Pandemic
Chapter 147 : The Rangers’ gas masks made them all look the same, made them look like the identical

The Rangers’ gas masks made them all look the same, made them look like the identical insects that they were.

Past the perimeter rose the seventy-story Park Tower Hotel, a pale tan spire reaching up to the black sky. Ramierez led her to the front of the building. She saw an arced gla.s.s awning that had once sheltered guests from the rain as they entered and exited. It wasn’t sheltering anyone anymore — the only gla.s.s that remained stuck out in jagged shards. The body of a man dangled from a support beam. Icicles of blood pointed down from the ends of his fingers like stubby red claws.

Once upon a time, a rotating gla.s.s door had kept out the Chicago winds. That, too, was nothing but shattered gla.s.s and twisted metal.

Clarence approached and stood next to her. The mask hid most of his face, but not his eyes. He looked at her with a pathetic expression of hurt and confusion.

It would be nice if she could kill Ramierez. But to murder Clarence? That wasn’t just a luxury — more and more, Margaret needed that as much as she needed to breathe.

Maybe her kind would descend upon this hotel and slaughter these soldiers. She would have them string Clarence up by his feet, cut him apart a piece at a time. She’d slice off his eyelids so he wouldn’t be able to look away as people smiled at him and ate those pieces.

She stared back at him, not wanting to give him any satisfaction at all, not wanting him to think that things were okay between them. Until she had a chance to kill him, she wanted him to hurt.

He turned away, walked into the hotel. Margaret smiled a little, then forced that down. She was still surrounded by the enemy. She had to be careful.

She heard gunshots from inside the hotel. She heard men yelling but couldn’t make out the words. Those sounds were lost as one of the helicopters roared overhead.

A bullet plinked into a car to her right. Then something hit her, knocked her face-first to the gla.s.s-strewn entryway, pinned her there — the soldiers realized she wasn’t one of them anymore, they were going to kill her, slide a knife into her back, they—

“Sniper,” Ramierez said. “Stay down, Doc.”

From high above, the helicopter let out a new noise, a short-but-intense demon’s roar. The faraway sound of tinkling gla.s.s smas.h.i.+ng against concrete joined the cacophony.

Ramierez rolled off her, lifted her to her feet. He looked her up and down. “You okay, Doc?”

She nodded. “I think so.”

Broken gla.s.s, I was rolling on broken gla.s.s …

“Ramierez, do you see any cuts in my suit?”

He gave her a cursory glance. “The suits are thicker than that, Doc, you—”

“Just look!”

Ramierez nodded, then checked her all over — placatingly, but also thoroughly.

She was entering a building crawling with the hydra strain. This place was death. Any cut, no matter how small, could spell the end.

“Looks clear,” Ramierez said. “You’re fine, Doc. And this lobby is secured, so you can relax.”

She let out a genuine sigh of relief.

Ramierez led her deeper into the lobby, which looked even more like a war zone than the streets outside. She recognized details from the YouTube video: the fire pit, now spotted white with windblown snow; corpses that had frozen solid and still wore jeans and winter coats; the soot-blackened ceiling; the shredded reception desk. The only thing missing was the body on the spit — maybe some of her kind had come in here, decided not to let good food go to waste.

To the left of the fire pit, Rangers were unfolding portable tables and unpacking the equipment she’d asked for. Tim stood there, directing them, using what was left of the reception desk as the lab’s main area.

Margaret looked around. The CBRN-suited Rangers seemed to be everywhere. They were setting up more of the tripod-supported weapons by the ruined door and also in the lobby’s broken windows, creating a field of fire out onto Chicago Avenue. More Rangers were undoubtedly setting up similar positions all around the hotel. If her kind attacked, these soldiers would mow them down by the hundreds.

Other Rangers carried large weapons to the elevator, which, surprisingly, seemed to still be working. She saw Klimas conferring with the Ranger commander — Dundee was his name — at what looked to be a hastily constructed command center, complete with laptops and soldiers already working away on them.

She saw Klimas reach up to the small earpiece at his right ear. He stared off, listening, then said something she couldn’t hear. He jogged to a stairwell door, calling out as he went.

“Ramierez, Bosh, Roth, with me! You too, Otto. We’ve got reports of hostiles in the building, so we’re going straight for the package. Elevator gets us there the quickest, so let’s move!”

On the way in, she had been “the package.” Now that they had reached the hotel, that term referred to someone else: Cooper Mitch.e.l.l. Klimas and the others were headed to the eighteenth floor. On the form he’d submitted online, that’s where Mitch.e.l.l had said he would be waiting.

In room 1812.

UNDER THE BED

Cooper heard a helicopter. It sounded big, loud, like military helicopters did in the movies. He also heard occasional blasts of gunfire. It had worked: someone was coming to save him. He just had to stay alive a little bit longer, and hope the rescuers got to him before the cannibals did.

The hotel still had heat. Anywhere but downstairs, where winter winds swirled snow through the lobby, the Park Tower remained well above freezing. At first, that had been a welcome discovery. Now, not so much.