by Anthony Izzo
Now, Frank pulled out of town.
From the passenger seat, Jenny said, “What are you thinking?”
“About my wife. If she’ll be safe. I told her to head to a cabin in the mountains.”
“Probably better off than in one of the cities.”
“I don’t want her to end up like the others.”
“She won’t.”
“We’ll see.”
CHAPTER 24
Milo awoke, neck stiff, head lolled to one side. He had slept in the armchair all night and was paying the price. He massaged his neck, trying to work out the kink. He had a feeling it would be there all day. He saw Mike’s mother asleep on the sofa. Her chest still rose and fell, which meant she had made it through the night. Mike lay on the floor next to the couch, a white pillow under his head. Apparently he had either swiped it or asked the staff for one. Milo would bet that he swiped it.
Debbie was curled up in a chair opposite Milo’s. She had one arm tucked under her head. It reminded him of the way she had slept as a little girl. Until she was ten or eleven, he would always peek in on her before he went to bed. No matter if she was on her side or back, the one arm was always tucked under. He remembered thinking with her eyes closed, lips slightly parted, and her hair spread across the pillow, she had looked like one of heaven’s own angels. He could have stood there and watched her sleep all night, his love for her swelling in his chest until he thought it would burst.
That little girl was now in college and engaged. When the hell did that happen? She had played a dirty trick: She had gone and grown up.
Milo rose from the chair and looked around. Some of the other refugees in the hotel now rose, massaging their backs and stretching, no doubt sore from evenings spent on the floor. There had been no vacancy at the hotel—he’d checked.
Milo looked toward the front doors and saw a pretty Indian woman in a navy blue hotel uniform standing there. She had her hands wrapped around a Styrofoam cup. A stainless-steel carafe and stack of cups were on the ground at her feet.
Milo joined her at the door. “Morning.”
She favored him with a radiant smile and said, “Good morning. Would you like some coffee?”
Coffee sounded fantastic. “You’re officially my new best friend. Milo.”
“Amala,” she said. She picked up the carafe and a cup and poured Milo a coffee. Then she handed it to him. He sipped it and it was hot and strong.
Amala said, “The sky is strange.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look through the opening.”
Milo peered through the opening in the furniture barricade. The first thing he noticed was his truck was still in one piece, for which he was grateful. It was dim outside, the way it got before a bad thunderstorm. But the sky wasn’t cloudy. Then he realized it was because he couldn’t see any sky, only a dome of darkness that towered over the city.
“Can you help me move some of this?” Milo said. “I want to have a better look.”
“Is that safe?”
“I think so. Something tells me these things operate in the dark.”
Milo and Amala set down their cups and spent a few minutes moving the furniture. When the door was clear, Milo took a last look and stepped outside. Amala followed him.
He looked up and saw blackness. It was the mist that had swept through the city last night, except now it hovered. The sun was barely visible through it, like a lightbulb through a piece of dark cloth. Looking across the street and to the south, he saw the same mist in the distance, a wall of it. Hundreds of feet high. It had effectively surrounded the city, blotting out most of the sun.
“Freaky,” Milo said.
“Excuse me?”
“Strange.”
“I’m going back in to serve coffee.”
Across the way, a white pickup truck rolled down South Elmwood. In the bed were a group of people, most of them dirty and bloodstained. The truck stopped at a light. They were most likely going to head over the Skyway and into Lackawanna, maybe hoping for an escape route that way. He noticed the shell-shocked looks on their faces and wondered what horrors they had witnessed last evening.
He heard the whap whap of a chopper, faint and then louder, and he looked up and saw the outline of it through the mist. It was hard to tell, but he thought it was military. Perhaps Uncle Sam was coming to the rescue after all. It rumbled overhead and then flew off into the distance.
He stepped back inside and closed the doors. He picked up his cup and drank the last of his coffee. He then discarded the cup in a trash can. Across the lobby Amala cheerfully served coffee, that wonderful smile on her face. He hoped a woman that lovely had someone nice waiting for her at home. That was a feeling he missed: having someone to greet him when he came home from a day on the excavator.
