Fall of Night (Dead of Night Series) (35 page)

SUBURBS OF PITTSBURGH

“Homer,” said Goat, after he started the camera again and adjusted the microphone, “why did you attack those people at the Seven-Eleven?”

“I thought you said you understood.”

“I do,” Goat said quickly, “but this will go out to millions of people who don’t yet understand. You want them to understand, right? That’s why we’re doing this.”

“Sure.”

“Then tell them.”

The rain was intensifying again, so Homer turned up the wiper speed. “What do you want me to say, exactly?”

“You just walked into a Seven-Eleven and killed five people. Talk about why you did that.”

Homer shook his head. “Is that what you think I did?”

“Didn’t you? You attacked everyone, bit them…”

“I didn’t bite everyone,” Homer said. “And I only killed two of them, and the Red Mouth brought them right back. It’s funny, in court they went on and on about how many lives they say I took. Maybe that used to be true, but that’s before I understood the real power of the Red Mouth. I wasn’t trying to
take
anything from anyone. I was always trying to give them something. That’s why I wanted my lawyer to put me on the stand so I could tell everyone that, so I could explain it. But he wouldn’t do it. He said that people wouldn’t understand and it would go against me in court. Against me? They fucking executed me. How much more against me could it have gone? I think that if he’d let me have my say, if he let me explain what the Black Eye saw and let me speak with the voice of the Red Mouth, then they wouldn’t have sentenced me to any frigging lethal injection.”

No,
thought Goat,
they’d have put you in a tiny padded cell and spent the next forty years experimenting on your brain to see what makes it tick.

He did not say this to Homer.

The killer kept talking, working it out for the camera. “That’s all different now. Thanks to Dr. Volker and the gift he gave me; now I can share that gift with other people. No one’s ever going to die. Not really. Not like it used to be. We’re all going to live forever.”

Goat kept the camera on the killer’s profile, capturing the way he nodded in agreement with his own words and thoughts.

“In the Bible Jesus talked about how the meek were going to inherit the earth. I forget where he said it, but it was important, and I think
this
is what he was talking about. The way people are when they wake up after I open the Red Mouths in their flesh. They don’t act the way they used to. They don’t talk; they don’t say stupid shit. I’ll bet they don’t even know if they’re Republican or Democrats. They’re just people. All the bullshit is gone.”

“They’re zombies,” suggested Goat.

“Sure, if you want to use that word. But I don’t know. Zombies. I always think of black guys with bug eyes in those old movies. Down in Jamaica someplace.”

“Haiti.”

“Haiti? Okay. Haiti. Wherever. Those are zombies. Is that what they are?”

“Dr. Volker said that he studied zombies in Haiti. The witch doctors there use a chemical compound to—”

“None of that matters. It’s what, voodoo? The Red Mouth isn’t voodoo and it’s not magic.”

“Then what is it?”

“If I tell you, you’ll laugh.”

“Believe me,” said Goat, “I won’t laugh.”

“It’s god stuff. I read a word once in a book. Celestial. You know what that means?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what this is. I know that because it’s what Jesus spoke about. It’s the meek inheriting the earth. And he knew. Those Romans opened Red Mouths in his flesh and he spoke the real truth. And he came back from the dead, too.” Homer shook his head. “Maybe Jesus was the first zombie. That makes sense to me.”

Goat almost asked him if he was serious or if this was some kind of twisted joke.

He didn’t.

And therefore Homer did not have a reason to kill him.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

WHAT THE FINKE THINKS
WTLK LIVE TALK RADIO

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

“We have Solomon from Philadelphia,” said Gavin.

“Great to talk with you, Gavin. Love the show, just love it.”

“Always great to hear. So, talk to me, Solomon, what do you think’s going down in Stebbins?”

“It’s UFOs. This is exactly what happened at Roswell.”

“How so, Solomon?”

“First they make an official statement and then they recant it right away.”

“Sure, but the first statement was about an outbreak of a new kind of virus.”

“Which they recanted.”

“Viruses are terrestrial.”

“Are they, Gavin?”

“You tell me.”

