by Anthony Izzo
“Pull over,” Laura said.
David gave her a suspicious look. “We need to get away.”
Laura looked behind her. For now, the street was empty. A fire glowed from somewhere past City Hall, oily smoke rising in the air. It would be safe to stop for a moment. She wanted another look at that wound.
“Do it,” Laura said. “I want to look at your arm.”
David pulled the truck to the curb. He left the engine running and his foot on the brake.
“Take off your shirt.”
David put the truck in park. He pulled off the shirt, wincing as he did so. He had on a black T-shirt under the flannel. Very carefully, Laura pulled up the short sleeve to get a better look at the wound.
This was bad. The skin around the wound was an ugly red. An orange tributary branched out about two inches from the wound. “When did this happen?”
“Just before I got to the house. One of them stabbed me.”
“You’re going to the hospital.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“You need treatment. Now.”
“Why?”
“That wound’s necrotic. We need to run a Gram stain, start debridement, get you on antibiotics.”
“English, doctor,” David said.
“The tissue around the wound is dead. And it looks as if it’s spreading.”
“That’s some bedside manner you’ve got.”
“I don’t have time to screw around. The General’s that way,” she said, pointing.
David put the car in drive and they pulled away.
Chaos had paid a visit to Buffalo General Hospital.
David parked the truck a block away. They could not get closer because ambulances and police cars clogged the street outside the emergency room entrance. The wounded, some in bandages, others in blood-soaked clothing, staggered toward the doors.
After parking the truck, Laura, David, and Sara moved toward the doors. Laura kept watch on David. Sweat dotted his forehead, and his respiration had become shallow.
They weaved through the wounded and Laura led them through a set of double doors and into the ER’s main corridor. Gurneys, all of them occupied, lined the walls. The smells of burned and putrid flesh hung in the corridor. From down the hall, a baby wailed. To either side, beds were full.
Laura spotted an orange plastic chair normally reserved for visitors. She grabbed it and set it against the wall. “David, sit down.”
He did, muttering, “Don’t feel so good.”
“How does your arm feel?”
“It hurts bad.”
Laura looked at Sara, who was looking at David and biting her lower lip.
Laura patted her on the arm. “Stay with him a minute. I’m going to see what I can do.”
“Will he be okay?” Sara asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” she said, and began winding her way through the wounded and the dying.
Laura found Dr. Peter Ostrow, one of her fellow ER docs, in room twelve. He was tall, with gray hair and glasses, and wore a look of perpetual state of concentration. He would have been handsome if his mouth weren’t set in a permanent grimace.
After stepping around the curtain, Laura found him standing at the bedside of a balding man with a face full of stubble. The man’s eyes were closed. An IV drip hung on a pole. The beep of heart and pulse ox monitors filled the room. A sheet came up to the man’s chest.
Ostrow stroked the arm of his glasses with his index finger. He glanced at Laura, then continued to study the patient.
“Peter, I’ve got a possible necrotic wound. What the hell is going on out there?”
Still not turning his head, Ostrow said, “All hell’s broken loose. We’re not equipped to handle all this.”
“I need to run a Gram stain on someone. We’ll need to start antibiotics, most likely, maybe get him to surgery.”
“ORs are full. And don’t bother.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve got a strong stomach, right?”
“Peter, look at the line of work we’re in,” Laura said.
He grabbed a pair of latex gloves from a dispenser on the wall. Ostrow reached over and pulled back the sheet that covered the patient. Laura gasped. The man’s right arm was devoid of skin from the shoulder to the elbow. The tissue underneath had turned a shade between black and gray. A stench of rot, thick and heavy, arose from the man’s ruined arm. She had seen many horrible wounds—among them a toddler burned over 90 percent of his body—but this was the worst.
Ostrow gently placed the sheet back. “Michael Plant. Arrived three hours ago. Wound on his arm was the size of a quarter. Said one of the freaks stabbed him. I immediately took it to be a necrotic wound. Strange that it started so fast. Negative for strep and E. coli. Within an hour it ate almost to his elbow. Started him on antibiotics, heaviest stuff we’ve got. No effect whatsoever. We’ve got him on morphine to keep him comfortable.”
“Others?”
“We’ve lost six this hour to it.”
“Spreading fast,” Laura said. “Have you seen them?”
Ostrow looked at her. “Who?”
“The freaks.”
“Just their handiwork.”
From the depths of his morphine-induced slumber, Plant moaned.
“Is it contagious?” Laura asked.
“Far as I can tell, it’s not spreading. It’s the rapidity that scares the hell out of me. And none of our heavy hitters—vanomyicin, mainly, are touching it.”
That didn’t bode well for David. As angry as she was, Laura had to treat him, had to find a way to cure him. It appeared to be a lost cause. “What if we amputate?”
Ostrow rubbed the bridge of his nose. “ORs are booked solid. They’re taking the most critical first. We had an MVA with multiple cars come in. I’ve had three amputations come in the past hour, poor souls had their arms cut off. Lost two of them.”
Laura imagined a conversation with the grim reaper would offer more hope than Peter Ostrow. Wishing him luck, she left the room to break the bad news to David.
