Dogs of War

by Jonathan Maberry

  THE HANGAR

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

  TUESDAY, MAY 2, 3:01 PM EASTERN TIME

  Bug stared at his screen.

  I am in hell.

  Save me.

  “It’s happening again,” he said, but Aunt Sallie was already staring at the words.

  “Who the hell is this?” she demanded. “Wait … is this Zephyr Bain? Is she reaching out to us? Christ, is that what this is all about? Is she Nicodemus’s frigging prisoner?”

  “I…” began Bug, but then he shook his head and started typing as fast as his fingers could move, writing in words and writing in code. “Come on, come on,” he muttered under his breath.

  The words on the main screen repeated over and over.

  “What are you doing, kid?” yelled Auntie, but he ignored her.

  “Let me be right,” said Bug.

  There was a ping from his computer, and a new text box opened up with a cursor flashing inside it.

  Bug caught his lower lip between his teeth and typed in a question:

  What is your name?

  No response. The field blanked out the text.

  “Okay,” he said, and typed a new question:

  Are you Zephyr Bain?

  Blanked again.

  Bug took a breath, nodded to himself, and asked the next question:

  Are you Calpurnia?

  The text didn’t vanish from the box. Not this time.

  Aunt Sallie looked from the screen to Bug and back again.

  “Jesus H. Christ.”

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN

  THE DOG PARK

  WASHINGTON STATE

  TUESDAY, MAY 2, 12:02 PM

  I didn’t freeze, I didn’t hesitate. That kind of thing had plagued me since last year, but there were no shackles on me now. No ropes, no strings. The Killer acted with savage practicality.

  I raced over to where Ghost was fighting a losing battle to protect Rudy and body-slammed two infected scientists so that they crashed into three others. The whole bunch of them went down in a hissing, snarling, snapping tangle. Before they even hit the ground, I had my Wilson rapid-release knife in my hand, snapped the blade into place with a flick of my wrist, and slashed the skin of the tent all the way to the floor. Then I grabbed Rudy by the shoulder and hurled him through the rent. Ghost leaped after him and I followed, seeing the infected horde scrambling toward me.

  “Run!” I roared, shoving Rudy toward the closest parked vehicle. He wasn’t a good runner, not even with his new knee, but he put his heart into it. There was movement all around me. Infected scientists who had escaped the tent, and also soldiers from the camp herding them with cattle prods. The infected hissed and reeled back from the shocks, their damaged brains able to process at least a marginal understanding of threat. Did that mean some of them were left inside? Was it enough to maybe save them if we could get treatment for them?

  I didn’t know and had no time to find out.

  I switched my knife to my left hand and drew my SIG Sauer from its shoulder rig. I shot the closest soldier in the thigh. I didn’t want to kill him. I wanted him to distract the infected. He fell screaming, and they swarmed over him.

  “Joe!” called Rudy by the Humvee. He was jerking at the door handle. “It’s locked.”

  Five more of the infected—staff members this time, not scientists—were running in his direction. A soldier with a shock rod was racing around the front of the truck. The only clear direction was into the woods.

  Shit!

  I shot the soldier and pushed Rudy toward the forest.

  “Ghost! Go safe! Shield Rudy, shield, shield.”

  My dog understood the command. Go with Rudy, seek out a safe route, and kill anyone or anything who tried to harm either of them. They vanished into the woods, and I fired at the knot of infected, dropping two with leg wounds. They crumpled and the others swarmed over them, but the uninjured ones immediately shifted all their rage and focus on me.

  So I turned and ran.

  They chased me like a pack of hounds.

  Up ahead I saw five people running in a tight knot toward another vehicle. Four of the soldiers, including Lieutenant Pepper, and they were clustered protectively around Major Schellinger. The major had a small ruggedized laptop in her arms, which she hugged protectively to her chest. No way to know what was in it, but I knew with every fiber of my being that if she was that desperate for it, then I wanted it. I could feel the Killer in my head actually laugh. No. Sorry, sister, but you are not leaving this party.

