Scott Sigler: Pandemic

The monster’s eyes flicked down to Cooper’s feet, focused on something there. Cooper looked down as well — the red axe blade, resting against the ground.

Jeff looked up again. His eyes filled with the anguish of a heart torn in two directions. He didn’t want to hurt Cooper, but he couldn’t hold himself back much longer.

For just a moment, the monster wasn’t a monster anymore. It was the boy Cooper had grown up with, the man he’d gone into business with. It was his lifelong friend, the person he loved more than anyone else in the world.

Jeff Brockman closed his eyes.

He let out a long, slow breath.

Cooper knew, instantly, that when Jeff opened those eyes again, he would give in to his nature; he would become the creature that Steve Stanton wanted him to be.

Cooper lifted the axe and stepped forward in the same motion. He swung it high and hard, brought it down with everything he had.

The red blade dug deep into Jeff’s head with a dull chonk .

The Monster Formerly Known as Jeff opened its eyes. He met Cooper’s gaze for two long seconds, then the eyelids sagged.

The massive body dropped straight down, like a yellow sack of boneless meat.

Jeff didn’t move. The axe handle stuck up at a shallow angle.

Steve Stanton stared. The expression on his face said it all: the dude knew he was fucked.

He turned to run, but Cooper dove at his legs. Steve hit the frozen ground face-first. He screamed for help, but there was no one left to help.

Cooper rolled him to his back and straddled his stomach. He slid his knees over Steve’s biceps, pinning the smaller man to the ground, a schoolyard bully about to inflict punishment on the class loser.

“This is all your fault,” Cooper said. “I don’t know how, or why, but I know it’s your fault.”

Steve stared up in pure terror, as if Cooper was ten times the monster Jeff had been.

And then Cooper remembered why.

“Oh, that’s right,” he said. “I make you assholes sick.”

Cooper reached to the back of his head, rubbed both hands hard against his torn scalp. It hurt, but he didn’t care. He brought his hands forward, held them palms out so Steve could see the blood.

“Your turn,” Cooper said.

Steve bucked and thrashed, but he couldn’t budge Cooper’s weight.

Cooper Mitchell pressed his bloody hands down on Steve Stanton’s screaming face. Cooper rubbed it around, rubbed it hard .

“That was for Sofia.”

He drove his thumb into Steve’s right cheek, three fingers into his left, and squeezed , forcing the man to open his mouth. Cooper shoved his bloody fingers inside, slid them across Steve’s tongue, jammed the fingertips inside Steve’s gums and slid them around real good.

“That was for Jeff.”

To finish it off, Cooper hawked the biggest loogie of his life, then spit it into Steve’s open mouth.

Steve froze. He stared up with the blank, disbelieving gaze of a man who has just received a death sentence. He moved his tongue around, trying to keep the loogie away from the back of his throat.

Cooper leaned close. “That was for me .”

Cooper reared back and punched Steve Stanton in the stomach.

Steve let out a slight wheeze. He gasped like a beached fish, trying and failing to draw a breath.

He swallowed.

Cooper stood, reached down and patted Steve’s cheek.

“And that? That one was for you , dickweed. Enjoy.”

Cooper looked around — there was no one left. All the Converted had faded away into the city.

He was alone.

He had won .

He turned toward the helicopter. Clarence was already in it, beckoning madly.

Time to go.

It was finally over . All of it. Over forever.

Clarence, Tim Feely and Commander Paulius Klimas stood in the Oval Office, waiting for the president to arrive. Klimas was on crutches. He wore a neat, fresh bandage around his neck.

Tim was using a cane. The cane’s handle was a twisted coil of DNA — the same as Murray Longworth’s. Clarence wondered if that meant something.

Clarence had asked both Tim and Paulius to be there for this. Ramierez was still in the hospital, but at least he was out of the ICU. He was going to live.

Clarence hadn’t asked Cooper Mitchell to come, because Cooper hadn’t known Margaret. Cooper had apparently moved to the Upper Peninsula, as far away from everyone and everything as he could get. That didn’t stop him from fielding offers to turn his story into a movie, however. LA had been hit hard, but the film industry didn’t miss a beat.

The Mitchell-Montoya plague, as the hydras were now known, had spread through the Midwest faster than anyone expected. Only two days after the Seahawk had carried the five survivors out of Lincoln Park, new batches made from Cooper’s blood had been crop-dusted across Manhattan, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Boston. Four days after, every major city had received multiple coatings.

Just one week after Margaret’s death, most of the Converted lay dead, their bodies waiting to be collected, carted away and burned.

The hydras didn’t seem to affect the yellow monsters, but that wasn’t as big of a problem as Clarence had feared. The monsters couldn’t blend in. When they were spotted it became an instant witch hunt. Special Forces handled the task if they were available, then cops, and if neither could get on the job, bands of armed citizens chased the creatures down.

Albertson had sent thousands of hydra doses to China, along with scientific advisors to help manage the massive effort of reaching the entire population. One Doctor Cheng, apparently, was part of that mission. Clarence hoped he enjoyed it.

America now focused her efforts on wiping out the Converted in Canada, Mexico and South America. Europe and Russia had already implemented their own hydra exposure campaigns, and were sending starter doses to Africa, Australia, India and all the corners of the earth.

For once, the human race unified in cause and spirit.

But it wasn’t all smiles and roses. The final death toll staggered the imagination. Some estimates were as high as one billion dead, although more conservative guesses placed it at “only” eight hundred million. It was the worst disaster in mankind’s history.

China had been hit the hardest, as far as body count went, but experts were saying the world might never know the full death toll in Africa. That continent had seen seven governments collapse, replaced by dictators who had swooped in to fill the power vacuum. The UN was at least a month away from having the ability to do anything about that.

As for America, the final death tally was estimated at over thirty million. No disaster in the nation’s history even came close. By comparison, the influenza epidemic of the 1918 pandemic had killed some 675,000 Americans, and the Civil War around 700,000.

Nothing could have prepared the United States for that level of death, and yet the 284,000,000 survivors were working together to rebuild. Partisan politics didn’t exist. Racism seemed to be something from the past. All that mattered was helping one another out, putting the pieces back together. Would this new Land of Brotherly Love last? Probably not. For now, however, it made the recovery process an amazing thing to behold.

The Oval Office door opened. President Albertson walked in. At his side was Murray Longworth, carrying two small, black lacquer boxes.

The president shook each man’s hand.

“Gentlemen, the world owes you a debt of thanks,” he said. “I can only imagine what you went through. And I can only empathize with the grief you must feel.”