Patient Zero

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Two

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday July 4; 12:19 P.M.

I STAGGERED BACK from El Mujahid as he lumbered forward out of the darkened office.

“Mother of God,” I heard Top whisper.

The makeup on El Mujahid’s face had run, giving him a weirdly melted look. It revealed a wicked cut, like a knife slash, that bisected his face. It was the first time I’d been this close to him. He had to be six five and two-fifty if he was an ounce. He pulled off the jacket he’d worn as part of his Secret Service disguise, then jerked the tie loose and tore that off, dropping it on the floor. His white shirt was soaked with blood, and he touched the bullet holes. They were in the right place, they had to have clipped his heart. He smiled.

“It worked,” he said in wonder. “My princess has found the way ”

Skip said, “Here’s an incentive for you, boss. My employers may not have been trying to bring about the end of the world but this asshole? Shit, he’s one of the horsemen of the apocalypse. He gets out of this place and it really will be game over.”

El Mujahid snarled at Skip, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Skip staring at the big terrorist with a mixture of admiration and disgust. Then I noticed that Top was looking straight at me, his dark eyes intense and unblinking. My hands were at my side and as I turned my face toward El Mujahid I curled the thumb and pinky of my left hand so that I showed three fingers. Then I curled the ring finger up, then the forefinger. Then the index, hoping that Top had read me the right way.

Abruptly I lunged at El Mujahid and chopped him across the throat with as hard a knife-hand blow as I’d ever used on a human being. At the same instant Top pivoted, his speed powered by adrenaline and fear and a hell of a lot of indignation. He grabbed Skip’s wrist with one hand and drove his opposite elbow back into the young man’s stomach. Skip’s finger clutched in a spasm of pain and the bullet burned across the side of Top’s temple. Top bellowed in pain but he came up off the floor and tackled Skip, driving him halfway across the room so that they both crashed onto a desk. The pistol flew into a corner.

Skip shoved Top back with a curse and with a shake of his wrist a knife dropped from a sleeve holster into the palm of his hand. He opened his mouth to taunt Top, but First Sergeant Sims moved forward in a blur and slammed into Skip. They hit the desk and then rolled off on the far side and out of sight.

I couldn’t go help. I had my own problems.

The blow that I’d used on El Mujahid should have killed him. At very least it should have crippled him. It would have done that to any man.

But El Mujahid was no longer a man. He coughed but then he expanded his chest and I could actually hear the fragments of his shattered hyoid bone click together. It was the creepiest sound I’d ever heard.

In a hoarse rasp of a voice he growled, “My princess has made me immortal. Praise Allah!” His eyes had looked dazed and dull when he’d first come out of the room, but I could see them becoming more focused. I didn’t understand it. If he was a walker, then why was he able to talk? Or think?

He took a step toward me. The first step was wobbly, as if he was uncertain how to use his body. But the second step was firmer. The third step showed no instability at all.

Crap.

His face took on an expression that was half triumphant leer and half naked hunger, and a fanatical light burned like a solar flare in his eyes. “Allah is the only God and I am his wrath on Earth!”

“Whatever,” I said as I dodged to one side and kicked him on the meat of the thigh with the steel toe of my shoe, a blow that would cripple anyone. But again it did nothing to him.

“It’s funny,” he said in Farsi, “but it doesn’t even hurt. Oh, Amirah how I love you.”

I made a lunge for my fallen pistol but El Mujahid leaped at me. Any awkwardness he might have experienced upon returning to life was gone. For all his size he moved with cat quickness and he body-blocked me away from the piece and kicked the gun under a desk. I slewed around and came up into a fighting crouch. Okay, I thought, c’mon, Joe, you’ve done this before. Break the neck and you stop these buggers.

So I jumped in and tried to grab his chin and hair. Most people have only seen this move in movies. They won’t recognize it when someone tries it on them, and it’s such a fast move that by the time they figure it out they’re on the cold side of being dead.

Unfortunately for me El Mujahid wasn’t a novice. He parried my lunge and hit me in the ribs with a short chopping punch that lifted me completely off the ground; then he combined off that and planted an overhand right that nearly took my head off. I managed to get a shoulder up in time to save my head, but El Mujahid was a tank and his punch dropped me. I landed hard and immediately tucked into a sideways roll and barely managed to avoid a stamp that would have crushed my skull.

The First Lady was screaming over and over again and I wondered if her mind had snapped.

I came out of my roll on fingertips and toes and tried to reach for the.38 on my ankle, but he rushed me with a flying tackle that sent us both rolling over and over across the floor. At the end of the roll I managed to get a knee up between us and braced it against his chest as he tried to pull me into a bear hug. With his arms he’d have splintered my back. I drove my shoulders back and used the greater power of my legs to break his grab. He skidded back and I again went for my pistol, this time getting it out; but El Mujahid threw himself forward like a dolphin jumping out of the water onto the side of a pool. It was a sloppy move, all momentum, but it worked and he made a big reach and swatted the pistol out of my hand.

So I kicked him in the face and back-rolled to my feet.

I had my back to the wall and he was between me and any guns. He rose slowly, head down, shoulders hunched, hands forward and out. This was a son of a bitch who really knew how to fight. Without rules, just react and destroy. Like me.

Past him I could see parts of the tussle that was going on behind the desk. Legs and arms, and a lot of cursing. I had no idea who was winning that fight.

El Mujahid stalked me, cutting left and right to try and box me into the corner. Against most opponents a corner is a pretty good place to make a stand, it allows for a lot of options when flight is no longer in the mix; but with a fighter like this bruiser it would be a death trap.

He leered at me and bit the air with a clack of teeth. “I think I’ll take a bite out of you,” he said, pitching it to sound like a joke. I wasn’t laughing.

I could still hear gunfire and screams coming from the Bell Chamber. It must be one hell of a battle in there. Would Grace survive it, or had she already fallen? Would she rise as one of the mindless walkers or as a new and improved thinking monster like the one I faced?

What would Church and the President do? Let everyone in the Liberty Bell Center kill each other and then torch the whole place? Could the President risk any other response, even with his wife here?

Then I realized that the First Lady was no longer screaming. El Mujahid noticed, too, and we both turned to see that she had picked up my.45 and was pointing it at the big terrorist. She fired, but in her panic she jerked the trigger instead of squeezing it and the gun bucked upward and the shot punched a hole in the ceiling.

I rushed in her direction, wanting that damn gun, but El Mujahid lunged in to cut me off, pawing at me with a fast grab. I parried it, but it was a fake and he snaked the other hand in and caught me by the sleeve of my suit jacket.

The First Lady got off another shot but it just tore a chunk out of El Mujahid’s hip.

He jerked me forward with such force that I flew off the ground, and he hit me with an elbow shot that broke a black bomb in my head. I sagged in his grip and as he bent toward me I could feel his hot breath on my exposed throat.