Joe Ledger: Code Zero Part 61

Mother Night looked at her watch and saw that it was time to get ready. She showered and dressed in the Lucy Kuo costume she'd hand-sewn. For ten long minutes she did nothing but stand in front of the full-length mirror and look at herself.

Then, with a sudden rush of white-hot anger, she tore the costume off, ripping it, pulling it away from her skin as if it were diseased. The top was taped to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and as she ripped it off the tape left angry red welts across her naked skin. She threw the rags on the floor, then got a knife out of her bag and knelt over the costume, stabbing it over and over and over ...

Time seemed to go away for a while.

A long while.

She blinked.

Blinked again.

She was no longer in the bedroom.

Mother Night was huddled in the back of the shower stall. Naked. Bleeding from cuts on her forearms and thighs, her face swollen and sore, eyes burning from tears.

"Wh-what-?"

Her voice was thick. The way a sleeper's is after a long night.

The vomiting began then.

Without warning, without the slightest twitch, everything in her stomach surged upward, burning her throat, bursting from between her lips, spraying the shower walls with garish red.

Red.

For a terrible second she thought she was throwing up blood, but it was too much and too thin.

Wine?

When had she drunk wine?

When could she have had this much?

There seemed to be no food mixed in with the wine, but the liquid was lumpy with ...

She stared.

Another rush spilled out.

And another.

Then her body convulsed with dry heaves as if it were trying to rid itself of her stomach lining. She strained so hard that white sparks detonated at the edges of her vision. Blood roared in her ears.

She kept staring at the lumps in the red mess.

There were pills mixed in with the wine.

Lots of pills.

"What?" she asked again, as if the vomit itself could provide an answer.

It took a long time.

The dry heaves ground slowly to a halt, leaving her breathless. She gasped for air, tried not to pa.s.s out.

Trembling fingers fumbled for the spigot and she turned it with a cry of effort.

The water was ice cold.

It punched the air out of her lungs and tore a scream from her.

Inside, deep inside, a voice laughed at her.

An old voice. The hated voice. The unevolved voice.

You killed me.

"What...?" she asked aloud, giving it different meaning now. Directing it somewhere. Inward. Backward in time.

You killed me, said her older self. You stole my life. You threw everything away, you pathetic b.i.t.c.h.

"f.u.c.k you, you weak little cow," sneered Mother Night. "You were nothing. You had no power. Look what I've done!"

You stole my life and made yourself into a monster. A hag.

Mother Night gripped the shower's safety bar and pulled herself to her feet. It took a lot and her legs did not want to hold her. She tried to lift her leg over the edge of the tub, bungled it, and then she was falling, clawing at the air, finding only the shower curtain, clutching it, tearing it loose, dragging it down to the floor. She landed hard, striking the point of her left elbow on the closed toilet seat.

You're pathetic. A psycho b.i.t.c.h who doesn't deserve to live.

"f.u.c.k you f.u.c.k you f.u.c.k you f.u.c.k you..."

It was all she could say as she fought her body onto hands and knees, gripped the edge of the sink, and pulled herself to her feet again. When she looked into the mirror it was not her own face she saw. It was not Mother Night.

Artemisia Bliss stared back at her. Sensibly dressed for work. Hair pulled back into a ponytail. Gla.s.ses on the end of her nose. Eyes filled with hate.

You're nothing but a loser.

"You're a G.o.dd.a.m.n liar. You were too weak to speak up for yourself. Pretty, clever little Artemisia Bliss. Crying into her pillow. Mad at the world. Boo-f.u.c.king-hoo. I won the game. I beat everybody. I made us into this."

She beat her fist against her chest. The pain was shockingly hard and it felt so good. So delicious.

So powerful.

"I f.u.c.king won!"

In the mirror, Artemisia Bliss shook her head.

This isn't a game.

"Everything's a game, a.s.shole. You were always too stupid to know that. It's all a game and I won. I beat them all. Church, Aunt Sallie, Bug. The field teams. Everyone. I f.u.c.king won."

The face in the mirror looked at her with such sadness.

So what?

"What?" Mother Night asked again.

Who cares if you won or not? Why do you think it matters?

Mother Night's mouth opened but she couldn't find the right words to explain to this phantom what it all meant. To make it crystal clear what every detail meant, why it all mattered, and the value of her victory. "I ... I..."

And then someone knocked on the door.

As if a light switch had been thrown, the image in the mirror vanished to be instantly replaced by Mother Night's face. She looked into those eyes-her eyes-and told herself that this was her true face. This was the only truth.

Mother Night.

Another knock.

A man's knock.

But not, she was sure, a police knock. If the police knew she was here they'd have knocked the door down and she'd be in handcuffs or sprawled in a pool of blood.

