by Scott Sigler
He watched one of the hatchlings rise up on its three tentacle-legs. It climbed on top of a hard, knee-high, uneven mound that ran the inner length of the lobby’s floor-to-ceiling glass wall. The creature vibrated: clumpy damp material squirted from its bottom.
It was shitting. That mound… it was all solidified shit. The thing vibrated one more time, squeezing out the last bits, then the graceful tentacle-legs carried it to the torn reception desk.
No, not torn… half-eaten.
Sofia’s hands clutched at Cooper’s arm. She stood half behind him, using him as both protection and support.
“Fuck me,” she said. “I never believed they were real. I thought that news footage was special effects bullshit.”
Cooper nodded, neither knowing nor caring if he’d ever believed or not. The past didn’t matter, because he could see just how real they were.
Sofia tugged at his coat. “What are they doing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re making a bulwark or something.”
“A bulwark? What the fuck is a bulwark?”
“Like a wall,” Cooper said. “Something to stay behind during a gunfight.”
“You a soldier or something?”
“History Channel. Watch enough World War Two documentaries and things sink in.”
The sound of roars suddenly echoed through the lobby, filtering in from somewhere deeper in the hotel. Cooper couldn’t be sure where the roars were coming from — if he and Sofia were going to get out of the hotel alive, they had to go right through the little poop-making monsters.
His hands felt sweaty. He raised the pistol, started to aim at the closest creature.
Sofia’s hand rested on his forearm.
“Don’t,” she said. “Five bullets. We have to conserve” — she ran out of breath in midsentence; she was farther gone than Cooper had hoped — “our ammo.”
If he fired off a round, would the hatchlings scatter? Maybe… or maybe they’d attack, like they had in the video, swarm in, chew him up alive and then shit him out to make more of their little fortress.
He looked at Sofia. “I can shoot one, see if they run. What else can we do?”
“We could… just walk out,” she said. She closed her eyes, tried to deal with the heat washing through her body. “We don’t fuck with them, maybe they don’t fuck with us. Chavo didn’t attack you… maybe these things won’t, either.”
Cooper’s throat felt tight. A pinching feeling churned in his guts.
Sofia raised a weak hand, pointed to the glass wall.
“The street is right there,” she said. “If we stay any longer, we’ll… we’ll run into something worse than those little monsters.”
Another roar — the closest yet — seemed to punctuate her words.
She was right. They didn’t have time to find another way out.
Gun in his right hand, his left arm around Sofia’s waist, Cooper stepped out from behind the corner and walked toward the front door some forty feet ahead.
The twenty hatchlings stopped moving. Cooper paused. They all turned their bodies so two of their eyes looked his way, focused on him.
Sofia slipped, just a little. He caught her, held her up.
Now or never…
He started walking again. Sofia did her best to carry her own weight and keep pace.
The pyramid creatures watched.
The long, glass wall passed by on Cooper’s right. At the end of it, past the reception desk on the left, was the revolving door that opened onto the street.
He was halfway to it when, as a unit, the hatchlings suddenly went back to their work of humping, grinding and shitting.
Cooper and Sofia reached the revolving door. They stepped inside, pushed, walked with it until it opened onto the sidewalk of the Trump Tower’s curved entry drive.
A strong, icy wind clawed him, ripped at his coat. Sofia’s hand came up to shield her eyes and face. He and Sofia stepped forward.
The two of them stared out at a war zone.
Burned-out cars lined Wabash Avenue, including the cop car he’d seen on fire just a few days ago. Or was it hours? He wasn’t sure. Powdery snow swirled along the pavement, in places stopping and sticking, turning into long, thin, white fingers that stretched over the blacktop.
Across the street to the left, a black-glass skyscraper towered high above. Cooper didn’t know the name of it. It had caught fire at some point. The building look like a tall, sparkling cinder.
And everywhere… bodies.
Some were bloated, their swollen bellies stretching shirts and popping buttons. Some were missing arms or legs. Some had their stomachs ripped open or their heads smashed in. The clothing of the corpses rippled and snapped in time with the unforgiving wind. Pools of blood had frozen into snow-speckled red glass.
Pillars of smoke rose across the city skyline, abstract streaks of wavering grayish-black brushstrokes on a canvas of glowing yellow and orange.
Five days ago, Chicago had been… well… Chicago. Now it was a slaughterhouse.
Beneath the wind’s undulating howl, he heard no car engines, no honks, no tires squishing across slushy concrete. No talking, no yelling… no people. The lack of city sounds jarred him almost as much as the hatchlings had.
“Fuck,” Sofia said.
“I know,” Cooper said. “Oh man oh man, this is so messed up.”
“Not that. I mean it’s cold.”
Cooper nodded. The wind stung his face. Wind like this could burn you, make your skin crack and peel worse than eight hours in the sun. He started shivering. Had to be five or ten below out here, way worse with the windchill. He was lucky he’d brought Jeff’s jacket, or there was no way Sofia would have lasted more than fifteen minutes out here.
The coat meant that her wound and infection might kill her before the cold did. He had to help her.
“You know of any drugstores in the area?”
Sofia nodded. “There’s a Walgreens up on Michigan Ave, by Pioneer Court.”
