Pandemic i-3

by Scott Sigler

  “Using Cooper isn’t an option,” Klimas said. “We’re not putting him at risk so he can pop his zits on the bad guys. The weapon we need is inside of Margaret. We need her blood. All of it.”

  Otto looked up. He was a man destroyed, a man gutted.

  “Can’t you all hear how insane this sounds? This is barbaric. You want to put my wife’s blood into a fire truck? What the fuck are we, vampires?”

  Tim pulled his fur coat tighter.

  “Call it what you will,” he said. “If we do this, then even if we don’t get Cooper out alive, we can still start a plague that might kill them all.”

  “And you know that how?” Otto said. “You’re going to butcher a woman who saved everyone in this room… to test out a theory?”

  Klimas’s hand flexed on the pistol. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  Otto looked from man to man, searching for support, finding none. His fists tightened until his hands shook.

  Cooper almost felt bad for the dude. Almost. At least he didn’t have to watch his wife transform into a monster.

  Tears formed in Otto’s eyes, spilled over, left thin trails of clean, wet brown through the dust that coated his skin.

  “This isn’t just about Margaret,” he said. “She’s pregnant. Just take some of her blood. A couple of pints — that won’t kill her.”

  Pregnant? Cooper looked back at the woman tied to the chair. Didn’t matter if she was. Why should she get to live when Jeff turned into a thing, and Sofia turned into dinner?

  Cooper hadn’t wanted to kill Sofia, he hadn’t, but killing her had kept him alive. He could still taste her… still taste her charred skin… still taste the juice that had dribbled from her steaming flesh…

  I had to do it had to do it I had no choice no choice at all.

  Feely started to speak, then paused. He was trying to find the right words.

  “She’s lying,” he said finally. “And even if she’s not, if she actually is pregnant, then the baby is also one of them.”

  The last bit of fight slid out of Agent Otto, as clearly as if someone had pulled a hidden plug and let it drain away.

  Klimas spoke again, softer this time.

  “If you want to say your good-byes, Otto, you need to do it now.”

  Clarence sniffed back snot, hissed in a breath. More tears formed.

  “Okay,” he said. He nodded, slowly at first, then with exaggerated motion. “Okay, I… I see it. That’s the way it has to be.”

  “Go for a walk,” Klimas said. “You don’t need to be here for this.”

  Otto’s eyes squeezed tight. He pinched hard on the bridge of his nose.

  “No,” he said, his voice hollow and hoarse. “If she has to be set free, I’ll do it.”

  The big SEAL wearing the ridiculous Chicago Bears jacket sniffed sharply, then turned and walked away. The other one, Bosh, just stared at the ground.

  Klimas held his pistol in his right hand. With his left, he reached to his side and drew a wicked-looking Ka-Bar knife. He flipped it, held it by the seven-inch blade, and offered it handle-first to Otto.

  “I’ll honor your request,” Klimas said. “But if you try anything, I’ll put you down, and then she dies anyway.”

  Otto started crying all over again. His big shoulders shook as he reached out and took the knife.

  BESIEGED

  IMMUNIZED: 89%

  NOT IMMUNIZED: 6%

  UNKNOWN: 5%

  FINISHED DOSES EN ROUTE: 10,134

  DOSES IN PRODUCTION: 98,000

  INFECTED: 6,000,000 (40,000,000)

  CONVERTED: 5,125,000 (23,500,000)

  DEATHS: 6,000,000+ (40,000,000)

  It was all over but the crying, really. Thankfully, Murray wasn’t much of a crier.

  The tipping point had been reached. Twenty-three million Converted, worldwide. No army, no matter how well equipped or organized, could stop that many people. And Cheng’s best guess was another forty million were infected — in the next three days, statisticians projected the total number of Converted to reach sixty million.

  Industrial production of the inoculant had collapsed. So, too, had America’s transportation network. It was now impossible to drive from New York City to the West Coast. Converted occupied the Rocky Mountains, making the range impassable. The last reliable form of transportation — airplanes — was in danger of falling; every remaining airport, both military and civilian, was under constant attack by hordes of monsters and screaming psychopaths.

