“I’m the one that—no, no really. It’s okay.”
They walked in silence, lit by lights strung across the street from the rooftops. When they’d gone a few blocks, Paul looked down at the warm glow in the pavement and stopped. “If it means anything, I left a picture of my sister at the memorial.”
Karen squeezed his shoulder and watched his hazel eyes study the ground. “I think that was a brave contribution for you to make.”
He couldn’t remember the last time he had a conversation where he felt at ease, free to let his guard down and not have to worry about what the other person wanted from him. Is this what people did one first dates, walk around and talk? Were they on a date? His cheeks were flush and he sighed.
“I searched for her for a long time. Every camp I’d go to, I’d show her picture, this simple yearbook picture with a blue background, asking if they’d seen her face. I promised my father, who was turning and didn’t want her to see him change—I promised him to not lose her. And not twenty minutes later, she was gone. Five years is a long time to look. Eventually, I arrived at Greenport, given her up for dead.”
“It’s okay,” she said, and embraced him, held his tall frame. “I had to leave someone there, too.”
They walked back to Saecula. The inside was about the size of a gas station convenience store, and where there would be rows of overpriced snacks, free standing walls rose to the ceiling to create more surface area for memorial pictures. A third of the walls were fully covered in artwork or snapshots, while the other walls were dotted with pictures that looked like floating paper ghosts. A handful of people roamed or gave vigil.
“Here’s my late husband,” she said, and pointed to a picture of a thin, young, balding man in a suit.
He remembered her earlier touch and returned a gentle shoulder squeeze, and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “Thank you. Where’d you put your sister’s picture?”
He led her to a corner, not yet filled with photos. “That’s her, that’s Morgan,” he said, tracing the edge of a school photo.
She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry for you, too.”
“If anything, seeing this place confirms my decision to apply to be a ZMT,” he said of the program the mayor had announced a few weeks prior. “Maybe I can save someone like my father. Or my sister.”
Paul felt the ambulance stop and arrived to a bustling warehouse of ZMT crews coming and going. The crews returning from their stationed zones were in the process of unloading their containment bags and inspecting their vehicles for damage. Brags of kill counts and how they were killed reverberated through the air of motor oil, gun cleaner, and putrid flesh. Teams carried containment bags to a processing station at the far end of the warehouse. Bodies would be swabbed for DNA samples and placed in barcoded tubes for population reconciliation, Greenport’s term for knowing who died. Then the bodies would be laid on a conveyor belt and fed to a backroom furnace.
The crews leaving for their shift waved out the ambulance windows and shouted back as they flipped on their flashing lights.
“Paul? Are you okay?” Jane said, tapping his shoulder across to the front passenger seat. “You just stared out the window the whole ride back.”
“I’m fine. Driving through Belleville always makes me think.”
She turned her head to the side and touched his chin and turned his head. “Of?”
“Jane, I’m fine, okay?”
“Of what,” she said still holding his face.
He averted his eyes. “Meeting Karen during the first Containment Day celebration.”
“Two years ago, right?”
He nodded. “We walked around Belleville ’til midnight, up and down the street by that gallery that turned into a permanent memorial.”
“The one with all the pictures and homemade art work?”
“That’s the one.”
Jane rolled up Paul’s left sleeve to his bicep. “I always find that place creepy. Deanna loves it, though. Says it’s the city’s temple.”
“A temple?”
“Mmmhmm. Paul, were you really thinking just about Karen?” Jane’s hands pulled a vial and a butterfly needle from a bag next to her seat. “I’m going to tell her if you don’t.”
“Jane,” he said in a sharp tone. He took a breath to calm himself. “I’ll tell her. Promise. She worked the day shift today, like me, so there’s already a good chance she saw the whole thing.” She swabbed his arm with a sterile cloth; the cab smelled of rubbing alcohol. “And do we really have to do this?”
“If by this, you mean drawing blood, yes, we do. If by this, you mean talking about nearly getting bit and being honest with Karen, no,” she said.
