Pandemic (55 page)

“Awesomesauce,” Steve said. “Do you think you can take my cousins and go get him?”

“Yeah,” the voice said. “I got inside info.”

Inside info
: that meant the scout’s group included someone who had served at that facility.

“Okay,” Steve said. “Then go get Nate.”

Steve hung up. It was the third such call he’d received in the last hour. By morning, General Brownstone would be overseeing the distribution of military weapons.

The wind had picked up, the fire had died down. The hotel lobby was colder than ever.

Cooper Mitchell lined up the bottom of the fire extinguisher, then jammed it down on the door handle. The metal
clinked
but didn’t break.

He looked around, seeing if anyone or anything reacted. He remained alone except for the sick people lying around the fire.

He waited a few more seconds, just to be sure, then lifted the extinguisher again.

Clink
, the door handle bent.

He drove the fire extinguisher down a third time: the handle ripped free and clattered against the floor. He slid his cold fingers into the hole, found the latch mechanism and pulled it sideways — he pushed the door open.

Inside was a tiny office, various calendars and work regulation posters tacked to the walls, just one overstuffed desk with a chair tucked under it. On that desk, various family pictures …

… and one black laptop, flipped open and waiting.

The screen was dark.

Cooper pushed the door shut behind him. The tiny room was much like the space behind the Walgreens counter. He thought of his last few moments with Sofia.

But she’ll be with you forever now won’t she because you ate her and you’re digesting her and she’ll be part of your muscles and part of your bones forever and ever and ever …

Cooper shook his head, tried to clear his thoughts.

A phone on the desk: he grabbed the handset, heard nothing. The line was dead.

He sat down in the desk chair. He was almost afraid to touch the computer. If it didn’t turn on, he was out of options — he’d have to risk leaving on foot, all by himself against a city of cannibals.

Cooper tapped the space bar. The computer screen remained black for a moment, then flared to life.

Oh shit, it’s working it’s working …

He searched for a web browser icon. He found one, clicked it. The computer made small whirring noises. The Google home page flared to life. News, he needed news.

He called up
cnn.com
. The website’s familiar red banner and white-lettered logo appeared. Below that, pictures of horror, of death, of a country on fire. Glowing headlines showed city names that read like a list of tourist attractions if you didn’t count the words next to them, words like
ablaze, destruction, thousands dead …

And, of course,
Chicago
.

“It’s everywhere,” he said. “Everywhere.”

He clicked for additional news on
Chicago
. More stories appeared. All roads and highways had been blocked off, sometimes by trenches or collapsed overpasses, more often by miles of burned-out cars.

Cooper finally understood why the military hadn’t come in to save Chicago … because the military had instead
blockaded
Chicago. At least that’s what the news said. The military wasn’t letting anyone in or out. The story said troops were preparing to reenter the city and take it by force: until then, all citizens were warned to remain inside, to not answer the door for anyone, not even family. Stay off the phones, don’t overwhelm the cellular networks.

He nodded rapidly, yes,
yes
they were coming in, he just had to stay alive a little while longer …

And then he noticed the story’s date. It was from yesterday. He started clicking through links, found that the
entire site
hadn’t been updated in the last twenty hours.

Could CNN actually be down? The whole thing?

Cooper tried the Yahoo home page; it came up instantly with a huge, red headline:

CHICAGO: ABANDONED

“No,” he said. He read the story, each word a crushing blow to his soul. “This
can’t
be fucking happening.”

The U.S. government had written off Chicago. No troops were coming in. Troops weren’t even surrounding the city anymore … too much territory to cover. Those forces had been moved to protect cities that had not yet been overrun.

He couldn’t be alone here, trapped with madmen and monsters.

Cooper kept searching, kept clicking, hitting the track pad so hard the desk vibrated. After five minutes of panicked reading, a story caught his eye:

GOVERNMENT WORKING ON BIOLOGICAL WARFARE AGAINST CONVERTED

(Reuters) — Anonymous sources out of Washington, D.C., are reporting that the government is developing a biological weapon that will target the “Converted” who are raging across the country and are responsible for thousands of deaths worldwide
.

An unnamed source said that the new weapon is actually a modified version of the pathogen responsible for creating the violent Converted in the first place. This “disease for the disease” is lethal to the Converted, but reportedly does no harm to people who have not yet been infected
.

The modified version originates from people who have had a rare form of stem cell therapy known as “HAC-12b.” When those patients become infected, the modified stem cells alter the nature of the pathogen, turning it into the biological weapon sorely needed to combat the Converted
.

Anyone who has had this therapy should contact the government via the attached links at the bottom of this story
.

Cooper couldn’t breathe. He stared at the screen until the words blurred, until they moved on their own, jiggling on the screen like wiggly black cartoon worms.

Everything connected.

His stem cell therapy … no way, no
way
.

This disease began with whatever Steve Stanton pulled up from the bottom of Lake Michigan. Stanton apparently became some kind of Grand Dragon leader or something. Jeff got sick, turned into that
thing
.

Cooper got sick, too, but then he got better.

He thought back to the hotel, that first night with Sofia. Chavo had come in while they slept. Had Chavo already been sick, or did he get sick because he was in the room with Cooper?

When the Tall Man and his friends first caught Cooper and Sofia at the Walgreens, they’d seemed healthy. Then they’d spent the night in the hotel lobby with Cooper, breathing the same air as Cooper … and now those people were all sick, just like Chavo had been.

