Pandemic

by Scott Sigler

  Cooper Mitchell wasn’t sure if he should hope. If he believed he might escape, would that jinx it? What if he wound up with a signpost rammed through his ass and out his mouth?

  He hid behind a rack of pantsuits on the first floor of Barneys, not even fifteen feet from the front door. The SEALs had to get him out. They just had to; all this couldn’t be for nothing.

  The weird thing about a city with no traffic was the sense of stillness, the quiet. If he closed his eyes, he could have been in the woods of Michigan, save for the occasional roar of a bloodthirsty monster. That lack of sound let things carry through the streets — he heard distant gunshots, powerful crashes of metal hitting metal, and the growing-closer sound of a gurgling diesel engine.

  Was that Klimas? Had he really pulled it off?

  Tim came down the stairs, cell phone pressed to his ear.

  “No, this isn’t Otto,” he said. “It’s Tim Feely.”

  The little doctor came up next to Cooper. He leaned around the pantsuits to peek out the store’s glass door. He leaned back suddenly, his face wrinkled in annoyance.

  “I don’t give a shit about your problems, Murray. This plan is ridiculous. Send someone to get us!” A pause. “No, Klimas isn’t here.” Tim looked around, saw Roth crouching just to the left of the front door, Ramierez lying on the floor beside him. “Hold on, Murray.”

  Tim duckwalked to Roth. The big man looked ridiculous in his letterman’s jacket. Cooper hated the Bears.

  Roth took the phone. “This is Petty Officer First Class Calvin Roth.”

  He listened for a second. “No sir, Director Longworth, Commander Klimas isn’t available. Yes, we still need extraction at Lincoln Park, the south end.” Roth looked out the window. Cooper followed his gaze, saw a dozen men and women rushing away down the street, toward the sound of that diesel engine.

  Roth ducked back behind full cover. “Yes sir, we still need that air support. We’re going to be under enemy fire the entire way, sir.” He paused, then nodded again. “Yes sir.” He hung up, handed the phone to Tim.

  “Well?” Tim said, taking the phone and pocketing it. “Is Murray sending the entire air force? I don’t want to go out there. I can’t.”

  Roth shrugged. “What air force? Washington is under attack. So is everything else. An AC-130 and an Apache are both en route. Those will have to be enough.”

  Feely shook his head. The man was about to freak out; Cooper didn’t know what they’d do if Feely didn’t get his shit together.

  “Two lousy planes,” Tim said. “No fucking way, Roth. Call him back! Tell him we need—”

  Roth’s hand shot out and grabbed Feely’s shoulder. The sudden move silenced him.

  “Doc,” Roth said, “I need you to shut up now.”

  Roth turned slightly, made eye contact with Cooper. When he spoke, Cooper knew it was to him and Feely both.

  “It’s game-time,” Roth said. “Stop worrying about shit you can’t change. If you want to survive, focus on the job at hand. When the fire truck comes, we go out firing. We’ll have a few seconds of surprise. The truck has to stop so we can get Ramierez inside. Cooper, how many rounds you have?”

  Cooper lifted the Sig Sauer pistol in his hand. “Fifteen.”

  “Good man,” Roth said. “Make them count. Doc, you remember what Ram told you?”

  Feely nodded. “Single shots. Keep the stock tight to my shoulder, move the barrel where I move my eyes. Aim, then fire.”

  Roth nodded. “Excellent. And how many rounds do you have?”

  “Ten,” Feely said. “But I can’t … I’m no good in a fight. Ramierez showed me how to shoot, but I can’t.”

  Roth shook his head. “Too late for that bullshit, Doc. Commander Klimas told me what you did to save Cooper. You’re a born warrior. That’s what I need you to be for the next ten minutes, got it?”

  A wide-eyed Feely nodded.

  “Say it,” Roth said. “Say, I’m a warrior.”

  “I’m …” Tim licked dry lips. “I’m a warrior.”

  “Good. Just keep saying that, Doc.”

  Cooper saw Feely mouthing the words, over and over.

  The diesel’s roar kicked up in volume, bounced off building walls — the thing had just turned a corner. Cooper saw it, saw the sun glinting off moving chrome, off red and white paint.

