harbin rounded Rosalin Agar’s cage and snapped his fingers several times less than an inch from her face. She didn’t react at all. Her eyes stared blankly forward, fixed on something none of them could see. “They’re clearly operating with some kind of hive mind. Not necessarily present here with us, but mentally somewhere else. Trancelike.”

  “We should bring Sophie here,” Fitch said. “Maybe she can talk to them.”

  Martha looked back down at the iPad. Sophie was staring up at the camera. She’d stopped moving. But that was impossible. She couldn’t have heard that.

  But the others did, her mind whispered back. And when one hears, they all hear.

  She wasn’t sure she believed that, either. She looked down at her watch. The horde was thirty-eight minutes outside of Gresham. What she believed didn’t really matter at this point. They were grasping at straws.

  Tennant leaned in close to Martha. “I don’t trust these people with my sister.”

  Martha brushed a strand of loose hair from the girl’s face. “I’ll get her, okay? You can come with me.”

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Martha

  Sophie didn’t resist, but that didn’t stop Fraser from putting her in full restraints. Before he agreed to allow her out of her room, a thick leather belt was secured around her waist. Handcuffs on her wrists and ankles were fastened to the belt with chains through metal rings. The unnerving contraption forced the small girl to lean forward and walk at a slow shuffle. Martha had seen similar restraints used in prisons. She didn’t want to know where Fraser managed to find one sized for an eight-year-old so readily.

  Seeing the little girl like this tore at Martha’s heart and made her think of Emily and Michael back home, hopefully sound asleep right now, unaware of all this.

  Tennant had held her sister’s hand while they put the restraints on, and Martha was surprised to see Sophie react positively to her sister’s touch. She hadn’t said anything, but she watched all of them closely, and that lucid behavior was encouraging.

  They moved as quickly as possible, but that wasn’t fast enough.

  The moment they got her out of the Jeep back at the hangar, Fitch cornered them outside and was quick to point out the location of the horde. “They managed to get somewhat close with a drone before the sound took out the camera. The microphone didn’t stand a chance—that was gone a half mile out. They’re picking up speed the closer they get to Gresham, like sharks heading to a feeding frenzy. We’ve got maybe ten minutes before they reach the edge of the city. They’ve picked up so many people along the way, we’ve lost track of their total numbers.”

  “Why aren’t they warning anyone?” Tennant asked, still holding her sister’s hand.

  Martha knew they wouldn’t. Even if they did, what would they say? Any kind of warning would do nothing but start a panic. “Let’s just get Sophie inside.”

  The little girl grew visibly tense at the sight of Fitch. At first, Martha thought she was frightened by the man, but that wasn’t it at all. There was a disdain there. Sophie said nothing, but her eyes followed him as he turned and quickly made his way back into the hangar.

  Harbin was standing off to the side of the hangar door, holding a black plastic crate. She wasn’t sure what was inside.

  Martha and Tennant helped her walk.

  Fraser remained several paces behind them, and while he tried not to be obvious about it, Martha noticed his hand never ventured too far from his sidearm, even when he caught her looking.

  When the cages came into view, Sophie froze. “Let ’em go. You’re gonna kill ’em.”

  That might have been the clearest Sophie had spoken since they pulled her out of that shelter, and Martha found herself exchanging a look with the others.

  The three runners turned toward Sophie in unison. All three rocked back and forth, their pace quickening at the sight of her. Martha heard the sound emanating from their bodies intensify like the buzz of bees. She rubbed at her arms and realized the hair was standing up, her skin covered in gooseflesh.

  “Let ’em go,” Sophie said again, more defiantly this time.

  Martha stroked the girl’s hair, tried to soothe her. “We can’t do that.”

  The sound grew louder, and Martha realized it was coming from Sophie, too. Not as loud as with the others, but it was there.

  Sophie balled her fists and stepped closer to the nearest cage, this one holding not the woman from their village, but the older woman. Her gray hair was matted to her skull with greasy sweat, and the lines of her face were filled with grime. The woman eyed Sophie, incoherent ramblings dripping from her lips. Sophie tried to reach out to the woman, but the chains on her wrists kept her from doing so. This seemed to aggravate her even more. “Anna Shim wants her children back. You’re all her children now.”

  Again, her voice was clear, nothing like it had been before, that didn’t make her words any less disturbing.

  Fitch was studying the iPad with her vitals. “Her temperature is only 101. That’s the lowest we have on record. BP is only slightly elevated.”

  Harbin set down the crate, reached inside, and came up with a pair of headphones. “Sophie, would you allow me to place these on you? They’ve been designed by the military to block the sound. I know it’s all around us, coming from them, from you. I know you can hear it. I’d like to see what happens if you’re severed from it. Do you know what that means, severed?”

  If Sophie heard him, she didn’t acknowledge it. Her gaze remained locked with the older woman in the cage, the two of them staring into each other’s eyes. The man in the center cage, as well as Rosalin Agar, were both facing them, slowly shifting back and forth.