A knock from behind their seats interrupted Paul. “Hey, ladies, the bags are outside the truck, and I’ve taken samples of our two departing guests.”
“Thanks, Bobby,” Paul said, wincing at the prick of the needle. “Hey, before you drag them off, can I take a look at them?”
“Sure. Is this about the ring? I left it on his hand.”
“No, I trust you left it. I want to look at the uniforms again.”
“Okay,” his voice lowered. “Is this about what you and Janey said earlier?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get him ready for his close-up,” Bobby called out. "I won’t pull his dick out for you though.”
Jane banged the cabin wall. “Bobby!”
“Just unzip the bags, and finish the report without the colorful details,” Paul said over his shoulder.
“Roger.”
The ambulance shifted up and down, and Bobby jumped out the back and slammed the doors. Jane removed the needle from Paul’s arm and taped a bandage. “Speaking of, why is Bobby a dick sometimes?”
“He’s no southern gentleman that’s for sure,” Paul said. “You should know that by now, riding along for over a year.”
“He always brings up Deanna. Inappropriately.”
Paul thought through Bobby’s knack for regular off-color comments. As team lead, Paul ignored them or told him simply to quit it. Was conflict management something they taught in college? “Are you still mad at him from earlier?”
“Now you want me to talk about my emotions?”
“Wait, what?”
“Yes, I’m still mad at him, and what do you mean, what? I asked you if you were okay, and you blew me off. And you want me to talk about how I feel?”
Paul was quiet. Jane held the IV line drawing blood. “Fine,” she said, sighing. “I love Deanna. She’s amazing and she treats me good. So good.” She closed her eyes tight, bowed her head and held the vial and needle in her lap. “You met Karen in a clean street in Belleville, and Deanna and I met escaping from a dirty camp in the woods that got overrun in the night. Literally, we met as we escaped. We ran next to each other, picking each other up as we tripped over branches and fell against rocks. And when we finally made it to a road, I collapsed, wailing, scared shitless.”
Jane’s eyes watered with tears. Paul remained motionless as she spoke, unsure even if buttoning his shirt sleeve would upset her further. Jane always told him she and Deanna met in a camp, but never any details.
“Deanna collapsed too. Well, more like she sat down like a runner who just finished a marathon and nothing happened. I just sat there bawling. And she, Little Miss Cool, pulls me close to her and rubs my head, and I rest it on her shoulder. Now, I’m streaming tears and drool on her sweater, when she begins humming. It vibrates through her throat and out toward her shoulders, and I think, this is weird, totally forgetting we just scrambled out of the woods with who knows what still around. Anyways, she hums notes higher and lower starting and stopping, obviously to a melody or beat. This goes on for a few minutes and I’m entranced, no longer feeling scared or weird, just completely in a moment, when she stops. All I hear is her heart beating and both of us breathing at the same time. It’s peaceful. The stillness of that moment.”
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“You must love her a lot.”
She wiped her eyes and gave a low chuckle “I do. I think about that often when I’m out on a shift, and how I just want to get back home to her. Alive. And it makes me angry that Bobby can’t respect that, and to see you not feel the same way, to get home to Karen.”
“I do feel the same way.”
“Then act like it, damn it,” she said, disposing the needle and IV line in a bio bag.
“I do love Karen. I—” He paused. “I’m trying to be strong for her, and being younger than her, sometimes it’s intimidating,” he said, buttoning his sleeve.
“Intimidating,” she said, arching her eyebrows.
“How do I be as good as her husband was? What if I’m not good enough? This is my first serious relationship and I’m just making it up as I go along.”
She grabbed his hands and squeezed. “We all are, no matter how much life experience or how old we are.”
They sat in silence and Paul leaned his head back on the seat and sighed. “Jane, I’m sorry, okay? Bobby shouldn’t have made fun of your relationship. I’ll talk to him about toning down the attitude, and I should be more open about my thoughts.”
