The kid on top had tried to scratch his way out of the crate, but the lid was nailed shut.
Dobbs remembered it so clearly, because he’d had to give back half his fee; he barely made anything on that deal.
The scratching stopped when it reached his stall and the door wouldn’t open. Dobbs looked down and saw the clawlike feet on the floor. The stall began to rattle and shake, and then the Snakehead was looking back at him, staring up from the floor as it slithered under the obstacle to reach him.
Ten minutes later, it left. What remained of Dobbs was stuck, headfirst, in the toilet, limbs splayed at disjointed angles.
He looked as if he had been flushed and spat out again, as if he was too foul even for the sewer pipe below.
MARSH KEPT SITTING THERE, waiting in the blockaded room with the other people. He’d listened, and he’d learned their names. He might have been happy to stay there forever, but something kept interrupting his peaceful daze.
The one called Copeland was cracking his gum again. Marsh hated that.
Marsh could even smell it. Copeland had a big wad of some sugary brand Marsh hadn’t seen since he stole candy as a kid. Marsh listened to the sound, like a cow mashing up its cud—and then, snap, pop goes the tiny bubble.
It wouldn’t be so bad, Marsh thought, if only there were some pattern to it. But it came at random moments. Snap. Snap. Snap. Then a long pause. Nothing but chewing. Then, just when he was used to the relative silence—another snap.
He decided to kill Copeland. That would end the noise.
The more the idea buzzed through his head, the more Marsh liked it. He still wasn’t exactly sure where the notion came from, but it made him feel warm. It made him feel better.
Because something was going on in his body. Something was making his heart beat faster, and making him angry. Way angrier than he’d ever been on meth, and he’d once punched through a wall of glass bricks while on meth. But at the same time, the anger made him happy. Filled him with all kinds of other images and feelings—
Snap. Snap. Snap.
Enough.
He stood up and immediately stumbled. One of the men, a guy with a blond crew cut, noticed.
“Take it easy, man,” he said. He helped Marsh sit back down. “You don’t look good.”
Marsh was a little premature. He kept breathing deeply. He looked at his skin and began picking, and saw the green-black scales under the sores. He felt the teeth behind his teeth, pushing forward.
No, Marsh was not good. But he could be worse.
Much, much worse.
They had their backs to him again. Marsh stood up once more. This time, he stayed on his feet. This time, he began walking.
He started with Copeland.
Snap.
LEVEL FOUR
The Snakeheads regrouped. They were running out of prey on the lower levels. Something told them they could find more as they rose up.
Like cattle in a chute, they began to stream through the only pathway left in the maze of corridors, stopping when they hit steel walls and turning in the new direction.
Some of their victims, not quite dead, rose up and followed them as soon as the change hit them. It transformed their bodies and healed them, but left them famished.
Clusters of Snakeheads still got stuck in the sally ports as they overloaded the hatches and tried to squeeze through. Biting fights broke out that left some of them wounded and an easy meal for the rest.
But the creatures still made their way to the surface, drawn by the scent of prey, rich with fat, heavy and slow on its feet, noisy and complacent. They twisted upward, more like one long serpent than individual creatures, slithering from a hole in the earth.
LIBERTY MALL, GROUND LEVEL
Twenty-six hundred feet above the Site, people were still arriving. They got into the spirit. Estimates put the crowd at a hundred thousand or more. They all waited, more or less patiently, standing room only, waiting to be funneled inside.
10:49 P.M. A little more than one hour to go, and all the doors would open. Then the fun would really begin.
THIRTY-SIX
A 1975 Trilateral Commission report concluded that the United States was plagued by an “excess of democracy,” when “what is needed is a greater degree of moderation in democracy,” to improve “governability.” Trilat co-founder Brzezinski recommended a study on “Control Over Man’s Development and Behavior” to devise “new means of social control,” especially in “advanced societies.” In the coming New World Order, the natives apparently have yet to be civilized.
—John Whalen and Jonathan Vankin,
The 80 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time
OSCEOLA MUNICIPAL AIRPORT, IOWA
T
he pilot was right on time. Graves met him in the hangar at the small, private airport outside Liberty. He carried only a duffel bag.
After takeoff, Graves sat comfortably in the leather chair of the Gulfstream and watched the Mall recede in the distance. By first light, this would be Ground Zero. People would not believe it, even when they saw the proof on TV, even when it was right in front of their eyes. From the center of the country, the new dominant species on the planet would spread outward.
Graves figured six months, a year at the most, before humanity was reduced to a few thousand people, not including those selected for the special shelters—like him.
The speaker above his seat clicked on. “We’ll be at Dulles before you know it, sir,” the pilot told him.
Graves pressed his own intercom button. “Thank you. Let me know when you’ve got an exact landing time.”
“Yes sir,” the pilot said, and clicked off.
Graves was no movie villain, no mad scientist who sticks around to see if his experiment works. He’d done everything he could. He’d fulfilled his duty to the Company. And Cade? Well, if Cade made it out in one piece, he could witness the new world. The Company could try to fit him into its plans then.
He had one last job to do; a reward, or a punishment, depending on the loyalty of his aides.
Just before he’d left the Site, he’d called Book and Bell from their quarters to his office. He figured they would be waiting there by now. He took out his sat-phone and dialed his own line.
