“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to run with I1V1. We knew things might get crazy. May as well take advantage. I’m telling Judy to clear your schedule — I’ve already started getting calls asking for more appearances.”

“And how am I to respond to people asking how I feel about this lunatic?”

“Well, for starters, don’t call him a lunatic.”

“Barel — ”

“We take the high ground. Call Reverend Mann a decent, honorable man of God who was simply speaking his mind.”

“Who wishes me dead.”

“Trust me, I’ve dealt with the ‘Blessed Church of Enlightenment’ garbanzos before. They’ll be spin-doctoring this puppy from here till doomsday. As soon as anyone actually calls them on their bullshit, they backpedal. We gain absolutely nothing by getting down in the dirt. Just stay above it all, and make use of all the new interview opportunities to point out how awesome you are.”

That finally got Big Charlie to smile, his endless shoulders rumbling with a chuckle. “Very well.” He tapped some keys on his computer. “Ah, I see your e-mail. Oh, and one from Mickey with the subject line of ‘Rev. Mann.’ ”

That surprised, and concerned Barel. Solano at least claimed to be a devout Catholic, and she wasn’t sure he’d come out against a man of God. Besides, Catholics were always going around forgiving people. “What’d he say?”

Big Charlie read off the screen. “ ‘That’s some serious bullshit right there. I won’t be sayin’ nothin to support that asshole Reverend Mann nohow. Sorry you had to hear that shit.’ ”

Barel gave a quick fist-pump. “Perfect. Not only do we get free airtime, we get Mickey going around agreeing with you at a time when he needs to be ripping you to pieces. This is great.”

“I hope you are correct, Barel.” Big Charlie sounded as serious as he ever did. “The reverend’s words did not come out of a vacuum, and I do not believe that he is the only one who has this particular opinion regarding those of us with I1V1.”

“What did I always tell you?” Barel said with a glare. “In a campaign, there is no long term. Worry about that when it happens. For now, let’s deal with the hand we’ve got, and Mann just gave us three aces.”

"JUNK" PT.5

Jonathan Maberry

— 18 —

October 12, 7:28 p.m.

Bellevue Hospital

Zero Days until the V-Event

Yuki tried not to think about the money she was spending to grease the wheels. The bonus she’d promised Charlie Sims was nothing compared to what she’d had to pay to get this far inside the hospital where Michael Fayne was being kept. There was a point during the negotiations with a friend of a friend of a friend of Sims — a thick slab of a white boy named Jenkins who ran security for the psych ward — where Yuki thought she was going to have to open more than her wallet. Jenkins was the kind of creep who ought to be on watch-lists. The kind you wouldn’t let your kids be alone with, not unless you wanted to pay some very expensive therapy bills for the next forty years.

But in the end, the thug’s greed was hungrier than his libido.

Now she was inside. Complete with a white lab coat and an I.D. badge that identified her as a visiting specialist from UCLA Medical. With a Chinese name on her nametag, her red lipstick rubbed off, her hair in a bun and a pair of horn-rim glasses she kept in a bag of simple disguises she always kept in her trunk, no one gave her a second glance. A couple of the men checked out her legs, but no one connected her with the glitzy and glossy Yuki Nitobe from Global Satellite News.

Jenkins had provided her with a swipe card from a doctor who was on vacation in St. Thomas.

“Charlie said that there were bonuses,” said Jenkins, shifting to block her from leaving his office.

Yuki stared up at him, hands in pockets. She’d managed to slip her little stun gun into her right lab pocket while Jenkins was fishing in his file cabinet for the I.D. card. Her thumb rested on the trigger slide.

“What kind of bonus are we talking about?” she asked cautiously.

He gave a nasty little laugh. “When Charlie called and gave me a heads up, I checked the nurses’ logs and found out what room they’re putting that guy in.”

“That was part of the original price.”

“The room number was, sure … but I got in there before the ambulance arrived and left one of my little toys behind.”

“What … toy?”

His grin was wide and wet as he opened a drawer in his desk to show her a dozen small black cylinders. Lipstick cameras.

“The feed is sent to a portable hard-drive with a little built-in router.” He produced one from his pocket and showed it to her. “There’s a cable to plug it into any viewer. It’ll even work for your iPhone. This one gets the direct feed from Fayne’s room.”

