Patient Zero

Chapter One Hundred Seventeen

Grace / The Bell Chamber / Saturday, July 4; 12:13 P.M.

“MAJOR WATCH!” BUNNY yelled, and Grace whirled just as the anchorwoman for Channels 6 News leaped at her from the podium. The anchor’s skin was wax-white and her eyes as round and empty as silver dollars, but she growled with hunger as she lunged for Grace’s throat.

“Bloody hell!” Grace shot the woman twice in the face. Blood splattered the faces of the three snarling figures that were mounting the steps behind her.

“What the hell are you doing?” screamed Mrs. Collins, and she made a grab for Grace’s gun arm and succeeded in pulling it down so that the next round chopped a divot out of the marble floor and ricocheted up to punch a red hole through the thigh of the Canadian ambassador. The ambassador dropped with a shriek of pain and instantly two of the walkers leaped from the podium and pounced on him. Grace wrestled with the Vice President’s wife, who had a surprising amount of wiry strength and in the end she had to let go with her left hand and chop Mrs. Collins on the side of the neck. It dropped the woman to her knees and Grace tore her gun arm free just as the third walker dove at her. Grace put two rounds in him and the corpse skidded to a stop inches from Mrs. Collins.

IT WAS COMPLETE pandemonium in the Bell Chamber as the infected who had lapsed into comas instantly snapped awake as walkers and attacked the crowd. Even with the warnings Grace, Brierly, and Rudy had given them about the nature of the infection the fifteen remaining Secret Service agents faltered, hesitating, unable to open fire on citizens, congressmen, and dignitaries.

Bunny muscled one dazed agent out of the way just as a journalist from the Daily News was about to grab him. The hulking sergeant snaked out a hand and caught the walker by the throat, buried his borrowed polymer pistol against the creature’s head and fired. He flung the corpse into the path of a second walker and killed that one, but then six of them came at him in a bunch and he fell back, dragging the startled agent with him.

“Fire, goddamn it!” Bunny yelled, and the agent seemed to snap out of his stupor. They found a clear patch of floor and the pair of them made their stand, opening up with both guns. Bunny had four shots left and used them all; the agent wasted an entire clip to bring down just one walker.

That left two from the pack still on their feet. Bunny stepped in and kicked the lead one in the stomach and when it doubled over he arched up and then brought his balled fist down as hard as he could on the back of the exposed skull. The walker immediately went into a boneless sprawl; but his companion just kept coming. He was three steps out when a shot snapped his head back. Bunny turned to see the agent, reloaded now, holding his smoking pistol in a two-hand grip.

BEHIND THEM RUDY, holding a flagpole, stood his ground between a huddled group of Girl Scouts and a walker in a Hawaiian shirt with toucans on it. The walker took a step forward but then ducked back away from the swing of the pole. Rudy frowned. He’d seen all of the tapes of the DMS encounters with the walkers, and he’d noted that they never flinched, never dodged. They lacked the cognitive powers to do it, and even their unnatural reflexes did not include any defensive reactions. And yet this one dodged once, twice.

And he smiled.

He pointed a crooked finger at the little girls behind Rudy and then he did something else walkers can’t do. He spoke.

“Mine!”

“Dios mio!” breathed Rudy, and the idea of a walker still capable of thought and deliberate action nearly took the heart out of him. But the whimpers of the girls behind him put strength in his hands. He held his ground.

AHMED, BROTHER OF Amirah, lover of Andrea Lester and El Mujahid’s chief agent in the United States, leered at Rudy and the girls. He felt amazing, immensely powerful and more completely alive than ever. The Generation Twelve pathogen burned like wildfire in his veins and when he had come awake moments ago he was overwhelmed by the clarity of focus it bestowed. Even after a life lived in dedication to the teachings of the Prophet he had never before understood so completely. The will of Allah was a white-hot light in his brain.

Consumed by his purpose and bursting with immortal power, he rushed forward to do the will of God. As the flagpole swung at him he caught it with one palm and with the other he grabbed Rudy Sanchez by the throat.