Pandemic

by Scott Sigler

  At the count of one hundred, she bent forward, extended her body and started doing push-ups.

  One … two … three … four …

  Math. The most basic language of the galaxy. The language created by God. Not the human god, or gods, but the real god.

  Sixteen … seventeen … eighteen …

  If the men on this ship had converted, she knew she would have been able to control them. They would have followed her, did whatever she said; God had made it that way. But the men weren’t converted — they were merely human.

  Human, yes, but trained killers. Dangerous.

  Thirty-four … thirty-five … thirty-six …

  She was smarter than they were. She could find a way to make them do what she wanted. If she started now, when the right time came she could play them against each other. Or, at least, she could stay alive long enough to find her own kind.

  Fifty-nine … sixty … sixty-one …

  Her arms and chest burned. She ignored the pain. Years spent hiding away had made her soft. She needed to make her body hard.

  Clarence would be the easiest to manipulate. She knew what motivated him — the simple sentiment of a soon-to-be extinct species: he loved.

  One hundred two … one hundred three … one hundred four …

  BIG PHARMA

  EXCERPT FROM THE WEBSITE “BEYOND TOP SECRET”

  By SmrtEnough2See

  For decades the government has been the pawn of Big Pharma, funneling billions of taxpayer dollars to companies that produce improperly tested drugs and vaccines. And now that same government is telling you that you must take this new “inoculant” drug for the mysterious “alien infection”? An infection that has not been proven to exist? And a drug that has not been properly tested, even by the rubber-stamping Big Pharma pawn known as the FDA?

  The government “tested” the drugs and vaccines that gave our children autism. Our friendly overlords aren’t even bothering to pretend to test things anymore.

  And now our government says we must take this untested “medicine.” If we don’t, why, we’ll become murderers! We’ll kill our own families!

  How frightening, and how convenient.

  Until the government publishes the science behind this claim, do not believe the lies.

  Demand information. Demand proof.

  THE WEST COAST

  The Situation Room was getting crowded.

  Murray tried not to stare across the table at the latest person to join the party. Dr. Frank Cheng looked like the cat that ate the canary: smug, self-satisfied and quite impressed with his new place of importance.

  You don’t even realize you’re choice number two, jackass — if Margo wasn’t stuck on that ship, she’d be here instead.

  Murray, Cheng, Admiral Porter, André Vogel, the president and a standing-room-only crowd of other directors, assistants and important people listened to Nancy Whittaker, secretary of homeland security, describe the massive inoculation project.

  “The West Coast response was phenomenal,” Whittaker said. “All major breweries and ninety percent of independents have cultures and are either in full production or close to it. Bakeries all over the country have joined in. They’re collaborating with any bottling facility they can find. We estimate that eighty-five percent of the populations of Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and San Diego are inoculated. The Los Angeles basin is lagging behind at around sixty-five percent.”

  The speed of the national response boggled Murray’s mind. In all his years of service he had never seen the nation unify for one cause like this. Not for 9/11, not for oil spills or tornadoes, not for hurricanes or superstorms.

  Maybe it was because most disasters were regional — a flooded Long Island had little impact on Arizona or California, didn’t affect the farmers in the Midwest and the plains states, didn’t bother anyone in the Great State of Texas. The news covered such tragedies, people donated to the Red Cross, then everyone who wasn’t in the disaster zone went on about their daily lives.

  The infection outbreak, on the other hand, affected everyone.

  Some people remained oblivious, as people often do, but the majority of Americans understood the situation’s stark reality: this was the potential death of their nation. Americans were banding together to fight it tooth and nail.

  Banding together thanks to the leadership of President Sandra Blackmon.

  Murray had thought her an idiot, a Bible-thumping figurehead, but her ideology and personality seemed tailor-made for just this situation. Demons were at the door; Americans wanted a defender armored up in good old-fashioned religion.

