Code Zero (58 page)

Montana made him pay for that with six rounds through his face.

Three Berserkers down.

I leaped over the falling body to try to help Bunny, but I saw the big kid from Orange County drive a Ka-bar up under the soft palate of the Berserker. As he did it, they both roared like monsters. The mercenary flopped over dead, temporarily pinning Bunny to the ground. White hands reached down, tearing at the corpse, trying to find purchase on Bunny’s Hammer suit.

Then Top was there, unarmed, rushing in, scooping up Bunny’s shotgun, firing, firing as he bought Bunny the chance to worm his way out.

A piercing scream made me turn and there was Ivan, fighting hand to hand with a Berserker. The big creature was bleeding from the mouth, big gouts of blood splashing on his chest and Ivan’s. I couldn’t tell what injury Ivan had inflicted, but then I saw something that drove an icy blade into my heart.

There was a long, ragged gash down Ivan’s chest and the layers of his Hammer suit were parted like the obscene lips of a terrible wound. I could see Ivan’s bare chest and there was no visible mark on him, but all of his protection against the monsters in the air was gone.

Gone.

Ivan must have known it, too, because he went absolutely insane with combat rage. He drew a bayonet and a short fighting knife and he attacked the Berserker, chopping pieces of padding and flesh away, ripping the life from the killer.

“Cowboy! Watch!”

It was Noah’s voice, and I darted left and spun as two zombies came hurtling at me, propelled by a mighty shove from the remaining Berserker. Noah had his gun up, but I was inside his field of fire. I waved him off as I closed on the zombies from the outside, slashing down at the knee tendon of the closest one and shoving him into the other. They went down. The Berserker threw himself at me. Nearly four hundred pounds of brute strength and crushing weight. I dropped flat and then kicked up, spoiling his lunge, sending him spinning into a bone-jarring fall.

I back-rolled to my feet, but Noah was there, aiming past me now, sighting along the barrel. He emptied half a magazine into the Berserker. The first bullets pounded the thing into forced immobility, and with that freeze-frame, Noah used the last four rounds to blow out its lights.

The gunfire was thinning as Echo Team chopped the last of the infected down.

I reached for a fallen rifle, but as I straightened, the last of the walkers fell over, a black dot painted on its pale forehead.

Thunder echoed through the cavernous room, bouncing back and forth, diminishing with each collision, and finally fading into a terrible silence.

We stood there, each of us frozen in whatever posture of combat we’d been in when the silence caught us.

We did not look at the fallen walkers.

We did not look at the dead Berserkers.

There was only one thing any of us could see.

Ivan stood by the pile of overturned cases, his dripping knives in his bloody hands. Where his uniform was torn we could see his skin. It was no longer untouched. Now huge blisters as big as walnuts were expanding, straining the thin layers of skin, and finally bursting to seed the air with tiny droplets of blood. Black lines of infection raced crookedly up his stomach and chest and vanished beneath the undamaged part of his mask. Blood ran in lines down from that hood.

With a cry of horror he tore his mask off and flung his goggles away. The blisters had turned his face into something out of nightmare. His eyes were bright red and he wept tears of blood.

“Help me!” he said, but his throat was so thick with wet wrongness that it came out as a strangled gurgle. He pawed the air in our direction, imploring us to do something even though we all knew there was nothing that could be done.

Nothing.

Not even if he was in a medical bay with the world’s top doctors around him. These were bioweapons of the worst and most terrible kind. No cure, no treatment.

No hope.

Ivan sank slowly to his knees.

Top handed the shotgun to Bunny and took the pistol from Noah. He looked at me.

It cost me a lot to give a single nod.

It cost Top every bit as much to see it.

He raised the pistol and sighted on Ivan.

Ivan reached out to him. Begging him for the bullet.

Montana yelled, “No!”

But the madness of the moment demanded a different answer.

Chapter One Hundred and Three

The Locker

Sigler-Czajkowski Biological and Chemical Weapons Facility

Highland County, Virginia

Sunday, September 1, 12:37 p.m.

