Joe Ledger: Code Zero Part 38

Zombies.

Coming for us. Moaning, aching for our flesh.

We stood there in a shooting line. Lydia, Sam, Ivan, Duncan, Montana, and Noah. And me. Echo Team.

We fired and fired and fired.

We covered one another as we reloaded.

Our guns bucked in our hands, the barrels growing hot. The air was thick and toxic with gun smoke and cordite.

The dead walked into our gunfire. They did not-could not-evade or duck away. They came into the bright muzzle flashes and the lead. They flew apart like broken toys.

We used every bullet, every grenade, every magazine.

And they still kept coming.

In the end, when the last bullets were fired and the empty magazines dropped, when we were ankle-deep in blood and spent sh.e.l.l casings, the dead still came.

A few left.

Civilians.

The ones from the last car.

Old and young. Some children among them.

They came.

Ivan was weeping openly. So was Noah. Lydia's face was stone and I feared for her. She was way, way out on the edge.

"G.o.d, please," said Duncan. He was breathing too fast, his whole system teetering on the edge of shock as he slapped his pockets for fresh magazines that weren't there. "I'm out. I'm out."

I felt a sob break in my chest as I drew my knife.

What followed was unspeakable.

Chapter Fifty-eight.

Westin Hotel Atlanta, Georgia Sunday, August 31, 2:15 p.m.

Mother Night watched the video feeds.

There were six cameras mounted at different points around the subway train. Each one had a lens that provided a panoramic view of the slaughter. Three of them showed close-ups of the infected, and she took them offline, not wanting to send a mixed message. One camera had a tight view of a line of DMS agents, and Mother Night was almost positive that the second man in that line was Joe Ledger. Even with the helmet, a balaclava covering his nose and mouth, and night-vision goggles, he had the right build, the right carriage. He looked like a video game character. She could have sampled him and built him into one of her own games. Maybe she would. She'd already established a network of dummy corporations and technical obfuscation that would allow her to bring games to market under a variety of false names so that nothing could be traced back to her.

It would be hilarious to have Joe Ledger, Top Sims, and that hunky Bunny as characters. Maybe Lydia, too, though Mother Night did not know her very well. The others were strangers to her except as names on covert reports hacked by Haruspex.

The two remaining cameras showed the whole line of shooters from a distance, and as the walkers shambled forward they were torn apart. Nice. From that angle and that distance, and in that s.h.i.tty light, it was impossible to tell that they were infected. Or how badly they were infected. They looked like frightened people reaching out for help. And being killed by government troops.

Absolutely perfect.

She took a sip of Diet c.o.ke, drew in a calming breath, let it out slowly, and then tapped the keys that would send this video feed to its various targets.

First was YouTube, with links automatically placed on six hundred preset Twitter pages and fifty Facebook group and event pages, as well as on thousands of blogs into which Haruspex had intruded.

Bang, bang, bang.

Using reposting services modeled after Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, the link was posted over and over again every few seconds. Tiny changes in wording and URL kept the antispam programs from blocking her out.

The number of hits began sluggishly, but within three minutes it had jumped, and then soared.

The thought of it going "viral" was an irony not lost on her.

She took another sip of Diet c.o.ke.

Then she sent the YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook links to the media.

To every network news desk. To more than six hundred global news agencies, from the a.s.sociated Press to Al Jazeera. And then Haruspex took over, sending the links to local affiliates, newspapers, and Web news editors.

Within minutes the slaughter in the Brooklyn subway system had hit sixteen thousand news sources.

"Burn to shine, motherf.u.c.kers," she murmured.

Chapter Fifty-nine.

The Oval Office The White House Washington, D.C.

Sunday, August 31, 2:19 p.m.

Vice President William Collins stood with a group of top advisors as they cl.u.s.tered around the president's desk to watch the horror unfolding on the TV screen. The image was that of American troops in unmarked black combat gear firing continuously on a group of unarmed civilians.

The bullets tore into the people.

The soundtrack was filled with shrieks and screams as the people begged for mercy. Threaded through the gunfire was the sound of gruff laughter.

Nice touch, thought Collins; and he wondered from which video game or movie Mother Night had lifted that soundtrack. In all the confusion it was impossible to match those cries for help to any actual mouth on the screen. Maybe one day someone would discover that the soundtrack didn't match the video at all, but by then it would be a different world.

And a different president.

Maybe a president whose last name began with a C.