  Whittaker finished her report, but she didn’t sit down. She shifted uncomfortably, like a high schooler who had to tell her strict parents she’d been caught screwing in the parking lot.

  “Spit it out, Nancy,” Blackmon said. “I heard your good news, now give me the rest.”

  Whittaker cleared her throat. “Madam President, while the distribution is going well, there is a growing problem. On multiple websites and in social media, people are broadcasting a message to not take the inoculant.”

  Blackmon’s face wrinkled in doubtful confusion. “Is this a religious reaction? I know the Muslim community isn’t thrilled we’re using breweries, but my people are in direct contact with Islamic leaders and we’re overcoming that.”

  Whittaker shook her head. She cleared her throat again, giving Murray a moment to wonder who could be so bug-shit crazy they wouldn’t take the inoculant.

  “The objections are anchored by the antivaccine crowd and the alternative medicine movement,” she said. “Almost without exception, both groups are using every communication vehicle they have — websites, blogs, email lists, social media — to tell people that this is, quote, a Big Pharma trick. I have some sites to show you.”

  Whittaker called up websites on the Situation Room’s main monitor. Murray saw page after page with headlines that painted the inoculation effort in terms of government abuse, a capitalist power grab, grand Illuminati conspiracy, even mind control. Who could be so bug-shit crazy? These people, that’s who.

  Blackmon stared blankly.

  “People are actually listening to this? These are just fringe movements. How many people are we talking about?”

  Whittaker shrugged. “It’s impossible to say at this time.”

  Blackmon threw up her hands. “But this doesn’t make any sense! We broadcast video of those brave sailors, the cocooning, that horror show of the triangles. We showed that!”

  “The most common reaction is that the videos are fake,” Whittaker said. “Hollywood special effects, CGI … they say all the data is fabricated.”

  Blackmon shook her head. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, she had never looked less presidential.

  “But that isn’t even sane,” she said. “What possible motivation could we have for tricking three hundred and thirty million people into drinking the inoculant?”

  “To create dependence,” Whittaker said. “That’s the most common claim. Other theories involve nanotech that will let the government target people who oppose official policy, or that the inoculant will let the shadow governments control politicians and the military, or just to make everyone dumber and more docile. All of these are variations on ideas that have been around for years and applied to everything from agriculture to chemtrails to broadcast television. Our urgent message that everyone has to take the inoculant plays right into the conspiracy theorists’ existing structures.”

  Blackmon sat quietly for a moment as she thought it over.

  She looked at Cheng. “The people who refuse to take the inoculant … what are their chances of contracting the disease?”

  Cheng leaned back, stroked his chin. The little fuck was actually milking the moment, pausing for drama’s sake. Murray cursed the misfortune that kept Margaret away.

  “We estimate that the infection rate will be around ninety percent for anyone who isn’t immunized,” Cheng said
.

  Blackmon straightened in her chair. She nodded, accepting the difficult news.

  “I see,” she said. “All right, let’s face reality — Doctor Cheng, if some people refuse to take the inoculant, and the infection spreads to these people, won’t they just die off?”

  Cheng sat forward, eager. “If only it were that simple, Madam President. This disease doesn’t kill people, it turns them into killers.”

  The fat man stood, addressed the room as if he were an actor on a grand stage.

  “This denial will create pockets of people susceptible to the disease, true, but keep in mind that even if we had one hundred percent acceptance from the populace, there is no way to inoculate everyone. We’ve seen it time and time again with pending natural disasters, where people don’t get the warning message despite our best communication efforts. If we inoculate, say, ninety percent of the population, ten percent of the population can still become infected — that’s up to thirty-three million Americans behaving like the infected victims we’ve already documented. It would create untold havoc.”

  Murray remembered the rampages of Perry Dawsey and Martin Brewbaker. Colonel Charlie Ogden had led a company of converted soldiers into Detroit, cut off all roads, shot down commercial jets, brought that city to its knees. Every infected person became a mass murderer — if millions of people became infected …

  Blackmon looked around the room. “Can we force the inoculation on those who won’t take it voluntarily?”

