by Guy James
Still watching the snow and thinking about the new life he would make for himself after he sold Lorie out, Dr. Westreich cleared his throat. He looked over his shoulder, but his patient of the hour, Mr. Anderson, didn’t stir.
Dr. Westreich turned back to the street, sighed, and rubbed at his temple. He felt a migraine coming on. It was just so boring to watch a patient sleep. It wasn’t that he had qualms about charging a patient for nap time, it was that he needed at least an iota of mental stimulation during his workday, and Mr. Anderson was one of the few patients he currently had in treatment whose case file was of even the remotest interest.
Mr. Anderson had presented himself in Dr. Westreich’s office more than two years ago. Now, as Dr. Westreich considered opening the window so that the cold air might rouse his sleeping patient, he found himself smiling as he reminisced on that first, fateful meeting.
Mr. Anderson had been a patient-to-patient referral. It had turned out that he was a family friend of a woman who Dr. Westreich had treated for years—unsuccessfully—for her depression.
At first, Dr. Westreich had thought that Mr. Anderson was not being completely forthright about his state of mind. They had gone through several introductory sessions in which Mr. Anderson had refused to go into any detail regarding his particular mental affliction because he wanted to get more comfortable with Dr. Westreich. Dr. Westreich had not minded, of course, because it wasn’t as if the sessions were free.
If all Mr. Anderson wanted to do was chat about the weather and politics for an hour three times a week, and was willing to pay for it, Dr. Westreich would not be the one to derail such a profitable, low-effort arrangement. In fact, Dr. Westreich had considered it lucky. He had secured a patient with seemingly endless financial resources who thought his problem so serious that he wasn’t even ready to tell his own psychiatrist about it.
Finally, after six weeks’ worth of “therapy,” Mr. Anderson spilled his guts. His problem was that he thought that he was the character Neo, from the movie, The Matrix.
Dr. Westreich's first thought upon hearing this was of money, and, more specifically, of the obscene amounts of it that could be extracted from a patient such as Mr. Anderson. Dr. Westreich's second thought was a reflection on whether believing oneself to be Neo from The Matrix was in fact a problem. In service of his first thought, he decided that it would have to be. There was no doubt a limitless set of awkward and socially uncomfortable moments that such a belief would lead to, not to mention potentially life-threatening situations into which Mr. Anderson might voluntarily place himself under the false comfort of his delusion. The more that Dr. Westreich thought about it, the more convinced he became that the problem experienced by Mr. Anderson was one of grand proportions.
Thinking about his past with Mr. Anderson seemed to alleviate some of the onset of Dr. Westreich’s migraine. It called to the forefront of Dr. Westreich’s mind all the good fortune with which he had been blessed in this life.
“There should be a show based on my practice,” he whispered.
Dr. Westreich couldn’t help but congratulate himself. He was, without a doubt and of his own accord, a psychiatrist of exceptional caliber, and now that he was transitioning into entrepreneurship with the help of Lorie’s troubled mind, he was certain that his new business life would be exceptional as well.
“Dr. Westreich,” Dr. Westreich whispered to himself, “is a man who will be written about. Dr. Westreich—” he smiled, “—is a man for the history books.”
History books that bore his image and potential titles for his autobiography and multiple biographies appeared in his mind, revolving faster and faster.
As he gazed out the window and the spinning images in his mind turned with increasing rapidity, Dr. Westreich thought that he could sense something was wrong. It was something in the way that people were moving, something that seemed familiar, and there was a smell that was…was it wafting in from outside?
Dr. Westreich felt a sudden numbness work its way under his fingernails and creep upward. Disorientation swept over him. He knew that he was supposed to know this feeling. It was, it was, it was—
A stomach-turning moan rose up from behind Dr. Westreich and he turned away from window—or the window turned away from him, he wasn’t sure—and there was Mr. Anderson, sitting up in the patient’s chair and clumsily reaching for Dr. Westreich. Mr. Anderson’s eyeballs were black and shrunken, and hung in putrid, loose sockets.
Something about Mr. Anderson’s eyes made Dr. Westreich remember the hours that he had spent watching The Matrix in sessions with Mr. Anderson. Dr. Westreich had always found the movie and its implications trivial, but he had put on his best doctor face and sat through the film with Mr. Anderson more times than he could remember.
And now the condition of Mr. Anderson’s eyes bore some fleeting resemblance to the way that Dr. Westreich had always imagined his own eyes must have looked when he had watched The Matrix with his patient. Dr. Westreich could not put his finger on what it was, and then his mind took an abrupt turn and shook itself free of the perplexity with which it had begun to lock up.
Dr. Westreich screamed. It was not a manly scream at all, and sounded very much like the noise a Sutton Place dog makes when it is fed other than gourmet doggy biscuits.
Dr. Westreich tore his hand from Mr. Anderson’s mouth, ripping strands of flesh from the bone. Dr. Westreich screamed again, more in shock at the sight of his mangled hand than at the pain, which he now only had a faint awareness of, as if the sensation were something outside of his body. He had no recollection of being bitten, or even of having gotten close enough to Mr. Anderson to be bitten.
