Fall of Night (Dead of Night Series) (19 page)

His mouth opened and the moan was louder now, rising above the howl of the storm.

Rodriguez and the white kid kept firing.

No
! cried Lonnie in a voice that had absolutely no volume. His cries were unwanted in that stolen throat. No one heard them at all. Not the soldiers, not the infection, not the storm.

But it was all Lonnie had. He had no control over his body as it lumbered through the mud and into the hail of bullets. The two soldiers were fucking idiots. They fired wildly, forgetting all of their training, all of the captain’s warnings. They tried to bully him down with round after round to his body. Wasting ammunition. Wasting seconds as Lonnie closed from fifteen feet to ten to five to …

Suddenly Lonnie’s left eye went dark and as an aftereffect he felt the thudding impact of the bullet that hit him.

He thought that would be it. A headshot. That’s what the captain told them all. Hit the infected in the head and they go down.

Aim for the head.

Don’t you get it, you stupid fucks, he tried to scream. I’m one of them. I’m infected! I’m …

Aim for the fucking head.

Please … oh, God, please, aim for the head. The head. Shoot the head. Shoot me in my head.

Except that one of these assholes had aimed for his head. Had hit his head. Had blown out one of his goddamn eyes.

And yet Lonnie watched his hands grab at the white kid. Saw the kid’s face come suddenly very close as the hands pulled and his own broken, bleeding head lunged forward.

Felt the tough, rubbery resistance of skin beneath his …

His teeth.

Jesus Christ.

Skin between his teeth.

Lonnie felt the skin compress. Become taut.

Collapse.

Tear.

Rupture.

And then the blood.

The liquid heat of blood against his lips, on his cheeks.

In his mouth.

Please, God, just fucking kill me!

And then he felt another impact. This time over his right eye. He felt it for all of one moment, and then a vast, featureless black mouth opened in the world and Lonnie Silk fell into it. As he vanished into the darkness, he thought he heard Tito Rodriguez calling his name. But soon it wasn’t his name anymore. And the darkness was everything.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

ZABRISKE POINT BIOLOGICAL EVALUATION AND PRODUCTION STATION

DEATH VALLEY, CALIFORNIA

Dr. Dick Price was the director of research applications for a facility buried deep in a billion-dollar laboratory. The lab was located in a place Price personally felt was the most aptly named spot on earth: Death Valley. There was no way to get to his lab except by helicopter, and when the birds were out of the coop he and his staff felt like they’d been abandoned on the dark side of the moon.

Team members had to go through ten kinds of security screening including incredibly thorough background checks and psychological evaluations that felt like personality rape. The few who passed those tests then had to put their names to a stack of waivers and nondisclosure agreements, and one frightening document which, for all intents and purposes, signed away their constitutional rights.

Once someone arrived at Z-point, as it was familiarly known, the government owned them. Body and, as Price saw it, soul.

Everyone on the science team knew that the place was illegal as hell. Even the support staff—cooks, guards, cleaners, and janitors—suspected as much. A word to a journalist could bring the place down and likely have several members of Congress and the Department of Defense thrown into jail, but the wording of those documents would land the whistle-blower in an adjoining cell.

It was criminal but necessary. At least as far as Price and his masters at the DOD were concerned. The international agreements and bans on certain kinds of biological warfare were nice in their way, but Price didn’t believe for a moment that any of the signatory nations was truly abiding by those rules. It didn’t make a lot of sense to do so, not as he saw it. There were terrorist groups who knew how to grow viruses, and plenty of nations—North Korea, Iran, and China sprang to mind—that were definitely cultivating the next generation of weaponized pathogens. The CIA had proof, but politics and the subtle chess game of brinksmanship kept that information below the surface. It was leverage in all kinds of discussions, and as long as the bad guys screwed around with their bugs and bombs, the State Department and the CIA had some dials they could turn. Blackmail was far more important and useful than public disclosure.

