Fall of Night (Dead of Night Series) (7 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

After Scott Blair left the president he hurried to his office. He blew past three of his aides, growled at his secretary to hold his calls until further notice, and closed his door. As soon as he was alone he took his cell phone from his pocket, punched in a five-digit code to activate a scrambler, and ground his teeth while he waited through five rings before the call was answered.

“How’d it go?” asked the man at the other end.

Blair snorted. “How do you think it went?”

“Jesus,” said the man at the other end. “Did you show him the math? Did he see the projection numbers if this thing breaks the Q-zone?”

“I did, but for all intents and purposes that broadcast from the school cut his balls off. He’s almost afraid to act.”

There was a pause. “Which means what?”

“I gave him an alternative suggestion.”

“Which is?”

“You, Sam,” said Blair. “I told him I wanted to send you in.”

There was a brief silence at the other end of the line. “Go in and do what?”

“Find out exactly what’s happening in Stebbins. You and a small team. I want to know how bad things are there. However, you are not to report to General Zetter. He and everyone here in Washington is acting like the Super Bowl is over and we’re all doing postgame chatter.”

“How’s that make sense? Surely they read the same report you forwarded to me. This pathogen isn’t a suitcase nuke. You can’t defuse it and sit back for a victory cigar.”

“Preaching to the choir, Sam.”

“So … what the hell’s happening? Why the shift from ‘move heaven and earth to win this’ to whatever the heck you’d call this shit? Is it that broadcast?”

“Mostly. That was like being hit by a cruise missile. It cut everyone’s balls off. There are people here who think that the attack on the school could be used to do more than bring down the president. They’re afraid it’s done permanent harm to the structure of government as we know it.”

“I watched the president on TV. He did a pretty solid job of pissing on that video. Don’t know if you watched the commentary afterward, but CNN, FOX, and even MSNBC are edging away from belief that Trout’s video was the real deal.”

“I know, but once the storm’s over and the press actually gets into Stebbins, some of what Trout said is going to be verified. The school looks like it was fired on by machine guns. We can’t change that.”

“Unless you blow it up.”

“Hiding the body after a murder isn’t the same as removing doubt about the crime.” Blair blew out is cheeks. “No, Sam, this is doing political damage, there’s no doubt about it.”

“But…?”

“But who the fuck cares?” growled Blair. “How did we ever allow ourselves to get to the point where careers and political agendas matter this much? We are facing a doomsday scenario and they’re acting like it’s the midterm elections. Doomsday, Sam. It’s not even an abstract concept. It’s right there, and we’re handling it all wrong.”

“And you want me to go in and—what? Take photos of the Gates of Hell to prove they’re opening?”

“Pretty much.”

“Jesus.”

“I need irrefutable proof that we’re not on top of this so I can force the president to respond the way we should have responded from the jump. Can you do that?”

“I can try.

“Sam…”

“I’ll do it,” Sam amended.

“How soon can you be on the ground there?”

“Almost right away. I have some assets I can put into play. I … well, I kind of figured this was coming and I tapped some friends who were in the area.”

“You’re already there?”

“Not inside the Q-zone, but close,” said Sam. “We’re at a motel just outside. Me and four people I can trust.”

“I…”

“I anticipated this, Scott. Don’t act so surprised. If I was off my game we wouldn’t be having this call.”

“I knew I could rely on you.”

“Yeah, yeah, if the world doesn’t end, buy me a beer.”

“I’ll buy you a brewery.”

“Deal. Now,” said Sam, “if we’re done with the bullshit, Scott … tell me why I’m
really
taking a squad of first-team shooters into the Q-zone.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

FARMLANDS SUPER MOTEL

BORDENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA

Sam put down his cell phone and took a long breath, held it until everything inside his mind and body felt steady, then let it out with slow control. Both aspects of the job Scott Blair wanted him to do—the official and unofficial mission—were going to be a real bitch. Although Sam had run with a SpecOps team for a long time, that was years ago. He hadn’t fired a shot in anger in a decade.

