Pandemic Page 133

He’s petting me. He thinks I’m sick and he’s petting my head.

“EVERRRRYONE … HURTS. WILLLL GO FIND … HELP.”

The fingers stroked Cooper’s hair one last time, then Jeff stood. He lumbered to the front of the hotel lobby. He walked out the ruined rotating door and vanished into the night.

Cooper slowly stood. He scanned the ravaged, smoky lobby to see if any of the killers were looking at him.

They weren’t. They were too busy dying.

The Tall Man’s eyes leaked yellow fluid, not all that different in color and consistency from the phlegm coating his nose and mouth. He was still coughing, still sneezing, but was too weak to wipe the goo away.

Cooper walked closer. The man’s rheumy eyes opened and closed, the stringers of yellow mucus that ran between his eyelids bouncing in time. His throat made a wet sound.

This was the man who ate Sofia.

You ate her too, you ate her too …

“I only had one serving, you f.u.c.k!”

Cooper took a step back: he’d just yelled at himself.

You are so f.u.c.king crazy you’re going off the deep end man get control …

“Shut up, shut up!”

He scrunched his eyes tight. He rubbed the pistol barrel against his right temple.

You’ve got the gun use it use it …

Use it on the Tall Man? No need. The Tall Man didn’t have much time left. None of these a.s.sholes did.

Or … maybe it was better if Cooper used it on himself.

He shook his head, shook it hard. No, he couldn’t think like that. He could make it out alive. He could. But if he couldn’t, if people like the Tall Man got him, if they were going to shove a stop sign up his a.s.s and out his mouth, roast him over a fire …

Was eating a bullet better than just being eaten?

The Tall Man coughed again. Phlegm came up, but this time so did blood. A thick, dark-red glob clung to his chin.

He’s coughing blood. Chavo was coughing blood …

Cooper heard yelling from the street. He held the gun against his thigh as he slowly walked to a broken window. He crouched, peeking just over the sill’s jagged gla.s.s.

Outside, he saw two women sprinting for their lives. Behind them, seven or eight screaming people carrying knives, hatchets, one carrying a shotgun by the barrel as if it were a club. Running alongside the hunters were two hulking, pale-yellow creatures with tiny faces and rippling muscles. Were either of them Jeff? No, they weren’t — Cooper would have recognized his friend, monstrous or not.

He couldn’t help those two women. He hadn’t saved Sofia, so he sure as f.u.c.k wasn’t going to get himself killed over a pair of strangers.

He watched the pursuers, the ones who still looked like normal people. Why weren’t they sick like the Tall Man and his crew? Why weren’t they sick like Chavo?

Wind blew through the ruined window, scattering snow in Cooper’s face. He walked back to the fire. No one had tended it for a while, nor tended to Sofia. Curls of orange heat wavered through the bed of coals, the flickering light playing off her blackened, burned, half-eaten corpse.

Cooper looked away. He had to get out of there, but he wasn’t setting foot on those streets. No f.u.c.king way. Someone had to rescue him, someone with lots of guns, but who? Were news stations telling people how to get help? He hadn’t seen a working TV since he and Sofia fled the Trump Tower. If he still had his cell phone, he could have tried reaching cops in other cities, maybe the army or the National Guard.

Then it hit him — he didn’t have a phone, but his “group leader” did.

He walked back to the Tall Man.

“Your phone,” Cooper said. “Give it to me.”

The Tall Man stared up. His eyes narrowed in confusion — he was trying to focus, trying to see.

Cooper held out his hand. “Your phone.”

The Tall Man blinked a few times. His eyes seemed to clear. He nodded. With great effort, he reached his right hand into his pants pocket and pulled out a flip-phone. He flipped it open with his right thumb. His left hand reached up to wrap around the top.

He twisted his hands and the phone cracked sickeningly, breaking into two pieces.

The Tall Man coughed, then laughed weakly. “I know now,” he said. “I know you’re not a friend.”

Cooper wanted to stomp his face in. He wouldn’t, though, at least not yet — the Tall Man was in great pain, and Cooper wanted him to suffer.

Cooper looked up at the ceiling. Most of the lights were out, broken by random psychos throwing random things for random reasons, but two of them shone bright.

The electricity … it was still on. Maybe he could find a hotel phone. If the power was on, maybe land lines still worked.

He looked at the registration desk, or what was left of it. The remains of three computers lay scattered on the broken wood. Computers … if he could get on the Internet, he could probably find out what was happening. He could find help. There had to be more computers around somewhere.

On the wall behind the registration desk, he saw a door.

A manager’s office?

He walked to the door. He tried the handle: locked. Maybe the psychos hadn’t been in there.

Cooper took another look around the lobby to make sure no one had gotten up, that no one was watching him.

No one was.

He set off to find something heavy.

WAITING …

Margaret Montoya sat on the bunk of her mission module. She had the lights off. The others thought she was sleeping, so they left her alone.