The King of Plagues jl-3

by Jonathan Maberry

  “God,” she whispered, and her dark eyes went wide.

  “At the risk of sounding terribly macho, Doc, I want to find them and shoot them. A lot.”

  She nodded. “I’ll load the gun.”

  Then something occurred to me. “Hey, didn’t you say that you gave a copy of your Goddess report to Grace?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s funny, because she never mentioned it to me, and neither did Church. When did you give it to her?”

  “At the end of August.” Circe looked down at her hands. “I tried to call her the next day, but she was already involved in something. I never found out what it was. Then a couple of days later I heard that she died.”

  Damn. Bull’s-eye, right in the heart.

  I closed my eyes. The whole mess with the Dragon Factory and the Jakobys started on the twenty-eighth. Grace died on August 31. Because of her the world didn’t die on September 1. The ache in my chest was so fresh, so raw, that I wanted to scream. I could see every line, every curve, of Grace’s beautiful face. I could smell the scent of her, taste her lips, feel the solid, lithe warmth of her in my arms.

  I felt something warm on my forearm and for a single crazy moment I thought that somehow Grace had reached out of those shadows to reassure me. But when I opened my eyes I saw that it was Circe O’Tree’s hand on my arm.

  “I’m sorry, Joe,” she said.

  I took a breath and shook my head. Circe moved her hand away, a little embarrassed.

  “I don’t think your report was ignored,” I said, my voice a bit thick. “I don’t think Grace ever had a chance to pass it along.”

  Circe looked depressed. “God, I would hate to think that we could have somehow prevented this. The Hospital and the rest.”

  “Let’s not Monday-morning quarterback it. We’re doing good work here. We’ll get this stuff into MindReader and who knows? We might actually be somewhere.”

  Circe nodded but didn’t comment.

  I snapped my fingers. “Wait … you said there were ten plagues. River of blood, darkness, frogs, ghats, flies, pestilence, boils, rain of fire, and locusts. That’s only nine. What’s the last one?”

  All the blood drained from her face. “The last one is the worst of all. It’s the one that finally broke Pharaoh’s resolve and made him free the captive Israelites.”

  “What was it?” I asked, but I thought I already knew, and the knowledge scared the shit out of me.

  She recited the passage in a hollow voice. “This is what the Lord says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again.’”

  She paused and watched my face as the horror sank in.

  “The tenth plague is the death of the firstborn children of the entire country.”

  Interlude Thirty

  Crown Island

  Six Weeks Ago

  On the morning of the first of November, Toys walked down to a deck that overlooked a particularly lovely stretch of the island’s rocky coastline. He sat in a deck chair, alone with thoughts that had become increasingly troubled and convoluted.

  Toys heard a soft footfall and turned to see that Rafael Santoro stood alarmingly close. Few people were able to sneak up on Toys. Peripheral awareness was something he prided himself on, and he was immediately irritated.

  Santoro held two steaming cups in his hands. “May I join you?”

  Four or five variations of “go fuck yourself” wriggled on Toys’ lips, but he held his tongue and ticked his head toward the other lounge chair. Santoro handed him a cup and lowered himself onto the chair.

  The view was spectacular. The sun had risen above the rippling waters of the St. Lawrence River, red and orange fire igniting from a million sharp wave tips. The rocky edge of the island was marshy, with tall bulrushes through which blue herons picked their way with the delicacy of monks.

  Toys cut a covert glance at Santoro, but the little man seemed not to notice. He sipped his tea and appeared to be fascinated by the dragonflies flitting among the reeds. The Spaniard had an interesting face, like one of the medieval saints on the tapestries in the dining hall: high cheekbones, hooded eyes, full lips, and a light in his eyes that suggested a complex inner life. The man’s appearance was so strangely at odds with what Toys knew about him: torture, extortion, terrorism, mass killings, and personal murders so numerous that they were recounted in summary form.

  The Spaniard sipped his tea. “Tell me, my friend,” he said softly. “How are you enjoying life as the Conscience to the King of Plagues?”

  “So, tell me,” Toys said after a few minutes, “what do I do as ‘Conscience’?”

  “That depends on you, and on your King.”

  Toys snorted. “I’m still adjusting to the concept of Sebastian as a king.”

  “You find it amusing?”

  “Amusing? Not in the least,” he said, and that was truer than his tone conveyed. “Though this whole setup seems a bit dodgy. It’s more like a movie than real life.”

  “But it is life,” observed Santoro. “The world does not turn by itself. It requires that kings step up to lead.”

  “Very profound.”

  “It’s true. The Seven Kings have always existed. I speak in the abstract. Before the Kings there were others. Always others. It is a necessary evil, yes?”

  “‘Evil’ is an interesting word choice.”

  Santoro smiled thinly. “It is evil, by the standards of the sheep.” He gestured with his mug to the unseen lands beyond the sunrise. “But evil is a concept constructed by man, and therefore it is subject to laws and interpretations. If we were subject to the same laws we would have to own guilt for what we do, but we do not acknowledge the laws of any land. We maintain the conqueror’s point of view, which is self-justifying.”

  “How so?”