“How far is that?”
“Two blocks east, a block north.”
Not far. He squeezed Sofia a little tighter, trying to reassure her. “And if we can’t get into that Walgreens, what else can you think of?”
She thought for a moment. “Northwestern Memorial Hospital is a little farther north, on Huron. If we can’t get in, we keep going right up Michigan Ave. There’s another Walgreens at East Chicago, I think… seven blocks north from here. Can we find a car?”
“No use right now,” Cooper said. “Even if we found one that worked, the street is too clogged with wrecks. For now, we walk.”
“I was afraid you’d say that. Cooper, I’m cold.”
He stuffed the pistol into the back of his pants. He bent, scooped Sofia up, held her in his arms as if they were about to walk across the threshold.
“Romantic,” she said, her voice barely audible over the winter wind. “You… you know we’re gonna die, right?”
Cooper pulled her close, kissed her forehead: even that felt scorchingly hot.
“We’ll make it,” he said. “Just give me directions.”
She pointed to the right. “North on Wabash.”
Sofia leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, then rested her head on his shoulder. She was shivering even worse than he was.
Cooper adjusted her in his arms. He headed north.
A GAME OF TAG
Admiral Porter relayed the news, somehow keeping his voice as emotionless as that of a traffic reporter.
“Seismic readings indicate a nuclear detonation in south-central Russia,” he said. “Approximately twenty megatons, believed to be of Chinese origin.”
Murray’s stomach did flip-flops. A nuke. A goddamn nuke. It changed the game in every possible way. Not only was the world up against a disease that turned humanity against itself, the disease had apparently learned how to push the button.
The staff of the Situation Room looked as sick as Murray felt. Everyone except fo
r the Joint Chiefs and the president. Porter and the other generals exuded grim determination — like it or not, this was their moment. Blackmon just looked pissed.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “This came out of nowhere. If it was an ICBM, we should have seen the launch.”
Porter nodded, took his customary pause before answering. “That’s because it wasn’t an ICBM. Our guess is a Type 631 missile fired from a truck just south of the Russian border, between Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Truck-fired missile range is over four hundred kilometers, enough to reach Omsk, Novosibirsk or possibly Krasnoyarsk.”
Murray didn’t know any of those cities. How big were they? Which one had been hit?
André Vogel pressed a finger to an earpiece in his right ear. He dabbed at his now constantly sweaty, bald head with a handkerchief.
“We’ve got a bird bringing up visuals on the region,” he said. “We should have satellite imagery on the big screen in a few seconds.”
The Situation Room fell silent. All heads turned to the monitor that showed fifteen American cities lit up in yellow, another eight in red. Smaller red and yellow spots dotted the country — violence was radiating from the big cities, spilling out across the nation.
The map of America blinked out, replaced by a high-angle view of a mushroom cloud billowing up over a glowing landscape. Murray saw the hallmarks of a major metroplex: a river cutting through the middle, clusters of tall buildings, roads snaking out to suburbs, then to forest and farmland.
A single word at the bottom identified the city.
“Novosibirsk,” Blackmon said slowly and carefully, as if she wanted to respect the newly dead by properly pronouncing the name of their now-destroyed home. “How many people?”
Admiral Porter answered her. “Third-largest city in Russia, behind Moscow and St. Petersburg. Population, one-point-five million.”
On the screen, the mushroom cloud continued to rise. Murray found himself wishing that this was a joke, the prank of some sick, twisted fuck.
It wasn’t.
“My God,” Blackmon said. “This is really happening.” She did her hands-rubbing-the-face thing, then blinked rapidly, worked her jaw as if trying to get a bad taste out of her mouth. “Do we detect any other launches from the Chinese?”
“Negative,” Porter said. “All ICBMs are still. The Chinese aren’t warming anything up that we know of. It could have been a rogue element. Possibly the truck crew was converted — they could have launched on their own.”
Vogel dabbed at his sweaty face with a sweat-soaked handkerchief.
“We’ve got full satellite coverage now,” he said. “If there’s another truck launch, we’ll see it happen.”
Blackmon laced her fingers together. She was trying to stay calm, to show confidence, but the fingers gripped too tightly, made the skin on the back of her hands wrinkle and pucker.
“Director Vogel,” she said, “I need you to find a way for me to talk to Beijing.”
Vogel leaned on the table. “We’re trying everything we can, Madam President. We’re starting to get satellite images from China’s largest cities. Several of them show major fires. Communication seems to be down all across the country. They can’t talk to us, and far as we can tell it looks like they can’t even talk to each other.”
Blackmon seemed to realize her hands were strangling each other. She extended her fingers, moved her hands apart, dropped them to her lap.
“Get me in touch with someone who can make decisions in China,” she said. “And get Morozov on the line. Right now.”
Bodies scurried into motion, hands picked up phones — at least four people jumped on the task of trying to reach Stepan Morozov, the president of Russia.
Paris, a cinder. London in chaos. Gun battles in the streets of Berlin. Reports of Converted wreaking havoc in South America, Northern Africa, India and Pakistan. Every continent felt the effects. All except for Australia, the leaders of which had been smart enough to shut down all travel three days earlier.
