Zero Day

by Ezekiel Boone

  And then that message started to loop. They listened to it four or five times before Rodriguez reached out and turned off the radio.

  All of them, including Gordo, Shotgun, and Teddie, stared at Rodriguez.

  “You heard the man,” Rodriguez said, “we’re standing by for further orders.”

  White House Manhattan, New York, New York

  New York City. Shining. Eternal. Untouched.

  Well, not completely untouched. The air force and the Army Corps of Engineers had turned more than a thousand yards north of 122nd Street into rubble, creating an impassible no-man’s-land protected by a hodgepodge of National Guard, army, and Marines. The men and women were armed with a mix of flamethrowers and machine guns: the guns for anybody who tried to enter, and the flamethrowers for any unwanted eight-legged guests that might be hitchhiking their way in. They didn’t have as many flamethrowers as they needed, but an engineer out in California had designed a kick-ass homemade version that could be turned out in any well-equipped metal shop or by anybody with a 3-D printer that worked in metal instead of plastic. For once, Manny was thankful for the whole hipster idea of “makerspaces.” They’d turned out nearly two hundred of the flamethrower nozzles yesterday, and the guy in charge of manufacturing them—a dude with a topknot who was so ridiculously good-looking that it actually made Manny angry—said they’d be able to make closer to five hundred a day going forward. The best thing was that whoever designed the flamethrowers had made them so they worked equally well with gasoline and with those barbecue propane tanks. It wasn’t perfect, but it beat a can of Raid any day.

  They’d have been able to make even more of the flamethrowers if New York City was still one unified, glorious beast, but the entire island of Manhattan had been turned into a no-go zone: tunnels and bridges destroyed with explosives, the Hudson and East Rivers natural barriers. Fortress Manhattan. Along with the thousands of soldiers, there were also private citizens, all making sure that Manhattan stayed untouched. The Bronx and Brooklyn and Queens were on their own, but Manhattan was free of spiders.

  So far, it was working, although Manny knew it was just luck: all it would take was one infected person, one lousy unseen spider, and the whole thing would fall apart. On top of which, Manny was now worried about the fealty of the entire armed forces. The coup on the USS Elsie Downs was a done deal. Was the rest of the military far behind?

  Judging by the reaction to their appearance in New York City, it was something to worry about. Stephanie needed to deliver something better than just a line in the sand. He happened to agree with her: If the only way to annihilate these eight-legged monsters was to also annihilate the human race, what was the point? It was smarter to take their chances that the spiders would go back into hibernation or return to whatever hell they came from. But in times like these, the rhetoric of inaction was always defeated by the rah-rah-rah of destruction. The intellectual argument usually fell in the face of somebody who could make smashing stuff sound exciting.

  All of this was made worse by the scale of what had happened on the USS Elsie Downs. This wasn’t just a few dozen sailors disobeying orders. This was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in conjunction with the senior officers of a Ford-class aircraft carrier. Broussard’s message of fighting back whatever the costs resonated.

  What he needed, Manny knew, was something concrete from Melanie.

  Which was a problem, because Melanie was still on the carrier and he had no way of getting in touch with her. All his faith rested in the idea that Melanie had an answer and that Billy Cannon and Special Agent Riggs were going to be able to get his ex-wife and her colleagues off that tub. In the meantime he was keeping pretty busy trying to help Steph make sure that the rest of what was left of America didn’t go down the drain, and trying to figure out how long they could stall before Broussard was able to Dr. Strangelove the country into oblivion.

  God, he missed normal politics. He missed the way it could be grand at times, how there were moments when everybody came together to do the right thing. That wasn’t where he excelled, though. What he loved, and what he was aching for, was the petty horse-trading, the maneuvering, the way he could count votes and twist arms and engage in backroom quid pro quos and emerge the winner.

