Patient Zero

Chapter One Hundred Thirteen

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:07 P.M.

I WIPED MY knife and slid it back into its pocket clip then retrieved my gun and cleaned it quickly on Colby’s tie. I had no idea how many agents had gone with the First Lady. Was there a chance she was safe somewhere? Would we get that much of a break?

I tapped my ear mike but there was nothing, not even static. It must have been damaged when I’d hit the wall. I was alone.

I was also furious with myself for not having brought a stronger force here to Philly; or maybe for not pressuring Church into canceling the event. We’d both looked at this as a likely scenario and we’d still allowed it go forward. I realized as I thought these things that this was one of the aftershocks of 9/11. For a while after that everything that could draw a crowd was canceled, but then our culture moved on and there were no more attacks. We became complacent. Maybe we even thought that, against all evidence, we really had Al Qaeda on the run and that we’d taken the fight so effectively to them that we could settle back into normal life here in the States.

Today we were paying the price for complacence. Did the blame belong to me? Church? Or was this a cultural failing? If I lived through the day I’d have to take a closer look at those questions; but social philosophy doesn’t help you in the heat of a firefight, so I pressed on.

There was still no sign of backup coming for me, but I couldn’t wait. I crept forward, going room by darkened room. I tried light switches in the hallway and in several rooms but got nothing. Someone must have thrown the circuit breakers. The only light was the dim red glow of emergency lamps. I had to check every locked room, every closet to see if I could locate the First Lady, or Agent O’Brien, and throughout I could feel a hot spot between my eyes as if Ollie Brown was laying his laser sight on me and waiting for the right moment to punch my ticket.

Five rooms in I heard wet sounds coming from the far side of a row of desks. I knew what those sounds would be and I really didn’t want to look; but I had no choice. Taking a fresh grip on my.45 I rounded the desks on the balls of my feet.

There were three of them on their knees, heads bent forward, like lions around a zebra carcass. Only the carcass was that of a Secret Service agent and the lions were office workers-two women and a man wearing business casual and sporting Liberty Bell Center IDs around their necks. Their hands and mouths were black with blood.

Bile rose in my throat and I gagged. Just a tiny sound, just enough so that their heads snapped up like the wary predators they were. The closest of them, a woman, hissed at me.

I shot her in the head. The impact flung her back and she toppled over the dead agent in a perverse imitation of intimacy.

The other two rose up and lunged but I was ready.

Two shots, two kills.

I stared at the bodies, and then at the dead agent. His throat had been savaged. Would he reanimate, or was this beyond the pathogen’s wound-repair mechanism? I pointed my gun at his head and just as my finger was tightening around the trigger I heard three separate sounds at the same moment.

From far behind me I heard Top Sims calling my name. At my feet I heard the first feeble twitch as some new and monstrous force fired the engines that would raise this fallen hero up as an undead killer. And up ahead I heard the First Lady scream.