Part 43 (1/2)

But the San Antonio Zoo didn't have gorillas.

All of this flashed through his head in the time it took to twist around in his seat and look.

There were no gorillas there, of course. This was a restaurant. That would be silly.

But the man who stood in the doorway looked kind of like an ape. Ma.s.sive sloping shoulders, huge chest and arms, thick black hair standing stiff and wiry on his head. And there was something clearly simian about his face. It was very ... well, apelike.

The man wore a black tank top with a symbol printed on it that Donald didn't know. A capital letter A surrounded by a circle. A for what? What team was that? Was it a school? He didn't know.

Donald's thoughts were falling all over one another, trying to find an exit from confusion into understanding. Everyone in the restaurant sat in shocked stillness, each of them struggling to make sense of it, too.

Two other people stood behind the ape-looking man in the tank top. A couple of girls. Chinese or something, Donald couldn't tell. They each held a small portable video recorder.

The big man opened his mouth and roared again.

The sound was so ridiculously loud that it shook the whole place. And it jolted the diners out of their shocked silence. Some of the women screamed. Some of the men cried out in surprise.

One man got to his feet. He was big, too, though well dressed in a very expensive summer-weight suit. Donald thought the man had the air of someone who was used to handling things. Tough-looking.

”Okay, pal,” said the man, ”time to dial it down and hit the road.”

The guy in the tank top said nothing. He smiled, though, and to Donald that smile was every bit as scary as that freaking roar.

Then the ape-guy swung a punch at the diner in the summer suit. Donald saw the look of surprise on the diner's face, but also saw him whip an arm up to block the punch. The incoming blow hit the blocking arm-and bashed it aside like it was nothing. The punch struck the diner on the side of the head. Even from twenty feet away Donald heard the wet-sharp sounds of bones breaking inside the diner's arm and head. The diner's head jerked sideways and lay almost flat on his opposite shoulder; it stayed there as the man's knees suddenly buckled and he fell like a bag of disconnected pieces onto his table. The man's date screamed.

Everyone screamed.

The ape-man reached out and grabbed the screaming date by the throat, tore her out of her seat, lifted her above his head, and threw her across the room.

The last thing Donald saw was the screaming, flailing, flying woman slam into Amanda Shockley with so much force that another wet-sharp crack filled the air.

Then a shadow fell across Donald.

He never saw the hands that grabbed him.

All he saw was Amanda falling, falling, her lovely eyes rolling up, her soft lips open.

And then the world dissolved into red and black and then nothing.

Morro Bay, California Three men who surviving witnesses later described as ”looking like gorillas” got out of a Humvee that had been driven all the way up to the front doors of the Morro Bay Aquarium. A fund-raiser was under way to raise money and awareness of sea lion conservation. A trio played light jazz, and two hundred people with checkbooks and an interest in conservation mingled, drank, ate little crab puffs, and chatted.

Until the three men showed up.

They piled out of their Humvee and without a moment's pause barged through the doors and attacked the crowd. They did not have guns or knives. They used no conventional weapons at all. Instead they picked up people and used them like clubs to batter anyone they could hit. They tore arms and legs out of their sockets-a feat the medical examiner would later argue in court as a physical impossibility-and beat people to death with them. This was refuted, of course, by video footage to the contrary. The exact source of the footage was never determined.

Of the two hundred people at the fund-raiser, one hundred and sixty-one escaped. The others, including all three musicians and seven wait staff, did not.

Chapter Sixty-seven.

The Hangar Floyd Bennett Field Brooklyn, New York Sunday, August 31, 3:23 p.m.

Rudy intercepted me as I approached the conference room. He shook my hand and held it as he asked, ”How are you, Joe?”

”Shaken, not stirred,” I said.

”This isn't a time for jokes.”

”No,” I said and sighed. ”It really isn't. But I got nothing else right now.”

He studied me with his one dark eye. ”No, don't do that. Tell me how you are.”

My instinct was to bark at him like a stray dog and tell him this wasn't the time or place for a therapy session. But I understood where he was coming from. He was the DMS house shrink and I was a senior operator. One who had just come back from two gunfights and might have to do more violence tonight or sometime too d.a.m.n soon. So I took a breath and nodded.

”I'm halfway to being freaked out,” I said quietly. ”There's enough adrenaline in my bloodstream to launch a s.p.a.ce shuttle, and I don't know if I'm ever going to sleep again. All I can see are the faces of ordinary people as I gun them down-women and children, old people, civilians with no part in this.”

”You do know that-”

”Yes,” I interrupted, ”I know that they were infected, that they were already dead. I know that, Rude, and you know how much that helps? It helps about as much as a fresh can of f.u.c.k you.”

”Take it easy, Joe.”

”Don't tell me to-”

He placed a hand on my chest. It was such an oddly intimate a thing to do that it snapped the tether that was pulling me toward rage. He stood there, fingers splayed, palm flat, one eye fixed on mine. And I heard it then, like an audio playback. There was a note of genuine panic in my voice. Not quite hysterical but close enough to feel the heat.

I closed my eyes and nodded. Rudy removed his hand.

”It must have been dreadful down there,” he said quietly.

”Everyone keeps saying that.”

”I imagine so. Have you spoken with the others on your team?”

”We weren't feeling all that chatty.”

”Joe, look at me,” he said, and I opened my eyes. There was compa.s.sion in his expression, but also something harder, sterner. ”Have you, Captain Ledger, senior DMS field commander, spoken with the members of your team?”

I sighed. ”f.u.c.k.”

This wasn't the first time someone had called me on this, on being so wrapped up in my own reaction to the horrors of the war fought by the DMS that I forgot that this wasn't a solo drama. Everyone was feeling it, being changed by it. I'd even thought about that fact while we ran, but I'd stumbled right past the moment where leaders.h.i.+p-real leaders.h.i.+p-might have made lasting difference to my team. Especially to the three newbies.

”I'm an a.s.shole.”

Rudy shook his head. ”We're all experiencing shock. When you have a chance, do what you know you have to do to ameliorate this. As I will when this is over. Like most things, Cowboy, psychological survival is as much an inexact science as it is a work in progress.”