  Roth nodded. “Here we go.”

  Cooper felt his heart hammering not just in his chest but in his head, his eyes, his entire body.

  The diesel’s roar grew louder.

  Just seconds now …

  WELCOMING COMMITTEE

  Through the store’s windows, Tim Feely watched the fire engine bear down on a charred, green Prius. A Converted stood behind the car, shooting a shotgun as fast as he could pump and pull the trigger. Tim didn’t know dick about guns, but that wasn’t going to do a damn thing. The man seemed to figure that out at the last second. He turned to run, but he’d waited too long — the truck smashed into the Prius, launching it three feet off the ground and spinning it like a cardboard coaster. The rear end hit the man and sent him flying, a rag doll that sailed through the air and hit the sidewalk in front of Barneys New York, splashing a spray of blood against the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  The truck was so close that Tim could see Bosh’s smiling face inside the cracked, blood-flecked, bullet-ridden windshield. The truck’s grille had once been polished chrome: now it was twisted and bent, with a severed right arm dangling from the left side. The obnoxiously huge front bumper was scratched and dented, wet with blood, streaked with a dozen colors from its vehicular victims.

  Bosh locked up the brakes. The wheels skidded through snow, kicking up sprays of dirty white. He swerved left as he entered the intersection, then curved sharply right. The truck slid to a stop, its left side just ten feet from store’s revolving front door.

  Roth handed his rifle to Ramierez, who held it along with his shotgun. Roth scooped Ramierez up.

  “Feely, Cooper, let’s move!”

  Roth pushed through the rotating door. Cooper hobbled forward so fast he was in the next divider behind Roth.

  Tim heard gunfire. His legs wouldn’t move. He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t —

  I am a warrior, I am a warrior.

  The thought seemed to lift him and throw him at the still-spinning door. He hit it on the run, shoulder smacking against the glass. He stumbled out into the windblown chaos.

  He faced the engine’s left side. So many bullet holes; how was the thing still running? Klimas stood in the truck’s bed, aiming his pistol and firing, making each shot count. Beyond the fire engine, maybe a block down Oak, Tim saw a wave of people and monsters closing in.

  Cooper turned right, started firing.

  Roth opened the rear passenger door and set Ramierez inside. He grabbed his big SCAR-FN rifle, leaving the wounded SEAL with the black shotgun.

  Tim stumbled forward, looked left, right, looked across the street — they were coming from everywhere. Hatchlings, people with blades and guns and clubs.

  He was going to die.

  A woman sprinted toward him, the butcher knife in her hand raised high. Tim pulled the M4’s stock tight to his shoulder, just as Ramierez had told him to do.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  The recoil turned him a little: he hadn’t expected that much.

  The woman fell to the ground, her hands clutching at her stomach.

  A screaming teenage boy with a shotgun. The shotgun roared. Nothing hit Tim. The boy pumped in another round, but before he could shoot again Tim aimed and fired. The bullet slammed into the boy’s chest — he staggered back, dropped.

  Klimas, screaming: “Get in! Get in!”

  Cooper, running for the truck.

  Roth, climbing into the back even as he fired short bursts down Oak at the onrushing horde.

  A roar from Tim’s right: he turned to see a nightmare — a huge thing that had once been a woman. She wore the tattered remains of a blue-sequined e
vening dress. Yellow skin pockmarked with sores, too-wide neck, long, pointed shards of bone sticking out the back of her wrists like a pair of chipped white swords.

  He couldn’t move. His body wouldn’t react.

  The monster roared again … her bone-blades reached out for him.

  Clarence Otto walked out of the store’s rotating door, his right arm level and steady, his pistol firing so fast, pop-pop-pop-pop. The woman-monster flinched, turned away. He fired three more times into her back. She dropped face-first onto the snow-covered street.

  Clarence grabbed Tim’s shoulder.

  “Move, dummy,” he said, and pushed him toward the truck.

  Tim’s paralysis broke. He ran for the rear driver’s-side door.

  A hatchling, crawling out from underneath the truck. Tim launched himself, raised both feet in the air and landed as hard as he could, smashing the pyramid body. Globs of purple guts splashed out against the trampled white snow.

