Patient Zero jl-1

by Jonathan Maberry

  God Almighty.

  Across the room I saw Skip and Ollie moving along the fringes of the room with a line of children between them, killing every adult they encountered.

  A guard nearly clipped me with a short burst from his AK-47, but I saw the movement of the barrel and beat him to the trigger pull. Behind him I saw that there were still some children in the cage. The door was closed but unlocked and the children had fingers hooked through the chicken wire trying to hold the door closed as six walkers fought to pull it open. Only the walkers’ lack of coordination had kept the children safe this long, but inch by inch the door was opening. I tore across the room.

  Gunfire made me dodge to the left and a line of bullets chased me along a lab table, shattering glass and filling the air with a spray of jagged shards. I dodged around a lab tech so that he was chopped apart by the gunfire. A guard was at the end of the table drawing a bead on Skip. There were too many children around, so I bashed down on his wrist with my gun barrel and chopped him across the throat with my left hand. He pitched back out of my way. I brought the gun up and shot three of the walkers, using two shots for each, concentrating on the ones farthest away from the children. They collapsed down and then I plowed into the remaining three undead. I used my last two bullets to kill one of them point-blank, and as his body sagged I front-kicked his corpse into the zombie next to him. The two of them crashed down and I spun to take the last creature standing, a man in jeans and a Hellboy T-shirt. I slammed into his chest with my forearms so that his weight crashed the cage door shut. He lunged his head over my arm and caught the strap of my Kevlar vest in his teeth. I tried boxing his ears with cupped palms, but that did no good, so I grabbed him by the hair and the back of the belt and rammed him headfirst into the wall. His skull collapsed on the first impact; the bones in his neck splintered on the third. I dropped him as the zombie who’d fallen under the one I’d kicked came crawling out from under, scuttling toward me on hands and knees. I axe-kicked the back of his neck and he dropped, twitching for a moment, and then lay still.

  I put my back to the cage as I switched magazines. My last one. The room was still in turmoil, but now each of my men had set up defensive stations. Top and Bunny had at least ten kids behind them and they were standing shoulder to shoulder, taking careful aim to bring down walkers, techs, and guards. Across the room, Skip Tyler had six kids tucked into a niche made from a collapsed table and a line of blue cases. There were bodies heaped in front of him. Ollie was by the entrance, and as the last few guards tried to race past him to escape he coldly shot them down.

  In the center of the room there were still half a dozen walkers, a few guards, and some kids. Everyone was covered with blood and I could see why none of my guys had gone to rescue those children. It was impossible to tell if they were infected or not.

  I had twelve rounds left and there were still six kids out there. I had to try.

  I rushed in, firing as I ran, dropping guards and walkers alike. One of the kids ran toward me and I knelt down, waving him on even as I aimed past him, but when he was ten feet away I saw that his eyes were empty and his mouth was open, teeth bared. It was the little kid who had clung to me for safety.

  “God,” I whispered through a throat filled with hot ash. I shot the child.

  For one moment there was a lull in the gunfire as the child pitched backward from the point of impact and slid to a stop on the floor. I could feel every set of eyes in the room on me, burning me with their stares. The children huddled behind my men cringed and cried out in renewed terror.

  Then one of the other children in the center of the room snarled with unnatural hunger and rushed at Skip’s group.

  The gunfire began again.

  When it stopped nothing moved in the center of the room except a pall of gun smoke and white fog that was now polluted with red.

  I stood on the fringes of the carnage, my pistol held out in front of me, one bullet left. The thunder I heard in my ears may have been the echo of the gunfire, or it may have been my own heart pounding out like the drums of damnation.

  Slowly, filled with fear and horror at what we had all just done, I lowered my gun.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Claymont, Delaware / Tuesday, June 30; 6:35 P.M.

  I CALLED IT in.

