Patient Zero

Chapter Seventy-Five

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 12:44 P.M.

SKIP LOOKED JUMPY from what had happened in the plant. He’d been pelted pretty good by the falling debris from Dietrich’s rescue and had bruises and butterfly stitches on his face. While he waited for me to speak his fingers kept lacing and unlacing on the tabletop.

“That was some shit, wasn’t it?” he asked, giving me a nervous laugh.

“It was memorable,” I agreed, and then I gave him another dose of the long silent treatment. His reaction was the exact opposite of Ollie’s; Skip was younger and more high-strung. His hands and eyes never stopped moving. He was so jittery that it was hard to get any read at all on him. So far he’d been the least “warriorlike” of the team, though admittedly during both battles with the walkers he’d been quick and efficient. Grace said that he’d been half-crazed when Alpha Team found him, and maybe that’s what I was seeing here: the aftereffects of fighting solo against those monsters. I remembered my own reactions after I fought Javad. I freaked, I threw up, and I had the shakes.

On the other hand, he-like Ollie-had told us that he’d been taken off guard at the crab plant. I studied his face. There was no way to know if the mole was even on my team, let alone whether it was Ollie Brown or Skip Tyler. But of the two choices I found it hardest to believe it of Skip. Maybe that was his shtick or maybe he was as innocent as he seemed. I was too exhausted to trust my own judgment.

“Our forensics guy figured out how you got taken,” I said after a moment.

He came to point like a bird dog. “What the hell did happen? Secret door?”

“Secret door,” I agreed.

“Son of a bitch.”

I nodded. Skip looked at the tabletop for a long time and when he raised his head his eyes were wet.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

I waited.

“I should have checked.”

“You’re lucky you weren’t killed.”

He looked away for a moment while he took a steadying breath. “Sir after what I saw in there yesterday and today, after what I did ”

“What you did?”

“I shot women. And kids. Old ladies. People. I killed a lot of people,” he said in a whisper. His mouth trembled and he put his face in his hands and he began to weep.

I sat back in my chair and watched him. His grief was everywhere. It filled the room.

I wondered what Rudy was thinking about all of this. The DMS had cameras that no one could spot, and Rudy was in the adjoining room watching it all.