She found him slumped in the plastic chair, moaning. Sara knelt at his side and was making small circles on his back with the palm of her hand. Trying to comfort him. What a good kid.
After telling them she’d be right back, she searched the corridors until she found an empty gurney. She wheeled it back to them and with Sara’s help got David on the gurney. The two of them wheeled him down a corridor and, finding an empty spot against the peach-colored wall, rolled him against it.
He began to shiver, and Laura got him a blanket and spread it over him. She craned her neck, looking around for a nurse to come take his vitals, but they all buzzed around attending to the wounded, flashes of pink and blue pants and smocks.
It was Sara that asked first. “Will he be okay?”
Without answering, Laura pulled back the sheet and took a look at the arm. Hot-looking orange tributaries branched from the wound, running down his bicep and into his forearm. The area around the wound was beginning to turn black. “Let’s get you something for pain. How much do you weigh?”
“ ’Bout one ninety.”
Laura went and tracked down a nurse. She ordered Demerol and a few moments later returned with the nurse, who administered a shot. The nurse buzzed away, on to her next patient.
“Mom, you never answered me.”
Mom. That’s the first time she’s called me that, Laura noticed. Under different circumstances, it would have brought her to tears. Instead she gave Sara a quick smile. “The infection, if that’s what it is, is spreading rapidly. It’s eating the flesh. Antibiotics won’t touch it, and even if they were, the hospital is out of the ones we need.”
“So basically I’m screwed,” David said.
“Is he going to die?”
She looked so sad and hopeful. Laura had seen that look on hundreds of faces, families of accident victims hoping for the best. It had always inspired pity in her, and this time it just ab
out cracked her heart in half. “We can make you comfortable, David. I’m sorry.”
David closed his eyes and sighed as if trying to absorb the force of the news she had just delivered. He opened his eyes and said, “I suppose I owe you an explanation, Laura.”
“That might be the understatement of the century.”
“How much time do I have?”
“Maybe a day, maybe less.”
“Then I’ll make it quick.”
CHAPTER 20
Death had come to Chippewa Street.
Milo saw the dead everywhere. Bodies in the street, draped over cars. Headless bodies. Bodies with arms and legs missing. Bodies with jellied organs and guts hanging from opened bellies. Blood slicked the sidewalks and street. The raw smell of it all was overpowering.
“Who the hell could do this?” he asked Mike, who stood next to him.
“Have to be one hell of a terrorist attack. There’s hundreds of bodies.”
“They must’ve all ran from the bars when the attack hit,” Milo said and noted a stack of bodies in the doorway of the bar across the street.
“What was it?”
“I-I don’t know. They were weird looking. And you saw that knife inside the bar. They were carrying weapons like that,” Milo said. “We ran downstairs. I didn’t get a better look at them.”
Mike kicked aside some broken glass. “We have to get my mother home. I need her medicine.”
“We have to get out of the city.”
“Not before we stop at my house.”
Milo turned to face him. “There’ll be help coming. The National Guard, someone. They’ll have medical care.”
Mike waved his arms around. “You see anybody? Have you heard anything, helicopters, trucks? I don’t think anybody’s coming. I’ll take care of her.”
“They’ll come.”
“Yeah, them and John fucking Wayne will arrive with the cavalry, and they’ll all be blowing bugles out their asses.”
“You’re one bitter bastard, you know that?” Milo said.
“Almost being tortured to death does that to a guy.”
“Spare me the pity party. I ask you something, Mike? If Hark grabbed you off the street, what’s your mom doing here?”
Mike’s face began to flush. Milo thought Mike might hit him with the pipe.
“I got involved with some bad shit with Hark. I won’t say what. His people were waiting for me at my house. They grabbed her as leverage.”
“You must have made him pretty angry.”
Mike snorted. “You think?”
Milo took a look through the Alligator Bar’s broken window. “We can’t stay here. Wouldn’t want to stay here with all the dead. Let’s get out of the city. We’ll get your mom help.”
“They’re not going to have what she needs. Our house isn’t far from here. I also got some pieces stashed at the house. From the looks of things, we’re going to need them. What say we get the guns, get the medicine, and then get the hell out?”
There was no telling what they would run into on the way out of Buffalo. Besides the strange things that had attacked the city, scores of criminals and looters would take advantage of the chaos and would be roaming the streets. Milo didn’t want to become easy prey, and he shuddered to think of what might happen to Debbie. “Okay. We get the guns. Let’s go help your mom into the truck. But then we get out of here.”
“If we can.”
Milo stepped over some stray bricks and went through the Alligator’s ruined door.
Mike’s mother looked one step away from death. The woman, who had been introduced as Agnes, lay on a sofa in the office. Her skin, gray and pale, was stretched over her cheekbones, and a red scarf adorned her head. Debbie sat next to the couch on an office chair, holding the woman’s hand.
That was his good girl. When Milo’s wife had been rushed to the ER, Debbie sat with him in the waiting room holding his hand the whole time. When the doctor, an Indian man named Bojedla, had come out of the OR and told them she didn’t survive the surgery, it was Debbie who quietly slipped her arm around Milo’s shoulder and squeezed. And it was Debbie who made the funeral arrangements when Milo couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Now, Agnes let out a low moan.
