by Keith Taylor
The elevator slowed to a halt, and the private still hadn’t answered as the doors opened onto the crowded lobby. Three soldiers and an orderly were waiting outside, their expressions impatient as the doctor and private stood motionless.
“You ladies taking in the sights, or are you gonna get out of the way?”
“Sorry, sir.” The private took Ramos by the arm once again, his expression blank as he pushed him from the elevator and led him down the busy corridor towards the ambulance bay.
Ramos shook his head sadly. Just a couple dozen yards ahead were the ambulance bay doors, and beyond those were the trucks. He bit his lip, trying not to think of that poor woman lying in her bed three floors up, confused and abandoned by the people charged to care for her. He tried not to think about what he’d tell Jack when he finally reached him. How he’d explain that he'd failed to keep his promise. That he'd left the man’s wife alone and scared while he rode away to safety.
It didn’t work. The guilt gnawed at him, and as the doors drew closer he—
The private suddenly stopped in his tracks, yanking Ramos to a halt, and the doctor felt the watch slip out of his hand. He was about to protest when the grip on his arm loosened.
“Sorry for the inconvenience, sir,” the private said. “It seems the elevator was a little crowded. I’d recommend that you use the stairwell to reach the third floor.” He nodded over Ramos’ shoulder, and the doctor turned to see the red lit emergency exit sign that led to the back stairs. “You won’t run into anyone you don’t want to see that way. Good luck.” At that the private gave a lazy salute and turned back towards the ambulance bay, pocketing the watch as he went.
Ramos wasted no time in pushing through the door and climbing the stairs. He hopped up them two at a time, cursing his age, his weight, his racing heart and burning calves with every punishing step. There were a couple of orderlies climbing down the staircase carrying boxes, and by the door to the second floor a young nurse sat curled against a wall in tears, but there were no soldiers to stop or question him.
When he finally reached the third floor, out of breath and feeling nauseated, he looked through the glass pane in the access door and saw that the corridor beyond was empty. It looked like three had been almost completely cleared out, aside from the patients left behind.
The doctor took a moment to get his breath back, then he pushed through the door to the deserted corridor. He had no idea where Karen was. He hadn’t even seen her in person since she’d been admitted. All he knew what that she’d been sent to a recovery room on three after the ER had stabilized her.
He made his way along the empty corridor towards the nurse’s station in the hope that her chart would still be there, but as he rounded the corner by the elevators his heart sank.
The station had been ransacked. It looked like an extremely localized tornado had touched down on the desk, leaving the rest of the floor untouched. File cabinets sat open and empty. Chairs were upended and tossed aside. A computer had been knocked from the desk, the monitor hanging from its cable, its screen shattered into a rainbow prism. There was no way he’d be able to track Karen down in this mess.
Ramos threw up his hands, exasperated, and just yelled out. “Karen! Karen Keane!” He waited in hope for a response, but the only answer was the flickering buzz of a strip light above his head. He called out again, but again only silence followed.
“God damn it,” he muttered to himself, realizing he’d have to waste time searching room by room, and his heart sank further when he figured out what that meant. There were still patients up here, dozens of them who were being left behind just like Karen, some of them no doubt just as healthy as she was. He knew he couldn’t save them all. All of their charts were gone, and there was barely a syringe or pill left in the store rooms. He’d have to look them in the eye, knowing that they were probably going to—
“Are you looking for my mommy?”
At first Ramos thought he’d imagined the small, timid voice. He scanned around the corridor, confused. There was nobody to be seen, and it was only when he peered over the edge of the nurse’s station that he finally noticed the little girl standing on the other side of the desk. Her head didn’t even reach over it, she was so small.
“Yes, I am,” replied Ramos, his voice softening. He recognized her right away. “Hey, I bet I can guess your name. Are you called Emily?”
The little girl nodded, looking down shyly at her feet.
“Hi, Emily. I’m Doctor Ramos. I’m a friend of your daddy. He asked me to make sure you and your mommy are OK until he can get here. Hey, do you know—”
“My daddy’s coming?” Emily was suddenly excited, a gap-toothed smile erasing her nervous expression.
“Yes, he’s on his way right now. He’s coming just as fast as he can, but look,” Ramos walked around to her side of the desk and lowered himself awkwardly into a crouch. “Until he gets here I’m gonna take care of you and your mommy, OK? Can you show me which room she’s in?”
Emily shook her head. “The lady didn’t tell me. She just told me to sit tight on those seats over there,” she pointed to a bank of plastic bucket seats in the waiting area, “and she said she’d come get me when mommy was awake, but then she never came back, and then, then all the people started going crazy and shouting at each other and I got scared.” Emily looked down at her shoes, stifling tears that wanted desperately to escape. “I got scared and I went to hide, and then I heard you calling for mommy and I came out.”
Ramos took her hand. “That must have been very scary, seeing all those people shouting, but it’s all over now. You’re completely safe with me. Now, how about we go find your mommy?”
Emily smiled and nodded. “And then daddy will come?”
“Yes, and then daddy will come,” Ramos assured her, leading her by the hand down the corridor.
