Pandemic Page 174

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. Across 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 gla.s.s 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” b.u.t.ton 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. “f.u.c.k 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.”