  He realized he’d completely missed whatever it was the woman in front of him had been talking about. She was a city engineer and had come in with some plan involving . . . the sewers? He nodded and dismissed her, and she left the room with a walk that was positively jaunty. At least somebody was happy, he thought.

  He looked at his watch. Nearly eleven o’clock at night. Late. But there was still work to do. He got up from his desk and poked his head out the door into the small antechamber where his administrative assistant was typing on a laptop. The admin, a soldier named Champ Jones, was on loan, but in the few hours since Manny had acquired Champ, he’d already decided to poach him permanently.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Nothing, really. Just stretching my legs. Who’s up next?”

  He knew there was a line out in the hallway. Even at this time of night, there was a line. Part of his job was to lighten the president’s load, and even though all the standard parts of the job had been stripped away—nobody was waiting to corral him to get their cousin’s nephew a White House internship—the state of emergency and the coup meant a new can of worms.

  “Cathy Silverberg.”

  “From the mayor’s office? How long has she been waiting? You should have bumped her to the front.” He could hear that his tone was too harsh. Scolding.

  “She just arrived, sir. After your last appointment was already in the office.”

  And now he felt like a dick.

  “Okay. Send her in. And get me a Diet Coke, please.” He turned, stopped, and then looked at Champ. “You’re doing a good job. Keep it up.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Manny went back into his office and sat down. They were operating out of an immense town house on the Upper East Side, just a block from Central Park. There were official offices they could have occupied, but given that they were in the middle of a coup, it had made more sense to pick something a little more difficult to find. There were nearly a dozen properties like this spread throughout New York City—buildings that looked like private residences but were actually property of good old Uncle Sam. He didn’t even want to think about what the open-market value of a property like this would be. Forty, fifty million?

  It was close to ten thousand square feet, with a dozen bedrooms—ten of which had been converted into offices—multiple living rooms and a grand dining room, and had enough glitz and gilt to make even the tackiest president happy. And that was just aboveground. After purchasing the building through a series of shell corporations during the economic crash of the aughts, the Secret Service dug out the basement and added three lower levels. Two levels of conference rooms and offices, and the very deepest level a bomb shelter. As it was, the entire building had been hardened: windows capable of withstanding a bazooka blast, reinforced concrete, all that sort of crap that got the Secret Service folks excited. If you were upstairs, you were probably safe from any conventional terrorist attack, and on the lower levels you were safe from anything within reason—the caveat being within reason. Manny knew that if Broussard decided the only course of action was to remove President Pilgrim from the face of the earth, the phrase within reason was headed out the window. The full might and fury of the United States military wasn’t going to be stopped by a town house on the Upper East Side. Thankfully, going by the fact that they hadn’t been shot out of the air as they’d fled the USS Elsie Downs, and that the temporary White House—White House Manhattan was what everybody was calling it—wasn’t just a smoking crater, Broussard wasn’t ready to go that far.

  Yet.

  He looked out the window. He was on the top floor of the town house, in one of the bedrooms that had been converted to an office. Steph’s office was next door, which had been
a fight. The Secret Service wanted her belowground at all times, but Steph won that argument, throwing back their own claims that the whole residence was hardened. Right now, however, she was a floor down, in an actual bedroom, sleeping. That had been another argument—one that he’d won. She needed to sleep. He’d handle everything else for now and catch a few winks in the wee hours of the night. Although it would help if Champ brought him his darn soda.

  As if his thoughts could produce actions, Champ came through the door holding a glass full of the dark elixir that powered Manny through his days, followed by Cathy Silverberg.

  They’d met a few times over the years. She had a relationship with the mayor that was analogous to his own with Steph. Well, probably without the affair part, he thought. But he knew both Silverberg and the mayor believed that if things had shaken out just a little bit differently, they, and not Steph and Manny, would have been the ones occupying the White House. Or, in this case, White House Manhattan.

  He shook Silverberg’s hand and then took a sip of his soda. The glass was cold enough in his hand that he already felt the relief before he even had any liquid in his mouth. But as he drank he knew something was desperately wrong.

