Pandemic Page 113

He nodded. “Aside from that.”

“Fine, I guess,” she said. “If you don’t count the fact that you’re jamming your fist into my bullet wound.”

He wanted to hear the rest of her story. “So how did you get away from the cop?”

She paused. He felt her arm slide around his back, felt her pull herself tighter to him. She was tough, no question, but there was still a frightened woman in there, a frightened woman who wanted comfort.

“He was forcing me to kiss him. He had his hands on my shoulders. His gun was in his holster. I grabbed it.”

For the first time, Cooper actually looked at the flat-black pistol in his hand. The faint, red light of the Exit sign played off the black barrel, enough for him to read the engraving on the side: SPRINGFIELD ARMORY U.S.A., along with the stylized letters XDM.

Cooper had never owned a gun. He’d been to a firing range three times in his life, all three times with Jeff, all three times just for fun. He hadn’t totally forgotten how to work a pistol. He pushed the release lever, slid the magazine out. On the back of the magazine, he saw two vertical rows — tiny dots that looked gold if a bullet was in there, black if there wasn’t. He counted seven spots of gold.

“Holds sixteen rounds,” Sofia said. “After the cop, other men tried to get me. I only missed twice. One in the chamber, so you’ve got eight left.”

He turned the weapon this way and that, looking for an orange dot.

“Where’s the safety?”

“Trigger and back-strap safeties,” she said. “Don’t worry about them. Just hold the gun tight, give the trigger a smooth pull.” Her voice dropped to barely a hiss. He heard anguish in her words. “It will shoot, trust me on that.”

The gunshots he’d heard while in the boiler room … how many of those had been hers? He’d killed the bald man with his bare hands. She’d killed people with this gun.

“It’s okay,” Cooper said, unsure if he was consoling her, or himself. “You did what you had to do. So did I.”

And in that moment, he knew he was in this with Sofia all the way — whatever the f.u.c.k was going on, they would face it together.

He kept pressing the tablecloth against her side, even though his arm was starting to tire. It had to hurt her, hurt her bad, but in seconds she started to snore.

Cooper Mitch.e.l.l sat in the darkness, this brave stranger’s head in his lap, wondering what the h.e.l.l they should do next.

DAY TEN

#APOCALYPSE

@Ticonderagga:

OMG, my neighbor just went ape-s.h.i.+t and attacked his wife! Pittsburgh PD shot him dead. Can’t believe this is happening.

@PickleThruster10:

15-car pileup on I-80 South. Looks like a guy cut in front of a tanker truck. Traffic at a dead stop — not going anywhere. #f.u.c.kingTraffic #AsianDrivers

@LongIslandIcy-T:

If anyone gets this, we’re trapped on roof at W139th & Amsterdam. Cops aren’t responding to 911. This guy is trying to kill us! Please send help!

@AlabamaCramma:

Explosions in downtown MLPS. News coverage spotty, says 30-40 dead, many more injured.

@Boston_Police:

Emergency notice: 24-hour curfew in effect. Stay in your homes. Do not let anyone in. Do not go into public areas. Do not approach police officers.

@WhiteSoxChum:

Where the f.u.c.k is the nat guard? Riot in street. I see dead bodies. Where are the cops? This is insane.

@BACOemergency:

Power is out throughout Baltimore. No ETA on recovery. Conserve cell phone power. Fill all available pots with water. Do not drink tap water after 5pm.

THE CITY OF LIGHTS

Murray watched it unfold on the Situation Room’s big monitor. The estimates were changing: some for the better, some for anything but:

IMMUNIZED: 43%

NOT IMMUNIZED: 50%

UNKNOWN: 7%

FINISHED DOSES EN ROUTE: 70,115,000

DOSES IN PRODUCTION: 58,653,000

And, at the bottom:

INFECTED: 976,500 (1,800,000)

CONVERTED: 250,250 (187,000)

DEATHS: 13,457 (30,000)

They’d added parentheses to the bottom numbers, representing global totals. The outbreaks of America and England were already producing cataclysmic numbers. China remained silent; that nation’s numbers could only be estimated based on limited satellite data and the stories of the refugees trickling into Myanmar and Vietnam. No refugees were hitting j.a.pan, however — the j.a.panese Maritime Self-Defense Force sank anything that came near the coast. Murray didn’t know if those casualties were counted in the tally.

As for France, well … the number of deaths in parentheses would need to be updated.

Paris burned.

The screens showed different angles of a city ablaze. Fire raged, consuming buildings both cla.s.sic and new. The dancing orange demons cast tall, flickering spires up to the night sky, spewing pillars of smoke into the blackness above.

Motherf.u.c.king Paris.

Some of the shots were from helicopters, some from the ground well outside the city proper, and two came from satellites. The scenes reminded Murray of watching the shock and awe of Desert Storm, but it was even worse than that — this level of destruction hadn’t been seen since World War II, since Dresden: he was watching a firestorm.

The unthinkable scenario had begun just a few hours earlier. There was no chance of controlling it. The French government had stopped giving death toll updates. The president, his cabinet, and much of the legislature had fled the city, hoping to set up somewhere else, to maintain government, to keep the head attached to the snake. Everyone who could get out of Paris probably already had.