Pandemic Page 163

“No,” he said. “You’ll have to kill me first.”

Feely slid off the bed, his hands out in front of him, palms up.

“Everyone just take it easy,” he said. “Klimas, I told you, we need her.”

Klimas didn’t look away from his stare-down. “Why?”

“Because she’s infected,” Tim said. “She’ll contract Cooper’s hydras, the thing that kills the Converted.”

Margaret stopped squirming.

Clarence forgot about the gun. He looked at Tim.

“You want to use my wife as a weapon?”

Tim started to talk, but coughed instead. Clarence felt a sting in his eyes. He smelled burning wood, melting carpet, odors filtering up from the fire below. Wisps of smoke curled near the ceiling.

Tim thumped a fist against his chest, coughed again, then continued. “Otto, if you’re right and she’s not infected, then she’s got nothing to worry about.” He looked at her, spoke sweetly: “Isn’t that right, Margopolis?”

Clarence felt her shaking her head. “Our baby,” she said, her words choked with deep sobs. “We don’t know how it will affect the baby. Keep Cooper away from me, honey, keep him away.”

Roth walked over, spoke to Klimas. “Commander, it’s ready.”

Klimas’s eyes narrowed. He lowered his weapon.

“Otto, I’m getting Cooper and Tim out of here,” he said. “If Margaret moves funny, I’m wasting her, and if you do anything to stop me, I’ll waste you. Got it?”

Clarence nodded. “Fair enough.”

Klimas tilted his head toward the man-size hole Roth had cut into the drywall. Through it, Clarence saw concrete.

“That’s the exterior wall of the hotel,” Klimas said. “It abuts another building that’s only a foot away. We’re blowing through both and entering that building. Then we’re descending to a tea shop that’s on the ground floor, at the corner of Pearson and Rush. I’m hoping the building is empty, and we can make it down without much of a fight. From there, we’re going to figure out a way through the enemy lines.”

“Enemy lines?” Clarence said. “They’re just a mob.”

“You’ll see soon enough,” Klimas said. “Everyone, into the hall.”

Bosh and Ramierez were still at their posts, guarding the hallway in both directions. Smoke curled thickly at the ceiling; the place was going up fast.

Roth pulled the door shut. He held a small detonator in his hand.

“Fire in the hole,” he said, then pushed the b.u.t.ton.

It didn’t sound like much of an explosion, more of a whump than a bang. Roth opened the door. A cloud of dust billowed out. Clarence looked in: the blast had punched clean through — he felt cold air pouring in, saw a brick wall beyond.

“First wall down,” Roth said. “Now to blast our way into the other building. Sixty seconds.”

He started placing small charges of C-4.

On his shoulder, Clarence felt Margaret start to shake. He turned, saw that Cooper Mitch.e.l.l was standing right next to them.

He was holding his exposed wrist near Margaret’s b.l.o.o.d.y hand. On that wrist, a red spot, a small patch of sagging skin: it looked like he’d just popped a huge blister, but Clarence saw no fluid. Tiny motes of floating white hung in the air for a moment, then dissipated into nothingness.

Cooper smiled wide. “Enjoy that, lady. You enjoy the f.u.c.k out of it.”

He stepped away.

Clarence set Margaret down on her own feet. With her hands still zip-stripped behind her back, she leaned against the wall. She shook violently.

She stared at Cooper Mitch.e.l.l, her eyes wide with terror.

HIT THE LIGHTS

Paulius lay on a tile floor, mostly hidden behind the low, brick wall of the dark tea shop’s broken window.

Outside in the cold, windy night, the few remaining lights lit up hundreds of Converted running through the streets: yelling in victory, screaming in psychotic rage, sometimes shooting guns into the air. Most of the time they moved south, toward the Park Tower.

But sometimes, they seemed to get confused — they ran north on Rush, or west on Pearson, and when they did, their own kind shot them down.

Thirty meters along either of those roads, a line of cars, trucks and other debris ran from sidewalk to sidewalk, completely blocking any way through. Barrel fires burned in front of these bulwarks, blurring any sight of the forces that hid behind them.

Paulius had to figure out how to cross those lines.

The gothic Archdiocese of Chicago was directly to the north, across Pearson. Paulius saw troops and guns lurking in the church’s broken stained-gla.s.s windows. He could lead his people into that building, search for an exit that would come out behind the Converted’s street-blocking wall, but he had no idea how many enemy troops waited inside.

Kitty-corner to the tea shop — across the intersection of Pearson and Rush — was a ten-story brick building, but going for that would expose him to fire from the troops behind the bulwarks of both streets. Plus, there was no guarantee the place wasn’t full of snipers just waiting for him to show his hand.

And due west, across Rush, a round skysc.r.a.per some forty stories tall. Same problems as the other buildings.

Every route seemed blocked, heavily defended.

There had to be a way.

He couldn’t count on help from anyone else, because no one answered his calls. As far as he knew, all the Rangers were dead. He’d lost most of his own men: just six out of twenty left, including himself. But if he could get Cooper Mitch.e.l.l to safety, his SEALs would not have died in vain.