“No, damn it, Paul, it’s not that you need to be open with your thoughts, but feel something, express something.” She held the vial of blood in front of his face. “Doesn’t this scare you?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Then be prepared to talk with Karen.” She looked over Paul’s shoulder through the window. Bobby stared at her, tapping his watch. “It appears we need to move. Paul, just be human, okay?”
Paul nodded his head and exited the ambulance to a cacophony of shouting, hammering, and engines accelerating out the warehouse doors.
“Took you guys long enough,” Bobby said, still pointing to his watch.
“Jane had to draw my blood, you knew that. What’s your rush?”
“I got somewhere to be tonight.”
Paul rested his hands on his hips and clicked his tongue. “Again? This is the third or fourth time you’ve had to jet after a shift.”
“Earning extra cash takes time. I run a few errands for some rich guy in Creedy, and he pays me at the end of the night.”
“Sounds like a good deal.”
“And I don’t have to deal with arms suddenly grabbing me out of no where.”
Paul let his concern fade. “Bobby, thank you for earlier.”
“You’re welcome, boss.”
“I know that wasn’t an easy shot.”
“Sure as shit wasn’t, and there’s no way that Janey was going to make that shot.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Jane said, rounding the front of the ambulance, marching toward Bobby with her fists clenched. The pair of violet roses tattooed on her right fist appeared like an emblem on a gauntlet. “You got there first is all.”
“Janey, I was teasing back there. You know I’m a hick from Mississippi.” Bobby tipped his cap up and opened his arms as if to invite her for a hug. “Are we good?”
Jane’s chest puffed in and out and she continued to stare Bobby down from her short frame. “For now. No more comments about Deanna and I.”
“Sure thing. You got it.”
Paul interrupted Jane as she began to open her mouth. “Bobby, I’ll get the bags to the incinerator. Finish the report and go.”
“That works.” Bobby walked away from the ambulance, clutching the tablet, and headed toward the office. End of shift protocol directed crews to sync their tablets on the local network for secure transmissions and to ensure the report wouldn’t arrive corrupted. Wireless signals spanned the city, but the density of buildings within some zones made sending the report unreliable. Once downloaded, a ZMT would verify the record and the crew’s actions of the day.
“Jane, let him go,” Paul said, walking beside her. “It was a rough end to the day. He shouldn’t have said what he said.” She looked at her boots, rubbed her rose tattoo and relaxed her shoulders.
“Clean up, and I’ll see you tonight at the bar.” He squeezed her shoulder and she looked up. “Is Deanna playing tonight?”
Jane grinned. “She is. It’s Ella night at The Aviary.”
“Sounds great. Karen and I will be there. She may bring people, too.”
“That’ll be cool. Look, I’ll get the blood sample turned in. For the next twelve to sixteen hours, take it easy. The lab will call by the beginning of our shift tomorrow. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Fluid contact infections feel like a bunch of rumors.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine as well.”
“Bye Paul.”
“Oh, Jane?”
She turned on her heel. “Yes?”
“The song. What was the song Deanna hummed to you?”
“’Reaching for the Moon.’ But there was no moon that night.”
“That’s funny. Will she sing it tonight?
“She always does, when it’s Ella Fitzgerald night,” she said. Her eyes twinkled and she walked out of the warehouse to the building with the medical lab.
Paul paced to the back of the ambulance to find both containment bags unzipped. He slid on a pair of rubber gloves from a side pants pocket and bent down to inspect the body named Alex. A shoulder patch consisting of a pine tree rising out of a blue splotch of thread on a white background at least confirmed Alex was wearing a city uniform. The white reflective bands running down the front and wrapping the ends of the jumpsuit weren’t familiar. Different groups of city employees wore distinct colors to signify to one another other who they were, especially at night. Police wore fluorescent blue while the fire department wore a bright yellow outside their fire suits.
