That was so close.
What about Church. Pick a word.
Powerful.
In every way, powerful.
Dangerous, too.
Power and danger.
Bliss hated him, too. Bug. He’d testified against her, too.
Why would she hate him? She would have to know that he was compelled to testify, and her hatred wasn’t born in the courtroom. It had to be there for her to do this kind of damage. It had to have been there for years, cooking, changing her.
So why would she hate him. He wasn’t powerful. He wasn’t dangerous.
Any power he had came from MindReader.
Bug stopped and cocked his head, reappraising that thought.
Was it true?
Was it an accurate assessment?
No. Maybe it wasn’t. If MindReader was only a computer then it was no more powerful than whoever put it to work. That was no different than a gun. It could not pull its own trigger.
Bug was the power behind MindReader. Something he had always known but never realized or considered.
And that’s why Bliss had hated him, too.
Because Bug was allowed total access to MindReader. Only two other people on earth had that privilege. Church and Auntie. How that must have galled Bliss. She always thought she was smarter than Bug, that she knew more about computers than he did, that she could do more than he ever could had she been allowed that freedom of access. She’d begged to show that to Church, to Auntie. To Bug.
It all came down to power.
He thought back to all the times the two of them played video games together. She won more than he did. And made a point of telling everyone about it.
That she’d won.
That, at least on those terms, she was more powerful than he was.
And something else flickered in Bug’s mind. Something that Rudy had said in his testimony at her trial. Bug closed his eyes as he pulled those words out of their storage slot in his mind.
“Her pathology clearly indicates that winning is of critical importance to Miss Bliss. That manifested in a number of ways, from using a variety of psychological manipulations to win arguments, even over minor points, to posting video game scores on the corkboard in the lunchroom. She needed to win and to be seen to win. To be acknowledged as the winner. It was one of the ways in which she felt empowered.”
That was part of it, but Bug was sure there was something else. Another point Rudy had made later during cross-examination. What was it?
“Come on,” he told himself, tapping his feet nervously on the floor. “Come on.”
Then it was there, like a file pulled from a nearly corrupted folder in a buried subfolder. There was only a fragment of it. Something Rudy had disclosed under protest because he felt it violated doctor-patient confidentiality. Only a federal court order was able to make Rudy say it.
“I counseled Miss Bliss about her drive to obtain power—as she defined power—and about her need to be recognized as the winner. She is not without a significant history of psychological problems. There are two documented suicide attempts from when she was a teenager. In both cases the attending psychiatrist concluded that these were cries for help or for recognition, or for acknowledgment of the power a child has when endangering their own life. She controls, for a short duration, the attention and actions of all adults around her. In light of my own sessions with Miss Bliss, I do not entirely agree with the conclusions of those early therapy sessions. It is my considered and professional opinion that she continues to be unstable and that she barters with herself for her own continued existence. Existence is predicated on winning. I cautioned her that one day she might either fail in so spectacular a way as to rob living of its richness, or that she would win too big a prize, because if you have climbed Everest, whither then?”
Chapter One Hundred and One
Westin Hotel
Atlanta, Georgia
Sunday, September 1, 12:31 p.m.
Mother Night paced back and forth in her room.
Everything was going exactly right.
Like clockwork.
Perfect.
Ever since Collins had managed to free her from prison, she had worked toward this moment. Using Huge Vox’s screening software and his massive database of information culled from tens of thousands of businesses, she had compiled a master list of disenfranchised and emotionally damaged people. She’d used Haruspex to troll the confidential records of hospitals, police departments, and foster care agencies to find even more of them, winnowing her list down to a few hundred. The ones who had been abused and discarded, or marginalized because they were statistically inconvenient to a system that did not allow for creative care of its fringe elements. She’d cultivated them with gifts, empowerment speeches specifically designed to play on their needs, be they anarchism, extreme socialism, radical patriotism, religious mania, or something else. There were so very many lost ones out there, and many of them—despite claiming to want or need no one—clung to Mother Night because she validated their existence. And her gifts were always well received. Food, money, video games, drugs, weapons. All paid for with money siphoned from accounts in banking and trust corporations whose security was no match for a system like Haruspex, whose parents were Pangaea and MindReader.
For two years Mother Night crafted her own persona and drew her minions to her, letting them suckle at the milk she provided. For two years she built the master plan of Burn to Shine. The greatest terrorist attack in history. That’s how it would be remembered. Through her faceless, broken minions she would be the most feared and powerful person on the planet. Even if that was only for the span of a weekend.
She. Mother Night. Artemisia Bliss.
More powerful than the president of the United States.
More powerful than Mr. Church.
As she paced she had to keep telling herself that this was exactly what she wanted. That she had already won.
But just as it had done earlier, that awful inner voice, her unevolved self, kept needling her, nagging her.
Run, it would say.
And she would scream at it.
She stopped pacing and went to the window. From the sixty-ninth floor, the city of Atlanta was beautiful. Sunlight and blue skies reflected from all the glass, and she could see for miles. It was a shame that she could not see the smoke curling up from the Centers for Disease Control. Wrong view for that, and it was a mistake she regretted making when picking this room.
