Pandemic i-3

by Scott Sigler

  The firehouse wasn’t much farther.

  THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY

  The president of Russia glared out from the Situation Room’s large screen. President Albertson glared back. At least, that’s what Murray thought Albertson was going for — in truth, it looked like he was trying hard not to soil himself.

  Stepan Morozov’s face sagged with prolonged anger and extreme exhaustion. He wore a suit coat, but no tie. His sweat-stained shirt was unbuttoned down to the sternum, showing graying chest hair.

  “President Albertson, the time to act is now,” Morozov said. “China is going to launch her missiles. Our intelligence confirms this. If Russia and America combine for a first strike, together we will eliminate China’s nuclear capability.”

  Albertson opened his mouth to speak, then shut it. Murray saw beads of sweat break out on the man’s forehead.

  On the screen, Morozov’s eyes narrowed. “Mister President? Did you hear me?”

  “Yes,” Albertson said quickly. “Yes, I heard you.”

  When Albertson didn’t offer anything else, Morozov’s face started to redden.

  “The Chinese have already struck us,” he said. “A million Russians are dead. The Chinese leadership says nothing — no apology, no explanation. We must assume that they are infected. If we strike while they are disorganized and silent, we might hit them before they can launch at all.”

  “And we might not,” Albertson said. “They could launch in retaliation, get their missiles away before ours hit. I’ll consider your proposal… I’ll talk it over with my staff. Thank you for the call.”

  Murray couldn’t believe what he was watching. The Russian president was asking the United States to join him in a large-scale nuclear attack on the world’s most populous nation, and Albertson just wanted to get off the line. The man was overwhelmed, completely unprepared for something like this.

  Morozov snarled. A string of spit ran from his top lip to his bottom, vibrating with each word.

  “There is no time to consider,” he said. The string of spit popped free, landed on his chin. “Maybe there is a reason you don’t want to strike! Maybe you are infected, and you are already talking to the Chinese about first-striking us!”

  Albertson shook his head. “I… we… of course we’re not infected! We… we…”

  Morozov shook his fist. “Then prove it! Strike now, before it is too late!”

  “I…” Albertson said. “We…”

  Murray stood up. “President Morozov, we are close to finishing a weapon that will wipe out the infected, all of them, worldwide.”

  In the Situation Room, faces pinched tight in anger or went blank in shock — two heads of state were deciding the fate of the world, and Murray Longworth was butting in?

  On the screen, Morozov turned to look at Murray. The virtual conference technology made it feel like he was looking Murray dead in the eyes.

  “You are Longworth?” he said. “The one who handles the… the… ah, yes, the special threats.”

  Murray was a little surprised to be recognized so quickly, but he plowed forward.

  “Yes, President Morozov, I am the director of the Department of Special Threats. Our solution, sir, is highly contagious. It spreads from one infected to the next. Our team is in Chicago, testing this solution as we speak. If Russia’s actions cause a nuclear strike on Chicago, then our solution will also be destroyed. And to be blunt, your weapons, our weapons — none of them can do a damn thing to save our citizens and our nations. If your people haven’t told you that already, they are either ignorant of reality or they are telling you what they think you want to hear.”

  Morozov’s face grew redder. His eyes widened.

  “Who do you think you are talking—”

  “Shut up,” Murray said. He couldn’t take this anymore, couldn’t take the pressure and these people posturing while the world died around them.

  He walked up to the screen as if Morozov was a real person and they were about to stand toe-to-toe. “If you launch, you doom the entire human race. We need more time.”

  Morozov stared out from the screen. His left cheek twitched.

  “Our intelligence says your military has abandoned Chicago.”

  Murray nodded. “And what better place to run our test than in a city overrun with the infected? We need more time, Mister President. We can stop this thing without nuking the bejesus out of China.”

  Morozov turned to look offscreen. Murray saw him mouth the word bejesus, then shrug. Someone offscreen answered him. He nodded, turned back to stare at Longworth.

  “I am told that you are a soldier?”