Then most of Dr. Westreich’s remaining lucidity got away from him and his office seemed to tunnel and transform into a perfect cylinder that wobbled one way and then the other, as if trying to decide in which direction it should spin. Dr. Westreich’s stomach lurched, anticipating the completion of the movement.
In a painful porthole of clarity, sharp, excruciating pain shot through Dr. Westreich’s right hand, and then dissolved at once.
It had felt as if the flesh of his palm had been torn loose and Mr. Anderson was chewing his way into the bones of the hand. Chewing? The word abruptly lost all meaning in Dr. Westreich’s mind as he stared at the strings of torn flesh that hung from Mr. Anderson’s mouth. Blood dripped from Mr. Anderson’s chin and splattered the leather of the patient’s chair.
Dr. Westreich looked up from the expanding pool of blood and at the patient. For a moment Dr. Westreich thought that the man in the patient’s chair was an actor from a movie that he had seen many times, a popular movie that everyone knew well, one of the greatest actors of all time. Then Dr. Westreich was sure of it—that this was his brush with Hollywood stardom.
Dr. Westreich felt a tickling sensation in his hand and then feeling returned, immense and untamed, driving out the awe he felt at being in the presence of celebrity.
A violent spasm of pain shook the psychiatrist’s body and then the numbness came again...crawling in under his fingernails and inching upward into his arms.
The sensation carried with it an unstated finality.
An image of Sven entered Dr. Westreich’s mind, and, in spite of the faltering light of his mind, he managed to twist his mouth into a leer at the thought of that arrogant, self-proclaimed hero.
The office lurched. Somewhere far away there was a scream. Dr. Westreich began to wonder if it was his own, but then his mind faltered.
The scream—it did not matter. It was outside of him, removed from those things that mattered.
Dr. Westreich smiled. He was in the matrix. The matrix was all around him. He stared down at Neo. Neo’s face was covered in blood. That was right, too. That was in the screenplay, Dr. Westreich was sure of it. He could see the words of the screenplay floating all around him, circling him as he read them.
Neo tore open Dr. Westreich’s belly.
As his guts spilled out of him, Dr. Westre
ich marked the event with a vacant stare.
The cylinder that the office had become, having finally decided on a direction, spun out of control, and went dark.
Dr. Westreich never lied about his relationship with walls again.
46
HUDSON RIVER GREENWAY, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Lorie gripped the handle of her long, serrated hunting knife. She slid the nail of one hand clicking along the knife’s serrated teeth.
Lorie considered whether her being right meant anything.
Ever since they had moved to New York, Lorie had always known in her gut that another outbreak would happen, and sooner than anyone expected. And now, she had been proven right.
There was no good in it, and it helped nothing. There was none of the usual satisfaction at having predicted something correctly, or of getting an answer right in class.
Instead, there was bitterness and anger…and a tainted excitement that filled Lorie with confusion and guilt when she felt it. A part of her had always been looking forward to this, and that part of her was now reveling in it, try as she did to keep the excitement at bay.
Lorie gritted her teeth. Trying to dampen the exhilaration she now felt was like stoking the flames of a fire. The more she tried to contain the feeling, the greater the pressure grew.
“Hello zombies,” she said, and grinned.
The words she had just spoken sunk in, and her smile faded.
“I’m completely out of my mind,” she said, and the words of Lorie’s psychiatrist flooded into her mind: “What you describe as taking pleasure in killing the infected,” Dr. Westreich’s voice echoed in her head, “it’s not actually that, Lorie. It’s not pleasure. That feeling you describe is a coping mechanism. It’s how your brain enabled you to deal with the events that were going on around you. It found a way to connect a positive emotion to something horrible that you had to do to survive. It is not an unusual phenomenon. I can assure you that nothing is wrong with you.”
The words faded out of Lorie’s mind and she refocused on the zombies who were staggering toward her through the falling snow.
“There’s a lot more wrong with me than you thought, Dr. Westreich,” she said. “You had no idea who was in your office. And now none of that matters—all of your education and experience and money, and whatever you were trying to get out of me. I’m sure that you’re dead now, or one of them.” She nodded. “Yeah. I can feel it. You’re one of them now, and maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll meet me tonight.”
Lorie looked up the stretch of Hudson River Greenway in front of her and a torrent of exhilaration poured over her. It felt as if she were standing underneath an ice cold waterfall. She had to fight to keep her balance.
As she gazed at the Hudson River Greenway and its staggering zombies, her mouth broke into the widest grin that she was capable of.
This was all to be hers.
They were all to be her prey.
47
CITY HALL, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
“Ow,” Sven said, and instinctively jerked his leg away. Ivan went with it, his jaw clamped onto the side of Sven’s calf, through Sven’s pants.
Ivan bit harder.
“What gives?” Sven muttered. He shook his leg and reached for Ivan.
Ivan let go, ran from Sven’s desk to the door, turned back to Sven, and yowled.
“Good morning to you too,” Sven said. “Evening, I mean.”