He just hoped San Francisco would still be there when Jack arrived.
΅
CHAPTER SIX
SCARED OF NEEDLES
KAREN'S HEAD FELT like it was stuffed full of cotton wool, in sharp contrast to her chest, which felt like it had taken a blow from Thor’s hammer.
She’d been conscious when they brought her into the ER. Not quite lucid, but awake enough that she’d felt the pain. Everything was still a little foggy. It all seemed like a half forgotten dream, quickly slipping away, but she remembered a nurse tearing open her blouse and running a gloved hand along the sides of her chest until she gasped with agony, and then someone had flashed a bright light in her eyes. And then… and then a sharp pinch in her arm, and after that it was all just a fog. She must have passed out, and when she came to she was alone in this room with an IV line trailing from her arm and melted ice packs on her chest.
She’d been pressing the call button by her bed for what felt like around fifteen minutes now, but nobody had come to answer. In all that time she hadn’t heard a peep from outside the door, and she knew that didn’t make any sense.
By the look of the room she was in Saint Francis, a hospital that had been nothing less than a home from home back when Emily had been a fussy, colicky baby, and she’d never known Saint Francis to operate at anything less than a dull, barely controlled roar.
“Hello?” She called out as loud as she dared. She didn’t want the nurses to think she was a difficult patient. “Hello, is anyone out there?”
She waited a couple minutes, but still there was no answer. Not a single sound from the corridor outside. The hairs on her arms stood on end, and a shiver passed through her. She knew it was absurd, but it occurred to her that this was just like the opening scene of a zombie movie, waking up in a deserted hospital after sleeping through the carnage.
“What the heck’s going on here?” she muttered to herself, sitting up straight in the bed. She looked around at the rest of the room. It was a double, with an empty bed on the opposite side of the room and a wall to wall window covered with half open blinds to her right. In the corner of the ro
om closest the door there was a small LCD TV playing on mute high up on the wall, with what looked like some kind of weather broadcast showing a still satellite image of a cloud system. She was about to turn away from the TV when she noticed the chyron running along the bottom of the screen:
BREAKING: NUCLEAR EXPLOSION OFF CALIFORNIA COAST?
Karen squinted at the small screen, certain she was misreading it. She looked down at her right arm and gingerly peeled the tape holding her IV line in place, wincing with discomfort as she slid the long needle from her forearm. As a bead of blood bubbled up at the injection site she looked away with a shiver, closing her hand over the tiny wound so she didn’t have to look at it. Emily hadn’t gotten her fear of needles from her father.
She kicked aside the sheets and climbed from the bed, clutching her arm and weaving a little as a head rush hit her. Her head was swimming, but she shook it off and stumbled across the room to squint up at the screen.
She hadn’t misread it. On screen was a satellite shot of the ocean off the California coast, and in the middle of a swirling storm system there was a spot, a pimple in the clouds, perfectly circular. The image cut to a time lapse, one moment showing the unbroken clouds and the next showing the hole punched in the sky.
The volume controls on the screen were too high to reach. Karen scanned the room for the remote, finally spotting it in a slot attached to the wall by the door. She limped over and turned it up high.
… clear that this is as yet officially unconfirmed. The situation is still extremely confused and developing by the minute, but sources close to the military are telling us they believe that this was indeed nuclear in nature. We don’t yet know if this was an attack, an accident or possibly even an unannounced test, and at this point our sources don’t want to speculate, but we’ve been told that no nation or group has so far claimed responsibility.
The question that must now be on the lips of every American is this: is the worst over, or are there more attacks still to come?
Karen turned from the TV as a voice cried out beyond the door. “Hey, it’s coming from in here!” The door swung open, and Karen dropped the remote with shock as her daughter pushed her way through.
“Emily!” she cried out, for a moment forgetting the terrible news on the screen. “Oh my God, I’m so happy to see you! What are you doing here?”
Emily ran to her mom, gripping her tight around the waist and holding on for dear life. “Mommy, they told me you got hurt! Are you feeling OK?”
Karen winced at the pain that stabbed through her chest as Emily hugged her, but she didn’t want to push her away. “Don’t worry, baby, I’m totally fine. The doctors just wanted to keep me here to make sure I was all better.”
A doctor in a white coat entered the room, out of breath and sweating. “Oh, thank God,” he gasped, leaning over with his hands on his thighs. “I thought we’d never find you. Come on, we have to leave right now.”
Karen was confused. “Leave? What are you talking about, Doctor…?”
“Ramos. Cesar Ramos. Don’t you remember, we met a couple of years ago at the…” He saw in Karen’s blank expression that she had no idea who he was. “Never mind. I’m an old friend of Jack’s. He’s on his way to the city, but right now we need to get out of here. I think something really bad is about to happen.”
Karen nodded. “Yeah, I know. I’m watching it.” She pointed up at the screen.
Ramos looked up at the screen and read the chyron, and the blood drained from his face.
“We have to leave. Now.”