“It’s all part of the conspiracy. Something
crashed
in Stebbins and that’s how the virus was released. It was something in the blood of the aliens. Something normal to their world but not to ours.”

“And the government is covering it up?”

“Absolutely. They want to use that virus as a bioweapon. That’s where these governments have always gotten their bioweapons. You think HIV came from people having sex with monkeys?”

“No, I don’t, but—”

“There you go. HIV, bird flu, swine flu, Ebola … the reason they’re so dangerous is because we have no natural immunity to that stuff. And why? Because it’s
not from here.
”

“How does that account for things like the black plague and the Spanish flu of the early twentieth century?”

Solomon laughed. “C’mon, Gav, you of all people have to know that they’ve been visiting us since before they built the pyramids.”

“Ah.”

“And this whole cover-up? That fake news story by Billy Trout? The rumors of soldiers shooting people in Stebbins? That’s just the military covering up the fact they have a crashed UFO. It’s textbook, Gavin. This is Roswell all over again.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

THE SITUATION ROOM

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

“Mr. President,” cried Sylvia Ruddy, “I think we have something!”

Everyone in the Situation Room whipped around toward her and all conversation died.

“Tell me,” said the president in a way that was an order flavored with a plea.

“Dr. Price at Zabriske Point received the Lucifer 113 samples. I have him on video conference.” She spoke into the phone. “Dr. Price, I’m putting you on with the president.”

A moment later Dr. Price’s thin, ascetic face filled the big view screen. His eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue but bright with excitement.

“Tell me something I want to hear,” said the president. “Do you have something for us?”

“I—We believe so. My whole team has been tearing apart the 113 variation and we’ve learned that Dr. Volker used new mutations of
Toxoplasma gondii
, which had always been a key component of Lucifer. Those mutations were part of his process of the neurological control functions of the bioweapon. While the genetically reengineered green jewel wasp larvae drive the aggression of the infected, the toxoplasma control the brain. That’s part of the process of shutting down higher function while keeping active those nerves and processes responsible for walking, grabbing, biting, swallowing, and so on.”

“Cut to it, Dr. Price,” the president said tersely.

“This is context, Mr. President. It explains what I think might work. Using the older form of Lucifer we were experimenting with parasites that would essentially attack the modified parasites. We had a great deal of success with
Neospora caninum
, which is a parasite similar in form to
Toxoplasma gondii
, but one found predominantly in dogs. Under standard microscopic examination, the
N. caninum sporozoite
—which is the body of the parasite—closely resembles the
T. gondii sporozoite
, and both diseases share many of the same symptoms. However—and this is where we may have hit on it—the
N. caninum
infection has a much more severe impact on the neurological and muscular system of test subjects.”

“How so?” asked Blair, and once more that dangerous spark of hope flared in his chest.

“The
N. caninum
variations we’ve been developing as a possible response to Lucifer create a certain set of symptoms—all of them in extreme degrees—that include stiffness of the pelvis and legs, paralysis distinguished by gradual muscle atrophy in which the muscles essentially seize up and can’t move. A secondary set of symptoms include severe seizures, tremors, behavioral changes, weakness of the cervical muscles near to the neck, dysphagia—difficulty swallowing—and eventual paralysis of the muscles involved in respiration.”

“Which means what, damn it?” snapped the president.

“It means, Mr. President, that we might be able to introduce a hostile parasite to the infected that will make them blind and paralyzed. Quite literally it will stop them in their tracks.”

“Good
God
,” gasped Ruddy. “You’re talking about people.”

Dr. Price looked at her with heavily lidded eyes. “No, ma’am,” he said slowly, “once a person has been infected by Lucifer—by any version of Lucifer—they are no longer people. They are dead meat driven by a parasite.”

“How is this a cure?” demanded General Burroughs.

“No … you don’t understand,” Price said. “There is
no cure
. Maybe there will be one day, I don’t know. That would take years of research. You asked me how to stop the infected. That’s what this is. A weapon that can stop them.”

Blair watched the president’s face, saw how this news hurt him. He didn’t like the man, but right now he felt deeply sorry for him. And, to a lesser degree, for Price.

