Zero State Read online

  One of the figures knelt in front of him. He recognized the device it held in its gloved hand. A device used for extracting blood.

  In another moment, the figures in the suits had what they wanted.

  Smith knelt on the red dirt and waited for the killing blow. The bullet to the head. The hands that would rend his spinal column from his brain stem.

  It never came.

  He opened his eyes, shaded them with a gloved hand. He watched the three figures in hazmat suits climb into the truck. The vehicle started to roll away. It grew smaller with distance, before disappearing altogether into the haze of the landscape.

  He was alone. He was alive. The sun was hot on his neck and scalp and the air was hot in his lungs. His mouth was as dry as the dirt beneath his knees.

  For a while he knelt there, with no idea of what to do.

  Then he stood and walked back into the cave-like entrance of the facility.

  CHAPTER 20

  Logan left the Paradime campus a few minutes past 8:00am.

  The apartment he and Zoe were renting was thirty minutes away. Instead of going directly there, he drove an additional twenty minutes and stopped at a doughnut shop alongside a highway. He took out his phone—his normal, secure phone, not the phone that went along with the half-false identity he was using at Paradime—which had spent the night in the glove compartment.

  He held down a button and the device powered on.

  He went inside and ordered an ice coffee—decaf, since he'd been up all night and wanted to get some sleep today.

  He sat down on a bench outside while he waited.

  A few minutes went by and the phone vibrated with an incoming message.

  You here?

  Logan typed out a reply.

  Outside. Large iced coffee. Gray sweatshirt and running shoes.

  A man approached. He had shaggy gray hair that was thinning above the forehead. He was ten years older than Logan, maybe twenty, still lean and strong. Someone who had fully rejected middle age. He was dressed like he'd come from a gym or had just finished a run.

  They said hello, shook hands, and walked over to the guy's truck. To a casual observer, they would look like two guys who knew one another from one of the local cycling or triathlon clubs, one of them showing off a new piece of gear.

  In the back of the vehicle was a gym bag. Logan opened it. The main compartment held four black cylinders, each about the size of a roll of quarters. The edges were padded with rubber. A metal ring dangled from the top of each.

  "Ever used one of these before?"

  "No, but I had one used on me last week," Logan said.

  The guy winced. "Ouch. So then you know how they work?"

  Logan held one of the sound grenades in his hand. The dossier Barnes had provided had included some background information about the security staff at Paradime. The people guarding the lab were top-of-the-class material. Every one of them had a college degree and an athletic record. They were the kind of guys that, twenty years ago, would be state police or FBI recruits. Logan knew they would be armed, some with submachine guns. They weren't the type of guys Logan wanted to pick a fight with. They also weren't the type of guys he wanted to have to kill or badly injure.

  If it came down to an altercation, he wanted a non-lethal way of incapacitating the security staff. And he'd been thinking about sound grenades a lot during the past week.

  He'd found the salesman through a secure network he'd used a few times before, but never in this city.

  "These are the real thing," the salesman said, taking Logan's momentary silence as a cue to strengthen the sales pitch. "Direct from manufacturer. No knockoffs. A good choice for committing crime in the sunny state of California. Governor passed that 'criminals with a conscience' bill earlier this year. Reduced sentences for any felony where a perpetrator went out of his way to use a non-lethal weapon."

  Logan nodded. "Headphones?" he asked.

  "Side pocket."

  Logan unzipped another compartment on the bag and pulled out a small plastic case. Inside were two pairs of small devices that looked like hearing aids.

  "Earbuds. They work a little different than the headphones, but they're a little more inconspicuous, and they can be switched on and off."

  "They work as well as the headphones?"

  "As long as you remember to switch them on."

  Logan took out an envelope filled with cash. They'd agreed on a price the day before. Logan waited while the money was counted.

  When the salesman was done, they shook hands.

  "Need anything else, you know how to get in touch."

  ***

  It took thirty minutes to drive to the apartment and another ten to find a spot to park. Inside, Zoe was cooking breakfast. She'd gone for a run and showered. Her laptop was open, the screensaver showing a series of German words with English translations.

  Logan had been carrying a gun when he'd met with the salesman, and he left it on the desk in the corner of the apartment where they were keeping everything related to the job. When you were in a temporary residence like this, it was better to keep anything incriminating in one section. This made it easier to keep track of the things you needed. It also made it easier to pack up if you needed to change locations in a hurry. This was also why they had been living out of their suitcases for the past week. No sense in getting settled in when they weren't staying long.

  Zoe set two plates on the table. Breakfast was eggs, bacon, and spinach.

  "What's your theory?" he asked as they ate. "What do you think we're stealing?"

  She smiled. "Honestly, I hadn't thought about it until now. But I've always been better at that than you, ignoring the things we're supposed to ignore."

  "And I thought I was better at hiding it."

  "Since you've been thinking about it, what do you think it is?"

