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Authors: Jonathan Maberry

BOOK: The King of Plagues
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Fair Isle Research Endeavor
The Hot Room
December 18, 3:06 P.M. GMT
Mikey and I entered the codes and swiped the keys. If he thought there was anything odd about what he was doing or if he wondered why he was doing it, he said nothing. His eyes were almost completely glazed, though, and the bleeding was worse.
“I’m sleepy,” he said. He leaned against the wall inside the air lock, and as the big door swung shut behind us he slid down and sat on the floor. He looked at me for a moment and I searched for some flicker of awareness, some spark, but there was only the vacuity created by the disease that was consuming him. He lay down on his side, curled his arm like a pillow, and rested his head. His eyelids drifted shut, long lashes brushing round cheeks, and he went to sleep. Blood pooled on the floor around him.
There was nothing I could do. Not a goddamned thing.
I wanted to scream, to pound my fists on the walls. But all I could do was continue, to go on, go deeper into this madness.
God help the first person I caught up with who was part of this thing.
I pressed the controls on the other side of the air lock. A simpler oneman system. The locks clicked, the air pumps hissed, the disinfectant spray blasted me, and the light went from red to green. Funny. Green is supposed to mean that it’s safe to proceed. I cut a last look back at the boy. Safe.
Inside my head the Warrior screamed for blood.
The inner door opened and I stepped into a surreal world. The room was large, much bigger than I expected, and there was a massive steel vault in the center of the floor, surrounded by very thick curved glass of the kind used in commercial aquariums. Inside this “fish tank” standing in a loose line around the vault were twenty-eight people in hazmat suits. Each faceplate was covered with strips of white surgical tape except for a narrow eye slit. The suits were pressure inflated so that they all looked like that Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and the suit material was opaque, so except for height it was impossible to tell the men from the women, and even that
wasn’t certain. They were identical. All traces of race, age, and gender were smoothed to a homogenous and alien sameness.
No one held a gun.
“Step out of the air lock.” The voice came through the lab’s PA system. It was a man’s voice. American accent. However, if someone in the fish tank was doing the talking I couldn’t tell.
“I’m good right here,” I said.
“Step out of the air lock or I’ll shoot one of these people.”
“Not a chance.”
“You don’t believe me?” He sounded way too calm, given the situation. I guess I did, too.
“Sure I do, but I’m not going to give you a new target.”
“Having an attack of the jitters?”
“No, I’m having an attack of common sense.”
He actually laughed at that. But the laugh was sharp and twisted like he had barbed wire in his throat.
“Are you Dr. Grey?”
A pause. “Yes.”
“You haven’t asked about your son.”
Another pause. Longer this time. “Is he dead yet?”
“You knew he was sick?”
“Yes.”
“Did you infect him?”
Seconds ticked by.
“Yes,” he said, and now I could hear the strain in his voice. It was like bending close to a piece of steel and seeing the tiny stress fractures.
“Why?” I asked, my voice as calm as I could make it.
“I did it to save him.”
“Well, nice fucking job, Einstein. That poor kid just bled out in the air lock.”
The PA system was bad, full of distortion, but I could hear his ragged sobs.
“I did it to save him!” he cried.
“From what?”
No answer.
“Listen … Dr. Grey,” I said, “let’s stop dicking around here. You’ve
gone to a lot of trouble to do all this, and to get me here. If you have a list of demands, or you want to make some kind of statement, then I’ll listen. But you have to make a show of good faith.”
“Faith?”
“You have to let some of these people go. Give up a few hostages. Show me that you’re at least willing to be reasonable.”
“No,” he said in a voice that sounded as vague and distracted as his son’s had been. “No … I think we’re well past the point of being reasonable.”
“No, we’re not. There’s still time to—”
“There is no time. Time ends here, ends now.”
“Bullshit. If that was the case, then why send for someone from Homeland? Why go to such elaborate lengths? If you have some political or social statement to make, then this is not the way to be heard.”