It rang three times before Bell picked up. She always was the curious one.
“Put me on speaker,” he ordered. He could picture them both, standing more or less at attention in front of the desk, more or less baffled.
“Where are you?” Bell asked. “The cells have been opened, and the fail-safes are down. It’s a nightmare down on Level Five, and I don’t think it’s going to stay contained.”
“It’s not,” Graves said. “Within a few hours, everyone at the Site will either be infected or dead.”
Silence. He quite liked imagining the shock on their faces.
“You’re gone, aren’t you?” Bell again. Her voice was flat.
“Approaching cruising altitude,” Graves agreed. “But I trust you to monitor the situation.”
Book finally spoke up. “You’ve fucking killed us, haven’t you, old man?”
“I wouldn’t repay your service like that,” Graves said. “Look on the desk.”
By now, they would have seen the vials and the jet injector guns he’d left for them.
“This is the new, final strain of the virus,” he explained. “You’ll retain most of your intellect, probably most of your memories as well. You’ll be the Alphas of the new people. Stronger than the basic-model Snakehead. Faster, too. And much smarter. Within a few hours, there will be thousands of those creatures, basically mindless, operating only on instinct. They will be looking for leadership. This is your chance to forge your own nation.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Bell screeched.
Book didn’t say anything.
“I’m offering you this duty and this reward,” he said. “I hope you choose to accept it.”
Bell began to scream other things at him, but he shut off the phone.
Graves was done. He’d completed his mission. It had taken him almost fifty years and dozens of false starts and aborted plans, but he’d done it.
Tomorrow, he would turn on the TV, and he would be living in the new world.
He pressed the intercom button again. “Tell me, is there any booze on this thing? I feel like celebrating.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
1951—Antarctica—An expedition is sent to the Arctic to retrace the steps of the Pabodie explorers, with the hope of finding some trace of the discoveries left behind. After a brief radio report of finding what appeared to be an alien craft, the expedition lost all contact during a massive storm. No survivors were found.
—BRIEFING BOOK: CODE NAME: NIGHTMARE PET
B
ell burst through the stairwell door, putting as much distance between herself and Book as she could. She knew he was bugnuts enough to look at being a six-foot lizard as a bright spot on his résumé.
She hadn’t signed on for that. And even though Graves had locked the Site down, there were still ways out. She knew the place as well as he did. Maybe better.
She would never use the hypo he’d given her. She had her sidearm, and she’d put that in her mouth first. All she had to do was make it to the surface.
The elevators wouldn’t be anything but coffins now. The stairwells would be full of Snakeheads. There were only one alternate route. She just had to get there alive.
She heard a tack-tack-tack on the floor behind her. She glanced back, and realized she wasn’t merely running now.
She was running from something.
A lone Snakehead was bounding after her, using arms and legs, on all fours.
Bell grabbed her gun, but the tack-tack-tack stopped. Oh shit, she thought, in the split second before the Snakehead landed on her. It had leaped through the air and taken her down.
The A/A fatigues had incorporated body armor, which protected her a bit. But it wouldn’t keep the Snakehead from chewing through her neck.
She managed to flip over and get her hand up, but her gun was somewhere far away, and the creature was lunging in for the kill.
Something grabbed it by the snout. Something yanked hard, pulling its jaws back toward the ceiling, until the creature’s head touched its back. Bones snapped through the scales at its throat.
The Snakehead was tossed aside, out of her field of vision.
Bell only really got scared then.
Cade stood above her. She looked into his eyes. And if he was frightening before, now he was terrifying. Because now he was angry, and he let her see it.
LEVEL FIVE
Hewitt and Reynolds were the only ones inside the Black Site who were not trapped. They could fold themselves into shadows and emerge outside at any time they wanted.
But to them, the sounds of pain and torment, the rending and tearing of human flesh, were like grand opera delivered via cocaine injection. Everywhere they went, there was more to see, more to hear, more to sense.
The Shadowmen hung on the walls and watched as the Snakeheads ran down former friends, coworkers and prisoners alike. Some died fast, while others began the insanely painful process of turning.
The Snakeheads had little interest in the Shadowmen. In fact, they seemed to actively avoid the darkness, as if they knew something even more unnatural lurked there.
It didn’t reduce the Shadowmen’s fascination one bit. They were like kids in a toy store, promising, “Just five more minutes, just five more minutes.”
The Shadowmen found an empty corridor. The cells had already been picked clean by the Snakeheads. Only bodies and the echoes of screams remained.
Then they saw Barrows cautiously working his way down the cell block, looking for an exit.
Behind the darkness that hid their faces, both Hewitt and Reynolds broke out into huge smiles.
They’d never liked that little prick.
Their talents were not as obvious as Cade’s. Their abilities were not made for direct confrontations.
But there were other punishments, other tortures than the merely physical.
And they finally had Zach where they wanted him: alone.
LEVEL TWO
Book picked up the vial Graves left for him with only a moment’s hesitation.
Bell ran out of the office as fast as she could.
She knew him better than he thought.
Book sat in an office chair in front of Graves’s desk. He was only playing at making a decision, he knew. He sat there not because he had anything to consider, but because he was scared.