Year Zero by Jeff Long

Author:Jeff Long [Long, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Action & Adventure, Thrillers, Suspense
ISBN: 9781416534426
Google: qfxPb96r-eUC
Amazon: B000FC0X32
Goodreads: 22199
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 1984-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

“We discussed it. Nathan Lee said, what’s worse, to be sick or be dead?”

“Youdiscussed it?”

They quailed.

“How long has he been in there?” she said.

Jarhead consulted his watch. “Twenty-three minutes.”

The Captain arrived. He peered through the slot. “Great,” he muttered, “he went and did it.”

“You knew he might go in there?” she said.

“I had a feeling.”

“What happened to ‘no contact’?” She’d never talked down to the Captain. She couldn’t help herself.

“He was warned.”

“She’s been through too much.” She was ready to hit somebody. “He’s gone. Do you hear me?” She heard herself, talking like Cavendish.

“He’s on our side, Miranda.”

“How do you know that?”

The Captain peeked at the scene inside. He shook his head. “The man is taking his punishment.”

The girl had the strength of a teenage boy. For twenty minutes, Nathan Lee had been sitting there while she beat and clawed at him. His face was swollen. His lips and nose were bleeding. His shirt was in rags. Not once did he raise an arm to ward away the blows. All he did was keep on reading.

Now Miranda saw it. He had brought his storybook with him. So that was it, he’d gone over the edge. Unable to get at Ochs, deprived of his own daughter, he had abducted this one. “He’s traumatized the whole ward,” she said. “Listen to them.”

“I hear. They get like this sometimes.”

“We’ve got to get him out of there.”

Nathan Lee had deceived her. She had deceived herself. The gravity and pureness of his quest had lulled her. It was only a matter of time before he stole some supplies and took Old Paint and vanished again. Miranda took that for granted. But this was the last thing she’d expected from him.

“What do you have in mind?”

“You have people,” she said. “Send them in.”

The Captain frowned. “She’s out of control. Send in the Posse, they’ll have to take her down, too.” The Posse was their crash team, big men with overwhelming force. “She might get hurt.”

“Dart him then. Gas him. The bastard.” She had never been so angry. Nathan Lee had no right to go crazy like this. He was supposed to have been stronger, not just another lamed spirit.

“She might get hurt,” the Captain repeated.

Miranda breathed out.

“She’ll tire out soon,” the Captain reassured her. “They always do.”

Miranda heard the sureness in his voice. Her expertise was the silent mechanisms inside the human cell, his was the violence of wild men, and a feral child. The bedlam rocked her. “How often are they like this?” she asked.

“Now and then. We keep a few sedated. The rest, we let them purge their devils. It’s good for the soul.”

Miranda clenched her fists on either side of the window slot. She tried to remember how long it had been since her last visit with the child.Seven weeks? She was a busy woman. That was her excuse. But the truth was this metal underworld, this place she had created to conceal the damned and the medical leftovers, was unbearable to her.

“No sense standing here,” the Captain said.

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