Pandemic (74 page)

The horde started to scatter even before the first 105-millimeter howitzer
round landed right on the dividing line of North State Parkway, pulverizing bodies, knocking cars on their sides and rattling the snow off of bare branches.

Confusion reigned. People took cover in buildings or sprinted back down the street, moved anywhere but toward the fire truck. They didn’t know what was happening; they only knew they had to run and hide.

The emperor had ordered them to kill Cooper Mitchell, but he had given another order as well … the order to evacuate the city. The mob’s will broke. The survivors fled, heading for their assigned vehicles, for the cars and trucks and buses and motorcycles that would take them north, to Milwaukee, take them east, to Michigan City and South Bend, take them south to Springfield, Champaign and beyond.

The exodus began.

Clarence knew he had to move, but his ice-cold body wouldn’t react, wouldn’t
obey
.

He heard something big land next to him, something that was still making a squealing noise.

He also heard Margaret’s voice:
Get up, baby … get up …

The fog cleared. Clarence reached out, use the shattered front of Engine 98 to help him rise.

In front of him, the muscle-monster did exactly the same thing.

Clarence stood just in front of the driver’s seat, the monster just in front of the passenger seat. The knife still stuck out of the creature’s neck. Jets of blood squirted out in red arcs that fell on the park’s white snow.

The monster reared up to its full height: eight feet tall and very pissed off. Yellow hands flexed into fists. Arms vibrated with fury, making the blood-streaked bone-blades shake and shimmer.

Clarence wanted to turn and run, but his body wouldn’t let him. It was all he could do to stay on his feet.

He was done for.

The creature brought its right fist back to its ear, aimed the bone-blade at Clarence’s chest.

I’m sorry, Margaret … I’m not going to make it …

A clink of metal on broken glass. Just inches from the monster’s left temple, the barrel of a Benelli shotgun slid across the bottom edge of the windshield housing.

The monster turned.

“FUUUUCK …” it had time to say, then the shotgun jumped and the monster’s face disappeared in a spray of blood and yellowish flesh. The creature fell to its back, twitching.

Through the windshield, Clarence saw the ashen face of Ramierez.

“Hooyah, motherfucker,” the SEAL said.

Clarence turned, letting the bullet-ridden truck carry his weight as he slid to the driver’s door. He opened it.

Bosh was slumped down in the seat, covered in his own blood. He was still blinking, but not for long. The monster had torn his throat open. Clarence could see the front of Bosh’s vertebrae.

Clarence shut the door. Out in the park, he saw a Seahawk helicopter coming in fast, nose tilted up for a landing.

“Everybody out!” he screamed as he stumbled around to the other side. “Move, move! Get to the chopper!”

He opened the passenger door to see that Ramierez had passed out again, shotgun still clutched in his hands.

Clarence lifted Ramierez out of the truck and started toward the helicopter. To his right, Tim stumbled along, supporting the limping weight of Commander Klimas.

Just one man missing, the only man who really mattered.

Clarence stopped only long enough to shout over his shoulder.

“Cooper!
Come on!
”

Cooper Mitchell’s head hurt, really,
really
bad.

He saw the horde scatter. Despite the pain, he felt elated.
He’d won
.

“Suck a bag of dicks, you fucking douchebags.”

He looked up to the sky, saw a slow-moving plane — just a dot, really, but whatever it was, it had ended the fight. Too bad it hadn’t arrived sooner; Roth might have made it.

Cooper had blood all over his hands.
His
blood, pouring out of a cut on the back of his head. He was probably going to throw up soon, thanks to the eye-narrowing throb going
boom-boom-boom
inside his skull.

He grabbed the water cannon’s post, used it to pull himself to his knees. He put his right hand down to press up, felt something smooth and hard beneath it — the fire axe.

His pistol was empty. For that matter, he didn’t even know where the thing was. He grabbed the axe handle, lifted it as he stood. His legs felt like rubber. He sat on the bullet-ridden metal box and slid his legs over the side. He dropped, almost fell when he landed.

His right hand held the axe handle. He pushed the top of the head against the ground, used the axe as a cane. There wasn’t one spot on his body that didn’t hurt.

