The Silent Army
Authors: James Knapp
Table of Contents
Praise for
State of Decay
“Knapp’s intense debut is a high-adrenaline thriller that takes the familiar zombie story down a radically new path. . . . [His] writing is sharp and his fast and furious plot twists keep the pages turning. . . . Fans of zombie fiction and readers looking for a good thrill will find it here.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Will appeal to readers who like Jonathan Maberry’s zombie thriller
Patient Zero
, and fans of gritty SF author Richard K. Morgan (
Altered Carbon
) will enjoy it as well. Highly recommended.”
—
Library Journal
ALSO BY JAMESKNAPP
STATE OF DECAY
ROC
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
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First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, October 2010
Copyright © James Knapp, 2010
eISBN : 978-1-101-46452-6
All rights reserved
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For Kim
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Big credit to my test readers, editor, and copyeditor, who help me be the best I can.
Also, to the mouse who lived in my wall and wouldn’t stop chewing the woodwork. You kept me awake and made me write. I’m sorry one of my cats ate you.
1
Smolder
Nico Wachalowski—Royal Plaza Hotel
Some things you never forget. For me, the thing I couldn’t leave alone was the way Faye looked at me just before the panel slammed shut between us. I remembered the fire raging behind her when I took her by the arm. When she pushed me away, her hand was cold. The big revivor shoved me back, and when the panel started to close, she looked me in the eye. I was sure an automaton couldn’t have looked at me like that. It was the last time I ever saw her.
“Revivors aren’t people,”
someone had once said to me. “Remember that.”
“I know what they are,” I had answered.
But I didn’t.
Everything should have been different. If I couldn’t save her, I should have at least put her to rest. I never should have done what I did. The Leichenesser would have destroyed her body, but I’d removed the capsule myself. The soldiers didn’t get her either. When I had my chance to put an end to it, I couldn’t. I put her right into the hands of Samuel Fawkes.
The rain was beating down, streaking diagonally across the glow of the one remaining streetlight. The hotel across the street was dark. It hadn’t been occupied in years and no one had come or gone for hours, but it wasn’t empty. The satellite confirmed it was tapping power off the grid, and had identified multiple heat signatures inside. Someone was there.
A message from the SWAT leader came in over my JZ implant. The words floated in front of the fogged windshield.
They’re inside. We’re just waiting on confirmation.
Things stayed quiet after the attacks, at first. For a week or two, revivors were news again, and images of their reanimated corpses stalking the streets alongside the National Guard circulated day and night. The questions the government didn’t want anyone asking got asked again as people looked at the images and wondered what signing up for revivor status really meant. The footage of the walking-dead soldiers so close up disturbed them, and for a while they wondered, Was avoiding third-tier status while keeping out of the grinder really worth becoming one of them? There were protests and debates and investigations, until public opinion tired of the whole thing and the buzz moved out to the fringe, where it was mostly forgotten. It wasn’t until two months ago that, out of nowhere, a bomb went off at the Concrete Falls recruitment center, where they did most of the city’s Posthumous Service signups. Despite the initial backlash against revivors, the facility was turning bigger numbers than ever. The economy tanked, and holdouts were lining up to trade their third-tier status for second. A spike in PS recruits put numbers at a five-year high. Concrete Falls had supplied the military with greater numbers of revivors than anywhere else in the country, but not anymore. No one claimed responsibility.
It had been a dead end until the group moved again. Information trolled off the communications networks suggested another high-profile strike was being organized, and this time we caught it early. No target had been confirmed, but both the seller and the buyer were involved in the previous bombing—I was sure of it. A shipment of heavy explosives had been smuggled into the country, to Royal Plaza, where it was about to change hands. There was a lot of pressure to put a name, any name, to the Concrete Falls attack, and to bring the people in.
My old friend and tech man, Sean Pu, was the one who tracked them down. The two of us went way back, having served together in the grind. He’d saved my life back then, and two times since. He had a big interest in the case, and for some reason he didn’t want me on it. Something had him nervous and although he never said anything, another agent, Mike Vesco, was brought in to take point. I was being edged out completely, until wire-taps uncovered illegal revivors at the site.
