Joe Ledger: Code Zero Part 48

"What did it say?" I think we all asked that at the same time.

"I'll show you," said Nikki, and immediately the screen split into two windows, one with her face and the other with the horrible footage of my team shooting at the walkers. With the false soundtrack off you could hear the moans of the hungry dead, and the effect was far more terrifying and monstrous.

But the data crawl at the bottom is what caught everyone's eye.

It jolted us all and, I have to say, it changed the game right there and then.

It read: The bidding starts at fifty million.

Those six words, over and over again.

Rudy said, "Dios mio."

I said, "Holy s.h.i.t."

"And there it is," said Aunt Sallie. "The anarchy, the destruction, it's all a cover for a f.u.c.king sales pitch. This whole G.o.dd.a.m.n thing is about money."

"It's always about money," grumbled Bug.

However, Rudy shook his head. "Money, maybe ... but I knew Artemisia. There was one thing she wanted more than money, more than career success, and more than personal fame. No, the thing she wanted most was power."

"Yes," said Church, "and look how powerful she's become."

Chapter Seventy-six.

Best Buy Willow Grove, Pennsylvania Monday, September 1, 6:00 a.m.

Donny Hauk sat on a square of cardboard that was padded by a folded towel that was carefully wrapped around a thick piece of memory foam. It was a very comfortable seat, and Donny believed that the memory foam remembered him. Or at least it remembered his a.s.s. It welcomed his a.s.s. It comforted his a.s.s. And Donny's a.s.s was grateful.

It had been a long night. Hotter and far more humid than the weatherman had said-and Donny, who did this sort of thing several times a year, hated f.u.c.king weathermen. a.s.sholes who were overpaid for being bad at their job. They said that it was going to be mild. Eighty-nine degrees wasn't mild. Eighty-eight percent humidity wasn't mild. It was a frigging sauna.

On the upside, the heat drove off a lot of what Donny called "civilians." Shoppers who didn't know how to wait on line, who hadn't acquired the predatory survival skills necessary to make it through a long night.

Donny had those skills. In spades. They'd been honed over years and were locked firmly into place.

Sure, he'd made rookie mistakes. He'd been a civilian once. First time he ever waited on line for a doorbuster was the release of the unrated director's cut of the second G.o.d of War game. Donny spent a bad night in worse weather than this, wearing a hoodie and nearly freezing his nuts off in sixteen degrees with a minus-two wind chill. His fingers and toes were almost dead from cold when they opened the door, and that made him sluggish and slow, and the crowd had surged past him. After eleven hours of waiting, Donny had returned home without the game, so crushed that he sat on the toilet, c.r.a.pping and crying.

Not his best moment, he knew, but an instructive one.

When he showed up at Walmart for the latest version of Resident Evil, he was wearing a fleece-lined anorak, gloves, earm.u.f.fs, and a scarf. He had a thermos of espresso and six power bars. His only mistake then had been to neglect to bring something comfortable on which to sit, and as a result he stood too long and then sat too long on hard ground. The aches born from that slowed him by a step, and despite being third in line he was not even among the first twenty through the door when the lights came on.

Live and learn.

Now he sat on ten inches of foam next to an ice chest filled with food and drinks. He had his iPod, iPad, and iPhone charged, and had extended batteries for each. Donny downloaded fourteen hours of movies from iTunes and made deals with people to watch his flicks via an earjack splitter in return for them holding his spot during bathroom runs to Dunkin Donuts a few blocks away. He also shared power bars and icy cans of c.o.ke with line neighbors who kept an eye on his stuff whenever he dozed.

At 6:00 a.m., when the sleep-deprived sales staff opened the door to the Best Buy in Willow Grove, Donny was on his feet, rested, as fit as his three hundred pounds on a five nine frame would allow, bags packed and eyes bright at the thought of the new game, Burning Worlds, which was rumored to be the toughest video game ever.

