Bzrk Apocalypse (18 page)

the sudden fatal “illness” of the Chinese leader, followed by the mad-

ness of the Brazilian president, and then this? Even the disaster in

Hong Kong. Oh yes: the pennies would begin to drop. The spies and

the cops and their ilk would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to

begin to see a hand behind it all. Right now people were jumpy, wor-

ried, on-edge, but they still believed the world was just sort of having

a bad run of luck.

There was no luck involved. Well, she corrected herself, there was

a bit of luck: the blundering Armstrong Twins had unintentionally

heralded what was to come. They had provided the fanfare presaging

the main event.

The Twins, poor silly buggers, were actually helping her carry out

her far superior, far cooler plan.

The thought of them, those hideous freaks, imagining that they

were in control. Lystra’s lip curled. For a while there had been a freak

show with the carnival: a bearded lady, a dwarf who dressed up like

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MICHAEL GRANT

a Tolkien character, and a genetically deformed man with hands like

lobster claws. They had frightened her then. The bearded lady in par-

ticular had tried to be friendly, motherly. The Human Claw, as the

lobster-handed man had styled himself, was easier to handle. He just

leered, the pervert, until her father had threatened to decapitate him.

Well, let the freaks think they had something. Let the Twins con-

gratulate themselves for killing the president, blundering idiots. The

penny would drop for them, too, soon.

“Girls’ night tonight, boys,” Lystra whispered.

She wondered if Bug Man, back at the hotel, was watching and

could see her on TV. She’d told him to, and while he wasn’t the obedi-

ent type, he
was
the frightened type.

The great thing about tonight was that all the king’s horses and all

the king’s men would never suspect the end goal. They’d be waiting

for some kind of blackmail demand. They’d be looking for a rational

motive. The fatal weakness of rational people was that they always

looked for the rational answer.

The attendees were mostly through the appetizer—a lobster-

and-crab terrine with snap pea mousse, brioche, and edible flower

fantasie
—when last year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature,

Miguel Reynaldo, stopped talking about his younger days when he

was a hobo, or traveling minstrel, or whatever it was he thought he

was, and stared hard at the Swedish finance minister, a dull middle-

aged woman seated across from him.

“I . . . I’ve just had the strangest . . . But it’s still there. I’m seeing . . .”

And at that point the CEO of Spotify said, “Like windows? Like

there’s windows in your head?”

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BZRK APOCALYPSE

The two men stared at each other, while those around them

formed expressions of polite concern.

“Something is the matter!” This came from a second table, from a

past Nobel Peace Prize winner, a man credited with saving many lives

through nonviolent means—but he was not now seeming nonviolent.

He had lurched to his feet, and in the process he had knocked over

his very expensive glass of Champagne and caused his dinnerware to

rattle and his chair to scrape.

“Moi aussi, mais c’est bizarre, ça!”
cried a French industrialist. Then he, too, shoved back from the table as if scalded. He tried to switch to

English, but it was a mangled job. “In my head things. I am see.”

It spread quickly. There were a dozen tables, hundreds of well-

dressed folk, and some of them, far too many of them, were now

whispering urgently or shouting hysterically that something was very

odd, something was not right in their heads.

“Bloody hell!” the English ambassador cried. “It’s some sort of

insect. Oh!”

And then versions of that in a dozen languages and multiple

accented versions of English. Those not directly affected were rushing

to give comfort. People shouted for doctors. The words
food poisoning

were spoken. Others said it was drugs. Someone must have spiked the

crabe et homard
with LSD.

Everyone was talking. The hall was a posh tower of Babel, volume

rising, some voices trying to dominate, impose order.

Then came the first true scream. It was a soprano sound, a wom-

an’s voice. It began in terror, rose in pitch, roughened, and turned at

last into a throaty animal howl.

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Lystra closed her eyes and savored it. It went on for a very long

time, and a smile split Lystra’s face, perfect teeth shining in candle-

light.

The room froze, listening, straining to see the source of this deli-

cious scream. Already some were moving prudently toward the exits.

“God fuck you all! God fuck you all!” A deep male voice, but

frantic not angry, fearful and repeating the curse over and over as

the man backed away from the table, plowed into people with out-

stretched arms. “God fuck you alllllll!”

Now the screams and cries, the roars and shouts and canine yelps

broke loose in full.

Miguel Reynaldo was laughing and howling like some demented

hyena, mouth so wide open it seemed his jaw must dislocate. He dug

his fingernails into his face, down his forehead and cheeks, leaving

bloody trails behind. Then he threw himself onto the table, twisted

onto his back, shrieking all the while, kicking dinnerware and bas-

kets of bread and glasses of sparkling water in every direction, like

some great toddler having the mother of all tantrums.

And that’s when things turned really ugly. Because someone—

later identified as a Finnish philanthropist—came up behind the

Swedish minister of finance and cut her throat ear to ear with a table

knife.

And when she had sunk to the floor—gurgling, dying, spraying

crimson across white linen—he kept sawing away, brushing aside her

weak defensive efforts, sawing away at her trachea.

Panic!

The screams were general now as people rushed to the exits,

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crushed into one another in their desperate desire to get the hell out

of that room, but not all those in the crowd were behaving normally.

A past Nobel laureate for physics had stripped off his clothing and

was peeing on anyone within reach.

Lystra, too, began to scream and wave her hands in the air. And

she grinned, widely, not only because that’s what would be expected

of a madwoman, but also because it was all just so wonderful.

“I bring you madness!” she yelled, and laughed, but kept a careful

eye on all around her as she backed toward the nearest exit.