  “Champ!” he barked at his admin before the soldier had a chance to close the door. “What the hell is this?” He held up the glass.

  “Diet Pepsi, sir.”

  Whatever warm feelings he’d had for his new assistant fled. Manny stared at Champ. “Diet Pepsi?”

  “Yes, sir. There’s no Diet Coke on the premises.”

  “You’re telling me that the United States government can secretly own a terrorist-proof town house with an extra-double-secret three-level basement in the middle of Manhattan, a block from Central Park, and we can’t stock the place with Diet Coke? You expect me to drink . . . this?” He held out the glass as if it were an infectious dying animal.

  Champ took the glass. “Do you want me to send someone out into the city, sir?”

  Silverberg laughed. She was somewhere close to Manny’s age. She had her brown hair twisted up off her shoulders and was professionally dressed. She looked more put together than Manny did; he was still wearing the same suit, wrinkled and mussed, although somebody had acquired a new shirt so he could replace the bloodstained one.

  Silverberg said, “There’s a bodega a couple blocks away. I’ll give you the address. There will be a pair of cops in front of it to prevent looting. Tell them you’ve got orders from the mayor’s office. Tell them Cathy Silverberg authorized it.”

  “No,” Manny said. “You know what, I’ll go get it myself. Get some fresh air. You up for a walk and talk?” he asked Silverberg.

  “Only if you don’t call it a walk and talk.”

  They took the elevator down and walked out through the front door. Silverberg had four plainclothes police officers with her, and four soldiers in uniform accompanied Manny. As they walked down the front steps, Manny suddenly stopped.

  “Crap.” He patted his pockets. “I don’t have a wallet.”

  Silverberg rolled her eyes. “I can spot you a few cans of Diet Coke.”

  They started walking again. “What do you need?”

  He knew she wouldn’t have come to see him if it wasn’t important. Right now she was as busy as he was. They’d done a tremendous job of keeping the lid on things in New York City. A certain amount of that was, of course, help from the National Guard and federal troops, but the mayor had stepped up. Behind the mayor, of course, was Silverberg.

  “You know what I love most about New York?” It was a rhetorical question, and Manny didn’t bother answering. Even though it sounded like she was going to take the long way to get to her point, he didn’t care. Getting outside had been a wonderful idea. Sure, maybe it wasn’t exactly fresh air—not with the smells of the city always hanging about—but it was nice out. The streets were completely empty of civilians. There was a contingent of Secret Service agents outside as well as a mélange of military—God, he hoped these particular men and women were more loyal than Broussard—but it seemed almost normal. The buildings around them were a mixture of darkness and light, and he wondered if, were it darker, he’d be able to see the stars.

  “What I love about New York,” Silverberg continued, “is that nobody is alike. Millions of people, and each one of them has their own story, their own life, their own opinions. There are only two things New Yorkers can agree on. The first is that you don’t block the sidewalk. Seriously, is there a bigger sin in all of New York than walking slowly or stopping in the middle of the sidewalk? That’s why we hate out-of-towners as much as we love them. But the other thing New Yorkers agree on is that you never, ever mess with us. You mess with New York City, and we’ll come at you.”

  They turned the corner. Silverberg’s cops were on point, with Manny’s protective detail behind them. There didn’t seem to be a great need for security right at that moment, he thought, but he was used to it.

  “I’ve been a New Yorker my whole life,” she continued. “I’m old enough that I’ve lived through Times Square turning from a war zone into a tourist trap. I’ve lived through Koch and Dinkins and Giuliani, and I saw the towers fall. I’ve lived through Bloomberg, though he was a heck of a mayor, and Hurricane Sandy and Mayor de Blasio. Heck, I’ve lived through eating chicken I bought from a street cart parked next to the Gowanus Canal. I mean, come on, is this all you’ve got? Spiders? You’ll have to try harder than that to scare New Yorkers.”

