by Paul Jones
Still, Emily was reticent to activate the alarm system. It wasn’t like she was yelling fire in a crowded cinema, she argued with herself, this was an emergency and the only way of guaranteeing she would get the undivided attention of any survivors left in the building.
Emily gripped the handle with her fingers and pulled it down.
Instantly, a white strobe light set high up on the wall began flashing. It was accompanied by an ear splitting alarm so loud it forced Emily t o throw her hands to her ears in pain.
“Ouch,” she exclaimed while simultaneously allowing herself a weak smile of triumph. If this didn’t get someone’s attention she didn’t know what would.
With her hands still firmly over her ears, Emily sprinted back to the entrance of the emergency stairwell. She opened the door and positioned herself half in the doorway where she could see anyone who came down the stairs while still giving her a clear view of the elevator floor display. If the lights of the display changed it would mean someone was using the elevators to head to the ground floor.
The piercing electronic wail of the alarm quickly induced a throbbing headache in the front of Emily’s skull, but she waited almost fifteen minutes in the stairwell, hoping someone might appear. But the illuminated floor number above the closed elevator doors did not waver and no one met her on the stairs. Still, she gave it another five minutes before allowing herself to let go of the hope of others being alive within her building.
Fighting back a steadily growing surge of despair, Emily allowed the door to close behind her as she walked back to the refuge of her own apartment.
CHAPTER SIX
* * *
Emily unlocked her apartment and stepped inside, made her way to the kitchen for a glass of water and froze when she saw Nathan’s body lying there.
It was as though she had completely forgotten about him the second she left the apartment. It was the trauma of the whole event, she knew that, but this was just too much for one person to be able to handle. How was she supposed to cope with this? There was no one to help her. So what was she supposed to do now? She had the dead body of her boyfriend in her kitchen, a bad enough scenario on any other day, but today it was simply a nightmare.
The sound of the fire alarm was squelched somewhat by the walls of her apartment but it was still loud enough to be a constant distraction, especially as the headache was blossoming into a face-numbing migraine. She knew now she hadn’t thought the whole activate-the-fire-alarm plan through quite as well as she should have, blinded by the hope of finding somebody else alive. Sure, it was loud enough to attract attention but how the hell was she supposed to turn it off? The incessant screech was beginning to drive her just a little insane.
It was all just too much for her overwrought emotions to deal with and she felt her consciousness begin to spiral back down toward that nice, safe place, deep inside the recesses of her mind. It was so tempting to just let go of reality. To allow herself to regress and forget about the whole god-awful mess she found herself in. But Emily knew if she allowed herself the luxury of skipping out on reality, the chances were she would never come back. She could feel herself standing on the very brink of madness, all it would take was a single mental step off that precipice and it would all be over for her.
And, oh God, it was so very, very tempting.
“No,” she said through teeth gritted so firmly she could feel the pressure waves rolling up through her jaw. “That’s not going to happen.”
She dismissed any thought of giving-up from her mind. She was a survivor. She had always been a survivor, and she sure-as-shit wasn’t going to change now just because it looked like the world was ending.
Emily started purposefully towards the bedroom, doing her best to push the sound of the alarm from her mind and concentrate on what she had to do next. Opening the linen cabinet, she pulled out a spare pair of bed sheets. She tossed the top sheet back in the cabinet, choosing the elasticated fitted-sheet instead. Thankfully, it was a queen size, anything smaller probably wouldn’t have worked for what she had in mind.
She took the sheet back to Nathan’s body and considered exactly how she was going to do what she needed to do. He was sitting upright which would help, but he weighed close to one-eighty and she wasn’t sure she was physically strong enough to carry that kind of weight—dead weight, her mind cackled at her, but she ignored it—if this didn’t go as planned.
Emily allowed most of the fitted sheet to drop to the floor while keeping the top hem stretched between both her hands. She looped the edge over Nathan’s head and forced it down between his shoulders and the refrigerator his body leaned against. She had to press her right knee against his chest so he wouldn’t keel over, not just yet. Emily pulled the elasticated edge of the sheet first over Nathan’s left shoulder and then the right, being sure to push it down as far as she could until both the right and left edges met. She tucked the side edges of the sheet underneath his elbows and pulled the remainder of the sheet down over the feet. With the sheet securely in place, Emily moved off to the side of Nathan’s body, grasped the edges of the sheet together as tightly as she could then pushed against his shoulder.
Nathan’s body slowly slid sideways down the refrigerator until he lay flat against the floor. Emily had to give the edge of the sheet a couple of tugs to pull the right side free so it met the opposite side. She grabbed his legs at the ankles and straightened them out, then moved back to his shoulders, still holding the edge of the sheet together, and pushed.
Nathan’s body rolled over to rest face down on the kitchen floor, completely encased within the fitted sheet like some modern day Mummy.
