Jonathan Maberry - Patient Zero

“No kidding,” I said aloud.

So how did I work this? I’m self-aware enough to know that I have a somewhat fractured personality. Not exactly multiple personality disorder, but clearly there were different drivers at the wheel depending on my mood, and depending on my needs. Over the years I’d been able to identify and make peace with the three dominant personalities: the Modern Man, the Warrior, and the Cop. At the moment all three of them were trying to grab the wheel.

The Modern Man, the civilized part of me, was in full-blown denial mode. He didn’t want to believe in monsters and he wasn’t all that comfortable with secret government departments and all that James Bond crap. The Warrior was okay with the cloak-and-dagger stuff because it partly defined him, it allowed him the chance to be who and what he was: a killer. He was useful in a firefight, but I seldom let him out to play. He was lousy at tea parties. Then there was the Cop. That part of me had become dominant over the last few years, and he also upheld the nobler parts of the Warrior’s personality—the codes of ethics, the rules.

With my eyes closed I settled back into meditative breathing and let the parts of me sort it all out. It was almost always the Cop who got the others to shut the hell up. The Cop was the thinker. I dismantled this thing bit by bit and laid everything on the table so the Cop could take a good long look.

There were parts that didn’t fit. The most obvious was the fact that the terrorists we took down at the warehouse had been such a mixed bag. These guys aren’t known for tolerance and team spirit.

The suicide plan was also weird. Each of hostiles at the warehouse had been infected by a disease and had to take regular doses of an antidote to stay alive. That was impressive, but it also seemed like overkill. It was too sophisticated for its own purposes, considering that the mere threat of it should have been enough. It also spoke of a degree of technological sophistication that was, as far as I could judge, beyond the reach of your average extremist cell. If this was all real, and if it turned out that the plague that created these walkers was developed by the same mind, or minds, that created the control disease, then the DMS might be facing an actual real-world mad scientist. In another mood, or perhaps on another day, that might actually be funny. Right now it scared the hell out of me.

Then there was Javad. Was he really dead and somehow reanimated? Impossible? You bet; and yet I know what I saw.

From now on, Church had said, we may have to consider “dead” a relative term.

I found it hard to believe that Javad was the only infected person. There hadn’t been a lab at the warehouse. Church had to know that, too; and I should have remarked on it. The oven timer dinged and I opened my eyes. I took the pizza with me into the little nook off the kitchen where I had my computer. I ate a slice while it loaded. Then I got to work. The Cop in me was in gear now. Church had said that if I looked I wouldn’t find anything about him or the DMS. I wanted to put that to the test, so I stayed up all night searching the Internet.

I did a search on the warehouse Church had been using. Baylor Records Storage. To dig deep I had to log on through the department Web site, and there was a serious risk in that. Everything is logged, everything is tracked.

“Screw it,” I said, and kept going. But Baylor Records turned out to be a dead end. Previous owner was dead and there were no direct heirs, so the government had snapped it up for back taxes. Easy enough for someone like Church to commandeer. I searched all night to see if there was any connection between Baylor Records and the old container company warehouse where we’d taken down the terrorist cell; but if a connection existed I couldn’t find it.

Early Sunday morning Rudy called to say he’d spent all of last night and this morning researching prions.

“What happened to ‘leave it alone, Joe’?”

“What can I tell you,” he said tiredly. “So we both need therapy.”

“You find anything interesting?”

“Lots, but none of it germane to what you mean. The whole prion thing seems less and less likely, though. As dangerous as they are the infection rate is extremely slow. It can take months or years for it to manifest. I’ll keep looking, though. And don’t forget about our session on Tuesday.”

“Yes, mother.”

“Don’t start with me, cowboy,” he warned, and hung up.

The rest of Sunday went like that. I logged hour after hour on the Net, and Rudy and I shared URLs via e-mail and IM, but we didn’t seem to be getting any closer to an explanation for what Javad was or how he came to be like that. Around midnight I finally shut off the machine, took a shower, and shambled off to bed. I was hitting brick walls everywhere I went, and I guess another person would have thrown in the towel, but that’s not my sort of thing. I just needed to rest and then attack this again with a fresher set of wits.

Gault and Amirah / The Bunker / Six days ago

THEY LAY EXHAUSTED on the table, their clothes tangled around her waist and his ankles, his body purple and red with claw marks and bites. He never left a mark on her, not even the smallest of love bites. That would be suicide.

They never spoke of love afterward. Never told each other how much this meant, or how much they meant to each other. They already knew what the other would say. It had all been said in that first moment of eye contact. Pillow talk would limit the feeling, it would define what did not need to be defined and therefore cheapen it all to some kind of clandestine Romeo and Juliet pap. This was much bigger and, Gault hoped, likely to end with less personal tragedy.

She spoke first, saying simply, “I’ve had some vague reports. Baltimore?”

“Mm, yes,” he drawled. “Seems our warehouse is a total loss.”

“What about Javad?”

He paused, staring at the speckled surface of the acoustic ceiling tiles, deciding which version of the truth to tell her. He loved Amirah but there were levels of privacy that even she didn’t get to enter; which would make it easier if he had to kill her one of these days. He liked to keep his options open. “Uncertain.”

“He hasn’t gotten out. I’ve been tracking the news feeds…”

“I know, which means that we still have to move forward with the next few steps of the operation.”

“What about the other two locations? If the Americans know about the warehouse…”

“Don’t worry,” Gault said. “They know about one of them—the big one; but not about the other one. Right now they’re holding off, probably hoping to find where the other lorry went.”

She nodded, the motion massaging his bicep, which was starting to fall asleep. “When will you evacuate the plant?”

“Why bother? We don’t really need it anymore and I’m rather hoping they raid it.”

Amirah turned her head sharply. “Why?”

“How, why, and when they raid that plant will tell us a great deal about their intelligence gathering, and their wits.”

“Shouldn’t those details be handled by your American friend?”

“He’s too close to it to risk any direct involvement. Besides,” Gault said, “there’s something else I need him to focus on. There are some indications that there is another player in the game, possibly a new counterterrorism organization or department. Right now this is just guesswork, but it bears looking into.”

Amirah sat up and her black robes fell down to cover her with an unintentional display of rumpled modesty. She pushed a strand of glossy black hair away from her face. Without the chadri her face was incredibly beautiful. Full lips, high cheekbones, a broad clear brow, and those eyes. Gault loved those eyes. Like a falcon or some creature out of myth.