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Something … huge.

He felt Sofia’s fingers clutch tight at his jacket. The raw intensity of her words. .h.i.t his ears like a siren, even though they were barely more than a whisper.

“What the f.u.c.k is that? Cooper, what the f.u.c.k is that?”

Cooper didn’t know, didn’t want to know. It was a man … maybe. Sickly yellow skin, no jacket, an upper body that was far too wide for legs that would be gigantic on anyone save for an NFL lineman. And the head — Cooper couldn’t make out much other than a neck that was as wide as impossibly wide shoulders, a neck that led up to a face hidden behind a blue scarf wrapped around the mouth and nose.

The woman let go of her own shoulders, finally turned to run, but it was too late; six people grabbed her. She screamed and jerked, tried to fight, but the others held her fast.

The man in the red jacket stood in front of her, reached into his coat, pulled out a long butcher knife.

Cooper thought about drawing his gun, taking a shot, maybe he could get lucky from this far out—

—and then it was too late. The man in the red jacket drove the knife into the woman’s belly, slid it up, like a butcher slaughtering a pig. The woman didn’t even scream, she just stared. Stared, and twitched.

Her attackers tore into her. Cooper saw hands driving down, yanking, ripping, saw those hands come back b.l.o.o.d.y and full of dangling intestines or steaming chunks of muscle.

The five people started to eat.

I am not seeing this … I am not f.u.c.king seeing this …

A tug on his coat.

“Coop,” Sofia said. “Get me the h.e.l.l out of here.”

He realized the gun was in his hand. He didn’t remember actually drawing it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”

He stuffed it once again into the back of his pants, then reached into the car for Sofia.

TIPPING POINT

From his little table in the Coronado’s cargo hold, Tim Feely studied the numbers. New York City, Minneapolis, Grand Rapids and Chicago were no longer providing consumer data. They were too far gone for that.

Elsewhere in the country, people were stocking up on whatever they could before it was too late. That panic skewed the consumer pattern information, but there was still enough data from which to draw conclusions.

Philadelphia: 9,000% increase in cough suppressants

Lexington: huge spikes in purchases of fever reducer