  Harbin handed out headphones to the rest of them, including the soldiers standing guard, then placed a pair on his head. “We’ll be able to communicate with you through the built-in radio, but you won’t hear anything else.” He waited for Martha and others to get their headphones in place, then knelt down next to Sophie. “Okay, here we go.”

  Like the three in the cages, Sophie was also rocking from side to side. Harbin timed his movement with her and brought the headphones down on her head as gently as he could, pulling them down until the padded cans covered her ears. It was obvious he had adjusted them to the smallest possible size, but even still, they were large on her, meant for an adult, not a child. Certainly nobody as young as her.

  Sophie’s eyes remained locked with the woman, both of them rocking together.

  Harbin produced a small remote from his pocket. “I’m switching them on.”

  When he pressed a button on the remote, Martha noticed a little red light come to life on his headphones, Sophie’s, all of them. Her world went completely silent. Gone were the gasping breaths of the runners, the drone of vehicles outside the hangar, all the ambient noise of the world relegated to the background of life. Everything vanished into a noiseless void.

  Sophie stopped rocking. She went completely still, rigid. Her eyes grew wide, and her mouth fell open as she quickly looked around. She gave the impression of a sleepwalker waking midstride in an unfamiliar room. Her face filled with a mix of shock and fear.

  “Sophie? Can you hear me?”

  This came from Harbin. Martha heard his voice only in her headphones, and she found this slightly disorienting.

  Tennant, standing beside her sister, reached for her hand and gently squeezed her fingers.

  Sophie looked up at her and blinked several times but said nothing.

  Martha touched the girl’s arm. She still felt warm, but not as bad as even minutes earlier. “Sophie, do you know where you are?”

  “Her vitals appear to be improving,” Fitch said, tapping at the iPad. “I can see her temperature droppi
ng, nearly a half-degree already, BP, respiratory, everything.”

  Harbin, still kneeling, grew excited. “Sophie, I believe by blocking the sound, we’ve broken whatever hold it had over you, do you understand? I don’t know how long this will last. There’s a good chance the moment I switch off those headphones, the noise will grasp you again, pull you back in.”

  “Anna Shim,” Sophie said softly.

  Harbin nodded. “Yes, Anna Shim will try to take you back. But know that if this works, we can break the link again. If you slip back, we can bring you back to us. We can keep you safe. We’ll find some way to make this permanent. For now, though, we don’t have much time. I need you to answer a few questions for me. Do you think you can do that?”

  She hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

  “When you heard the noise, when it…controlled you…were you able to communicate with the others? Could you hear these people?”

  He gestured toward the three in the cages. Like Sophie, they had stopped rocking. They were completely still, their eyes locked on her.

  Sophie looked up at them, seemed to think about this for a moment, then turned to Harbin. “They’re very sad. They hurt. They want to stop.”

  “That’s good. That’s very good. We’re here to make it stop,” he told her. “I want you to think about this part very carefully, because this is very important. You could hear them. Could they hear you?”

  Again, she nodded.

  “And what about the others? The large group approaching that town, could you hear them? Could they hear you, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think you could tell them to stop? Could you tell them that a lot of people will die if they don’t, and they have to stop?”

  Sophie’s face grew pale. “She’ll be angry with me. She would be so mad…”

  “But you could, couldn’t you?”

  Sophie’s eyes fell to the floor as the seconds ticked. She looked at the three caged people, then back to the floor.

  “Sophie? Could you tell them to stop?”

  Martha hadn’t noticed it at first, there was so little. The thin trickle of blood slipped out from under Sophie’s headphones, down the side of her neck, and found her shirt. Barely visible. Only a few drops. But there nonetheless, and Martha knew something was wrong.

  Sophie looked back up at Harbin, leaned in close to him. “She wants you to understand how mad she would be. She says you need to understand.”

  She screamed.

  Amplified by the headphones, Sophie’s horrible, shrill cry stabbed at Martha’s ears like the sharp edges of broken bottles twisted and forced into her flesh.

  She heard herself scream, she heard everyone screaming.

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Martha

  Fitch was first to tear off his headphones and throw them to the ground, and Martha was about to do the same when Harbin grabbed her hands and pulled them away. He fumbled with his remote and managed to press a button that somehow muted Sophie’s cries. Not completely, but enough. Martha sucked in a deep breath and fought the urge to pass out.

  Fitch was on the ground, his body convulsing, and Harbin ran to him, tried to get his headphones back on, but the man batted him away, struck out and caught his jaw with an errant fist, then twisted and rolled to his side.

  Martha was about to help when she realized two of the soldiers had ripped away their headphones, too—both were on the ground—one was rolling back and forth, his hands pressed to his ears; the other had managed to sit up and was trying to raise the stubby barrel of his weapon toward Sophie. He held the rifle at an odd, twisted angle, his fingers fumbling for the trigger. Both his eyes were pinched shut, blood trickling out from the corners as his mouth moved in a scream Martha could no longer hear.

  “Don’t shoot!”

  Wasted words. She knew it the moment she shouted, because her microphone had been muted with Sophie’s. That didn’t keep her from screaming again as she dove toward him.

