Pandemic

  Clarence walked closer.

  Her eyes narrowed. She screamed, a sound of desperate rage. The gag muffled some of it, but only some.

  No. He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t.

  Clarence turned to leave, but stopped short — Klimas was standing just a few feet away. Had he been there the whole time? The SEAL nodded in man-to-man understanding. He extended his hand, palm up.

  “Give me the knife,” he said. “Take a walk. No shame in it — she’s your wife.”

  Clarence looked at the extended hand. Then he looked at the knife. No, it had to be him.

  “Was,” he said. “Was my wife.”

  He turned again, faced her, forced his feet to move.

  Margaret’s body shook, this time from sobs. Tears filled her eyes, ran down her forehead to vanish in her dark hair. She drew a ragged breath in through her nose, paused, then screamed again.

  Reality slurred for a moment. Everything shifted. He’d met her five years ago, fallen in love with her almost immediately. So brilliant, so hardworking, so utterly committed to doing whatever it took to get the job done. And what a job that had been.

  She’d fallen for him almost as fast. For a while, things had been perfect. They had been so happy together. They thought they had all the time in the world.

  They didn’t. No one did. Ever.

  No matter how much time you have, that time always runs out.

  Clarence stepped forward.

  Her screams grew more ragged as vocal cords gave way. She thrashed harder, so hard the whole ladder rattled, but the SEALS knew their business when it came to tying knots.

  He reached out with the knife. The blade shook madly, so much so that it looked like a prop made out of rubber.

  He was Abraham, ordered by God to sacrifice his own son. Only God wasn’t here, and no one was going to appear in a cloud of holy light and tell him it had just been a test of his devotion.

  Clarence started to talk, but his throat tightened and he choked on the words. He swallowed hard and tried again.

  “Good-bye, my love.”

  He pressed the edge of the blade against her throat. She screamed and screamed, she chewed madly on the gag, she jerked and kicked and fought for life.

  Clarence closed his eyes.

  He pushed up as hard as he could and slid the knife forward, felt the blade slice deep. The ladder rattled harder than ever. Still pressing up, he pulled the blade back, felt it bite into tendons and ligaments. Hers wasn’t the first throat he’d cut. It wasn’t like the movies — one slash didn’t do it, you had to saw a bit to get at those arteries.

  He pressed up even harder and slid forward again, then pulled back again. Hot wetness splashed onto his hand.

  Her screams ceased.

  Eyes still locked tight, he sawed forward one more time, back one more time.

  The ladder stopped rattling.

  He heard the sound of his wife’s blood splattering into a plastic mop bucket.

  From behind him, Klimas’s command voice boomed.

  “Feely! Get this blood ready to go!”

  Clarence realized he was still holding the knife. He let it drop, heard it clatter, then covered his face with his hands.

  He slowly sank to the floor.

  All the time in the world …

  All the time in the world …

  MISSION OBJECTIVES

  Paulius Klimas wasn’t a religious man. His lack of faith, however, didn’t stop him from a small prayer of thanks:

  Thank God it’s winter.

  The Windy City was living up to its name. Snow, ash and dirt swirled, rose and fell as gusts curled off buildings and rolled down the streets. Paulius guessed the temperature was hovering in the single digits, but the windchill dropped it far below zero. The weather numbed him, made it hard to move, but he was thankful because it produced a much-desired side effect: the streets were mostly empty.

  Even monsters and psychopaths hated the cold, it seemed.

  He and D’Shawn Bosh moved quickly. Roth’s sporting goods store had been stop number one. Bosh had gone for Cubs gear, while Paulius opted for a black, knee-length Bears coat and matching hat. They both wore gray Chicago Fire sweats over their fatigue pants.

  Paulius also looked a little pregnant. He had a one-gallon milk jug of Margaret’s blood strapped to his belly. Feely had said his body heat would keep it from freezing solid.

  They were headed east on Oak. Dust from the JDAMs had billowed out even this far, some four and five blocks from impact, turning the standing snow from white to gray.

  Though the bad guys clearly didn’t like the cold, a few of them remained outside. Paulius saw several bundled-up people, heads covered in hats and faces wrapped in scarves. They all carried weapons of one kind or another: hunting rifles, pistols, knives, axes, even carbines. One fat guy lugged a chain saw. The dirt, the streets filled with ruined cars, an armed militia walking free — Chicago reminded Paulius of a subzero Mogadishu.

  The monsters, however, didn’t seem to mind the conditions. Three-legged hatchlings scurried everywhere. As for the huge, yellow behemoths with the wicked bone-blades sticking out of their arms, Paulius saw at least one on every block. It was all he and Bosh could do to keep walking, to try to pretend the creatures were nothing unusual.

  Roth’s experience held true: without uniforms, Paulius and Bosh drew little attention. They reached Michigan Avenue, looked out onto a park covered in gray snow. At the park’s far edge lay U.S. Route 41, and beyond that, Lake Michigan.

  “Damn,” Bosh said. “We ain’t getting out that way.”

  Paulius nodded. There were even more cars blocking the road than when he and his men had swum in the day before. He pulled out his binoculars, steel-cold fingers complaining at even that small motion. Through them, he saw the reason for the growing and already-impassable roadblock: two of the sickle-armed, muscle-bound creatures were rolling a burned-out Toyota pickup down the road. They pushed it near several other cars, then bent, lifted, and flipped the vehicle on its side as if it were nothing more than a toy.

  He stowed the binoculars. “After we pick up the others, we’ll have to use surface streets to drive north. Let’s go.”