“These cameras are in every patient’s room?”

He snorted. “Nah. We … um … use these to keep an eye on patients when we don’t want them to know.”

“ ‘We’? You mean the doctors, or you and your jerkoff buddies?”

“What’s it matter to you?” he asked coldly, actually contriving to look offended; however, they both knew that those cameras were never approved by administration. Yuki wondered how many of them were covertly positioned in rooms occupied by young women. She felt mildly ill and wished she could spend a few minutes introducing Jenkins’s nutsack to her stun gun. Instead, she nodded.

“Two hundred,” she said.

“Screw that,” he countered. “A grand or we’re not even having this conversation.”

“A grand? Not in this lifetime, Jenkins. Five hundred and I take the hard drive with me. And that is the end of this conversation.”

Jenkins tried to budge her, but Yuki could see from his expression that he knew he was wasting his breath. She gave him cash and he gave her the hard drive.

Once she left his office, Yuki began threading her way through the maze of halls and security checkpoints, going ever deeper into the most secure sections of the hospital’s ward for violent patients. Her disguise worked so well that she felt invisible. The place was a beehive of doctors, nurses, orderlies and visiting families.

The one close call was when three people stepped out of an office right in front of her. Two were strangers — a short woman with an imperious air, a tall jock-looking guy with wire-frame glasses and Detective Schmidt.

Yuki did a fast right turn and walked into a patient’s room while the trio passed, but after a moment it was clear that the detective had not recognized her. He probably hadn’t seen her, and with all that was going on, Yuki could understand that.

She noted that the detective and the jock wore fresh bandages. That tallied with what Sims had told her. She looked at her watch. It was almost seven-thirty. Christ, the day was burning away. She’d missed the window for the six o’clock news and if she didn’t come up with something solid, she’d blow the slot for the eleven o’clock broadcast. Without a homerun she was going to very quickly lose all of the ground she’d gained today.

“Are you here to ask me about the space dolphins?” asked the old man in the bed.

Yuki turned to him. He was about a thousand years old and apparently composed entirely of wrinkles. He looked hopefully at her.

“Space dolphins?” she asked.

“Yes. Don’t you see them?” he said, nodding to the empty air beside his bed.

Yuki smiled. “Of course I do. They’re quite lovely.”

The old man blinked twice at her and then smiled. “They really are. Especially the green ones.”

“The green ones are always the prettiest,” she agreed.

She left him smiling and continued her search for a creature that was equally fantastic. One that should have been equally unreal. But wasn’t.

— 19 —

October 12, 8:11 p.m.

Bellevue Hospital

Zero Days until the V-Event

Dr. Alice Feldman stood by the open door with an orderly right beside her. The orderly, Max, was one of the biggest men Luther Swann had ever seen. Max was easily six-eight, all of it his chest and shoulders. He looked like he could bench-press New Jersey.

Three other orderlies were clustered around Michael Fayne. Each of those men was also huge, and Swann wondered if sheer bulk was the principle requirement here. It probably was, he decided.

Max did the talking. “Mr. Fayne,” he said, “these men are going to place restraints on your ankles and wrists. Do you understand me?”

Fayne nodded.

“Mr. Fayne, I’m going to need you to give me a vocal response. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” mumbled Fayne in a broken voice. “I don’t care what you want to do.”

“You’re not going to give us any trouble, are you?” asked Max.

“No.”

“Nobody wants to hurt you, Mr. Fayne,” said Max.

Fayne snorted at that and shook his head. “Just fucking do it.”

Max nodded to the other orderlies and they applied the padded restraints with practiced speed and dexterity.

Swann leaned close to Dr. Feldman. “How strong are those things?”

Max smiled faintly, “Nobody ever gets loose.”

“He’s stronger than he looks.”

The giant shook his head. “Leather, chain and airline cable, mister. They’ll hold anyone.”

Swann nodded, but he wished he actually felt reassured. He looked at Schmidt, who stood with his weight shifted to his left foot. Per protocol he had surrendered his sidearm, but Swann wondered if the detective had a back-up pistol in an ankle holster. Almost certainly. Schmidt caught him looking and when Swann pointedly looked down at his ankle and back up again, the detective gave him a cold millimeter of a smile.

Swann felt that was far more reassuring than the restraints.

But not as much as it should have been.