Jonathan Maberry - Patient Zero

“I think I have it, Father!” he called as his fingertips encountered the soft ropy length of the umbilical cord. “The cord is twisted around the hind legs.”

He heard the scrape of a crutch as his father shuffled toward the open window. “Be gentle now, boy. Nature does not want you to hurry.”

“Yes, Father,” Eqbal said. It was one of his father’s favorite sayings, and it matched the slow process of thought and action that made Eqbal his father’s son. Patience was as valuable to a farmer as seeds and water.

He curled one finger around the cord and gently—very gently—pulled it down and over the kid’s legs, then felt inside to make sure that there was no other obstruction. With great care he pushed on the kid to turn it inside the mother, who continued to bleat and cry.

“It’s clear, Father.”

“Then step back and let her do her own work,” his father advised, and Eqbal glanced up to see his father’s face in the window. He, too, was slick with sweat. The pain of his broken leg—shattered in a terrible fall on the cliffside—was etched into the lines on his face. His color was bad, but he was smiling at his son as Eqbal slowly withdrew his hand from the goat and sat back to watch.

The bleating of the goat changed in pitch as the baby began to slide along the birth canal. It was still painful, but now the goat did not sound desperate, merely tired and sore.

Within two minutes the wet, slime-slick little body slid out of her and flopped onto the straw-covered ground. Immediately the mother struggled to her feet and began licking at it, sponging clear her baby’s nose and mouth and eyes.

“A female, Father,” said Eqbal, turning again to look at his father. He froze, confused at the expression on his father’s face. Instead of relief or joy, his face stared at him with a an expression that was a twisted mask of shock and horror.

“Father…?”

Then Eqbal saw that his father was not looking at him… but behind him.

Eqbal whirled, thinking that it was one of the men from the Taliban group in the caves to the south; or a collector from the poppy farms come to take someone else off to work in the fields. Eqbal’s hand was straying toward his shepherd’s crook when he froze in place; and he could feel his own face contorting into lines of dread.

A man stood behind him.

No… not a man. A thing. It was dressed like a man but in strange clothes—light blue pants and a V-necked short-sleeved shirt. Eqbal had seen TV, he had been to the clinic in Balkh, he knew what hospital scrubs were; but he had never seen them out here. This man wore them now, and they were dirty and torn and stained to a dark shining purple wetness by blood. Blood was everywhere. On the man’s clothes, his hands, his face. His mouth. His teeth…

Eqbal heard his father scream and then his whole world was torn in red madness and pain.

EL MUJAHID SAT comfortably in the saddle of his four-wheeled ATV, leaning back against the thick cushions, heavy arms folded across his chest. Three hundred yards up the slope the screams were already starting to fade as the last of the villagers died. He did not smile, but he felt a strange joy at so much death. It had all worked so well, and so quickly. Far more quickly than the last time. Four subjects, eighty-six villagers. He checked his watch. Eighteen minutes.

His walkie-talkie crackled and he thumbed the switch and held it to his mouth.

“It is done,” said his lieutenant, Abdul.

“Are you tracking all four subjects?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the villagers.”

“Five have already revived,” said Abdul, and the Fighter thought he detected a slight tremble in the man’s voice. “Soon they will all be up.”

The Fighter nodded to himself, content in the knowledge that Seif al Din, the holy Sword of the Faithful, was in motion now, and nothing could deny the will of God.

In the village the rattle of gunfire seasoned the air like music.

Baltimore, Maryland / Tuesday, June 30; 9:11 A.M.

I MADE IT through the rest of the night and all through the morning without federal agents appearing to kick down my door. Days of searching for the DMS, Javad, the two trucks, and Mr. Church had gone exactly nowhere. I now knew way too much useful information about spongiform encephalitis, including mad cow disease and fatal familial insomnia, but I had nowhere to go with it. Hoorah for me.

I took a hot shower, dressed in khakis and a Hawaiian shirt that was big enough to hide the .45 clipped to my belt; and then headed out to my appointment with Rudy. But first I had to stop at Starbucks and pick up his silly-ass drink.

“I’M SORRY, JOE,” said Kittie, the receptionist, when I arrived at Rudy’s office, “but Dr. Sanchez didn’t come back from lunch. I called his cell and his home number but they go straight to his answering machine. He’s not at the hospital, either.”

“Okay, Kittie, tell you what… I’m going to go swing by his place and see what’s what. I’ll give you a call if I find anything. You call me if he gets in touch.”

“Okay, Joe.” She chewed her lip. “He’s okay, though, isn’t he?”

I gave her a smile. “Oh, sure… could be any number of things. He’ll be fine.”

Out in the hallway my smile evaporated. Sure, any number of things could explain this.

Like what?

On the elevator down I began to feel a little sick. Now was not a good time for Rudy to suddenly go missing. I thought about the message I’d probably sent to Church via my Internet searches and began to get a big, bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I stepped out of his building and looked around the parking lot. His car wasn’t there, not that I’d expected it to be. So I walked over to mine, clicked the locks and opened the door.

And stopped dead.

I had my gun out before I even fully registered what I was seeing. I spun around and scanned the entire lot, pistol down by my leg. My heart was a jackhammer. There were over fifty cars and half a dozen people going toward them or walking toward the building. Everyone and everything looked normal. I turned back to the front seat. There, on the driver’s side, was a package of Oreo cookies. The plastic had been neatly sliced and one cookie was missing. In its place was one of Rudy’s business cards.

I holstered my gun, picked up the card and turned it over. On the back was a note. Nothing complicated, no threats. Just an address that I knew very well and one other word.

The address was the dockside warehouse where I’d killed Javad the first time.

The single word was: “Now.”

Baltimore, Maryland / Tuesday, June 30; 2:26 P.M.

IT TOOK TWENTY minutes to drive back to the docks and I had murder in my heart.

When I pulled up to the parking lot entrance I slowed to a stop and stared. The place had changed a hell of a lot in the last few days. There was a brand-new heavy-duty front gate that hadn’t been there when we’d raided the place, and a chain-link fence topped with coils of razor wire. There was a second inner fence that looked innocuous except for the metal signs every forty feet that read: DANGER—HIGH VOLTAGE. I saw four armed security guards, all of them dressed alike in distinctly nonmilitary uniforms. Some kind of generic guard-for-hire rig, but that didn’t fool me. They all had the trained military look. There are certain levels of training you can’t disguise with polyester sports coats and khaki slacks.