James Knapp - The Silent Army

Table of Contents

Praise for State of Decay

Knapps intense debut is a high-adrenaline thriller that takes the familiar zombie story down a radically new path.... [His] writing is sharp and his fast and furious plot twists keep the pages turning.... Fans of zombie fiction and readers looking for a good thrill will find it here.

Publishers Weekly

Will appeal to readers who like Jonathan Maberrys zombie thriller Patient Zero , and fans of gritty SF author Richard K. Morgan ( Altered Carbon ) will enjoy it as well. Highly recommended.

Library Journal

ALSO BY JAMESKNAPP

STATE OF DECAY

ROC

Published by New American Library, a division of

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

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80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, October 2010

Copyright James Knapp, 2010

eISBN : 978-1-101-46452-6

All rights reserved

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PUBLISHERS NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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For Kim

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Big credit to my test readers, editor, and copyeditor, who help me be the best I can.

Also, to the mouse who lived in my wall and wouldnt stop chewing the woodwork. You kept me awake and made me write. Im sorry one of my cats ate you.

Smolder

Some things you never forget. For me, the thing I couldnt leave alone was the way Faye looked at me just before the panel slammed shut between us. I remembered the fire raging behind her when I took her by the arm. When she pushed me away, her hand was cold. The big revivor shoved me back, and when the panel started to close, she looked me in the eye. I was sure an automaton couldnt have looked at me like that. It was the last time I ever saw her.

Revivors arent people, someone had once said to me. Remember that.

I know what they are, I had answered.

But I didnt.

Everything should have been different. If I couldnt save her, I should have at least put her to rest. I never should have done what I did. The Leichenesser would have destroyed her body, but Id removed the capsule myself. The soldiers didnt get her either. When I had my chance to put an end to it, I couldnt. I put her right into the hands of Samuel Fawkes.

The rain was beating down, streaking diagonally across the glow of the one remaining streetlight. The hotel across the street was dark. It hadnt been occupied in years and no one had come or gone for hours, but it wasnt empty. The satellite confirmed it was tapping power off the grid, and had identified multiple heat signatures inside. Someone was there.

A message from the SWAT leader came in over my JZ implant. The words floated in front of the fogged windshield.

Theyre inside. Were just waiting on confirmation.

Things stayed quiet after the attacks, at first. For a week or two, revivors were news again, and images of their reanimated corpses stalking the streets alongside the National Guard circulated day and night. The questions the government didnt want anyone asking got asked again as people looked at the images and wondered what signing up for revivor status really meant. The footage of the walking-dead soldiers so close up disturbed them, and for a while they wondered, Was avoiding third-tier status while keeping out of the grinder really worth becoming one of them? There were protests and debates and investigations, until public opinion tired of the whole thing and the buzz moved out to the fringe, where it was mostly forgotten. It wasnt until two months ago that, out of nowhere, a bomb went off at the Concrete Falls recruitment center, where they did most of the citys Posthumous Service signups. Despite the initial backlash against revivors, the facility was turning bigger numbers than ever. The economy tanked, and holdouts were lining up to trade their third-tier status for second. A spike in PS recruits put numbers at a five-year high. Concrete Falls had supplied the military with greater numbers of revivors than anywhere else in the country, but not anymore. No one claimed responsibility.

It had been a dead end until the group moved again. Information trolled off the communications networks suggested another high-profile strike was being organized, and this time we caught it early. No target had been confirmed, but both the seller and the buyer were involved in the previous bombingI was sure of it. A shipment of heavy explosives had been smuggled into the country, to Royal Plaza, where it was about to change hands. There was a lot of pressure to put a name, any name, to the Concrete Falls attack, and to bring the people in.

My old friend and tech man, Sean Pu, was the one who tracked them down. The two of us went way back, having served together in the grind. Hed saved my life back then, and two times since. He had a big interest in the case, and for some reason he didnt want me on it. Something had him nervous and although he never said anything, another agent, Mike Vesco, was brought in to take point. I was being edged out completely, until wire-taps uncovered illegal revivors at the site.

Sean had saved my life three times, but two years ago things had become more complicated; Sean turned out to be something other than what I thought he was, something hed hidden very well. I always thought he was my right-hand man, but it turned out I was wrong, and it was the other way around. I was his right hand, and he used me as a fist that he sometimes struck hard with. The fact that he kept up that lie for so long didnt jibe with what I knew about him. I hadnt decided yet where we stood.