Jonathan Maberry - Patient Zero

The attacker flew backward as if he’d been hit by a shotgun blast. Ledger completed his step and was smoothly reaching to his belt for a fresh magazine when the footage ended.

“Bloody hell!” Grace gasped. It came out before she could stop the words.

“Elapsed time from the slide locking back to completed kill is 0.031 seconds,” said Church. “Tell me why I want him for the DMS.”

She hated when he did this to her. It was like being in school, but she kept her annoyance off her face. “He showed absolutely no hesitation. He didn’t even flinch when his gun locked open, he simply went into a different form of attack. It’s so smooth, like he’d practiced that one set of moves for years.”

“In light of that video and your assessment would you consider him a likely candidate for us?”

“I don’t know. His psych evals read like a horror novel.”

“Past tense. His dissociative behavior was directly related to a specific traumatic event that happened when he was a teenager. His service record since then doesn’t show an unstable personality.”

She shook her head. “That trauma happened during a crucial phase of his life. It informed the rest of his development. It’s why he began studying martial arts. It’s why he joined the army, and it’s why he became a policeman. He keeps looking for ways to channel his rage.”

“It seems to me that he’s found ways to channel it. Very useful ways, Grace. If he was lost in rage then his pathology would be different. A rageaholic would have taken up something confrontational; instead he’s refined his abilities through an art known for its lack of flamboyance.”

“Which could be interpreted as someone desperate to maintain control.”

“That’s one view. Another is that he’s found control, and it’s saved him.”

Grace drummed her fingers on the table. “I still don’t like those old psych evaluations. I think there’s a ticking bomb there.”

“You should read your own, Grace. The recent ones,” Church said mildly, and she shot him a withering look. “Tell me, Grace—if he’d been with Bravo or Charlie teams at St. Michael’s do you think things would have gone differently?”

Grace’s jaw tightened. “That’s impossible to say.”

“No it isn’t. You know why things went south at the hospital, and you saw this tape. My question stands.”

“I don’t know. I think we would need to observe him a lot more.”

“Okay,” he said. “Then go and observe him.”

With that he got up and left the room.

Baltimore, Maryland / Saturday, June 27; 6:54 P.M.

RUDY GOT QUIET as we walked back to my SUV. I undid the locks but he lingered outside, touching the door handle. “This cabrón Church… what’s your take on him?”

“Car could be bugged, Rude.”

“Fuck it. Answer the question. Do you think Church is a good guy or a bad guy?”

“Hard to say. I certainly don’t think he’s a nice guy.”

“Given what he has to do, how nice should he be?”

“Good point,” I said. I reached in and keyed the ignition, then turned the radio up loud. If the car was bugged that might help, though I suspected it no longer mattered.

“He’s asking you to take a lot on faith. Secret government organizations, zombies… do you feel that he was trying to trick you in some way?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t think he was lying about that. Even so… I can’t seem to wrap my head around all this. It’s impossible. It doesn’t fit, it’s all too…” I couldn’t put it into words, so I stared at the day around us. Birds sang in the trees, crickets chirped, kids laughed on the swings.

Rudy followed my gaze. “You find it hard to believe in those things when you can stand here and see this?”

I nodded. “I mean… I know it was real because I was there, but even so I don’t want it to be real.” He said nothing and after a moment I hit him with another bomb. “Church said he’d read my psych evaluations.”

Rudy looked like I’d slapped him. “He didn’t get them from me.”

“How do you know? If he’s on the same level as Homeland you could be bugged and monitored out the wazoo.”

“If I get so much as a whiff of violation—”

“You’ll what? Raise a stink? File a lawsuit? Most people never do. Not since 9/11. Homeland counts on it.”

“Patriot Act,” he said the way people say “hemorrhoids.”

“Terrorism’s a tough thing to fight without elbow room.”

He gave me an evil glare. “Are you defending an intrusion into civil liberties?”

“Not as such, but look at it from the law enforcement perspective. Terrorists are fully aware of constitutional protections, and they use that to hide. No, don’t give me that look. I’m just saying.”

“Saying what?”

“That everyone thinks this is an either/or situation and it’s more complicated than that.”

“Patient records are sacred, amigo.” He only ever calls me that when he’s pissed.

“Hey, don’t jump on me. I’m on your side. But maybe you should consider the other side’s point of view.”

“The other side can kiss my—”

“Careful, bro, this whole car could be bugged.”

Rudy leaned close to the car and said, loudly and distinctly, “Mr. Church can kiss my ass.” He repeated it slowly in Spanish. “¡Besa mi culo!”

“Fine, fine, but if you get disappeared don’t blame me.”

He leaned back and gave me a considering look. “I’m going to do three things today. First, I’m going to go over every square inch of my office and if I find anything out of place, any hint of violation, I’m going to call the police, my lawyer, and my congressmen.”

“Good luck with that.” I climbed in and pulled the door shut.

“The second thing I’m going to do is see what I can find out about prions, something that indicates whether they can somehow reactivate the central nervous system. Maybe there have been some studies, some papers.”

“What’s the third thing?”

He opened the door. “I’m going to go to evening mass and light a candle.”

“For Helen?”

“For you, cowboy, and for me… and for the whole damn human race.” He got in and closed the door.

We didn’t speak at all on the drive back.

Gault and Amirah / The Bunker / Six days ago

WITH EL MUJAHID and his soldiers gone that left only six people in the camp besides Gault. Four guards, a servant, and Amirah, who was both the wife of El Mujahid and the head of Gault’s covert research division here in the Middle East. She was a gorgeous woman and a freakishly brilliant scientist whose insight into disease pathogens bordered on the mystical.

While he waited for her he switched on his PDA and accessed the files the American had sent, most of which were official reports on the task force raid. Most of it had gone exactly as arranged—although the American did not know that. There were a lot of things Gault chose not to share with the nervous Yank. He did wonder, however, why the crab processing plant had not yet been raided. He made a note to ask Toys to look into that.

The tent flaps opened. He turned to see her standing there, and for a moment all thoughts of raids and schemes evaporated from his head.

Amirah was slim, average height, dressed in the black chadri that showed only her eyes, and she might have gone unnoticed in a bazaar or on a crowded street. Unless, of course, any sane man made eye contact with her, then the anonymity would disintegrate like a sand sculpture in the face of a zephyr. This woman could stop traffic with her eyes. Gault had seen her do it. Conversations always faltered when she entered a room, men actually walked into walls. It was the strangest of reactions because it was so contrary to Muslim tradition. To catch a woman’s eye once is okay, to do so twice was haram, a social and religious gaffe of serious consequence, especially in the traditional circles in which this woman and El Mujahid traveled. And yet no one—not one man Gault had seen—had ever looked into her eyes and not been affected.