  Battles raged in the streets of D.C. The army manned a solid perimeter fourteen blocks square, with the White House dead-center. Admiral Porter’s people estimated that thirty thousand Converted were pressing in on two thousand U.S. military defenders. And every now and then, one of those defenders would turn out to be Converted himself, slaughtering those around him in an effort to open up a hole in the lines.

  Air support wouldn’t last much longer. Fewer people to repair and rearm planes, fewer bases, and on three separate occasions — one F-22, one F-35, and one Apache — an aircraft had turned from defender to attacker. The burning hole in the West Wing came courtesy of the F-22 pilot’s kamikaze effort.

  At every level of the military, paranoia ran rampant. No one could say for sure if the man or woman next to them might be the enemy, the kind that didn’t test positive.

  Ronald Reagan Airport and Bolling AFB had fallen. There was no airport close enough that they could risk driving President Albertson to it, even with the five Ml-Abrams tanks parked on the White House lawn. Three times the military had tried to bring in evac helicopters, and all three times the Converted had shot those aircraft down. The enemy had SAMs, and plenty of them.

  The bottom line: no one was leaving the White House. Not even Albertson. Admiral Porter’s best estimate was that loyal troops could defend the White House for another six days, seven at the most.

  Murray had once dreamed of the Situation Room burning to the ground. Now it looked like that might actually happen, only with him still in it.

  AFTERMATH

  Emperor Steve Stanton, Minister of Science Doctor-General Jeremy Ellis, and Supreme Master of Logistics Robert McMasters stood on a tall pile of rubble, all shivering against the biting wind. They looked down at the ten-foot-deep crater that had once been bustling Michigan Avenue. Shattered vehicles, broken concrete, jutting metal and shredded bodies lay in and around it, all victims of the powerful detonation.

  Those had been some seriously big bombs.

  The once bright and gleaming Park Tower was a blackened finger pointing to the sky. Fire had consumed much of the building, gutting it, leaving hundreds of charred corpses inside like it was some oversized piñata of death.

  A small army of hatchlings worked through the rubble, all with one specific task: find the body of Cooper Mitchell. Only then would Steve know he was truly safe.

  “Doctor-General Ellis,” Steve said. “Do you really think we’ll recover Cooper’s body?”

  Ellis’s eyes flicked to the pistol strapped to Steve’s thigh. For some reason, the man always seemed to think he was moments from being shot.

  “If Cooper is in there, he’s probably too burned to be recognizable,” Ellis said. “But we do have to try, Emperor. If I can get him to my labs, maybe I can find a cure.”

  If the good doctor-general didn’t get infected himself and die in the process, of course.

  Steve again stared into the crater. Unseen planes had dropped the bombs. One second everything had been fine, the next, all crazy explosions and total chaos. Steve wasn’t sure how many of his people had died. Maybe the late General Brownstone should have spread them out a little bit more. Live and learn.

  Poor General Brownstone. She’d been close to the hotel, directing the third wave when the bombs hit. At least someone had found her head.

  That left Steve with no option but to make Ellis head of the army. Ellis didn’t have the mind for the job, but he’d do until Steve found a soldier wi
th command experience who had actually lived through the night. Steve had thought of giving McMasters the job, but he didn’t trust the man — maybe McMasters was thinking of taking over.

  Actually, when it came to the power structure, it was better to be safe than sorry. Steve made a mental note to kill McMasters later.

  The bombs had been a brilliant stroke, he had to admit; they had wiped out most of his organized army. He was still the emperor, but now what he ruled was little more than a mob.

  He had to start over. Start over somewhere else. He was lucky the humans hadn’t used a nuke. That luck wouldn’t last long.

  “Master of Logistics, it’s time we looked at moving on. I don’t care for big cities anymore.”

  McMasters slipped a little on the concrete, regained his balance. “Yes, Emperor. General Brownstone’s evacuation plan hasn’t been affected. She organized caches of working vehicles. We could start clearing out a road, have the trucks and buses moving out in about four or five hours?”