The people in the room shifted nervously. I stayed crouched down behind the heavy door, trying to find my target. Still nothing. Or was there? At the far end of the fish tank, one of the figures had shifted position, but she did it very cautiously. It was a small figure, almost certainly a woman, and she slowly raised her arm so that her forearm lay across her midsection. Her hand was curled into a loose fist, but as I watched, she uncurled her index finger. It took a second for me to process it, but then I realized that she was pointing to a spot outside the tank. I deliberately turned away, sweeping my eyes and gun in a wide arc as if covering the room, but when I swept back toward her she was still pointing. She even twitched her hand a little to emphasize her meaning.
“This isn’t about politics,” said Grey. He muttered something else after that, but it was too low for me to hear. A remark to himself. I think he said, “At least I don’t think it is.”
I surreptitiously cut my eyes in the direction the woman indicated and saw a row of gray filing cabinets lining the far side of the Hot Room. There were several of them and from where I stood I couldn’t see what was beyond them, but if someone was on the other side, they’d be able to see the fish tank and my reflection in the glass. It couldn’t have been a large space, and there wasn’t enough cover for someone to stand behind it. But … was someone sitting on the floor? Yeah … there was enough cover for that.
Gotcha.
“Then what’s it about, Doc? Give me something so I can help you.”
“I don’t need help!” His voice was thicker. More tears, or had he been exposed to the pathogen as well? The big clock in my head went
tick-tock.
“Then tell me what you do need.”
“I need you to step out of the air lock. I swear I won’t hurt you. But I need to see you. I need to look into your eyes.”
“And why would that be?”
“Because I need to know if I can trust you.”
“Trust is a funny request from someone who just killed his kid.”
“I could have vented the Ebola into the atmosphere,” he said. “I didn’t have to warn anyone. I didn’t have to bring you here. I could have made this much worse.”
Worse than murdering your own kid?
I wondered, but he was right. If a strain of fast-acting airborne Ebola reached England or the Continent …
“If you want to earn my trust, Doc, why not let some of the hostages go?”
“
No!”
he snapped with abrupt ferocity. “No, they stay.”
“And you want me to become a hostage, too?”
“No,” he said, and maybe it was the distortion of the PA system, but he sounded genuinely surprised. “No, don’t you get it? This isn’t about you! I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t even know you.”
“But you do know these people. Aren’t they your friends? Your colleagues and co-workers?”
“Exactly!” he said as if he’d just made a point.
He sneezed. I heard it through the PA system and I heard it in the room. He was definitely over behind the filing cabinets.
“I don’t have much time,” he said. “God … Mikey.”
“Where is your wife, Dr. Grey?”
He didn’t answer.
“Is she dead, too?”
“Yes,” he said after a long pause.
“Help me understand this. You take your co-workers hostage and yet you kill your own family?”
“I won’t explain over the com system.”
Seems that my options dwindled down to just one.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to stand up and step out of the air lock. If
this is an ambush, believe me when I tell you that I’m better at this than you are. If I see a gun in your hand I will shoot you dead.”
“I won’t shoot you.”
“Same rules apply if I see a trigger device. You’re not winning friends here.”
“No,” he said, “I expect not. Monsters don’t have friends.”
That was a comforting statement.
“Coming out,” I called, and I let my gun lead the way as I straightened and eased out of the air lock. The hostages all took an involuntary step back as I fanned the pistol barrel across them. I had the file cabinets in my peripheral vision, and I was ready to bust a cap in absolutely anything that moved.
Suddenly I heard a ripping sound to my right and knew for certain now that he was there. There were no shots, no further sounds.
I had my pistol in a two-handed shooter’s grip and I moved low and fast, checking every corner, and when I reached the wall of filing cabinets I took a breath and then whirled around.