Back in the center of the room a man later identified as one of

the world’s great scientific minds was squatting on a table defecat-

ing, while around him madmen and madwomen screamed and threw

things, attacked one another with cutlery and broken glass, clawed

their own eyes, or simply huddled in corners yelping at imaginary

spirits.

“Madness!” Lystra yelled as she reached the door.

In the space of five minutes the Nobel banquet had become a

blood-splattered insane asylum.

Would Bug Man appreciate it? Would he get it? Probably not.

Buggy was useful for some things, not for others. He would not be

enough to occupy her own Eden. Someone smarter would be good.

Someone more subtle. Someone who would chafe even more and thus

be even more completely subjugated in the end.

Sadie McLure. God, the irony would be wonderful.

Not everyone was driven mad at the Golden Hall. Most were not,

though it was hard to differentiate them as they ran from the hells-

cape splattered with blood.

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Lystra Reid’s gown—Prada, very chic—was already red, so

the blood didn’t show. However, her shoes—Christian Louboutin

pumps—were absolutely ruined.

But she could not resist, as she fled the room, crying out in her

pretended madness: “‘As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods.

They kill us for their sport.’”

Thus did Lear quote from
King Lear
as she kicked off her shoes

and ran barefoot into the cold night, laughing and twirling as snow-

flakes fell.

150

FIFTEEN

Keats handed Plath a cup of coffee. Her hands were shaking. It was

morning and she’d had no sleep. They stood in the kitchen, Keats

in some soccer team jersey and sweatpants; Plath in an unattractive

sweater, panties, and socks.

“It’s plugged. The big one.” Keats sipped his own coffee and

looked at her over the rim as he took a second sip.

“What?” She was confused for a moment, thinking he was talk-

ing about the coffee.

“The second hole. It’s plugged. I don’t think it was all that danger-

ous, anyway, but I’ve patched it, the lymphocytes are keeping it clean,

and I can see clotting factor forming nicely.”

“Thanks.” She sent him a very serious look and added, “I don’t

say that enough, do I? Thanks.”

“Hungry?”

She considered it. “Yes, I am.”

“I’ll fry some eggs and bacon. No bangers, I’m afraid. You Ameri-

cans don’t really do sausages very well.”

“You can cook?”

He made a small laugh. “Oddly enough, I don’t actually live at

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Downton Abbey.” Then, thinking that may have sounded resentful,

he smiled and touched her shoulder. “I learned a bit of this and that.

Enough to fry an egg and make toast. If we have bread.” He searched

the cupboards. “Yes, we do have bread. But no beans or tomato.”

“Beans?”

He sighed. “The thing you Americans so proudly think of as

breakfast is a sad affair compared to a proper full English breakfast.

Eggs, bacon, toast, black pudding, mushrooms, beans, and a nice

grilled tomato. And coffee, of course, unless you prefer tea.”

“Black pudding?”

“Given your adventures tonight, it’s maybe best not to discuss

black pudding.”

“No?”

“It’s also called blood sausage.”

“Ah. Yeah. Enough blood.”

He set a rectangular grill on the cooktop and turned on the fire.

He peeled strips of bacon from the package and started the flame

beneath a sauté pan. In seconds the bacon was sizzling, and both the

familiar sound and aroma made Plath’s mouth water.

“Were you going to tell me?” he asked, once he had things orga-

nized and under way.

She stalled for a moment by sipping her coffee. She didn’t have to

tell him. But he had possibly just saved her life.

“I was planning an armed attack. I was planning to kill people.

I met with Stern, without you. I asked him for . . . and he said . . .”

She sighed, lost momentarily. “I never really asked myself whether it

was the right thing. I have this picture in my head. . . .” She let that

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sentence peter out, not willing, still, to tell him everything. Not the

things that would make him despise her.

He nodded. “You started to suspect you’d been wired.” He sighed,

turned the bacon, pushed the toast down, and used his spatula to

keep the eggs from spreading out. “And you didn’t tell me because

you thought I might be the one doing it.”

“It’s the world we’re in, isn’t it?” she asked.

He nodded. “It’s the world we’re in.”

“But it wasn’t you.” She took his hand, which after a few seconds

he took back to press the spatula down on the bacon.

“Which leaves who?” he asked.

She glanced toward the door, wondering if anyone was on the

other side listening. “Wilkes. Billy. Maybe even Vincent, maybe that

affectless thing he’s doing is just camouflage. Or it’s someone else

with BZRK, someone not from our group. We’re just a part of it, after

all.”

“You’re sure it was a biot, not a nanobot?”

She played the memories back. “Not a hundred percent.” She

tried out various values in her head. “Seventy percent sure. But if I’m

planning on blowing up, um, attacking the Tulip . . . The Armstrongs

wouldn’t be doing that; they wouldn’t be wiring
me
to kill
them
.”

He served the food onto two plates, and they sat at the counter

and ate, side by side, leaning so that their shoulders would touch.

Finally Keats spoke. “If you were wired, why? I mean, what you’re

pointing to are kind of, I don’t know, moral changes.”

“Have you noticed anything different with me?” she asked, afraid

of the answer and covering it with transparently false nonchalance.

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He thought it over while chewing bacon. “You’re questioning Lear

and BZRK less. I mean, maybe it’s just that you’ve got more respon-

sibility. But you used to be more suspicious, I guess. More critical.”

She thought about that. “Yeah, maybe so.

“I’ll help you look for wire.”

Plath hesitated and felt herself blush. She filled her mouth with

egg. If she was still wrong, if somehow Keats was the person running

the biot, or at least knew about it, then he would never find any wire.