  There was an overturned table behind me and I leaned against it while I surveyed the room. A pall of acrid gun smoke hung like a blue veil in the humid air, and the kids kept crying. Each of my men looked stricken. Except for Ollie Brown, whose face showed nothing at all. He could give Church a run for his money. Skip looked sick; Bunny’s and Top’s faces were rigid with fury.

  I wondered what expression was on my face. Maybe shock, probably fear; but if my features truly reflected what I felt then my expression would be mingled horror at what had been about to happen to these poor kids and a dead sickness for what I had just done. That I’d been forced to do it made no difference to me at all. I felt unclean.

  Five minutes ago there had been dozens of people in this room. Now most of them were dead. I’d killed at least a quarter of them myself. I’d killed so many people that I’d lost count. The realization hit my brain like a fist. I’d killed before, but this was worse. Ten times worse than the task force raid. And part of the guilt I felt was a secret shame because deep inside my soul the warrior part of me was beating his chest and yelling in exultant triumph even while the more civilized parts of me cringed.

  I took a step toward Top’s group but the children behind him shrieked and pulled back, terrified of me. They’d seen me gun down at least two other children. They were too young to understand about the infection. They couldn’t know I wasn’t a monster, too. Top gathered a few of them in his arms, shushing them, murmuring quiet words as Bunny stood by, awkward and helpless. I stayed where I was.

  There was a noise and I looked up to see Alpha Team flooding into the room, weapons up and out. Major Courtland was in front with her pistol in her hands, Gus Dietrich was on her flank. They skidded to a stop and stared at the scene of total carnage.

  “Bloody hell…” gasped Courtland, and her words could not have been more aptly chosen.

  Dietrich stared openmouthed, and the agents of Alpha Team looked from the heaps of corpses to the crowds of weeping children to the bloodied members of Echo Team.

  Courtland recovered first. She keyed her radio. “Alpha One to base. We need full medical teams double-quick. We have multiple civilian victims requiring immediate medical attention and evac.” She paused as she did a quick head count. “Civilians are all children. Repeat, civilians are children times seventeen. Send all available medical units.”

  I pushed off from the table and walked over to her, my eyes stinging from the smoke.

  She opened her mouth to say something, then caught herself, paused, and finally said, “Are you all right, Captain?”

  I very nearly bit her head off. It was such a stupid and clumsy question, but I buried that reaction. What else could she say?

  “I’ll live,” I said. “Tell your people… there are zero infected among the children. All of the bite victims are…” I couldn’t finish it.

  She swallowed and relayed the info, then clicked off her mike. “Your men?”

  “No casualties.”

  Courtland nodded, and for a moment we shared a look. Soldier to soldier, or warrior to warrior. The ugly truth was that there were going to be casualties among my men. This event would scar every single one of them.

  She looked around as the first wave of EMTs spread out through the room. The children shrieked and wept. Some of them ran toward the men and women in uniforms and the EMTs gathered them up in their arms, some of the medics and soldiers weeping as they held the kids. Other children shrank back, all trust in adults having been torn out of them. A few sat in unmoving silence, speaking of damage that went all the way down to the cellar of their souls.

  “Was this how it was at St. Michael’s?” I asked.

  She shook
her head. “No. Everyone there died. My team was outside the whole time.”

  I nodded. “This morning I was just a cop,” I said.

  “I know.”

  There was more to say but it didn’t need to be said aloud. We both understood.

  “We got a live one!” Dietrich called, and we turned to see a wounded lab tech trying to crawl out from under a dead walker. In his nearly mindless state of pain he reached out to the nearest person in a soundless plea for help. Ollie Brown stood over him, a sneer of contempt on his face. He drew his pistol and racked the slide.

  “Stand down!” I bellowed, starting forward, but Brown was already bringing the barrel down toward the tech. Suddenly Gus Dietrich stepped forward, grabbed Ollie’s wrist and swung it violently upward. The pistol blast was shockingly loud, even to my wounded ears, but the bullet just buried itself in the wooden roof timbers thirty feet above.

  I got up in Ollie’s face. “Stand down right now, Lieutenant.”