΅
CHAPTER SEVEN
BATTLE ROYALE
JACK STOOD IMPATIENTLY at the ticket desk, rocking back and forth on his heels, praying that the earth would open up and swallow the woman in line ahead of him. For five minutes she’d been arguing with the desk agent that her cockatoos were comfort animals, and she couldn’t for the life of her understand why it might be an issue for her fellow passengers to fly to Albany beside a brace of mangy, screeching, agitated birds trapped in a too-small cage that stank of ammonia and ancient newspaper. “You let babies fly!” she yelled at the harried desk agent. “These are my babies!”
Jack rolled his remaining two vodka miniatures around his palm like stress balls, wondering if he should drain them now to knock himself out for the flight, or maybe just whip them at the woman’s head in the hope that a lucky shot might knock her out cold.
Eventually a manager stepped up to the desk, a polite smile plastered to his face. He took the nightmare passenger gently by the arm and led her away to settle down, carrying the birdcage with him. “Careful!” the woman warned, fussing around the manager. “Maisie has a weak stomach. She doesn’t like to be jolted.”
Jack whispered a silent prayer of thanks and took her place at the counter, where he met an exhausted, plastic smile attached to a young desk agent who looked like she shared his feelings about old ladies and cockatoos. She gave him an almost imperceptible eye roll.
“Welcome to United, how can I help you today?” She glanced to the side, making sure she was out of earshot of the manager. “Please tell me you don’t have any birds.”
Jack let out a dry chuckle. “No, it’s just me. I need to get to San Francisco. First flight you have, any class is fine.”
The agent tapped away for a moment at her computer, frowning, and then flashed him a sympathetic half smile. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything available until… ummm… there’s a flight departing at 2:15AM. Would you like me to book that for you?”
Jack looked at his watch. Hell, that was almost twelve hours from now. If he planted his foot to the floor he could almost drive there from Seattle before the flight would arrive. He shook his head. “What about LA? Reno? Anything that puts me within driving distance.”
She tapped at the computer again, humming under her breath. “LA is… sorry, the first flight we have is at 10PM. You’d get there sooner on the direct flight. Reno is…” She fell silent for a moment. “Aha! OK, yeah, I have one seat left on a flight to Reno departing at 3:40 this afternoon. That’s wheels down a little after 5PM.” She tapped a few more keys. “The last minute fare for that flight will be… umm, $449. Would you like me to book that for you?”
“Please.” Jack slapped the company credit card on the desk. There was no way in hell Baxter would allow him to expense the flight, but he’d have to just deal with the fallout later. Reno was a little more than a three hour drive from home, less if he didn’t worry too much about the speed limit. Add an hour to deplane and find a rental car, and he could be at the hospital at… what, around 9PM?
“Huh,” the agent said, blinking at her screen. “That’s odd.”
“What? What is it?”
She shook her head, confused. “It looks like that flight was just canceled. Maybe it’s just a glitch. One moment please.”
Jack didn’t need a moment. Behind him a collective groan went up around the concourse, and he turned just in time to see the big board on the wall shift to a sea of red. Every single flight flipped to read canceled, even those that had already been boarding. He turned back to the desk agent.
“What’s going on? Are you people serious?”
“I… I don’t know,” she replied, staring at her screen, her eyes wide. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Not when we’re not under ten feet of snow, anyway. Maybe there’s—”
She was interrupted by the sound of a scream echoing from the other end of the concourse. Jack spun around to see a half dozen security guards jump to action, running towards the scream with their hands on their holsters, but then another scream rang out from the opposite direction, closely followed by another, and another.
The guards stopped in their tracks, confused and unsure where to go. Now screams, yells and gasps began to break from everywhere in the crowd, and it didn’t take long for Jack to notice that most came from people who were looking up at the TV screens mounted on the walls. Something terrible was happening, he real
ized, but it wasn’t happening in here but out there.
Jack didn’t waste a moment. He grabbed his credit card from the desk and set off at a dead run back towards the entrance, pulling his phone from his pocket as he went. He had no idea what was going on, but he could put two and two together. Something awful had happened, and with every flight canceled the last place he wanted to get stuck was at the airport with a few thousand terrified people and no cabs.
He tapped the screen to reload his homepage as he ran, and his pace quickened. The page was frozen halfway through loading, but Jack didn’t need to read beyond the block capital breaking news headline to know that life was about to get very interesting, in the worst way imaginable.
At the entrance to the airport it was clear that the news hadn’t yet spread beyond the terminal. Cab drivers sat on the hoods of their cars, chatting with each other while waiting for fares to arrive, and even now new arrivals were awkwardly tugging luggage from trunks and heading inside, completely clueless as to what had happened.
Jack wanted nothing more than to dive into the back of the closest cab and yell at the driver to get out of here, but a calm, sensible voice in the back of his mind ordered him to take a breath and think about it. He only had around ten dollars in his wallet, and whatever happened from here on in he figured it was a safe bet that pretty soon his credit card wouldn’t be anything more than a shiny piece of plastic. If everything was going to hell, cash and barter would be king.
By the entrance to the terminal stood a bank of ATMs. Jack stopped at the first machine, slid his card into the slot and waited for what felt like an eternity for the computer to register his PIN.
