Patient Zero_ A Joe Ledger Novel Part 16

The room was large, as big as a school auditorium, with a high ceiling set with grime-covered louvered windows. Against the far wall was a third row of blue cases, and against the left wall were more lab tables. Scattered throughout the room were at least a dozen armed guards, all of them with automatic weapons; and maybe four more men in lab coats. But in the far left corner was a big cage made from industrial-grade chicken wire and steel pipes. Ten of the blue cases stood with their doors wide open, and three guards were using electric cattle prods to drive a snarling, staggering line of walkers toward the cage.

The cage was packed, wall to wall, with children.

Chapter Forty-Two.

Claymont, Delaware / Tuesday, June 30; 6:26 P.M.

THE CHILDREN WERE huddled into a pack inside the cage, their eyes wide, their mouths trembling. I could see some of them weeping but they made no sound, though whether it was terror of the walkers or threats from the guards that stilled their tongues I couldn't tell.

I pulled back and handed the mirror to the others, making them each take a fast look.

I mouthed the words "we need prisoners," but I don't know if any of them were able to process the thought. Top, the only man among us who had kids of his own, had the most murderous expression I'd ever seen on a human face.

I held up three fingers and everyone got set, Ollie and Skip on the left flank, Bunny and Top with me. I counted down fast.

"Go!" I snarled, and we rushed into the room.

Chapter Forty-Three.

Claymont, Delaware / Tuesday, June 30; 6:27 P.M.

BUNNY OPENED UP with the shotgun on the two closest guards, blasting them into red tangles of flailing limbs; Top shot two of the lab techs and then turned his fire on the cl.u.s.ter of guards. I could hear shots and screams as Ollie and Skip tore into the guards on the far side. I raced straight forward, gun up and out, and shot the guard standing by the door to the cage. It was a long shot; bad aim could kill one of the kids, but I had no choice. The walkers were yards away. My shot took the guard in the mouth and he rebounded off the chicken wire and fell, his fingers still curled around the latch. As he fell the door swung open.

The guards with the cattle prods turned toward us. Two of them tossed down their prods and fumbled for their guns. I shot one twice in the chest but even as I was swinging my barrel toward the other the nearest walker leaped at him and buried its teeth in his throat. They fell together in a thrashing heap. I shot the remaining guard who was caught in a moment of bad choice: drop the prod and grab his gun or fend off the walkers. My bullet knocked him into the arms of a walker. The creature, a middle-aged Asian man in a track suit, bore him down and began savaging him. I shot the walker in the back of the head.

A man rushed at me from my right and I turned to see that there had been at least eight more guards on the other side of the first row of blue cases. They opened up with AK-47s and I had to dive for cover behind one of the lab tables. I dropped, rolled, and came up by the far corner and emptied my magazine into them, dropping two. As I ejected the mag and slapped another in, Top Sims caught them from an oblique angle, chopping down three of them with bursts from his MP5. Skip Tyler opened up from the other side and the guards tried to fight their way out of a crossfire.

Behind me there was a huge shriek of noise and I spun to see the children surge through the open door of the cage. Three walkers lunged at them and that fast I was up and running, shooting above the heads of the children, trying to make head shots while dodging incoming fire. The children were hysterical and in their panic they flooded across the entire production floor. The gunfire from Echo Team faltered as the children surged around the lab techs and guards, trying to flee the walkers, looking for any way out and finding only guns and teeth and terror.

One of the lab techs whipped back one flap of his white shirt-jacket and pulled a Sig Sauer and shot a ten-year-old girl in the chest.

"f.u.c.k prisoners!" I heard someone snarl and the tech died in a hail of bullets. The voice I'd heard had been my own, the bullets mine and Top's.

A guard brought an Uzi up and tried to shoot me even though there was a line of children between us. I shot him through the eye.

"Run!" I yelled to the kids. "Go that way!" I pointed toward the door, even tried to shove some of the kids that way, but their terror was too deep, too complete.