Mike stirred and sat up. He ran a hand through his hair.
“What’s up?”
“Sky’s blotted out.”
“What?”
“The mist that rolled through the city last night? It’s covering us like a dome.”
“So?”
“That stuff ate through one guy’s skin, damned near melted him. Nobody’s getting in or out as long as it’s there.”
“What about the freaks?”
“No sign of them yet.”
“So what now?” Mike asked.
“We go to your place, arm ourselves, find a place to hunker down before dark.”
They waited for the others to wake up. Debbie got up next, followed by Mike’s mom. The hotel staff brought out croissants and muffins, along with orange juice and more coffee. After waiting in line, Mike and Milo brought back food. They all sat in the lobby and ate, nobody talking. In the background, Milo heard the television droning on. Apparently the National Guard was on the outskirts of the city at the old Ogden toll barriers. They were trying to figure out if they could penetrate the mist.
Milo felt sorry for the poor bastard who was going to be the guinea pig for that experiment.
The free food eaten, Mike and Milo helped his mother to the truck while Debbie went ahead and opened the door. Once in the truck they weaved through downtown, Milo driving. There was little traffic, but there were stragglers on the streets. He saw looters carrying computer monitors, a forlorn woman pushing what looked like a dead child in an umbrella stroller, a rag-clad homeless man with a shopping cart full of pop cans (he hoped the guy got his nickel’s worth), and several people just walking around, blank looks on their faces, as if wondering where to go, what they should do. Get the hell off the streets, that was what.
They had to weave through some wrecks, and got held up on Seneca where an ambulance and fire truck had responded to an accident. There was a sheet-covered body in the road, and next to it the twisted remains of a red hatchback.
They arrived at Mike’s house a half hour after the auto accident cleared out. Milo saw more corpses on the drive than he did in the hell that was Dak To. It was possible to disassociate a bit, because these weren’t members of his unit, but it didn’t make it any less disturbing. Most of the corpses he’d seen looked as if they’d been savaged. Limbs and noses and ears hacked off, bellies opened, and guts lying on their laps.
Milo and Mike stood on the front porch of Mike’s house. Milo looked down the street at the stacks of cars and rusted steel in the scrapyard, thinking this was a hell of a place to grow up in. Kids were supposed to have green grass and playgrounds, not junkyards. Debbie and Agnes remained in the truck. Mike had asked Milo to come on the porch with him.
“There’s a body in the house,” Mike said.
“The freaks get it?”
“That guy Hark that was after me? They got here, offed my mom’s aide.”
“So you’re saying?”
“We’ll move her.”
Milo scanned the street one more time. Other than a few parked cars, the street was deserted. It appeared the destruction that had taken place downtown had not come to the Valley.
T
he wind picked up, chilling the back of Milo’s neck. He wanted to get inside, but didn’t relish moving a corpse. “What about the neighbors, they home?”
“Now you’re thinking. Let’s try the Hoolihans’.”
As they descended the steps, Milo heard a whoosh-roar overhead and looked up to see the outline of a fighter jet through the mist. “Think they’ll bomb them?”
“At least someone’s shown up.”
“They won’t get through the mist,” Milo said.
“We’ll see.”
Mike and Milo climbed the porch steps at the Hoolihans’. The front door was adorned with Indian corn. Mike rang the bell and they waited for someone to answer, but no one came. He rang it a second time and after no one answered, Mike said, “I’ll go in.” He slowly opened the door and went inside. Milo followed him. They went through the entire house and found no one. After finding it empty, they brought in Agnes and Debbie. They laid Agnes on the couch and covered her with a rainbow-colored afghan. Mike went next door to get her meds and his guns.
