Pandemic (47 page)

“We’re friends,” Cooper said. “We’re all friends here.”

The man wiped his white sleeve across his nose; the fabric came away streaked with red. Sweat gleamed on the cook’s face and forehead. He sniffed deeply, the sound choked by snot clogging his sinuses.

“I’m all stuffed up,” he said. “Can’t smell a thing. If you’re a friend, why you pointing that gun at me?”

The man had obviously come in here looking for a place to sleep. He hadn’t bothered to look behind the tables — Cooper and Sofia had been lucky.

“My name is Chavo,” the cook said. “What’s yours?”

Chavo
. Cooper hadn’t wanted to know the man’s name, hadn’t wanted to think about him as a person.

“Don’t worry about our names,” Cooper said. “How long have you been in here?”

Chavo shrugged. “Since sometime last night. We were taking care of business.” He smiled when he said it.
Taking care of business
meant
killing people
.

He stuck out his tongue, showing the blue triangles that dotted the pink surface. The man’s smile widened as his tongue slid back into his mouth.

“See? I can prove I’m a friend.”

Cooper felt Sofia squeeze his arm.

“Shoot this fucker,” she said.

Chavo started coughing again, his fist at his mouth, his body nearly convulsing, yet his eyes never left Sofia.

He pointed at her. “She’s not a friend.”

The man lifted his right knee and planted his foot as if to stand.

Cooper leveled the pistol at Chavo’s face.

“Don’t you fucking
move
.”

Sofia’s fingers dug into his left bicep, so hard they felt like dull metal needles that couldn’t quite penetrate the skin.

“
Shoot
this fuck,” she said. “Waste him before he calls for help!”

Her hands let go of his bicep; Cooper felt them grabbing for the gun.

He used his free arm to keep her away. “Sofia,
stop
!”

Chavo stood and ran for the door. His hands reached for the horizontal bar, hit it, knocked the door open.

He made it one step out before the gun fired twice,
bam-bam
, the second shot surprising Cooper even more than the first.

The man lurched forward, landed hard on his face and chest.

Cooper felt stunned … he’d just shot a man in the back. He hadn’t thought, he’d just done it.

Chavo wasn’t dead. His arms came up, hands pressed against the floor — he started to crawl. Two spots of red spread across the back of his white uniform.

Cooper saw Chavo’s chest fill with a big breath, saw the man’s head tilt back …

“Kill
lll
them! They’re in here!”

He shouldn’t be able to scream, I shot him in the back, he should be dead …

Sofia yanked the gun from his hand.

She limped toward the door, one hand pressed to her side, the other holding the pistol.

Chavo crawled a little farther. His belly left smears of blood on the carpet.

Sofia reached him. She put the gun to the back of his head and fired. Chavo’s face flopped onto the carpet. He stopped moving.

Cooper ran to Sofia, stood next to her. Blood soaked into the carpet beneath Chavo’s face — or what was left of his face — a thick stain that slowly spread outward.

Sofia sagged against Cooper, weakly held the gun up for him to take. “You’ve got five bullets left,” she said. “Try not to be … be such a pussy … okay?”

She started to fall; he slid an arm around her waist, held her up. He could feel her heat even through her clothes. He had to get her to a hospital, find a doctor or something.

Cooper took the gun from her hand. He stared down at the dead man.

Then, he heard the roar.

It was a sound both human and not, a sound that carried through the hall. It came from somewhere off to the right. Then, from the left, a man answering with a guttural shout.

Cooper again looked at Chavo’s body. The blood streaks pointed back to the door, like an arrow that said
the people you want to kill are in here
.

He pulled Sofia tighter. “Come on, we have to move.”

She seemed to gather the last of her strength. She gently pushed away, stood on her own two feet. “Move where?”

Where? Good question. Whatever was coming would check this room, check the nearby rooms as well. If he and Sofia were going to survive, they had to find something better … maybe find a car and get the hell out of Chicago, maybe reach the
Mary Ellen
.