  Tim reached for the door.

  “Feely, up here!” Klimas, yelling down at him. The SEAL pointed to the water cannon mounted behind the cab. “You’re on that! Move!”

  Hands grabbed Tim from behind and threw him over the bullet-ridden equipment boxes. He landed hard on top of canvas hoses. Tim scrambled to his hands and knees in time to see Clarence Otto hop onto the truck’s rear bumper.

  Klimas pounded on the cab’s hood three times. The big diesel gurgled, and they started to roll.

  TIME TO FLY

  The SH-60 Seahawk pilot eased his helicopter off the Coronado’s deck. He was a good mile away from the shoreline, probably safe from any Stinger the Converted might launch, if the Converted could spot the Seahawk at all from that distance.

  The ’Hawk headed north, over open water, following the Apache attack helicopter that had lifted off a few moments before. The two aircraft would fly well past the LZ, cut west over the shore, then fly south so they could approach the LZ from the north.

  IFF picked up another friendly aircraft in the area: an AC-130 gunship.

  That baby brought serious firepower. The SH-60 pilot hoped the survivors could make it to the extraction point — if any bad guys followed, the AC-130 would make a wonderful mess of them.

  HELL’S ANGELS

  Steve Stanton rode on the back of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. He wore an American flag helmet, which he thought was pretty damn awesome.

  In front of him, driving the bike, was the wide bulk of Jeff Brockman. Steve had duct-taped a map of Chicago to his back. Jeff didn’t wear a helmet, because there probably wasn’t a helmet in the world that would fit him. His bone-knives pointed straight ahead, parallel to the snow-covered road.

  Two more motorcycles — another Harley and a crotch rocket — were driving on their right, and a BMW was on their left. A bull drove each of those bikes. Behind each bull, a man with a machine gun.

  The biker gang (Steve couldn’t help but think of it as a biker gang) rolled south on Lakeview Avenue. They drove fast where they could but had to slow frequently in order to maneuver around the cars that choked the road.

  This time, Steve would take care of things personally. He’d find Cooper and shoot him dead. If Steve could get Cooper alone — and unarmed — he would have Jeff kill him slowly. Maybe use those bone-blades to skin Cooper alive.

  Spotters reported that the fire engine — a frickin’ fire engine, of all things — was heading north on State Parkway. The humans were smart. They wanted to get away from downtown. They must have guessed correctly that Steve had concentrated his remaining Stingers there. The humans wanted to get somewhere a helicopter could safely pick them up. Steve had sent more motorcycles to gather up the remaining Stingers and bring them north, but he didn’t know where those helicopters would land.

  Or did he? He looked at the map. The humans were driving north … they would want an open, flat place with no tall buildings. Steve’s fingertip traced the roads.

  There … Lincoln Park.

  Just south of where he was now.

  Considering the abandoned cars blocking the streets, it would take the fire engine about five minutes to reach that location.

  Steve’s biker gang could be there in four.

  ON THE ROAD

  Clarence Otto was soaking wet.

  Tim Feely had yet to master the water cannon. He’d mishandled it twice, the errant, full-force blasts almost knocking Clarence off the truck to land at the feet of the pursuing horde. The big vehicle smashed its way north. The road had narrowed. Not as many tall buildings here, far more three-, four-, and five-story constructs. Snow-covered bare trees lined the sidewalks. It couldn’t be far now … maybe four more long blocks to go.

  Clarence returned fire as best he could. He had only three rounds left in his Glock. Subzero temperatures and wet clothes made his body shake so bad he could barely aim.

  Margaret’s blood is in that water …

  He felt she was with him again. Not the husk he’d killed in the store, but the Margaret of five years ago. His wife. His love. They were fighting this nightmare together.

  Roth was down: a bullet had shattered his right collarbone. He lay there on the ruined hoses, his body tossed left and right by the endless collisions — no one had time to help him.

  Klimas had Roth’s SCAR-FN rifle, was firing single shots to the right side.

  Cooper Mitchell knelt on the hoses, taking careful aim to the left. He was laughing; he sounded just as insane as the crazies running after the fire truck.

