by Paul Jones
Now there was nothing.
New York, the city that never slept, had been silenced forever.
CHAPTER FIVE
* * *
An hour had passed since Nathan died. The feeling of calm Emily had felt began to evaporate as, slowly, she began to surface from her mind’s self-imposed fugue state.
She was alive!
Emily tried to stand but her legs cramped and she flopped back down on to the floor, pain spiking up the calves of her legs. She felt as though all her energy had been sucked right out of her.
She crawled over to the coffee table and picked up her cellphone, trying to ignore the cramps in her legs that felt like a dog nipping at her ass.
Flipping the phone open, she punched in 911. "Come on," she whispered. "Please. Come on. Somebody pick up."
The phone rang and rang. No one answered,
She hung up and immediately dialed the number for the front-desk of the Tribune. It rang four times before a woman’s recorded voice answered and said "If you know your party’s extension, please enter it now."
No one had picked up at the front desk, which was okay, she hadn’t expected anyone to be operating the reception area; everyone except for Konkoly and Frank had left, after all, so the system had defaulted to afterhours mode. She entered Konkoly’s extension number. It rang twice before she heard his voice in her ear. “Hi, you’ve reached the desk of Sven Konkoly. If you’d like to leave a message …” Emily hit the # key on her phone and the system returned her to the main menu. “If you know your party’s extens—” The recording cut off when she tapped in the two-digit number for Frank Embry’s extension.
It went to message, too.
Emily carefully worked her way through every extension number she could remember. Each time the voice of her friends and colleagues greeted her and asked her to leave them a message, they would get back to her when they could. Emily had a feeling that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. She stared at the phone in her hand, willing it to ring, for somebody, anybody to call her back.
The pain in her legs and bottom had turned into tingling pins-and-needles. She flexed her legs a couple of times hoping to get the blood to flow a little faster, it helped a little but they were still twitchy after so much time spent in one position. She tried to stand again, and found her legs were once again willing to obey her. She raised herself to her feet, and moved over to the window. She couldn’t see Nathan from there, his body blocked by the counter and the sofa.
There was one more call she needed to make. Slowly she dialed the number for her parent's home.
Mom and Dad had retired ten years earlier. After selling the farm, they had packed up and moved to Orlando, Florida. “Gonna get while the getting’s good,” her dad told her in his best John Wayne drawl during one of her annual trips back home. “We’re craving some sun and sea,” he had gone on to say. “After sixty years of living here, I think we both deserve it, don’t you?”
Emily had agreed, it was the best move they could make, but she still felt a pang of sadness at the loss of the home she had grown up in, and, despite her childhood desire to leave Denison as soon as she was physically able, the idea of never going back there had been painful.
Listening to the phone’s distant ringing she remembered how happy her parents seemed the last time she had seen them. They both sported a deep tan from too many days on the beach. They were like a couple of teenagers, holding hands, cuddling-up on the sofa together as they had talked with their one and only child. When Emily heard the answering machine click on she let out a deep sigh, fighting back a rush of tears at the sound of her father’s voice: "Hi, you've reached Bob and Jane. We can't get to the phone right now but if you'd like to leave a message we'll get back to you as soon as possible."
At the beep, Emily spoke softly into the phone: "Mom? Dad? If you get this message, I'm okay. I'm alive. I think... I think everyone else here might be dead. I love you. Please call me." She left her cellphone number on the machine before hanging up. As she flipped her phone closed, she was left with the disconcerting feeling she had not left a message for her parents but a goodbye note.
* * *
Emily stepped into the corridor outside her apartment. She had left her keys sitting on the countertop in the kitchen. The idea she might accidentally lock herself out made her nervous, so she stood in the doorway with her right foot resting against the bottom rail of the door to keep it from closing.
"Hello?" Emily called, her voice echoing along the empty corridor. "Can anyone hear me?" There was no answer, just the gentle hiss of the air conditioning and an annoyingly familiar sound from further along the corridor she could not quite identify.
From somewhere on the floors above her, Emily thought she caught the sound of music playing but she couldn’t be sure. She had already tried flicking through the local TV channels but found nothing but empty desks and preprogrammed shows. At least the TV was still on the air, she reasoned.
“Hello?” she yelled again, louder this time, but still no one answered her.
Emily stepped back inside the apartment and started toward the kitchen. She grabbed her keys and placed them safely in the pockets of her jeans then turned and retraced her steps back to the front door, opened it and stepped outside.
The click of the lock engaging as the door closed made her heart pound a little faster as panic gave her system a little tweak. She shrugged it off and started down the corridor towards the elevator.
There were forty apartments on each floor of her building. Emily made her way to her nearest neighbor. She knocked loudly and rang the apartment's doorbell.
"Hi?" she called out. "Is there anybody in there? Can you hear me?" Placing her ear against the cold wood of the door, Emily listened for some kind of an answer, something that would tell her she was not alone. But there was no reply, not even the warning yap of one of the Chihuahuas or Shih-Tzus she knew some of her neighbors kept as pets.