  The question surprised Murray. “I was,” he said. “I served in Vietnam.”

  Morozov spread his hands, palms up. “Once a soldier, always a soldier. I served my country in Afghanistan.” His anger faded somewhat. “You have killed people, Mister Longworth? You have seen your friends die?”

  What the hell does this have to do with anything?

  “Yes to both,” Murray said.

  Morozov bit his lower lip. He nodded, turned slightly to look at Albertson. “You have twenty-four hours to prove this. Then, America will join our attack. As one of your former presidents once said so eloquently, you are either with us, or you are against us.”

  He made a gesture to someone off camera. The screen went blank.

  Albertson’s face glowed with a sheen of sweat. He put his sweaty hands on the table. He was trying hard to look like he was in control — trying, and failing miserably.

  “Admiral Porter,” he said. “If Murray’s people fail, what do you think we should do?”

  The admiral sagged in his chair. “I’ve been in this game for forty years. I never thought I’d say something like this, Mister President, but it’s my recommendation that we join the Russians.”

  Albertson closed his eyes. “All right. I need some time to think. I need a few minutes of sleep, maybe.”

  He stood. As Murray and the others watched, the president of the United States of America walked out of the Situation Room to take a nap.

  FROZEN FOOD

  The bodies of the two policemen were gone. Probably hauled away, probably eaten — an ultimate dishonor that wouldn’t have happened if Paulius hadn’t killed them.

  He wondered, briefly, if the cops were taking their revenge from the grave. He and Bosh couldn’t find a way into the firehouse. The windows and doors weren’t just boarded up, they were blocked by sheet metal that had been bolted in place from the inside. The public transit bus remained embedded in the firehouse door; the cops had even secured the area around it, blocking any way in. The bus’s smashed-in front end meant no one was going through it without a blowtorch.

  Paulius and Bosh knelt in the shadows of the firehouse’s small backyard, out of sight from the main road. An eye-high wall — made of the same gray stone as the firehouse — lined the yard, providing a place to stay out of sight. It also gave some shelter from a constant wind that rattled a single, bare tree. Decent cover for now, but they had to find a way inside before they were seen.

  The cold had finally got to Bosh. He couldn’t stop shivering.

  “What’s next, Commander? Shoot through a door?”

  Paulius’s toes felt numb.

  “Too much noise,” he said. “If we can slip in unseen, we’ll have more time. We don’t know if the engine is damaged, or if it even runs. You said you saw the cops come out of the back of the bus?”

  Bosh nodded. “We’d checked it minutes earlier, and it was empty. The cops must have seen the Rangers, then come out of the firehouse and into the bus to stay under cover while getting a better look.”

  “Could they have come through the bus?”

  “Maybe,” Bosh said. “I looked inside, but we were advancing so I just gave it a quick once-over.”

  “Let’s check again.”

  Paulius moved to the corner of the firehouse, looked along the building’s west wall out onto Chicago Avenue. Acros
s the demolition derby of a street, a hospital: THE ANNE AND ROBERT H. LURIE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF CHICAGO, said the big white letters above the glass building’s front entrance.

  He saw no movement. He advanced. Bosh followed, covering him. Paulius moved to the rear of the bus. He hand-signaled Bosh to stay put, then entered the open door halfway down the long bus’s right side.

  Inside, Paulius counted seventeen corpses. By the looks of them, they’d either died during warmer temperatures, or later thawed out long enough to start bloating before things returned to subzero. Some of the bodies had been gnawed on, meat torn away down to scratched bone.

  Paulius realized why the Converted had taken the bodies of the two cops: they hadn’t been frozen solid. Fresh meat.

  He shuddered, got his head back in the game. The bus tilted up at a slight incline. He walked down the aisle toward the front, slowly, careful to make sure each corpse was just that — a corpse.

  He heard a click in his headset.

  “Commander,” Bosh said, “three hostiles coming this way, from the west. Moving quick, maybe sixty seconds till they reach us.”

