Predator One by Jonathan Maberry Page B

variation of mad cow. Prions. Misfolded proteins that led to rapid neurodegeneration, causing the brain tissue to develop holes and take on a spongelike texture.Incurable, untreatable, and fatal.
    The fact that this man, in particular, should be dying from a prion disease was all the proof Pharos ever needed that there was not only a God but also one with a wicked fucking sense of humor.
    Despite how amusing it was, it was also dangerous. If the Gentleman descended too far into madness, then those codes would go with him. Much would be lost.
    Many billions.

    And the world…?
    The great plan, the project, would still unfold, even without this last King. It was a time bomb of procedure and process. When it detonated, this ugly world would continue spinning; however, the American government would cease to exist in any recognizable form. The dollar would be relegated to a footnote in history. There would be global war. There would be chaos, and thereforea delicious opportunity to plunder more wealth than had ever been taken in the history of larceny.
    “The codes, the codes, the goddamn codes,” he muttered to himself.
    Two nurses—one male and burly and the other small and delicate—came padding up, and he waved them inside. Then Pharos crossed his arms and watched as they managed the padded straps and pulleys as they moved the Gentleman from hisbed to a special bathtub. They washed him with chemicals that soothed his burns and disinfected his entire body. Then they hoisted him out again. Water dripped from the man’s slack flesh, and steam coiled up from his chest like the heads of pale snakes. Pharos removed a package of cookies from an inner pocket of his sports coat. A small six-pack of Nilla Wafers.
    It made him smile to eat them.
    It reminded him of the people who were going to suffer—so much, and for so long.
    It also calmed him, and he needed to be calm because of the impending arrival of Father Nicodemus.
    “Good God and all His angels,” murmured Pharos as he chewed. He did not speak loud enough to be heard by the nurses or the bastard they were now arranging in the bed.
    Father Nicodemus.
    If there was ever a real boogeyman,then the little Italian priest was it. Pharos remembered the first time he had met the man. The priest had been staying at the house of Hugo Vox. Pharos had been introduced by Vox and had made the mistake of letting manners get in the way of his instincts. He’d offered his hand, and the priest had taken it.
    It was the single most disturbing memory that Pharos possessed. The priest had claspedthe proffered hand in both of his, and his hands were small and delicate and damp. And they were different. One hand, his right, was as hot as if he’d been holding a steaming cup of coffee; the left was cold, the skin icy.
    Pharos had instinctively jerked back, but the priest, a man half his size and twice his age, had tightened his grip and would not release his hand. Instead, he pulled Pharos’shand forward and pressed it to his own chest. Pharos could remember how that bony, meatless chest felt through the thin fabric of the cleric’s black shirt.
    “Feel that?” asked Nicodemus, smiling at him the way the snake probably smiled at Eve on that distant misty dawn morning. The way the Roman soldier had before he unlimbered his whip as he approached a kneeling Jew in the governor’s court.As the German technicians had as they closed the iron doors to the gas chamber. Even at his most corrupt, Pharos had never before seen such a smile look back at him from the mirror. “Do you feel that, boy?”
    Boy? Pharos had been thirty-five at the time. Tall and powerful.
    “Stop messing with him,” said Vox from the wet bar, where he’d been building himself a Scotch. “He doesn’t understand yourjokes.”
    “Oh, he understands,” said Nicodemus, using his grip to pull Pharos closer. He dropped his voice to a whisper. His voice had been cultured and accented, but in the next sentence it changed