  I ran as fast as I could. Pepper cast a look over his shoulder, probably expecting to see an infected behind them. Saw me instead. Stopped and whirled and brought up his rifle.

  I don’t know what his story was. He was a wounded combat vet who, if Rudy was right, had received a chip in his brain that helped him recover. That’s what we guessed. He was here with Schellinger and he was part of whatever was happening. Did that mean he was under some kind of mind control? Or had he sold his soul to Zephyr Bain in order to get that chip? Victim or villain? I didn’t know.

  I killed him anyway. If Pepper was an innocent, then maybe I’d burn for firing that bullet. Maybe we’d all burn. I don’t know, and in that moment I could not care. God help me, but I could not.

  Pepper fell, his face disintegrating from the hollow-point round. I fired and fired, taking many small steps so as not to spoil my aim. The soldiers were caught in the fatal indecision of running for cover, protecting Schellinger, or turning to fight. I gave them no chance to sort out their priorities. They all died.

  The last one to fall fell hard against Schellinger, and she staggered badly and went down on her knees, the laptop case flying and then jerking short, and I realized that she had cuffed it to her left wrist. Stunned as she was, Schellinger was quick. She used her free hand to snatch a Glock from the holster of a dying soldier. She fired one-handed from her knees and I felt a line of heat open up along my side in the gap between Kevlar and belt. A lucky shot. No one is that good.

  I shot her in the shoulder. The heavy slug punched a neat red hole below the right clavicle and blew out a lump of red the size of an apple from her back. She screamed and fell back, and I was there. She was bleeding very badly, but it wasn’t the high-speed spray of a ruptured artery. Her gun had fallen into the dirt, and I put a knee on her chest and pinned her down with the hot barrel of my SIG Sauer, scalding the flesh under her chin. She clamped her jaws shut against the pain and gave me a look of pure, unfiltered hatred as intense as any I’ve seen.

  “Tell me how to stop it,” I demanded.

  Schellinger shook her head. I looked at the laptop case that lay a few inches from her fingers. She looked at it, too.

  “I want immunity,” she blurted.

  I pushed the barrel deeper into her skin. “Can you stop this?”

  “I—”

  “Sell it, honey. You’re having a bad day, but it can get a lot worse.”

  There were so many screams filling the air that I had to yell my words. And then there was a new sound. A weird mechanical howl, like when the squelch is turned too high on a walkie-talkie. We both looked, and I felt my blood turn to ice as a pack of animals suddenly ran through the camp. They ripped through the tent and attacked everyone they encountered. Infected people, chipped soldiers. Everyone. I had never seen them except in video reports or as diagrams in a file. WarDogs. Armed with rifles and blades. One had a flamethrower unit. And there were smaller ones the size of Ghost that had snapping sets of steel teeth.

  Holy mother of God.

  They tore into any human they encountered. The soldiers fought back. The rabid scientists tried to bite them. The slaughter was a red horror.

  Schellinger hissed at me. “The control codes are in the laptop. You can shut them down. These and all the drones and attack robots. It’s systemwide.”

  “Tell me how to stop the whole thing,” I growled. “The diseases, the nanites. All of it, or so help me God—”
<
br />   She shook her head, her eyes wild with fear. Pretty sure her plan hadn’t been to become a victim of her own dogs of war. Too bad.

  “That’s Calpurnia,” she yelped. “I don’t have access to that, I swear. Just the robotics and the chips.”

  “Fuck. Give me that, then. Tell me the code.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said quickly. “You need to get to Wi-Fi. Clean Wi-Fi, nothing associated with the camp. You need to uplink the laptop to a satellite feed and broadcast it on the right frequency.”

  “Tell me how to access the system.”

  “Fuck you, Ledger,” she gasped. “This is wrong. This isn’t the plan. I was supposed to be warned before they triggered it. This is all going to shit. Someone activated the WarDogs too soon. Get me out of here and I’ll help you.”

  “Maybe I don’t need you. I have the laptop and I have a spiffy computer that will rip it a new asshole.”