She thought about calling Ludo Monk, and it took her a long moment to realize why that had occurred to her.
It wasn’t because she needed to give him instructions.
No.
It was because she had no one to talk to.
There was no way Collins was going to take any further calls from her. And … who else was there? Yesterday she’d had some fun sending blind texts to Samson Riggs and Joe Ledger, but the novelty wore off. That wasn’t real conversation.
There was no real conversation.
There was not even the possibility of real conversation.
Any conversation.
She felt a tear dangling from her jaw before she even realized that she was crying.
Then a thousand thoughts fluttered through her mind like a flock of starlings. Strange thoughts. Bad thoughts. Thoughts of dying, of suicide—though those thoughts were always with her. Other things, too. Like maybe she should call someone in the press. Give someone the interview of a lifetime. Make the most important call ever. Tell the whole story. Wow them.
Would that work?
Would that ease the pain?
Maybe.
For as long as the call lasted.
And then what?
Then what?
She placed her palms against the big glass window. It was sealed, no way to open it. She wished there were a balcony.
Or maybe not.
It was too tempting to simply swan-dive out of the pain and into the nothing.
&nb
sp; Instead she turned and put her back to the wall and slowly slid onto the floor.
And wept because she was lonely.
She wept because she had won.
She wept because there were infinite worlds.
She wept because she believed she could conquer them all.
She wept.
Chapter One Hundred and Two
The Locker
Sigler-Czajkowski Biological and Chemical Weapons Facility
Highland County, Virginia
Sunday, September 1, 12:33 p.m.
The Berserkers rushed us. They were all as tall as Bunny—six six or larger—with monstrously overdeveloped muscles. They wore black body armor, head to toe, that left only a triangle of their face visible through a clear plastic shield.
The belt slipped on the gears of time. The speed and insanity of the fight shifted as the Warrior became the Killer and he shouldered all other parts of me aside.
I had my Beretta in my hands and I spun and moved into the line of attack of the closest Berserker. I’d fought these monsters before. I knew that if they had one chance, one fragment of advantage, then they would win. They were immensely powerful, designed by cutting-edge science to be ferocious and savage, driven to the point of madness by chemical adjustments and drugs.
But the point of madness was now somewhere behind me.
As the Berserker grabbed me I rammed my gun against the plastic covering over his mouth and pulled the trigger. The round went straight through the clear cover but the dense bulletproof material of the Berserker’s head cowling prevented it from exiting, so instead it bounced around inside the thing’s head, turning monster into meat.
But as it fell, its fangs locked inside the trigger guard and tore the weapon from my hand. I let it go and whipped out my rapid-release folding knife as I turned.
Bunny was down, rolling on the ground with another of the monsters. Noah was down, too, but he was trying to fight his way out from under a pile of infected. Top and Lydia were running and trading shots with the Berserkers. Montana and Ivan were behind the stack of fallen cases. All I could hear were curses, screams, and howls of bestial fury.
A Berserker smashed one of the zombies aside and ran at me, raising a Ruger Blackhawk and firing. I shoved another of the infected into the path of the bullets, ducked low, and came in hard and fast. I head-butted his shooting arm up so that its next round exploded one of the overhead lights; and as I did so I used both hands to drive my blade through the plastic guard and into one flaring nostril. The blade bit deep, blood exploded over my hands as I gave the blade a vicious counterclockwise turn and then ripped it out.
He screamed so high and shrill that I thought my eardrums would burst. I dodged left, jumped, and kicked him in the side of the knee, landing as much of my weight as I could on the joint. It shattered audibly, and the Berserker was falling sideways into the hands of a half dozen of the zombies, who bore him down.
A dead-white hand grabbed at my goggles, trying to pull them off, but I kicked out and the infected fell away. If I lost those then the mucus membranes around my eyes would be an open door to the pathogens in the room. If that happened I was dead no matter who won the fight.
There was no time to think about that as a third Berserker came wading toward me, swinging for my head with the stock of his rifle. But he staggered as a fusillade of rounds hit him in the side. The foot-pounds spun him but didn’t drop him. His armor was too solid and he had enough mass to bull through any bruising from the impact. He whirled toward the shooter and I saw Montana kneeling atop one of the crates, her rifle tucked into her shoulder. There was a jagged crack across the front of her goggles. The Berserker was caught in a moment of indecision—take me or go for her.
Montana made him pay for that with six rounds through his face.
Three Berserkers down.
I leaped over the falling body to try to help Bunny, but I saw the big kid from Orange County drive a Ka-bar up under the soft palate of the Berserker. As he did it, they both roared like monsters. The mercenary flopped over dead, temporarily pinning Bunny to the ground. White hands reached down, tearing at the corpse, trying to find purchase on Bunny’s Hammer suit.
Then Top was there, unarmed, rushing in, scooping up Bunny’s shotgun, firing, firing as he bought Bunny the chance to worm his way out.