The helicopter. Right there. He’d
made
it.

Cooper heard movement behind him. He turned sharply.

Not five feet away, slowing to a stop, was the Monster Formerly Known as Jeff, and hiding behind him, head not quite reaching Jeff’s massive shoulders, was Steve Stanton.

Steve looked terrified. His eyes darted everywhere, but always flicked back to Cooper.

Only a part of Cooper noticed this, because he couldn’t stop looking at Jeff — huge body, pale yellow skin gleaming from a sheen of sweat, mouth open, chest heaving slightly from exertion.
So goddamn big
. And those massive arms, the bone-blades jutting from the backs of his hands.

Jeff raised a hand to his head. His fingers flipped back imaginary hair.

“COOOO​OOPEE​EERRR​RRR …”

“Hey, buddy,” Cooper said. He didn’t feel afraid this time, which made no sense at all — Jeff was a
thing
, a thing with fucking bone-swords for arms. And yet, Cooper had won. He couldn’t die now … it simply was not possible.

Steve pointed a shaking finger at Cooper. “Jeff, kill him!
Skin
him!”

The Monster Formerly Known as Jeff blinked slowly. He took a step forward.

Cooper held up his left hand, palm out:
stop right there
.

“It’s
me
, bro. It’s Coop. Don’t do this.”

Jeff lifted a gnarled, yellow foot to take another step forward, then put it back down. His face was distorted, misshapen into a mask of evil, but Cooper could still read his lifelong friend — Jeff didn’t want to attack.

Steve’s screech tore at the air. “Kill him!
Kill that diseased motherfucker!
”

The monster’s eyes flicked down to Cooper’s feet, focused on something there. Cooper looked down as well — the red axe blade, resting against the ground.

Jeff looked up again. His eyes filled with the anguish of a heart torn in two directions. He didn’t want to hurt Cooper, but he couldn’t hold himself back much longer.

For just a moment, the monster wasn’t a monster anymore. It was the boy Cooper had grown up with, the man he’d gone into business with. It was his lifelong friend, the person he loved more than anyone else in the world.

Jeff Brockman closed his eyes.

He let out a long, slow breath.

Cooper knew, instantly, that when Jeff opened those eyes again, he would give in to his nature; he would become the creature that Steve Stanton wanted him to be.

Cooper lifted the axe and stepped forward in the same motion. He swung it high and hard, brought it down with everything he had.

The red blade dug deep into Jeff’s head with a dull
chonk
.

The Monster Formerly Known as Jeff opened its eyes. He met Cooper’s gaze for two long seconds, then the eyelids sagged.

The massive body dropped straight down, like a yellow sack of boneless meat.

Jeff didn’t move. The axe handle stuck up at a shallow angle.

Steve Stanton stared. The expression on his face said it all: the dude knew he was fucked.

He turned to run, but Cooper dove at his legs. Steve hit the frozen ground face-first. He screamed for help, but there was no one left
to
help.

Cooper rolled him to his back and straddled his stomach. He slid his knees over Steve’s biceps, pinning the smaller man to the ground, a schoolyard bully about to inflict punishment on the class loser.

“This is all your fault,” Cooper said. “I don’t know how, or why, but I know it’s your fault.”

Steve stared up in pure terror, as if Cooper was ten times the monster Jeff had been.

And then Cooper remembered why.

“Oh, that’s right,” he said. “I make you assholes sick.”

Cooper reached to the back of his head, rubbed both hands hard against his torn scalp. It hurt, but he didn’t care. He brought his hands forward, held them palms out so Steve could see the blood.

“Your turn,” Cooper said.

Steve bucked and thrashed, but he couldn’t budge Cooper’s weight.

Cooper Mitchell pressed his bloody hands down on Steve Stanton’s screaming face. Cooper rubbed it around, rubbed it
hard
.

“That was for Sofia.”

He drove his thumb into Steve’s right cheek, three fingers into his left, and
squeezed
, forcing the man to open his mouth. Cooper shoved his bloody fingers inside, slid them across Steve’s tongue, jammed the fingertips inside Steve’s gums and slid them around real good.

