For all the commotion going on upstairs, it was very still down here. Still and quiet, like a tomb.
He listened. He held his breath.
Come on, dude, where are you?
And then, very faint, a sound so thin he wondered if he was imagining it: the crunching guitar chords of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” — Jeff’s ringtone.
Cooper turned in place, trying to nail down the direction. There, halfway down the hall, a pair of white, windowless metal doors. He walked to them, looking left, looking right, listening for any sound that might warn him of company.
Somewhere around a corner, a door smashed open, echoing through the concrete hallways. Cooper heard a man screaming in anger.
“… cut you … cut you up … run, motherfucker!”
The yelling grew louder. Shit, the man was coming his way. Cooper thumbed the left-hand door’s latch and yanked it open. He quickly stepped inside a poorly lit area, quietly pulled the door closed behind him.
He turned, letting his eyes adjust to the low light — and when they did, he found himself facing a smiling, bald man sitting on a folding metal chair.
A single overhead light lit up that man’s white shirt, played off his pink head. He wore a patterned tie loosened at the neck. Black slacks, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The clothes and his beer gut screamed conventioneer from Wisconsin.
“Hello,” the man said.
“Uh,” Cooper said. “Hi.”
Cooper quickly looked around, got his bearings. He was in a boiler room. On his right, two big metal tanks on concrete footings. The tanks needed a fresh coat of paint — gray enamel bubbled here and there, had been scraped away in others. The size of the tanks held his attention for a moment: it figured a large hotel like this would need a ton of hot water, but that wasn’t something you thought of when you checked into the Trump’s swank lobby.
Farther back in the room, just one other light glowed. There were dozens of dangling light fixtures, but none of them were on; most of the bulbs looked broken.
The man stood. His chair slid back an inch, the scraping sound echoing off the boiler room’s concrete walls. He took in a long, slow breath through his nose, then exhaled out his mouth in a cheek-puffing expression of relief.
“Can I help you?” he said.
His eyes … there was something off in them. The man radiated excitement, like he wanted to jump and dance and scream, yet he stood stock-still.
“Uh, no, thanks,” Cooper said. “I’m just looking for my friend.”
The bald man smiled. He nodded. “A friend of yours is a friend of mine. We’re all friends now, right?”
Cooper didn’t know what to say. What was this man’s deal? Something about his eyes, how they glowed with intensity, with … joy. Joy, yes, but something else as well — this man looked more than a little crazy.
The dangerous kind of crazy.
“Sure, buddy,” Cooper said. “We’re all besties, whatever you want. My friend is six-two, about two hundred pounds, looks like he’s forty.” Cooper tapped his own left shoulder. “Brown hair about to here?”
The smiling man smiled some more. His front right tooth looked chipped. There was a fresh cut on his lip, the flesh torn and exposed. Cooper wondered if the two wounds happened with the same punch.
“I’ve seen a lot of people,” the man said. “A lot of people came down to the basement. Some left. Some stayed.”
Cooper quickly looked left, right — were there others down here? He’d been scared in the stairwell, but he’d been alone. Now his stomach pinched and twirled. His hands shook. This was a bad scene, as bad as bad got. He had to get out of there, but he wasn’t leaving without Jeff.
He lifted his phone to dial Jeff’s cell again but saw that he had zero bars — no connection in the boiler room.
Cooper put the phone in his pocket. “See anyone wearing an AC/DC T-shirt? A black one?”
The bald man nodded. “Oh, sure! That guy’s here. He’s resting.”
Cooper’s heart raced. He could get his friend and get the hell out of there, leave this two-cards-shy-of-a-full-deck Wisconsinite behind.
Cooper forced a smile. “Can you show me? I’d appreciate it.”
“Sure,” the bald man said. “We’re all friends now, right?”
“All friends,” Cooper echoed. “Total BFFs.”
“Huh? Bee-eff-eff?”
“We’re friends, I mean,” Cooper said. “Show me?”
