It was on the desk and I pulled it close. There were two words in a little gray box.
Message sent.
“Grace… did Cyrus send the code?”
“I-don’t…” Her voice disintegrated into a fit of coughing. Blood flecked her lips.
“Grace, honey, stay with me. Help’s on the way.”
I hoped to God that I wasn’t lying to her. I could hear helicopters in the air now, which meant that help was arriving from outside the EMP blast zone. Soon hundreds of troops would be landing. But was it all for nothing?
“Joe,” she whispered, “listen…” She reached up with a weak hand and gripped the front of my shirt, tried to pull me close. “Joe-if the… code… was sent… there’s…”
She broke off into another fit of coughing. I used another strip of cloth from my shirt to dab the blood from her lips. I wanted to scream. I wanted to do anything to get out of this room, to get her to a medic.
“… Joe… if the code was sent… there’s still time.”
“What do you mean, Grace? How can we stop it?”
“Cancel… code…” More coughing, more blood. “Cyrus knows. If not… MindReader…”
The Berserkers were knocking plaster out of the wall. The whole room shook.
“Take the flash drive… to Bug… tell him.” Her eyes drifted shut.
“Grace, come on… don’t do this to me. Don’t leave me…”
Her eyelids fluttered open. “I’ll… never leave you…”
But she did.
Her eyes closed and she settled against me. Her head lolled forward and she died right there with her cheek pressed against mine. I screamed her name. I screamed and screamed until I tore blood from my own throat.
But all the screams in the world could not bring her back from the infinite sea of darkness in which she now swam. I could actually feel her leave. It was like a whisper against my lips. Her last breath, exhaled as I held her.
I pulled her against my chest and rocked her back and forth as one by one all of the lights that held back my personal darkness flickered and went out.
Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Two
The Dragon Factory
Tuesday, August 31, 3:08 A.M.
Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 32 hours, 52 minutes E.S.T.
I crouched in the dark. I was bleeding and something inside was broken. Maybe something inside my head, too. Grace lay in my arms and yet she was gone.
I was gone, too.
Slowly, with infinite care and gentleness, I slid from the chair and laid her on the floor. I straightened her arms and legs, and I bent and kissed her forehead and eyes and her lips. For a long moment I knelt there with my head on her chest, praying that I could hear that noble and loving heart beat once more.
But all I heard was silence and the screaming madness that was boiling inside my own head. The door was barred, but the Berserkers were going to get in. I knew that.
I got to my feet. I had Grace’s gun. I released the magazine and checked the rounds. I had three bullets left. Three bullets and a knife.
The pounding on the door was like thunder. I knew the door wouldn’t hold.
The code had been sent. I pulled the flash drive from the computer and put it in my pocket. Somewhere the Extinction Clock was ticking down. If I was still in this room when it hit zero, more people would die than perished during the Black Death and all of the pandemics put together.
I thought I could stop them. We-me, Church, the DMS… Grace-we thought we could stop them.
Now it was down to me or no one. I had to get the flash drive to Bug, and I prayed that he and MindReader could read the codes on the drive and send whatever cancel signal could be sent. It might even be a fool’s errand. But Grace had died to get us this far, and with her last breaths she’d given me this task.
If there was any kind of justice in the universe, then a sacrifice so bravely made could not-
It wasn’t our fault we came into this so late. They chased us and messed with our heads and ran us around, and by the time we knew what we were up against the clock had already nearly run its course.
We tried. Over the last week I’d left a trail of bodies behind me from Denver, to Costa Rica, to the Bahamas. And now Grace Courtland was dead.
The pounding was louder. The door was buckling, the crossbar bending. It was only seconds before the lock or the hinges gave out, and then they’d come howling in here. Then it would be them against me.
I was hurt. I was bleeding.
I had three bullets and a knife.
I got to my feet and faced the door, my gun in my left hand, the knife in my right.
I smiled a killer’s smile.
Let them come.
Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Three
In Hell
Tuesday, August 31, 3:09 A.M.
Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 32 hours, 51 minutes E.S.T.
When the door burst open there were five of them.
I used three bullets and killed three of them. Head shots. I would like to think that some force steadied my hand. I don’t know. But I killed the first three through the door.
When the fourth one climbed over the bodies I met him with a knife to the throat. I stabbed him a dozen times. I was screaming. He was screaming, too, trying to back away. I crawled out after him and killed him.
The last of the Berserkers came at me and hit me. I felt my cheekbone break. I felt teeth buckle in their sockets. I don’t know what kept me on my feet. I don’t know what put the power in my arm to slash him across the throat. Over and over again.
I blacked out for a while, and when I could think again I was covered in blood and the Berserker was… ruined.
I staggered across the office to the desk and then shambled around it.
Cyrus Jakoby lay on the floor. He was bleeding from several gunshot wounds. All were serious. None were fatal. That was a shame. For him.
He looked up at me, at my face, into my eyes, and he saw something that tore a scream from him. Maybe it was in that moment that he recognized the implacable, heartless, relentless monster that his victims had always seen in him. Maybe he realized that he was tethered to life by only one slender thread.
He knew the cancel code.
He knew that I would not, could not, kill him as long as he had it.
He thought that he could bargain with that.
He should have looked deeper into my eyes.
I stood over him, covered in blood-some of which was Grace’s-and I showed him my knife.
I never had to ask him for the code.
In the end, he gave it willingly.
But not easily.