Cooper felt at the back of his neck. A shred of hanging skin, still there, left over from the blister Sofia had pointed out the day before. It had
popped
like a little puffball, squirted out a tiny cloud of white …

He forgot about the icy temperature, tore off his coat and shirt. He examined his body, found a dozen small, puffy spots filled with air, and at least another dozen that had already torn open.

It’s me … I’m the reason …

Cooper rushed out of the office and back into the ruined lobby. He looked at the Tall Man, who was clearly dying. Two of the others were already dead, lifeless eyes staring out at nothing.

“I’m contagious,” Cooper said. “I’m the reason they’re dead.” He looked to the blackened corpse above the dying fire.

“You hear that, Sofia? I got them for you. I got ’em good. I’m real sorry I had to eat you,
real
sorry. I just have to find a better place to hide, maybe a room upstairs, wait for the government to send people to save me, and then …”

His voice trailed off. Someone would come for him, sure, but what then? Would they lock him up and study him? The government barely gave a shit about civil rights when everything was fine; with the world going straight to hell, they would do anything they wanted with him.

Contacting the government, telling them he’d had the HAC therapy, that was his only chance to live. But he also had to find a way to make sure regular people knew about him, knew what he had inside of him — otherwise, he might vanish at the hands of the good guys just as easily as he could at the hands of the psychotic fuck-stains who had taken over Chicago.

The laptop … at the top of the screen, there had been a tiny, reddish dot …

… a camera.

Cooper rushed back into the office.

The Converted were coming.

Blackmon’s people were trying to hurry her out of the Situation Room, but she was still the president and no one could make her go any faster than she wanted to. The time had long passed for her to be airborne, safely away from the rapidly deteriorating situation on the ground.

The army had reported contact with at least five large mobs of Converted in and around the city of Washington, D.C. The mobs seemed poorly organized, poorly armed, but they all had one thing in common: they had been heading for the White House.

Air Force One —
known as
Air Force Two
just yesterday — had landed at Ronald Reagan National Airport, delivering Vice President Kenneth Albertson. The military maintained firm control of that airport. After Fort Benning and Andrews AFB had fallen, the Joint Chiefs had issued “kill zone” orders for all critical facilities. No matter who you were, infected or not, if you came within a hundred yards of a protected area, you got shot.

Blackmon was heading to the airport. Albertson was on his way to the White House to take her place. The American people knew him. With his face broadcasting from the nation’s capital, it would remain clear that America had not fallen.

Not yet.

But Blackmon was a realist, and knew that worst-case scenario might come to pass. Elena Turgenson, the Speaker of the House, was third in the presidential line of succession. Blackmon had ordered her to Sacramento, to set up the next governmental seat in the eventuality that the Converted overran D.C.

Blackmon’s aides were all ready to follow her out. They held stacks of paper, briefcases, and laptops. She had cleaned up for the trip: hair done up right and a freshly pressed red pantsuit gave her that hallmark
presidential look
once again. She was waiting for Vogel to finish talking on the phone. Someone had submitted info to the HAC site, and apparently linked to a video.

Vogel whispered something, nodded, then hung up.

“Identity confirmed,” he said. “The subject is Cooper Mitchell. SSN and address are accurate. Facial analysis software registers a one-hundred percent match with DMV records. There is no question that this man was part of the HAC study.”

Blackmon let out a little puffed-cheek
whuff
of air.

“We have a chance,” she said. “Play the video.”

A paused YouTube page appeared on the main monitor. The frozen image was a blur of blacks and grays. Murray couldn’t make anything out.

“
YouTube?
” Blackmon said. “This video is
public
?”

Vogel nodded. “Yes, Madam President. It seems Mister Mitchell didn’t fully trust our HAC form. He wanted to make sure everyone saw him, so he couldn’t — I’m quoting from his submission form —
just vanish into a secret lab, you goddamn government shiteaters
. End quote. The video’s play counter only shows three hundred and one views so far, which isn’t much. We’re still in control of this information.”

Blackmon nodded. “Play it.”

The image twitched and jumped, jostled by rapid movement. The face in the video belonged to the man holding the camera — Cooper Mitchell. He looked panicked, had the sunken eyes of someone who had flat-out gone over the edge. A week’s worth of stubble. Skin red and cracked from exposure to wind and cold.

“It’s
me
,” Mitchell said. “They come around me and they die. It takes, uh, maybe like twelve hours or so, but they
die
.”

He started laughing.

The sound of that laugh made Murray’s blood run cold. He’d laughed like that once, back in Vietnam, when he, Dew Phillips and six other men had heard the choppers coming to save them. Eight soldiers — all that remained from an entire company. They’d been overrun, covered in mud, fighting for their lives through the night in dark, sandbagged trenches. Murray had known his time was up,
known
he was going to die, right up until he’d heard those rotor blades slicing through the air. That sliver of sound had given him the strength to fight on.

The image jostled as Mitchell walked, but stayed centered on his face. The background moved madly around him.

“Just
look
at this,” he said. “How fucked-up is this?”

The image skewed as he turned the camera around. Murray saw a fire pit topped with a pig mounted on a spit. At first, he thought the scene was somewhere outdoors — because that’s the only place one
saw
fire pits — but then he realized it was inside the lobby of a trashed building.

Then, he realized it wasn’t a pig.

“Jesus Christ,” President Blackmon said. Her hand went to the cross hanging from her neck.

The image whirled to show a man in a red jacket, lying on his back. At first Murray thought this man was also dead,
had
to be dead from the tacky phlegm that coated his mouth and nose, but the man’s eyes cracked opened. The eyelids looked nearly glued shut by strands of viscous yellow.