"Behind you!" I heard Bunny roar, and I crouched and spun to see a walker-a hulking brute in a football jersey-lunge at me, his mouth already smeared with blood. He was coming so fast that I knew that a head shot wouldn't stop him, so I drove into him with a sliding side kick to the thigh that jerked him to a stop, and as I pivoted off the kick I brought the gun up under his chin and blew off the top of his head. As he fell backward another walker leaped over him. This one was a young woman in what had once been a very expensive tailored suit. I shot her in the throat but the bullet tore only flesh and the slide locked back on my gun. There was no time to reload as she slammed into me; so I pivoted to let her ma.s.s whip around and past me. Her fingers never managed to grab me and she flew off and slid ten feet along the floor. With a human being the shock and impact of the fall would have given me a few seconds to reload; but the walker came right off the floor and dove at my legs, trying to bury her teeth in my flesh. With my left hand I drew my knife and drove the blade down as hard as I could in the back of her skull, right above the collar. The furious tension was instantly gone and she dropped to the ground, a piece of my pant leg caught between her teeth.

Top Sims came from my left and stood cover while I reloaded, dropping a lab tech and a walker by the time I had the new mag in and the slide released.

There was a bull roar and we pivoted to see Bunny being rushed by three walkers. There were a half dozen kids huddled behind him and his shotgun was empty. He slammed the folding stock of the shotgun across the face of one walker and I could tell that he was unnerved when the monster just shook it off. Years of training condition us to fight even the most aggressive person, but none of us had trained to fight the dead, to fight things that could not be hurt, that could barely be stopped.

I started in his direction, but Top waved me off. "I got it!"

Bullets burned the air around me and I turned to see a pair of guards using an overturned table as a shooting blind. Dumba.s.ses. The table was aluminum. I put four rounds through the thin metal, two sets of two, and both men fell back with sucking chest wounds.

A blur of movement made me turn again and a little boy of about seven wrapped his arms around my left thigh and clung to me, screaming, his face streaked with tears. A walker came loping across the floor, red teeth bared in a hungry grimace. I shot him in the chest and head and then shot a guard. The clinging child let go and I turned to see him falling to the floor. One side of his face was streaked with blood from a terrible bite. The walker had gotten him before he'd run to me for help. The child's body twitched and thrashed, and lay still.

G.o.d Almighty.

Across the room I saw Skip and Ollie moving along the fringes of the room with a line of children between them, killing every adult they encountered.

A guard nearly clipped me with a short burst from his AK-47, but I saw the movement of the barrel and beat him to the trigger pull. Behind him I saw that there were still some children in the cage. The door was closed but unlocked and the children had fingers hooked through the chicken wire trying to hold the door closed as six walkers fought to pull it open. Only the walkers' lack of coordination had kept the children safe this long, but inch by inch the door was opening. I tore across the room.

Gunfire made me dodge to the left and a line of bullets chased me along a lab table, shattering gla.s.s and filling the air with a spray of jagged shards. I dodged around a lab tech so that he was chopped apart by the gunfire. A guard was at the end of the table drawing a bead on Skip. There were too many children around, so I bashed down on his wrist with my gun barrel and chopped him across the throat with my left hand. He pitched back out of my way. I brought the gun up and shot three of the walkers, using two shots for each, concentrating on the ones farthest away from the children. They collapsed down and then I plowed into the remaining three undead. I used my last two bullets to kill one of them point-blank, and as his body sagged I front-kicked his corpse into the zombie next to him. The two of them crashed down and I spun to take the last creature standing, a man in jeans and a h.e.l.lboy T-shirt. I slammed into his chest with my forearms so that his weight crashed the cage door shut. He lunged his head over my arm and caught the strap of my Kevlar vest in his teeth. I tried boxing his ears with cupped palms, but that did no good, so I grabbed him by the hair and the back of the belt and rammed him headfirst into the wall. His skull collapsed on the first impact; the bones in his neck splintered on the third. I dropped him as the zombie who'd fallen under the one I'd kicked came crawling out from under, scuttling toward me on hands and knees. I axe-kicked the back of his neck and he dropped, twitching for a moment, and then lay still.

