Pandemic

by Scott Sigler

  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.

  DAY TWELVE

  YOUTUBE

  IMMUNIZED: 84%

  NOT IMMUNIZED: 10%

  UNKNOWN: 6%

  FINISHED DOSES EN ROUTE: 30,000,000

  DOSES IN PRODUCTION: 12,000,000

  INFECTED: 2,616,000 (15,350,000)

  CONVERTED: 2,115,000 (6,500,000)

  DEATHS: 284,000 (14,100,000)

  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. Mu
rray 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.

  The man looked at the camera for a moment, then coughed hard. Blood bubbled out of his mouth.

  “See that?” Cooper Mitchell said from off-screen. “Fucker is dying, man! Dying!”

  The camera spun again, stopping on a prone woman. Her blank eyes stared out. Dried, bloody spittle flaked from the lips of an open mouth. On the woman’s neck, peeking out from the jacket, Murray saw the shape that had marked the beginning of this horror show …

  A triangle.

  One of the triangle’s slitted eyelids was slightly open — but instead of the glistening black Murray expected to see, there was a sagging, puckered, grayish membrane, like a party balloon that had almost fully deflated.

  The shaking camera whipped around to once again focus on Mitchell. He leaned in close, until the screen showed only his wide, bloodshot eyes.

  “Dead! Dead as fuck! Because of me! Someone come and get me, please come and get me, I make these assholes die! You want to save the world? Then you better fucking save me!”

  The movie ended, leaving a blurred image of the too-close face up on the screen.

  Blackmon looked shaken. Seeing an American citizen being cooked on a spit would do that to a person. She sat on the edge of the table, maybe to keep herself from collapsing. The polished surface reflected the bright red of her pantsuit.

  “So this man could have Montoya’s hydras,” the president said. “Where is he?”

  “Chicago,” Vogel said. “Park Tower Hotel, downtown area.”

  Blackmon slid off the table, stood straight. She gave her pantsuit jacket a sharp tug downward, as if she were just about to go on camera.

  “Admiral Porter, I want this man. What kind of resources do we have around Chicago?”

  Porter shook his head. “We have nothing in that area, Madam President. All of Illinois is a mess. Converted have been spreading out from the Chicagoland area. We’ve got troops positioned at the nuke plants near Rockford and Wilmington, killing anything that comes close. Davenport and Champaign are part of that chain, trying to slow the spread from the suburbs. We could pull some of those forces, but doing so is going to widen the gaps the Converted can get through. Indianapolis is holding strong and I highly recommend we don’t pull troops from there. Once we beat this thing, Madam President, we’ll need those power plants and the industrial base of cities that weren’t overrun.”

  “Screw the power plants,” Blackmon said. “If we don’t get this man, there won’t be anyone left to use power.”

  The idea hit Murray fast, took him over and charged him up.

  “The SEAL team that rescued Montoya,” he said in a rush. “They’re in quarantine on the Coronado. That ship could be off the shore of Chicago in hours, and it has two SH-60 Seahawk helicopters. The SEALs could go in, get Mitchell and bring him back out again.”

  Blackmon considered this. “Admiral? Will that work?”

  Porter nodded. “Maybe. It’s a damn good idea, but the city is overrun — a partial SEAL team probably isn’t enough.”

  “Then get me something to back them up,” Blackmon said. “Admiral, if we have any reserves at all, this is the time to use them.”

  Porter drew in a deep breath. Even at this late stage of the game, he wasn’t going to rush things.

  “We do have a few air-support assets on standby. The crews have been isolated from day one, so we know they’re reliable. As for ground forces, I’ve got a Ranger company at Fort Benning. I was saving them for your security, Madam President. If Air Force One can’t refuel in midair, or you have to land for whatever reason, that company will go to where you are, give you adequate protection.”

  She huffed. “My protection matters even less than those power plants, Admiral. Send the SEALs. Send the Rangers. Will that be enough?”

  “It has to be,” Porter said. “It’s all we have left. We haven’t seen the same organized forces in Chicago we’ve seen in Minneapolis or the New York boroughs, so this could work.”

