Pandemic

by Scott Sigler

  He realized the gun was in his hand. He didn’t remember actually drawing it.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  He stuffed it once again into the back of his pants, then reached into the car for Sofia.

  TIPPING POINT

  From his little table in the Coronado’s cargo hold, Tim Feely studied the numbers. New York City, Minneapolis, Grand Rapids and Chicago were no longer providing consumer data. They were too far gone for that.

  Elsewhere in the country, people were stocking up on whatever they could before it was too late. That panic skewed the consumer pattern information, but there was still enough data from which to draw conclusions.

  Philadelphia: 9,000% increase in cough suppressants

  Lexington: huge spikes in purchases of fever reducer

  Fayetteville: All stores sold out of pain relievers

  The list went on and on. Most of Baltimore had lost power the day before, so there was no additional data to be had there. Indianapolis, Huntsville and Birmingham were in the same boat.

  As near as Tim could tell, most cities on the Eastern Seaboard had significant outbreaks. The Midwest was even worse. The West Coast showed some signs of infected activity, but the overall stats indicated those populations were mostly normal; they’d brewed the inoculant faster there, distributed it better, done a superior job at overcoming local objections. Although murder rates had skyrocketed, police departments remained in control of the West Coast and the Southwest — except for Los Angeles.

  Riots and looting had cast LA into chaos. There was no information to discern if the violence came from the Converted, or if it had blown up due to the deaths that occurred because of the mayor’s shoot-on-sight after-dark curfew.

  Canada was also in bad shape. Montreal was ablaze, just like Paris. Tim didn’t have consumer data on Europe, but news reports of burning cities and corpses littering the streets told the story just fine.

  Pandora’s box had opened. Just like the myth, evil things had flown out to infect the world. In that myth, the last thing to escape had been hope.

  This time, Tim wondered if there was any hope at all.

  COOPER’S CHOICE

  Shadows moved within the darkness of a wintry Chicago night. Cooper stumbled more than he ran, the girl in his arms a heaviness that threatened to pull him down.

  Just drop her … just leave her, she’s going to die anyway …

  They’d found the hospital to be a burned-out husk. When they’d come in for a closer look, something had found them, followed them.

  Cooper had carried Sofia away, but that something had picked up their trail. They fled north. The storm that threatened to kill them also provided some cover: blowing snow helped them hide, masked their tracks and their sounds.

  His arms burned, screamed for oxygen. Sofia hung low, near his thighs, his left arm under her knees, his right around her back. He stopped only long enough to heft her high again, up to his chest, then he continued up Michigan Avenue.

  He felt her fingers clutch his jacket, pulling it tighter across his chest.

  “They’re coming,” she said. “I can hear them. Run faster, goddamit!”

  Cooper could barely run at all, let alone faster, but he heard them, too, heard their yells, heard the roaring of some misshapen thing.

  He’d walked seven excruciating blocks — careful not to step on frozen body parts or broken glass — with the cold making his hands numb, making his fingers tingle, with Sofia’s weight dragging at him, and now he was only a block shy of Chicago Avenue.

  So he ignored the icy cold air that sucked deep into his heaving lungs, ignored the wind that made his face sting and burn. He moved faster.

  Up ahead, on the other side of Chicago Avenue on both the left and the right, he saw gothic buildings made of white stone. They looked like castles, especially the one on the left with its octagonal tower that stretched thirty feet above. It was old, so old it had probably once towered over the surrounding buildings back when “tall” meant four or five stories. Now it was just a lost footnote in the city’s sprawling skyline. A little castle … a little fortress …

  Leave her and go hide. Go in the fortress, block the door, you can hold them off …

  A tug at his collar.

  “There,” Sofia said. She pointed right: he saw the white WALGREENS lettering on a black overhang. Below it, a revolving door of glass in a curved metal housing. The store sat at the base of a tall, tan building. This place wasn’t burned out. Cooper didn’t see any activity in front of the store, or inside it. Maybe they could hide in there, killing two birds with one stone.

