Night Zero

by Rob Horner

  That sense of wrongness multiplied. It wasn’t the sick people. Those stayed on their cots, filling their drawers and the air with latrine mud so that the whole airport smelled like a port-a-potty at a Texas chili cookoff. It was the ones who weren’t sick. At least, not with the same thing that had the others curled on their sides.

  “Don’t you feel it, man?” Jesse asked fiercely.

  But Sam did feel it. You could see it in his stance, in the brown eyes that weren’t just staring over the heads of people, bored but intending to do his job. Those eyes roved and jerked, back and forth. The EMTs moved a few steps in, like they were going to just grab the next two with the appropriate number scribbled on their hands and get out. Then they stopped. Their heads leaned toward each other for a second.

  They could feel it too.

  Keeping the crowd in front of them, the EMTs started backing up.

  Shit, Jesse thought. This powder keg’s going to blow!

  And it did!

  Howls that might have been human voices rose from all over the airport. Screams like those actresses made in the movies about possession, the ones made extra-creepy by special effects guys with weird instruments, came from everywhere. And the leans became lunges, grown men and women in their traveling clothes charging forward, tripping over sick people on cots, knocking bodies onto the floor, hands out with fingers flexed and hard, like they thought they had claws. It was madness.

  But there were other people too, those who hadn’t been stricken with the bloody shits and weren’t responding to the cowbell of craziness, maybe thirty all told. They were shouting, calling to friends to wait their turn. Some ran forward to try to pull a loved one back. Jesse saw a handsome older woman reach out for her husband, only to have him whip around and slam his face into hers. But after knocking her down, he stayed on top of her. He was…

  “He’s eating her fucking face!” Jesse said.

  A young man in board shorts and a bright T-shirt with a surf logo went down under four of the crazy people. A scream to their left showed a little girl, pigtails in her hair, being chased by another old man, and the only thing that kept her safe was the difference in their ages. She was running toward them.

  “I gotta do something,” Sam said, starting forward. Then he stopped. The look on his face said he didn’t know what to do.

  “Open the damned door, Sam,” Jesse said.

  “I can’t. Orders…”

  “You got orders for handling this?” Jesse moved to the space Sam vacated, ready to push past his friend and risk being tackled from behind. The little girl came closer, still screaming.

  “Help me! Misters? Please!”

  “Can you take her with you?” Sam asked.

  “Her and you both,” Jesse said, reaching for Sam’s arm as the little girl reached them, darting around behind the TSA agent.

  The old man didn’t stop. Two grown men weren’t going to be enough of a deterrent to stop him.

  “Uh uh,” Sam said. “I got a job to do. You just remember that, okay? I did my job, and you slipped by me.” Sam shook Jesse’s arm away, drawing his 9mm Glock from its holster.

  Jesse hesitated a second, even when the little girl tugged on his arm. “Please! He’s gonna eat me!”

  “You need to stop right there,” Sam boomed, using his outdoor voice, the one Toni kept on him about not using in the house.

  The old man kept coming, red-veined right arm and normal-looking left stretched out in front of him.

  Sam pointed the gun at the ceiling and squeezed the trigger. The sound of the shot galvanized Jesse and electrified the room. The crazy people stopped long enough to let the EMTs get out the front door. Trev’ion was already gone, having bailed as soon as it became obvious it was run or be eaten. One of the EMTs was leaning on the other. Every head turned to look at Sam, but he didn’t see them. His eyes were locked on the old man who didn’t seem to care that a gun was just fired into the air and now it was pointing at him, a thin curl of white smoke still drifting up from the muzzle.

  “Last chance,” Sam said. There was a calm there that no one should have in such a situation. It spoke of a rightness of thought, action, and belief. The old man took another step and Sam’s gun went off again, this time striking center mass on the man’s chest, throwing him back to the floor.

  You could tell who was still normal by how they reacted to the shots. Some people ducked or threw themselves over the sick people on the cots. Some intentionally tipped cots over, dumping their loved ones on the ground, then used their own bodies as shields. Others screamed. Jesse saw two or three duck into the restrooms.