“Hold on a second,” he said, then ran back into the conference room and grabbed the two coats. He shrugged his on, offered Jeff’s to Sofia.

“Outside,” he said. “We have to go outside.”

Sofia rubbed her face. She nodded. “Well … shit. Had to happen sooner or later, I guess.”

She put on Jeff’s coat. Cooper slid under her shoulder and helped her forward. He held the gun tight as the roars grew louder.

Steve Stanton stood tall, his hands resting lightly on the balcony’s marble railing. Wide stairwells descended on the left and the right, but his followers were packed in so tight Steve couldn’t see a single step. Below, a sea of reverent faces gazed up at him. Skylights above shone a pale yellow, letting in the scant late-morning sunlight that managed to penetrate the winter storm blowing outside.

He was in the Art Institute of Chicago, a place dedicated to the beauty of the human race. With the help of the people packed in to hear him, to
follow
him, he would destroy that beauty, and that race as well. This place was a fitting cathedral for the newly born flock to hear his message.

The Converted murmured in anticipation, in excitement. They waited for him to speak.

Until just a few days ago, Steve hadn’t believed in a higher power. Now he knew one existed, and knew that this divine being had chosen him to lead —
when God stands with you, no man can stand against you
.

The people on the stairs, the faces down below, they were all God’s children, but they were not all the same. Some had the mark of the triangle on foreheads or cheeks. Others of that type had no visible marks, because clothes hid their blessings.

Even if the signs were hidden, Steve could just
look
at a person and know their caste.

Those marked with the triangles were
hatchling hosts
, walking incubators who were soon to give up their lives for the glory of God’s very first creation.

Then there were the
mothers- and fathers-to-be
, people already swelling with God’s love. Soon they would be moved away from the city center to areas where humans huddled in offices and stores and apartment buildings. When these parents blossomed, the winter wind would carry spores to places that the Chosen could not reach.

The
triangle-tongues
made up the main body of Steve’s growing army. Stable and reliable, but also vicious, hungry and
smart
. Not as intelligent as he
was, of course, but capable of thinking for themselves, able to follow orders to the letter or problem-solve when those orders no longer made any sense.

A scant few of the faces below belonged to
leaders
, people closer to Steve’s own intelligence. Like him, these individuals showed no outward sign of any kind. Yet, they had something inside of them, something that called to the other castes, made the hatchling hosts and triangle-tongues and parents-to-be
want
to follow, made them
need
to please and obey.

And God’s final creation: the
bulls
. Steve didn’t know who had first used that nickname, but it fit perfectly. Something to do with local sports teams, apparently. There were very few bulls so far; many had perished during the conversion process, either in their cocoons or shortly after hatching. Whole-scale restructuring of the human body carried a high risk of failure.

Steve had ordered his few “finished” bulls to stay out of sight for now. Bulls were harder to control. They were more violent than even the triangle-tongues. The last thing Steve needed was fighting among the people.

Soon, however, he’d let his bulls run.

All of these castes would do anything he said. They would obey. They would kill. If he asked them to, they would
die
.

He raised his hands; they fell silent.

“My friends,” he said. “This is the start of something wonderful.”

His words echoed slightly off the stone walls, making him feel far more grand, far more powerful. His speech carried the will of God.

“You have been chosen,” he said. “Every one of you feels this in your heart, just as I do. You used to be workers and bosses, teachers or policemen. You used to be shopkeepers and soldiers. You served in a hundred other roles. What you were before no longer matters, because now we are
one
.”

The smiles, the nods, the wide-eyed stares of bliss. They knew. They
believed
.

“Everyone here understands that humans are the enemy, that they must be destroyed,” Steve said. “We will accomplish that, but we can’t act like animals. The American military will strike back, and soon. They will start with the cities where the violence is out of control, where it is clear our people have taken over. We can’t help those other cities. We can only help ourselves. Therefore, as we accomplish our goals, we have to draw
as little attention as possible
.”