Donny was first in line, and by now the other doorbusters-they'd taken that as their name-showed deference to Donny. He had become royalty to then. While not quite a family, the doorbusters had become a community, a "people," and Donny Hauk was their king.

As the store manager appeared and bent to unlock the doors, Donny led the applause. Then Donny turned to the others and in a regal voice declared, "Let the games begin!"

That sparked another round of applause and laughter, but this time it was all for him. With a great beaming smile, Donny picked up his shopping bag, waved to the crowd, turned, and walked through the doors. The crowd bustled like anxious bees, but no one tried to push past him. No sir. Not anymore. Not King Donny.

He waddled along familiar aisles with the horde of doorbusters behind him, heading to the big display for Burning Worlds. They had life-size character cutouts on either side of a kind of cattle chute that opened in a s.p.a.ce where a long rack of games had been placed. One hundred copies of the new game were in the center, and all of the other hot products put out by the same company were racked for impulse purchase.

Donny reached out his hand, fingers wiggling, as he selected which copy of Burning Worlds he wanted. There were grunts and a few curses behind him-not directed at him but fired by members of the increasingly agitated crowd. Donny picked one, top row, fifth from the left. The plastic wrapping on the box looked perfect. No smudges or fingerprints, no tears in the cellophane.

When Donny turned and held up his selection, the crowd applauded again.

All hail the king.

Satisfied, happy, and excited, Donny stepped away from the rack, giving only a casual glance behind him as the crowd surged forward and the feeding frenzy began. A few people ran past to be first in line at the checkout, but that was fine with Donny. He didn't need to be first to pay. Instead he drifted over to look at the Blu-ray box sets. He was reading the back cover text on the fourteenth series of Doctor Who when he heard one of the staff say, "What the h.e.l.l?"

Donny looked up in time to see a semi pull to a stop out front, the truck so close to the building that it triggered the automatic door. The truck was big, white, with no markings. Everyone who was near the front of the store stopped what they were doing and looked. Donny frowned because the narrow gap left by the truck was far too tight to allow him to get out. Complaining about that would be awkward, and anxiety immediately began to climb inside his chest.

He turned to the closest salesman to ask a question, but the young man was already in motion, striding toward the front with a firm jaw, an outraged expression on his face, and balled fists. Donny drifted along behind.

A slender Asian woman squeezed though the tiny gap between the open door and the cab. The door effectively blocked any additional doorbusters from getting in, however. The truck and its door formed a bulky seal to the front of the building.

The salesman began yelling questions as soon as he was close, but Donny was bemused to see that the driver completely ignored him. The driver wore a white jumpsuit, brand-new sneakers, and leather driving gloves. A pair of nearly opaque sungla.s.ses clung to the front of her face.

The morning breeze blew under the truck and into the store, carrying with it the stink of gasoline and ...

And what?

It wasn't skunk and it wasn't the sulfur stink of a troubled engine.

This was more like his fridge smelled when a storm tripped the circuit breakers in his apartment the week he was away at San Diego Comic Con. Everything in the box, from leftover Chinese to the brisket his aunt Helene had brought over, turned into lumps of rot. It took a week, lots of scrubbing, and four boxes of baking soda to get rid of the stink.

That's what the female driver smelled like.

Like rotten food.

The Asian woman seemed to tune in on his thoughts, and while the salesman continued to yell at her, she removed a small spray bottle from a pocket, uncapped it, and sprayed the contents on her clothes.

The G.o.d-awful smell of decay suddenly became ten times worse.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" yelled the salesman.

The Asian woman put the bottle back into her pocket, unzipped her jumpsuit, reached inside, and when she removed her hand she held ...

A gun?

Donny gaped at it. He'd played every kind of first-person shooter game on the market and yet he'd never once seen a real gun.

The salesman froze, his expression caught between outrage and horror.

"What...?" he said.