  "Nothing important. Nothing really important, anyway. I think the only reason we're stealing it is because some director of some department was put in charge of this, and that person wants to meet his or her goals for the quarter. They don't want this marked as incomplete on their review. They want to get their bonus. And they've got enough weight to throw around to push their own projects ahead, even if resources are limited."

  Zoe stared at him a moment, a blank expression on her face. And then she laughed. "When you start thinking like that, it's time for a new line of work."

  Something occurred to Logan. "What if Barnes was lying to us? What if there is no agreement that we get to walk away? All we have is his word."

  "Now that is something I had thought of."

  "And?"

  "We don't fight it, but it doesn't change a thing. With or without their blessing, after this is done, we disappear."

  ***

  After breakfast and a shower, Logan laid down on the bed that he and Zoe had been sharing. He fell asleep easily. He was able to turn off his thoughts when he needed to.

  When he woke it was 5:17pm. Zoe was in the bed alongside him.

  He watched the clock change to 5:18 and then 5:19, and thought, Two days from now, I'll be retired.

  He got out of bed and walked into the next room.

  He picked up one of the sound grenades and examined it. He wanted to test these before he went to work tonight. It wouldn't take long. He just needed to find a secluded spot and pull the pin. They'd need to make sure the grenades worked, and that the earbuds worked.

  Zoe appeared in the doorway to the bedroom. "You only have four of those. Think that's enough?"

  "I'm not planning on needing any of them."

  Zoe was wearing a t-shirt, underwear, socks. Her short hair was mussed. Her body looked hard and toned.

  Logan turned his attention toward her. The kiss caught her off guard. They were still getting used to this, to ignoring boundaries that had previously been in place.

  Her weight felt familiar in his arms as he lifted her and car
ried her back to the bed.

  ***

  They were renting the apartment for a full month, though they would only be there about a week. The owner worked for one of the tech companies in the area, and he'd listed his apartment for short-term rentals while he was traveling abroad. Zoe had arranged the lease via email, so they hadn't met the owner in person. But he'd left a guidebook and a list of local bars and restaurants he recommended, as well as a calendar of events that would be taking place while he was away. This was helpful, since Logan and Zoe were unfamiliar with the city.

  Shortly after 6:00pm, they chose a place from the list of recommendations and went out for dinner. The place they'd decided on was a local park, a ten-minute drive from the apartment. A dozen food trucks had taken up permanent residence around the edges of the park. Wooden picnic tables were scattered throughout, and trees offered plenty of shade.

  Each truck had a different specialty. Gourmet burgers. Fried shrimp. Indian. Thai. Vegetarian. Schnitzel. Logan and Zoe wandered from menu to menu, blending into the crowd. The air was filled with the smell of food cooking over propane stoves and the hum of generators. Nearby, a group of twenty-somethings shouted to one another as they threw a frisbee across an open patch of grass.

  "Burgers?" Zoe said. "I eat the same foods all the time, I'm boring."

  Logan smiled. "A few days from now we might not be in a place that offers a decent burger, we should enjoy one now."

  They ordered the same thing, burgers topped with aged cheddar and avocado, sweet potato fries on the side, bottles of beer from a local brewery. They found seats at one of the wooden tables near the park's center.

  "This feels too normal," Logan said.

  "I think this actually counts as a date," she smirked. "It's awkward for me too."

  "It's... nice." Logan took a bite of his burger. It was nice. The breezy early evening. The food. Zoe's company. For a moment he forgot about the reason they were here, what was waiting for him later that night and in the days ahead.

  "I could get used to this," Zoe said.

  On the other side of the park, someone started screaming.

  CHAPTER 21

  Barnes lay in a thin pool of blood and fluids, his arms and legs held together with rope and tape. The surface beneath him was cold and metal. The compartment was pitch black, the only light a thin line across the bottom of the closed door. He'd figured out that he was in the back of a truck. He couldn't see the walls, but he could sense their dimensions by the boxed-in smell of his dying body.

  They were moving. Through the floor he could feel the vibration of the engine, the roll of the tires.

  They'd been traveling a long time. There had been stops along the way. They'd given him water. They'd given him food, back when he was able to eat, before two figures in hazmat suits had held him down and pushed a needle into one of the bulging veins on his arm.

  He thought he knew what the needle contained. He had the vague memory of telling his captors things he shouldn't have. He tried not to think about what that meant.

  But as the symptoms began to surface, as his internal organs tightened with pain and his temperature climbed and a bloody mixture of fluids began to leak from his body, he was faced with the growing certainty of what they'd done to him.

  He coughed, and the taste of copper and sulfur filled his mouth. He spit. He felt other fluids running out of him, from other places.

  His head felt like a tank had been parked inside it. The surface of his skin boiled with fever. His joints were swollen and painful, and his limbs were numb from being in the same position for hours. His thoughts were fragmented and deformed. Through the delirium, he clung to the idea of getting free, of tearing at his captors hooded suits with his hands, of rubbing his blood and shit in their faces.

  The floor beneath him went still. It took Barnes a moment to realize that they were no longer moving. The engine had been shut off. Through the thin metal walls he could hear the muffled sounds of traffic and crowds of people.