Blackmon turned to Porter. “Admiral, what’s the condition of the Seventh Fleet?”
Maybe Murray wasn’t up on his Russian geography, but he — like everyone else in the room — knew exactly what Blackmon was asking. The Seventh Fleet operated as a forward force near Japan, a constant presence of power some sixty ships and three hundred aircraft strong. The Seventh was America’s sheathed saber in that region.
“Seventh fleet is at REDCON-1,” Porter said. “They are prepared to defend any hostile action and are available for offensive operations.”
Blackmon nodded her approval. “Make sure fleet command knows they have clearance to shoot down anything that comes near them. From here on out, we err on the side of an international incident as opposed to losing even a single ship.”
“Yes, Madam President,” the admiral said. He turned to his assistants, setting in motion another miniflurry of activity.
Vogel looked off, put his hand to his earpiece. He turned to Blackmon.
“Madam President, we have President Morozov on the line. He called us.”
An assistant placed a red phone on the table in front of Blackmon. It was an old-fashioned thing, a handset connected to the main phone by a curly cable: the “hotline,” a piece of equipment that for five decades had served as a last resort to stop nuclear war.
Blackmon took a deep breath. She picked up the handset.
“President Morozov, America expresses its deepest condolences at this tragedy.”
She paused, listening. Her eyes widened.
“Stepan, don’t do this,” she said. “That attack probably wasn’t ordered by the government. China is dealing with the same problems you are — you know they wouldn’t risk a war with Russia. If you retaliate, all you’ll do is kill innocent people.”
She listened. Her eyes closed. That was it, just her eyelids closing, and everyone in the room knew Morozov’s answer.
Blackmon opened her eyes. They burned with anger and frustration.
“The United States objects in the strongest possible terms,” she said. “The world is on the edge of collapse. This will push us even closer.”
There was a pause, then she hung up the phone.
Blackmon took a moment. The room waited for her. She squared her shoulders and spoke.
“President Morozov feels compelled to retaliate. What will Russia’s likely target be?”
Vogel rubbed at his bald scalp, rubbed hard. “Probably a city comparable in size to Novosibirsk,” he said. He tapped at his keyboard, glanced at the main monitor as he did. “The closest Chinese city would probably be… Ürümqi.”
The image on the screen shifted, showing a city nested between three snowcapped mountain ranges. At the center, the word Ürümqi. If Murray hadn’t heard Vogel say it, he would have had no idea how to pronounce it.
Blackmon nodded once, as if she knew the city of Ürümqi was the only obvious answer. “And that city has one-point-five million people?”
“Closer to two-point-five million,” Vogel said. “Three-point-five in the prefecture, so the death toll would depend on what weapon the Russians use.”
Murray shook his head in amazement. Three-point-five million: about the size of Los Angeles, America’s second-largest city.
Blackmon’s hands clenched together again. The world’s most-powerful human being had no power at all to stop a massive slaughter.
“Admiral Porter, how would Russia strike that city?”
“Tupolev bomber,” Porter said. “Likely a Tu-160 flying out of the Engels-2 air base near Saratov. You can bet it’s already in the air. It will launch a Kh-55 cruise missile, probable warhead yield of 200 kilotons.”
A series of concentric circles appeared on the screen, overlaying the city. The center circle was a bright red, surrounded by one in red-orange, which in turn was surrounded by orange, and finally a ring of yellow. More words appeared on the screen, showing districts or suburbs, Murray wasn’t sure: Qidaowanxiang, Ergongxia
ng, Xinshi, Tianshan, Shayibak and more. The names all fell within the bands of color. Murray didn’t know those names, probably couldn’t even pronounce them, but the names made everything more real.
People lived in Xinshi, people lived in Qidaowanxiang… people who were probably going to die.
Vogel turned to Admiral Porter, looked at all the Joint Chiefs.
“We have to do something,” Vogel said. “Do we have any resources in the area? A carrier, anything?”
The air force admiral started to speak, but Blackmon cut him off.
“We do nothing,” she said. Her voice was cold, unforgiving. If her heart felt anything, she refused to let those emotions reach her brain.
Vogel looked shocked. “But Madam President, a strike could kill millions of people! We have to try to stop it!”
Blackmon stared straight ahead. “Russia has been attacked and will retaliate. If we try to intervene, we…”
Her voice trailed off. She closed her mouth, licked her lips. She gathered herself, continued.
“If we intervene, Russia could interpret that as an act of war. America is in dire straits — we can’t risk doing anything that would put our troops in conflict, and we cannot risk nuclear weapons being launched at our shores. Russia has the right to defend herself.”
Vogel slumped back into his chair. He was stunned, just like most of the people in the room, just like Murray. Wasn’t the president of the United States supposed to be able to reach out and stop injustice?
And yet, Murray knew Blackmon was making the right call. If the USA stuck her nose in the middle of this fight, the next mushroom cloud might rise over Miami, Seattle, Phoenix… any number of American treasures. Blackmon had no choice other than to make sure Russia didn’t see the United States as an enemy.
Admiral Porter cleared his throat. “Madam President, if I may offer a suggestion?”
