Jonathan Maberry - Patient Zero

“That would be a no, then.” His color was starting to look bad as all of this sank in.

“Could a prion do that?”

“Before today I would have said no unreservedly. And I still don’t think so.”

“What the hell are prions anyway? I can’t remember what I remember about them.”

“Well, there’s a lot of mystery attached to them. Prions are small proteinaceous infectious particles that resist inactivation by ordinary procedures that modify nucleic acids. Does that make sense?”

“Not even a little.”

“Sadly it doesn’t get much simpler. Prions are cutting-edge science and we are quite sure that there is more we don’t know than we do know. Prion diseases are often called spongiform encephalopathies because of the postmortem appearance of the brain with large vacuoles in the cortex and cerebellum; makes the brain look like Swiss cheese. The diseases are characterized by loss of motor control, dementia, paralysis, wasting, and eventually death, typically following pneumonia. Mad cow disease is a type of spongiform encephalopathy. Coming back from the dead, however, is definitely not a known symptom.”

“So… prions couldn’t turn a terrorist into one of these monsters?”

“I don’t see how. You said Church was only guessing. It’s been what… five days since you shot Javad? That’s not a lot of time to do that kind of medical research. Church may be completely wrong as to the cause.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that Javad was dead, though.”

“Dios mio.”

“Rudy… you do believe me, right?”

He stared at the mantis some more. “Yes, cowboy. I believe you. I just don’t want to.”

I had nothing to say to that.

Grace Courtland and Mr. Church / Easton, Maryland; 6:22 P.M.

MR. CHURCH SAT in the interrogation room and waited. There was a discreet tap on the door and a woman entered. She was medium height, slender, and had looks that Church had once heard referred to as “disturbingly pretty.” She wore a tailored gray suit and skirt, low-heeled pumps and coral blouse. Short dark hair, brown eyes with gold flecks. No rings, no jewelry. She looked like a Hollywood accountant or an executive at one of the snootier ad agencies.

“You saw?” Church asked.

She closed the door and glanced at the laptop Church had on the table before him, the screen lowered to hide its contents. “Yes. And I’m not happy with losing the walker.” Her voice was low and throaty with a London accent. “I know we have other subjects, but—”

Church dismissed that with a little movement of his head. “Grace, give me an assessment of his capabilities based on what just happened.”

She sat. “On the plus side he’s tough, resourceful, and vicious, but we already knew that from the warehouse videos. He’s tougher than any of the other candidates.”

“What’s on the minus side?”

“Sloppy police work. Two lorries left the warehouse the night before his task force raided it, one was tracked, one wasn’t. Ledger was involved.”

“I think that when we acquire all of the records from the task force things might look different where Ledger’s involvement is concerned.”

Grace looked dubious.

“What else is in the minus column?” Church asked.

“I don’t think he’s emotionally stable.”

“Have you read his psych profile?”

“Yes.”

“Then you already knew that.”

She pursed her lips. “He’s no yes man. He’d be hard to control.”

“As a team player, sure; but what if he was a team leader?”

Grace snorted. “He was a sergeant in the army with no combat experience. He was the lowest-ranking member of the joint task force. I hardly think…” Grace stopped, sat back in her chair and cocked an eyebrow. “You like this bloke, don’t you?”

“Liking him is irrelevant, Grace.”

“You really see him as management material?”

“Still to be determined.”

“But you’re impressed?”

“Aren’t you?”

Grace turned and looked at the window to the other room. Two agents in hazmat suits were strapping Javad’s corpse to a gurney. She turned back to Church. “What would you have done if he’d been bitten?”

“Put him in Room Twelve with the others.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

She turned away for a moment, not wanting Church to see the contempt and horror in her eyes. Her face reflected the horror, shock, and grief she—and so many others in the DMS—felt. It had been a dreadful week. The worst of Grace’s life.

“Your assessment,” he prompted.

“I don’t know. I think I’d need to see him in a few other situations before I would want to see him wearing officer’s rank. After what happened at the hospital we can’t afford to have anything less than first chair when it comes to team leadership.”

“If it was your choice to make, would you invite him into the unit?”

She drummed her fingers on the table. “Maybe.”

He pushed the plate toward her. “Have a cookie.”

She saw that the plate held Oreos and vanilla wafers. She declined with a polite shake of her head.

Church raised the screen of the laptop and turned it so they could both see it. “Watch,” he said and pressed the play button. A high-resolution image appeared of a group of men in black combat fatigues moving rapidly through an office hallway.

“The warehouse?” she asked. “I’ve seen this already.”

“You haven’t seen this part.” On the screen Joe Ledger stepped into shot about twenty yards ahead of the agent whose camera had provided the footage. Ledger spotted two task force officers taking fire from three hostiles who were shooting from a secure position behind a stack of heavy crates. Bullets tore chunks from the paltry cover behind which the agents crouched. Ledger came up on their seven o’clock, well out of their line of sight; he had his pistol in his hand but to open fire from that distance would have been suicide. He might get one or two but the other would turn and chop him up. There was no cover at all between Ledger and the hostiles, but he hugged the wall, running on cat feet, making no noise that could have been heard above the din of the gunfire.

When Ledger was ten feet out he opened fire. His first shot caught one of the hostiles in the back of the neck and the impact slammed him into the crates. As the other two turned Ledger closed to zero distance and fired one more shot and the second hostile staggered back, but then the slide on Ledger’s gun locked open. There was no time to change magazines. The third hostile instantly lunged at him, swinging his rifle barrel to bear. Ledger parried it with his pistol and then everything turned into a blur. All three hostiles were down.

Grace frowned but declined to comment as the file repeated in slow motion, leaning forward at the point where the slide locked back on Ledger’s gun. The slow-mo even caught the elegance of the ejected brass arching through the air. Ledger had the pistol held out in front of him so it was obvious that he recognized the predicament of the empty magazine but he did not visibly react to it. His hands separated and while he was still in full stride he used the empty gun to check the swing of the hostile’s rifle while simultaneously jabbing forward with his left hand, fingers folded in half and stiffened so that the secondary line of knuckles drove into the attacker’s windpipe. As this was happening Joe’s left foot changed from a regular running step into a longer lunge and the tip of his combat boot crunched into the cartilage under the hostile’s kneecap; and a fraction of a second later Ledger’s gun hand came up and jabbed the exposed barrel of the pistol into the hostile’s left eye socket.