Pandemic Page 117

A thousand heads nodded.

“We will use their own communication systems against them,” he said. He pointed to his ear. “The humans are listening. Only the heads of individual groups may have a cell phone. Do not talk about being Chosen on phones, on the Internet, or in emails. I will distribute code words that you will pa.s.s on to others by face-to-face meetings only. If I need to make everyone act at once, we’ll broadcast those code words. We must be careful so that the outside world doesn’t suspect our numbers.”

The heads nodded faster, more intently. They understood.

“As you spread through the city, find others of our kind. Tell them about me, tell them I am in charge. If you find humans who are not converting, kill them. Who here has served in the military?”

Along the descending stairs and down on the main floor, forty-odd hands rose.

“Excellent,” Steve said. “All of you, come up and meet with me when I dismiss the rest. Everyone else, when you leave here, find me more soldiers. Ask for military experience, and ask specifically for anyone who served in a reserve unit in this area. If there are weapons in or around Chicago, we need them.”

Steve again put his hands on the cool, stone railing. He leaned forward, letting the motions come naturally, letting the intensity build. His past, the shy, awkward thing he’d once been, it all seemed a bad dream. Power coursed through him. He could control the Chosen Ones as easily as he’d controlled the Platypus.

“The world is about to change, forever,” he said. “We will make this city ours. Soon after that, the entire country.” He stood straight. He raised his arms, spread them wide. “When the Chosen in other cities are tearing themselves apart, tearing their cities apart, Chicago will stand tall. From here, we will rule. The time of humanity is over, Chosen Ones — your time has come!”

Their roaring cheer filled the open s.p.a.ce, echoed off the marble walls, made Steve’s skin ripple with goose b.u.mps.

This thousand would spread through the streets, gathering others of their kind, killing any who were not. In a day, this city would be under his control.

Chicago was only the beginning.

THE TRUMP TOWER

The fire stairs had seen him safely down. Cooper prayed they would see him safely up. It was smarter than taking the elevator, anyway: who knew what those doors might open up to?

Sofia couldn’t climb the steps on her own. That burst of strength she’d used to kill Chavo was already a distant memory. Cooper kept his left arm around her waist, helping her along. His right hand stayed locked on the cool, comforting feel of the pistol.

Two switchback flights led from the subbas.e.m.e.nt to the bas.e.m.e.nt level. Another pair would lead to the ground floor. He’d helped her up six steps to the first landing, halfway to the bas.e.m.e.nt level, and his legs were already burning.

“Cooper … I’m not doing so great.”

“You have a fever,” he said. “Maybe your wound is infected.”

“That fast?”

He shrugged. “Beats the h.e.l.l out of me. I think we have to find a drugstore or a hospital, get you antibiotics.”

There had to be drugstores close by. He could find her some medicine, then maybe they could make their way to the Mary Ellen. Jeff was nowhere to be found, and — Cooper hated to admit it — after seeing that empty coc.o.o.n membrane, he was no longer sure he wanted to find Jeff.

He helped Sofia up another step.

“Just a little more,” Cooper said. “Make it to the ground floor, then we’ll peek into the lobby and see if the coast is clear.”

Two heads peered around a white stone corner. Cooper stared into the Trump Tower’s long lobby. On his right was the forty-foot-long, twenty-foot-high gla.s.s wall that looked out onto Wabash Avenue. Outside, big clumps of snow whirled down from a sky that was almost the same yellow as the feet he’d seen in the boiler room.

Directly in front of him stretched the modern, white marble floor that led to the registration desk … or at least what was left of it. Body parts littered the lobby. Puddles of tacky blood pooled around corpses, b.l.o.o.d.y footprints leading away in various directions.

He took all that in at a glance, because he could really focus on only one thing.

Hatchlings.

Twenty of them, maybe thirty. Cooper had seen shaky footage of hatchlings before, part of Gutierrez’s T.E.A.M.S. program. The video had been taken by soldiers in the woods just before the creatures attacked. But to see the things in person …

They stood around two feet tall. Three thick, twitching tentacle-legs made up half of that height, legs that attached to the bottom points of a three-sided pyramid covered in gnarled, glossy-black skin. And in the middle of each triangular side, a vertical, black eye. Purplish lids blinked rapidly, pus.h.i.+ng in from the left and the right sides, keeping the eyes wet and clean.

The hatchlings crawled on everything: furniture, body parts, the splintered wood of the shredded front desk, even chipped and cracked white stone walls that four days earlier had been a spotless, polished marvel. The monsters lowered their bodies to these various surfaces. They jittered and shook perversely, like misshapen dogs humping wood and gla.s.s and marble. As they shook, Cooper heard crunching sounds, grinding noises.

He watched one of the hatchlings rise up on its three tentacle-legs. It climbed on top of a hard, knee-high, uneven mound that ran the inner length of the lobby’s floor-to-ceiling gla.s.s wall. The creature vibrated: clumpy damp material squirted from its bottom.

It was s.h.i.+tting. That mound … it was all solidified s.h.i.+t. The thing vibrated one more time, squeezing out the last bits, then the graceful tentacle-legs carried it to the torn reception desk.