  Paulius had only seconds to search. There had to be a way in. The windshield? Spiderwebbed and smashed, but still intact — no one had come through there. The front-right entry door? Also smashed, so bent and twisted there was no way it would ever open again. No one had come through there, either.

  If he’d been those cops, told to guard that facility, what would he have done? They’d taken the time to armor up the building, but they obviously left themselves a way in and out.

  Paulius knelt down and looked under the dashboard. Right where the driver’s feet would go, he saw a floor mat. He pulled it aside to reveal a hole large enough for a man to crawl through.

  He hit the “talk” button twice, sending two clicks to Bosh.

  The bus creaked slightly as Bosh entered and moved silently up the aisle. Paulius pointed to the hole.

  Bosh handed his M4 to Paulius, then sat on the driver’s seat and slid his feet into the hole. His Chicago-Cubs-jacket-covered gear made him have to wiggle a bit, but he popped through.

  Paulius heard approaching voices.

  “I heard something over here,” a woman’s voice said.

  “Ah, the firehouse again?” said a man. “Fuck that, there’s no way in.”

  Paulius handed Bosh’s M4 through, then his own. He slid into the hole.

  “I’m hungry,” the woman said. “There’s bodies in the bus.”

  Paulius was halfway in when his long Bears jacket snagged tight, pulling the sleeves up hard against his armpits.

  “Those bodies are gross,” the man said. “When we unthaw them, they’re rotted and black.”

  “That’s all that’s left,” the woman said. “Unless you know where there’s some living meat that everyone missed?”

  Paulius pulled, but couldn’t see where he was hooked. He couldn’t even turn all the way around to the hostiles if they walked into the bus.

  “Come on,” the woman said. “There’s got to be something worth eating in there. Come on.”

  The voice couldn’t be more than ten feet away.

  Hands grabbed at his waist. He reached for the knife sheathed on his chest — it was gone, he’d given it to Otto. He raised a hand to strike downward, but saw Bosh’s head wedged into the tight corner.

  Bosh’s shaking black hands fumbled at something. Paulius felt the coat snap free, then he was yanked down into a dark crawlspace. He landed on frozen ground.

  Paulius reached a hand back up, quietly, and grabbed the edge of the floor mat. He silently pulled it over the hole.

  He waited in the darkness. He wiggled his body enough to draw his sidearm. He heard footsteps inside the bus.

  “This forearm looks kinda okay,” the man said. “Kinda.”

  “Great,” the woman said. “This is only temporary, Harry. I can’t wait until we get out of here in a couple of hours. I bet cash money there’s fresh meat down in Champaign.”

  A few more footsteps, then nothing. Paulius sat silent, listened to the Converted’s fading conversation.

  On his hands and knees, he scooted backward through the tight space, across the frozen ground until he felt concrete. He stood: he was inside the firehouse — a long, wide garage, gear hanging from the walls, electric heaters spaced around the floor, their coils glowing orange — and sitting there pretty as you please was the red, white, black and chrome bulk of Fire Engine 98, all thirty feet of her. Polished, clean and gleaming.

  The boxy cab alone looked as big as an SUV; it would hold six people, easy, with plenty of window room to fire weapons out either side. The wide, wraparound windshield took up the top half of the vehicle’s ten-foot-wide flat front.

  A square, chrome grille sat below that windshield, lights and flashers on either side. The front bumper was a massive thing: red-trimmed white metal sticking out some two feet from the grille, perfect for smashing past abandoned cars. Below the right-side windows at the rear of the cab, inch-high gold letters spelled out CHICAGO FIRE DEPT. Up on the front right, gold lettering read ENGINE CO. And below that a big, white 98.

  The boxy rear section of the vehicle was around fourteen feet long and ten feet high, with a bed full of neatly coiled hose. Long equipment boxes ran the length of the bed, a ladder strapped horizontally to each side. Anyone in the bed would be able to take cover behind those equipment boxes, rest weapons on the flat tops and be protected from most small-arms fire.