Dr. Charles Grey sat on the floor. He held a beaker of some evil-looking liquid in his left hand. His pistol lay next to his right thigh. The hood of his hazmat suit was gone, torn open and partly off, which explained the tearing sound I’d heard. His face was puffed and red from crying, but he wasn’t sick. Not yet. He’d been waiting for me to arrive before subjecting himself to the Ebola pathogen.
He looked up at me with eyes that were filled with a devastating sadness. The microphone fell from his hand.
“Help me,” he said softly. “Please, for the love of God help me … . I don’t want to kill the world.”
The Seven Kings
Four Months Ago
After the oath was given and accepted, there was a party. The Kings and their Consciences left the chamber and went up into the castle, where tables had been set, food laid out, and a thousand candles lighted. There were
scores of people—members of the upper-echelon staff, rock stars, politicians, famous artists.
The American took Gault and Toys aside before they entered the ballroom.
“Careful what you say in here.”
“These people don’t know?” asked Gault.
“Nah. They think this is a party, and most of these lunkheads are professional party people. They jet-set around the world to wherever the party is. Drinking, snorting, and fucking their way through the glitterati landscape. No cameras are allowed and the stuff that happens here never makes it to the press.”
“Yes,” murmured Toys with a smile, “we’ve swum in these waters for years.”
The American laughed. “Good point. Then you know the rules.”
“The only rule is silence,” said Toys.
“Fucking A.” The American clapped them both on the shoulders and then dove into the eddying waters of flesh and excess.
Gault made to follow, but Toys touched his arm. “Sebastian … are you sure about this?”
“About what? Getting drunk and getting laid?”
“I’m being serious here.”
“Why?” asked Gault. “Why are you even hesitating? I could tell when we were in there that you didn’t like it. Why? This is what we have both wanted
forever.
All this power has been handed to us.”
“When you’re done coming in your pants, how about stepping back for a perspective check? Don’t you think this is all too much too soon? And too free?”
A look of disappointment flickered over Gault’s face. “I understand that you’re still off-balance from what happened with Amirah and the Seif Al Din, Toys. Granted our luck turned bad with that.” He touched the bandages that covered part of his handsome face. “Don’t think that I’ve forgotten, or could ever forget. But sometimes fortune does smile on people. We’ve landed on our feet here. We’ve landed hip deep in gold dust. We’re among friends.”
“They’re not my friends,” said Toys defensively.
“Sure they are. They’re my friends and what’s mine is yours. Now stop being a pussy and let’s go get what we deserve!”
Toys started to protest, but Gault clapped him hard on the shoulder—much harder than had the American—and pulled him into the noise and movement of the party.
The Blue Bell Inn
Skippack Pike, Blue Bell, Pennsylvania
December 18, 3:07 P.M. EST
Rudy stopped at the Blue Bell Inn and asked for a table as far away from other diners as possible. The place was warm and cheery with Christmas decorations and twinkling lights. Rudy barely registered them. He was shown to a corner deuce where he ordered coffee and waited for the server to go away. Then he removed his cell, activated the scrambler, and called Mr. Church.
For once Church actually answered the phone. “Doctor,” he said tersely, “is this important? Otherwise—”
“It’s very important.”
“Then give it to me fast. We’re in the middle of something here.”
Rudy did, though a couple of times he felt as if he were wandering down shadowy side corridors of speculation. Church listened without interruption, but when Rudy was finished he said, “Verify that he mentioned the Ten Plagues of Egypt.”
“Yes.”
“And a river of blood?”
“Yes.”
“And he mentioned Grace and Ghost?”
“He used those words in a sentence. It might be pure coincidence, but I doubt it.”
Church grunted.
“Mr. Church,” Rudy said, “I want to be frank with you.”
“By all means.”
“This man frightened me.”
“In what way? Because he appears to have insider knowledge?”
“Not precisely. It’s more that he appears to have …”
“Say the word, Doctor.”
