Encrypted (50 page)

Vernon, Vernon, Vernon. Such a dark chapter in the Hand’s history. Their core had wavered. Disheartened by modern medicine’s ability to prevent or cure the cleansing scourge, they had sought to infiltrate modern culture. Curry favor amongst the elite. What had that Presley boy done beside
s
learn how to oscillate his il
i
osacral junction?

Those responsible for such a lowering of the Hand’s sights were feeble, weak, and ultimately ineffectual. Ones even as easy to manipulate as Vernon had turned on the Hand. Betraying the order and their purpose. Shortly after
,
there had been a cleansing purge within the Hand.

A purge that
rid them of any not strong enough to conceive and execute a worldwide plague of biblical proportions.
Lino
had been born to this task
,
and he would not falter.

Brother
Loboum
would find more than paintings burning at his next destination.

Francois had tipped his hand greatly.

Lino
turned to
the
messenger. “Have the jet prepared. We go back to New York.”

CHAPTER 22

Plum Island

4:16
a
.
m
.,
E
ST

Amanda jerked upright, blinking, keeping herself from falling asleep. The data was finally starting to make sense. She had identified over ten thousand possible loci. Now the only job left was to hone that down to a Hidden Hand safe house on the Eastern
S
eaboard.

Y
eah
, no matter how you sliced
it,
nothing about it qualified as “only.”

A noise near the door attracted her attention. Although a part of her didn’t want to expend the energy to even turn her head, she did
—
but wished she hadn’t. Not with Henderson and Devlin dragging a co-worker out.

The director caught her gaze. “We’ve taken all the food out of the refrigerator units…”

She sighed. He didn’t have to tell her what they were using the industrial
-
sized refrigerators for. Clearly
,
the death count had risen to a point
where
they now needed to be concerned about contamination from the corpses. Normally
,
Black Death victims were burned
,
but with the rainy weather outside
,
there would be no pyres.

“How many?” Amanda felt she needed to ask.

Henderson glanced around the room. Half the scientists remained
,
and most of them listed on their seats looking not long for this world. As the director and Devlin continued their grim task, Amanda glanced
at
Jennifer.

Her assistant la
y
over the desk, resting her head on her crossed arms. She was just resting, right? Amanda watched her assistant’s chest. It was rising and falling, right? She put her hand near Jennifer’s nose, but couldn’t feel any breath.

Amanda snatched her hand away. Her assistant
was
barely recognizable
—
with her puffy face from lack of lymph drainage to her skin
—
mottled with oozing boils. Then
,
those dark blue lips.

Carefully
,
she reached out and shook her assistant’s shoulder. “Jennifer
?
”

No response. Amanda refused to believe
that
her best friend was dead.

“Jennifer?”
S
he shook harder.

Then
,
with a raspy cough
,
her assistant opened her bloodshot eyes and gave a weak grin. Amanda nearly burst into tears. Instead
,
she put on a brave face and smiled back, rubbing Jennifer’s back. The woman tried to sit up, but Amanda urged her to lie down.

“Get some rest.”

Jennifer’s forefinger and thumb made the sign for “little.”

“Yes, Jen, just a little more rest.”

As her friend let gravity close her eyelids, Amanda let the tears flow. She might as well cry while she still could.

* * *

Zach watched through the plane window as terrain streaked by
,
b
ut not nearly fast enough. The pilot had to keep them under the radar
,
and therefore couldn’t gain the altitude needed to really increase speed. What should have been a five-hour flight was now a grueling six
-
hour plus roller
-
coaster ride. To stay out of any major airport or military base’s flight zone
,
they had to zigzag their way up the
E
astern
S
eaboard.

He had to give credit to the pilot. By faking a blown transponder and sketchy radio, the guy had threaded this difficult needle all the way to New York. But the way the pilot kept glancing down
at
the fuel gauge, Zach had a feeling they were going to make it into the Essex County Regional Airport on fumes.

Even if they had to make an emergency landing, Zach could never blame the guy. If it hadn’t been for the pilot
,
they’d probably still be in Mexico under the
Federales
’
custody
,
or worse
,
turned back over to the CIA.

Zach glanced
at
Quirk
,
who slept with his mouth open just slightly. Between checks of the fuel gauge, the pilot would glance
at
Quirk. Who knew how much of the pilot’s cooperation was due to financial gain
,
and how much
because of
this somewhat odd attraction? They said opposites attracted, but this was a pretty extreme case. Seriously, who knew how the heart worked?