On the other hand, knowing that your enemy was designing microscopic monsters was in itself a tacit mandate to do the same. Maybe not for attack—not even Price thought that America was crazy enough to release the kind of bioweapon that teams like Z-point developed—but in order to build a good shield you have to be able to study the sword it needs to stop. That’s what the people at Z-point did. They made monsters in order to study them and—ideally—craft response protocols, sera, antitoxins, and other prophylactic measures.

For these reasons and others, Dick Price believed that he was prepared for the conversation he was about to have with the president of the United States. He’d had two similar conversations with a previous president during a bioweapon attack at the Liberty Bell Center in Philadelphia more than a dozen years ago and then when a group of domestic terrorists created weaponized and communicable versions of genetic diseases including Tay-Sachs and sickle cell. Those had been difficult conversations, especially the first one, since the sitting president of any given administration is never advised about the existence of Zabriske Point or similar stations until he needed to know. Plausible deniability was such a useful thing.

“We’re just about ready,” said his aide.

Price sat at his desk with a large laptop open and the encryption conference software up and running.

He adjusted his tie, sipped some water, took a calming breath, and nodded to the aide.

The screen display changed from a placeholder of the presidential seal to the face of the commander in chief. Two people sat on either side of the president—Scott Blair, the national security advisor, and a young and very intense-looking black woman Price knew by reputation only, Dr. Monica McReady, a rising superstar in the epidemiology world. A woman, he reminded himself, who had been mentioned several times as perhaps a better fit for the directorship of Z-point than he was.

Shit, he thought. That’s just swell.

He could feel sweat begin to form along his spine.

“Dr. Price?” said the president.

“Yes, Mr. President. Despite the circumstances it is a pleasure to meet you, even virtually.”

The president gave a tiny nod. There was a brief round of introductions, but it was done fast and without the usual courtesies.

“Have you been brought up to speed on the situation developing in western Pennsylvania?”

“I have, Mr. President.”

“Am I to understand that you are familiar with Lucifer 113?” There was both frost and anger in the president’s tone.

“Yes, sir. Very familiar.”

“In what way are you familiar?”

Price paused. “Well, Mr. President, as you know we—”

“No, Dr. Price, I don’t know. Until twenty minutes ago I had never heard your name or the name of your facility. While I am aware of the requirements of security and confidentiality, I am distressed to learn that we are continuing work on a bioweapon of such devastating potential that one of my predecessors felt compelled to use an executive order to terminate all work on it. Are you aware of that order, Dr. Price?”

Price said nothing, and against his will his eyes flicked toward the national security advisor.

“Mr. President, I…” began Price, but his words faltered.

The president shook his head. “When this matter is resolved,” he said coldly, “there will be a full investigation. Make no mistake. However I think it’s fair to say that heads will roll at a higher pay grade than yours.”

Blair looked at the fingers of his folded hands and Price saw something flicker on his face. Was it irritation? Was it cynical humor? Whatever it was flicked on and off his mouth in a microsecond and the president did not see it.

Price said, “I … um … I mean, thank you.”

“But hear me on this, Doctor,” interrupted the president, “a new executive order is forthcoming and that will be enforced. Failure to comply will be met with the harshest possible penalties.”

“I understand, sir.”

The president studied him for a long two-count. “Do you, Dr. Price?”

“I believe I do, Mr. President.”

“Then let’s get down to it. Samples of the pathogen are being sent to you by military courier. Even though you already have the original pathogen there, we now know that Dr. Herman Volker used a modified version. Volker said as much to his CIA handler when he called to alert us about what he’d done.”

“What about Dr. Volker? If the release of Lucifer was an accident, then surely he’d be eager to help us—”

“Herman Volker is dead,” the president said flatly.

“What?” gasped Price. “Was he infected?”

“He hung himself.”

“Oh no. That’s horrible.”

“Dr. Price, let’s not waste time weeping over a man responsible for the deaths of thousands of American citizens.”

Price straightened and cleared his face of expression. “Of course not, sir. It’s just that he could have helped us. Remodeling a weaponized pathogen is tricky work, and even though it can result in something as apparently unstoppable as Lucifer, there are often chinks in the armor, so to speak.”

