Jonathan Maberry - Patient Zero

I lingered for a moment in the doorway trying to estimate the probable enemy numbers based on the amount of stored goods. I noticed Top nearby doing the same thing. He gave me a raised eyebrows look. Either there were twenty really hungry terrorists in this place or the count was closer to forty, maybe twice that.

We backed out and closed the door.

The hall took on a curve and we followed it for another twenty yards until we reached a set of those big vinyl double doors of the kind that flap open when you push a cart through them. We flanked the doors, staying low, and listened.

It took a second to settle into the vibrational rhythm of the place, mentally filtering out the sounds of compressors and other ambient noises that you might expect in a dilapidated old building. Then we heard it.

A low, inhuman moan.

It suggested a dreadful hunger and it was on the other side of the door.

Skip shot a nervous glance at Top, who gave him a wink that was supposed to look casual and light, and didn’t. I saw the looks on everyone’s faces and I made them meet my eyes. It would reinforce the orders I’d given them. Prisoners—if possible.

Then there was a sound to our right farther along the curving corridor and as we looked there was a dark movement and then the weak overhead lights threw a shadow on the wall. A silhouette of a guard with a slung assault rifle. A guard, not a walker.

Ollie was closest so I gave him the nod and he went down onto the floor like a snake and eased into a low shooting position. I saw the guard’s booted foot round the corner first and then his whole body, and then there was a phfft-phfft sound as Ollie squeezed off two silenced shots. The man’s head snapped back and he sagged against the wall; Bunny ran past me and reached the guard before he had a chance to collapse onto the floor. Between Ollie’s shot and Bunny’s quick feet the whole thing looked choreographed, practiced. In human terms it was terrible, but in the way of warriors it was beautiful, a demonstration of the soldier’s art taken to its most polished level.

The cop part of my mind noted that Ollie’s handgun of choice was a silenced .22. An assassin’s weapon. The low weight of the bullet made a dot of an entry wound but didn’t have the mass to exit the skull, so the bullet just bounced around and snaped off all the switches. Ollie had taken him in the head with both shots. Most shooters, even the very good ones, are not good enough to confidently try two in the head without a double-tap to the body to stall movement; and he’d taken the shots from thirty feet. Ollie had brought his A-game with him.

Back at the vinyl door we set ourselves for our entry. Foggy mist curled out from under the door like the tentacles of some albino octopus. The smell was worse here. The sewers had been bad but the stench here was of meat rotting on the living bone, a vital corruption I’d only smelled once before—when I killed Javad. The second time.

We flanked the door and Top pulled out a little handheld dentist’s mirror and angled it under the door, slowly turning it left and right. Inside there was a whole row of big blue cases. Not a surprise but it didn’t exactly make me want to do the Snoopy dance. From what I remembered of the building schematics this had to be the main production floor, but the row of cases blocked all but a narrow strip; and in the center of the row stood a guard. He had his back to us and he was craning to look through a slender gap between two of the cases. We heard more of the moaning and now we could orient sound with location. Something was happening on the far side of the cases, on the big production floor. The guard was eager to see it. So was I.

I holstered my pistol and drew my knife. I held a finger to my lips then touched my chest. The others nodded. Bunny and Top curled their fingers under the flaps of the door. At my nod they pulled the flaps open as quickly as silence would allow, and I moved into the room fast and hard. I reached around and clamped my left palm over the guard’s mouth and used my thumb and the edge of my index finger to pinch his nose shut; at the same time I kicked him in the back of the knee with one foot and as he suddenly fell back against me I cut his throat from ear to ear, taking the carotids, the jugular, and the windpipe in one deep sweep. I pulled him back and pushed him into a forward crouch so that his nodding head would prevent the spray of arterial blood. He was dead before he knew he was in threat and it hadn’t made a sound. Bunny and Skip took the body and eased it down as I straightened. I wiped the blade and sheathed it, drew my pistol and thumbed off the safety.

There were four cases in the row and they completely blocked the door and hid us from whoever else was in the room. I took the dentist’s mirror from Top and checked around both ends of the row. On our right I could see down a corridor formed by a second row of cases that were lined up at a right angle to the first set and a row of laboratory tables cluttered with equipment. There was one guard standing in the gap between the two sets of cases, and near him were six men in stained white lab coats. Everyone was looking through the gap into the center of the main room.

I faded back and used the mirror to peer around the left end of our row. Two guards stood shoulder to shoulder about twenty feet away, also looking toward the center of the room, but this time I could see what they were looking at. What I saw froze the blood in my veins to black ice.

The room was large, as big as a school auditorium, with a high ceiling set with grime-covered louvered windows. Against the far wall was a third row of blue cases, and against the left wall were more lab tables. Scattered throughout the room were at least a dozen armed guards, all of them with automatic weapons; and maybe four more men in lab coats. But in the far left corner was a big cage made from industrial-grade chicken wire and steel pipes. Ten of the blue cases stood with their doors wide open, and three guards were using electric cattle prods to drive a snarling, staggering line of walkers toward the cage.

The cage was packed, wall to wall, with children.

Claymont, Delaware / Tuesday, June 30; 6:26 P.M.

THE CHILDREN WERE huddled into a pack inside the cage, their eyes wide, their mouths trembling. I could see some of them weeping but they made no sound, though whether it was terror of the walkers or threats from the guards that stilled their tongues I couldn’t tell.

I pulled back and handed the mirror to the others, making them each take a fast look.

I mouthed the words “we need prisoners,” but I don’t know if any of them were able to process the thought. Top, the only man among us who had kids of his own, had the most murderous expression I’d ever seen on a human face.

I held up three fingers and everyone got set, Ollie and Skip on the left flank, Bunny and Top with me. I counted down fast.

“Go!” I snarled, and we rushed into the room.

Claymont, Delaware / Tuesday, June 30; 6:27 P.M.

BUNNY OPENED UP with the shotgun on the two closest guards, blasting them into red tangles of flailing limbs; Top shot two of the lab techs and then turned his fire on the cluster of guards. I could hear shots and screams as Ollie and Skip tore into the guards on the far side. I raced straight forward, gun up and out, and shot the guard standing by the door to the cage. It was a long shot; bad aim could kill one of the kids, but I had no choice. The walkers were yards away. My shot took the guard in the mouth and he rebounded off the chicken wire and fell, his fingers still curled around the latch. As he fell the door swung open.