“That was for Jeff.”

To finish it off, Cooper hawked the biggest loogie of his life, then spit it into Steve’s open mouth.

Steve froze. He stared up with the blank, disbelieving gaze of a man who has just received a death sentence. He moved his tongue around, trying to keep the loogie away from the back of his throat.

Cooper leaned close. “That was for
me
.”

Cooper reared back and punched Steve Stanton in the stomach.

Steve let out a slight wheeze. He gasped like a beached fish, trying and failing to draw a breath.

He swallowed.

Cooper stood, reached down and patted Steve’s cheek.

“And that? That one was for
you
, dickweed. Enjoy.”

Cooper looked around — there was no one left. All the Converted had faded away into the city.

He was alone.

He had
won
.

He turned toward the helicopter. Clarence was already in it, beckoning madly.

Time to go.

It was finally
over
. All of it. Over forever.

Clarence, Tim Feely and Commander Paulius Klimas stood in the Oval Office, waiting for the president to arrive. Klimas was on crutches. He wore a neat, fresh bandage around his neck.

Tim was using a cane. The cane’s handle was a twisted coil of DNA — the same as Murray Longworth’s. Clarence wondered if that meant something.

Clarence had asked both Tim and Paulius to be there for this. Ramierez was still in the hospital, but at least he was out of the ICU. He was going to live.

Clarence hadn’t asked Cooper Mitchell to come, because Cooper hadn’t known Margaret. Cooper had apparently moved to the Upper Peninsula, as far away from everyone and everything as he could get. That didn’t stop him from fielding offers to turn his story into a movie, however. LA had been hit hard, but the film industry didn’t miss a beat.

The Mitchell-Montoya plague, as the hydras were now known, had spread through the Midwest faster than anyone expected. Only two days after the Seahawk had carried the five survivors out of Lincoln Park, new batches made from Cooper’s blood had been crop-dusted across Manhattan, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Boston. Four days after, every major city had received multiple coatings.

Just one week after Margaret’s death, most of the Converted lay dead, their bodies waiting to be collected, carted away and burned.

The hydras didn’t seem to affect the yellow monsters, but that wasn’t as big of a problem as Clarence had feared. The monsters couldn’t blend in. When they were spotted it became an instant witch hunt. Special Forces handled the task if they were available, then cops, and if neither could get on the job, bands of armed citizens chased the creatures down.

Albertson had sent thousands of hydra doses to China, along with scientific advisors to help manage the massive effort of reaching the entire
population. One Doctor Cheng, apparently, was part of that mission. Clarence hoped he enjoyed it.

America now focused her efforts on wiping out the Converted in Canada, Mexico and South America. Europe and Russia had already implemented their own hydra exposure campaigns, and were sending starter doses to Africa, Australia, India and all the corners of the earth.

For once, the human race unified in cause and spirit.

But it wasn’t all smiles and roses. The final death toll staggered the imagination. Some estimates were as high as one
billion
dead, although more conservative guesses placed it at “only” eight hundred million. It was the worst disaster in mankind’s history.

China had been hit the hardest, as far as body count went, but experts were saying the world might
never
know the full death toll in Africa. That continent had seen seven governments collapse, replaced by dictators who had swooped in to fill the power vacuum. The UN was at least a month away from having the ability to do anything about that.

As for America, the final death tally was estimated at over thirty million. No disaster in the nation’s history even came close. By comparison, the influenza epidemic of the 1918 pandemic had killed some 675,000 Americans, and the Civil War around 700,000.

Nothing could have prepared the United States for that level of death, and yet the 284,000,000 survivors were working together to rebuild. Partisan politics didn’t exist. Racism seemed to be something from the past. All that mattered was helping one another out, putting the pieces back together. Would this new Land of Brotherly Love last? Probably not. For now, however, it made the recovery process an amazing thing to behold.

The Oval Office door opened. President Albertson walked in. At his side was Murray Longworth, carrying two small, black lacquer boxes.

The president shook each man’s hand.

“Gentlemen, the world owes you a debt of thanks,” he said. “I can only imagine what you went through. And I can only empathize with the grief you must feel.”