We stood over Ivan’s body for as long as we could. I knew that there was little chance he would receive a proper burial. Even if the technicians and biohazard teams would somehow sterilize this place and bring it back online—an event I did not believe possible—any organic material would have to be incinerated and the ashes treated with chemicals and then sealed in ceramic-lined steel drums. We’d bury a box under a stone with Ivan’s name on it.

Top knelt and placed the pistol on Ivan’s chest. None of us would ever want to fire the gun that had killed our friend.

And besides, a warrior needs his weapon as he rides into Valhalla.

Finally, I turned away and walked to the door of the Ark vault, pushed it open, stared inside.

There was a heavy set of industrial-grade acetylene tanks and a welding mask. The whole front of the Ark had been cut open, the locks melted away, the steel panels for each compartment pried up. My BAMS unit was picking up traces of everything. Every single goddamn virus and spore and bacterium and prion that was stored at the vault was now swimming in the air.

But as I studied the storage slots I could see that even though they had been opened, they were still full. The Berserkers had not stolen the pathogens. They’d merely released them. They’d totally contaminated the Locker. Top and Bunny came in and saw what I saw.

“I don’t get it,” said Bunny. “They opened these up before we got here.”

“I know.”

“That makes no sense.”

Top backed up a step and looked out through the door at the mass of bodies outside. I could see his eyes through his goggles and they were narrowed. Intelligent and calculating.

“Talk to me, Sergeant Major,” I said.

“I don’t think this was a theft, Cap’n,” he said slowly.

“No,” I agreed.

“What are you talking about, old man?” asked Bunny. “They sent a whole team in here.”

“You saw the team they sent in. A bunch of thug shooters and those fucking Berserkers. Tell me, Farmboy, which of them look like highly trained technicians capable of safely transporting the worlds deadliest pathogens out of here?”

Bunny said nothing. He kept looking at Top.

“Tell me where the vehicles are for this team,” added Top. Then he shook his head. “Hell, no, boy. This was a trap set for us. Or for a team like us.”

“Almost worked, too,” said Bunny as he nodded out the vault door to where Ivan lay.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Farmboy,” Top said. “It worked exactly right. Just like whatever Shockwave walked into in Atlanta. There were only two DMS teams left and Mother Night took them both clean off the board.”

“But we won this,” insisted Bunny. “We ain’t dead.”

I said, “What Top is trying to tell you is that we’ve been manipulated into wasting time we don’t have to waste. What do you call it in video games when you go off the main level of play?”

“A side quest?”

“Yeah,” growled Top, “and another term for that is
wild goose chase
.”

I kicked the side of the Ark so hard that hollow metal echoes shouted back at me. “We’re down here fighting the wrong goddamn fight.”

“Then where’s the real fight?”

I tapped my earbud but there was no signal. “I don’t know but we need to get out of here to find out, and I think our clock is just about out of time.”

We turned and we ran.

Chapter One Hundred and Four

Westin Hotel

Atlanta, Georgia

Sunday, September 1, 12:41 p.m.

Mother Night looked at her watch and saw that it was time to get ready. She showered and dressed in the Lucy Kuo costume she’d hand-sewn. For ten long minutes she did nothing but stand in front of the full-length mirror and look at herself.

Then, with a sudden rush of white-hot anger, she tore the costume off, ripping it, pulling it away from her skin as if it were diseased. The top was taped to her breasts, and as she ripped it off the tape left angry red welts across her naked skin. She threw the rags on the floor, then got a knife out of her bag and knelt over the costume, stabbing it over and over and over …

Time seemed to go away for a while.

A long while.

She blinked.

Blinked again.

She was no longer in the bedroom.

Mother Night was huddled in the back of the shower stall. Naked. Bleeding from cuts on her forearms and thighs, her face swollen and sore, eyes burning from tears.

“Wh-what—?”

Her voice was thick. The way a sleeper’s is after a long night.

The vomiting began then.