His technical skills were still there. On the rifle range he was still one of the two or three top snipers in the U.S. military. But was he still fit and sharp enough to lead men into a situation like this? Had he have lost a step getting to first base?

Possibly.

More important, could he do what Blair wanted him to do? Would he do it? Sam certainly agreed with the NSA advisor’s logic and even, to a degree, with the plan. But it was ugly and it was risky. There were a lot of ways it could go wrong and very few ways it could all work out right.

He took a second calming breath.

And a third.

Then he called the four members of his team waiting in rooms here at the motel. They were all seasoned Special Operatives. None of them were active military. Like Sam, they had retired to contract work, but also like him their only employer had been Uncle Sam. Different groups within the government, and sometimes the agendas didn’t quite mesh, but since they were freelancers they could pick and choose their jobs. None of them ever wanted to follow an order they didn’t like or couldn’t square with their consciences. That adherence to a specific ethical code had earned the team the sobriquet of The Boy Scouts. Nice nickname but far from the truth. People in Special Ops never felt entirely comfortable in, say, a confessional. Certainly not Sam.

Sam caught his reflection in the mirror bolted to the back of the motel room’s door. The man he saw looked small, old, and guilty even though he hadn’t yet done anything except take a call from an old friend. But then he thought about what was at stake. He thought about his family back in California. His dad, his stepmom, his brother, and his infant half-brother. They were three thousand miles away from this, but with something like Lucifer 113 distance wasn’t a guarantee of safety. All it did was buy some time.

Time before what?

Before the inevitable or something that might already be over.

There was no way to know. No way to be certain.

Except to gather his team, saddle up, and cross the Q-zone into Stebbins County. The one place on earth that no one in their right mind wanted to go.

“The fuck are you doing?” he asked himself.

His reflection looked pale and sickly and it offered no reply.

Then Captain Sam Imura stood up, reached for his gear bag, slung his sniper rifle over his shoulder, and headed out to war.

CHAPTER TWENTY

BORDENTOWN STARBUCKS ON ROUTE 653

BORDENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA

“Please…” he begged. “Don’t … please…”

Goat was crammed into a cleft formed by his overturned table, a couple of chairs, the wall, and a tourist who sat bleeding and weeping. He huddled into his niche, arms wrapped around his head, knees drawn up tight as if the bones of his limbs offered some real protection for what was happening. The air in the Starbucks was filled with screams and prayers.

And laughter.

Low, thick. Wet.

“Please,” Goat whimpered. He thought desperately about Volker’s information, uploaded to his email accounts but not sent. Not shared.

And with sudden screaming clarity he realized that he and Billy had made a serious mistake. That information should have gone out. Goat’s instinct had been to send it, but he hadn’t. It was in attachments. It was just sitting there. As useless as he was.

God …

Despite the carnage around him, Goat cut a sly, frightened look at his laptop, which lay on the floor not five feet away. How long would it take to locate the email and forward it to the listservs of reporters to which he belonged. How long?

Five seconds?

Less.

That’s all the time it would take to maybe save the whole fucking world.

A handful of seconds.

Goat felt himself begin to move, shifting away from his worthless hiding place, edging toward the laptop.

Then the laughter stopped.

“Hey,” said a voice, “I know you.”

The world seemed to freeze around Goat and for a terrible moment even the screams seemed muted as if those words had flipped a switch on everything. Goat didn’t look up, though, too frightened to risk acknowledging anything.

“Yeah,” continued the voice, “I seen you somewhere, ain’t I?”

Goat held his breath, refused to move.

Then pain exploded in his thigh as something hit him with jarring force. A cry burst past the self-enforced stricture in his throat, and he rocked sideways, suddenly whipping his arms out like defensive stabilizers. Despite his need not to see this man, Goat’s eyes opened and there he was. Standing right there, looming over him, bare-chested, ugly, covered in glistening red, eyes dark and wild, smiling mouth full of promise.

“Fucking-A, I knew I knew you,” said Homer Gibbon. “You were there when they killed me.”

Behind Gibbon and all around him was pain and horror.