“What form would this weapon come in, Doctor?” asked Burroughs. “If it’s some kind of parasite…”

“Actually,” said Price, “the Chinese developed a toxoplasma delivery system in the nineties. We’ve codenamed it Reaper. Lurid, I know, but it was designed to attack and destroy, so we … well, anyway, we acquired it from them and—”

“What’s the potential effect of this Reaper on uninfected persons?” asked Blair.

Price paused on that. “We … don’t know. We’ve never tested this on people.”

“How do we use it?” interrupted the president.

“Airbursts. The modified
N. caninum
are held in stasis inside a dry medium that can be packed into rockets calibrated for low-level detonation over infected areas. How big is your quarantine zone?”

“The zone is a circle sixty-four miles across,” said Blair.

Price considered, quickly doing the math in his head. “That’s what—twelve-thousand eight hundred and sixty-one square miles?”

“And it could expand,” said Burroughs. “How much of this canine stuff do we need?”

“
N. caninum
,” corrected Price. “Or just Reaper. That’s what we’ve been calling it, too. Easier to say. Hold on, let me make that calculation.”

They watched him as he tapped for several excruciating moments on a laptop. Blair saw a frown carve itself deeply into Price’s face.

“Um … the required parasitic load would depend on population, terrain, and weather conditions. However, if we work with the prevailing winds, we could put enough of the parasite-rich medium in a standard airburst bomb or rocket to cover several square miles. Less in a high airburst in low winds. More in the current conditions. Call it fifty tons of the medium.”

That was ugly news.

“How fast can we get the Reaper material to Pennsylvania?” asked the president.

Price blinked like a bug. “Mr. President … we don’t have that much of the Reaper stockpiled.”

“How much do you have?”

“Between here and one other lab, maybe eight, nine kilos.”

“Shit,” hissed Blair.

“Can you make more of it?” asked the president.

“We can make a mountain of it, sir. Making it isn’t difficult. But it will take time to set up a production process for it, and then there’s manufacture time, bonding with the dry medium, payload assembly … Mr. President, at the very earliest we could have the first batches ready for you in six days.”

Six days.

Those two words hung burning the air.

“Scott,” asked the president in a leaden voice, “do we have that kind of time?”

“Without containment, sir?” Blair shook his head. “In six days we’ll have lost most of the East Coast and the entire South. In six days, Mr. President, fifty million people will be infected.”

Dr. Price had nothing to say. There was no possible response to a statement like that.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL

STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA

They went inside out of the rain. Sam Imura and his team—their weapons and gear returned to them, the cuffs removed—along with Dez, Trout, Uriah Piper, Mrs. Madison, and a small handful of the more sober and steady adults. Dez picked one of the smaller classrooms in order to limit the size of the crowd, and she closed the door. Several of the adults in the school clearly wanted to object, but none of them got farther than beginning to say something to her, and then clearly thought better of it.

“Where are the drives?” asked Sam as soon as the door was closed.

Trout started to answer, but Dez cut him off. “No. You first. You tell us what’s happening.”

“We don’t have time for that, Officer Fox,” said Sam urgently, “we—”

“Fucking
make
time for it.”

Sam turned appealing eyes to Trout, but he shook his head. “You heard the lady,” said Trout. “And if the clock is ticking, better cut right to it.”

Sam glanced at his people, then gave a short sigh. “Okay, in the spirit of us actually getting somewhere, I’m going to shoot straight with you.”

“Figuratively speaking,” murmured Trout.

“Figuratively speaking. Let me preface it by saying that my boss is Scott Blair, the national security advisor. He was the one who advised the president to drop a fuel-air bomb on Stebbins County.”

“Shit,” said Dez. “What an asshole.”

Sam shook his head. “No, he’s not. Put yourself in his place. He didn’t invent Lucifer and he wasn’t part of any group that kept that plague after it should have been completely eradicated. Blair’s only concern is just what his job title says—he advises the president on matters of national security. This plague threatens the entire nation. There was a window—a very small one—last night when it might have been contained. That window closed when Mr. Trout here broadcast his appeal to the world to save the kids here in the school.”