While Mike was gone, Debbie and Milo raided the fridge, finding bagels, cream cheese, and orange juice. They brought them into the living room. Agnes refused the food with a weak, “No thanks,” so Milo and Debbie dug in.
Mike returned with two sleek handguns tucked under his arm and a plastic grocery bag filled with brown pill bottles. Mike gave Agnes the pills and she popped them. He went to the kitchen and got her a glass of water, which she used to wash them down. “You’re a good boy when you want to be, Mike.”
“Rest, Mom, okay?” Mike said.
When they had finished the bagels and juice, Milo said, “Where do we go now?”
“Help will be along. You saw that fighter,” Mike said.
“They won’t get through.”
“How do you know?”
“It ate through someone,” Milo said. “The shit actually melted some poor bastard’s face.”
“The army has chemical suits,” Mike said.
Debbie gave a harsh laugh. “Lot of good it’ll do them.”
“They’ll come for us,” Mike said.
Maybe or maybe not. They seemed safe here for now. But what would happen when the sun went down? They couldn’t fortify the house well enough to resist an attack. Even if they plastered plywood over the windows and nailed the doors shut, it wouldn’t be enough.
“So what do you propose?” Mike asked.
“We get some supplies and get to a high building, like we said. Move during the day. Wait for help.” Or forever, he thought. Help may or may not come, but they weren’t getting out of the city and the house wasn’t safe.
“What about my mom?” Mike asked.
Agnes said, “Let me rest a bit, then we’ll go.”
“I don’t think we should move you,” Mike said.
“We can’t stay here, Michael.”
Mike took her hand, squeezed, and let go. “So where then?”
Sara awoke to the sounds of someone wheezing. No, not wheezing, but gasping, bubbling, and choking for breath. She had been curled up on the emergency room floor using her jacket as a pillow. Head fuzzy, she stood up. Laura was gone.
The sounds came from David. His chest heaved, rising and falling with alarming rapidity. Mouth open, he strained for breath, but could make only liquidy gurgling noises. As if that weren’t torture enough, the skin affliction had wound its way up the side of his neck and something black and crusted had taken over the side of his face. It seemed to pulse, bubbling up in skin blisters. He looked to her, eyes frantic.
Where the fuck was Laura when she needed her? “I’ll get a doctor!”
She tore down the hallway, nearly bowling over an elderly woman in a gray hospital gown. She reached the nurses’ station at the junction and found a sour-looking redhead behind the counter. The redhead was scribbling on a pink form.
“My father’s dying. Help.”
To Sara’s surprise, the woman looked up, slapped her pen down, and said, “Show me.”
They reached David and the nurse took one look and ran. A moment later she came back with a crash cart and an Asian doctor in green scrubs. Sara stepped back to let them work. Now David tried to sit up and Sara saw the frantic look in his widened eyes, knowing he was in trouble. He gave a heavy, wracking cough and yellowish phlegm splattered on the sheets. The blisters on his face blew up like tiny balloons and popped, each oozing more yellowish fluid. The smell hit Laura, a thick smell, almost sulfurous. She backed up and covered her nose and mouth.
There’s nothing I can do, nothing at all. He’s dying and I’m standing here with my back to the wall and thinking how horrible it must be.
Then Laura appeared at the junction near the nurses’ station. She was carrying a Styrofoam cup and, seeing David, set the cup down and ran to help.
Now he was thrashing and a deep wet sob came from inside him. He turned his head and Laura thought how brilliant and blue his eyes looked against the scaly stuff that had overtaken his face.
He gave a choked moan and flopped on his back. His hands clenched and unclenched. She caught a sharp whiff of urine as his bladder let go. Laura prepared the paddles and the machine gave a high whine. They shocked his chest and his back arched but he remained still. They shocked him again. It seemed useless.
Laura turned to her. “Does he have a DNR?”
What was she asking? “Huh,” she managed, feeling stupid.
“A do not resuscitate. A health-care proxy?”
“Not that I know of. He never told me.”