  “Tell me: who was more evil, Alexander the Great or Adolf Hitler?”

  “Hitler.”

  “Ah, but you say that without considering it. Hitler is regarded as evil because he slaughtered millions of people and tried to conquer Europe. By the standards of those who defeated him, he was evil. Alexander tried to conquer the entire world, a process that resulted in a higher percentage of deaths than during Hitler’s war.”

  “Hitler tried to exterminate whole races of people.”

  “Alexander issued challenges to cities and nations. If they surrendered to him, he let them live, and even preserved their cultures. But if they opposed him, he slaughtered them wholesale. He killed the men and sold the women and children into slavery. How is one more moral than the other? Do you want to debate degrees of acceptable genocide?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Toys said, “I don’t.”

  Santoro nodded and they watched the sun climb higher. In the glow of the new sun his saintly face was beatific. It troubled Toys and he turned away.

  Santoro asked, “Do you feel it’s wrong?”

  “Right and wrong is another discussion I don’t want to have.”

  “That is as it should be, yes?”

  Toys looked at him in surprise. “How so?”

  “Well, my friend, if we are to accept that we are conquerors in the purest and oldest sense of that word, and if that means that what we do is governed by rules we set which, by their nature, are outside of the laws of any land, then right and wrong are concepts without substance. They don’t apply to us because they are specific to individual cultures and we are not.”

  Toys sighed, feeling himself drawn into the discussion despite his better judgment. “What about basic human rights?”

  “Ask the Chinese that question.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Human rights, as we understand them today, are based upon Western ideals of democracy. These Western va
lues are themselves profoundly bound up with strong individualism, profiteering, and capitalistic competitiveness. The Confucian system does not subscribe to any of those values. There is not a single statement on human rights to be found within the Confucian discourse. Confucianism advocates duties and responsibilities and makes no case at all for individual rights. They believe that they act according to Heaven’s Mandate, in which the ruling body does whatever is necessary for the greater good, even if that means the sacrifice of individuals of the lower classes. Do you follow?”

  “Yes. So … you’re saying that human rights are as subjective as any other set of rules?”

  “Absolutely, and the subjectivity in question is the perspective of the most powerful. That is why when I kill for the Seven Kings I am not committing murder, nor am I participating in acts of terrorism. Those are subjective concepts, and our worldview is grand. It is our mandate from heaven. As a result, we are above all of that, yes?”

  “Just because we say we are?”

  “Yes. And because we have the power to enforce our own and particular set of rules.”

  Toys looked for the hidden meanings in Santoro’s words, but the man was nearly impossible to read. On one hand, he appeared devious and multifaceted, and on the other, his intent seemed dreadfully straightforward. Toys decided to test the waters.

  “What about the people who surround kings?”

  “Which kings?”

  “Oh,” Toys said casually, “take Jesus. King of the Jews. If laws don’t apply to kings, what’s the trickle-down effect? Do the laws of right and wrong apply, say, to Peter?”

  “For betraying Christ?” Santoro gave an elaborate shrug. “He was weak, but he believed, and he recanted his weakness to the point of martyrdom.”

  “And Judas?” He pitched it offhandedly, but Santoro’s face darkened.

  “That was a betrayal because of personal fear—Judas betrayed Christ into torture and death. His was an unforgivable affront that cannot be redeemed. In my pride and sinfulness I have prayed that I could meet such a man and teach his cowardly flesh to sing songs of worship and praise.” As he said this he touched his wrist, and Toys knew that there was a knife hidden beneath the sleeve.

  Santoro smiled and for the first time Toys could see the killer behind the saint. He looked into Santoro’s eyes and saw—nothing. No life, no spark of humanity, no genuine passion. There was absolutely nothing there. It was like looking into the eyes of a monster. A zombie. Or a demon.

  Toys nodded as if agreeing to the sentiment, but inside he shivered. He found it curious that there was such a gap in beliefs between Santoro and the American. He’d suspected as much, hence his reference to Judas, but the Spaniard’s reaction was unexpectedly intense.

  Not a confidant, then. Note to bloody self.

  “What if Judas genuinely believed that Jesus was making a misstep?” he prodded. “I’ve heard a bunch of different theories. One is that Judas may have thought that Jesus was becoming a danger to his own cause and that Judas went through proper channels of the church—the Sanhedrin—to try and head him off at the pass before he got into worse trouble.”

  Santoro said nothing. He listened, eyes narrowed, mouth pursed.

  “Another theory is that Judas was a bit more ‘Old Testament’ than Jesus and he had him arrested in the hopes that once Jesus was in peril he would be forced to reveal all of his glory and power and kick Roman ass.”

  The birds sang for a long time before Santoro answered. He studied Toys, but Toys was too practiced a hand at dissembling to allow anything that he felt to show on his face. He sipped his tea and waited.

  Finally, Santoro said, “You ask troubling questions.”

  “You asked me about Hitler.”

  Santoro nodded, taking Toys’ point. “The question supposes that Jesus was fallible.”