Sean had saved my life three times, but two years ago things had become more complicated; Sean turned out to be something other than what I thought he was, something he’d hidden very well. I always thought he was my right-hand man, but it turned out I was wrong, and it was the other way around. I was his right hand, and he used me as a fist that he sometimes struck hard with. The fact that he kept up that lie for so long didn’t jibe with what I knew about him. I hadn’t decided yet where we stood.
Whatever his reasons, he wanted me kept out of this one, but impounding revivors on UAC soil still fell into my jurisdiction. After Fawkes’s attack, no one wanted revivors in the city. If he decided to keep me involved, it was because he thought he could control me. I wondered how much longer that would last.
A helicopter floated between the buildings high overhead. The hotel was being monitored from the air, and the scanner had isolated twelve voices inside.
This is Vesco. We have confirmation. The shipment and the buyer are both on-site. At least six revivors are confirmed inside as well.
Roger that.
Move into position
, I told them.
I pushed open the door and stepped out into the rain. Sticking to the shadows, I headed toward the building.
Wait for my signal.
The building’s layout was projected via my implant back onto my retinas so that it glowed softly against the dark alleyway. I pinpointed the revivor signatures, and placed them over the map. Most of them were on the first floor.
Up ahead, under a rusted fire escape, a fire exit led inside. I flashed my badge at the scanner there, issuing a federal override and suppressing any alarm they had rigged. A light on its plastic housing flickered and turned green. When the bolt snapped, I drew my gun and went inside.
I pulled the door shut, blocking the sound of the rain behind it. Inside it was dark. I adjusted my visual filter to let in more light and looked around.
I’m in.
There was a swinging door ahead of me, and I pushed it open into an old kitchen area. Thermal signatures from rats scattered when I stepped through, and disappeared into the walls. The short-order line was covered in grease and dust, with spiderwebs stretched between stray pots and pans that still hung over it. Brown water had collected in one corner near a crack in the wall.
They’re working out of the large, highlighted area,
Sean said.
I’m still trying to pinpoint the shipment.
Understood.
The area he referred to might have been a restaurant or bar at one time. Corridors headed off in four directions from there, three of them flanked by small hotel rooms. Five of those rooms had a revivor signature inside.
Opening the kitchen door a crack, I used a backscatter filter to peer into the walls on the other side. There were two cameras hidden behind the tiles there, one watching the kitchen and one watching a corridor to the left.
I’ve got some security here. Visuals will be offline for a minute.
Roger.
The baffle screen would disrupt the cameras, but also my internal recording buffer. They’d send someone to check out the disturbance, but I didn’t need long.
I slipped past the camera and headed down the corridor. There were a few rooms on the south side of the area. Two of the rooms had revivor signatures present.
I’m past the cameras and heading into the room on the right. You see it?
I have you.
I listened at the door but didn’t hear anyone inside. Sticking close to the wall, I reached out and tried the knob. It was locked.
Give me an override on the door.
Done.
I showed my badge to the scanner and the bolt clicked. No one inside moved or spoke. Using the backscatter, I looked through the door. No one was waiting on the other side.
I pushed open the door and slipped through. There were more cameras mounted in the ceiling but they were turned away, watching the bed.
We’re picking up some activity in there. How long, Wachalowski?
Not long.
The hotel room was lit by simulated candlelight. As soon as I was inside, I caught a blast of perfume and damp air. There was a water stain on the far wall where a strip of wallpaper had been torn away. The bed was made and the blankets turned down. The revivor signature was coming from the bathroom.
Moving into the room, I noticed something under the bed.
Hold on.
Across from the foot of the bed I saw the revivor through the open bathroom door. It was standing in the dark with its back to me, looking into the mirror over the sink. It was female, with stick-thin legs and a pair of sheer briefs hanging from a flat behind. It wore a wig the color of bubblegum.
I got down on one knee and looked under the bed. In the shadows, I saw a pair of bare feet, toes down.
“She put her there,” the revivor said from the bathroom. When I looked, it still had its back to me.
I grabbed the ankles, and the skin was cold. Keeping out of range of the cameras, I dragged a second female revivor out from under the bed. It didn’t have a signature.