He never told me a lot of things, she thought. Why the hell would he tell me that? She wondered.
They kept shocking him and did CPR and shot him up with a syringe. She lost track of how long they worked on David. It seemed like a long time. They finally gave up and draped the sheet over his head.
Sara moved toward the gurney, parting Laura and the Asian doctor. She peeled back the sheet from his face, which had now gone slack, eyes closed. Sara reached out to touch his face. Laura gripped her wrist. “You shouldn’t.”
Sara calmly removed Laura’s arm from hers and said, “I want to.”
With the back of her hand she stroked his cheek on the side of his face that didn’t bear the growth. It was hot and rough with stubble. How many times had she kissed that cheek as a little girl? Usually after he surprised her with a doll or a box of Lemonheads, her all-time favorite candy. It wasn’t right that he was gone.
She took her hand away and then replaced the sheet. She felt an arm around her shoulder. Laura’s.
“I’m sorry,” Laura said.
She tried to speak but felt her throat start to close up. Instead she pressed her face against Laura’s shoulder and Laura embraced her and she cried harder than she ever had before.
After she had cried herself dry, her throat hoarse and her eyes stinging, Sara decided she needed some fresh air. She wound her way through the sick and the injured, who clogged the hallway, most of them on gurneys and some in wheelchairs. As she passed, she smelled unwashed bodies and was glad to be nearing the emergency room’s main door.
Outside she found a green bench. There were a slew of cars parked at crazy angles on the street. She hadn’t noticed at first, but the day seemed gray. Almost black. She looked up at the sky and saw it: a dark, swirling mist that dimmed the sun and hovered like ashes. Was this Engel’s doing?
A breeze blew down the street and she caught a chill.
A moment later Laura joined her on the bench.
“How are you holding up?”
At least she didn’t ask the all-time dumbest question reserved for funerals and wakes: How are you doing? Were you supposed to say, Great! Love it when people die! Keep it coming.
“Not so good.”
“I’m sorry I said bad things about him. Do you understand?”
“He was a good man. Good dad.”
“I’m sure he was.”
“You didn’t like him.”
“I didn’t know
him,” Laura said. “Didn’t like what he did.”
Laura watched an elderly man wrapped in a blue blanket hobble past. He looked out at the tangle of cars on the street and said, “Jesus Christmas,” then kept going.
“I’m leaving. To find Engel.”
“You’re safer here.”
Sara didn’t see the point in arguing. Laura wanted to protect her, and for that she was grateful. But her father—and yes, he was her father—was dead because of these things. If she sat here safe and sound knowing that she could have stopped something, the guilt might gnaw a hole in her. “You can come with me, or not. It would be better if you did. I don’t exactly know the way. And you’re a doctor if I get hurt.”
“You’re set on this, aren’t you?”
“I’m going.”
“Not without supplies we aren’t.”
Laura and Sara arrived in the cafeteria. It was empty save for a weary-looking doctor who was stirring a cup of coffee and staring into it as if it held the meaning of life. They crossed through the eating area to the food line. The cashier’s station stood empty. Laura began handing food to Sara: bags of chips, cookies, some bottled waters, Slim Jims, a few bananas, and some cereal bars. Laura had no money left: she had spent her last dollar on the coffee. Given the circumstances and what they were about to undertake, the hospital could spot them a few snack items.
Their next stop was the locker room, where Laura found a knapsack. She emptied out the contents: a pair of running shoes, shorts, a shirt, and thong panties. Then she took the food from Sara and placed it in the bag.
They made one more stop in the supply room, where Laura grabbed gauze, tape, Band-Aids, a suture kit, rubbing alcohol, ointment, and some samples of amoxicillin. She stuffed those in the outside pocket of the knapsack. She felt more guilty about the knapsack than the other items. Stealing from a huge corporation that owned a dozen hospitals wasn’t too terrible. Taking another doctor’s belongings made her feel like she had a film of dirt on her skin. If they survived, she’d return it.