Emily moved on to the next apartment and repeated the process. After the sixth door remained closed, she stopped knocking.
Hiss. Clang. Thump. There was that sound again, so damn familiar but Emily just couldn’t identify it. The sound grew louder the further she moved towards the center of the corridor.
Hiss. Clang. Thump.
Set back in an alcove off the main corridor, the waiting area for the elevator remained hidden from view until Emily rounded the final corner, following the sound.
Hiss. Clang. Thump.
The body of the dead woman lay half-in and half-out of the elevator doorway. Every few seconds the automatic doors would try to close and then spring back open as they thumped loudly against the unmoving woman. This was the source of the sound she had been hearing.
Hiss. Clang. Thump.
Each time the doors collided with the dead woman, her body would give a little twitch that Emily found incredibly unnerving.
The corpse lay face down, her head and upper torso resting on the linoleum floor of the corridor. A halo of congealed blood spread out around her head while the woman's lower body remained in the elevator compartment. Two brown paper bags of spilled groceries lay at her feet, their contents—mostly canned peaches and plastic gallon-bottles of water—had escaped from the bag when the woman died and now lay scattered over the floor of the elevator. The dead woman was dressed in an expensive looking gray business suit, the jacket and white shirt beneath it had ridden-up around her middle, exposing the small of her back and the myriad of tiny engorged veins creating an ugly latticework across her pale skin.
One of the dead woman's hands lay outstretched in front of her, her fingers cupped as though she had died while trying to drag herself out of the compartment. Her other arm was pinned beneath her body.
Emily had seen her share of dead bodies in her time in New York; it went with the territory of being a reporter. Most had been the result of accidents, suicides, or the occasional murder victim. She thought herself inured to the dead, but there was som
ething incredibly disturbing about this corpse’s involuntary movements every time the door banged against it that reminded Emily of the zombie movies she used to love to watch. There was that, and the fact that the continuous hiss, clang and thump of the elevator doors’ opening and closing was head-achingly loud in the confines of the elevator alcove.
No way was she going to leave the poor woman just lying there. It was just too disturbing. Emily stood over the body for a few moments before deciding what she needed to do. She placed the heel of her right foot against the corpse's shoulder and pushed. The body moved a few inches, leaving a red smear of blood, but then stopped as the friction of the escalator’s rubber-lined floor made it impossible to push her any further. There was only one way this was going to happen and that was for Emily to pull the corpse into the elevator by its legs.
She stepped gingerly over the body, carefully avoiding the congealed pool of blood and avoiding the doors as they once again tried to close and then sprung back open. Emily half expected the woman to suddenly reach out and grab her foot. She had a mental image of herself being dragged kicking and screaming into the compartment and the elevator doors sliding silently shut, her screams slowly fading down the empty hallway as the elevator moved on to pick up more undead riders to feast on her flesh.
The dead woman didn't grab for her, she just remained where Emily had pushed her. Emily grabbed the woman's legs by her blue pumps—Christian Louboutin, if she was not mistaken. Whoever this woman was, she had taste and money—and pulled. The body made a disturbing slurping sound as she dragged it feet-first the remaining distance into the elevator compartment.
Emily was surprised at how much flexion there was in the corpse. Wasn't rigor mortis supposed to have set in by now? She lifted the cuff of the woman's trouser and pushed it back, exposing the woman's ankles and a few inches of the calf of her leg. Although the skin was certainly pale, it did not have the gray cast she had seen in other dead bodies. Also, there didn't seem to be any noticeable lividity either, the natural pooling of blood to the lowest point in the body that leaves corpses looking bruised and battered.
Strange.
She was no doctor, but she was sure that was part of the normal course of decomposition. Apparently, she was wrong. Or the rules had changed.
So involved in her thoughts was she, Emily failed to notice the corpse was now completely clear of the elevator doors which promptly began to close again. She thrust her hand between them just in time to stop them from trapping her in the traveling metal coffin with the dead woman. As the doors opened again, Emily leaped from the elevator cabin to the safety of the alcove. Free of their obstruction, and with the woman’s body curled fetal-like in the corner of the cabin, the elevator finally clanged shut and this time the doors stayed closed. Emily watched the glowing LED numbers on the floor-indicator rise through 18 then 19, before finally stopping at floor 21 to pick up a passenger Emily was certain would never take the ride.
* * *
The door to apartment #32 was ajar.
Emil’s heart began to beat faster as she approached. Maybe there was someone alive in there.
Not wanting to walk into the apartment unannounced, Emily leaned towards the crack of the door and called out “Hello? It's Emily. I live in apartment number six. Is there anyone home?” As she leaned in, her shoulder nudged the door open further and the sudden squeak of its unoiled hinges caught her momentarily off guard, setting her heart racing even more. It took her a second to gather herself before she pushed the door wider and stepped into the apartment.