Emily had already figured out exactly where she was going to have to take him. She had considered the elevator but she just couldn’t bring herself to do that. Instead, she decided to take Nathan’s body to the apartment where she had found the dead family. It was further but it also seemed more fitting somehow.
There was a roll of twine in the kitchen utility drawer and Emily cut several four-feet long lengths of it. She slid the first piece under the sheet near Nathan’s head and wiggled it down until it was parallel with his wrists then tied the two loose ends together, securing his arms to his sides within the shroud. She repeated the procedure again to secure his arms at his shoulders and then to lock his ankles together.
When she was finished, Emily scrunched together a handful of the fabric near his feet until she had enough to give her a secure handgrip. She tied that off with a shorter piece of the twine. She gave the shroud a couple of careful tugs just to make sure Nathan’s body was secure within the sheet. Satisfied with her work she took hold of the handgrip with both hands and began to pull the corpse of her boyfriend toward the front door.
It was relatively easy to slide Nathan along the smooth tiled kitchen floor, but when she hit the carpeted area of the hallway the friction of the cotton sheet against the carpet made moving his body much more difficult. By the time she pulled his body through the front door and out into the 17th floor corridor, she was sweating hard and breathing even harder. She dropped Nathan’s feet to the floor and took a minute to get her breath. The alarm, so much louder out here, beat Emily’s head like it was a tribal drum, she could feel a vein begin pulsing in her forehead as the pain banged against the front of her skull.
When she reached the halfway mark near the elevator, her head felt as though it would explode, and the muscles in her arms, back, and neck were burning. Her fingers ached in every joint where she had gripped the fabric so tightly to avoid it slipping from her grasp. Emily was half-tempted to leave the body there for the night but the idea of facing this first-thing in the morning was unthinkable. She interlocked the fingers of both her hands and flexed them until her knuckle joints popped, then reached down and began hauling her grisly load towards the waiting door of apartment #32.
* * *
Emily bumped the door of the apartment open with her butt. She pulled Nathan’s body down as far into the en
trance corridor as she could before her hands finally told her they could take no more and she had to let go. His sheet covered feet clumped to the carpet and Emily slumped down right after them, her back resting against the wall as she fought to catch her breath. Her blond hair had matted to her forehead and she pushed it back out of her stinging sweat filled eyes. Her head was thumping with the mother of all headaches, her vision was swimming and her heart pounded in her ears. She had never felt so exhausted in her life. It took all her will power not to close her eyes and sleep right there. Instead, she raised herself to her feet, ignoring the pain in her back and the objections of her knees, and hobbled out of the apartment.
At the door she paused momentarily and stared at the shrouded form of Nathan. “Bye, baby,” she whispered and pulled the door shut until she heard the click of the lock engage.
She had taken two steps toward her apartment when the wailing of the fire alarm suddenly stopped. There was a second or two’s pause and then Emily heard three short, sharp beeps as the system had either shut itself down or reset.
“Thank you, God,” said Emily, and staggered the remainder of the distance home.
* * *
She was utterly spent.
The pain in her head eventually began to fade but only after she washed down a couple of painkillers with one of the remaining cans of beer from the fridge. Neither the beer nor the painkillers did much to help her back which spasmed and shuddered every time she moved. And no amount of alcohol or pills was ever going to ease her numbness over the death of Nathan.
She sat facing the window of her apartment, sipping the remainder of the Bud Light while she stared out at her little slice of the city, watching dusk slowly descend over the buildings. Emily had never experienced such a profound silence before, both outside the apartment and within her heart.
Who knew such absolute stillness existed.
The streets were free of cars and people, the sky, usually buzzing with aircraft and birds, was vacant and clear. It was quite beautiful. A light brown haze of smog still swirled high above the rooftops, the only reminder of the millions of lives that had traversed the streets and alleys below, just hours before.
As dusk gradually edged toward night, she watched the streetlights begin to flicker silently on, casting long shadows that stretched and grew before being swallowed up in the descending darkness.
The silence quickly became intolerable, and Emily abandoned her spot at the window for the couch instead. She switched on the TV, more for the comfort gained from filling the room with any sound other than her own breathing. She felt as though her head had been stuffed full of cotton balls. It wasn’t a bad feeling, not really, kind of like a shot of Novocain for her spirit, buffering her against the pain of the reality of her situation.
On the TV screen the image of the dead news presenter stared back at her, his eyes as black and blank as she was sure hers were. She returned his stare for several minutes, then switched off the TV and dragged her sorry excuse for a body to the bedroom.
As she passed through the kitchen, Emily glimpsed the blood stained pool where Nathan’s body had lain and the splatter on the counter. She was just too tired to take care of it right now; it would have to wait until the morning. She trudged into her bedroom and collapsed on top of the comforter.
Within minutes, she was asleep. Mercifully, she did not dream.