The man walked deeper into the poorly lit basement, past the gray boilers. Cooper hesitated. This was a mistake. He was going to follow a strange, whacked-out man into Freddy Krueger’s home turf?
You fucking owe me, Jeff. I hope you’re okay, so I can kill you myself.
Cooper followed the bald man in the blood-speckled white shirt.
As he walked, he scanned left and right again … and he saw shapes. Shapes back in the shadows, where the floor met the wall, around and even underneath the boilers. The shapes were … people? Sleeping people covered in dark blankets, maybe?
There were two more smaller boilers beyond the first pair. After the last boiler, the white-shirted man stopped and turned. He smiled that something-is-wrong-with-me smile, then gestured toward a bulky shape, covered in a blanket, resting at the base of the cinder-block wall.
It took Cooper a moment to see something in that shape, to see a person’s face.
Jeff’s face.
His best friend in all the world, his business partner, his brother, and yet the sight of him suddenly repulsed Cooper. Jeff’s face looked … bigger. Swollen, sweaty, with big threads from that blanket clinging to his jaw, his cheeks. And the body beneath that blanket … bloated, misshapen … too large.
Something deep inside of Cooper told him to stay the fuck away from Jeff. No, not just stay away, more like turn and haul ass out of there.
No. He would not leave. That was his friend. Jeff was sick. Really sick, obviously, something way beyond drinking himself halfway into a coma and finding a quiet place to pass out.
Cooper took a step closer, leaving the strange man facing his back.
Those threads on Jeff’s face … they weren’t threads.
Because it wasn’t a blanket.
Jeff was encrusted in some kind of dark-brown clay, or maybe a stiff foam. His eyes were closed, his mouth was open. The material curved up over his left cheek, split into tendrils that threaded up into his hair: a twisted delta of that strange mud cupped Jeff’s head like a mother cradling a child.
Then, Cooper saw something that took his mind a moment to register. Half covered by that material, there were two left hands. No … three of them. There were two people in there with Jeff, two small people. Cooper saw a shoeless, skinless foot sticking out, a foot with black, shriveled skin … almost like the foot of a mummy.
Cooper’s chest tightened and tingled. Was Jeff dead?
No, his lips were moving, just slightly — he was still breathing.
“Jeff,” Cooper said. “Bro, can you hear me?”
“Of course he can’t,” said the bald man. His words faded away into the boiler room’s shadows.
The situation hit Cooper with a sudden, gripping clarity — a city going crazy and he was in a dark basement, a strange man with a psycho grin standing right behind him. Had this man put Jeff here? Had he covered Jeff and those other people with this brown goop?
Cooper turned, looked at the chipped-tooth smile. He pointed down at Jeff.
“What is that stuff all over him?”
The man shrugged. “I dunno. That’s how it’s done, I guess. I’m just supposed to watch and make sure they’re safe.”
“Safe from what?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. He sniffed again. Twice, like a dog checking something out. “Safe from people who are not our friends.”
Friends. Out of the bald man’s mouth, the word sounded heavy, important. It sounded … religious.
Cooper squatted in front of Jeff, forced himself
to reach for his friend — then he pulled his hand back. What if that brown shit was some kind of disease? What if it was contagious? Could it be part of what Blackmon had been babbling about on TV? He had to call an ambulance. But if he did, would one come? The world outside had melted down. Cooper couldn’t count on help from anyone; Jeff needed him, and needed him right now.
Cooper reached out with his index finger, pointed it, poked the tip into the brown material. It felt like a crunchy sponge.
“Hey,” said the man behind him. “You’re not supposed to touch that. Never supposed to touch that!”
Cooper stood and turned. “You said you didn’t know what this crap is.”
The man’s smile faded. “Maybe I was wrong.”
The hair stood up on Cooper’s neck. To his left, the bulky, hot boiler. To his right, heavy shadows that hid the rest of the basement. This crazy fuck blocked his path to the door.
“Uh, wrong about what?”
“About you being my friend.”
