Code Zero (35 page)

“Ain’t that interesting as shit,” mused Top.

“Whatever it is,” I said, “we’ll figure it out on the fly.”

Without another word we then ran down the stairs into the subway.

Down into hell.

Chapter Fifty-four

Fulton Street Line

Near Euclid Avenue Station

Brooklyn, New York

Sunday, August 31, 1:56 p.m.

Officer Faustino stared at us with big eyes in a white face. She held her Glock in one hand, the barrel pointed to the ground. Her partner, Dawes, stood nearby, looking equally scared and confused.

“Officers,” I said, pulling down the lower half of my balaclava as I stepped onto the platform. Sweat ran down my face. “I’m Captain Ledger, Homeland Security.”

A lie, but a useful one.

Beyond the cops I saw Ivan squatting on the edge of the platform, pointing a combat shotgun into shadows. The rest of Echo swarmed past me, moving quickly to double-check that the station was secure.

“C-Captain,” said Faustino, tripping over it a bit. “What’s happening?”

Instead of answering, I said, “Holster your weapons, officers. Do it now, please.”

They did so, but reluctantly. The two cops looked to be about one short step away from losing their shit. The male cop maybe more so. I could sympathize. Control is not a constant or a given, even if you have a badge pinned to your chest.

However, Faustino forced herself to straighten and chased the tremolo out of her voice as she asked, “How can we help?”

A good cop. I gave her a smile.

“We can’t let anyone down those stairs,” I said, “and we sure as hell can’t let anyone go up. Not unless you get an all-clear directly from me or my superiors. Can I trust you and your partner to hold this line?”

She forced herself to straighten. “Yes, sir. We got it.”

I kept eye contact for a few seconds longer, then spun away to join my team. This was a “life sucks” moment for everyone. I dearly hoped this would be the worst moment of all of our days.

At the edge of the tracks I hunkered down next to Ivan, who was studying the tunnel through a night-vision scope.

“What are you seeing?”

“Seeing nothing, boss,” he said, quietly, not looking at me. “Hearing some weird shit, though, and its making my balls want to shrivel up and hide.”

I held my hand up for silence and bent my ear toward the tunnel entrance. I didn’t hear anything. Until I did. It was soft, distant, like a breeze blowing through a cracked window on a stormy night.

“Those are human voices,” said Sam quietly. Lydia and the others clustered around us and they listened, too. They all heard it. Some sooner, others after a few seconds, but they all heard it.

The moans. Plaintive and hungry.

“Fuck me,” whispered Bunny.

“Okay,” I said as I went over the edge and down onto the tracks, “form on me.” We moved quickly and quietly into the tunnel, but a hundred feet in I stopped and turned to the others. “Listen up,” I said, facing the newbies, “there wasn’t time before and I didn’t want to say this in front of those cops, but here’s the deal. This is the point where I’m supposed to make a speech to the new recruits. But I don’t like speeches and we don’t have time, so this will be short and sweet. You three are jumping in ankle-deep shit. You’re doing that without being properly briefed or trained. All of that sucks, but there it is.”

Three sets of eyes studied me. Everyone pulled down the lower shrouds of their balaclavas. Easier to have a conversation that way. Ivan stood apart and kept his shotgun pointed down the tunnel.

“We’re heading into a situation that is probably going to be worse than anything you’ve dealt with,” I continued. “Get used to that because this is what we do. The DMS usually doesn’t put boots on the ground unless the shit is already hitting the fan. Sucks but there it is.” I cut a look at Lydia. “You tell them what’s down here?”

She nodded. “As much as I could. Wasn’t a lot of time.”

To the newbies I said, “So you know. This is the real face of terror, kids. Not guys in turbans and not homegrown assholes with fertilizer bombs. As far as the DMS goes, it’s mad science and monsters. You three good to go or do I send you back to babysit the cops? The appropriate response is ‘hooah.’”

“Hooah,” they said. If there wasn’t overwhelming enthusiasm, who could blame them?

“Good. Combat call signs from here out.”

“Sir,” said the bullet-headed ATF shooter from Boston, Duncan MacDougall, “we don’t have call signs. At least I don’t.”

