Pandemic Page 124

Leave her and go hide. Go in the fortress, block the door, you can hold them off …

A tug at his collar.

“There,” Sofia said. She pointed right: he saw the white WALGREENS lettering on a black overhang. Below it, a revolving door of glass in a curved metal housing. The store sat at the base of a tall, tan building. This place wasn’t burned out. Cooper didn’t see any activity in front of the store, or inside it. Maybe they could hide in there, killing two birds with one stone.

He reached the door: it was still intact, as were the glass windows on either side.

Cooper carefully carried Sofia into the rotating door, careful not to stumble and drop her or smack her head against anything. He pushed. It turned with a deep swishhh. Three steps later, he stepped into a miracle.

The lights were on.

There was no wind.

No heat, either, but without the windchill the place felt comparatively warm.

The doors might be intact, but this place hadn’t escaped the disaster. Ten feet in lay a headless body. Ice crystals formed a strangely beautiful pattern in the blood that had spilled from the man’s neck and spread across the hard stone floor.

Farther up the first aisle, between scattered bags of chips on one side and candy bars on the other, lay a second body, a woman. A look of disbelief had frozen on her face, maybe when her attackers had torn her right arm from her body, leaving the ripped sleeve of her blue jacket ragged and stiff with icy blood. That jacket remained buttoned under her chin, but open at the belly to show an empty cavity — her internal organs were gone.

“My God,” Sofia said. “Coop, we gotta hide.”

He nodded. He hefted her higher, or tried to, but his arms wouldn’t lift her. He was damn near done. “Is the pharmacy in the back?”

“Yeah,” Sofia said. “Straight back.”

Cooper stepped over the bodies.

All through the aisles, products had been ripped off the metal shelves and tossed onto the floor. It didn’t look like much had been taken, though — more a store-trashing rampage rather than people scrambling for supplies.

He stumbled on a box of candy, causing him to hit the shelves on his left, rocking them a little before they settled back down with a bang.

Sofia’s face wrinkled in pain. She’d taken the brunt of that blow.

“Sorry,” he said.

She said nothing.

Cooper kept moving. The fluorescent lights created the strange sensation that — aside from the bodies, of course — this place was still open for business, that the horrors outside had passed it by.

He reached the pharmacy counter. Instead of looking for the door, he set Sofia on the counter, then hopped over. When his feet hit the floor, his exhausted legs gave out beneath him. He fell in a heap on the tile, banging the top of his head against the corner of a rack that held hundreds of little plastic pull-out bins.

“Owww.” Cooper rolled to his back, hands pressed to his new injury.

“Graceful,” Sofia said. “Just … let me catch my breath, then I’ll … start carrying you.”

He lifted his head to look at her. She’d pushed herself up on one elbow to stare down at him. Jeff’s big coat made her seem so small, so feminine. She looked like death warmed over — face gaunt, black hair stringy and frozen in clumps, eyes half lidded — but the left corner of her mouth curled into a shit-eating grin.

Back flat on the floor, muscles burning, chest heaving and head stinging, Cooper started laughing.

“Sofia, you’re kind of a dick.”

She nodded weakly. “I’ve been told that once or twice in my day. You mind getting me down from here?”

The brief moment of humor vanished. He fought his aching body and stood, gently lifted her from the counter, then set her down with her butt on the floor and her back against the inside of the counter. If anyone else came in the store, Cooper and Sofia wouldn’t be seen unless the intruder came all the way to the rear.

She reached up and caressed his face. “Thanks, Cooper. I mean it. I’d be dead already if it weren’t for you.”

He didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded. He turned to the pull-out bins, started filing through the paper envelopes inside of them.

“Amoxicillin, maybe? You allergic to that?”

“No idea,” Sofia said. “I guess we’ll find out.”

He nodded. “I guess we will.” He dug through the envelopes.

“Hey, Cooper … you feel okay?”

“You mean other than cold and exhaustion? Sure, I guess. Why?”

“You got some kind of big blister on the back of your neck.”

He stopped flipping through the envelopes. He remembered the puffy, air-filled spot he’d seen on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s some kind of allergic reaction, I think. Hives or something. I haven’t checked in a while, but I had them all over my body.”

He reached to his neck, felt what she was talking about: a puffy blister the size of a small marble. He pressed on it, heard a soft pop, saw a tiny mist of slowly floating white. Sofia’s breath scattered it away.

“Gross,” she said. “Like a puffball.”

Cooper nodded. “Yeah. That is kind of gross.”

She gave a halfhearted shrug. “The least of my worries right now. Can you get me some water? I’m really thirsty.”

He noticed her breath crystallizing when she talked. The store gave them shelter, but he’d have to find a way to get heat, fast.

Chapter end