The King of Plagues

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Hit me.”

  “It’s a plot for a novel. The Hospital thing.”

  “When was the novel published?”

  “That’s the weird part. I’ve been knocking the idea around for a while. It’s something I thought I’d do if I ever started a new series. My Rick Stenner books are all set in the U.S. except the flashback one, Black Ops, which is set during the invasion of Baghdad. But I’ve been wanting to spin off the Xander Murphy character for a while now. He was a supporting character in White Gold, and the readers really took to him. Kind of lowrent James Bond type that—”

  “I know,” I said. “Jude Law played him in the movie.”

  “Right, right … so you know. Okay, well, I figured that if my writing schedule ever opened up a bit, or if the Stenner books got stale, I’d do some Murphy books. It would be a switch to—”

  “Slow down … . You’re saying that the Hospital scenario is from a book you plan to write but haven’t actually done anything with?”

  “Right.”

  “There are no early drafts?”

  “There are no drafts at all. Never got that far.”

  “Notes? Plot outlines, anything like that?”

  “Nope. The idea’s still up here.” He tapped his skull. “That’s one of the reasons I’m so concerned. I mean, if it was something that I’d already published—”

  “Then we’d have six billion suspects.”

  “I don’t sell quite that many books.”

  “Anyone can read your stuff in a library,” I said.

  “Good point. On the other hand, if it was something I’d written but which hadn’t yet been released, that would narrow it down to the staff at my agent’s office, my lawyer, my family, and my publisher. Still a lot of people, but a narrower field.”

  “So, who have you told about this plot?”

  “I belong to a couple of writers’ organizations and we have conventions every year. The pros do a couple of panels for the fans, and then we decamp to the closest bar and spend the rest of the weekend networking or bullshitting. You know, gossip, industry news, that sort of thing. After a couple of rounds we start one-upping each other about what would make the absolute best kick-ass novel and how we’re the guy to write it.”

  “And that’s where the Hospital idea came in?”

  “Yeah. This was a convention called ThrillerFest. I was at the bar in the Hyatt with a whole bunch of other writers. We were all hammered and we were doing the one-up thing with the perfect thriller plot. I told them about the Hospital bombing.”

  I said, “Tell me why you picked that hospital.”

  “You probably can’t tell from my accent, but I was born in London. Grew up in Whitechapel, about two blocks from the hospital. We emigrated when I was seventeen and I lost my accent in college theater courses. My first job, though, was as an assistant orderly at the London. Mostly I pushed a laundry cart around, but I was in every part of that hospital every day. I could draw a diagram of it from memory, or at least a diagram of the old building. So, when I needed a landmark for my imaginary terrorists to blow up, I picked that one.”

  “Write what you know,” I suggested.

  “Exactly.”

  “So, who stole your idea?”

  He grunted. “I’m pretty sure Osama bin Laden wasn’t doing shots with us that night.”

  “When was this?”

  “Couple of years ago. July 20 09.”

  “Who was there?”

  “In the bar? Christ, everyone. Place was packed. People were coming and going. I can’t tell you for sure who was in our conversational circle when I talked about that scenario. We were all pretty well hit in the ass. It was late, though. Midnight at least, which means that the party was in full swing.”

  “Give me some names.”

  “Well … David Morrell was there for some of it. He asked me later if I ever wrote the book.”

  “Morrell?”

  “Guy who created Rambo? Who else? Let’s see … . Gayle Lynds was there. Sandra Brown, Doug Clegg, Steve Berry, Vince Flynn, Eric Van Lustbader, Ken Isaacson, John Gilstrap …”

  He rattled off a long list of names. I recognized some of them from Hugo Vox’s Terror Town think tank. I wrote down all of the names. By the time Hanler was finished rooting around in the rubble of that drunken memory we’d compiled a list of twenty-eight names. Of those eleven were definites. Four of them were hazy maybes. The rest had all been at the table, but he didn’t know when or for how long.

  “Anyone else there?”

  “Maybe, but I was seeing pink lobsters by the time I rolled out of there. I should have been arrested for the way I drove the elevator to my floor.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments, drinking our coffee, thinking it through.