The hallway lights were on and from where she stood Emily could see the curtains pulled closed in the living room at the opposite end of the corridor, shrouding it in darkness. The apartment was tastefully furnished, an expensive looking vase rested on a sofa-back table in the hallway holding a fresh bunch of oriental lilies. Beneath the scent of the lilies was another, not so pleasant smell. Emily recognized the unmistakable odor of vomit mixed with the metallic, heavy tang of spilled blood. It wasn’t strong at this end of the apartment but the open door allowed the air-conditioned corridor to pull the scent towards her.
Emily moved further into the apartment’s hallway, not bothering to announce herself again, as she already knew what she would find. Where the corridor opened into the living room area Emily saw a small shape spread-eagled on the floor: it was a child, no more than four or five, a little boy. His dead, blood-black eyes stared at the ceiling and a tiny fist gripped at the blood soaked t-shirt he wore. In the dead child's other hand was a small brown teddy-bear. An oval pool of flakey blood had dried around the boy's head, leaking from his nose and his mouth, which hung loosely open, forever locked in a state of shock and terror.
Emily stifled a cry of horror. Trying to avoid looking at the little boy, she stepped around him, keeping her eyes fixed instead on a painting hanging on the far wall as she moved into the living room.
The bodies of two adults lay nearby. The man was still sitting upright on the living room sofa, his arms hung loosely at his side and his head drooped toward his left shoulder. A stream of dried blood and congealed vomit cascaded from his mouth running down the front of his business suit, forming a black pool in his lap. The dead man's eyes stared sightlessly at the equally black flat-screen TV fixed to the far wall of the apartment.
A woman, Emily assumed it was the boy’s mother, lay crumpled on the floor in front of the man. When she collapsed, she had fallen through a glass coffee table, smashing it into a thousand pieces. Shards of broken glass were everywhere, covering the floor in front of the sofa and jutting from between the threads of a beautiful oriental rug the table had sat on. One large fragment had penetrated through the woman’s left arm. It must have severed an artery, Emily thought, because the lake of blood around the woman was much larger than she had seen from the other victims of the red rain.
Curled up in the corner of the room, she saw another small shape motionless on the expensive carpet. Not a child this time; the family cat, Emily guessed. It too was dead, dark red clots of blood congealing at every orifice. This sickness, this red plague, did not seem to discriminate between species and Emily was pretty sure that that was a very bad thing. Viruses were not supposed to transfer between species. It was supposed to take time or bad luck for it to mutate into a form where it would be able to jump across, but this one seemed more than capable of killing anything it came into contact with. She remembered the dead birds she had witnessed falling from the sky when the red-rain first came.
This was bad, Emily realized. It probably meant the situation was far worse than she had first thought. If the rain was able to kill across species then where would it stop? Would it mean every creature on Earth was affected or just those that had come into contact with the red rain? The idea was terrifying.
It was also something she simply was not willing to contemplate right now. For all she knew this was a localized event and help was already on its way. If it was, then she wouldn’t have to worry about what kind of a threat the rain was. She could leave it to the experts to figure out, not her; she was just a journalist. Emily knew her line of reasoning was tenuous at best, but it was all she had, and she was going to hang onto it at all costs.
There was nothing more for her here. Emily began backtracking towards the front door, careful to avoid looking at the bodies of the family who had once lived here.
Outside, as the cool of the air-conditioning washed over her, Emily considered moving her search to the other floors of the apartment building. She got as far as the elevator and almost pressed the call button before she caught herself from summoning the dead woman back to her floor.
She already knew what she would probably find if she left the safety of her floor. If the footage she had seen of the devastation in Europe had been anything to go by, Emily’s survival was an anomaly. Everyone else was most likely dead, both here in the apartment building and throughout the city, probably even across the country and maybe—as hard as it was t
o allow herself to even contemplate—the world.
And if there were survivors in her building, surely she would have heard something from them by now. Someone would have been moving around, looking for others as she was. There was no way she was going to put herself through the pain of finding more bodies like those of the elevator woman and the poor family she had just left.
It was all just too … sad. Yes, that was exactly the word to describe this situation. It was all just too goddamn sad.
Emily stood in front of the door leading into the emergency stairwell. She pulled open the door and yelled into the open cavity “Is there anybody there? Can you hear me?” She waited a few seconds for an answer—none came, just the hollow sound of her own voice echoing back to her and the metallic clang of the door as she let it close behind her.
There had to be another way to get the attention of anyone left alive, she thought as she walked back towards her apartment.
Strategically placed at key points on each floor of the apartment building were four bright-red pull-station activators for the complex’s fire alarm system. Emily had passed two of them before she grasped she had the perfect solution and stopped at the one nearest her apartment.
Emblazoned with the word FIRE in large white letters on each case, the alarm could be triggered by simply pulling down on a small plastic handle. If there was anyone left alive in the building, or even nearby for that matter, this would be the way to let them know there were other survivors or at least flush them from their apartment.