  And the rest? The crazed fuckers with murder in their eyes and blood on their lips? They turned en masse and rushed for Sam.

  “Go!” Sam yelled, turning to face the rush.

  Ducking low, Jesse grabbed the girl around her waist and hip-checked the crash bar that opened the door. Breath rasping and heart racing more from fear than exertion—the girl was light as a dream in his arms—he stumbled out onto the tarmac, shocked by how clean the air could smell after several hours in the sick house. His Cessna was spot lit by the moonlight just fifty yards off to the left, like God was giving him a signal that said There’s your ride, buddy. Now get in and get gone.

  Gunshots sounded behind him. Three, four, five in rapid succession. Then a pause. Finally, six or seven more.

  Jesse had covered only ten yards before he heard Sam scream.

  “I can run, mister. Put me down, please!”

  Jesse set her down, then took her hand. Getting the girl away had become more important that saving his own sorry ass. If he could get her away, then Sam’s sacrifice would mean something.

  A final shot sounded, which made the total fifteen by Jesse’s count.

  He wondered if Sam had saved that last bullet for himself.

  He was three-quarters of the way to the plane when the door slammed open behind them, howls and wails chasing them across the tarmac. The same light that seemed to be a celestial blessing of his departure became a roadmap to their death, a glowing path from the back door of the airport straight to his plane.

  Jesse and the girl ran with terror fueling their legs. He patted his pockets as they approached the plane and for a moment…

  The keys! Where are the fucking keys?

  …forgot that he’d left the keys inside the plane. But the door opened easily, and the girl clambered aboard. Jesse followed, pushing the door closed and slamming the lock into place.

  “Pick a seat and buckle up,” he said, climbing into the pilot’s seat. Thanking God that he’d already done his pre-flight, Jesse started the engine just as the first fists began pounding on the door. A look to the side showed crazy eyes looking in at him, while other bodies attempted to climb onto the wings. As soon as the engine would allow, he nosed the plane into motion, wincing every time the spinning propeller cast up a red spray, or the tires jounced them over a body.

  Then they were free, rolling, picking up speed, KIAS at 35 and climbing. He kept his eyes glued to the runway, wary for any debris that might take out a wheel and destroy their ability to escape. But the tarmac was clear, and he was able to lift off at 60 KIAS. He dipped the nose a little to smooth out their climb and began a turn to the west. The big jet had come from the east, so it didn’t make sense to head that way.

  “You okay back there?” he asked, eyes roving the dials and gauges. The Cessna could make a little more than 600 miles before it needed to refuel, and he was carrying enough gas in the back to give them maybe half that again, if they needed it.

  “Yes, sir,” the girl replied, one hand resting on the back of the other, covering the scratch the old man gave her before she was able to get away.

  Chapter 16

  Thirty minutes.

  That’s how long Dr. Lowman had until he was supposed to call a special number that would link him with the most powerful men in the country. He’d known being Chief Medical Officer for the CDC carried risks for th
e occupant, but he’d never before had the distinct feeling of wearing a bullseye on his back while he walked through a yard surrounded by snipers.

  Hell, if I’d wanted this kind of action, I’d have joined the Marines instead of the Navy.

  Henley and Yen were dead. Theirs were two of the bodies discovered in the lab outside Atlanta. Being dead didn’t mean being absolved of blame, but it sure as hell meant fewer people who could take responsibility and work on solutions.

  That left Dr. Robert Matthis, who’d been frog-marched into his office five minutes before.

  “Leave them,” Greg said softly when the Secret Service agent bent to remove the man’s cuffs.

  It was a childish thing, leaving the pot-bellied and balding scientist in handcuffs, but it helped Lowman feel in control. He needed that illusion. And if the situation scared Matthis enough, maybe he’d provide more information without Greg needing to drag it out of him. He checked the recording program on his computer. Somewhere there was a digital file already running, courtesy of Dr. Cummings, but he intended to have his own evidence ready, just in case it was needed.