The man’s hands shot out, reaching for Cooper’s neck. Cooper flinched away — his heels hit Jeff. Cooper fell backward against the cinder-block wall, slid down it until his ass landed on the pile of bodies. He tried to scramble up, but the bald man’s hands slammed into his throat, wrapped around his neck.
Strong thumbs pushed hard into Cooper’s windpipe. He couldn’t breathe. The man leaned in hard, his weight keeping Cooper pressed down on Jeff, the other bodies and the crunchy material that covered them.
“Just give us a smooch,” the man said. “It’ll be okay.”
He opened his mouth and bent closer.
The overhead lights cast the man’s face in shadow, but not so much that Cooper couldn’t see the wide eyes, pupils so big they looked like dimes, the strand of spit stringing from the upper lip to the lower, and the man’s tongue — pink, dotted with tiny, blue triangles.
What the fuck oh God oh God!
Cooper’s hands shot up and grabbed the man’s face. Thumb tips drove deep into the man’s eyes with a pop and a squelch and a burst of hot wetness.
The man released Cooper’s throat, flailed at Cooper’s hands. Cooper shoved him away. The man fell back into the aisle, his ass landing on concrete, his hands covering ruined eyes that spilled blood onto his white shirt. The sound he made … it was like an obese cat crying for food.
Cooper coughed, drew in air, pushed himself to his feet. His wet thumbs were already cooling in the basement air. He quickly wiped them off against his pants legs, horrified at what was on his skin.
He had to get out of there.
Cooper turned to face his friend. Jeff hadn’t moved a muscle. Neither had the other two people hidden beneath the brown material.
“Jeff! Dude, wake the fuck up!”
Cooper went to grab Jeff’s shirt to shake him, actually touched the brown stuff before his hands retreated on their own as if they’d touched a man-size spider.
Gloves, he needed gloves, something to cover his hands. No, too late for that — he already had flecks and chunks of the brown stuff on his fingers, and he could feel pieces of it on his neck and face.
Cooper fought back revulsion as he grabbed at the brown material and tried to pull it off his friend. It was some kind of membrane, a thick sheet that didn’t want to be ripped free. Little tendrils were anchored tight to the cinder block like roots of crawling ivy. It felt like touching wet wood, so black and rotted that it squished more than crunched. Cooper pushed his fingers through it, down around Jeff’s shoulder, and yanked — Jeff remained covered in the membrane, but at least Cooper had pulled him free of the wall.
Cooper felt two strong hands lock down on his right ankle. He started to turn, to kick out, but before he could, he felt the hard sting of something biting his calf through his jeans.
He looked down to see the bald man: hollow holes for eyes, white teeth locked on dark denim that was already growing darker with spreading blood.
Cooper raised his right fist high, twisted as he brought it down on top of the man’s head. The man quivered, but didn’t let go. Cooper reached down with both hands and gripped hard on the back of the man’s neck. He yanked, felt a deeper pain as the man’s teeth tore free.
Cooper flung the man onto his back, straddled him, then wrapped his hands around the man’s throat and squeezed and how do you like it motherfucker squeeze just keep squeezing and never stop and never stop until you die motherfucker until you DIE!
The man’s blue-dotted tongue stuck out. He made noises that might have been a desperate effort to draw air. The bloody mess of two ruptured eyes still managed to squint in agony, eyelids sagging in against the negative space.
Cooper felt the man’s life slip away.
So he squeezed some more.
He didn’t know how long it was until he felt his hands weaken, the muscles exhausted, until they could no longer keep up the crushing pressure. Cooper stood, chest heaving. He heard the sound of his own ragged breaths.
Had he just killed someone?
No-no-no, the man couldn’t be dead, this couldn’t be happening, it wasn’t real it wasn’t real.
What was going on? The craziness out in the streets, in the hotel, and now this? And Jeff …
Cooper stumbled back to his friend. Jeff still hadn’t moved. He lay there, covered in that blasphemous rot.
