Pandemic Page 100

“That’s some pretty f.u.c.ked-up s.h.i.t,” Cooper said.

Jeff coughed again, even harder than before. Half bent over, he walked to the bed and flopped down.

“f.u.c.k 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 f.u.c.king 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 b.u.mped 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-a.s.s 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 h.e.l.l 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.

“h.e.l.l 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 d.a.m.n, 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.