The FBI woman, Montana Parker, shook her head. “Me neither.”

“I do,” said the Navy SEAL, a tall, ascetic man with a poet’s face. “Been called Gandalf since OCS.”

“Gandalf,” I said, nailing it in place.

MacDougall, I remembered from the training sessions, had a tattoo of a snarling wolf on his left forearm. I pointed to him. “You’re Bad Wolf.”

He grinned.

“What about you?” I asked the FBI woman.

“Most of the guys I’ve ever worked with have called me ‘that bitch,’ but I don’t think that’s going to play.”

Despite everything, I laughed.

Ivan shifted to stand next to her. He was six four and she came to well below his shoulder. Five three, tops. “How about Stretch?”

She gave him a smile that was softer and brighter than I would have expected. She hadn’t smiled once during the training sessions, and I had the feeling that no one had ever accused her of having an overly sunny disposition. I’d been leaning toward a call sign of Genghis or Harpy, but I was glad I hadn’t said anything.

“Welcome to the DMS, Stretch. I’m Cowboy.” I pointed to Top and Bunny. “Sergeant Rock and Green Giant.”

They’d already learned the call signs of the others. Lydia was Warbride, Ivan was Hellboy, and Sam was Ronin. And for a weird little moment I thought I heard other call signs whisper through the shadows. Names of comrades and friends long gone, and others who’d taken injuries that had pushed them off the firing line.

Dancing Duck.

Chatterbox.

Trickster.

Scream Queen.

So many others.

Too many others.

“Now pay close attention, and that goes for everyone,” I said. “We’re stepping into a world of wrong here, and if we come to a worst-case scenario then we are going to have to make hard choices without hesitation. The first two DMS teams who faced people infected with the
seif-al-din
were overwhelmed and destroyed because they hesitated. They let ordinary human feelings get them killed. We can’t repeat that. The reason you three made the cut is because you never hesitated, not in any of the drills. Well, this isn’t a drill. This is as real as it is ever going to get. We are going to face walkers. You understand what that means?”

MacDougall—Bad Wolf—said, “What Warbride told us seems unreal. This is World War Z stuff. I mean … are we really talking zombies here? It’s hard to believe.”

“Tell you what, son,” said Top in a slow drawl, “how about you cover yourself with steak sauce and walk point for us. Let’s see if it feels like hazing when those fuckers tear a flank steak off your ass.”

The other members of Echo laughed. Not nice laughs.

Bad Wolf stiffened. “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just…”

Top laid a hand on his shoulder. “Son, you’re fishing for a context that just ain’t there. We’ve all been through it. You’ll get through it, too.”

“It’s what we do,” murmured Lydia.

“She’s right,” said Bunny. “You know that line from Shakespeare? The one about there being more things in heaven and earth?”

“Sure,” said Bad Wolf. “
Hamlet
.”

“Pretty much our job description.”

It chilled me to hear that line used now when I’d thought it less than two hours ago.

I said, “Look, guys, here’s the bottom line. These walkers—they’re not supernatural, nothing like that. This is a weaponized disease that turns innocent people into mindless killers. It isn’t pretty and it isn’t curable. Anyone who is infected is a time bomb because he or she can and will try to spread it. If we don’t stop it, those movies—
The Crazies
,
28 Days Later
—they won’t be horror flicks, they’ll be historical documents. That is not a joke and it’s not an exaggeration. Tell me you hear and understand.”

The horror in their eyes was total now. But they said, “Hooah.”

I pulled my balaclava into place. “Then let’s go to work. Ronin, you have our backs. Hellboy, you’re on point. Nobody gets out of visual range. Be sharp and be professional.”

We moved on. It did not help my peace of mind knowing that Euclid Avenue Station was the end of the line. I hope we didn’t cut ourselves on that kind of irony.

Interlude Fourteen

Four Seasons Hotel

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Two and a Half Years Ago

“I think they know.”

The vice president propped himself up on one elbow and placed his other hand on the naked back of Artemisia Bliss. She sat on the edge of the bed, a wineglass cradled between her palms, head bowed, black hair falling to hide her face.

“Who knows?” he asked.