“Okay. He appears to have unnatural knowledge.” Rudy licked his dry lips. “What is happening over there? How come I can’t get through on Joe’s phone?”
“Captain Ledger is participating in an active operation.”
“Is he in danger?”
Church did not answer.
“What did Nicodemus mean by ‘river of blood’?”
After a moment, Church said, “I’ll call when I have information that I can share.”
Church disconnected, and Rudy sat alone.
“Dios mio,” he breathed.
The Seven Kings
Four Months Ago
“So … you make your fortunes by chaos?” Gault asked as he and the American strolled through the fragrant gardens on the island. Toys trailed along a few feet behind them, and watchful guards were posted in camouflaged observation posts. Gault carried a glass of whiskey and soda; the American had a balloon of brandy. Vox took slow drags on a cigar. Behind them the castle was lighted up like a Disney palace. Music and laughter from the party were muted by the dense trees.
“‘Chaos’ is a good catchall word,” said the American. “By its own nature it resists specific definition. ‘Destabilization’ is maybe a little more precise. Any time the status quo takes a hit we make a buck.”
“And yet your day job—if it’s not too vulgar to call it that—is all about stabilization.”
“Yeah, well, life’s a fucking comedy act isn’t it?” They strolled in companionable silence for a bit. “With my day-job stuff … you
do
see how that allows for the other stuff to work, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“So, you can see why I’m not too crazy about Mom screwing with it.”
“Of course,” said Gault neutrally.
“I’d rather we stuck with events like 9/11 and the London subway bombings. That stuff hits the market like a tsunami, and we turn a buck while staying far, far away from the action.”
“You prefer to play it safe?”
“Fucking right. The risks should all be on paper or in predictions of percentage points. We shouldn’t be risking our own goddamn necks.”
“That’s less … exciting.”
The American snorted. “Don’t lecture me on what’s exciting, Sebastian. You’re a nice kid, but you laid your balls on the chopping block when you got involved with Lady Frankenstein over in Afghanistan. And you
didn’t
profit from it. You’re on the lam and you lost how much money?”
Gault said nothing.
“Mom’s more like you,” continued the American. “She grooves on the danger. She was against the bank thing we did a few years ago.”
“You robbed a bank?”
“Ha! We robbed every bank on the Continent. We spent fifteen years orchestrating the recession that slammed everyone at the end of’08. That was mine, right from the beginning. No risks, and we made insane amounts of money.”
“From an economic downturn?”
“That’s just it, Sebastian: the Seven Kings don’t see what’s been happening as an economic downturn. It’s simply a turn; it’s a sudden and radical change. Look, imagine that the economy is like an hourglass. Turn it on its head and the sand flows in a safe and predictable way. But if that same glass had holes in its sides, then during the process of turning it around some sand would inevitably fall out.”
“And when the glass is turned, you’re standing under those holes ready to catch the spill?”
“Sure. Here’s the crazy thing: most of the actual methods we use to scoop up the sand are legal. We have legions of people working for us holding the buckets. Investors, brokers, trust attorneys. For example, back at the end of 2009 our hedge-firm guys raked in billions in profits. Record one-year takes. Since we helped to destabilize certain banks, we knew who was likely to fall and who would remain standing. While most investors were running for the exits or swallowing bottles of sleeping pills, we used our people to scoop up beaten-down bank shares. We bought Bank of America stock when it had
dropped below a dollar a share, and then sat tight as the bailout shored up the holes we’d kicked in the sides of the ship. A bunch of ultraconservative boneheads didn’t follow suit because they thought that the government was about to nationalize the big banks. There were times no one else was even bidding.” He took a deep lungful and blew pale blue smoke over the heads of a thousand roses. “During the resurgence, one of our guys scooped up about twelve billion after fees in the second quarter of’09 and did even better in each quarter of 2010. That was just one of our guys.”
“No one noticed?”