Her body was streaked with wine vomit. A few pills clung to her skin.

Mother Night took the white terrycloth robe from the peg on the door, pulled it on, belted it, walked into the hall and out to the living room of the big suite. Her laptop was on the bed and she paused to hit a few keys. The screen display immediately showed the hallway outside her room via a video stream from the cameras she'd mounted there.

Two men stood in front of the door. They were dressed casually, in Hawaiian s.h.i.+rts, jeans, dark sneakers. They could have been conventioneers at the hotel, or they could have been conferees there to attend DragonCon, the big science fiction and fantasy convention that spilled across five hotels. Not everybody at the conference wore costumes from movies, comics, or games.

They could have been ordinary men.

But they weren't, and she knew it.

Mother Night recognized one of them. The last time she'd seen him, he'd been dressed in a dark suit, white s.h.i.+rt, and dark tie, with sungla.s.ses and a wire behind his ear. In her memory, the man stood beside a limousine, watching up and down the street as a man got out of the car.

The man this fellow was guarding was Bill Collins.

This man at her door was one of the Secret Service agents whose loyalty to the vice president extended far beyond his role to the country. This man was owned by Collins, heart and soul. His companion would be as well.

And yet they were here.

Knocking on her door.

As if to punctuate that thought, one of the men rapped his knuckles on the door.

The realization of who they were was so intensely painful that Bliss nearly collapsed. Her legs, already wobbling from the wine, the pills she'd taken in her fugue state, and the aftereffects of vomiting, tried to buckle, but she caught herself.

"No," she snapped. "Don't you f.u.c.king dare."

She kept her voice low. She didn't want the killers at the door to hear her.

The pain didn't abate even though her legs grew more steady.

"Bill..." she whispered.

On the level of pure human emotion-a level she felt floated at an immense distance-there was heartbreak. Bill. How could he do this?

On all other levels, however, there was a cynical amus.e.m.e.nt. How could he not do this? It was neither surprising nor unforgivable. In his place, she would do the same.

Probably should do the same, time allowing.

Still, it did hurt.

Oddly, she knew that he loved her, and she him. So strange. Maybe that's how G.o.ds love. It was all very Shakespearean.

She waited, watching as they listened and finally nodded to each other. One man s.h.i.+fted to watch the hall as the other removed a keycard. Both men drew pistols from under their Hawaiian s.h.i.+rts and held them down by their legs, out of sight even though the hall was currently empty.

Mother Night spent one moment listening inside her head for the voice of Artemisia Bliss, but there was only silence.

She smiled and waited for the men to enter.

Because the hallway was deserted, no one heard the two men scream.

Chapter One Hundred and Five.

The Locker Sigler-Czajkowski Biological and Chemical Weapons Facility Highland County, Virginia Sunday, September 1, 1:02 p.m.

It took twenty-two minutes to climb flights of stairs and scale the elevator shaft. We encountered six wandering walkers and put them down. With each encounter it was simply a matter of one of us making a head shot. There was no drama attached to it, which is surreal. We were so numb, so terrified, so humiliated that the infected we killed had become little more than irritants.

In a flash of th.o.r.n.y precognition I knew full well that this was going to come back to bite each us on the a.s.s. Once we were past the heat of the fight-and providing Mother Night didn't destroy the f.u.c.king world-we were going to visit those killings in our dreams, in our quiet times. The infected were victims. Colleagues in the DMS. Scientists, technicians, office staff, maintenance, cafeteria staff. People. Humans whose lives had been stolen from them and whose bodies had been hijacked by a parasitic bioweapon that made them into monsters. Yeah, sure, we had to kill them. And no, there was no way we could stop and mourn or even regard their humanity in our haste to get out of there and back into radio contact, but you can't write bad checks like that without them bouncing. We would all have to pay those penalties someday, somehow.

But for now, we climbed, we ran, we killed, we fought, and we prayed.

The hardest part was the decontamination process. One full hour of being blasted by steam and chemicals and foams and G.o.d knew what else. Eventually we staggered out of the offices into the Tractor Store, wearing sweat-soaked underwear. We even had to leave our guns behind.

We reeled into the sunlight of a Monday afternoon.

Ghost came racing and barking toward us, then slowed and stopped as he smelled the chemicals on me. He growled at me and even bared his fangs.

Fair enough.

Sam broke cover and ran to us, his rifle ready, face twisted into doubt. He looked past us, waiting for Dunk and Ivan to come out of the building. Looked in vain, and I saw pain flicker across his features. He and Ivan were close. I took his earbud and tapped it to get a command channel. First thing I did was call for the Black Hawk and order the pilot to have the Lear fueled and ready. Then I called Church and told him what had happened.