  His muzzle flashed and what must have been loud reports were only dull thuds to her as he pulled the trigger. He held the gun cradled loosely in his right arm, and the moment he pulled the trigger the kickback sent the weapon flailing in a wide arc as the bullets were expelled in a wild hail.

  Martha wasn’t first to reach him; one of the other soldiers was faster. The bulky man dove from Martha’s left and dropped over the soldier on the ground without hesitation. His knee came down hard on the man’s firing arm, pinning the weapon between them, but not before two of his shots hit the second soldier in the chest. Martha watched as one of those shots burst out the bulky soldier’s back and disappeared somewhere in the ceiling. Both men stopped moving.

  The soldier who had been rolling had gone still. His mouth was open impossibly wide, as if his jawbone had snapped. He’d bit his tongue clean off, and a lumpy chunk rested on the side of his face. What was left of his eyes was nothing more than dark congealed jelly oozing from the sockets.

  The bullets.

  The wild shots.

  Off to her side, Harbin still struggled with Fitch. The doctor’s arms flailed, his head jerking from side to side.

  Martha’s head swiveled around and she found Sophie unharmed, standing perfectly still. Tennant was behind her and had her arms around her sister in a tight hug, her face buried in the little girl’s back.

  Sophie was still screaming, pausing only long enough to suck in more air.

  Martha had lost track of Fraser, and when she found him she realized he had circled around the cages and managed to get right behind both girls. His eyes met Martha’s, and in that instant, she understood exactly what he planned to do. She also realized she was too far away to stop him.

  She cried out again in another plea rendered silent by the headphones and ran toward him anyway, ran toward the three of them, and had she been just a little bit faster, if her legs were only a little longer, she might have made it.

  She didn’t, though.

  Fraser came up behind both of them, reached out, and yanked the headphones off Sophie’s head. They skittered across the floor and cracked against the far wall in a mess of black plastic and electronics.

  Sophie’s body jerked with such force Tennant was tossed away, landing hard off to her side.

  His balance gone, Fraser fell awkwardly on his shoulder. The impact wrenched his headphones off, and they shattered on the concrete.

  Sophie collapsed, unconscious.

  Martha scrambled over to her, cradled the little girl’s head in her lap.

  An instant later, Tennant was there, her headphones gone as well, her face twisted in pain. She was screaming, crying out, her fingers clawing at Martha’s headphones, trying to take them off, and at first Martha fought her—she thought it was the sound, that godawful noise—using Tennant as it used Sophie, but then Martha realized she was only crying out in anguish at the sight of her sister; she was screaming at Martha, trying to talk to her. Tennant ripped at Martha’s headphones and she let her, and the moment they pulled away from her ears, her world filled with sound.

  “—elp her! You gotta help her!”

  Martha waited for her ears to bleed, for her eyes to rupture, waited for a pain that didn’t come but that did little to slow her gasping breaths or her heart, beating so hard it was a wonder it hadn’t burst.

  “Please, Doctor!”

  She only half-heard her. About ten feet to her left, Harbin rolled off Fitch onto his back, yanked his headphones off, threw them aside, and just lay there, exhausted. His nose was bleeding, but judging by the redness on his cheek, this was most likely from being struck, not the sound.

  Fitch was clearly dead. Like the soldier, his eyes were gone. Blood had pooled under his ears on both sides of his head. One of his arms was pinned beneath him.

  In the cages, having smashed against the bars and walls, the man and the older woman were both dead, their bodies twisted in piles on the ground. Only Rosalin Agar was still alive. She stared down at Ma
rtha and Tennant, at Sophie, frantically moving from her left foot to her right and back again as if standing on hot coals. Yellow mucus dripped from her nose to the corner of her lip, and she mumbled incoherently. There was a large gash on her forehead, just below her hairline, most likely from hitting the bars like the others.

  She wants you to understand how mad she would be. She says you need to understand.

  Fraser groaned.

  In her arms, Sophie stirred.

  On the wall, the clock read three minutes after ten.

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  President

  The president sat at the head of the conference table aboard Air Force One. Under his hands, the table was damp with sweat. He’d given up wiping it away with his shirtsleeve. Normally he didn’t hear the drone of the engines, monstrous things built by General Electric, but he heard them now. On his first flight aboard the plane, he’d been told each of the four had a thrust rating of 56,700 pounds. He’d nodded, smiling, pretending he understood what that meant. Everything about the plane had seemed impressive, why not the engines? Turned out, these were the same engines found on any other Boeing 747. Airbus used them, too. Nothing special at all. When his staff assured him Air Force One was the safest place he could be during a conflict, that he was untouchable here, he thought about those commonplace engines. Reminded himself that safety was a carefully crafted illusion.

  The people of Gresham, Oregon, had returned home from work, from school, eaten dinner with their families and friends, sat in front of the television or played games or read, and many were probably retiring to bed right about now. They’d tucked their children away and lain their own heads down on their pillows believing they were safe because the people in power, the people they trusted, told them they were. That carefully crafted illusion.

  General Westin was on the president’s left, acting director of the NSA Samantha Troy on his right. He didn’t want anyone else in the room, not now. The three of them had their eyes fixed on the large monitor on the wall, the satellite image of the horde.