Scott Sigler - Pandemic

“You don’t do the books,” Cooper said. “We’re in a lot of trouble, dude. We need this gig.”

Jeff bit at his lower lip. “I’m telling you, we should take another job.”

“You want another job? How does busing tables at Big Boy sound? Because that’s where we’ll be if we pass this up.”

Jeff looked down, stared at his work-booted toe scraping a circle against the concrete floor.

“It’s skunky,” he said. “I’m telling you.”

For as long as he could remember, Cooper had trusted his friend’s instincts. Although they were partners, Jeff was the de facto leader — but where had that gotten them?

Cooper put his hand on Jeff’s shoulder. “Dude, I’m begging you. Just this once, will you trust me ?”

Jeff inhaled a long, slow breath that seemed too big for his lungs. He let it all out in a whoosh.

“Okay, I’m in,” he said. “We’re going to need a third guy. With this kind of money we could stop hiring under the table.”

Cooper shook his head. “Let’s use José. We still haven’t paid him for the last two jobs. We owe him.”

Jeff tilted his head back. “Damn, I forgot we haven’t paid him.”

Of course Jeff had forgotten. Cooper had what he wanted, so there was no point in digging on Jeff for that.

Jeff smiled, clapped his hands together, rubbed them vigorously.

“José it is,” he said. “Let’s go tell Mister Stanton he’s hired himself a boat.”

Choices had been made.

The Orbital had never possessed true sentience. That didn’t mean, however, that it didn’t have a logic process. It still had to think . It had to create questions, evaluate those questions, form hypothetical strategies and use the data it possessed to evaluate probable results.

The Orbital had limited resources. Some of those resources needed to be used in an attempt to create new weapons, new strategies. Logic also dictated, however, that some resources needed to be used on three existing, proven designs: hatchlings, crawlers , and mommies .

Hatchlings moved fast. They could build up or tear down defenses. They could swarm, they could attack. They could kill .

Crawlers turned humans into murderers that slaughtered their own kind. Crawler-infected humans could still use weapons, vehicles and tools. They could work together, take and give orders, function as an organized force. And perhaps far more important, a crawler-infected human could infect others.

Mommies had been created by Chelsea — not by the Orbital, but that didn’t matter. The design turned humans into spore-filled gasbags. Mommies couldn’t fight or build, but they were an extremely efficient vector for mass infection.

Those designs filled specific roles. All three were included in the Orbital’s last salvo.

But they weren’t enough.

The Orbital needed new troops, new weapons. It had to create something… better .

The pure, brute force of the “sonofabitch” had defeated the Orbital’s early attempts. The Orbital had learned from that and would use similar tactics in one of its final designs. This fourth design wouldn’t just affect the host’s brain; it would overwhelm the host’s entire body, transform it, providing strength, rage, aggression, toughness, brutality… a fitting monument to the only human who had dug hatchlings out of his own body. Were the Orbital capable of emotion, that fourth design might have been the product of spite. Or, possibly, of hatred .

Brute force had stopped the Orbital’s attempts, but so, too, had intelligence. The fifth design would harness the human intellect, shape it, turn it into a weapon. The most brilliant humans would be transformed into leaders , generals that could manage the war long after the Orbital had perished.

To protect such a vital strategical asset, the Orbital had spent much of its remaining days finding a way to hide these leaders — not only could they direct a growing army, they could also function in a covert role, hiding among the humans until the right time to strike.

Three proven designs. Two designs as-yet untested when the Orbital crashed into Lake Michigan.

The Orbital would never know just how successful those last two designs turned out to be.

Murray Longworth had a dream.

That dream consisted of a giant bonfire, a bonfire made from the long, heavy, wooden table that sat in the White House’s Situation Room. Throw in the wood paneling as well; that would burn up real nice. Not the video monitors that lined those walls, though — he would set those up around the bonfire and play some shit on them that had nothing to do with saving the world: a Zeppelin concert, maybe some playoffs for whatever sport was in season, a few cartoons, perhaps, and — for sure — at least three screens playing constitutionally protected good old-fashioned American porn. He’d have a keg. He’d hire some strippers a third his age to sit around in bikinis and laugh at his jokes. He’d warm his old bones in the heat of that bonfire, get crocked, and celebrate the death of the room he hated so much.

“Murray?”

He blinked, came back to the moment. He was in that very Situation Room of his brief daydream, but there was no bonfire, no keg, and no porn. Images of Lake Michigan played across the screens. Instead of strippers, he was looking at some of the only people who knew the entire history of the situation, from Perry Dawsey’s naked run for freedom right up to the sinking of the Los Angeles .

“ Murray ?”

The president of the United States of America had called his name. Twice. Sandra Blackmon stared at him. She wore a red business suit. She always wore red. She did not look happy with him. In his defense, the only time she did look happy was when the news cameras were on her. There were no news cameras in the Situation Room.

Murray sat up straighter. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, waiting for his mental playback loop to retrieve the question his conscious mind had missed. Forty years of marriage had developed that skill, the ability to make part of his brain record words even when he wasn’t paying attention at all. His wife would ask, Are you listening to me ?, and Murray could regurgitate the last ten or fifteen seconds of what she’d said. The same skill came in handy during these meetings.

His playback loop brought up her question: Did you get Montoya ?

“Yes, Madam President,” he said. “Doctor Montoya is on her way to the task force. She’ll report to the Carl Brashear , where we have the remains of Lieutenant Walker and Petty Officer Petrovsky.”

President Blackmon nodded, just once. Murray thought the motion made her look like a parrot.

“Excellent,” she said. “Lord willing, maybe Montoya can find something that other person you have running the show could not. What’s that man’s name again?”

“Cheng,” Murray said. “Doctor Frank Cheng.”

Blackmon nodded once. “Yes, Doctor Cheng. Why isn’t he on the Brashear already?”

Murray’s teeth clenched. “Doctor Cheng is at Black Manitou Island, overseeing preparation for the delivery of any samples that Montoya sends out for more detailed analysis.”

Blackmon’s mouth twisted to the left, a tell that she wasn’t buying it. Most people bought into Cheng’s grandstanding bullshit. Murray did not. Neither, apparently, did President Blackmon.

“Fine,” she said. “He can stay there and prep . I wanted Montoya on the case, and she is, so we’ll put our full trust in her.”

If Murray could have lived out his bonfire fantasy, he knew some of the people in this room would eagerly join him. Others, no. These were among the most powerful people in the country: the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the national security advisor, the secretary of defense, the director of homeland security, the secretary of state… the nation’s decision makers, gathered together to help President Blackmon chart a path in this dangerous time.