  Damn, but that was a big crater. Whatever had dropped the bomb that made it might still be up there, looking down, waiting for the next target.

  “Make it so,” Steve said. “But Doctor-General Ellis and I won’t be with that group. General Brownstone had motorcycles as well, did she not?”

  McMasters nodded. “She had a few caches of those as well. I know some are at the parking garage at Saint Joseph’s Hospital, up north in the Boystown neighborhood.”

  Perfect. That location was five miles from where Steve stood, far enough to survive the worst effects of a large nuke if the humans decided to drop one on downtown Chicago.

  “Start the exodus,” he said. “I want hundreds of vehicles leaving at the same time, heading south, east and west.”

  Steve had wanted to rule from Chicago, but clearly that was not God’s will. In a few hours, the Chosen Ones would radiate outward, drawing attention while he and a few others slipped away to the north, using motorcycles to navigate through the congested roads. He would find a place to hide for a while, and let things run their course.

  Humanity couldn’t last that much longer. And when they were gone, Emperor Steve Stanton would begin again.

  A LAST KISS

  His fingers flexed around the knife’s handle. So light in his hand, so heavy on his soul.

  This had to be done. Clarence knew that.

  Roth and Bosh had found a ladder. They’d used pantyhose to strap Margaret to it, her back against the rungs, then tied each end of the ladder to a clothing rack. Her face was about two feet closer to the ground than her feet. Below her head, they’d put a scuffed, yellow plastic mop bucket.

  Margaret saw him coming. She was still gagged. Her eyes flicked to the knife in his hand, then widened with both fear and anger. She chewed on the gag, made noises that were pleas, or curses, or probably both. Her body lurched against the restraints. The ladder and clothing racks rattled, but didn’t budge.

  What, had he thought that Margaret would go easy? Had he thought that at the last moment, she might accept this fate, look at him lovingly, forgive him for what must be done? Maybe in that Candyland vision, he’d remove her gag and she would whisper how she loved him, how she was sorry it had to be this way but she was so grateful he was taking away her pain.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  This would not be nice.

  This would not be easy.

  Margaret Montoya, or whatever had taken her over, didn’t want to die. Just like any person, any animal, she wanted to live.

  Clarence walked closer.

  Her eyes narrowed. She screamed, a sound of desperate rage. The gag muffled some of it, but only some.

  No. He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t.

  Clarence turned to leave, but stopped short — Klimas was standing just a few feet away. Had he been there the whole time? The SEAL nodded in man-to-man understanding. He extended his hand, palm up.

  “Give me the knife,” he said. “Take a walk. No shame in it — she’s your wife.”

  Clarence looked at the extended hand. Then he looked at the knife. No, it had to be him.

  “Was,” he said. “Was my wife.”

  He turned again, faced her, forced his feet to move.

  Margaret’s body shook, this time from sobs. Tears filled her eyes, ran down her forehead to vanish in her dark hair. She drew a ragged breath in through her nose, paused, then screamed again.

  Reality slurred for a moment. Everything shifted. He’d met her five years ago, fallen in love with her almost immediately. So brilliant, so hardworking, so utterly committed to doing whatever it took to get the job done. And what a job that had been.

  She’d fallen for him almost as fast. For a while, things had been perfect. They had been so happy together. They thought they had all the time in the world.

  They didn’t. No one did. Ever.

  No matter how much time you have, that time always runs out.

  Clarence stepped forward.

  Her screams grew more ragged as vocal cords gave way. She thrashed harder, so hard the whole ladder rattled, but the SEALS knew their business when it came to tying knots.

  He reached out with the knife. The blade shook madly, so much so that it looked like a prop made out of rubber.

  He was Abraham, ordered by God to sacrifice his own son. Only God wasn’t here, and no one was going to appear in a cloud of holy light and tell him it had just been a test of his devotion.

  Clarence started to talk, but his throat tightened and he choked on the words. He swallowed hard and tried again.