“Sure they noticed, but they don’t draw the right conclusion based on what they saw. It’s like that old joke about six blind guys trying to describe an elephant. One touches its ears and thinks the elephant looks like a fan, another one touches its tail and thinks it’s a snake, and another one touches its tusk and says it must be like a spear, yada, yada.”
“
Three
blind men,” Gault corrected.
“Six,” the American said without rancor. “The American poet John Godfrey Saxe translated that story from an old Indian legend cooked up by a Jainist philosopher. Some lazy ass shortened it to three men.”
Gault grunted as he sipped his whiskey.
The American gave him a foxy wink. “I know you think I’m a fucking moron ’cause I talk like I’m a blue-collar chowderhead from South Baaaston.”
“Only sometimes.”
“Only sometimes,” agreed the American.
“Point taken,” Gault said. “My apologies.”
“Fuck it. The Seven Kings don’t apologize to each other. Or to anyone. We also don’t take offense. In fact, it’s useful to try and never take anything personal. You’re above that shit now; you live in a Big Picture world now, Sebastian. It takes some adjustment to think of yourself in those terms.”
“As a king?”
The American nodded.
“It may take some getting used to,” Gault murmured, “but I expect I’m going to like it.”
“Oh, you will.”
They walked on, pausing as a fat peacock strutted across their path, taking his time and pretending not to notice the two tall men.
“Faggot bird,” the American muttered. “Eris loves them. I’d like to turn my dogs on ’em. That’d be wicked fun.”
“Hedge funds,” Gault prompted.
“Well, yeah, hedge funds. When a lot of businesses tanked, we cleaned up buying properties for pennies on the dollar, and did better buying billions in beaten-down commercial mortgage-backed securities. For a while the fluctuations in the bond market pretty much gave us a license to print money.”
“What if the market doesn’t recover?”
“We won’t be aboard any ship that’s actually sinking, and if we have to take a loss here and there to maintain respectable credibility, then we’re taking a chunk of the back end. The stuff our accounting department does is science fiction.”
“How do you keep yourself safe from the IRS and the FBI?”
The King of Fear chuckled. “Most people run from the feds because they know you can’t fight ’em and you can’t beat ’em in court. We don’t have that problem.”
“Why not?”
“This is what I mean by ‘Big Picture,’ Sebastian. Small minds try to figure out how to dodge the bullet the system shoots at them. Big minds try to fight the system by wrapping themselves in layers of legality.”
“And that’s what you do?”
“No. We’re Big Picture, but we’re Big Picture
as viewed by Kings
. What we do is plan ahead. Years and years ahead. Anyone involved in the actual crisis is going to get looked at very closely, right? What we do is plan far in advance and then we seed people into the system. We’re everywhere, Sebastian. We’re in all levels of government, all corners of Wall Street and other national financial districts. We’re in Congress and the White House. We’re deeply positioned in the IRS, FBI, SEC, EPA, FTC, … and everywhere else. We have significant players in the Republican and Democratic parties. And we have people peppered through the press. We’re on both sides of every argument, every congressional bill, every peace accord, every global summit. Chaos isn’t about taking sides. Kingship is about ruling
all
of it.”
They stopped by the cliff and looked out over the wind-troubled waters of the St. Lawrence River.
“Who does your dirty work? Hits and bombings and such?”
“We recruit from existing extremist cells. We fund them and protect them, and then we tap them to be our street troops. We call them the Chosen, and they’re sold different versions of a bill of goods about rewards in heaven. Or whatever else they’d sell their souls for. Money, pussy, whatever works. You’d be surprised how many of these soldiers of God will sell their own mothers for a few hundred K and a California blonde with plastic tits. Kind of ruins your faith in suicidal fundamentalism.”
Gault laughed and the American blew smoke rings at the moon.
“Couple, three years ago,” continued the American, “my man Santoro came up with an idea to build a more elite combat team. The Kingsmen.”
“Catchy.”