  “For the record, do you know who I am, Dr. Matthis?”

  “You’re Dr. Greg Lowman, Chief Medical Officer and technically in charge of Project Avaxx, though I’d be surprised if you knew about it before today.”

  The words were spoken with elitism and disdain, in a Brahmin accent as phony as anything Greg had ever heard before. The man was from Detroit, not Boston!

  But maybe that elitism could be used against him. He clearly wasn’t as intimidated by being in handcuffs as Greg had hoped. But what if it was all an act. Not just the accent, but the bravado as well.

  “Let’s see, Robert. Do you mind if I call you Robert? Or do you prefer Bob?”

  “You can call me Doctor Matthis and remove these shackles. Then perhaps we can talk.”

  Greg felt the smile forming and let it widen. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his desk.

  “Listen, Bobby. I can call you anything I want to, as long as it doesn’t impugn your race, religion, sexual orientation, or age. If I wanted to call you a crab on the hair of God’s ball-sack, I could. Not that I would, mind you. I’m just using that as an example. But we seem to have a misunderstanding that needs to be cleared up. You see, I am the CMO, and you’re just a third-rate computer operator who was brought in after Avaxx was already a success to—”

  “How dare you?” The man’s face had reddened with every word after “Bobby,” and now he quivered with barely controlled rage, advancing a step toward Lowman, despite having his hands cuffed behind his back.

  “It’s not a dare, Dr. Matthis. It’s the way of the world. You fucked up. You’ve gotten a lot of people killed, and you’re scared. You have every right to be. I happen to be the guy who’s about to go talk to the President about Project Avaxx, something which, as you pointed out, I didn’t know about before today. But I know about it now, and I have to go stand in there and give a report on it. There’s going to be some shit-slinging, don’t you doubt. Do you know which way shit rolls, Dr. Matthis?”

  The portly doctor didn’t answer. A lot of the bluster had left him as Greg talked, the imperious bearing giving way to slump-shouldered resignation.

  “This only works if you answer my questions. I’ll give you the respect of your title, and you return that respect by helping me understand the situation, deal?”

  Dr. Matthis stared for another few seconds, then dropped his gaze. “Downhill,” he whispered. “It rolls downhill.”

  Amazingly, his fake accent was gone.

  Greg looked at him for a moment, then pushed a button on his intercom. “Come back and remove the cuffs, please.”

  “The idea of an inactive flu virion and a benign bacterium like Staphylococcus epidermidis looked good on paper and sounded good in theory, but it simply wasn’t practical,” Dr. Matthis said.

  “Why not?”

  “Two reasons. One, the flu virion is inactive, meaning it cannot replicate. That’s what makes it so safe for use as a vaccination.”

  “Okay.”

  “And two: Staph epi is only benign in that it doesn’t cause infection in humans. It’s actually a hardy bug capable of living on the surface for an extended period, and very resilient against infectious agents, including viruses.”

  It was one of those explanations that makes total sense once it’s spelled out. A hypothesis doomed to failure from the start. Even without an advanced degree in microbiology, it was something anyone, even Dr. Lowman, would have figured out eventually. Was Dr. Johnson so lulled by the idea of doing something to counteract the anti-vaccine movement that he would overlook such an obvious contradiction? Maybe at first. The man had been famous for his thoughts and feelings on people who refused to vaccinate their children. But wouldn’t he have figured it out eventually?

  Not if the recordings were to be believed. From what Greg had listened to so far, he seemed genuinely frustrated that progress was so slow, and only reluctantly agreed to bring in Dr. Riggs and Dr. Matthis.

  If the recordings were to be believed…

  Greg looked up at Dr. Matthis. “He knew his office was bugged, didn’t he?”

  Dr. Matthis inclined his head.

  “He knew it and he used it as a fucking cover. The whole rant was just…what…reading a script? What were you really working on?”