  “Good-bye, my love.”

  He pressed the edge of the blade against her throat. She screamed and screamed, she chewed madly on the gag, she jerked and kicked and fought for life.

  Clarence closed his eyes.

  He pushed up as hard as he could and slid the knife forward, felt the blade slice deep. The ladder rattled harder than ever. Still pressing up, he pulled the blade back, felt it bite into tendons and ligaments. Hers wasn’t the first throat he’d cut. It wasn’t like the movies — one slash didn’t do it, you had to saw a bit to get at those arteries.

  He pressed up even harder and slid forward again, then pulled back again. Hot wetness splashed onto his hand.

  Her screams ceased.

  Eyes still locked tight, he sawed forward one more time, back one more time.

  The ladder stopped rattling.

  He heard the sound of his wife’s blood splattering into a plastic mop bucket.

  From behind him, Klimas’s command voice boomed.

  “Feely! Get this blood ready to go!”

  Clarence realized he was still holding the knife. He let it drop, heard it clatter, then covered his face with his hands.

  He slowly sank to the floor.

  All the time in the world…

  All the time in the world…

  MISSION OBJECTIVES

  Paulius Klimas wasn’t a religious man. His lack of faith, however, didn’t stop him from a small prayer of thanks:

  Thank God it’s winter.

  The Windy City was living up to its name. Snow, ash and dirt swirled, rose and fell as gusts curled off buildings and rolled down the streets. Paulius guessed the temperature was hovering in the single digits, but the windchill dropped it far below zero. The weather numbed him, made it hard to move, but he was thankful because it produced a much-desired side effect: the streets were mostly empty.

  Even monsters and psychopaths hated the cold, it seemed.

  He and D’Shawn Bosh moved quickly. Roth’s sporting goods store had been stop number one. Bosh had gone for Cubs gear, while Paulius opted for a black, knee-length Bears coat and matching hat. They both wore gray Chicago Fire sweats over their fatigue pants.

  Paulius also looked a little pregnant. He had a one-gallon milk jug of Margaret’s blood strapped to his belly. Feely had said his body heat would keep it from freezing solid.

  They were headed east on Oak. Dust from the JDAMs had b
illowed out even this far, some four and five blocks from impact, turning the standing snow from white to gray.

  Though the bad guys clearly didn’t like the cold, a few of them remained outside. Paulius saw several bundled-up people, heads covered in hats and faces wrapped in scarves. They all carried weapons of one kind or another: hunting rifles, pistols, knives, axes, even carbines. One fat guy lugged a chain saw. The dirt, the streets filled with ruined cars, an armed militia walking free — Chicago reminded Paulius of a subzero Mogadishu.

  The monsters, however, didn’t seem to mind the conditions. Three-legged hatchlings scurried everywhere. As for the huge, yellow behemoths with the wicked bone-blades sticking out of their arms, Paulius saw at least one on every block. It was all he and Bosh could do to keep walking, to try to pretend the creatures were nothing unusual.

  Roth’s experience held true: without uniforms, Paulius and Bosh drew little attention. They reached Michigan Avenue, looked out onto a park covered in gray snow. At the park’s far edge lay U.S. Route 41, and beyond that, Lake Michigan.

  “Damn,” Bosh said. “We ain’t getting out that way.”

  Paulius nodded. There were even more cars blocking the road than when he and his men had swum in the day before. He pulled out his binoculars, steel-cold fingers complaining at even that small motion. Through them, he saw the reason for the growing and already-impassable roadblock: two of the sickle-armed, muscle-bound creatures were rolling a burned-out Toyota pickup down the road. They pushed it near several other cars, then bent, lifted, and flipped the vehicle on its side as if it were nothing more than a toy.

  He stowed the binoculars. “After we pick up the others, we’ll have to use surface streets to drive north. Let’s go.”

  They moved south on Michigan Avenue. On the far side of the street, a Converted woman was using a hacksaw to cut away at the arm of a frozen corpse. As Paulius and Bosh moved past, the woman didn’t even look up.