  “Your plot,” I said, “did it involve bringing in oil or rubber in large quantities? Or pallets of tires?”

  He gave me a shrewd look and for a moment I could see the brains behind the bestseller bluster. “You’re talking about the black clouds? Yeah, I saw that on TV and thought it was odd.”

  “Not part of your story?”

  “No.”

  “Any religious themes in your plot?”

  “Just the usual stuff. Fundamentalist Shiites. Not very original, I’m afraid, and I’d probably have changed it in the writing. The genre’s moving away from using Muslims as the go-to bad guys.”

  I said nothing.

  Hanler sipped his coffee and stared up at the ceiling. “It would be kind of weird if a writer was involved in this sort of thing,” he said. “We cook up the worst possible catastrophes. Brilliant crimes, terrorist campaigns, mass murders. We get inside the heads of serial killers and extremists. Good thing we’re the good guys.”

  “If all of you are,” I said.

  “Yeah, there’s that. Sorry this wasn’t more useful. And I hope like hell that I didn’t waste your time.”

  Me, too, I almost said aloud.

  We stood and shook hands. Hanler eyed me for a moment. “Look, Joe, if it turns out that it was one of the people at ThrillerFest or someone from the T-Town group, someone who used my idea …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Put the son of a bitch down like a rabid dog.”

  “Why? For stealing your idea?”

  “No,” he said without humor. “Because it means that I’m partly responsible, however far removed, for the deaths of four thousand people. I have trouble sleeping at night as it is. I think knowing that for sure … Christ, I think that might kill me.” He sighed and smiled a weary smile. “Come on; let me buy you one for the road. And something for Circe and your pal.”

  And that fast everything went all to hell.

  There was a series of firecracker pops somewhere outside and the whole front set of windows of the Starbucks exploded inward.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Starbucks

  Southampton, Pennsylvania

  December 19, 5:43 P.M. EST

  A barrage of heavy-caliber bullets tore into the coffeehouse, tearing apart the counter, shattering the big urns of hot coffee, sending stacks of paper cups flying, and ripping apart the spot where I’d been standing a split second before.

  The heavy front glass was thick enough to have deflected the first rounds; otherwise I’d be dead. Instead I hooked an arm around Hanler and a young woman wearing a Grinch sweatshirt. I felt two hard jerks at the flaps of my sports coat and knew that a couple of rounds had missed me by inches. We hit the deck just as the first screams rose, louder than the gunfire. Then a second window blew and suddenly I was screaming myself as glass splinters rained down on my head. I shielded my eyes with my arm.

  “Down! Down! Get down!” I roared.

  I pivoted and looked out from under my bent arm. Most of the customers were already in motion, dodging and ducking, leaping over counters and pitching themselves behind the overstuffed chairs. But a few stood there with slack mouths and eyes like deer on a highway … and the bullets tore them to
rags. A college jock with a Rutgers ski cap flew backward into a display of stocking stuffers, his white parka blooming with red flowers. As he fell his outflung arms knocked down an old man and a teenage girl, sending them sprawling and saving their lives by accident as the heavy-caliber rounds swarmed the air.

  Even through the thunder of gunfire I could hear Ghost barking like crazy, but I couldn’t tell if he was hurt.

  “Hanler! Crawl behind the counter! Hanler!” I yelled, but Marty Hanler didn’t reply, and he didn’t move. He lay facedown on the floor and blood spread from beneath him in a growing crimson pool. Damn.

  “He’s over there!”

  The yell came from the shattered window and a split second later a line of bullets pocked the floor near my head. I used my right foot to shove the screaming young woman out of the way as I rolled in the other direction. I tore open my sports coat, found the knurled grips of my Beretta, racked the slide as I rolled to a kneeling position, and brought the weapon up in a two-handed grip. The first of the shooters stepped through the window. He wore heavy body armor and had a scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth and wore ski goggles. He held a Colt AR-15 Tactical Carbine, firing at anything that moved.