  Despite her terror, she sneered. “Think so? Think you’ll use MindReader? Bullshit. We own that system.”

  “Don’t be too sure. MindReader’s been to the gym, and now it’s all kinds of buff.”

  She tried to twist away from my gun. “I don’t care what you think you’ve done. We have Calpurnia and she has ten kinds of safeguards against anything you have. Now get me out of here and maybe I’ll—”

  “Ahhh … fuck it and fuck you.” I moved my barrel from her chin and shot her through the wrist. The bones exploded and she screamed so loud it drowned out the sounds of carnage. She wasn’t dead, but I didn’t like her chances.

  Cruel? Merciless?

  Yeah. Who gives a shit?

  I snatched up the case, took a look back at the camp, and saw that everyone and everything there seemed suddenly to be looking at me. Maybe it was the gunshot or Schellinger’s scream, or both. Didn’t matter.

  They all came running after me like the hosts of hell itself. I cast a longing glance at the rifle and equipment on the dead soldiers, but there was no time to pillage them. I whirled and ran. The shadows beneath the trees reached for me, and I let myself vanish into the darkness.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN

  JOINT FREETECH/WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION FIELD CAMP

  NORTH REGION, BRAZIL

  TUESDAY, MAY 2, 12:02 PM LOCAL TIME

  The soldiers moved through the foliage, working as a well-oiled team, using the tricks they had drilled for months. The cattle prods were the key. That was the only thing that worked on the infected. The freaks responded to electric shocks and even seemed to understand what they were and what was expected of them. It kept them from trying to bite their handlers and kept them moving.

  The virus-control field camp was directly ahead, and now the infected were shifting their focus from the handlers to the smells of cooking fires and human beings. They quickened their pace, long lines of drool swaying pendulously from their chins. The soldiers grinned at one another, interested to see what it would be like when they turned these maniacs loose on Junie Flynn and her FreeTech team. John had promised huge bonuses if they brought back her head.

  “Let ’em loose!” barked the co-pilot, who was actually the team leader.

  The soldiers gave the infected a last shock, propelling the six rabid killers forward to the very edge of the camp. The infected howled like dogs as they burst through the edge of the forest.

  Which was when it all went wrong.

  The howls turned to shrieks. Not of rage but of pain, and then it was all drowned out by a harsh chatter of automatic gunfire. The co-pilot flattened out, dragging the pilot down with him, but two of their men were hit by rounds and they puddled down. The third soldier returned fire, crouching low and aiming through a gap in the dense shrubs. He burned through an entire magazine and reached for a fresh one, and then the top of his head seemed to leap up. He fell sideways, spilling brains onto the ground.

  Silence dropped like a tarp over the camp.

  The pilot and the co-pilot had their weapons out, but there was no sound, no movement. They began crabbing sideways, edging away from the camp back toward the trail they’d followed. They got thirty feet before they turned, rose, and stopped dead in their tracks.

  A man stood there. Huge, with massive shoulders and heavy arms. His face was lumpy and ugly and covered with scars. He wore sunglasses with dark lenses, and he held a Glock 20 pistol in each hand.

  “Either of you fuckers know how to stop this singularity thing?” asked the man.

  “N—no … we’re just … we’re just…”

  “Fuck it,” said the big man, and shot them both. His face registered no emotion at all as they fell.

  Smoke drifted on the humid air. Without haste the man holstered his guns, removed a sat phone from his belt, punched a number, and waited until the call was answered. “Tell Ledger his lady is safe,” he said. “Franks out.”

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY

  THE DOG PARK

  WASHINGTON STATE

  TUESDAY, MAY 2, 12:07 PM

  I ran and they followed.

  No idea how many.

  No idea exactly what they were. WarDogs for sure, but design variations I’d never seen. Big. Relentless. Dangerous as hell. Chasing me through the forest. Swift and silent. Hunting me.

  As I ran, I could still hear the echo of screams from the camp. High-pitched and wet, the kind of scream that no one can fake, the kind that only the worst pain and terror can reach down and pull out of you.

