James Knapp - Element Zero

I turned back to the man, and watched as the stream of urine stopped suddenly. His head perked up, like he’d heard something.

They’ll see him on the camera, Van Offo said.

That’s fine.

The man swayed on his feet for a moment. He zipped up, and stood there like he wasn’t sure what to do.

“Come on,” Van Offo whispered under his breath. I zoomed in on the man, and watched his eyelids droop. Van Offo had him.

The man in the apron took a single step back. He turned toward us, and I heard a soft pop as his body jerked suddenly. Blood jetted from one ear, and left a red scribble in the snow.

What was that? The SWAT leader asked. It wasn’t a gunshot. One of Fawkes’s kill switches had detected Van Offo’s interference and gone off. If the others weren’t alerted, they would be soon.

Cut the power. Move in now.

The man’s body crumpled to the ground as the floodlights went out with a loud snap. The LEDs on the storage units went dark as boots tromped through the snow. I closed in on the body, Van Offo close behind me.

“Get that door open!” the SWAT leader shouted.

The magnetic lock had powered down with the bolt still in place. One of them slammed a metal crank into the key and released it manually. Snow drifted down as another officer moved in and heaved open the door.

It was halfway open when a bright flash filled the opening and the force from an explosion inside the car blew the door off its track. It struck the SWAT officer and hurled him back onto the ice. Through the ringing in my ears I could make out shouting, as firelight flickered behind the tinted glass of the train car’s windows.

Get that fire out, the SWAT leader said. A team moved in and I followed close behind them. Flames raged behind thick black smoke inside the car, as one of the men slung a douser through the doorway and it thumped in the small space.

The flames died as a huff of hot air and smoke blew through the opening.

How many inside? the SWAT leader asked. The smoke was still too thick to enter the car, but using the backscatter I could make out two male figures inside. They looked dead, but something in there was still moving. A shape slunk below the smoke level, close to the floor.

There’s something in—

A dark shape lunged out of the smoke. A male revivor collided with the closest officer, one arm trailing behind it on a cord of sinew. Half its face was obliterated, and one moonlit eye stared from the blackened mess.

“Revivor!”

The officer went down with the thing on top of him. Smoke drifted from the revivor as it clamped its gray, meaty fingers around the man’s throat.

I fired a burst into the back of its skull, and black fluid splashed across the fresh snow. A rifle shot slammed into its chest, and it let go. The officer shoved the body to one side and got back up.

Something heavy landed on my back. I slipped on the ice and fell as it came down on top of me. Coarse hair brushed my neck, and rank-smelling breath huffed over the side of my face.

I twisted onto my back and saw a dog baring sharp yellow teeth. I got one arm between us as it went for my throat, and clamped down instead on the body armor covering my forearm. Its paws dug into my chest as it thrashed its head and growled.

A shot went off near me as several shapes leapt, trailing smoke, out of the storage car. As I struggled I saw two more dogs, large huskies, hit the ground and scramble on the ice. Exposed ribs stuck out where the hide had been blown off of one, and another was missing a back leg. Growls, punctuated by loud barking, sent clouds of breath through the frigid air, and I saw moonlight yellow in one set of eyes.

I pushed myself to my knees as the dog on top of me continued to thrash. The weight of it pulled me down again, and claws raked my face. I pushed the barrel of my gun into its flank and pulled the trigger three times. It let go, but didn’t go down. It snapped its jaws as I pulled away, and saliva flecked my face.

I put a shot through one of its eyes, and it staggered and fell. I peered through the hide and saw components clustered along its spine.

They’re reanimated, I broadcast. Destroy those dogs.

One of the officers fired, and the dog nearest him jerked and went down. The third lunged and clamped its jaws down on the man’s calf, thrashing as the rifle went off three more times.

A bullet tore through the animal’s side and it went limp. The SWAT officer pried the jaws free and let it fall.

Hold your fire.

The last shot echoed off, and the yard got quiet. The remains of the revivor lay crumpled in the snow, along with the three dogs and the SWAT member who got caught in the blast. Nothing else moved from the direction of the car.

A few feet away, the body of the man in the black apron lay face down in the snow. I used the backscatter to scan into the bloody hole in his ear, and saw traces of shrapnel that had been pushed from the inside out.

“That’s Fawkes’s work,” Van Offo said.

I looked over the body. The only thing the man had on him was a drugstore cell phone. It was clean; no numbers were stored. I pulled the ID from it and fed it back to Alice Hsieh back at headquarters.

Alice, we’re at the site. I need a number run from a cell phone we recovered. Can you trace the last circuit?

Hang on.

The SWAT leader was calling in an EMT, his breath blowing plumes as he barked into the radio. I put in for a biohazard team to come impound the revivors.

Got it, Alice said. I was able to go back twenty-four hours. One call only; someone named Harold Deatherage.

Thanks.

“Last call went to a guy named Harold Deatherage,” I told Van Offo. He shook his head.

“Do you know that name?” he asked.

“No.”

“The car is clear!” a voice shouted. I looked through the thinning smoke and switched to a thermal filter. There was nothing living left inside, and no active revivor signatures.

I waved smoke away as I crossed to the entrance and through the doorway. The inside of the car was a mess of twisted metal and broken wire cages. There were remains scattered through the car, but it was hard to separate them all out. Some were canine; I could see singed fur and pointed teeth buried in the mess. A human leg and two misshapen arms were sprawled among other, unidentifiable pieces.

Near the back of the car were several scorched gurneys. I could make out frayed wire and a broken housing for electronics, along with an IV rack that was bent in half. Some kind of test had been run there, but there was no way to know for sure what they’d been doing without a forensic reconstruction. Van Offo crept through the debris behind me and surveyed the scene.

“Why dogs?” he asked.

“You got me.”

In theory, anything with a brain could be revived, but the bottom line was that a real dog was cheaper and easier to maintain. It didn’t make sense.

Out at the edge of the yard I saw the first group of camera eyes gathering, recording everything they could see. A van pulled up behind them while I watched. In twenty minutes the place was going to be mobbed.

Alice, this was definitely Fawkes. We’re going to need a forensics team down here. They were able to blow the inside of the unit, but I think we can salvage something from it. We need DNA identification on two bodies, and put a rush on that revivor impound; this is too public.

Understood.

I looked around the car. The broken shells of computer terminals were scattered in the wreckage, along with a second gurney. When I scanned the floor, I could make out surgical tools. The head of a dog lay a foot from its body, eyes staring up at me.