Pandemic Page 129

Murray had harbored no illusions about the overwhelming magnitude of this situation, but now an even harsher truth started to hit home.

“Immunity alone isn’t going to do it,” he said quietly. “We have to find a way to kill these f.u.c.king things, all of them, or we’re facing an extinction event — we’ll be gone. Someone wake up the president. And get Margaret Montoya on this screen, right now.”

BREAKFAST

As impossible as it seemed, Cooper Mitch.e.l.l slept like the dead — right up until the smell of roasting meat brought him out of it. His mouth watered for a few seconds, then filled with bile when he realized exactly what that smell was.

Sofia.

He opened his eyes. The people sleeping just a few feet away: why did they think he was one of them? If they figured out he was not, then he would be the one sizzling over the fire.

He was in the small lobby of the Park Tower hotel. Before everything went to s.h.i.t, this must have been an opulent place: marble floor, black-stone columns supporting a tastefully lit ceiling, art on the teak walls and gla.s.s display cases full of large, expensive fossils. Now it looked like he’d slipped back in time to when the Neanderthals lived in caves.

Wind blew in through the broken gla.s.s of the main entrance. It had been a revolving door once, but most of it had been torn away; Cooper guessed someone had rammed a truck through it, then driven off. As you came in that open s.p.a.ce, feet crunching on broken gla.s.s, to the left were the trashed display cases and waist-high windows — shattered, of course — that opened up onto snow-covered Chicago Avenue.

He was as far away from those windows as he could get, maybe forty feet straight back, lying on the hard floor with his shoulder pressed up against the lobby’s far wall. His new “friends” had built a fire here. A layer of smoke floated near the ceiling, swirling slightly from the wind that came in off the street. To his right were the remains of the reception counter, much of which had been torn away to keep the fire going.

He didn’t want to be anywhere near the crackling flames, but the cold wouldn’t let him stray far. That meant he had to stay close to the thick pile of hot coals, and to the makeshift spit the others had crafted from street signs.

On that spit, a naked, sizzling, blackened Sofia, a signpost shoved through her mouth, down her throat and out her a.s.s.

The Tall Man slowly rotated her. He stopped for a second, raised a fist to his mouth as his body contracted in a wheezing cough. The skin at Sofia’s right shoulder split. Juices bubbled out, dripped down to hiss against the coals, sending up a ribbon of steam that rose past her cooking body.

She counted on you. You told her you’d save her and you shot her you shot her you coward you murderer but I had to I don’t want to die …

The skin on Sofia’s head had shrunken, cracked, showed some of the white skull beneath. Someone had already eaten her eyes; empty sockets gazed out. And yet for all the damage, he still recognized her face.

Cooper sensed someone coming up from behind. He closed his eyes, pretended to be asleep. If he flinched, if he lost it and started running, they would know he wasn’t one of them.

A hand patting his back, a friendly thump-thump that felt like being smacked with a heavy mallet. Each connection filled Cooper with an eruption of fear. His heart threatened to blast right out of his chest. He kept his eyes closed.

Stay still stay still don’t flinch don’t panic don’t run …

Another thump-thump. Cooper couldn’t fake sleep any longer. He opened his eyes — it was the Monstrosity Formerly Known as Jeff, crouching down on his heels. Jeff’s pale-yellow face broke into a long-toothed smile.

“COOOOPERRRR.”

Cooper came very close to s.h.i.tting himself.

“Hey, Jeff,” he said. What else could he say?

Jeff’s horrid smile widened. A gnarled hand reached up — Cooper flinched, knew the bone-blade sticking out of Jeff’s forearm would punch right through him, but then the pale, white scythe pointed to the ceiling. Jeff’s gnarled fingers slid across his own scalp, lifted imaginary hair away from his swollen, yellow forehead. It was an instinctive motion, one he had made hundreds of thousands of times in his life, but his light-brown locks were no more. The fingers barely moved the few strands of hair that clung wetly to his scalp.

“COOOOOPERRRR … YOU HURT?” Monster Jeff rubbed his chest, then his stomach. “HURT INSIDE?”

Cooper glanced around the room, at all the others who had yet to rise. Were they sick? If so, should Cooper pretend to be the same way?

Jesus Christ save me get me out of this I swear I’ll lead a better life Jesus please please please …

The Tall Man coughed again, worse this time, the convulsion making him double over.

Fake it be like them whatever it takes be like them …

“Yeah,” Cooper said. “I hurt, Jeff. Inside.”

He looked around at the band of murderous cannibals. Two were asleep. The other three sat near the fire, one sneezing, the last two coughing, just like the Tall Man was.

And those coughs … wet … powerful … familiar.

They sound just like Chavo did.

Monster Jeff stood. He turned toward the spit, his thick body blocking the firelight and casting a shadow across the marble floor. His left hand reached out; the bone-blade stabbed into Sofia’s blackened b.u.t.t cheek. He used the right-hand blade to slice at the charred corpse, then lifted his left arm — stuck on the point of his scythe was a chunk of whitish meat, still steaming and sizzling and popping.