Pandemic Page 101

It was empty.

He turned on the nightstand lamp. He blinked at the sudden light. On the floor below the TV, Jeff’s AC/DC s.h.i.+rt and his jeans: gone.

Cooper quietly stood, walked to the closed bathroom door.

“Jeff,” he said in a whisper. “There’s some s.h.i.+t going down in the hall.”

No answer.

Cooper opened the door — the bathroom was empty.

Where the h.e.l.l was Jeff?

He quietly walked to the room’s main door, careful not to make any noise. He leaned into the peephole and looked out.

There was a teenager lying there, bleeding from a gash in his forehead. The kid moved weakly, unfocused eyes staring up at nothing.

Cooper automatically reached for the door handle, but stopped when he saw a flicker of motion. Through the peephole’s fisheye lens, another teenager stepped into view. Then another.

One grabbed the fallen one’s feet, the other reached under his shoulders. They lifted.

Cooper again started to open the door, to see if he could help, but one of the teenagers turned his head sharply.

Wild eyes stared right at Cooper.

He felt a blast of fear, something that rooted him to the spot — he dare not move, not even to step away from the peephole.

Was the teenager looking at him? No … no one could see through a peephole, not from that far away. Maybe Cooper had made a noise.

Not knowing why the teenager scared him so bad, Cooper stayed perfectly still. He didn’t even breathe.

The boy said something to his friend. They carried the fallen one down the hall, out of sight.

Cooper ran to the hotel phone. He stabbed the b.u.t.ton marked “front desk.” The phone on the other end rang ten times before a woman answered.

“h.e.l.lo, this is Carmella.”

“I need security,” Cooper said. “No, just call the cops. There was a hurt kid up here. Maybe there was a fight. They took him.”

“And I give a s.h.i.+t, why?”

Cooper blinked. “Uh … didn’t you hear me? I think that kid was hurt. He had a head wound.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” the woman said. “f.u.c.k you very much.”

She hung up.

Cooper stared at the handset for a moment, then felt stupid for doing so and put it back in the cradle.

He looked at his cell, dialed 9, then 1, then paused: those cops in the street, shooting people. Were more cops like that? Maybe all of them? Maybe calling 911 wasn’t such a good idea.

He heard sirens coming up from the street. He walked to the window and pulled back the heavy curtains. For the second time in a handful of seconds, what he saw stunned him.

Chicago burned.

He saw flames rising high from the windows of two skysc.r.a.pers. Down on the street, people scrambled in all directions. There were four fire engines, but only one had a crew that was trying to fight the fires. The other three trucks seemed to be abandoned. And no, people weren’t scrambling down there, they were … chasing … they were fighting.

A black car turned the corner, completely out of control. It skidded across cold pavement and skipped up onto the sidewalk, where it plowed into an old man. The man flew back a few feet, then vanished below the still-moving black car.

Cooper heard the now-familiar, distant snap of a gunshot, but he couldn’t see where it came from.

Chaos down on the street. b.l.o.o.d.y teenagers in the hall. The front desk lady didn’t sound like she was dealing with a full deck. Jeff, gone. And Steve Stanton … was Steve okay? Cooper vaguely remembered Steve was on another floor, but he had no idea what the room number was.

He couldn’t worry about Steve right now. Finding his best friend was all that mattered.

Cooper looked at the nightstand, seeing if Jeff had left his cell phone — it was gone. He looked to the room’s lone chair: Jeff’s coat was there, Cooper’s piled on top. It was freezing outside … maybe Jeff was still in the building.

He dialed Jeff’s number.

On the other end, Jeff’s cell rang. And rang.

“s.h.i.+t, bro, pick up.”

On the seventh ring, Jeff answered.

“Coop?”

A surge of relief at hearing his voice.

“Jeff, dude, where are you? s.h.i.+t is going off outside. I don’t know what’s happening but we need to bail the h.e.l.l out of Chicago. We have to get to the Mary Ellen and get out of here.”

Jeff said nothing.

“Jeff, talk to me — where are you, man?”

“Not … sure.”

His voice sounded so deep, racked with pain and confusion.

“Jeff, just tell me where you are. I’ll come get you. Are you in the hotel?”

“Hotel?”

“Yes, the Trump Tower, where we’re staying? Are you in the building?”

Cooper waited for an answer. Jeff sounded like he was on the edge of pa.s.sing out.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “Uh … bas.e.m.e.nt.”

“Bas.e.m.e.nt? Good, Jeff. Where in the bas.e.m.e.nt? Focus, brother, focus. I’ll come get you. Look around and tell me what you see.”

“It hurts,” Jeff said. “Coop, it hurts.”

“Okay, I hear you, but tell me where you are, buddy. You—”

The phone went silent, the connection broken.

Cooper immediately dialed again. The phone rang and kept ringing until voice mail answered.

“This is Jeff Brockman of Jeff Brockman Salvage, and if you’ve got the bills, we’ve got the skills. Leave a message and we’ll get back at ya, p.r.o.nto.”