I put my back to the cage as I switched magazines. My last one. The room was still in turmoil, but now each of my men had set up defensive stations. Top and Bunny had at least ten kids behind them and they were standing shoulder to shoulder, taking careful aim to bring down walkers, techs, and guards. Across the room, Skip Tyler had six kids tucked into a niche made from a collapsed table and a line of blue cases. There were bodies heaped in front of him. Ollie was by the entrance, and as the last few guards tried to race past him to escape he coldly shot them down.

In the center of the room there were still half a dozen walkers, a few guards, and some kids. Everyone was covered with blood and I could see why none of my guys had gone to rescue those children. It was impossible to tell if they were infected or not.

I had twelve rounds left and there were still six kids out there. I had to try.

I rushed in, firing as I ran, dropping guards and walkers alike. One of the kids ran toward me and I knelt down, waving him on even as I aimed past him, but when he was ten feet away I saw that his eyes were empty and his mouth was open, teeth bared. It was the little kid who had clung to me for safety.

"G.o.d," I whispered through a throat filled with hot ash. I shot the child.

For one moment there was a lull in the gunfire as the child pitched backward from the point of impact and slid to a stop on the floor. I could feel every set of eyes in the room on me, burning me with their stares. The children huddled behind my men cringed and cried out in renewed terror.

Then one of the other children in the center of the room snarled with unnatural hunger and rushed at Skip's group.

The gunfire began again.

When it stopped nothing moved in the center of the room except a pall of gun smoke and white fog that was now polluted with red.

I stood on the fringes of the carnage, my pistol held out in front of me, one bullet left. The thunder I heard in my ears may have been the echo of the gunfire, or it may have been my own heart pounding out like the drums of d.a.m.nation.

Slowly, filled with fear and horror at what we had all just done, I lowered my gun.

Chapter Forty-Four.

Claymont, Delaware / Tuesday, June 30; 6:35 P.M.

I CALLED IT in.

There was an overturned table behind me and I leaned against it while I surveyed the room. A pall of acrid gun smoke hung like a blue veil in the humid air, and the kids kept crying. Each of my men looked stricken. Except for Ollie Brown, whose face showed nothing at all. He could give Church a run for his money. Skip looked sick; Bunny's and Top's faces were rigid with fury.

I wondered what expression was on my face. Maybe shock, probably fear; but if my features truly reflected what I felt then my expression would be mingled horror at what had been about to happen to these poor kids and a dead sickness for what I had just done. That I'd been forced to do it made no difference to me at all. I felt unclean.

Five minutes ago there had been dozens of people in this room. Now most of them were dead. I'd killed at least a quarter of them myself. I'd killed so many people that I'd lost count. The realization hit my brain like a fist. I'd killed before, but this was worse. Ten times worse than the task force raid. And part of the guilt I felt was a secret shame because deep inside my soul the warrior part of me was beating his chest and yelling in exultant triumph even while the more civilized parts of me cringed.

I took a step toward Top's group but the children behind him shrieked and pulled back, terrified of me. They'd seen me gun down at least two other children. They were too young to understand about the infection. They couldn't know I wasn't a monster, too. Top gathered a few of them in his arms, shushing them, murmuring quiet words as Bunny stood by, awkward and helpless. I stayed where I was.

There was a noise and I looked up to see Alpha Team flooding into the room, weapons up and out. Major Courtland was in front with her pistol in her hands, Gus Dietrich was on her flank. They skidded to a stop and stared at the scene of total carnage.

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l " gasped Courtland, and her words could not have been more aptly chosen.

Dietrich stared openmouthed, and the agents of Alpha Team looked from the heaps of corpses to the crowds of weeping children to the bloodied members of Echo Team.

Courtland recovered first. She keyed her radio. "Alpha One to base. We need full medical teams double-quick. We have multiple civilian victims requiring immediate medical attention and evac." She paused as she did a quick head count. "Civilians are all children. Repeat, civilians are children times seventeen. Send all available medical units."

I pushed off from the table and walked over to her, my eyes stinging from the smoke.

She opened her mouth to say something, then caught herself, paused, and finally said, "Are you all right, Captain?"

I very nearly bit her head off. It was such a stupid and clumsy question, but I buried that reaction. What else could she say?

"I'll live," I said. "Tell your people there are zero infected among the children. All of the bite victims are " I couldn't finish it.