  He reached the door: it was still intact, as were the glass windows on either side.

  Cooper carefully carried Sofia into the rotating door, careful not to stumble and drop her or smack her head against anything. He pushed. It turned with a deep swishhh. Three steps later, he stepped into a miracle.

  The lights were on.

  There was no wind.

  No heat, either, but without the windchill the place felt comparatively warm.

  The doors might be intact, but this place hadn’t escaped the disaster. Ten feet in lay a headless body. Ice crystals formed a strangely beautiful pattern in the blood that had spilled from the man’s neck and spread across the hard stone floor.

  Farther up the first aisle, between scattered bags of chips on one side and candy bars on the other, lay a second body, a woman. A look of disbelief had frozen on her face, maybe when her attackers had torn her right arm from her body, leaving the ripped sleeve of her blue jacket ragged and stiff with icy blood. That jacket remained buttoned under her chin, but open at the belly to show an empty cavity — her internal organs were gone.

  “My God,” Sofia said. “Coop, we gotta hide.”

  He nodded. He hefted her higher, or tried to, but his arms wouldn’t lift her. He was damn near done. “Is the pharmacy in the back?”

  “Yeah,” Sofia said. “Straight back.”

  Cooper stepped over the bodies.

  All through the aisles, products had been ripped off the metal shelves and tossed onto the floor. It didn’t look like much had been taken, though — more a store-trashing rampage rather than people scrambling for supplies.

  He stumbled on a box of candy, causing him to hit the shelves on his left, rocking them a little before they settled back down with a bang.

  Sofia’s face wrinkled in pain. She’d taken the brunt of that blow.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  She said nothing.

  Cooper kept moving. The fluorescent lights created the strange sensation that — aside from the bodies, of course — this place was still open for business, that the horrors outside had passed it by.

  He reached the pharmacy counter. Instead of looking for the door, he set Sofia on the counter, then hopped over. When his feet hit the floor, his exhausted legs gave out beneath him. He fell in a heap on the tile, banging the top of his head against the corner of a rack that held hundreds of little plastic pull-out bins.

  “Owww.” Cooper rolled to his back, hands pressed to his new injury.

  “Graceful,” Sofia said. “Just … let me catch my breath, then I’ll … start carrying you.”

  He lifted his head to look at her. She’d pushed herself up on one elbow to stare down at him. Jeff’s big coat made her seem so small, so feminine. She looked like death warmed over — face gaunt, black hair stringy and frozen in clumps, eyes half lidded — but the left corner of her mouth curled into a shit-eating grin.

  Back flat on the floor, muscles burning, chest heaving and head stinging, Cooper started laughing.

  “Sofia, you’re kind of a dick.”

  She nodded weakly. “I’ve been told that once or twice in my day. You mind getting me down from here?”

  The brief moment of humor vanished. He fought his aching body and stood, gently lifted her from the counter, then set her down with her butt on the floor and her back against the inside of the cou
nter. If anyone else came in the store, Cooper and Sofia wouldn’t be seen unless the intruder came all the way to the rear.

  She reached up and caressed his face. “Thanks, Cooper. I mean it. I’d be dead already if it weren’t for you.”

  He didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded. He turned to the pull-out bins, started filing through the paper envelopes inside of them.

  “Amoxicillin, maybe? You allergic to that?”

  “No idea,” Sofia said. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  He nodded. “I guess we will.” He dug through the envelopes.

  “Hey, Cooper … you feel okay?”

  “You mean other than cold and exhaustion? Sure, I guess. Why?”

  “You got some kind of big blister on the back of your neck.”

  He stopped flipping through the envelopes. He remembered the puffy, air-filled spot he’d seen on his shoulder.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s some kind of allergic reaction, I think. Hives or something. I haven’t checked in a while, but I had them all over my body.”