  I know. I’ve screamed like that before.

  Maybe I will again. The day’s still young.

  And they’re coming.

  I ran as hard as I could. Ran as smart as I could, holding the laptop case as if it was the most precious thing on earth, because maybe it was. Looking for a way out. Rudy and Ghost were somewhere out here, too. Both of them running, if they were still able to run. I needed to get Schellinger’s laptop to a Wi-Fi connection or a satellite uplink. I had adapters of every kind—that was part of my standard field kit. I could plug this into a cell phone, hack it into any landline, or beam it wirelessly. All of that was possible, but not way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. They’d picked this spot well.

  There was a rustle above me, a flap of wings, and I risked a look to see if it was one of the pigeon drones Bird Dog had launched. There was nothing, though; whatever had made the noise was already gone. Probably an owl or a starling frightened by the commotion.

  Was Schellinger telling me the truth? Could the codes in the laptop stop this? And, if so, did that mean it would stop all of it or just control the dogs and maybe the chipped soldiers? There was no way to know. Not until I made that one call. Maybe the most important call anyone’s ever had to make.

  Just one call.

  All around me the woods suddenly went quiet. Just like that. The birds gasped themselves into stillness, the insects stopped pulsing. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

  They found me.

  God Almighty, they found me.

  One of the WarDogs broke from cover and ran toward me, a machine gun rising from a concealed bay in its back. I was moving, the light was questionable, and I had maybe half a second left, so I took the shot.

  The dog jerked sideways, sparks leaping from the side of its neck, its gun firing high and wide and missing me by twenty yards. Son of a bitch. I didn’t know whether to call it luck or the maliciousness of a perverse god who wanted more drama, but my shot had hit something important. So I ran at the thing and damn well shot it again, aiming for the shadows under the shoulder cowling. My second round whanged off and did nothing. Maybe it hit a heavy steel joint. Didn’t know, didn’t care. I fired again, and this time the bullet punched all the way in. The red lights in the dog’s eyes snapped off in an instant and it simply collapsed.

  Note to self: remember that spot. Hard as hell to hit, but it’s a winner.

  As I turned to go, though, I heard a high-pitched burst of squelch. Not the hunting cry but like the sound burst transmitters
make. Deeper inside the forest, I heard new sounds. Hunting cries, for sure.

  Had the dying machine sent a message to its fellows? If so, what was it? A warning? A locator?

  Impossible to know at that moment.

  I ran.

  Behind me I could hear them chasing me. Closing in for the kill.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE

  JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL

  BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

  TUESDAY, MAY 2, 3:13 PM EASTERN TIME

  The WarDog ran forward, steel nails clicking on the linoleum hallway floor. The woman doctor lay slumped in the doorway of the child’s room, and the dog’s tracking software had zeroed on that spot. Tactical order was to terminate all organic targets inside and to eliminate any armed or unarmed resistance. Only the six chipped soldiers who ran behind it were exempt. The dog had Bruiser painted on its shoulder.

  The soldiers fanned out around the WarDog as it slowed by the doorway to assess the threat level with thermal sensors. The team leader had the same display on a small screen strapped to his left wrist. There was a single heat signature inside the room.

  “Bruiser,” he said, “kill.”

  The WarDog crouched and sprang, clearing the corpse and landing on the floor inside. It opened up with its automatic weapon and the heat signature on the soldier’s display flew apart and diminished.

  “In,” he snapped, and the soldiers surged forward to verify the kill. The image showed a hospital bed ripped to tatters. But as the soldier closed in on the entrance he suddenly realized that something was wrong. There was no blood.

  There was no body.

  On the bed, shattered and scattered, were the pieces of some kind of machine. He stood there, his own gun aimed, as understanding caught up with him. The machine was a space heater.

  Realization came one second too late, as did his awareness that the dead doctor on the floor was moving. There was something wrong with that, too, he knew. Her lab coat should have been covered in blood. It wasn’t. Her eyes should have been glazed and dead. They weren’t. And she absolutely should not have been smiling.

  But she was.