  I gave him a double tap.

  The first round punched into his sternum—it didn’t penetrate his vest, but it froze him into the moment—and I put the next round through his right eye. The impact snapped his head back and probably broke his neck, and it painted the two men behind with blood and brains. I shot the second one in the mouth as he tried to yell.

  The third shooter swept the room with an AR-15 that had an oversized hundred-round drum magazine. Bullets chopped the floor and turned tables into clouds of splinters.

  And … oh Christ—Rudy and Circe! They were still outside.

  If they were still alive.

  Rudy didn’t carry a gun, but he had common sense, good survival instincts, and a cell phone. I hoped he was hiding under my car calling for backup.

  The counter above me disintegrated into a storm cloud of splinters and I threw myself forward and down, one arm hooked over my face to protect my eyes as I went onto my side and fired blind. I put half a magazine through the flying debris and the chatter from the assault rifle abruptly stopped.

  “He’s over behind the counter!” a man yelled from the other side of the store.

  Suddenly three other long guns opened up from the far end of the store, blasting the side window and running lines of destruction along the floor. People screamed as bullets found them, punching through heavy winter coats, tearing chunks out of legs and arms, and splashing the floor with red.

  This was going from bad to absolute frigging disaster. Adrenaline was pumping through me by the quart, but at the moment it was triggering more of the flight impulse than the desire to fight all these guys. I was scared out of my mind; I’ll admit it to anyone.

  “Grenade, grenade!”

  I didn’t know if someone was calling for a frag or telling his comrades that he was throwing one, but I did not want to wait around to find out. I came up firing and put the rest of the mag downrange, forcing them back for a second. The grenade dropped from dead fingers and fell outside the store.

  There was a huge whump! and a dozen car alarms began to blare.

  Any hope I had that the blast had taken out the rest of the shooters was blown to hell as they opened up again. And I prayed that Rudy and Circe were nowhere near that grenade when it blew.

  I had only one spare magazine and I swapped it out as I flung myself to the left, hitting the base of the front wall. Broken glass covered the floor, and as I slid out of the line of fire the jagged shards tore through my trousers and bit into my left thigh like a swarm of piranha.

  The third shooter—the one I hit while firing blind—was down but not dead. He lay partly inside the coffee shop and was slowly trying to crawl back out. Blood dripped from a thigh wound and another on his right forearm. The strap of the AR-15 was wound around his injured arm.

  I stretched for a long reach just as the other shooters opened up again. My scrabbling fingers caught the strap and I jerked it toward me, hauling gun and gunman into the store. The shooter tried to make a fight of it, but I wasn’t in the mood. I jerked harder and as he flipped over onto his back I chopped down on his windpipe with the butt of the Beretta.

  There was movement to my left and I saw Ghost crouching behind the ruined counter, his teeth bared, his white pelt dottled with blood. His muscles bunched as he prepared to make a run at the gunmen.

  “Down!” I snapped. It was forty feet to the side window, and fast as Ghost was, he’d never get them before they got him. The dog gave me a fierce, despairing look. He wanted to be in this fight. He probably smelled my blood and the ancient instinct to protect the pack leader was coming close to overriding his training.

  Behind me a man growled, “C’mon, Turk; get this motherfucker!”

  Then one of the gunmen kicked the rest of the glass out of the window and stepped through. There were at least a dozen people in the coffeehouse, and most or all of them were hurt. A lot of them were dead, too. I cut a look at Hanler, but he lay in the center of a lake of blood and wasn’t moving. I didn’t think he was ever going to.

  Son of a bitch.

  I took the AR-15 and from the weight I could tell that the drum mag was more than half-gone. How many rounds left? Twenty? Thirty? The dead man’s coat was open and I flipped back the flap, saw a second mag hanging from his belt, and made a grab for it.

  The shooter caught the movement and suddenly the dead man’s body seemed to rise from the floor as rounds punched into his meat and muscle, jerking the corpse into a horrible parody of convulsive life.