  Separating the rear bed from the cab, a three-foot-thick section of chrome packed with hose connections and valves. And on top of that control section, the crown jewel, the thing that might let Tim Feely’s plan actually work: a water cannon mounted on a swivel.

  Bosh let out a low whistle.

  “Ho-leee shit, Commander,” he said. “I’d rather have a tank, but since we don’t have one, this is pretty damn close.”

  Bosh opened the driver’s door. He had to step up on a footrest to look inside. He reached in, grabbed something, then leaned back out and dangled that something in front of Paulius.

  A key chain with a single key.

  “Looks like they were considering bugging out,” Bosh said. He pointed to the rear of the building. “There’s a good fifty feet of space behind this baby, so we can build up a head of steam.”

  “How are we going to move that bus?”

  “Don’t think we have to,” Bosh said. “It’s just a shell. They took the engine out. Drive train, too. That’s why we could crawl under it. They even kept it warm in here, maybe to make sure the fire truck would start right up. I think those cops were getting ready to ram their way out and take their chances.”

  Paulius nodded. If he’d left the cops alone, would they have driven to safety? He couldn’t allow himself to worry about that now.

  “I’ll figure out how to get this blood into the water tank,” Paulius said. “Have to make sure the water’s warm enough, but Feely said the hydras should survive no problem.”

  He looked at Bosh. “You’re qualified in heavy vehicles. You want to drive?”

  Bosh smiled. “Hell yes, Commander. Navy SEALs was my second choice. As a kid, I always wanted to be a fireman.”

  BOOK IV

  Road Trip

  MEET THE PUBLIC

  Ten tons of truck smashed into the firehouse door, denting the metal outward and knocking the gutted bus a good five feet back.

  Paulius was standing outside the firehouse, rifle snug against his shoulder, waiting for the inevitable reaction from the locals. The big diesel engine gurgled as Bosh reversed, then revved when he floored it. The rolling door ripped outward as the truck again smashed into the bus, knocking it back at an angle. One more shot would create enough room for Engine 98 to pull out onto the street. Bosh reversed; the dented roll-up door slid off the truck, clattered limply on the concrete drive.

  Paulius spotted two people rushing in from the west, a man and a woman, and another man coming fro
m the east. From all up and down the street, people scurried out of buildings like angry ants defending a hive.

  The people from the west were fifty yards away, shooting hunting rifles as they ran.

  Paulius sighted in, breathed out and squeezed the trigger. The woman’s head snapped back as her body fell forward — dead before she hit the ground. The man saw this, slowed. Paulius squeezed off another shot. The man spun right, left hand clutching at his shoulder.

  The big diesel roared again. Engine 98 drove over the fallen roll-up door and smashed past the bus.

  Paulius spun to the right, aimed and fired. The man coming from the east doubled over, fell face-first onto the snowy sidewalk.

  Paulius sprinted for the fire truck, which was already turning left onto Chicago Avenue. He hopped up on the rear bumper, then scrambled into the hose-lined bed. He stayed low, picking targets as he went.

  So many of them… coming so fast…

  He didn’t need to give Bosh instructions. The man had been given one clear objective: get back to the others as fast as possible, don’t stop for anything.

  Paulius dropped two more bad guys before Engine 98 turned north on Mies van der Rohe Way. He faced forward. The cab’s roof topped out at his sternum, giving him excellent protection from the front while still providing a full range of fire.

  He heard Bosh’s voice in his headset: “Commander, you might want to hold tight. It’s about to get violent.”

  Up ahead, Paulius saw a line of cars set up bumper-to-bumper, blocking the street. He ducked down, wedged himself between the back of the cabin and the water cannon’s metal post. On the inside wall of the passenger-side tool box that ran the length of the bed, he saw a red fire axe held firmly in a bracket. If he ran out of ammo, it might come down to using that.

  Bosh floored the gas. Engine 98 responded, picking up speed. The wide, flat, front metal bumper hit first, bashing a BMW to the left and a Ford truck to the right.

  “Ho-leee shit,” Bosh said. “You see that fucker fly?”