  There was a scrape of metal on metal and light flooded the compartment, as bright as a nuclear explosion. Barnes blinked his eyes frantically, trying to get them to adjust.

  Two shapes climbed through the blinding light and into the back of the truck. They were dressed in hazmat suits. Gloved hands gripped him. The rope and tape were cut from his arms and legs. Pins and needles and pain spread beneath the fevered surface of his body, through his swollen joints and cramped muscles.

  He was pulled onto his feet and dragged through the light.

  A hard shove sent him into a wall of bodies. He shaded his eyes with his hands and saw a woman turn toward him. The expression on her face changed from anger to confusion to terror. She had blood and shit on her. His blood and shit. She screamed.

  He blinked. His eyes finally adjusted to the light.

  Faces. Faces all around him. Men, women, children. He was in a crowd. Their clothes were stained where he had been shoved against them.

  He was in a crowd of people and he was leaking disease from every opening on his body.

  He struggled to speak. "Get away from me."

  Bile and blood rose in the back of his throat and he tried to force it back down.

  "Get... away." The words were followed by a torrent of black vomit that sprayed from his mouth.

  All around him, dozens of people: confused, terrified, screaming. They pushed against each other. Bodies slammed into him and he tried not to touch them.

  Through the fever and the failing of his body's systems, Barnes felt a flood of adrenaline.

  He roared, "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!"

  ***

  A mass of bodies moved through the park, pushing, shoving, fighting one another. It was a free-for-all. A few people were knocked to the ground. Logan stepped into the maelstrom, driving a shoulder into the crowd, and lifted a girl off the ground before she could be trampled. The instant she was on her feet she started running.

  Logan and Zoe moved against the stream, toward the point everyone was running from. It was an unspoken decision. They had training. They had guns. They had dealt with worse than whatever could have invaded this peaceful park on this quiet evening, or so they thought.

  The crowd thinned around them. The only ones left were the stragglers and the wounded and the people who'd had enough sense to let the madness pass before making their exit.

  Logan saw what they had been running from.

  A devil walked through the park.

  The man that stood ahead of them was naked, heavily muscled, with red skin. It turned toward them.

  They both recognized the face. Zoe said the name.

  "Barnes."

  He stared back. He looked confused, terrified, and grateful.

  He took a few steps forward, then stopped himself when they stepped back. Logan had drawn his gun.

  Barnes knelt, looking at his hands, his blood-covered skin.

  "That shit you took off the island," Barnes shouted toward them. "They have it. They injected me with it."

  The thought was too big to fit inside Logan's head. "Who?" he called back. "Who did this?" They kept their distance, talking like two people on opposite sides of a canyon.

  "The fucking mutants from the island. There's more of them. They know who you are. They came here for you. Because you killed some of them."

  Logan looked around, the empty park suddenly threatening. "We need to get out of here," he said to Zoe.

  "You can't leave me like this," Barnes shouted.

  "We'll get help!"

  "What the fuck is going to help me? I just gave this shit to half the people who were here."

  "What do you want us to do?"

  Barnes looked around. He wiped blood away from his nose and eyes. "You've got to burn me."

  Logan stared at Barnes until he knew the man was serious. His eyes scanned the park until he found what he was looking for.

  He walked away from Zoe, ov
er to one of the food trucks. A radio was still playing behind the counter, the generator was still humming behind the back bumper. Next to the generator was a red plastic jug. Logan lifted it. Gasoline sloshed inside.

  "No," Zoe said as he walked back to her. Her eyes were wet. "You can't be serious."

  Logan had already shut off that part of himself.

  Zoe said, "Shoot him first, burn the body."

  "We can't get that close to him. He needs to light it." An hour ago he'd been in bed with her. A few minutes ago he'd been sitting across from her, making eye contact, his leg pressing against hers underneath the picnic table. Now he was watching himself from a distance and his voice was flat, cold, without emotion.

  Logan threw the jug toward Barnes. It bounced on the ground in front of the man's bare knees.

  Barnes stood, unscrewed the cap, and poured the contents over his head. Fuel washed away some of the blood. The smell of gasoline drifted through the air. When the jug was empty, Barnes tossed it aside.

  In the near distance, there was the sound of police sirens.

  "I gave this to people," he shouted. "This shit in my blood. When they let me out, I gave this to people in the crowd. You've got to make a call, you've got to let them know. And you've got to call the company, tell them what happened." He took a deep breath. "I need a match," he said.

  There were a few things Logan made a habit of carrying. Lock picks. Some kind of blade. A length of paracord. A cigarette lighter.

  He pulled the last item from his pocket. It was the cheap plastic variety, bought for a dollar at a gas station.

  He tossed the lighter. Barnes snatched it out of the air.

  Barnes took a series of short, shallow breaths. He flexed his muscles. He looked like a bodybuilder psyching himself up before going on stage.

  "Don't let me burn too long," he said.

  Logan raised his gun, set the sights on the center of Barnes's massive chest.

  "Hey Barnes," Logan said.