She swallowed and relayed the info, then clicked off her mike. "Your men?"

"No casualties."

Courtland nodded, and for a moment we shared a look. Soldier to soldier, or warrior to warrior. The ugly truth was that there were going to be casualties among my men. This event would scar every single one of them.

She looked around as the first wave of EMTs spread out through the room. The children shrieked and wept. Some of them ran toward the men and women in uniforms and the EMTs gathered them up in their arms, some of the medics and soldiers weeping as they held the kids. Other children shrank back, all trust in adults having been torn out of them. A few sat in unmoving silence, speaking of damage that went all the way down to the cellar of their souls.

"Was this how it was at St. Michael's?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No. Everyone there died. My team was outside the whole time."

I nodded. "This morning I was just a cop," I said.

"I know."

There was more to say but it didn't need to be said aloud. We both understood.

"We got a live one!" Dietrich called, and we turned to see a wounded lab tech trying to crawl out from under a dead walker. In his nearly mindless state of pain he reached out to the nearest person in a soundless plea for help. Ollie Brown stood over him, a sneer of contempt on his face. He drew his pistol and racked the slide.

"Stand down!" I bellowed, starting forward, but Brown was already bringing the barrel down toward the tech. Suddenly Gus Dietrich stepped forward, grabbed Ollie's wrist and swung it violently upward. The pistol blast was shockingly loud, even to my wounded ears, but the bullet just buried itself in the wooden roof timbers thirty feet above.

I got up in Ollie's face. "Stand down right now, Lieutenant."

His face was ugly with fury, but after a long moment the tension bled out of his limbs. Top Sims stepped between him and the lab tech, his hand on his holstered pistol.

"Let him go, Sergeant," I said, and Dietrich carefully released Ollie's wrist and took a short step to one side, his eyes hard. To Ollie I said, "Secure your weapon."

Ollie's eyes bored into mine and then past me to the tech, and for a second I thought he was going to try for the shot, but then he eased the hammer down, flicked on the safety, and holstered his piece. EMTs immediately stepped up to triage the wounded man.

"What the h.e.l.l's wrong with you?" I snapped. "What part of the mission orders sounded like 'shoot unarmed prisoners'?"

"He's a piece of s.h.i.t." Ollie sneered.

"He's the only person we have left to interrogate."

Ollie said nothing, so I grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him a few yards away. I wasn't nice about it and when he tried to pull his arm away I dug into a nerve. Even with his stone face the pain showed through. I eased the pressure and he jerked his arm free.

"Okay, Ollie, let's sort this out right here, right now."

"There's nothing to sort out," he said, then added a sarcastic, "sir."

"You're one more smarta.s.s remark away from getting bounced off this team." He blinked at that and snapped his mouth shut on whatever he was about to say next. I leaned close. "You're a top-notch fighter, Ollie, and I'd rather keep you than lose you, but if you can't follow orders then you are no good to me or anyone. Now I'm going to ask you only once and that's it. Are you on my team or not?"

Ollie met my stare for a long ten-count and then he inhaled sharply through his nose and exhaled slowly. "f.u.c.k it," he said.

I waited.

"I'm in."

"My rules, my way?"

He nodded and closed his eyes for a few seconds. "Yes, sir." No sarcasm this time.

"Look at me," I said. He opened his eyes. "Say it again."

"Yes, sir. Your rules, your way."

I nodded and stepped back. "Then we won't discuss this again." I turned and walked away, pa.s.sing Dietrich and Courtland without comment, and rejoined Echo Team. After a moment Ollie followed.

To the team I said, "I guess they'll debrief us once we're back in Baltimore. They'll need to know everything." I paused. "I have a friend, Dr. Rudy Sanchez. He's a police psychiatrist, and he's a good man."

"A shrink?" Skip asked.

"Yeah. He's at the DMS, and I want each of you-each of us- to take a few minutes and sit down with him."

"Why?" asked Skip.

Top turned to him. "Tell me something, kid; when you woke up this morning did you think that by suppertime you'd be killing zombies and gunning down little kids?"

Skip dropped his eyes and looked dejectedly down at the floor.