A piercing scream made me turn and there was Ivan, fighting hand to hand with a Berserker. The big creature was bleeding from the mouth, big gouts of blood splashing on his chest and Ivan’s. I couldn’t tell what injury Ivan had inflicted, but then I saw something that drove an icy blade into my heart.
There was a long, ragged gash down Ivan’s chest and the layers of his Hammer suit were parted like the obscene lips of a terrible wound. I could see Ivan’s bare chest and there was no visible mark on him, but all of his protection against the monsters in the air was gone.
Gone.
Ivan must have known it, too, because he went absolutely insane with combat rage. He drew a bayonet and a short fighting knife and he attacked the Berserker, chopping pieces of padding and flesh away, ripping the life from the killer.
“Cowboy! Watch!”
It was Noah’s voice, and I darted left and spun as two zombies came hurtling at me, propelled by a mighty shove from the remaining Berserker. Noah had his gun up, but I was inside his field of fire. I waved him off as I closed on the zombies from the outside, slashing down at the knee tendon of the closest one and shoving him into the other. They went down. The Berserker threw himself at me. Nearly four hundred pounds of brute strength and crushing weight. I dropped flat and then kicked up, spoiling his lunge, sending him spinning into a bone-jarring fall.
I back-rolled to my feet, but Noah was there, aiming past me now, sighting along the barrel. He emptied half a magazine into the Berserker. The first bullets pounded the thing into forced immobility, and with that freeze-frame, Noah used the last four rounds to blow out its lights.
The gunfire was thinning as Echo Team chopped the last of the infected down.
I reached for a fallen rifle, but as I straightened, the last of the walkers fell over, a black dot painted on its pale forehead.
Thunder echoed through the cavernous room, bouncing back and forth, diminishing with each collision, and finally fading into a terrible silence.
We stood there, each of us frozen in whatever posture of combat we’d been in when the silence caught us.
We did not look at the fallen walkers.
We did not look at the dead Berserkers.
There was only one thing any of us could see.
Ivan stood by the pile of overturned cases, his dripping knives in his bloody hands. Where his uniform was torn we could see his skin. It was no longer untouched. Now huge blisters as big as walnuts were expanding, straining the thin layers of skin, and finally bursting to seed the air with tiny droplets of blood. Black lines of infection raced crookedly up his stomach and chest and vanished beneath the undamaged part of his mask. Blood ran in lines down from that hood.
With a cry of horror he tore his mask off and flung his goggles away. The blisters had turned his face into something out of nightmare. His eyes were bright red and he wept tears of blood.
“Help me!” he said, but his throat was so thick with wet wrongness that it came out as a strangled gurgle. He pawed the air in our direction, imploring us to do something even though we all knew there was nothing that could be done.
Nothing.
Not even if he was in a medical bay with the world’s top doctors around him. These were bioweapons of the worst and most terrible kind. No cure, no treatment.
No hope.
Ivan sank slowly to his knees.
Top handed the shotgun to Bunny and took the pistol from Noah. He looked at me.
It cost me a lot to give a single nod.
It cost Top every bit as much to see it.
He raised the pistol and sighted on Ivan.
Ivan reached out to him. Begging him for
the bullet.
Montana yelled, “No!”
But the madness of the moment demanded a different answer.
Chapter One Hundred and Three
The Locker
Sigler-Czajkowski Biological and Chemical Weapons Facility
Highland County, Virginia
Sunday, September 1, 12:37 p.m.
We stood over Ivan’s body for as long as we could. I knew that there was little chance he would receive a proper burial. Even if the technicians and biohazard teams would somehow sterilize this place and bring it back online—an event I did not believe possible—any organic material would have to be incinerated and the ashes treated with chemicals and then sealed in ceramic-lined steel drums. We’d bury a box under a stone with Ivan’s name on it.
Top knelt and placed the pistol on Ivan’s chest. None of us would ever want to fire the gun that had killed our friend.
And besides, a warrior needs his weapon as he rides into Valhalla.
Finally, I turned away and walked to the door of the Ark vault, pushed it open, stared inside.
There was a heavy set of industrial-grade acetylene tanks and a welding mask. The whole front of the Ark had been cut open, the locks melted away, the steel panels for each compartment pried up. My BAMS unit was picking up traces of everything. Every single goddamn virus and spore and bacterium and prion that was stored at the vault was now swimming in the air.
But as I studied the storage slots I could see that even though they had been opened, they were still full. The Berserkers had not stolen the pathogens. They’d merely released them. They’d totally contaminated the Locker. Top and Bunny came in and saw what I saw.
“I don’t get it,” said Bunny. “They opened these up before we got here.”
“I know.”
“That makes no sense.”
Top backed up a step and looked out through the door at the mass of bodies outside. I could see his eyes through his goggles and they were narrowed. Intelligent and calculating.
“Talk to me, Sergeant Major,” I said.
“I don’t think this was a theft, Cap’n,” he said slowly.
“No,” I agreed.