The look she gave me was one of hard, unflinching fatalism. It was the reason there was no trace of hope or optimism in her eyes. “It’s everywhere, man. How can you not know that? This is the actual end.”
Suddenly hands began pounding on the outside of the bus. Heavy, soft, artless thumps. Nothing fast, nothing precise. Just the battering of mindless need. I knew that sound. The hungry dead. The relentless dead.
I’d fought this before. It was how I got into the DMS. Sebastian Gault had developed a prion-based pathogen that turned people into something straight out of The Walking Dead. Except this wasn’t TV. This was the world and we’d had to do terrible things to save it. So many people died to put the monster back into its cage. Then it surfaced again after Artemisia Bliss stole the seif al din pathogen from the secure facility where it had been locked away. She’d unleashed it on a subway train in New York, at a Best Buy in Pennsylvania, and at a science fiction convention in Atlanta. Worst day for civilian deaths in American history. Again, my team and I had been forced to pull triggers and cut throats in order to save the nation — hell, the entire world — from consuming itself. No joke, no exaggeration.
So what happened? How was I on a school bus with all these kids and a cop telling me that some other bioweapon, Lucifer 113, had slipped its chain? How could I not have prevented this? Where was the DMS when the Devil got out of its cage? How was it possible that the apparatus of defense that Church had built could have failed on so spectacular a level?
How? The dead hammered on the bus. The children screamed.
“This isn’t real,” I told her.
“Fuck you,” she said, and punched me again. Harder. “Look around you. These kids are all that’s left of my town. Every bus is filled with kids. Kids. Look at them. Listen to them, for Christ’s sake. Not real? God, I want to kick your teeth down your throat. This is happening and it’s happening right now. You’re supposed to be a genuine goddamn American hero, Ledger. Why don’t you Velcro your nutsack back on and act like it.”
The dead began hammering on the side of the bus with renewed intensity.
I struggled to get to my feet.
And the God Wave hit me again.
I stood on the side of an overturned school bus.
Dez Fox was gone. The bus was years old, wrapped in creeper vines, rusted and dead. There was a sound behind me and a young man climbed up to stand next to me. At first I thought it was Sam, but I was wrong. He was younger, taller, slimmer. His eyes were sadder. He had a katana slung over his shoulder, angled for an overhand draw. His name was Tom, but I don’t know how I knew that.
“There’s a trail through the trees,” Tom said, nodding off to my left. “Heads up into the hills. Zoms won’t go uphill unless they’re chasing something.”
“I taught you that, kiddo,” I said. My voice sounded different. Older, filled with hard use and gravel. The kind of voice you could get if you screamed enough.
Far ahead we could see movement on the road as first one and then several emaciated figures staggered out of the tall weeds.
“Time to go, Tom,” I said.
We turned and walked the length of the school bus. He dropped lightly to the ground and then offered a hand to help me down. It was disconcerting to realize I needed it. In the distance on the other side of the bus the dead had caught our scent and they began to moan. We faded into the trees, heading uphill.
The God Wave took me away before I saw where we were going.
And then I stood on the shores of a black ocean.
Creatures roiled and twisted in the surf. Dark shapes that made no sense to a sane mind. Out on the horizon there was a mist, white as milk, rolling in. It churned, too, as if there were things moving inside it, approaching where I stood. If it reached me while I stood there they would consume me. No question about it.
“It’s beautiful here,” said a voice, and I turned to see a handsome young man standing beside me. He was whole and straight. No burns, no madness flickering like candle flame in his eyes. And he could have been Junie’s twin brother.
“I guess you’d have to know how to look at it,” I said.
Prospero nodded. “It’s not your home.”
“No.”
There were storm clouds above us and something moved inside of them, too. Not animals, not beasts. Machines. As I watched, a half dozen of them broke from the clouds and soared above us. Two groups of three. Each of the machines was triangular in shape. They were elegant and they soared above us toward a row of mountains that towered miles and miles into this impossible sky.
“Not outer space,” said Prospero. “You know that, right?”
“I guess I do.”
“That’s too far to travel.”
“Yes.”
“But here,” he gestured to the nightmare world around us, “my home is right next door to yours.”
“Prospero,” I said, “my world is dying. My people are going to burn when all the lights go out. Children are going to get sick and die. I can’t do this without you.”
He said nothing as he turned to watch the triangular craft dwindle into tiny dots.
“Your father and Harcourt Bolton have stolen your machine and they are using it to destroy everyone I love.”
He smiled. “My father is dead. He shot himself, did you know that? They broke him up and threw him away. Poor Daddy.”
“Okay… but Bolton is still trying to steal what you made. He’s turning you into a monster by exploiting what you built.”
“I am a monster. I come from a world of monsters.”
I turned to him. “Maybe that’s true, Prospero, but you’re not evil. You never were. In my world Bolton is the monster. And he is definitely evil. He keeps you in chains. You’re the monster in his basement. And he will never let you go home.” I gestured to the world. “You’re dreaming this, but you’re still a prisoner in that basement.”
Tears broke and ran down his face. “All I ever wanted was to go home.”
“Help me stop Bolton and I promise you that you can go home.”
He looked at me shrewdly. “You’re really in love with someone who comes from here? A woman like me?”
“Her name is Junie Flynn. She’s your sister, Prospero, and I love her with my whole heart and soul. That has to be worth something, Prospero. It has to mean something.”
He opened his mouth to speak but then the God Wave hit me again.
And I was gone.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOUR
Harcourt Bolton slept and dreamed and smiled as the seconds ran down.
He did not see the elevator doors open there on the parking garage. He did not see the woman and the man step off. Did not see her point with a knife toward the parked SUV. The windows were smoked and he was content that he could not be seen.
He had forty Closers in the building. The last of the DMS was being exterminated here, and soon, with federal marshals, FBI agents, NSA, Secret Service, and Homeland to work with, he would shut down every last field office. It was already in motion. Nothing could stop it now.
He lay on the seat he’d put back, and he floated inside the mind of the Mullah, and he was content.
Until the window beside him exploded inward.
The sound, the flying safety glass, the sheer shock of it tore him out of the Mullah’s mind and out of the dream state. Then hands reached through and tore him out of the car, dragging him through the window as teeth of glass ripped at him. Violin and Mr. Church dumped him on the hard concrete and squatted down in front of him.