Terrorists getting a little too scientifically savvy? A zombie plague breaking into the U.S. with no hope of a cure in sight? Who ya gonna call? Well, if you’re smart you’ll call Joe Ledger, because after what he’s gone through in Patient Zero, he’s got what it takes to set things right.
In Patient Zero, Joe Ledger is a cop with the Baltimore P.D. that just had a bust go down badly. Things go from bad to worse when he gets picked up by two gray-suited guys and driven to what he thinks may be a Homeland Security grilling, but turns out to be an interview for a position with the super-secret Department of Military Sciences. The DMS is sort of the locked-and-loaded version of the X-Files, but with more science and less hocus-pocus; their job is to track and prevent terrorists and other assorted baddies from releasing Bad Things here in the U.S.A. Their focus at the moment? Zombies. Not the shuffling zombies you could probably cow-tip into submission if you had the element of surprise, but 28 Days Later super-fast, super-pissed zombies ready to infect (and eat) whoever gets in their way.
Though zombies figure prominently in this book, it’s more science fiction than straight-out horror, much like Michael Crichton or Robin Cook. With balls. There’s a lot of scientific research in here, and though the author does say that the “parasites and control diseases” he dreams up in this novel aren’t real, they’ve still got enough truth behind them to be scary stuff indeed. Maberry also did some martial arts writing in the past, and that knowledge shines through here; the combat scenes are well thought out and choreographed, and unlike some other stories when someone fights — they get tired, they get sore, they hurt, and their performance suffers as the battle wears on. Characters with no military background, like Joe’s friend and therapist Rudy, take awhile to get their bearings, and there’s no guarantee that everyone who goes in is gonna come back out at the end.
It’s not just the combat that’s done well in Patient Zero, the characters are just as well done. The soldiers and law enforcement types in Maberry’s Department of Military Sciences sound authentic. They aren’t stock characters pulled up to be mowed down one by one; they each have their own tale to tell (or keep hidden, as with the enigmatic leader of the team, Mr. Church), their own strengths and weaknesses. Ledger’s teammates each have their own reasons for being recruited and the interplay between these characters is just as interesting as the tale itself.
As for the bad guys — I won’t say that Patient Zero’s bad guys are multi-layered; a few of them are just plain batshit crazy. El Mujahid, the leader of the terrorist group that has the zombies on a short leash, is a zealot who doesn’t care who lives or dies as long as his cause is advanced. His wife, the lovely Amirah, is a genetics whiz-kid who has created the deadly Seif al Din (Sword of the Faithful) pathogen, and may have ideas of her own. The way Maberry introduces Amirah, especially how he describes the way she can radiate power even when she’s covered from head to toe with only her eyes showing, is exceptional. Non-terrorists are here too, and are in it for money, or for power, like the amoral billionaire Sebastian Gault and his lackey Toys. But in each case the back story for these characters is well thought out and described in such a way that though you may not agree (or even want to spend more than five seconds in a room) with them, the peeks into what makes them tick are fascinating and flesh out what could be stock baddies. Maberry also has a knack for turning plot on a dime, and what may have seemed true at the start becomes cloudy and unknown as characters’ personalities and true motivations become more apparent.
By page 115 any hope of putting this book down had gone south; I was completely sucked in, and there was no way I was going anywhere. Maberry’s action sequences are compelling and his ability to create engaging characters left me no choice but to keep reading so I could figure out what would happen next, and to whom. When you get to Chapter Sixty you may want to make sure you have nothing going on for the rest of the time it’ll take you to finish the story, because you won’t be able to move until you’ve turned the last page. Even the Epilogue has a trick or two up its sleeve, and not the typical now-trite trick ending, but there is definitely enough there to keep readers wondering what’s next for Joe and the DMS. With the subtitle “A Joe Ledger Novel,” this looks to be the first in a series. With the economy tumbling ever downward, W’s terrorism rants still echoing in our ears and scientific research growing by leaps and bounds, Ledger could be the Jack Ryan of the new millennium.
(St. Martins Griffin, 2009)
