“You know of any drugstores in the area?”
Sofia nodded. “There’s a Walgreens up on Michigan Ave, by Pioneer Court.”
“How far is that?”
“Two blocks east, a block north.”
Not far. He squeezed Sofia a little tighter, trying to reassure her. “And if we can’t get into that Walgreens, what else can you think of?”
She thought for a moment. “Northwestern Memorial Hospital is a little farther north, on Huron. If we can’t get in, we keep going right up Michigan Ave. There’s another Walgreens at East Chicago, I think… seven blocks north from here. Can we find a car?”
“No use right now,” Cooper said. “Even if we found one that worked, the street is too clogged with wrecks. For now, we walk.”
“I was afraid you’d say that. Cooper, I’m cold.”
He stuffed the pistol into the back of his pants. He bent, scooped Sofia up, held her in his arms as if they were about to walk across the threshold.
“Romantic,” she said, her voice barely audible over the winter wind. “You… you know we’re gonna die, right?”
Cooper pulled her close, kissed her forehead: even that felt scorchingly hot.
“We’ll make it,” he said. “Just give me directions.”
She pointed to the right. “North on Wabash.”
Sofia leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, then rested her head on his shoulder. She was shivering even worse than he was.
Cooper adjusted her in his arms. He headed north.
A GAME OF TAG
Admiral Porter relayed the news, somehow keeping his voice as emotionless as that of a traffic reporter.
“Seismic readings indicate a nuclear detonation in south-central Russia,” he said. “Approximately twenty megatons, believed to be of Chinese origin.”
Murray’s stomach did flip-flops. A nuke. A goddamn nuke. It changed the game in every possible way. Not only was the world up against a disease that turned humanity against itself, the disease had apparently learned how to push the button.
The staff of the Situation Room looked as sick as Murray felt. Everyone except for the Joint Chiefs and the president. Porter and the other generals exuded grim determination — like it or not, this was their moment. Blackmon just looked pissed.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “This came out of nowhere. If it was an ICBM, we should have seen the launch.”
Porter nodded, took his customary pause before answering. “That’s because it wasn’t an ICBM. Our guess is a Type 631 missile fired from a truck just south of the Russian border, between Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Truck-fired missile range is over four hundred kilometers, enough to reach Omsk, Novosibirsk or possibly Krasnoyarsk.”
Murray didn’t know any of those cities. How big were they? Which one had been hit?
André Vogel pressed a finger to an earpiece in his right ear. He dabbed at his now constantly sweaty, bald head with a handkerchief.
“We’ve got a bird bringing up visuals on the region,” he said. “We should have satellite imagery on the big screen in a few seconds.”
The Situation Room fell silent. All heads turned to the monitor that showed fifteen American cities lit up in yellow, another eight in red. Smaller red and yellow spots dotted the country — violence was radiating from the big cities, spilling out across the nation.
The map of America blinked out, replaced by a high-angle view of a mushroom cloud billowing up over a glowing landscape. Murray saw the hallmarks of a major metroplex: a river cutting through the middle, clusters of tall buildings, roads snaking out to suburbs, then to forest and farmland.
A single word at the bottom identified the city.
“Novosibirsk,” Blackmon said slowly and carefully, as if she wanted to respect the newly dead by properly pronouncing the name of their now-destroyed home. “How many people?”
Admiral Porter answered her. “Third-largest city in Russia, behind Moscow and St. Petersburg. Population, one-point-five million.”
On the screen, the mushroom cloud continued to rise. Murray found himself wishing that this was a joke, the prank of some sick, twisted fuck.
It wasn’t.
“My God,” Blackmon said. “This is really happening.” She did her hands-rubbing-the-face thing, then blinked rapidly, worked her jaw as if trying to get a bad taste out of her mouth. “Do we detect any other launches from the Chinese?”
“Negative,” Porter said. “All ICBMs are still. The Chinese aren’t warming anything up that we know of. It could have been a rogue element. Possibly the truck crew was converted — they could have launched on their own.”
Vogel dabbed at his sweaty face with a sweat-soaked handkerchief.
“We’ve got full satellite coverage now,” he said. “If there’s another truck launch, we’ll see it happen.”
Blackmon laced her fingers together. She was trying to stay calm, to show confidence, but the fingers gripped too tightly, made the skin on the back of her hands wrinkle and pucker.
“Director Vogel,” she said, “I need you to find a way for me to talk to Beijing.”
Vogel leaned on the table. “We’re trying everything we can, Madam President. We’re starting to get satellite images from China’s largest cities. Several of them show major fires. Communication seems to be down all across the country. They can’t talk to us, and far as we can tell it looks like they can’t even talk to each other.”
Blackmon seemed to realize her hands were strangling each other. She extended her fingers, moved her hands apart, dropped them to her lap.
“Get me in touch with someone who can make decisions in China,” she said. “And get Morozov on the line. Right now.”
Bodies scurried into motion, hands picked up phones — at least four people jumped on the task of trying to reach Stepan Morozov, the president of Russia.
Paris, a cinder. London in chaos. Gun battles in the streets of Berlin. Reports of Converted wreaking havoc in South America, Northern Africa, India and Pakistan. Every continent felt the effects. All except for Australia, the leaders of which had been smart enough to shut down all travel three days earlier.
Blackmon turned to Porter. “Admiral, what’s the condition of the Seventh Fleet?”
Maybe Murray wasn’t up on his Russian geography, but he — like everyone else in the room — knew exactly what Blackmon was asking. The Seventh Fleet operated as a forward force near Japan, a constant presence of power some sixty ships and three hundred aircraft strong. The Seventh was America’s sheathed saber in that region.
“Seventh fleet is at REDCON-1,” Porter said. “They are prepared to defend any hostile action and are available for offensive operations.”
Blackmon nodded her approval. “Make sure fleet command knows they have clearance to shoot down anything that comes near them. From here on out, we err on the side of an international incident as opposed to losing even a single ship.”
“Yes, Madam President,” the admiral said. He turned to his assistants, setting in motion another miniflurry of activity.
Vogel looked off, put his hand to his earpiece. He turned to Blackmon.
“Madam President, we have President Morozov on the line. He called us.”
An assistant placed a red phone on the table in front of Blackmon. It was an old-fashioned thing, a handset connected to the main phone by a curly cable: the “hotline,” a piece of equipment that for five decades had served as a last resort to stop nuclear war.
Blackmon took a deep breath. She picked up the handset.
“President Morozov, America expresses its deepest condolences at this tragedy.”