Still holding the length of pipe, Mike said, “You okay, Mom?”
With a weak voice, she said, “You’re stupid, Michael, you know that?”
“Yeah, been stupid,” Mike said.
“She’s burning up,” Debbie said. “She needs to get to a hospital.”
With her free hand, Agnes clawed at Debbie’s shirt. “No hospital. I’m not dying in one of those places. Take me home.”
“That’s where we’re going, Ma,” Mike said.
“That’s the first intelligent thing I’ve heard you say.”
Agnes closed her eyes. She released her grip on Debbie’s shirt. To Milo, it didn’t appear she would make the ride to the house. They would see.
“Let’s get your mom to the truck,” Milo said.
Together Mike and Milo lifted the frail woman from the couch and took her to the back door. Debbie, in the lead, opened the door and peered outside. There was no one in the parking lot, save for a woman’s corpse. The dead woman had been wearing a miniskirt and now it was hiked up over her panty-clad buttocks. Milo looked away.
They got in the truck, Mike and Debbie in the back of the extended cab, Milo driving, and Agnes in the passenger seat, her head resting against the window.
Mike gave him directions to the house. Milo pulled out, hoping they would make it.
The ramp to the 190 had proved impassable. A tractor trailer lay on its side across the ramp, a host of cardboard boxes spilling from its opened doors. It may not have been wise to venture on the 190, anyway. When they had reached the ramp, Milo heard shrieking metal and more screaming coming from the direction where they wanted to go. He guessed those who had tried the thruway had not met with success.
They had seen columns of smoke rising in the sky and the hot orange glow of flames, as if the city were a giant furnace. In several places corpses had been impaled on oily black spears and left as grisly reminders of the attack. He remembered the Sabres had been scheduled to play tonight. There would have been eighteen thousand people in and around the Arena at the time of the attack. God help them.
Now, after backing the truck away from the 190 ramp, Milo pulled into a parking lot and stopped.
“Why you stopping?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Think about finding another route. Go Seneca Street.”
Debbie said, “Why don’t you cool it?”
“Cool it? We’re sitting ducks here.”
Milo rubbed his temples. “Everybody stop. Let me think!”
That quieted them down for the moment. “I say we hole up for the night. It’s dark, the roads are a wreck, and there’s no telling what’s out there. We could run right into the things that attacked us.”
“Things?” Mike asked.
Milo turned around and looked at him. “You have a better word for them?” When Mike didn’t answer, Milo said, “I didn’t think so.”
“Hotel,” Mike said. “Maybe we could all sit in the Jacuzzi, too.”
“Michael,” Agnes said, her eyes still closed. “Listen to the man. Listen to someone for a change.”
“Don’t see what good it’s going to do,” Mike said.
“I could use a warm bed,” she said.
“I think it’s going to be decided for us,” Milo said. Through the rear truck window, he saw a dozen of them emerge from a parking ramp across the street. Overhead, a winged creature looped in a circle. Milo got the truck going.
They pulled around, in front of the fountain, and Milo got out. The double glass doors were locked. Milo checked over his shoulder. The freaks hadn’t seen them. Yet.
Kicking the door, Milo hoped to gain someone’s attention. After a few seconds, a hotel employee dressed in a white button-down and black slacks
came to the door. He was a small guy with a thin goatee. “Open up. I’ve got more people out here.”
“No way,” the guy said, raising his voice to be heard through the glass.
“Open the goddamned door!” Milo said, pounding on the glass.
Now Mike had climbed out of the truck and, standing at the passenger-side door, said, “What’s the holdup?”
There was probably a service or side entrance for the hotel, but they didn’t have time to find it. Milo had an idea. “You see my friend there? You don’t open this door, I’m going to have him get in the truck and drive the fucking thing through the doors.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Mike, he won’t open up. Get in the truck, start it up, and drive through the doors. They’re glass. They’ll give.”
Mike got a huge grin on his face. “You got it.” He started around to the driver’s side.
The clerk said, “You’ll let them in. They’ll get in here if I open up.”
“Place is getting opened up with or without you, chief. It’s your call.”
The truck engine revved. It rolled forward. The clerk’s eyes grew wide and he fumbled a moment before unlocking the door. Milo put his hand up, indicating Mike should stop.
Once the doors were opened, Milo went back to the truck and between him and Mike they brought Agnes inside the hotel. Debbie was the last one in and locked the door behind them.
Milo took a look across the street. The group that had exited the parking lot was headed in the opposite direction. He looked up and saw the winged thing—a grim silhouette against the dark sky—swoop behind City Hall and disappear. They had avoided trouble, for now.
Milo eyed the clerk. “You could’ve got us killed.”
“I was just concerned for the safety of our guests.”
“We’re not paying customers, right?”
“You can be asked to leave, sir.”
“I’m not leaving unless you throw me out,” Milo said, looking the slim clerk up and down. “And I don’t see that happening.”