  His face was ugly with fury, but after a long moment the tension bled out of his limbs. Top Sims stepped between him and the lab tech, his hand on his holstered pistol.

  “Let him go, Sergeant,” I said, and Dietrich carefully released Ollie’s wrist and took a short step to one side, his eyes hard. To Ollie I said, “Secure your weapon.”

  Ollie’s eyes bored into mine and then past me to the tech, and for a second I thought he was going to try for the shot, but then he eased the hammer down, flicked on the safety, and holstered his piece. EMTs immediately stepped up to triage the wounded man.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” I snapped. “What part of the mission orders sounded like ‘shoot unarmed prisoners’?”

  “He’s a piece of shit.” Ollie sneered.

  “He’s the only person we have left to interrogate.”

  Ollie said nothing, so I grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him a few yards away. I wasn’t nice about it and when he tried to pull his arm away I dug into a nerve. Even with his stone face the pain showed through. I eased the pressure and he jerked his arm free.

  “Okay, Ollie, let’s sort this out right here, right now.”

  “There’s nothing to sort out,” he said, then added a sarcastic, “sir.”

  “You’re one more smartass remark away from getting bounced off this team.” He blinked at that and snapped his mouth shut on whatever he was about to say next. I leaned close. “You’re a top-notch fighter, Ollie, and I’d rather keep you than lose you, but if you can’t follow orders then you are no good to me or anyone. Now I’m going to ask you only once and that’s it. Are you on my team or not?”

  Ollie met my stare for a long ten-count and then he inhaled sharply through his nose and exhaled slowly. “Fuck it,” he said.

  I waited.

  “I’m in.”

  “My rules, my way?”

  He nodded and closed his eyes for a few seconds. “Yes, sir.” No sarcasm this time.

  “Look at me,” I said. He opened his eyes. “Say it again.”

  “Yes, sir. Your rules, your way.”

  I nodded and stepped back. “Then we won’t discuss this again.” I turned and walked away, passing Dietrich and Courtland without comment, and rejoined Echo Team. After a moment Ollie followed.

  To the team I said, “I guess they’ll debrief us once we’re back in Baltimore. They’ll need to know everything.” I paused. “I have a friend, Dr. Rudy Sanchez. He’s a police psychiatrist, and he’s a good man.”

  “A shrink?” Skip asked.

  “Yeah. He’s at the DMS, and I want each of you—each of us— to take a few minutes and sit down with him.”

  “Why?” asked Skip.

  Top turned to him. “Tell me something, kid; when you woke up this morning did you think that by suppertime you’d be killing zombies and gunning down little kids?”

  Skip dropped his eyes and looked dejectedly down at the floor.

  Top laid a big hand on his shoulder, gave it a squeeze. “Believe me, Skip, you don’t want to go to sleep tonight with this in your head and no one to talk to.”

  Ollie just stood there with his eyes glistening and his fists balled into knots.

  Bunny said, “I ain’t ever gonna sleep again.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  The DMS Warehouse, Baltimore / Tuesday, June 30; 8:51 P.M.

  A CHOPPER TOOK us back to the warehouse in Baltimore. On the way Grace told us that quarters had been set aside for each of us. “It’s not much,” she said over the whine of the rotor, “we had small offices converted into bedrooms. Mr. Church has asked that you and your men go to your quarters and wait until called for. He doesn’t want any of you talking to other DMS personnel until he’s had a chance to meet with you himself. Don’t worry, you’re not under suspicion, it’s just that a lot of the DMS staff are new and some have not been informed about the nature of this crisis. Security is paramount.”

  We didn’t like it but we all understood and we flew the rest of the way in silence. I noticed that Top was pretending to sleep but was actually studying Ollie, who had turned stiffly away from Courtland and me and was staring out the window. When Top noticed me watching him, he smiled and closed his eyes. After that he really did look like he was sleeping, but I didn’t believe it.