  She stopped walking. Manny saw the bodega across the street. Sure enough, there were two uniformed cops in riot gear standing outside. The store was open, however, and he could almost taste the Diet Coke.

  “Manny,” she said. She glanced ahead to make sure that her protective detail was far enough away that she could speak without being overheard. “There’s a reason I came myself. We’re hearing things.”

  “What kinds of things?” he asked, but he had a sinking feeling.

  “Rank and file would be one thing, but we’re getting pushback from the brass, too. There are a lot of people who think Broussard might be right.”

  Manny nodded. There was no point arguing and there was no point drilling down. He didn’t know Silverberg that well, but he knew she was as tough as they came and she was thorough. She wouldn’t have come to Manny with this if there wasn’t a real problem. There might have been a political angle during normal times—there was always a political angle—but she was a straight shooter.

  “How long?” he asked. “How long do you think you can keep the police in line?”

  She looked down and opened her purse, rummaging around until she pulled out a wad of cash. “Here.” She stuffed the money into his hand. “For your soda.”

  “You’re not coming in?”

  “No. I don’t have much to add to what I just said. And to answer your question: I don’t know. Two days? Three? Maybe less. You know how it is. What’s the saying? A powder keg ready to explode? I’m telling you, we’re already riding hard on this, and I think the longer you guys go without giving us something solid, the harder it gets to convince people that Broussard is wrong. And all bets are off if we get a third wave of those damn spiders.”

  “I thought you said it would take more than spiders to scare New Yorkers.”

  “I was lying,” she said. She turned, walked over to the two cops at the door, introduced herself and Manny, then waved good-bye.

  He went in, handed the cash—close to sixty bucks—to the guy at the register, and then cleared the cooler of all its cans and bottles of Diet Coke. Three paper bags full. He gave a bag each to two of the four soldiers on his security detail, and carried the third bag in one hand, leaving the other free to drink a soda. He didn’t feel like waiting until he was back at the town house. The first sip hit his mouth with a jolt that felt like he’d stuck his finger directly into a light socket. He took a gulp, enough that he choked a little and then had to cough. It was invigorating, however. Between that and being outside, he was wide
-awake again. There was something kind of pleasant in the idea of walking through the streets of New York as the clock approached midnight. When he’d visited the city as a young man, in his twenties, he stayed out until all hours of the night, and one of his favorite things had been—

  He stopped walking so abruptly that the soldier behind him actually banged into him.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Manny turned and stared at the soldier. Like a lot of soldiers, this one seemed spectacularly young-looking up close, and he was taken aback by Manny’s behavior. Manny couldn’t help it, though: what Cannon had said to Steph as they were about to flee from the Elsie Downs had suddenly come back to him. They’d talked about Operation SAFEGUARD, and how that would buy them about seventy-two hours—he took a quick look at his watch, thinking it was less now—and then Cannon said something about—

  “Soldier,” Manny said. “Are you a Christian? What’s Matthew 5:45?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Don’t worry about it”—Manny glanced at the kid’s name tag—“Specialist Ward.”

  “Sir?”

  He turned to look at one of the soldiers who had taken point. Her voice came as a surprise. He hadn’t looked at any of them closely, and, geared up, Specialist Green’s gender hadn’t been obvious.

  She held herself with confidence, despite looking no older than Specialist Ward. “My mother’s a minister, sir,” she said. “Lots of Bible camp growing up.”

  “Matthew 5:45?”

  “It’s from the Sermon on the Mount.” She stared at Manny’s face for signs of recognition. “Jesus?”

  “Okay, even I know that much. But what is it? What’s Matthew 5:45?”

  “I used to have it memorized, but—”

  “I’ll settle for the approximate version, soldier.”

  Specialist Green scrunched up her eyes in concentration. “No. Give me a second. Uh, this is the English Standard Version. If you want King James or something, you’ll need to find somebody else.”