The Dragon Factory

Jonathan Maberry The Dragon Factory

Copyright © 2010 by Jonathan Maberry

To Randy and Fran Kirsch,

Charlie and Gina Miller,

Frank and Mary Lou Sessa,

and my blood brother, Arthur Mensch,

and, as always, to my beloved Sara Jo

Acknowledgments

A bunch of good-hearted and very bright people helped with the research and creation of this book and they all deserve thanks: my agent, Sara Crowe of Harvey Klinger, Inc.; my editor and fellow pop-culture geek, Michael Homler; everyone at St. Martin’s Press; Julia Kats for Russian translation and Alois Lohn for German; the members of International Thriller Writers, the Horror Writers Association, and Mystery Writers of America for ongoing support and encouragement; Mike Witzgall, for devious info on weapons and tactics; my cronies in the Liars Club: Gregory Frost, Jon McGoran, Dennis Tafoya, Keith Strunk, Don Lafferty, Kelly Simmons, William Lashner, Merry Jones, Marie Lambra, Ed Pettit, Laura Schrock, and L. A. Banks; Michael Sicilia of Homeland Security; Tiff any Schmidt, Nancy Keim-Comley, and Rachael Lavin for editorial assistance; the Starbucks in Upper Southampton, PA, where I wrote most of this book; and Axel Alonso at Marvel Comics.

A number of world-class genetics experts provided crucial technical information for this book (any errors are entirely the fault of the author): Yanru Chen-Tsai, Ph.D., Director, Transgenic Research Facility, and Associate Director, Stanford Cancer Center; Ioannis Dragatsis, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Physiology, University of Tennessee; Dr. Laurence Bugeon, CMMI, Division of Cell & Molecular Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Imperial College London; G. Thomas Caltagirone, Ph.D., President and CEO, Aptagen, LLC; Aurora Burds Connor, Ph.D., Director, Rippel Mouse ES Cells and Transgenic Facility, and Director, Preclinical Mouse Models Facility for the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.

Prologue

(1)

One week ago

Otto Wirths was the second-worst mass murderer in the history of the world. Compared to him Hitler, Stalin, Attila the Hun, and even Alexander the Great were amateurs, poseurs who could not hold a candle to Otto and his body count.

Only one person was worse.

Cyrus Jakoby.

That wasn’t his real name, and in a way he had no real name. Like Otto, Cyrus was a freak. Like Otto, Cyrus was a monster.

A week ago I’d never even heard of them. Almost no one had. A week ago they were on no watch lists, they were not sought by any world governments, their names were not muttered in hateful curses or angry prayers by a single person on planet Earth.

Yet together they had done more harm than anyone. Together they had very quietly slaughtered tens of millions.

Tens of millions.

At night, when they sat down to their dinner they did not dwell on past accomplishments. A champion athlete doesn’t dwell on the preliminaries. To them it was always what was coming next. What was coming soon.

One week ago, seven days before I even heard of them, Otto Wirths placed a large digital clock on the wall above the elaborate workstation where he and Cyrus spent much of their waking hours. The clock was set to tick off seconds and minutes. Otto adjusted it to read: 10,080. Ten thousand and eighty minutes.

One hundred and sixty-eight hours.

Seven days.

One week.

After he pressed the start button, Otto and Cyrus clinked glasses of Perrier-Jouet, which-at over six thousand dollars a bottle-was the world’s most expensive champagne.

They sipped the bubbles and smiled and watched the first sixty seconds tick away, and then the next sixty.

The Extinction Clock had begun.

(2)

Now

I crouched in the dark. I was bleeding and something inside was broken. Maybe something inside my head, too.

The door was barred. 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.

They would get in.

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.

I had to stop them. It was down to me or no one.

It wasn’t my fault I 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. Some of those bodies were human. Some… well, I don’t know what the hell you’d call them.

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.

Let them come.