  IT WAS NEARLY dark when we landed. A guard met me as I debarked and took me to Church’s office. His face showed little emotion, and he sure as hell didn’t rush up to embrace me, but I could see his eyes behind the tinted lenses of his glasses as he gave me a thorough up-and-down appraisal. He waved me to a chair and then sat down behind his desk; and the guard poured me a cup of coffee before he left.

  “Grace said that there were no injuries sustained by Echo Team.”

  I almost said, “Nothing that will show,” but it was trite. He seemed to guess my thought, though, and nodded.

  “And you managed to secure a prisoner.”

  I said nothing. If he knew about Ollie—and I’m sure he did—he left it off the table.

  “What’s going to happen with those kids?”

  “I don’t know. They’ve all been admitted to the hospital with FBI protection. The Bureau’s taken over the problem of identifying them. Some of the children are too traumatized to even give their names. None of them remember how they were taken. A few had recent burns on their skin consistent with liquid Tasers, so we can assume they were taken unawares, perhaps randomly.”

  “Experimenting on kids puts a whole new spin on this thing.”

  “Yes,” he said, “it does, and I want to hear your full report on what happened today, Captain, but first I want your assessment of the crab plant. When is the absolute soonest you can hit it?”

  “There’s maybe a slim chance that the hostiles in the other plant won’t know about the hit we just did. The cell lines were jammed, right? And you cut the landlines, right? It’s late in the day,” I said. “Communication between the cells would necessarily be at a minimum anyway. I think we have to hit it by noon tomorrow.”

  “Why not right now? We have sufficient firepower to do a hard entry.”

  I shook my head. “There are three reasons why that’s not going to happen tonight. First, you need to interrogate your prisoner. Second, the meat plant was full of kids. Who the hell knows how many civilians are in the crab plant. If you go in all John Wayne then you could get a lot of innocent people killed.”

  “And the third reason?”

  “Because that plant belongs to Echo Team and I don’t want anyone else jumping our action. Look, you hired us on to be your first team. Well, you got what you paid for. I know you had to be here watching the feeds from the helmet cams. So you know what we went through in there, and you know how tight my guys are. Alpha Team may be DMS elite or some shit but they were a half-step off getting to first base. They should have been in there faster. I shouldn’t have had to call them once things got hot.”

  “Grace Courtland and Gus Dietrich are superb agents. As good as anyone on Echo Team,�
� Church said. “At one point all of them were, but… since St. Michael’s they’ve been showing signs of stress disorder. In the last two days their team drills are down by fourteen percent and their live ammunition drills show hesitation. None of that was there before St. Michael’s.”

  Now I understood. I put my cup down and leaned my elbows on his desk. “So we understand each other here?”

  “If what you saw in Delaware has taught us anything it’s that we are losing ground on this thing. I want the crab plant hit tonight. Now.”

  “No way. My team needs to rest. You talk about reduction in combat efficiency, well, you put a top team into a critical situation without time to rest then you don’t have a top team anymore. You have tired men who will be off their game. Going right back out would get them killed. Twelve hours to sleep and plan the hit.”

  “Two hours’ sleep and they debrief in the helo.”

  After a minute, I said, “I see the science team. Then we go in three hours. That’s not negotiable. I won’t lead my team to a slaughter. I’ll go in alone before I do that.”

  For a moment it looked like he was considering that as a suggestion. Then he nodded.

  “Okay.” He took a vanilla wafer and gestured to the plate. “Have one.”

  I had an Oreo. “Do you want reconnaissance or scorched-earth?”

  “My science division needs data. Computers, lab equipment, pathogen samples… we need to leave the place intact.”

  “What kind of backup can we expect?”

  “The works. Alpha Team will be on deck and they’ll be first in if you need them; F-18s in the air, helo support for extraction if it gets hot. Special Forces strike teams can be inside in ten minutes; and the National Guard is on standby. If it turns into a firefight we have the edge. If the perimeter is breached we’ll take a closer look at the scorched-earth option.”