It was hard not to smile, so he took the urge and made it look like a grimace.

The gunfire began to dwindle as the last of the civilians staggered and fell. Collins knew that the staggering movements were as much to do with the nature of the seif-al-din pathogen as they were from bullet impacts, but millions of TV watchers wouldn't know or suspect that.

The secretary of state said, "Oh my G.o.d."

The president was pale with shock. "How did this get on the air?"

Collins pushed through the crowd. "Did you authorize this?" he demanded. "Did you send troops in to kill those people? My G.o.d ... these are Americans!"

The president shook his head, dazed and apparently lost. "How did this get on the air?" he repeated.

Collins had to bite his tongue to keep from smiling.

Chapter Sixty.

Fulton Street Line Near Euclid Avenue Station Brooklyn, New York Sunday, August 31, 2:22 p.m.

We stood there, wrapped in a shroud of gun smoke, haunted by the echoes of our guns, ankle-deep in blood, filled with horror.

Everybody was panting. Hands shook with a palsy that was born of the realization that this moment was both unreal and yet sewn into the fabric of our lives. No matter what else happened, no matter how hardened we got, or how insane we became, in one way or another we would each revisit this place in dreams. In those dark times we would stand in the fetid darkness and do awful things, knowing that we must and knowing that with each bullet fired we were blasting away at those precious human qualities that defined us. In a very real way, we all died a little that day, and we would be less alive from here on.

Behind me I heard someone quietly weeping. Maybe one of the newbies, maybe one of the regulars. I didn't know and didn't want to find out.

I understood, though.

If this had been a regular battle between us and the bad guys-terrorists, criminals, soldiers in a foreign army-then there would be some kind of natural path along which we could walk from here back to the world.

These were civilians. They hadn't been driven by an ideology to attack us. It wasn't politics or religion or even greed.

They were victims.

They had been murdered twice.

Once by whomever had released the seif-al-din pathogen aboard that train; and then again by us.

My earbud buzzed.

"Deacon to Cowboy," said Mr. Church, "I need you to listen to me very carefully. Do not say anything. Not a word. Switch to my private channel. Only you."

I raised my hand and snapped my fingers. Everyone fell silent.

Church said, "This action has been filmed. Look for cameras."

I did. And I found them. Same as the ones from the tunnel, but we'd missed them as we'd closed on the train. There had been no time to look for cameras at that time. Now I saw all the little red lights shimmering like rats' eyes in a sewer.

"Disable the cameras," ordered Church.

But before I could even reach out the red lights flickered off. They all went dark.

"Cowboy, the feed has stopped," said Church. "Locate and collect those cameras. Bug will want to examine them."

Top instantly organized everyone into a search.

Church switched to a private channel. "Just listen. We have a situation developing. The feeds from those cameras were streamed to the Internet and all major news services." He quickly explained about the soundtrack of people screaming and begging for mercy. The president just called me and demanded that I pull your team and order you to stand down pending an investigation. The media is exploding with this, and a great deal of that heat will be directed toward the president. It's likely to damage or destroy this administration."

I cursed very quietly.

"Do not exit at Euclid Avenue," Church continued. "Proceed along the tracks three stops to Liberty Avenue station. It's a mile and a half. I'll have people down there with decontamination equipment and fresh clothes. We'll extract you from there."

"How much s.h.i.t are we in?" I asked.

Instead of answering he said, "Get moving."

The line went dead. I called my people over and gave them the short version of what was happening.

Ivan said, "This sucks dog b.a.l.l.s."

"Hooah," muttered Top darkly.

"n.o.body knows who we are," I told them, touching my balaclava. "We're soldiers in unmarked black. Trust Deacon to protect us."

"Can he?" asked Montana.

"If anyone can," I said, which did not sound as comforting as I hoped it would. "Clock's ticking, so let's haul a.s.s."

We hauled a.s.s.

We ran as if monsters were chasing us. Which they d.a.m.n well were.

Interlude Sixteen Metropolitan Detention Center Brooklyn, New York Two Years Ago Artemisia Bliss sat in her cell and waited for her life to end. Wished, in fact, for it to all be over. They had her on suicide watch, though. Fair enough. If there was any chance for a quick way out, she'd take it.

Living in h.e.l.l was not living.

This was going to be h.e.l.l. Of that she had no doubt. The judgment against Artemisia Bliss had been so severe.

One hundred and sixty-five years.

The joke was that there was a chance for parole after seventy years.