  He reached to his neck, felt what she was talking about: a puffy blister the size of a small marble. He pressed on it, heard a soft pop, saw a tiny mist of slowly floating white. Sofia’s breath scattered it away.

  “Gross,” she said. “Like a puffball.”

  Cooper nodded. “Yeah. That is kind of gross.”

  She gave a halfhearted shrug. “The least of my worries right now. Can you get me some water? I’m really thirsty.”

  He noticed her breath crystallizing when she talked. The store gave them shelter, but he’d have to find a way to get heat, fast.

  He pulled out six of the plastic bins, slid them over to her.

  “Look through those envelopes,” he said. “We want amoxicillin, penicillin, shit like that. I’ll get you that water.”

  He stood, looked over the counter and out into the store — still empty. The pharmacy door was off to his left. It opened into store’s horizontal rear aisle. Most of the end-cap displays were untouched. If he’d needed a new mop head or a four-for-three bargain on Tampax, it would have been his lucky day.

  He saw the refrigerators off to the left, still lit from within. He skipped the soft drinks, grabbed three bottles of water and an orange juice instead. One refrigerator contained sandwiches. He grabbed three.

  The lights are on … the refrigerators are working.

  In all the apocalyptic movies, the power was one of the first things to go. But not here in Chicago. With the city all but destroyed, wouldn’t the psychos have hit a power plant? A transformer? Power lines, maybe? Apparently not.

  He looked up and down the line of refrigerators. There was enough food and water to last him and Sofia for several days. And if they ate through all that, the shelves were still filled with dry goods, canned tuna, crackers … enough to last them weeks.

  Long enough for the National Guard to arrive, to take control of the city.

  An idea struck him. He jogged through the aisles, careful not to step on anything, looking for small appliances. In Aisle Six, he found what he wanted: an electric heater.

  He juggled his loot as he walked back to the pharmacy door. If he could find a way to board up that front entrance, maybe board up whatever rear entrance the place had, they could stay here at least long enough for Sofia to get better.

  Just to the right of the pharmacy door he found a waist-high wall of bandages and disinfectants.

  He walked into the pharmacy and set the food and water next to her. She held up a white paper bag: amoxicillin.

  “Good girl,” he said. He opened a bottle for her and put it in her hands. He then opened the medicine, put two pills in her mouth. She lifted the water bottle — weakly, but on her own — and took a drink. Her eyes closed in relief.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Thank you. I never thought water could taste so good.”

  He grabbed the box with the heater, slid it in front of her. “Unless you object, I’ll just go ahead and plug this in for you.”

  Her eyes widened. She shivered. “Heat? Oh, Coop, if I wasn’t so messed up, you’d totally get a blow job.”

  “Yeah? Well, then get ready for your panties to evaporate.”

  Cooper walked out, gathered an armful of peroxide, cotton balls and gauze wrap. He walked back to her and set the pile of medical supplies next to the pile of food.

  She weakly lifted her water bottle, took another drink. “I’ve had better dates, but not many,” she said. “Turn the heater on before I change my mind about fucking the living hell out of you.”

  “Yeah, all your bleeding and shivering is such a turn-on.” Cooper ripped open the heater box. He looked at the cash register on the counter, followed the power cord down to an outlet. He plugged in the heater, turned it as high as it would go and pointed it at her.

  The heater’s fan spun up. The air came out, warm at first, then it quickly turned hot.

  Sofia closed her eyes, leaned her head against the wall. “Oh, hell yes. Thank you.”

  Cooper gently opened Jeff’s coat and pulled up Sofia’s shirt to look at the wound. The edges were gray, almost black. It looked horrible. He had no idea what to do next.

  He opened the bottle of peroxide, then a box of gauze strips. He poured peroxide onto the wound. Sofia hissed as the liquid fizzed into whiteness. He used the gauze to dab at the wound. He cleaned as gently as he could, wiping away blood both dry and wet. He used more gauze to cover the wound, then ran tape around her stomach and back.