The sounds of metal doors slamming open echoed through the room. The boiler blocked a view of the door, but the sound of shoe soles slapping against concrete told Cooper people were coming, fast.
He had to hide. There was only one place to hide. Cooper quickly and quietly slid between Jeff Brockman and the wall.
Jeff’s body felt hot, as if his fever had magnified a hundred times. Cooper slid down on his right side, pulled on Jeff so his friend’s back once again rested against the cinder-block wall.
Cooper tried not to think about the other two people under the membrane …
Rushing footsteps coming closer.
It was a shit hiding place it wouldn’t work they were going to kill him and strangle him but it was all he had.
Through a small rip in the membrane, he could see part of the concrete floor, could see the foot and leg of the dead bald man.
Maybe it’s dark enough, maybe they won’t touch Jeff because they’re not supposed to touch NEVER supposed to touch, maybe—
Three sets of feet stepped into view: red sneakers; a pair of shiny, polished shoes; a pair of brown loafers. The heels of the polished shoes rose up — someone was kneeling over the bald man’s body.
“He’s dead,” a voice said.
“Where’s the killer?” said another.
The feet moved. Shoes pointed in new directions as people looked around the boiler room
“I don’t see anyone,” the first man said.
“Should we check the cocoons?” said another.
“Check them for what? We don’t even know what’s happening in there. We’re not supposed to touch.”
“Never supposed to touch,” a woman said.
The first voice spoke again. “Someone who is not a friend is around here somewhere. Let’s go tell Stanton.”
Stanton? Had Cooper heard that right?
The shoes moved away, slowly, but it only took a couple of steps before they were gone from Cooper’s view.
He lay there, under his best friend and the two people packed in with his best friend, all of them covered in God knew what, trying not to make the slightest noise that would bring men who wanted to kill him, kill him because he wasn’t a friend.
Cocoon.
That’s what they called the membrane, a fucking cocoon? What did that mean?
A cocoon … a caterpillar turning into a butterfly … was Jeff changing into something else?
Cooper closed his eyes, tried to breathe as quietly as he could. If Jeff was changing, what would he become?
And how long did Cooper have before it happened?
THE INTERNET
Murray bit in
to a chicken sandwich, his mouth filling with the punchy taste of aioli and Gouda. Things were going to hell in a handbasket, but he could say one thing for the White House — someone here sure knew how to cook.
They all ate. The chief of staff had insisted, making sure everyone got what they wanted, making doubly sure that Blackmon didn’t skip her meal of a BLT and fries.
As Murray chewed, he watched the big monitor at the end of the Situation Room, the one mounted opposite the president’s seat at the head of the table. The left half of the monitor condensed the developing situation into a handful of ever-changing estimates:
IMMUNIZED: 26%
NOT IMMUNIZED: 66%
UNKNOWN: 8%
FINISHED DOSES EN ROUTE: 62,000,000
DOSES IN PRODUCTION: 71,300,000
The right half of the monitor showed a map of the United States. Each state was a shade of gray. The more doses delivered, the darker the state became.
The same map used colors to denote outbreaks. Philadelphia, Boston and several other cities glowed yellow, indicating high numbers of early-stage cases. That meant people were infected but had not yet turned violent.
Other cities glowed orange, showing areas with spiking cases of assault, murder, property damage, et cetera. Those cities — Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Columbus — were just beginning to tip over to the worst color of all: red.
Four red areas glowed ominously: Grand Rapids, Minneapolis, New York City and Chicago.
And at the bottom of the monitor, white letters on a black bar that stretched across the bottom of the display:
INFECTED: 530,000
CONVERTED: 78,500
DEATHS: 1,282
Those numbers were estimates, a best guess compiled from city reports, the CDC, FEMA and other organizations responsible for tracking the disaster.
Things were bad. Things would get much worse, but the important numbers were on top: 26% immunized, 133 million doses en route or in production. America was rallying to the cause. When it was said and done, this would rate as the worst disaster in American history, by far, but the tide was already turning.