  Whittaker nodded. “Legally, yes. Local and state public health organizations have the right to require vaccination via the precedent of Jacobsen versus Massachusetts — sometimes individual freedoms lose out to the greater need — but it’s doubtful we can do that on a national scale. Even if we had every police force working with us, we can’t organize a door-to-door campaign for the entire country.”

  Blackmon’s predator gaze swept the room, looking for prey.

  “I must not be hearing this right,” she said. “Are all of you telling me that we just have to wait and see if American citizens get infected, then suffer whatever damage they inflict until we can kill them?” She slapped the table. “Unacceptable! I want alternative plans, and I want them in four hours. Cheng, what about Montoya’s hydra strategy?”

  Cheng froze. He looked left and right, saw that everyone was waiting for his answer. He licked his lips.

  “Um, we’re working on it.”

  Blackmon slapped the table again. “How long?”

  Murray was just as much at fault as Cheng for this, but he couldn’t help take a tiny bit of satisfaction at watching the attention whore suffer. You wanted the big time, hot shot? This is what it’s really like.

  Cheng had no choice but to meet the president’s burning gaze.

  “We have to locate the individuals who had that experimental stem cell therapy,” he said.

  Blackmon’s nostrils flared, her lips pressed into a thin line. The most powerful human being on the planet had eyes only for Cheng.

  “I’m gathering you’ve found none so far,” she said. “And the only way that could happen is if you haven’t actually looked.”

  She turned on Murray, pointed at him. “This is on you, too, Longworth.”

  “It is,” he said. “I’ll take charge of the search personally.”

  “Director Vogel,” Blackmon said. “You’re now in charge of that search. I don’t care what you have to do to find those people. Get the details from Murray and make it happen.”

  Vogel nodded. “Yes, Madam President.”

  She turned her attention back to Cheng. “From what you’ve told me, the hydra strain could be just as bad as what we’re already dealing with. But if this spins out of control and my choices are hydras or the destruction of the United States of America, you know goddamn well which one I’ll pick.”

  Blackmon sat still for a moment, gathering herself. Murray wanted to crawl across the table and kiss her. He looked around the room, saw similar sentiments etched on the faces of America’s elite; at that moment, no one gave a rat’s ass if Sandra Blackmon was Republican or Democrat, civilian or a vet, male or female. She was the right person in the right place at the right time. Everyone believed in her.

  She took a breath, visibly calmed herself. “The hydra strain is one contingency plan, but that’s not enough. I want everyone working on worst-case scenarios. I want to know just how bad it can get, and I want to know what we’re going to do if it gets that way.”

  In the face of an utter catastrophe, it defied logic that Murray felt optimistic — and yet, he did. It wouldn’t be easy, and he knew many would die, but they were going to beat this thing.

  They were going to win.

  MISTER BLISTER

  Cooper took another bite of his egg-white omelette. Room-service breakfast, and it tasted damn good. He wasn’t sure if it was thirty-seven dollars good, but this was on Steve’s tab so he didn’t really care.

  He still felt crappy — exhausted, weak, like his whole body was rebelling against him — but at least his appetite had returned. He was turning the corner. One more good, long sleep, and he’d be right as rain.

  Jeff, on the other hand, had gotten worse.

  “Buddy-guy, you got to eat something,” Cooper said. He pointed his fork at the hamburger sitting on the tray in front of Jeff’s bed. “Feed a cold, starve a fever, bro.”

  “Got a fever, too,” Jeff said. “Dude, I hurt so goddamn bad.”

  His eyes were swollen, almost crusted shut.

  “Jeff, I know you don’t want to see a doctor while you’re on vacation, but—”

  A loud thump-whoof came from outside the curtain-covered window, followed by the faint, constant cry of a car alarm.

  Cooper put his fork down and walked to the window. He opened the heavy curtains, looked down to wintry Wabash Avenue far below.