“It inspires a sense of pride and entitlement. I put Santoro in touch with some ex-Delta and SEAL guys and they built a training program that is world-class and wicked hard. Couple of guys out of every group die or get crippled. We let the other cadets shoot the cripples. Sounds harsh, I know, but it also makes them hard as fucking nails. Real fire eaters.”
“How are these Kingsmen used?”
“Black ops, wet works. That sort of thing. We had one tussle with the DMS. Our team lost, but it was an overwhelming-odds situation, and the DMS thought they were facing some rogue cell of ultrajihadists.”
“The DMS teams are the toughest I’ve ever seen,” Gault warned.
“Yeah, well … we’ll get a chance to test that.”
“These Kingsmen … what’s their incentive?”
“Numbered accounts in the low seven figures. Plus they watchdog each other, and that keeps them all straight. Lots of trust between them. Real pride. No way they’d screw each other over. They have a real sense of pride, and they are totally devoted to Mom. Eris has built her mystique to the point that some of these guys really think she is a goddess. She’s convinced them that she is a direct descendant of Sargon the Great of Akkad, so the Kingsmen believe they can trace their warrior lineage to the first emperor in human history. That’s quite a legacy. Santoro is their general, role model, and chief badass.”
“He seems like a capable chap.”
“He’s a fucking nut bag. Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy like a son, but he is eight beers short of a six-pack. Santoro absolutely believes Mom’s
a goddess. That’s not a joke. Guy gets a spiritual boner every time her name is mentioned, and once—just once—one of the Kingsmen saw Eris walk by and didn’t yet know who she was, so he made a crack about wanting to tap that, and Santoro was right there. Jesus fucking Christ, you never saw anything so fast and nasty. Santoro told the guy to pull his knife, and mind you, this guy was ex–Force Recon and he was a badass mamba-jamba and twice Santoro’s size. But my boy cut him four kinds of bad: long, deep, wide, and often. He humiliated him and carved pieces off the guy and then did things to him while he was down and dying that I don’t like to think about. Had the guy begging for forgiveness from the Goddess with half a tongue and his guts in his lap. Talk about an object lesson. There had to be forty, fifty of the Kingsmen—full team members and cadets—watching that. By the time he was done, Santoro was painted red from head to toe and he looked like some kind of demon. The other Kingsmen knelt—actually fucking
knelt
—in front of him, and then Santoro led them in a prayer to the Goddess. That, my friend, is how legends are made.”
Gault stared at the American. “Bloody hell.”
The King of Fear chuckled. “Life’s weird for us, but you get used to it.”
They began walking again.
A little while later Gault said, “If you disapprove of Eris’s plan are you outside of it? Or do all the Kings work together on everything?”
The American puffed his cigar before answering, “It’s one for all and all for one. For the most part. I have a couple of my own gigs running, but this thing—what we’re calling the Ten Plagues Initiative—is what everyone else wants to do, so I’m doing my part. But there are threads that could lead back to me. Granted, it would take some pretty damn creative logic jumps to connect the dots, but even so that’s more of a trail than I like to leave. The DMS are not as stupid as my darling mother thinks.” He cut Gault a look. “You know that firsthand.”
Gault touched the bandages. “Yes. But … tell me, is this the first time the other Kings voted against you?”
The American smiled. “Yeah. Kind of caught me off-guard, too.”
“Is this going to be a problem?”
“Nah,” said the American. “I got it handled.”
TOYS TOOK MICROSIPS from a glass of wine as he trailed along behind Gault and the American. Neither man had so far bothered to direct a single comment to him. Nor did they lower their voices to prevent him from hearing the conversation. He supposed that it was all meant to be a sign of trust, an unspoken acknowledgment that he was privy to all of their secrets.
But it didn’t feel that way to Toys.
He sipped his wine and digested everything he heard, and kept his thoughts to himself. In the darkened woods the peacocks screamed like damned souls.

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