  “That’s all I know to do,” he said.

  He smiled at her. She took a drink of water, smiled back.

  Swishhhh.

  They froze: the front door had just turned.

  They heard footsteps.

  A man’s voice called out, and it was all Cooper could do to not piss his pants for the second time.

  “Where are you, motherfucker? Are you in there?”

  The voice sounded confident, aggressive; the voice of a man in a bar challenging another man to a fight.

  Swishhh … swishhh … swishhh.

  More noises. Feet moving, cellophane rattling, boxes falling. More than one man; maybe three, maybe four. Then, the sound of a low, deep growl.

  Too deep to be human.

  Sofia’s hands snapped out: she grabbed Cooper’s jacket, surprising him. He started to lean back, but she pulled him close.

  “They’re going to find us,” she hissed. Her face was only inches from his, her skin red, the edges of her nose cracked and raw. “They’re going to find us. They’re going to kill us.”

  “Be quiet,” he whispered back, trying to push her away. She was losing it. She was making too much noise. He had to get her out of there, had to get himself out of there.

  “Sofia, let go of me!”

  Out in the store, something hit hard against a shelf. The shelf must have tipped over, because it crashed onto the floor with a sound like a broken gong. Cooper heard people moving around, yelling at each other.

  Sofia’s puffy eyes filled with tears. She mouthed two words, over and over:

  Shoot them!

  The noises in the store grew closer.

  Cooper grabbed Sofia’s wrists, pulled at them, tried to tear her grip from his coat.

  He mouthed back to her: Stop it! She resisted for a second, even sneered at him, but he got his feet under him, then leaned away until her hands finally snapped free.

  Out in the store, another rack fell over, the sound punching through him, shaking his atoms, letting him know the cannibals were coming and this panicking woman was going to get him killed.

  He leaned in again, pressed his lips against her ear.

  “Calm the fuck down. Just stay quiet, they’ll leave, they’ll—”

  He felt Sofia’s right hand on his hip, sliding around to his back …

  The gun.

  He leaned away hard, lost his balance. His ass hit the floor and he skidded into the heater, sending it clattering loudly i
nto a wall.

  Sofia scrambled to her feet. She tore off Jeff’s coat and reached for the door handle, her open, bloody shirt flaring out behind her.

  Cooper pushed himself to his knees and dove — his fingertips closed on the shirttail, then slipped free. He landed on his stomach as she opened the door and hobbled out into the store.

  He jumped to his feet, drew the pistol as he rushed after her, just in time to see Sofia trip over an overturned rack. Her face bounced hard off the metal shelves. Blood poured instantly from a long gash across her forehead.

  The blow staggered her, took away whatever adrenaline-fueled energy reserve she’d found. She flopped to her back, the tilted rack beneath her, the top of her head on the tile floor, her legs dangling off what used to be the rack’s bottom.

  She looked at him with glazed eyes.

  But Cooper Mitchell didn’t really see Sofia. What he saw were the six people standing there, three on either side of her, all staring at him, all hunched forward in clear aggression.

  The same people who had killed that woman in the street.

  Killed her, and eaten her.

  Six people … and by the revolving door, mostly hidden by the racks of merchandise, that hulking form Cooper had seen coming across the bridge, head still wrapped in the blue scarf.

  Five bullets; he couldn’t get them all.

  He was going to die.

  They all held weapons: long knives, a fire axe, a machete, a tire iron. The woman in the blue snowsuit had a chrome-plated revolver in her left hand.

  Cooper was too afraid to move. His pistol was pointed down … he had to raise it, had to do something …

  The tall man in the red jacket took a small step forward, then stopped. The knife he’d used to kill the woman in the blouse caught the store’s fluorescent lights.

  Clean. The blade is clean. He took the time to clean it …

  The man stared at Cooper. He lowered the knife. The others stood still. They weren’t attacking.

  Cooper looked at them. They looked at him, but they also looked at the gun in his hand.

  “Help … me …”