  Lying flat on my back, head toward them, I raised the rifle with both hands and emptied the first magazine at that end of the store. It sounds easy, but the recoil slammed into my upraised arms and threatened to tear them out of the shoulder sockets.

  The gun clicked empty way too soon; I’d guessed wrong about how many rounds were left. There couldn’t have been more than a dozen rounds left, but it bought me a second’s worth of grace, which was all I needed to swap out the magazines.

  I drew a breath, then let out the loudest war cry I could. Who knows what I said or if I said anything at all? Just noise. Loud and feral, the primitive and inarticulate cry of the Warrior within as I rolled onto my stomach and came up into a low crouching run, firing from the hip, blasting on full auto as I dodged from wall to wall. I don’t know how I didn’t get shot. Battlefields are like that. Sometimes you have the best armor and the best cover and a ricochet pings off a wall and punches your ticket, and sometimes you feel painted with magic as you run through hellfire without a scratch. Bunny calls it having a Die Hard moment. Top says that it’s Madman Mojo. I don’t have a name for it, but I made it to the counter alive. I hip-checked Ghost and sent him on a nail-skittering sideways slide into the wall. He yelped in pain, but he was still on his feet and out of the line of fire.

  Then the tone of the fight changed. Only one gun continued to pour fire my way; the others were shooting at something outside.

  Rudy and Circe?

  It sounded like a dozen guns in play out there.

  I dove for cover, and my heart sank in my chest. There were more of them, and no matter how much of a Die Hard moment I was having, I couldn’t win against an army. In the movies a hero can win against unlimited odds. This wasn’t the movies. I was already slowing down and I was going to run out of ammunition very soon. And then I was going to die.

  There was a scream and a crash and I looked up as one of the shooters came backward through the window, arms flung wide, chest and face exploding like fireworks.

  Then I heard it.

  “Echo! Echo! Echo!”

  A deep, bass rumble of a shout.

  Top!

  The shooters at the far end turned toward the shouts, and I rose up and hosed them. But one of them spun and fired a full mag at me. I felt the wind of the
first rounds as I dropped back out of sight.

  There were more screams, and no more rounds came my way.

  I ducked and crabbed sideways and looked down the store and saw that one shooter was gone, punched back out through the window and sprawled like a starfish on the hood of a parked Hyundai. A second man had dropped his weapon and was trying to stop his life from leaking out of a hole in the side of his neck.

  The third shooter held his ground and was slapping a fresh magazine into place. I’d been waiting for that moment, and I rose up from hiding and ran at him. Ghost was right on my heels, racing along with the silent speed that a fighting dog has when blood is in the air and it’s time for the kill. The AR-15 was a burning monster that bucked and jerked in my hands as I put twenty rounds into the shooter. Vest be damned. I drilled a hole through his chest you could drive a truck through, and what was left of him pinwheeled out through the window.

  Two more shooters ran past the window, heading toward the front, but I heard a fusillade of mixed-caliber reports and both men staggered back, turning and juddering as Echo Team chopped them apart. There was more movement outside and I saw Top Sims and Bunny duck down behind a car and trade fire with yet another pair of shooters. How many of the bastards did they send? I mean, I’m flattered and all that they think I’m that tough, but an entire army seemed a bit excessive.

  I reached the window. The man with the neck wound wasn’t hurt near as bad as I thought and he pivoted and used a bloody hand to draw his sidearm. There was a flash of white, a fierce growl, and a sharp crunch, and then the gun arm collapsed into red junk as Ghost took him. He screamed, but Ghost growled like a monster out of myth.

  “Keep!” I ordered Ghost, and the big shepherd stopped short of killing the man but didn’t let go of the mangled arm.

  I crouched and did a fast look around the corner of the window. There were four shooters on my right, all of them firing over the hoods of parked cars. It was weird. You see scenes like this in Iraq and Afghanistan, not in suburban Pennsylvania. I’m sure there was a lesson in there about cultural arrogance, but I was too busy to sort out the nuances at the moment. I dropped the AR-15 and took the sidearm from the guy Ghost was babysitting. The guy didn’t seem to mind. He was busy trying not to scream.