“We?”
“My partner and me.”
“You gay?”
“The other kind of partner.” Cooper thought of telling her about the cocoons, but if he did, she might think Jeff was something to be shot, not someone to be saved. “He was gone when I woke up this morning. I can’t find him.”
They fell silent for a moment. He stroked her hair, felt her relax a little more.
“This shit is insane,” Sofia said. “I heard the president was saying something about it a couple of days ago, but I have two jobs — who has time to follow politics, right? Yesterday morning we got a delivery of that inoculant gunk she was talking about. It was meant for the rich guests. I sneaked a bottle, drank it. Maybe that’s why I’m not sick.”
Cooper remembered the speech, remembered Blackmon talking about some kind of medicine.
“Is there any more of that stuff here?”
He felt her shrug. “I don’t think so. Most of it got delivered to the top floors, the suites.”
Blackmon’s medicine had arrived in time to help make a difference, and the one-percenters got priority? It infuriated him, but he knew he shouldn’t be surprised: some things never change.
He felt Sofia’s blood cooling in the damp tablecloth.
“How’d you wind up getting shot?”
She paused, seemed to gather herself.
“This morning, all this shit was going on outside,” she said. “Explosions, fires. These two pigs came in. We thought they were there to take care of things, you know? But they just started shooting people. Peter, a guy who was working with me, they shot him in the head. They got a couple others too, I think. I don’t know for sure, because I ran.”
She sounded a little guilty, as if she should have gone all Rambo on two trigger-happy psycho cops.
“You’re alive,” Cooper said. “You did what you had to do.”
He felt her shrug again. “I guess. One of them shot me just as I reached the stairs. He followed me down. He cornered me. He… I think he was going to rape me or something.”
Cooper remembered the bald man… give us a smooch.
“He tried to kiss you? That why you wanted to see my tongue?”
He felt Sofia nod.
“Asshole was crazy,” she said. “He tried to pull me close… he had both hands on my shoulders. He was so strong. I kicked him in the balls and it didn’t do anything. I think he laughed, like it was a fun game or something. He came at me again… he stuck his tongue in my mouth. I felt those fucking bumps. They stung.”
Cooper tried not to flinch, to jerk away. He realized he’d made a huge mistake. Just because her tongue looked normal didn’t mean she wasn’t infected. She claimed to have taken the inoculant, but how did he know she was telling the truth? Was she going to change? Was she changing that very second? Would she attack him the way the bald man had?
He looked down at her, a dark, warm shape in his lap. She was a danger… he had a gun. All he had to do was put a bullet in her, then he’d be safe for certain.
But Sofia seemed normal. He needed normal. Maybe she wasn’t lying about drinking the stuff from the government. Maybe she was fine.
Maybe.
“I think your bleeding is slowing down,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“You mean aside from being shot?”
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 fuck 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 Mitchell sat in the darkness, this brave stranger’s head in his lap, wondering what the hell they should do next.
DAY TEN
#APOCALYPSE
@Ticonderagga:
OMG, my neighbor just went ape-shit 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. #FuckingTraffic #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 FUCK 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%