Heads nodded. Some put hands over hearts. Some even cried. The power of God flowed through Steve Stanton.

He had seen the news coverage of Paris. He had to make sure his followers didn’t do anything stupid like that. Cities
mattered
.

“Spread the word — do
not
destroy power facilities. Leave all power lines and transformers alone. Do not destroy any communication. Telephone lines, utility poles, cell-phone towers, leave them all be. And
no more fires
. If any of you see a Chosen One setting a fire, kill that person and make an example of them. Am I understood?”

A thousand heads nodded.

“We will use their own communication systems against them,” he said. He pointed to his ear. “The humans are listening. Only the heads of individual groups may have a cell phone.
Do not
talk about being Chosen on phones, on the Internet, or in emails. I will distribute code words that you will pass on to others by face-to-face meetings
only
. If I need to make everyone act at once, we’ll broadcast those code words. We must be careful so that the outside world doesn’t suspect our numbers.”

The heads nodded faster, more intently. They understood.

“As you spread through the city, find others of our kind. Tell them about me, tell them I am in charge. If you find humans who are not converting,
kill them
. Who here has served in the military?”

Along the descending stairs and down on the main floor, forty-odd hands rose.

“Excellent,” Steve said. “All of you, come up and meet with me when I dismiss the rest. Everyone else, when you leave here, find me more soldiers. Ask for military experience, and ask
specifically
for anyone who served in a reserve unit in this area. If there are weapons in or around Chicago, we need them.”

Steve again put his hands on the cool, stone railing. He leaned forward, letting the motions come naturally, letting the intensity build. His past, the shy, awkward thing he’d once been, it all seemed a bad dream. Power coursed through him. He could control the Chosen Ones as easily as he’d controlled the
Platypus
.

“The world is about to change, forever,” he said. “We will make this city
ours
. Soon after that, the entire country.” He stood straight. He raised his arms, spread them wide. “When the Chosen in other cities are tearing themselves apart, tearing their
cities
apart, Chicago will stand tall. From here, we will
rule
. The time of humanity is over, Chosen Ones —
your
time has come!”

Their roaring cheer filled the open space, echoed off the marble walls, made Steve’s skin ripple with goose bumps.

This thousand would spread through the streets, gathering others of their kind, killing any who were not. In a day, this city would be under his control.

Chicago was only the beginning.

The fire stairs had seen him safely down. Cooper prayed they would see him safely up. It was smarter than taking the elevator, anyway: who knew what those doors might open up to?

Sofia couldn’t climb the steps on her own. That burst of strength she’d used to kill Chavo was already a distant memory. Cooper kept his left arm around her waist, helping her along. His right hand stayed locked on the cool, comforting feel of the pistol.

Two switchback flights led from the subbasement to the basement level. Another pair would lead to the ground floor. He’d helped her up six steps to the first landing, halfway to the basement level, and his legs were already burning.

“Cooper … I’m not doing so great.”

“You have a fever,” he said. “Maybe your wound is infected.”

“That fast?”

He shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. I think we have to find a drugstore or a hospital, get you antibiotics.”

There had to be drugstores close by. He could find her some medicine, then maybe they could make their way to the
Mary Ellen
. Jeff was nowhere to be found, and — Cooper hated to admit it — after seeing that empty cocoon membrane, he was no longer sure he
wanted
to find Jeff.

He helped Sofia up another step.

“Just a little more,” Cooper said. “Make it to the ground floor, then we’ll peek into the lobby and see if the coast is clear.”

Two heads peered around
a white stone corner. Cooper stared into the Trump Tower’s long lobby. On his right was the forty-foot-long, twenty-foot-high glass wall that looked out onto Wabash Avenue. Outside, big clumps of snow whirled down from a sky that was almost the same yellow as the feet he’d seen in the boiler room.

Directly in front of him stretched the modern, white marble floor that led to the registration desk … or at least what was left of it. Body parts littered the lobby. Puddles of tacky blood pooled around corpses, bloody footprints leading away in various directions.