“Aunt Sallie,” she said. “Church.”

Collins snorted. “I doubt it. If they had a clue you’d be out on your ass.”

She shook her head. “I might be out on my ass. I’m not sure.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I tried to do a remote login to my workstation from my laptop and it said that the system was down for repairs.”

“So?”

“The system is never down for repairs. There are too many redundancies.”

He grunted and stroked her back, running his fingers slowly up and down the knobs of her backbone, circling them one at a time as he went.

“What could they know?” he asked.

Bliss pushed her hair out of her face and took a sip of wine. “It’s possible they may have discovered that I copied Hugo Vox’s records.”

“Vox? Not Paris Jakoby?”

“I deleted all traces of what I took from the Jakobys. No, Aunt Sallie has been retracing all the stuff we took from Terror Town. And I saw that there were special eyes-only requests for any files I accessed.”

“I thought that Haruspex thing could hide from MindReader.”

“It can … but this was right after I started using it. I’ve upgraded it a lot since then.”

He stopped caressing her and sat up. “You erased your tracks, though, right? Haruspex is just like MindReader, right? It doesn’t leave a footprint. That’s what you told me.”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

She shifted to look at him. “I know everything Pangaea could do, and I think I know everything MindReader can do…”

“But—?”

“But what if I’m wrong? What if MindReader can somehow track erasures, even ones made by software that does what it does?”

“Is that even possible?”

She was silent for a long time.

“Bliss?”

“Maybe.”

Collins launched himself off the bed and walked across the room, then wheeled on her. She could feel his anger. It filled the whole room.

“And you’re fucking telling me this now?”

“I—”

“You do know that Deacon wants my head on a pole,” he growled. “After the NSA dropped the ball in shutting them down last year, Deacon all but tore me a new asshole. Came right up to the edge of threatening my fucking life, you know. He came right out and told me that he had his eye on me, that if he discovered any impropriety he would bury me. His words. Bury me—and knowing him I don’t think that was a metaphor.”

Bliss shook her head. “He can’t touch you.”

“He can if he gets inside Haruspex and sees what we’re doing. Jesus fuck, Bliss. There’s enough there to have me arrested and jailed.”

“No…”

“Yes there is and you damn well know it.”

“I … I’ll wipe the files. Demagnetize the drives and wipe everything,” she insisted.

He came back and squatted down in front of her. “Can you dupe everything and hide it?”

“Hide it?”

“Yes. Make a master copy and put it somewhere safe. Somewhere MindReader can’t find it. No Internet connection.”

“Sure, I can copy it to a master drive and—”

“How long will that take?”

“I don’t know, Bill. A day…?”

“Do it. I’ll have one of my guys come by your place. We need that data. All of Vox’s notes, the security game modules, the pass-code interpreter … we need all of it. If we lose it then we lose any chance of doing some real good.”

Bliss said nothing but she gave him a token nod. Bill Collins had a different worldview than she had. He was, in his own way, a patriot. She was genuinely apolitical. He wanted the presidency so he could rebuild America into a form that he believed would approximate the way the country would have been had politicians not spent two centuries wandering in the opposite direction of what the Founding Fathers intended. Bliss wanted to publish file patents, and revise the current definition of what “filthy rich” meant. So far, though, both paths led through a landscape she thought of as “deliberately chaotic.” Funny how fanatical idealism and rampant greed sometimes look the same from a distance.

“I can make the copies,” she said, “and I can blank out my own laptop. But what happens if they hit me with a warrant? Think about it, Bill, if they really think I hacked and copied those files, a warrant would be a no-brainer.”

He nodded. “Yeah, damn it.”

“So what do I do? I could get arrested.”

That was a big ugly truth and it hung in the air, leering at them. Collins refilled their wineglasses and they sat next to each other, naked and slumped, thinking it through.

Collins said, “We have to stop using Haruspex, that’s for certain. At least for now.”

“I know.”

“When I send my guy to get your drive, let him have that, too. I have places to hide it where no one can find it. Believe me.”

She gave a weak little laugh. “I’ll feel naked without it.”

He touched her face, then trailed his fingertips down over her chin, her throat, her breast.