  They moved south on Michigan Avenue. On the far side of the street, a Converted woman was using a hacksaw to cut away at the arm of a frozen corpse. As Paulius and Bosh moved past, the woman didn’t even look up.

  The firehouse wasn’t much farther.

  THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY

  The president of Russia glared out from the Situation Room’s large screen. President Albertson glared back. At least, that’s what Murray thought Albertson was going for — in truth, it looked like he was trying hard not to soil himself.

  Stepan Morozov’s face sagged with prolonged anger and extreme exhaustion. He wore a suit coat, but no tie. His sweat-stained shirt was unbuttoned down to the sternum, showing graying chest hair.

  “President Albertson, the time to act is now,” Morozov said. “China is going to launch her missiles. Our intelligence confirms this. If Russia and America combine for a first strike, together we will eliminate China’s nuclear capability.”

  Albertson opened his mouth to speak, then shut it. Murray saw beads of sweat break out on the man’s forehead.

  On the screen, Morozov’s eyes narrowed. “Mister President? Did you hear me?”

  “Yes,” Albertson said quickly. “Yes, I heard you.”

  When Albertson didn’t offer anything else, Morozov’s face started to redden.

  “The Chinese have already struck us,” he said. “A million Russians are dead. The Chinese leadership says nothing — no apology, no explanation. We must assume that they are infected. If we strike while they are disorganized and silent, we might hit them before they can launch at all.”

  “And we might not,” Albertson said. “They could launch in retaliation, get their missiles away before ours hit. I’ll consider your proposal … I’ll talk it over with my staff. Thank you
for the call.”

  Murray couldn’t believe what he was watching. The Russian president was asking the United States to join him in a large-scale nuclear attack on the world’s most populous nation, and Albertson just wanted to get off the line. The man was overwhelmed, completely unprepared for something like this.

  Morozov snarled. A string of spit ran from his top lip to his bottom, vibrating with each word.

  “There is no time to consider,” he said. The string of spit popped free, landed on his chin. “Maybe there is a reason you don’t want to strike! Maybe you are infected, and you are already talking to the Chinese about first-striking us!”

  Albertson shook his head. “I … we … of course we’re not infected! We … we …”

  Morozov shook his fist. “Then prove it! Strike now, before it is too late!”

  “I …” Albertson said. “We …”

  Murray stood up. “President Morozov, we are close to finishing a weapon that will wipe out the infected, all of them, worldwide.”

  In the Situation Room, faces pinched tight in anger or went blank in shock — two heads of state were deciding the fate of the world, and Murray Longworth was butting in?

  On the screen, Morozov turned to look at Murray. The virtual conference technology made it feel like he was looking Murray dead in the eyes.

  “You are Longworth?” he said. “The one who handles the … the … ah, yes, the special threats.”

  Murray was a little surprised to be recognized so quickly, but he plowed forward.

  “Yes, President Morozov, I am the director of the Department of Special Threats. Our solution, sir, is highly contagious. It spreads from one infected to the next. Our team is in Chicago, testing this solution as we speak. If Russia’s actions cause a nuclear strike on Chicago, then our solution will also be destroyed. And to be blunt, your weapons, our weapons — none of them can do a damn thing to save our citizens and our nations. If your people haven’t told you that already, they are either ignorant of reality or they are telling you what they think you want to hear.”

  Morozov’s face grew redder. His eyes widened.

  “Who do you think you are talking—”

  “Shut up,” Murray said. He couldn’t take this anymore, couldn’t take the pressure and these people posturing while the world died around them.

  He walked up to the screen as if Morozov was a real person and they were about to stand toe-to-toe. “If you launch, you doom the entire human race. We need more time.”

  Morozov stared out from the screen. His left cheek twitched.

  “Our intelligence says your military has abandoned Chicago.”

  Murray nodded. “And what better place to run our test than in a city overrun with the infected? We need more time, Mister President. We can stop this thing without nuking the bejesus out of China.”

  Morozov turned to look offscreen. Murray saw him mouth the word bejesus, then shrug. Someone offscreen answered him. He nodded, turned back to stare at Longworth.

  “I am told that you are a soldier?”

  The question surprised Murray. “I was,” he said. “I served in Vietnam.”

  Morozov spread his hands, palms up. “Once a soldier, always a soldier. I served my country in Afghanistan.” His anger faded somewhat. “You have killed people, Mister Longworth? You have seen your friends die?”

  What the hell does this have to do with anything?

  “Yes to both,” Murray said.

  Morozov bit his lower lip. He nodded, turned slightly to look at Albertson. “You have twenty-four hours to prove this. Then, America will join our attack. As one of your former presidents once said so eloquently, you are either with us, or you are against us.”

  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 glass 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 a
nd 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” button 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. “Fuck 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.”

  “That’s all that’s left,” the woman said. “Unless you know where there’s some living meat that everyone missed?”

  Paulius pulled, but couldn’t see where he was hooked. He couldn’t even turn all the way around to the hostiles if they walked into the bus.

  “Come on,” the woman said. “There’s got to be something worth eating in there. Come on.”

  The voice couldn’t be more than ten feet away.

  Hands grabbed at his waist. He reached for the knife sheathed on his chest — it was gone, he’d given it to Otto. He raised a hand to strike downward, but saw Bosh’s head wedged into the tight corner.

  Bosh’s shaking black hands fumbled at something. Paulius felt the coat snap free, then he was yanked down into a dark crawlspace. He landed on frozen ground.

  Paulius reached a hand back up, quietly, and grabbed the edge of the floor mat. He silently pulled it over the hole.