Paul called out to a member on another crew whose shift was ending. Beefy arms, a beer belly and a buzz cut, the guy could pass as a high school football coach. “Hey, Raymond. Can you come here for a second?”
“What’s up?”
“These uniforms. I’m pretty sure they’re Greenport issued.”
He nodded. “The white striped jumpsuits are the drivers, or runners. Typically, they’re petty criminals, and driving Greenport trucks as part of their—rehabilitation. Not too many of them, I hear.”
“Why do you say runners?”
“Most of them were caught running drugs, and now they’re running Greenport’s wares across town and to the port. Did they have their ID badge on them?”
“Not that we could find.”
“Weird.”
“Very.”
Paul zipped the bags and wheeled them on a stretcher to the conveyor belt, ready to feed the incinerator.
Chapter 5
Julian Washington patted the breast pockets of his white striped jumpsuit in search of cigarettes. Fifty-one-years-old, black, with a bean stalk frame and deep-set eyes, Julian felt like a scarecrow in a size-too-big suit. His hands tapped down his left side and discovered a box tucked into the opening below his waist. From the opposite pocket he retrieved a stainless steel lighter, flicked it open and lit a cigarette.
Nearly a day had passed since his last drag. Normally he smoked six a day, a steady habit he timed his watch around. In-between the three smokes at meal times, he smoked a snack cig, as he called it. Before the Plague, he’d step outside his suburban print and copy shop, call out to whichever of his employees was operating the counter, and say he was going out for his snack.
Taking in his evening snack, he guessed it was sometime after eight o’clock. He leaned against the eighteen wheeler’s driver’s side door and blew a cloud of smoke to his side. Other drivers in the dock sat at break tables eating their second or third helping of beef stroganoff or standing around, waiting for their next round of instructions since they arrived four hours ago.
Upon six rigs arriving from Millers, the industrial prison district, the crew of drivers were greeted by large television monitors instructing them into the City of Greenport’s dry goods shipping and receiving center. The doors creaked and squealed as the bay enclosed behind them, an
d a robotic voice directed them into a makeshift dining hall. Large aluminum disposable casserole trays rested on stands above blue flames emanating from a sterno can. Stacks of plastic cups lined the end of the table with a jumbled drawer of plasticware. Petty thieves and crooks weren’t worth the dishwashing cycles of metal forks.
Julian idly watched the men eat. At Miller’s, Julian and the others worked in Greenport’s manufacturing plant as indentured labor serving out sentences. All those with him sweated and endured eighteen to twenty hour shifts pressing dyes into breadboards for electronics sold up river. Their food rations consisted of different forms of paste in different textures and colors. Adding water thinned the pastes and made them more palatable, and word of mouth recipes passed amongst inmates for how to mix them or simmer leaves or berries found on the grounds of the prison. Even in the hell that was Millers, a commissary sold small luxuries like snack chips, candy bars, or cigarettes for extra hours of labor.
In the break room, the prisoners devoured the stroganoff, filling bowls and cheered at the sight of solid food in a meal they recognized. Egg noodles sloshed back and forth in a creamy broth with steak cubes so tender they shredded apart with hardly a scrape of a fork. While the others hummed and compared the food to a meal their mother used to make, Julian quietly took three pieces of bread and a glass of water and went back to the dock with his truck. This surprise meal was not the first time he needed to make a meal for himself from anything other than the offered main course. His stomach would assault his gastrointestinal track with a vicious intolerance of cramping and shitting for hours on end if he ate a bite of the stroganoff. Julian’s stomach ached for the bland meals of paste back at the prison.
A youthful male voice said, “Hey, brought you some more bread.”
Julian turned to his co-driver, Miles, who handed him a stack of bread on a plate. “Thanks.”
Miles looked barely old enough to drive, with his ruddy baby face and black mop of oily hair. A head shorter than Julian, Miles lucked out receiving a jumpsuit that fit his short body. “I saw you didn’t eat much, let alone touch the stroganoff.”
Survivor Response Page 4