“What kind of chinks?”

“Intentional vulnerabilities left by the designers so that they are not as vulnerable to the pathogen as, say, their enemies. Or, in some cases, design flaws that can be exploited to create a counteragent or some prophylactic measure.”

The president brightened. “Are you sure?”

“Sure? No, sir.”

“What will make you sure?”

Price considered. “One of two things offer the best chance of that. The first will be an examination of the Lucifer 113 samples being sent to us. We’ll learn a lot by comparing it to the most recent version of Lucifer that we have.”

“That’s going to take time, though,” suggested the president.

“We can work pretty fast when—”

“Skip the sales pitch. What’s the other chance?”

“Looking at Volker’s research notes. Do we know where they are?”

“There are no records in his office at the prison where he worked. The hard drives have been completely wiped and degaussed.”

“Everything?” asked Price, aghast that any scientist would do that to his own work. “He kept no backups?”

“He did,” said the president. “All of his research was copied to a set of flash drives.”

“That’s terrif—”

“Which we do not have.”

Price had to bite back a curse. “Is anything being done to obtain those drives?”

“Of course,” said the president. “However, since we have no guarantee of that happening right away, we need to move forward with what we have. Is there anything you can tell me about Lucifer based on what you’ve so far been told about the current crisis?”

Price nodded. “I believe so, sir. I reviewed some field reports from a doctor attached to the National Guard. If the reports are accurate then there are marked differences between the current strain and the samples we were initially given here.”

“What differences?”

“Well, the rate of infection appears to have been greatly accelerated. Possibly by a factor of ten. The original Lucifer samples we have been working with here have a much longer gestation period. This was a problem the Soviets recognized that essentially limited practical application of the weapon because there was too great a lag time between introduction and a full-blown outbreak. Now that appears to occur in minutes. That’s rather exciting.”

“Doctor,” warned the president, his voice low and slow, “be very careful in your choice of words.”

“I—I’m sorry,” stammered Price. “I meant from a scientific perspective.”

“I know what you meant.”

The president’s eyes were hostile. So, Price noted, were those of Dr. McReady. Price composed his own features to show contrition.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “My apologies.”

McReady bent close and whispered something to the president, who looked unhappy, but he nodded.

“Doctor,” said the president to Price, “how active has your research been on the Lucifer pathogen?”

You bitch, thought Price. Aloud he said, “We, um, have continued to study it in order to prepare a response protocol in the event of the weapon being deployed as, um, it currently has been…”

“What is the status on that research?”

Price licked his lips. “We have developed several advanced strains of the pathogen.”

“And where are you with response protocols?”

Again Price tried not to look at Scott Blair. “We’ve made some progress.” He leaned slightly on the word “some.”

“Describe that progress, Doctor,” ordered the president.

“Sir, before I do, I need to explain what Lucifer is. It’s more than just a weaponized disease. Lucifer was built using select combinations of disease pathogens and parasites. Those parasites have undergone extensive transgenic modification. Toxoplasma gondii is a key element, as is the larva of the green jewel wasp. The toxoplasma is a key element in artificially induced schizophrenia, a disease that heightens fear and increased psychological distress. This is the keystone of the uncontrollable aggression of the infected. Their brains have—to put it in layman’s terms—been rewired to react as if they are constantly under attack. This triggers our most basic survival instincts, feeding each infected a modified cocktail of adrenaline, dopamine, and other elements. At the same time, the genetically modified lancet flukes Dicrocoelium dendriticum and Euhaplorchis californiensis combine to regulate that aggressive response behavior into a predictable pattern. Specifically a pattern that includes seeking uninfected prey, attacking it, and infecting it. Remember, sir, this was developed by Soviet scientists during the Cold War as a self-cleaning weapon. Once introduced to, say, a base or station, the disease would spread like wildfire and ultimately there would be no uninfected survivors. The infected would be unable to manage any organized defense, even to the point of being unable to aim and fire a gun. An armed infiltration team could then enter the base and eliminate the infected and thereafter secure any physical assets like computers, equipment, and so on.”