DAY TWO
CHAPTER SEVEN
* * *
Emily woke an hour before dawn and watched the birth of the day from the same window she had watched its death, this time with a cup of black coffee in her hand instead of a beer.
Her body still complained at her for the abuse she had put it through the previous evening but it wasn’t so bad this morning, just the dull ache of stretched muscles unused to having to work. Her head still ached though. She wasn’t sure whether that was the stress of the previous day’s events, the fire alarm induced migraine, the beer or, more likely, a combination of all of them. She still had the strange head full of cotton balls feeling, there just wasn’t so much of it this morning.
Her eyes had opened right on time for her to get up and get ready for work. She felt a subtle sense of relief as the vague memory of what was surely just a terrible nightmare fluttered from the dark cave of her unconscious mind. But as those first few groggy seconds between sleep and full wakefulness fell away it erased the cobwebs shrouding her mind and the previous day’s events cleared into terrifyingly sharp focus.
Reality had chased Emily from her bed and she had all but run to the living room window. Just in case, she had told herself. Just in case it was all a dream. As she passed by the kitchen, she glanced down at where, in her nightmare, Nathan’s body had lain and where the bloodstain should be … it wasn’t there. It was gone. Not a trace left.
Just a dream, she thought and raced on to her roost at the window. Throwing back the drapes, she pressed herself against the cold glass and stared out at the still empty streets and sky.
Emily stood at the window, watching what should have been, even at this early an hour, a bustling city filled with office workers, joggers, dog walkers and everything that made New York the only place in the world she would ever want to live. She glanced back over her shoulder at the kitchen and the spot where the bloodstain should be, the blood was definitely gone. Not a trace remained. Was it possible she had dreamed Nathan’s death, maybe even his visit, all together?
That just wasn’t a possibility. His police issue bomber-jacket lay on the sofa where she had left it yesterday, his cap sat on the kitchen table. He had been here. He had died here. But that didn’t explain why his blood had disappeared from the floor.
Emily examined the floor and the walls in the kitchen where she thought the bloodstain had been. There was no trace. It was as though it had never existed, as though not a drop was spilled.
She was sure she hadn’t cleaned it up, but, maybe in her stress induced fugue state, she had left her bed in the middle of the night and removed it. Possible? After what had happened yesterday, she supposed anything was possible. Was it likely? She didn’t think so. It certainly hadn’t cleaned itself up and she was a little old to believe the elves had done the job for her during the night.
Coffee, that was what she needed.
She opened the cover on the coffee maker, pulled out the old filter and tossed it in the trash then replaced it with a fresh one. She spooned in a couple of scoops of ground beans, and filled the carafe with enough water to give her four cups of coffee—she was going to need at least three to get her going— and emptied the water into the reservoir. A few minutes after flipping the machine’s ‘on’ switch, the smell of fresh brewed coffee began wafting enticingly around the apartment. Emily filled a mug with the steaming coffee before the machine had dripped even half of its precious liquid into the carafe. She walked to her perch at the window, sipping the delightfully strong brew.
Outside the window, the dawn sky was a fiery red above the city’s rooftops. With each passing minute morning sunlight pushed back the shadows that had claimed the streets, but there was little consolation for Emily. The streets were still empty.
With caffeine finally beginning to flow through her veins, Emily began to feel the last of the cobwebs clear from her foggy brain. She needed a plan, she decided; some kind of strategy for figuring how to get in touch with authorities and let them know she was alive. There had to be other survivors out there, it was just a case of finding them or leaving enough clues to help them find her.
She walked back to the kitchen and placed the coffee cup down on the counter, found her backpack nearby and pulled a steno-pad and pen from within. For the next hour Emily worked on compiling a comprehensive ‘to do’ list. Telephone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, social media sites; anything she could think of that would help her reach out and locate other survivors. She would need to stick to a strict timetable of calling the numbers on the steno pad every few hours. She could use the time
in-between to check news-portals and social-media websites. If she stuck to that plan it would only be a matter of time until she found somebody who could help her, she was sure.
There was no way to tell how long it would take for the cavalry to come riding over the horizon, so she’d need to find some supplies to get her through the next couple of days. She toyed with the idea of checking out some of the apartments on other floors but she thought the chances were high she would only have the same result as she had on her own floor yesterday. Empty, locked apartments with nothing but the dead inside. If there was anyone alive in the building, the fire alarm would have surely brought all but a deaf person running.
She wished she had been clearheaded enough yesterday to grab what supplies she could from the dead family’s apartment. That was not an option now as she had clearly heard the door lock behind her when she closed it after dropping off Nathan’s body. She was going to have to take a trip outside and grab what provisions she could. It would waste time she would rather spend running through her contact list, but it should only take a half-hour or so, if she was fast. Besides, she could use some sunshine. That would have to be later though. Right now she needed to make a few calls.