Without warning, without the slightest twitch, everything in her stomach surged upward, burning her throat, bursting from between her lips, spraying the shower walls with garish red.

Red.

For a terrible second she thought she was throwing up blood, but it was too much and too thin.

Wine?

When had she drunk wine?

When could she have had this much?

There seemed to be no food mixed in with the wine, but the liquid was lumpy with …

She stared.

Another rush spilled out.

And another.

Then her body convulsed with dry heaves as if it were trying to rid itself of her stomach lining. She strained so hard that white sparks detonated at the edges of her vision. Blood roared in her ears.

She kept staring at the lumps in the red mess.

There were pills mixed in with the wine.

Lots of pills.

“What?” she asked again, as if the vomit itself could provide an answer.

It took a long time.

The dry heaves ground slowly to a halt, leaving her breathless. She gasped for air, tried not to pass out.

Trembling fingers fumbled for the spigot and she turned it with a cry of effort.

The water was ice cold.

It punched the air out of her lungs and tore a scream from her.

Inside, deep inside, a voice laughed at her.

An old voice. The hated voice. The unevolved voice.

You killed me.

“What…?” she asked aloud, giving it different meaning now. Directing it somewhere. Inward. Backward in time.

You killed me
, said her older self.
You stole my life. You threw everything away, you pathetic bitch.

“Fuck you, you weak little cow,” sneered Mother Night. “You were nothing. You had no power. Look what I’ve done!”

You stole my life and made yourself into a monster. A hag.

Mother Night gripped the shower’s safety bar and pulled herself to her feet. It took a lot and her legs did not want to hold her. She tried to lift her leg over the edge of the tub, bungled it, and then she was falling, clawing at the air, finding only the shower curtain, clutching it, tearing it loose, dragging it down to the floor. She landed hard, striking the point of her left elbow on the closed toilet seat.

You’re pathetic. A psycho bitch who doesn’t deserve to live.

“Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you…”

It was all she could say as she fought her body onto hands and knees, gripped the edge of the sink, and pulled herself to her feet again. When she looked into the mirror it was not her own face she saw. It was not Mother Night.

Artemisia Bliss stared back at her. Sensibly dressed for work. Hair pulled back into a ponytail. Glasses on the end of her nose. Eyes filled with hate.

You’re nothing but a loser.

“You’re a goddamn liar. You were too weak to speak up for yourself. Pretty, clever little Artemisia Bliss. Crying into her pillow. Mad at the world. Boo-fucking-hoo. I won the game. I beat everybody.
I
made us into
this
.”

She beat her fist against her chest. The pain was shockingly hard and it felt so good. So delicious.

So powerful.

“I fucking won!”

In the mirror, Artemisia Bliss shook her head.

This isn’t a game.

“Everything’s a game, asshole. You were always too stupid to know that. It’s all a game and I won. I beat them all. Church, Aunt Sallie, Bug. The field teams. Everyone. I fucking won.”

The face in the mirror looked at her with such sadness.

So what?

“What?” Mother Night asked again.

Who cares if you won or not? Why do you think it matters?

Mother Night’s mouth opened but she couldn’t find the right words to explain to this phantom what it all meant. To make it crystal clear what every detail meant, why it all mattered, and the value of her victory. “I … I…”

And then someone knocked on the door.

As if a light switch had been thrown, the image in the mirror vanished to be instantly replaced by Mother Night’s face. She looked into those eyes—
her
eyes—and told herself that this was her true face. This was the only truth.

Mother Night.

Another knock.

A man’s knock.

But not, she was sure, a police knock. If the police knew she was here they’d have knocked the door down and she’d be in handcuffs or sprawled in a pool of blood.

Her body was streaked with wine vomit. A few pills clung to her skin.

Mother Night took the white terrycloth robe from the peg on the door, pulled it on, belted it, walked into the hall and out to the living room of the big suite. Her laptop was on the bed and she paused to hit a few keys. The screen display immediately showed the hallway outside her room via a video stream from the cameras she’d mounted there.