“Your choice, Princess,” I said. “This…or paradise?”
I leaned on the word this. From the absolute stillness, I knew that she understood what I meant. The cave, these men, all this destruction. She knew. And even though she had meant to sweep the world with her pathogen, the end goal — the transformation via Generation 12 of a select portion of Islam and the total annihilation of the enemies of her people — that was impossible. All that was left to her now was to be a monster. Alone and reviled.
The moment stretched. No one moved. Then Amirah leaned her head toward me. An oddly intimate movement.
She said, “Not…this.”
I whispered, “Yarhamukallâh.”
May God have mercy on you.
And pulled the trigger.
Chap. 4
I sat back and studied Harper for a long time.
He said, “What? You going to sit there and tell me that you wouldn’t have done the same thing?”
I said nothing.
“Look,” he said, “I know that was you in the cave. What are you? Delta? SEALs?”
I said nothing.
“You know what we’re up against out there. They want us to stop the Taliban, stop the flow of opium, but our own government supports the brother of the Afghan president, and he runs half the opium in the frigging country! How the hell are we supposed to win that kind of war? This is Vietnam all over again. We’re losing a war we shouldn’t be fighting.”
I said nothing.
Harper leaned forward, anger darkening his face. He pointed at me with the index finger of his uninjured hand. “You think Abu Ghraib’s the only place where we had to do whatever it took to get some answers? It goes on all over, and it’s always gone on.”
“And look where it’s gotten us,” I said.
“Fuck you and fuck that zero tolerance bullshit. We were trying to save lives. We would have gotten something out of that man.”
“You didn’t get shit from the first two.”
Now it was his turn to say nothing. After a minute he narrowed his eyes. “When you spoke to that…that…thing. That woman. At the end, you gave her a blessing. You a Muslim?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Honestly, Sergeant, I don’t think I could explain it to you. I mean…I could explain it, but I don’t think you’d understand.”
“You think I’m a monster, don’t you?”
“Are you?”
“No, man,” he said. “I’m just trying to….” And his voice broke. At first it was just a hitch, but when he tried to catch it and hide it, his resolve broke and he put his face in his unbandaged hand and sobbed. I sat back in my chair and watched.
I looked at him. The bandages on his other hand were stained with blood that was almost black. Red lines ran in a crooked tracery from beneath the bandage and up his arms. I could see the same dark lines beginning to creep up from his collar. It was forty-eight hours since he’d been brought to the aide station. Fifty-nine since Amirah had bitten him. Strong son of a bitch. Most people would have turned by now.
“What’s going to happen to me?” he asked, raising a tear-streaked face.
“Nothing. It’s already happened.”
He licked his dry lips. “We…we didn’t know.”
“Yes you did. Your squad was briefed. Maybe it was all a little unreal to you, Sergeant. Horror movie stuff. But you knew. Just as you know how this ends.”
I stood and drew my sidearm and racked the slide. The sound was enormous in that little room.
“They’re going to want to study you,” I said. “They can do that with you on a slab, or in a cage.”
“They can’t!” he said, anger flaring inside his pain. “I’m an American god damn it!”
“No,” I said. “Sergeant Andy Harper died while on a mission in Afghanistan. The report will reflect that he died while serving his country and maintaining the best traditions of the U.S. Marine Corps.”
Harper looked at me, the truth registering in his eyes.
“So I ask you,” I said, raising the pistol. “This…or paradise?”
“I…I’m sorry,” he said. Maybe at that moment he really was. Deathbed epiphanies aren’t worth the breath that carries them. Not to me. Not anymore.
“I know,” I lied.
“I did it for us, man. I did it to help!”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”
And raised the gun
Deep Dark
NOTE: This story takes place after the events of Patient Zero. It is an independent adventure.
Chap. 1
It was the dirty end of a dirty job.
Three of us — Bunny, Top and I — were hunting horrors in the dark, seven thousand feet below Camelback Mountain. Even with night vision goggles, body armor, and weapons, we were lost in an infinity of shadows. If we blew this, if we couldn’t wrap this before the clock ticked down, then the whole place would go into hard lockdown. Steel doors would drop, and explosive bolts would fire, triggering thermite charges that would seal the doors permanently in place. Federal and international biohazard protocols forbade anyone from digging us out if the failsafes went active.
The Vault would become our tomb.
The government would disown us; our own people would have to write us off.
But the things we hunted wouldn’t care. When our lights and weapons and food ran out, they’d hunt us.
And, very likely, they would get us…and then get out.
Chap. 2
We touched down on a State Forestry helipad at the top of Camelback. Morning mist still clung to the off-season ski slopes. The sun was a weak promise behind a ceiling of white clouds that stretched into the dim forever. A bookish-looking man in a white anorak and thick glasses met us as we ducked out through the rotor wash. He was flanked by a State Cop, who looked confused, and a security officer from the Vault, who looked bug-eyed scared. Nobody shook hands.
We piled into an Expedition. The State Cop looked at the equipment bags we carried, and it was clear he wanted to ask, but he’d been told that questions were off-limits. All he knew was that we were ‘specialists’ on the Federal dime who came here to help solve a security problem. Which is another way of telling him to shut the hell up and just drive the car.
The geek with the glasses turned to me and started to speak, but I shook my head.
We drove in silence down the zigzag road that should have been packed with tourists here for the water park and other summer sports. We passed three police roadblocks and turned onto an access road before a fourth. A phalanx of Troopers were bellowing at the families and tour busses, waving them into U-turns and turning deaf ears to the abuse heaped on them by people who had driven since before dawn to get here. Top caught my eye and shook his head. I nodded. Inconvenience was a hell of a lot better than dying out here in the cold.
A smaller road split off from the access road and led into a big equipment barn, but the barn was just a cover for the entrance to The Vault. Four nervous-looking guards manned the entrance; their supervisor came over to us in an electric golf cart. He cut a look at the bookworm.