certain but alive. He was being transported to a hospital for a postmortem.”
“Yeah, and-?”
“He woke up on the way to the morgue.”
“God ”
Courtland said, “The bite of a walker is one hundred percent infectious ”
“So you both said.”
“If a person receives a fatal bite then shortly after clinical death the disease reactivates the central nervous system and, to a limited degree, some organ functions, and the victim rises as a new carrier. If a person receives even a mild bite the infection will kill them in about seventy hours, which at best gives us three days to locate any victims and contain them.”
“I’m not sure I like the word ‘contain,’ ” I said.
“No one will like that word if it comes to that,” Church said.
“Bite victims begin to lose cognitive functions quickly,” Courtland continued, “and even before clinical death they become dissociative, delusional, and uncontrollably aggressive. In both the predeath and postreanimation phase the carriers have a cannibalistic compulsion.”
Church said, “This is all information we learned after the fact.”
I looked at them. “What the hell happened?”
Church’s face was as ice. “We didn’t know what Javad was at first. How could we? The learning process for us was very awkward.”
“What does that mean?”
“You read about the fire at St. Michael’s Hospital? The night of the task force hit?”
I sat there, not wanting to hear this. Grace looked away but Church stared back at me with a dreadful intensity.
“Javad woke up hungry, Mr. Ledger. Only two DMS agents accompanied the body to the morgue. We lost contact with them shortly after arrival. Major Courtland and I were actually at the hospital but were conducting an interview in another wing. When the alert came in we called in all available teams, but by the time they arrived on the scene the infection had spread to an entire wing of the hospital. Major Courtland’s Alpha Team had perimeter duty and Bravo and Charlie teams entered the hospital to try and contain the situation.”
“We thought there had been an attempt by other terrorists to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades,” Courtland said. “But it was only Javad. By the time the teams were inside the infection was completely out of control. Javad had gotten all the way down to the lobby and was attacking people in the waiting area. Mr. Church was able to subdue him-and before you ask, no, we didn’t know what Javad was at that point. He was a suspected terrorist, albeit one we thought had been killed. Our agents were confused because the attackers appeared to be patients, doctors, nurses. Our men hesitated. They were overwhelmed.”
“How many of them did you lose?”
“All of them, Mr. Ledger,” Church said. “Two teams; twenty-two men and women. Plus the two agents who had been in the ambulance. Some of the finest and most capable tactical field operatives in the world. Torn to pieces by old women, children, ordinary civilians and ultimately by each other.”
“What did you do?”
“You read the newspapers. The situation needed to be contained.”
I leaped to my feet. “Jesus Christ! Are you telling me that you deliberately burned down the entire fucking hospital What kind of sick son of a bitch are you?”
Without turning he said, “Earlier, when I told you that if this plague gets out, there will be no way to stop it, I was not exaggerating. Everyone would die, Mr. Ledger. Everyone. We are talking the actual apocalypse here. Counting Javad, our patient zero, we have a loss of life totaling one hundred and eighty-eight civilians and twenty- four DMS operatives. Two hundred and ten deaths as a result of one carrier. Friends of mine are dead. People I knew and trusted-and all of this spread from a single source that was, more or less, contained. We lucked out in that the attack was inside a building that had reinforced windows and heavy-duty doors we could lock. And, to a small degree we were on the alert, though not for something like this. If no security had accompanied his body to the hospital well, it’s doubtful we’d be here having this conversation. Same goes if the terrorist cell had followed through with its plan. Had Javad been turned loose, say, in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, or South Central L.A. on a Saturday afternoon, or at the rededication of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia this coming weekend, we would never have been able to contain it. Never. Now we are reasonably sure that there are more strike cells, each one likely to have one or more walkers. We know where one is and we have that under heavy surveillance. If there are others we need to find and neutralize them. We have to do everything we can to locate and destroy these other carriers. If we don’t then we will have failed all of humanity. We may already be too late.” He turned toward me, and his face was filled with a terrible and savage sadness. “To stop this thing I’d burn down heaven itself.”
I stood there, stunned and sick. “Why the hell did you drag me into this shit?”
“I brought you here because you have qualities I need. You are an experienced investigator with an understanding of politics. You can speak several useful languages. You have extensive martial arts training. You are tough and you are ruthless when it comes down to it. You’ve demonstrated that you lack hesitation in a crisis. Hesitation got our other teams killed. You’re here because I can use you. I want you to lead my new team because my existing agents are being slaughtered and I need it to damn well stop!”
“But why now? Why didn’t you tell me this the other day when I auditioned for you?”
“Things have gotten worse,” said Courtland. “The other day we thought we had this under control, that we really had gotten the jump on it. We were wrong. We programmed MindReader to search all available databases for anything that might be related. One of the things we programmed it to find were cases of attacks involving biting.”
“Oh crap ”
Church said, “So far there have been three cases. All isolated, all in the Middle East. Two in very remote spots in Afghanistan and one in northern Iraq.”
“When you say ‘isolated’ ” I began.
“All three were identical: small villages in remote areas that have natural barriers-mountains in two cases, a river and a cliff wall in the other. Each village was totally wiped out. Every single man, woman, and child was killed. Every body showed signs of human bites.”
“And, what, the villagers were all walkers now?”
“No,” said Courtland. “Every person in each village had been shot repeatedly in the head. No other bodies were found.”
“What does that tell you?” Church asked.
“God Almighty,” I breathed. “The isolation, the cleanup afterward it sounds like someone’s been taking the walkers out for test-drives.”
“The most recent one was five days ago,” Courtland said.
“Okay,” I said softly. “Okay.”
“This time they left a calling card,” Church said, “a video of the slaughter and a message from a hooded man. We’re running voice recognition on it but my guess is that it will be El Mujahid or one of his lieutenants.”
“The attack took place in a small mountain village called Bitar in northern Afghanistan,” said Courtland quietly. “Military authorities were tipped off to the attack but arrived hours after it was over. They found a tape that had been left for them on one of the bodies of the dead. Barrier intercepted it and was only fortunate enough to keep it from being generally released. We’re lucky it wasn’t posted on YouTube.”
“If you’re in,” Church said, “then as soon as possible I want you to lead Echo Team in a quiet infiltration of the crab plant in Crisfield. That will put you and the members of your team in terrible danger. I make no apologies about it I brought you here because I need a weapon. A thinking weapon. Something I can launch against the kind of people who would use something like Javad against the American people.” He paused for a moment. “The only people who have ever faced a walker and lived are in this room. So let me ask you, Mr. Ledger,” he said softly, “are you in or not?”
I wanted to kill him. Courtland, too. I could feel my lips curling back and past the stricture in my throat. With a hiss in my voice I said, “I’m in.”
Church closed his eyes and sighed. He stood with his head bowed for a moment. When he opened his eyes he looked ten years older but far, far more dangerous.