People were broken.

Broken.

Arms shattered, mouths gaping to reveal broken teeth, handfuls of hair torn out from customers who had tried to run but were one step too slow. Everyone was bloody. Every single person.

Some of them lay sprawled, dead or dying.

But even as he thought that, Goat knew he was wrong.

Dying maybe. Dead?

Not really.

Death, as Goat had known it his whole life until yesterday, was no longer a fixed point in reality. It was no longer a doorway that, once entered, could not be passed again. All of that had changed.

Because of Dr. Volker.

Because of something called Lucifer 113.

And because of this man.

This monster.

Homer Gibbon.

When Goat didn’t answer, Homer kicked him again. Same spot, only harder.

Gibbon wore no shoes but he knew how to kick. And from the laugh that bubbled out of him, he enjoyed it. The way some kids like kicking cats. A small cruelty that spoke with disturbing eloquence about this man. Even if Goat had not known what kind of monster Homer was, even if Goat had not sat through weeks of testimony by clinical psychologists and forensics experts at this man’s trial, he would have deduced important truths about him from that kick and its accompanying laugh.

“I asked you a question, boy,” said Homer, his voice colored by an accent that sounded southern but was pure rural Pennsylvania. “Want to see what happens if I have to ask you again.”

“Y-yes…” stammered Goat.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I was there.”

Homer kicked him again. Even harder. Goat screamed in pain and tried to turn away to protect the spot on his leg that now burned as if scalded.

“You was there when what?” demanded Homer.

“Yes,” said Goat in a small, fractured voice, “I was there when they killed you. At the prison. At the execution. I was there.”

Homer nodded in satisfaction. “What’s that make you? Some kind of news reporter?”

Behind Homer one of the wounded people was crawling toward the door. Her shirt was torn, revealing a bra with little blue flowers on it. Most of her right shoulder looked like raw hamburger. Goat hadn’t witnessed the attack specifically on her, but he recognized the bite. Even from ten feet away Goat could see a thick black goo mixed in with the blood, and in that goo tiny threadlike worms wriggled. Dark lines ran crookedly from the torn flesh, delineating the pattern of her veins and blood vessels. Even though the bite had just happened a few minutes ago, the infection was spreading at incredible speed.

So fast, thought Goat, it’s happening so fast.

It was nothing Mother Nature could ever have created. Nothing natural could spread infection at that rate. Lucifer 113 had been genetically engineered to be a perfect rapid-onset bioweapon, and the modified parasites took hold inside the bloodstream with all the deadly speed of a neurotoxin.

Homer turned, following Goat’s line of sight, and again there was the low, wet laughter.

“Fuck yeah,” he said. “That’s right. That bitch is one of mine now.”

“One of yours?” asked Goat weakly.

Homer turned back and then squatted down in front of Goat, arms dangling off the tops of his knees like a gorilla. “You gonna lay there and tell me you don’t know what’s happening? You’re a reporter and you want to tell me you don’t know what I done in Stebbins? You going to fuck with me like that?”

“N-no…”

Homer reached out and patted Goat on the cheek. Three pats, each one harder so that the last one was a full slap that rocked the reporter back against the table. It was not as hard as the kicks had been, but hard enough, and Goat’s head banged off the wooden table. He twisted sideways, once more curling into a fetal ball, collapsing against the side of the badly injured customer who’d been sitting there weeping and bleeding.

It was then that Goat realized two very bad things.

The first was that the man was no longer weeping. Or breathing for that matter.

And second was that his eyes were open.

Wide open.

Staring right at Goat.

Black mucus ran from between the man’s slack lips. There was nothing in his eyes. No pain, no confusion over the way in which everything had suddenly gone wrong for him, no spark of anything. The eyes saw Goat, though; that much was certain.

The dead man opened his mouth to show his teeth.

Behind Goat Homer Gibbon chuckled.

“Look who woke up hungry,” he said.

He was still chuckling when the dead customer lunged at Goat, grabbed him by the shirt and hair, and pulled him toward those blood-streaked teeth.