by Scott Sigler
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 th
ick 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 the 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.”
Cooper felt a pull of emotions. The fever was making Jeff delirious, maybe even dangerous enough to do something violent, but he was also afraid and in pain. For Jeff to actually ask Cooper to stick around? That man never asked for help. That meant he was in bad shape.
“It’s okay,” Cooper said. He quietly returned to his bed, feeling his way through the darkness. He lay down. “It’s okay, Jeff. I’ll be here. Just go to sleep.”
“You won’t bail on me?”
Cooper felt a rush of love for his friend. They’d known each other their whole lives — like he could ever bail on Jeff Brockman.
“Hell no,” Cooper said. “I got your back. Just sleep. I’ll be here.”
Moments later, Jeff started snoring.
Cooper adjusted in his bed, but felt a pain on his right shoulder. He quietly sat up, craned his neck to get a look. In the faint light, he saw he had a blister of some kind. Small, reddish, straining the skin like it had liquid inside. Liquid, or… air?
He pressed a finger against it, slowly at first, then harder. It squished in, but didn’t pop.
Cooper rubbed at the area, then lay down. If it was still there tomorrow, he’d deal with it then.
For now, however, the more sleep, the better.
BECOMING MORE
Steve hurt.
He didn’t mind the pain. Something was happening… something wonderful. He wasn’t afraid of Bo Pan anymore. He wasn’t afraid of anyone, or anything.
He lay in his dark hotel room. He heard noises outside — sirens, faint screams, something that might be a gunshot — but he didn’t care. None of those things concerned him.
He wasn’t going back to Benton Harbor. He’d never see his parents again, but that, too, was okay, because — somehow — his parents were no longer his.
They weren’t his parents any more than some chimpanzees were his parents. Related? Sure, but vastly separated by different states of intelligence, different states of awareness.
Steve closed his eyes. He would sleep a little more. And he knew, he knew, that when he awoke, he would be a new man.
DAY NINE
THE FRONT DESK
Yelling from outside the room.
Cooper yawned. He sat up in bed. The room was pitch-black. He was still coming out of sleep, but damn, he felt a hundred percent better. Just not being sick made him instantly happy, giddy at feeling normal once again.
Another yell from the hall.
Then, silence.
Cooper thought of the scene on the street: one cop burning, another cop shooting a man then making out with him, a woman crawling across the sidewalk, leaving a trail of blood.
He sat very still, listening for anything, hearing nothing.
What time was it?
That question made him remember Jeff throwing the clock against the wall. Sick Jeff. Angry Jeff.
Cooper quietly felt around the nightstand, searching for his cell phone. He found it, turned away from Jeff so the light wouldn’t cause problems, then checked the time — 8:45 A.M. He’d slept through the night.
Had Jeff slept, too?
Cooper slowly moved his phone so the display’s illumination lit up the bed next to him.
It was empty.
He turned on the nightstand lamp. He blinked at the sudden light. On the floor below the TV, Jeff’s AC/DC shirt and his jeans: gone.
Cooper quietly stood, walked to the closed bathroom door.
“Jeff,” he said in a whisper. “There’s some shit going down in the hall.”
No answer.
Cooper opened the door — the bathroom was empty.
Where the hell was Jeff?
He quietly walked to the room’s main door, careful not to make any noise. He leaned into the peephole and looked out.
There was a teenager lying there, bleeding from a gash in his forehead. The kid moved weakly, unfocused eyes staring up at nothing.
Cooper automatically reached for the door handle, but stopped when he saw a flicker of motion. Through the peephole’s fisheye lens, another teenager stepped into view. Then another.
One grabbed the fallen one’s feet, the other reached under his shoulders. They lifted.
Cooper again started to open the door, to see if he could help, but one of the teenagers tu
rned his head sharply.
Wild eyes stared right at Cooper.
He felt a blast of fear, something that rooted him to the spot — he dare not move, not even to step away from the peephole.
Was the teenager looking at him? No… no one could see through a peephole, not from that far away. Maybe Cooper had made a noise.
Not knowing why the teenager scared him so bad, Cooper stayed perfectly still. He didn’t even breathe.
The boy said something to his friend. They carried the fallen one down the hall, out of sight.
Cooper ran to the hotel phone. He stabbed the button marked “front desk.” The phone on the other end rang ten times before a woman answered.
“Hello, this is Carmella.”
“I need security,” Cooper said. “No, just call the cops. There was a hurt kid up here. Maybe there was a fight. They took him.”
“And I give a shit, why?”
Cooper blinked. “Uh… didn’t you hear me? I think that kid was hurt. He had a head wound.”
“There’s a lot of that going around,” the woman said. “Fuck you very much.”
She hung up.
Cooper stared at the handset for a moment, then felt stupid for doing so and put it back in the cradle.
He looked at his cell, dialed 9, then 1, then paused: those cops in the street, shooting people. Were more cops like that? Maybe all of them? Maybe calling 911 wasn’t such a good idea.
He heard sirens coming up from the street. He walked to the window and pulled back the heavy curtains. For the second time in a handful of seconds, what he saw stunned him.
Chicago burned.
He saw flames rising high from the windows of two skyscrapers. Down on the street, people scrambled in all directions. There were four fire engines, but only one had a crew that was trying to fight the fires. The other three trucks seemed to be abandoned. And no, people weren’t scrambling down there, they were… chasing… they were fighting.
A black car turned the corner, completely out of control. It skidded across cold pavement and skipped up onto the sidewalk, where it plowed into an old man. The man flew back a few feet, then vanished below the still-moving black car.
