Jonathan Maberry - Patient Zero

He crawled across the floor to the table and grabbed his cell phone, hit speed dial and waited through four interminable rings before Toys answered with a musical, “Hello-o-o!”

“Get back here!” Gault said in a hoarse whisper.

“What’s wrong?” Toys said sharply, his voice low and urgent.

“It’s…” Gault began, then a sob broke in his chest. “My God, Toys… I think I’ve killed us all.”

The phone fell from his hands as the black reality of apocalypse bloomed like a mushroom cloud.

Crisfield, Maryland / Thursday, July 2; 3:13 P.M.

I SPENT HALF the day with Jerry. Once I’d explained my theories we set about comparing them with what he’d deduced from his forensic walk-throughs. We were both on the same page. I told Jerry to round up all the forensics experts that had arrived while I’d been sleeping and I went off to find Church. Outside I ran into Rudy. He accompanied me to the computer van, where Church and Grace were using MindReader to search for Lester Bellmaker.

“Jerry Spencer’s ready to give a preliminary forensics report,” I said. “I think we should set that up sooner than later.”

“You have something?” Grace asked, searching my face.

“Maybe, but I want you both to hear the forensics first and then we can play ‘what-if.’”

Church made a call to set up the meeting.

Grace told us that MindReader had come up with two Lester Bellmakers in North America and six more in the U.K., but so far none of them appeared to have even the slightest connection to terrorists, diseases, or Baltimore. The closest hit had been a Richard Lester Bellmaker who served a tour in the Air Force from 1984 to 1987 and was discharged honorably. That was it. The guy managed a Chuck E. Cheese outside of Akron, Ohio, and no matter how deep Grace searched into his background the guy didn’t ring a single damn bell.

“We’re getting nowhere,” she said.

“And slowly,” Church agreed.

“Could Aldin have been lying to us?” Grace asked, cutting a look at Rudy. “You watched the interrogation videos, and you read the telemetry feeds. What’s your assessment?”

Rudy shrugged. “From what I could see that man was desperate to tell the truth. That much was in his voice. He was trying to make a dying declaration, and he wanted to go out with as clear a conscience as possible.”

“So, he was telling the truth?” Grace asked.

Rudy pursed his lips. “It’s probably fair to say that he was telling the truth as he knew it, but we can’t discount the possibility that he may have been regurgitating disinformation fed to him by the guards.”

“Too right,” Grace agreed. “Which means we could be wasting time and resources on a wild-goose chase.”

“So what do we do now?” Rudy asked.

“Keep looking,” Church said.

Sebastian Gault / The Hotel Ishtar, Baghdad / July 2

THE DOOR to Gault’s hotel room banged open and Toys came rushing in with a pistol in his hand. All affect was gone and in its place was a reptilian coldness as he swept the gun across the room. Seeing Gault on the floor, Toys kicked the door shut behind him and rushed to his employer’s side.

“Are you hurt?” he asked quickly, searching for signs of blood or damage.

“No,” Gault gasped. “No… it’s…” He disintegrated into tears.

Toys studied him with narrowed eyes. He lowered the hammer on his gun and slid it into the shoulder holster he wore under his jacket. Then he caught Gault under the armpits and with surprising strength hauled him to his feet and walked him to a chair. Gault sat there, face in hands, sobbing.

Toys locked the door and verified that the electronic bug detectors were still operating, then he dragged an ottoman over and sat down in front of Gault.

“Sebastian,” Toys said softly. “Tell me what happened.”

Gault slowly raised a tear-streaked face to him. His eyes had a look of hopeless panic.

“Whatever it is we can deal with it,” Toys assured him.

Uncertainly and with stuttering words, Gault told him about the call to Amirah and of the dreadful realization that had bloomed in his mind. Toys’s face underwent a process of change from deep concern to disbelief and then to fury.

“That fucking bitch !”

“Amirah…” Gault’s voice disintegrated into tears again.

Without word or warning Toys slapped Gault across the face with vicious speed and force. Gault was flung half out of the chair. Gault stared at him, his tears stilled by the impossibility of what had just happened.

Toys leaned close and in a deadly quiet voice said, “Stop your blubbering, Sebastian. Stop it right fucking now.”

Gault was too stunned to speak.

“Try for once to think with your brain instead of your cock; if you had you’d have seen this coming. I bloody well saw it coming, and I’ve been warning you about that bitch and her husband for years. Christ, Sebastian, I ought to kick the shit out of you.”

Gault climbed back into the chair, eyes still unblinking.

Toys sat back and waited until the immediacy of his rage passed. “How sure are you about this? Is this a guess or do you know?”

“I… I don’t know for sure,” Gault managed. “But it all just came to me. In a flash.”

“Came to you in a flash.” Toys sneered. “Mother Mary, save me.”

“I… if they…”

“Shut up,” Toys said as he fished out his phone. He dialed a number. A voice answered on the third ring.

“Line?” Toys asked.

“Clear,” said the American.

“I’m calling on behalf of our patron. There’s a problem. Listen to me very closely and take all appropriate action. The Princess and the Boxer have gone off the reservation.”

“What? Why? ”

Toys’s mouth made an ugly shape as he said, “They think they’re still in church.”

That wasn’t an agreed code word, but Toys was sure the American would grasp the meaning, and he did. “I never trusted those two from the beginning. Jesus H. Christ.”

“Yes, well, that’s a comfort to all of us, isn’t it?”

Toys disconnected and stared at Gault. “Listen to me, Sebastian… if El Musclehead is going to launch the latest generation of the plague in America then we have to assume that Amirah has taken some precautions.”

Gault’s eyes came back into focus. “Precautions?”

“She’s a wacko, I agree, but I can’t believe that she’d want to destroy the entire world. A lot them are true believers, don’t forget.”

Gault sat up straight. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that she probably has a bloody cure for this thing. Or a treatment. Something that will keep it from wiping out her own people. El Mujahid might already have been inoculated, but that’s beside the point. What we have to do is get our ruddy asses to the Bunker, beat some information out of your girlfriend, and then make sure Gen2000 starts cranking out the cure just in case our American friend doesn’t stop the Fighter in time.”

“The Bunker… yes.” Gault nodded and his jaw lost some its softness, his eyes grew several degrees colder. “Yes, Amirah will have thought it through.”

Toys cut him off. “Understand me, Sebastian,” he said in an icy voice, “I work for you and I love you like a brother, but you’ve endangered me by letting this thing get out of hand. I warned you about Amirah a hundred times and now she’s stabbed you in the back. If she has a cure then we are going to bloody well get it.” His green eyes glittered. “And then we are going to put a bullet right through that brilliant little brain of hers.”