  “Jeff, come take a look at this.”

  Jeff did, groaning as he pushed himself out of bed and joined Cooper at the window.

  Fifteen floors down, flames billowed out of a black-and-white cop car. One cop lay on the pavement, unmoving, his heavy winter jacket on fire and billowing up greasy black smoke. Another cop stood near the car, aiming his pistol at running pedestrians.

  “Holy shit,” Jeff said again. “I think he’s—”

  Filtered by the distance and by a thick window that wouldn’t open, the cop’s firing gun sounded like the tiny snap of bubble wrap.

  A woman fell face-first onto the slushy sidewalk. She rolled to her back, holding her shoulder.

  The cop turned, aimed at a running man: snap. The man kept running, angling for a brown delivery van parked half up on the sidewalk. Snap. The man stumbled, slammed into the van’s side. He slid to the ground.

  The cop strode toward him with a steady, measured pace.

  “Jesus,” Jeff said. “That cop … he’s killing people.”

  Cooper heard sirens approaching; thick, long echoes bounced through downtown Chicago’s city canyons.

  The cop reached the fallen man, pointed his gun at the man’s head. Cooper couldn’t breathe — fifteen stories up, there wasn’t anything he could do but watch.

  Then, the cop put the gun away. He knelt down and put his face on the fallen man’s, held his head in what looked like a passionate kiss. The man kicked and struggled, but the cop kept at it, ignoring the feeble punches that landed on his shoulders and back.

  Jeff shook his head. “What the fuck? Johnny Badge shoots him down, now he’s performing mouth-to-mouth?”

  Cooper didn’t say anything. The burning cop car continued to pour black smoke into the sky, the greasy column rising up right in front of their window. The woman was crawling across the sidewalk, a trail of blood marking her path.

  “That’s some pretty fucked-up shit,” Cooper said.

  Jeff coughed again, even harder than before. Half bent over, he walked to the bed and flopped down.

  “Fuck it,” he said. “I gotta sleep. Turn out t
he lights, bro.”

  Seeing Jeff on the bed made Cooper’s own crippling fatigue hit home. The excitement had made him briefly forget how bad he hurt, but there was no escaping it.

  “It’ll be on the news soon,” Cooper said. “Got to be, bro. We’ll find out what happened then.”

  He looked out the window again. The cop was still bent over the fallen man. Two other people had come up to help, but Cooper couldn’t make out what they were doing from so far away. Across the street, two women clashed in a hair-pulling chick-fight. Friday night in downtown Chicago. That toddlin’ town.

  Cooper jumped as something smashed into the wall next to him, shattered in flying pieces of black and clear plastic — the alarm clock.

  “Coop, I told you to turn out the fucking lights!”

  Jeff stared hatefully at him through swollen, red eyes, his mouth open, the tips of his wet, white teeth visible behind cracked lips. His face looked … different, somehow. If Cooper had bumped into this Jeff on the street, he would have barely recognized him.

  Angry Jeff was back. And just like before, Cooper’s instincts screamed at him to do nothing that might set his friend off.

  “Calm down, dude,” Cooper said softly. “I’ll get the lights.”

  Cooper pulled the curtains tight. He moved slowly to the light switch, flicked it off. Darkness engulfed the room — even the alarm clock’s red glow was gone. A tiny bit of light filtered through the top of the curtains.

  “I can hear you,” Jeff said from the darkness. “Your loud-ass breathing, Cooper, I can hear you.”

  Now he was breathing too loud? Cooper wasn’t about to go to sleep if Jeff might wake up at any moment and beat the living hell out of him. Cooper wanted out, and he wanted out now.

  “Jeff, brother, maybe I’ll just go downstairs and let you sleep.”

  He started to edge toward the door.

  “Coop?”

  Cooper stopped cold. Jeff’s voice, but normal again. Normal, and scared.

  “Don’t go,” Jeff said. “Just … just stay here, okay? I hurt awful bad.”