  “You want some?” he said, pulling the trigger. He looked at a new target. “Oh, you want some, too?”

  Klimas had ordered Clarence to cover the rear. With the way Engine 98 swerved and slammed and smashed, anything beyond the ten-yard range was an impossible shot.

  Constant obstacles kept the truck from outrunning the wave of pursuers. Bosh avoided what he could, but for the most part he just plowed through anything that was in the way.

  The muscle-monsters were faster than the people, faster than the hatchlings. Four of them had pulled ahead of their fellow Converted and were only ten or fifteen feet behind the truck — if Bosh slowed down, even for a few seconds, yellow-skinned beasts would jump right into the back.

  Clarence aimed carefully, trying to gauge the engine’s continuous impacts. He fired at the lead muscle-monster. It twisted a little to the right, blood visible on its chest, but it kept coming. Clarence aimed lower, fired again: the creature clutched its belly. It slowed, unable to keep up. Clarence aimed at the next one, fired — his slide locked back. He was out of ammo.

  He turned to face forward. Little Tim Feely aimed the water cannon to the right, shooting a long, spreading spray at the hatchlings, people and muscle-monsters that poured out of buildings, desperate to get at the still-accelerating fire truck.

  Klimas dropped, blood pouring from his knee. He reached both hands to grab it; his SCAR-FN tumbled over the side to clatter against the snow-covered street.

  Roth had yet to get up.

  Cooper fired his Sig Sauer — his slide locked back. His weapon was also out.

  A hatchling scrambled over the right side and shot toward Klimas. The SEAL saw it coming, managed to get his hands up in time. Tentacles wrapped around arms: Clarence saw what lay on the bottom of those pyramid bodies — thick teeth made to tear off huge chunks of flesh.

  Clarence reached to his belt. He gripped the handle of the knife he’d used to kill his wife. Klimas pushed the hatchling against the inside of the equipment box. Clarence drew the blade and drove it into the plasticine body. The hatchling let out a high-pitched squeal. Clarence lifted the knife and flicked the creature over the side.

  Klimas’s knee was a bloody mess. He grimaced against the pain, but held out one bloody hand.

  “Can I have my knife back?”

  Clarence handed it over. He never wanted to touch the thing again.

  He looked forward over the truck cabin’s roof. Another wave of bad guys rushed down the middle of the tr
ee-lined street, coming head-on.

  Bosh floored it.

  Engine 98’s flat face hit people so hard the cabin rattled with each impact. Bodies flew in all directions. The truck wobbled and bounced as killers of all kinds fell under the wheels, spraying blood onto the snowy street and even up onto the sidewalks.

  And then, there were no more attackers in front. Bosh had driven through, broken free. Clarence looked out the back.

  Hundreds of them — no, thousands — filled the street, a rushing mob straight out of a zombie flick. The closest ones weren’t even fifteen feet away.

  Tim was still aiming his spray off the right side. Clarence grabbed his shoulder. Tim yanked back on the cannon’s valve-handle. The spray of water quickly faded and died, dripping down onto the bed’s hoses. His face was a sheet of blood; a round had grazed his forehead.

  Clarence pointed to the rear. “You wanted them concentrated.”

  Tim looked. He’d been wide-eyed the entire time, terrified of everything, but now his fear vanished.

  Tim Feely snarled.

  “Come get some,” he said. He pointed the chromed cannon at the chasing horde and shoved the valve-handle all the way forward.

  A concentrated blast shot out, hit a muscle-monster in the chest. Tim moved the stream side to side, knocking people down, kicking up a huge spray that soaked everyone around them.

  And still the mob came on.

  SLOW RIDE

  Engine 98 slammed into something big, catching Tim unawares and smashing into the back of the pockmarked cabin. The blow stunned him. He blinked, tried to clear his vision. When he looked up, he saw Clarence manning the water cannon.

  Clarence aimed high, creating a wide, spreading spray that rained down on the army of pursuers.

  How many had been exposed? Five hundred? More?

  Tim hurt so bad. Every bone, every muscle, if not from jarring impacts then from the endless shivering. His hands were so cold he couldn’t move his fingers, which were curled up as if they still gripped the water cannon’s handles.