Jonathan Maberry - Patient Zero

We moved like ghosts, no chatter, just a line of men moving through shadows to face monsters. It was unreal, I felt like I was in a video game. Shame real life doesn’t have a reset button.

In the chopper we’d sketched out what plans we could. “Here’s the skinny,” I said as we nodded our heads together over a map in the narrow confines of the chopper’s cabin. “Church has a en route to give us a thermal scan of the place, but that’s about as much intel as we have. He’s also arranging to have phone lines cut and Major Courtland said that they’ll get a presidential order allowing them to disrupt all cell reception in the area. We don’t want one of the hostiles texting his buds on his LG Chocolate. ”

“LOL,” Bunny murmured.

“We’ll come up through the sewers. We pulled up the schematics for the storm drains and there’s a big line that goes right under the plant, very nicely placed for a quiet walk-in once the lights are off. Questions?”

“Mission priorities?” asked Top.

“Mr. Church wants prisoners for interrogations. We’d all like more intel before we kick the doors on that crab plant. From all indications that’s going to be the big enchilada. The computer geeks think this meatpacking place is a storage depot for our hostiles, not a main action center.”

“Does that mean taking a bullet to give him his prisoner?” Ollie asked, his eyes hard, challenging.

“No, but don’t let it fall that way. Shoot to wound, try to disable whenever possible, but don’t get killed.”

“High on my to-do list, boss,” observed Bunny, and Skip nodded.

“What about those zombie motherfuckers?” asked Top.

“If we’re lucky the walkers will be in their containers, locked up and on ice.”

“And if we’re not lucky?”

“If it doesn’t have a pulse, Top, you have my permission to blow it all the way back to hell.”

They all nodded. It was the only part of the plan that they liked. I could see their point. In the annals of warfare there was a long history of men getting killed because they lacked clear intelligence. We had jack shit.

Before we boarded the chopper I said, “Look, we don’t know each other and we haven’t even had the chance to train as a team. Church is asking us to hit the ground running. Let’s do just that. None of us are green at this sort of thing, so let’s act and function like professionals. Chain of command is me, then Top. Everyone else is equal. We all watch each other’s backs as well as our own. Five of us go in, five of us come out. We all clear on that?”

“Hooah,” Top said.

“Hoo-fricking-ah,” agreed Skip.

That was half an hour ago; now we were in the sewers and as we walked I had to fight to keep my whole attention on the matter at hand. If there was ever a better definition of too much too soon I don’t want to hear it. I wondered how unsettled the others were, and how that would affect them once things got hot.

Ollie stopped, one fist raised, and we froze in place. He pointed to our ten o’clock and I saw the rusty iron ladder bolted to the wall. It was covered in moss and rat shit and it ran up into a black hole in the ceiling. Thick frigid white mist snaked down through a grille set into the concrete.

“Scope,” I whispered to Skip and he produced a fiberscope camera that was attached to the display screen of a miniature tactical video system. We clustered around and studied the screen display. It showed an empty room lined with stained metal tables. No movement except for the mist.

“Must be cold as hell up there,” Top said. He glanced at me. “Them walkers need to be kept on ice, right?”

“Let’s hope so; but even if it’s cold up there let’s not take anything for granted.”

“Skip,” I said, “up the ladder. Look for trips and traps.”

But after he was up there for a minute he quietly called down, “Clear. No electronics. Just a padlock. I need the bolt cutters.”

Bunny pulled them from his pack and handed them up. There was a sharp metallic snap and then Skip was handing down the chain in sections. That was good news as far as it went, but it still spooked me. Any time something is too easy, it isn’t.

“Go, go, go,” I hissed as one by one Echo Team climbed the ladder and took defensive positions inside the room. I went up next to last and gave the room a quick eyeball, but it really was empty, just an old meat-cutting room with roller tables and hooks on chains so that sides of beef or pork could be swung in on ceiling-mounted rails from the killing rooms, then once cut they would be rolled along the metal tables into an adjoining room for cleaning and packaging. Waste and blood was flushed down the floor gutters to the sewers. The function of the room was obvious and I don’t think any of Echo Team missed the irony of being in a room made for butchery.

The mist was ankle deep and clung to the floor, obscuring our feet. It stank of raw sewage and decay. The ambient temperature had to be right above freezing although the air was oppressively humid. There were doors on either end of the room. One led to the disused packaging shed, which was empty except for old heaps of dirty Styrofoam meat trays and rolls of plastic wrap; the other door was locked.

“I got it,” Ollie said, and as he knelt in front of it he pulled a very sweet set of professional lockpicks from his thigh pocket. It was as good a set as I’d ever seen and he handled them with practiced ease. It wasn’t the sort of thing soldiers carry; I’d have to ask him about it later.

There was a soft buzz in my ear and I held up my hand for silence. There was some static on the line but Grace Courtland’s voice was clear and strong. “Thermal scans show multiple tangos.” “Tango,” or “T,” was field code for “terrorist.”

“Count how many?”

“Clustered. Maybe twenty, maybe forty.”

“Say again.”

She repeated it and asked me to confirm reception.

“Echo One copy.”

“Alpha on deck,” she said, “local law on standby.”

“Copy that. Orders?”

“Proceed with caution.”

“Copy. Echo One out.”

I called the men over and we crouched down, heads together. “Thermal scans say that we have upward of twenty warm bodies in the building. No way to know how many walkers—their heat signatures are too low.”

I saw the news register on each man’s face. Skip looked scared, Bunny looked mad. Top’s eyes narrowed and Ollie’s face turned to stone.

“Five men in, five men out,” I reminded them.

They nodded, but I added, “This isn’t the O.K. Corral. We don’t know for sure that everyone in here is a hostile. Check your targets, no accidents, and I don’t want to hear about ‘friendly fire.’”

“Hooah,” they said, but without much enthusiasm.

“Now… let’s go kick some undead ass.”

Claymont, Delaware / Tuesday, June 30; 6:23 P.M.

OLLIE FINISHED PICKING the lock and Bunny teased the door open, wary for trip wires and alarms, but no bells rang and nothing blew up as the door swung inward on rusty hinges. There was no other sound except the distant hum of motors.

I took point this time. My soaked sneakers wanted to squelch so I placed my feet carefully, taking my time to stay silent. The hall was empty and long, filled with gray shadows and the ever-present mist. We hugged one wall and moved forward in line, staying low, watching front and back, checking every door we passed. When the corridor ended at an L-junction I paused and peered carefully around the edge, keeping my head well below the normal light of sight. I made a “follow me” sign and we turned left to follow the hall. We found one locked door, which Ollie opened without effort, but it was just a storeroom.