Zach turned his attention to Ronnie
,
who was hunched over her computer as Francois leaned on her shoulder
,
snoring blissfully away. By the way Ronnie fidgeted in her seat and bit her lip
,
she wasn’t in “the zone.” He’d already learned
that
if she
were
, she wouldn’t move a muscle
,
except for those in her fingers as they flew over the keyboard. Zach wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not that she was only using her normal brain RAM speed.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
boasted
some of the most sophisticated antitheft system
s
in the world. To think
that
Ronnie could stage a break-in
,
orchestrated in under eight hours
,
seemed ludicrous. But ludicrous was the norm the
se
past twenty-four hours.

Every joint ached from the abuse of the last day
,
but whatever mixture of meds Quirk kept coming up with certainly took the edge off. At some point
,
though
,
the injuries were going to catch up with him. And when they did? He wanted a morphine drip
,
please.

“TXM918
,
we are still not picking up your transponder,” air traffic control stated in Zach’s headset.

The pilot rubbed the radio
handpiece
on his jeans, crackling the connection
.
“Be advised
,
Essex
,
that
we are low on fuel and coming in with minimal altitude.”

“TXM918
,
be advised
that
you
cannot
land here. We are inside the red zone. Please divert to Log
a
n
A
irport.”

“Tell that to my fuel gauge,” the pilot said
,
and
then snapped off the radio.

The red zone. As they had flown through the night
,
they’d heard snippets of local radio stations announcing at first mass evacuations
, and
then orders of quarantine. They had traveled from the green zone of Tennessee to the yellow zone of Charleston to the orange zone of Washington D
.
C
.
and
now the red zone of New York. They truly were flying into the thick of the storm.

All to burn a bunch of paintings
,
hoping that it led them to the organization that had started all of this. To find a supposed vaccine. There were way too many “hopes” and “suppose
s
” in that equation for Zach. He preferred a little door
-
breaking and hot
-
car pursuit. The closest they were coming to his FBI wheelhouse was to steal a
car, stay under the speed limit and make their way into the
Metropolitan
M
useum
of Art
.

“This is going to get bumpy,” the pilot warned as they dropped what little altitude they had.

Soon
,
those little specks in the early morning light became cars. Lines and lines of cars. Zach surveyed the freeway as they flew parallel to it. The road
was
nothing more than
a
parking lot
,
though. All eight lanes
were
at a stand still. Then he spotted the roadblock. They were turning back all traffic exiting the city
and p
utting those cars on the freeway going eastbound.

A car tried to break past the roadblock and strike west over the uneven ground. They didn’t get far
,
though
,
as
the
National Guar
d
fired, blowing out their tires. Jesus. What the hell
had
happened overnight?

Then Zach saw what had happened.

A line of bodies, covered in bright red tarps
,
stretched for as far as the eye could see. No, not just a line of bodies, but
lines
of bodies. As they flew further, they found bodies not covered by tarps. The corpses
’
blue lips
stood
out against their stark
,
pale faces. Some were already bloating. Others looked like heat-baked dolls.

The plague. Not the theoretical plague or the video footage of the plague, but the
actual
plague played out beneath them. The entire field surrounding the airport
was
a vast, grotesque morgue.

They were barely over the last body when the wheels touched down on the
T
armac. The plane bounced once
, and
then settled on the ground as wind screeched in the downed flaps.

Zach looked back
at
Ronnie, her eyes wide
and
glistening with tears. Their quest
was
no longer intellectual.

As they rolled down the landing strip and turned toward the hangar, Quirk roused.

“So
,
what did I miss?”

No one had the heart to answer him.

Pulling the plane to a stop, the pilot unstrapped himself. “I’ll go steal a helicopter.”

* * *

“Quirk. Stop looking down,” Ronnie reminded Quirk
,
but how could she expect him to
not
look out the helicopter window?

New York, a city they had visited a million times over. A city they both loved
,
had turned into what looked like the set from a zombie apocalypse movie. Only the dead that littered the streets weren’t getting up again. They were dead.
Gone
. Died because Ronnie wasn’t smart enough to figure
all
this out.
A
vaccine
was
out there, but she couldn’t find it.

How many other cities would
suffer
the same fate? How many would die because she couldn’t crack the angels
’
code? Not that she believed the angels had actually sent the code. Because if they were really angels, why wouldn’t they just tell her where in the hell the vaccine was located?