  “Are either of us that inflexible that we think that he wasn’t? Or couldn’t have been? After all, Jesus doubted. He lost his cool and trashed the moneylenders outside of the temple. Let’s face it—the whole point of his being here was to be human. To show that if he, locked in flesh and filled with the full roster of human emotions, can have faith and ultimately do the right thing, then so can we. That all falls down if he was infallible.”

  Santoro nodded again. “Please do not be offended by this,” he said softly, “but you are smarter than you look.”

  Toys gave him a charming smile. “Now why would I be offended at that?”

  “I meant it as a compliment. You are deeper than you appear. People are often fooled by you, yes?”

  Toys shrugged.

  Then Santoro tried to blindside him. “Do you have doubts about what the King of Plagues is doing?”

  Toys was expecting it and he kept his expression and body language casual, as if this were just another part of the same discussion.

  “Sebastian is as fallible as any other man. I love and respect him, and I would kill anyone to keep harm from touching him. You understand that?”

  “Of course.” Santoro’s eyes glittered.

  “But I’m supposed to be his Conscience. His advisor. It’s not that I doubt Sebastian,” he lied. “It’s more that I need to make sure I’m doing my job in the way that best serves him and the Kings.”

  “And the Goddess,” amended Santoro.

  “Of course,” said Toys smoothly. “Sebastian loves her very much.”

  “As do we all.”

  “So … where does ‘conscience’ play into all this?”

  Santoro relaxed slightly. “Conscience is what we choose to make it. The devil on your left shoulder and the angel on your right are slaves to your will.”

  “Ah,” said Toys, as if he understood what that meant. And, with a sinking heart, he did. He stood and tossed the rest of the tea into the river. “This gives me a lot to think about, Rafael. Thanks … . I appreciate it.”

  And may you have an aneurism next time you’re jerking off to a picture of the Goddess, you great freak.

  Santoro inclined his head and sipped his tea.

  Toys thrust his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders in what he hoped would convey a posture of thoughtful introspection, and headed along the path toward the castle.

  As he walked, however, he weighed Santoro’s words against the weight of the conflict within his heart. The devil on your left shoulder and the angel on your right are slaves to your will.

  The cries of the gulls overhead sounded like the screams of drowning children.

  If we were subject to the same laws we would have to own guilt for what we do, but we do not acknowledge the laws of any land. We maintain the conqueror’s point of view, which is self-justifying.

  “Yes,” Toys murmured aloud. “Too bloody right we do.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  Strauss & Strauss Pharmaceuticals

  Jenkintown, Pennsylvania

  December 19, 10:57 A.M. EST

  Amber Taylor sat like a robot in her office. Her hands were folded in her lap, her fingers like sticks of wet ice. Inside her chest her heart was beating too loudly and without rhythm.

  His voice, his words, still echoed in her mind. Do it, he’d said. Do it today or … or …

  Today.

  She was supposed to die today.

  She was supposed to kill today.

  She would never see her babies again.

  She would have to trust that they would keep their word and leave her family alone. He promised they would. If she did what they said. If she became a murderer.

  He had made her swear. On the lives of her children. On the lives of her babies.

  Amber slid open her top desk drawer and stared down at the horrible weapon of destruction that lay there among the pens and paper clips and pushpins.

  A ring of keys.

  They lay there, pretending innocence, looking like nothing. Keys to the lab, to the vault. The keys were right there. No one would think twice if she picked them up, walked out of her office, walked down th
e line of cubicles to the elevator. Took it to the basement. Opened the door to the lab. And the one to the vault.

  The rest was a security code, and that was in her head.

  Simple actions. Each one easy. Each one unobtrusive. So easy.

  After that …

  God.

  Nothing existed beyond that thought except horror. Amber Taylor closed her eyes and prayed. She had not been to church since her husband died. Not even to take the kids. Religion and God were as dead to her as Charlie.

  And then …

  Something happened that had she possessed any faith she might have thought was divine intervention. But Amber lacked that belief, that optimism.

  And yet.

  There was a sound. Five beeps from the PA system and then a voice: “This is a security alert. This is a security alert. All employees are required to turn on your intranet. There is a critical news bulletin from Homeland Security. All employees are required to watch this bulletin. It will be broadcast in real time in sixty seconds. This is not a training exercise.”

  The message repeated.

  Amber blinked several times, unsure of what she was hearing. On the third repeat it logged in: Homeland Security.

  Her hands lifted by reflex, her icy fingers making the necessary keystrokes, logging on, pulling up the intranet.

  The screen changed. First black and then the red, white, and blue eagle shield of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Then the shield dissolved into a man seated in what looked like an airplane seat. He was big, blocky, in his sixties, but he looked strong. Dangerous. Amber could recognize dangerous. He wore tinted glasses, but she knew that if she could see his eyes they would be fierce.

  “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Dr. Bishop, director of special medical services for the United States Department of Homeland Security. You are all probably aware of the tragic event that occurred in London two days ago. The world press has called this an act of terrorism, and so it is. But it is far more than that. The security at the London Royal Hospital was compromised by two or more of the employees at that facility. Those employees did not, however, do this out of choice. They were coerced. A group of terrorists made threats against the families of these people. These threats were as terrible as they were insidious. As a result, good people were forced to do terrible things.”