“Who did?” I asked. In the bathroom, the revivor just kept staring in the mirror. I left the body and moved in behind it.
SWAT, get ready to move on my mark.
Roger.
I came within a foot of it, until I saw its eyes reflected back in the mirror. It had a pair of large, bare breasts thrust out in front of it with the characteristic dark gray nipples and black veins tracing the curves. Underneath them, ribs stood out, and down the middle of its back, I could see the knobs of its spine. When I leaned in, I caught a whiff of decomposition underneath heavy perfume. Wherever the thing was made, it was a botch job. The inhibitors were failing, and the body was beginning to rot.
“Who put the revivor under there?” I asked.
“She did.”
I blinked hard, deactivating the JZI. For a few seconds, I’d be completely offline. The revivor looked at me in the mirror, and met my eye.
“Am I for you?” it asked. I spun it around so it was facing me. I took a photograph from inside my jacket and held it in front of its face.
“Have you seen this woman?” I asked it.
“It’s a revivor.”
“I know that. Have you seen her?”
“No.”
“Do you know the name Faye Dasalia?”
The factory fire where I’d last seen her burned for three months straight. When it finally died down to the point where it could be scrubbed, there was nothing left. There was no way to know if Faye or any of the other revivors had come out of there intact, or where they’d gone if they had.
It looked up from the picture, focusing on me again.
“I don’t know that name.”
I blinked and the JZI reinitialized. Before it could say anything else, I touched the scanner to the back of its neck and squeezed the contact, firing a wire filament up into the spine. It made contact with the primary revivor’s node, and the body went rigid for a second before it went limp. I caught it as it started to fall.
Sean, Vesco, I have a connection.
You dropped. What happened?
That was Vesco. He’d been keeping an eye on me, a little too closely. Someone had their hooks in him.
Repeat: you dropped. What happened?
Cut the chatter and wait for my signal.
The revivor felt cold through my wet shirt. Hoisting it up, I eased it back into the bathtub.
The data miner started boring through the security they’d installed on it. A central command was being used to control them, which meant they needed an open connection to each revivor. A centralized hub like that, in the hands of an amateur, could allow access to all their systems if you made a direct connection with one of the revivor nodes. I was counting on that.
On the edge of my peripheral vision I could see audio waves piped in from the eye in the sky. The analyzer was pulling out three voices spiking over the haze of conversation. They were coming from the basement level, where a second group of revivors were located.
The miner drilled down and opened a channel. Using the JZI, I joined the revivor network.
Node count: eleven.
Five upstairs. The rest had moved to the basement. The link went green, and I tapped into the central node. They’d put plenty of security on all the typical channels, but sure enough, the revivor spokes were wide open.
I’m in.
Moving in now.
I started pulling the files. Less than ten seconds later, I heard a boom that vibrated through the floor. The audio being monitored spiked, and I heard shouting as footsteps tromped down the hallway. The last of the files came through, and I broke the connection to the revivor.
The door opened and a man came through, pointing an automatic pistol. I fired twice and he pitched back, his gun clattering across the floor.
“This way!” someone yelled from outside.
I picked up the pistol and handed it to a SWAT officer as I stepped back out into the hallway. Several more of them had men under armed guard.
“This is a raid! Get on the ground now!”
Down the hall, uniformed men were holding rifles on three guys. Two were in sports jackets and the last was in his underwear, holding a balled-up bedsheet to his chest. Mike Vesco waded through the mess, holding up his badge.
“Drop it and get down!”
“Step away from the—”
A high-pitched hiss blasted through the air back in what used to be the hotel lounge. Behind the bar a white light flared up as smoke blew through the seams of a computer chassis.
“Get an extinguisher over there, goddamn it!”
Watch those exits.
Down a side hall, hotel room doors were hanging open as SWAT cleared the rooms. Through one of the doorways I saw an overweight, middle-aged man standing naked with his hands up. A revivor was bound on the floor next to the bed, gagged and handcuffed.
Do we have a lock on the shipment?
Negative.
In the next room down was the only guy who hadn’t gotten caught with his pants down. He was an Asian man, dressed to the nines, with an expensive watch and long, thick hair. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, unconcerned. There was no revivor with him.