Donny's legs trembled with the desire to run, but he dared not move. The crowd in the store was noticing the gun by degrees. There were gasps and yells. And screams. The Asian woman smiled placidly and watched the effect, apparently enjoying it. She raised her gun and pointed it at the salesman.

"Shhh," she said.

The salesman became a statue, though Donny could see him go dead pale. Then the slim woman in the reeking jumpsuit half-turned and looked at Donny.

No, she looked above Donny. Despite himself, Donny turned and looked up, too, and saw one of the store's many security cameras. A small red light glowed beside the black lens.

Without a word of warning, the Asian woman shot the salesman in the chest. It was done with an almost casual disinterest. The bullet punched through the salesman's body and exited with a burst of blood that splashed across Donny's chest and face. The salesman fell backward and crashed to the floor.

Everyone screamed.

The killer raised her pistol and fired the next shot into the ceiling.

"Shut the f.u.c.k up," she bellowed, s.p.a.cing out the words for maximum clarity.

Everyone shut the f.u.c.k up.

Donny's bladder suddenly let loose and hot urine coursed down his legs and into his shoes. Even with death looking at him, he was wretchedly ashamed and hoped no one would notice.

No one did.

The woman turned in a slow circle with the eye of the pistol following her line of sight. She held a shushing finger to her full lips as she turned. When the store was totally silent, the woman once more looked up at the video camera.

"Now that I'm pretty sure I have your attention, here's the news," she said, smiling, enjoying herself. "The only action is direct action. Sometimes you have to burn to shine."

That's when Donny-and everyone else-understood what was happening. It was more of the Mother Night stuff. The anarchy and chaos that was all over the news. It was here. Right here. For real.

Laughing at the crowd's reaction, the woman walked out to the truck, jerked open the side door, and then came back into the store. People began jumping down from the open door.

But that was wrong. Donny frowned, trying to understand what he was seeing. The truck seemed to be filled with people, but they weren't jumping down or climbing down. They were falling down.

Awkwardly.

Clumsily.

Hitting the ground so hard Donny was sure he heard bones break.

They were dirty, dressed in rags, slack-faced.

And they stank. G.o.d almighty, they stank worse than the Asian girl did.

The people kept tumbling out, landing on one another, crawling, struggling to their feet. They all looked stoned.

They all looked sick, Donny thought.

Their faces were pale. Some as white as mushrooms, others as gray as dust, What was weirdest of all, what disturbed Donny on a level he couldn't understand ... was why none of them cried out when they fell or when someone fell atop them. Even the ones who clearly broke a hand or arm or leg didn't scream or curse or anything.

However, they did make sounds. Small sounds. Low and so oddly out of keeping with what was happening.

They moaned. Soft, plaintive.

Moans of deep need.

Then the people got to their feet and began shuffling awkwardly into the store. The people inside, the sales staff and the doorbusters, shifted back from them. No one liked the look of them.

There was something intensely wrong here.

When Donny looked into the eyes of the closest of these newcomers he saw ...

Nothing.

No trace of personality. Not even the deadened gaze of stoners. There was simply-nothing.

Like they're dead, thought Donny.

That was the worst thought he'd ever had. It was also the most cogent and accurate observation he'd ever made.

Like they were dead.

Like.

They.

Were.

"Oh, G.o.d," whispered Donny.

The Asian woman-the one who called herself Mother Night-smiled as the slack-faced people pa.s.sed her on either side. They ignored her. Once past her, however, their moans of need sharpened into driving, intense moans of another kind.

Moans not just of need.

But of hunger.

A hunger so deep that it made Donny's bowels ache and throb.

To the camera, the woman said, "Generation Six. Old school, I know, but a cla.s.sic nonetheless. Now, children, remember what Mother Night said. Bidding kicks off at fifty million euros." Then, as she turned, she said something else, but it was directed to the slack-faced people. To Donny it sounded like, "Bon appet.i.t."

Donny was sure of it.

Dead certain.

Donny had seen this before. In games. In movies.