  “Now you’re asking the right question, Dr. Lowman.” A little of the smugness had returned, but the geneticist was doing a good job of keeping it toned down. After all, it didn’t matter what Lowman knew or when he found it out. Shit always rolled downhill. And much more of it stuck to the person at the bottom than the one at the top. Lowman might not be the top, but he was a damned good bit higher than Matthis.

  “It really was about immunity, just not in the way you heard it. Think of it as a viral immunity, rather than an immunity to a virus.”

  Lowman worked through that turn of phrase. “You wanted to make a virus that spread immunity, rather than illness?”

  “Exactly. And they started with flu and Staph but got nowhere.”

  “What about the report about Staph aureus? Was that just a plant too?”

  “No, that worked,” Matthis said. “But it was too dangerous. It caused pus-filled sacs to form in the lungs of the exposed mice, a pneumonia that grew faster than anyone expected. Death occurred within 24 hours.”

  “So why were you brought in?”

  “The prions, as you’ve guessed. They are a bit of a specialty of mine.” Now the smugness was back full force, without the accent. Lowman didn’t begrudge it this time. The man was a noted expert regarding the properties of prions. “You’re aware that prions are encapsulated, yes? That capsule makes them impervious to almost every measure we have at sterilization.”

  “Except incineration.”

  “Correct. What if we could take an inert prion and insert inert virions inside?”

  “What if?”

  “You’d have the perfect carrier particle, Dr. Lowman. A prion is nothing more than a bunch of folded proteins sticking together in a formation we call an amyloid fibril. These fibrils can adhere to each other in such quantities as to form plaques that are visible to the naked eye. We didn’t want them that big. My job was to arrange these proteins in such a way as to form a sphere, inside of which we could insert one, or dozens, of virions.”

  “That doesn’t explain how it would communicate, or how you’d get it into the body in the first place.”

  “An excellent point, Dr. Lowman. A shell like that, while protecting its contents, would also be impervious to breaking down inside the body. Essentially, it would get metabolized out unchanged. So, we took it a step further.”

  “What did you do?” Lowman asked. He could feel the genuine curiosity of the researcher waking in his chest. It’s what led him to work with the CDC after leaving the Navy, what fueled his rise through the ranks. He’d never been a backward researcher, one of those people
who have an idea then go hunting up a problem to try it on. But show him a problem and he couldn’t help but try to be a part of the solution.

  “Please understand when I say that at this point in time we were nowhere near ready for any sort of trials. We’d backed off mice after the Staph aureus and were back to mixing things in test tubes just to see what survived. None of us, not myself, Henley, Yen, Riggs, or Johnson, had any intention of this middle stage ever being introduced to public knowledge. In fact, Johnson made us include a safeguard the minute we added prions to the mix.”

  “I read that. What was it?” Lowman asked.

  Matthis waved a hand. “It’s coming. I’ve had a lot of time to organize my thoughts on the ride to DC.”

  “Not to interrupt, but why are you in DC? Weren’t you still day to day and hands on with the study?”

  “I was and I am. But Riggs is here. I needed his expertise with molecular biology to try to solve a problem with the virulence of our middle-form particle.” He spread his hands in a what-can-you-do gesture. “It’s not something we could discuss over the phone or through email. You understand.”

  Lowman did, but said nothing.

  “The prion shell idea worked, and our initial virion, the inactivated flu, could survive indefinitely inside of it, so we were making progress. But we needed a hardy bacterium to attach it to, something that could infect by touch or inhalation.”

  “Good God, not Anthrax,” Lowman breathed.

  Matthis laughed. “Hell no, not Anthrax. I’ve seen the same movies you have and read the same books. You couldn’t pay me enough to mess with that bug.”

  Greg relaxed marginally. “So, what did you use?”

  “Clostridium difficile was our logical choice, and the reason I came to DC. It’s hard to kill, as I’m sure you’re aware. Hand sanitizer alone won’t do the trick.”

  Lowman remembered the reports, the cases of uncontrolled diarrhea and vomiting. “I take it that’s what got released during the explosion.”