  “God guide and defend our soldiers,” Blackmon said. She addressed the entire room. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have to get to Air Force One. I have the utmost respect for your dedication and your bravery. The fate of our nation, of the entire world, hangs on us continuing to do our jobs. May the good Lord protect you all.”

  She finally let her handlers hustle her out.

  Murray was sad to see her go. Not long ago he’d hated that woman, but when things were at their worst, President Blackmon was at her best. Now he’d get to see the VP in action — Murray didn’t have high hopes. Albertson had been on the ticket because he could carry California. That, and probably only that, had put him in such a high place of power.

  For now, however, Albertson didn’t matter. Cooper Mitchell did. Murray had one card left, and now was the time to play it.

  “Admiral, Clarence Otto is on the Coronado,” he said. “He’s Department of Special Threats. I think he should go in with the SEALs, manage the biological aspect.”

  Porter nodded. “That’s fine. People, contact the Coronado and have it steam full speed for Chicago. Let’s get the SEALs briefed.” He turned to Vogel. “Show me that video again.”

  Vogel nodded, tapped some keys. The screen refreshed. It started to play, then he paused it. He pointed to view-counter in the video’s bottom right-hand corner. In the time it had taken Blackmon to watch the video and approve the mission to Chicago, the view-count had jumped from 301 to 15,236.

  “Oh, shit,” Vogel said. “I think it’s gone viral.”

  VIRAL

  Steve Stanton played the video for a third time. To think he’d actually saved Cooper Mitchell’s life?

  Now, he wanted to kill Cooper. Cut his belly open, pull out his intestines and make the man eat them. Have one of the bulls break his bones, one by one, while Steve danced to the music of his screams.

  Four of Steve’s high-ranking followers — three men and Dana Brownstone — stood before him. They all had the smart strain, like him. None of the four had challenged his leadership; those who had were already dead.

  Although not at Dana’s level, the men were all quite brilliant: Robert McMasters, the president and CEO of the energy company Exelon; Cody Hassan, who had apparently been an up-and-coming jazz musician; and Jeremy Ellis, a young geneticist who held multiple Ph.D.s. McMasters was hard at work on preserving the power grid. Hassan helped craft the messages to send through Brownstone’s network. Ellis was already modifying facilities at the University of Chicago so he could study both the biology of the Chosen Ones, and how to defeat the humans’ inoculation formula.

  All four of them were afraid to make a noise. They all sensed Steve’s fury. That, and their eyes kept flicking to the two huge bulls that stood behind him.

  Three workers sat in front of his three laptops. All three screens showed the same YouTube video. Steve pointed to the middle screen.

  “Cooper Mitchell shot this inside a building. Which building? Wh
at floor?”

  Brownstone and the men said nothing.

  Steve drew a black pistol from a thigh holster. The weapon had belonged to a cop. The cop didn’t need it anymore; he had tasted delicious.

  Steve aimed it at Hassan’s face and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked in his hand. Hassan’s head snapped backward. He dropped, probably dead even before his limp body hit the floor.

  Steve holstered the pistol. “I said … what building?”

  Brownstone shook her head. “We don’t know, Emperor! The video quality is terrible. We can’t identify any key structural elements. We think it’s a hotel or an office building, but there’s over a hundred and thirty million square feet of office space in the central business district alone. He could be anywhere.”

  Steve looked down at the man running the middle laptop.

  “Refresh,” he said. “And play it again.”

  The man did as he was told. As the window came up, Steve looked at the number of plays: 132,512. The views were climbing, fast. He didn’t know if that was from uninfected watching it with a final sense of hope, his own kind watching it with a feeling of horrific dread, or a combination of both.

  The video played. Steve wondered what Cooper would taste like. He’d never find out, of course, because Cooper was a walking plague.

  If only he’d just let Bo Pan kill the man …

  “Isolate his face from this video,” Steve said. “Then print pictures. Thousands of pictures.”

  He turned to his four — correction, his three — top followers.

  “Spread the word that everyone is to look for this man. Search every building, every office, every basement. If someone finds him, kill him on the spot, whatever it takes.”

  Ellis raised his hand. “Emperor, the people who kill him might very well contract the disease he carries and transmit it to the rest of us. If it’s as contagious as it appears to be in the video, it could spread like wildfire through the Chosen Ones — it could eventually reach us.”