The waking world resolved around Sven and he slowly lifted his head from the document on his desk. He caught sight of some of the words on the page and began to recall the document’s content. It was an updated summary of New York City’s current budget options, taking into account a variety of tax abatement, fund raising, and condemnation strategies that Harry had had some of his advisors prepare. The summary was aimed at the part of Sven’s and Harry’s strategy with which they were experiencing the most problems: that of gaining ownership of the space for and constructing the public safe rooms.
“Ivan,” Sven said, looking at his cat, “it’s those dreams again—both of them. Is that why you woke me? I guess I should be grateful for that. They just won’t stop. I’m starting to think I might have a problem.”
Ivan yowled, and Sven looked down at the document on his desk, which was now adorned with two small drool circles. He looked back at Ivan, who still had not moved from his post by the door. The cat was breathing heavily.
“Ivan, what’s wrong?”
Ivan yowled again, padded over to Sven and pawed at his pant leg.
“Yeah,” Sven said, “you’re probably right. It’s time we head home. It’s not like I’m getting anything done here. Let me just check my email and we’ll go.”
Bleary-eyed and with a growing awareness of a dull ache behind his eyes from too much screen reading, Sven reached for his keyboard and hit a key to wake his computer up.
When the screen resolved, Sven hit the replay button on the YouTube video that was open in his browser, and Ray Lamontagne’s New York City’s Killing Me began to play.
Sven had been playing the song over and over again that week, being careful not to have it playing in the background when anyone else walked into his office. He was at the forefront of the mayor’s support team, after all, and he didn’t want anyone to know that certain aspects of living in the greatest city in the world—as those who spent very little time in New York City called it—were grating on his determination.
Sven shook his head and tried to focus on the words of Ray Lamontagne’s song. He tried to get the song to pull him further away from the outbreak-induced social issues that were grinding away at the cartilage of his soul, but he couldn’t. There was too much…too much—
Ivan let out a meow that broke in half under its own strain.
Sven looked into Ivan’s eyes and felt an abrupt change in the room.
Cold…and numbness…creeping, spreading.
And then Sven realized that he had turned the music on to drown another sound out.
Sven slowly stood, leaning on the desk with both of his hands, and took small steps to the window. As he inched closer, his mind filled with dread.
It won’t be that, he told himself.
Whenever he heard sirens, he assumed they meant another outbreak, but they never did, and it wasn’t what the sirens meant now. It was a human tragedy of some sort, but not another outbreak. The chances of another outbreak, their in-house committee of doctors and scientists said, were close to non-existent.
The problem with that was that deep down, Sven knew otherwise.
This time was different. It wasn’t the sirens. It wasn’t the noise. It was the air. The air had changed.
As he crept closer to the window, the wail of sirens dueled with Ray Lamontagne’s New York City’s Killing Me. In the end, the sirens won out.
No, Sven realized, it wasn’t the sirens that had won out. It was the screams.
Outside, two men were trying to run from a horde of…a horde of infected.
“It can’t be,” Sven said, rasping. “It can’t.”
Sven watched the movement of the men slow until the two stood in place, dazed and expressionless. Then the infected overtook them. The infected bit and tore at the men, biting off the nose, cheek, and ears of one, and ripping both arms off the other, then proceeding to tear the flesh from the wounds with their teeth.
The first attacked man reacted, and put his hands up to where his ears had been, trying to stem the flow of blood from the wounds. Blood gushed through his fingers, and then his hands dropped limply to his sides.
Moments later, the infected seemed to lose interest, and began to wander away, leaving the two men standing there, destroyed and twitching.
Sven moved away from the window and sat back down at his desk. The song ended, and Sven felt as if his body were expanding into the silence, prodded by the intermittent screams from City Hall Park outside his window.
Sven grabbed his smart phone and called Jane. The phone rang six times, a
nd then went to her voicemail. Sven cursed, hung up, and called again. Six more rings, and Jane’s voicemail again. Sven cursed again, took a breath to calm himself, and noticed that the green and blue lights on the phone were flashing.
He checked his text messages, then his emails. Jane knew, and had been trying to warn him.
“Thank God,” he said. “She’s okay.”
He dialed her number again. One more try, and then he would email her and let her know he was fine. Then he would see about actually being fine.
The phone rang three times and Jane picked up.
“Sven,” she said, before he had a chance to say anything, “Sven, thank God. I couldn’t reach you and I thought… Sven…I can’t reach Lorie.”
Sven’s jaw clenched shut. He heard his heartbeat reverberating in his head, felt every beat in his ears.
“Have you tried email and messaging?” Sven asked.
“Of course,” Jane said, her voice frantic. “Nothing from her and no response. She’s offline. The circuits were busy, overloaded, when I tried to call you. I tried sending text messages, and I think a few of those got through. When I first tried to call Lorie it went straight to voicemail, but now I’m getting the same message with her. I sent her texts, too, but I have no idea if she got them. I’ve emailed her too, but no response.”
“Lorie knows what to do, Jane. I’m sure she’ll be alright.”
Silence.
“Sven? Where are you? Are you still at work?”
“Yes.”
“How…how is it down there?”
Sven walked to the window and looked outside.
Ivan yowled.
“It’s still early,” Sven said. “I need to post the alert on the forum.”
