by Riley Flynn
24
“Who the hell are you?”
A pair of eyes stared at Alex, full of wrath. They were different colors. One grey, one blue. Both beneath a pair of thin-rimmed office glasses. Pushing himself back, away from the broken bottle under his chin, Alex tried to take everything in.
He’d sailed straight through the open door. She must have watched him, waited. The anger in her eyes was exacerbated by her hair, pulled back into a stiff knot and stretching the skin of her forehead tight against the bone. Nostrils flared. This time, she stamped down on his foot. It hurt.
“I said who the hell are you? Answer me now.”
It wasn’t a shout. It didn’t need to be a shout. It didn’t even need to be an order.
“I-I’m Alex Early. I’m just a guy.”
“Who the hell is Alex Early and what does he want with me?”
“I don’t want anything with you, I just want drugs. Medicine, I mean. My friend is very sick.”
Relentless as she was, Alex couldn’t escape. Trying to move right or left, down or up, she caught him on the prick of her weapon, balancing his skull at her pleasure.
“Well, then, Alex Early, why did you try and break into my store?”
“It’s a drug store. It’s where I hoped the drugs were.”
“But is it your drug store? Is this medicine yours?”
“No. I mean, I can pay. My friend is very sick. Can’t you help me?”
“I don’t help thieves. What good would that do me? If a thief be found breaking up, and be smitten that he die, there shall no blood be shed for him. I know where I spent my Sundays as a child.”
“I’m not a thief. Not yet. I didn’t steal anything from you.”
“How about from other people?”
Right then, she almost smiled. She almost smirked.
“Please,” Alex said, blood thumping in his veins. “Can I just talk to you? Can’t you get this thing from my neck?”
The woman motioned at the rifle, still slung across Alex’s back, drooping now onto the floor, forgotten. Carefully, Alex took the gun in one hand, fingers far from the trigger, and slid it across the floor.
“Is that better?” he said, bottle still up against his neck.
“Hmpf. Perhaps.”
Relenting, she lowered her weapon. As she stood up to her full height, Alex could see her properly. The hair was a light sandy blonde, falling across the shoulders of a lab coat. The coat had seen better days. Once white, it now had a number of stains. She stood silhouetted against the light from outside. Now, Alex could see that she was pregnant. Quite pregnant. She placed the broken bottle on the counter of the store.
“Well then, Alex Early, you’re going to have to impress me.”
The store was tidier than Alex had expected. The shelves were still stacked with drugs, boxes, and everything else normally found in such places. In one corner, an old set of scales was rusting away, offering to weigh people for a dime. It still seemed expensive.
The woman was closing the door. It wasn’t a short process. From inside, Alex could see why it had resisted his efforts at breaking and entering. As well as the glass being incredibly thick, the door was bolstered with three heavy duty locks and a dead bolt. He could have been tenderizing his shoulder for hours against the wood without moving it a millimeter.
As well as the shop floor and the counter, a space smaller than the inside of Timmy’s SUV, there was a door heading into the back. It was dark in there. No windows, Alex thought. No weak points of entry. There was no way of knowing how far the building went back. But it could be quite a distance. Then he noticed the smell.
“Hey, erm… I don’t know your name. What’s that smell?”
“Joan. My name is Joan.”
“Joan?”
The soles of her shoes slapped against the tiles as she snapped around.
“Yes,” she said, accompanied by a stern stare. “Do I need to repeat myself?”
“No, no.”
Getting to his feet, Alex looked around the room. It seemed the same from up here.
“So you guys don’t have any power either, then?”
“Guys? What exactly do you mean by ‘you guys’?”
“Listen, I wasn’t trying to insinuate-”
“I don’t much care for what you were saying, insinuation or not, Mr. Early. I said you were going to have to impress me and so far, I am left wanting.”
“I was just trying to-”
“Trying to what? Make conversation? I’ll have you know that I’m here all alone. Yes, poor defenseless me.”
Still standing in front of the light from outside, all the better to mask her expressions, Joan had folded her arms.
“I don’t know-”
“That’s right, Alex, you do not know. Now, you say your friend is sick? What possibly could I do to help this situation?”
“We’re in the drug store. I thought there might be something here. Please. He’s burning up. Pale. Getting sicker and sicker.”
Ever so slightly, she lowered her shoulders. The firm, pressing tone which had pressed Alex up against the ledge eased off.
“How do his eyes look?”
“A bit bloodshot. But we’ve been sleeping late. I think he’s just tired.”
“He’s not tired, Mr. Early. You would have to be an idiot to not know what is happening.”
“Enlighten me.”
An eyebrow arched.
“Enlighten me, please?” Alex reiterated.
“Fine. Your friend is sick. He has the Eko virus. I am not a doctor. I am not an expert. But neither am I an idiot. I trust you have been following the news lately?”
“I’ve watched what I can. I’ve-”
“Then you will know, Mr. Early, that we are in the throes of a pandemic. An epidemic. A cruel joke played on us by God. We are in the midst of a reckoning, Alex, and your friend has been found wanting.”
“He’s not sick. Not like that. I’ve seen the bodies. He doesn’t look like-”
“Oh, none of them do. None of them do. That’s how it started here. Fever. Flu. That’s what they told me. Came up to the counter, asking for the usual remedies. And I gave them out. They didn’t come back. At least, not upright they didn’t. You asked what that smell was? Where do you think they keep the morgue in this town? Where do you think they pile up the bodies when no one can drive the fifty miles to civilization? Here. That’s where they keep them. In a big room. A big, cold room. But people don’t die here. Not very often. So we ran out of room. We have plenty of bodies and no real morgue, Mr. Early. And now we have no electricity. Do I need to paint you a picture of what happens?”
“But you’re still here?”
“Very astute. Yes, I am still here.”
“But… why?”
“Where else will I go? I can’t drive away. I damn sure can’t walk dozens of miles. Not in these shoes.”
Alex looked down at her feet.
“That was a joke, Mr. Early. Must I constantly lower my expectations of you?”
“Look, Joan. Please. My friend is very sick. I just want to help him. I can help you too, if you want. Just tell me what you need.”
“Need? You think I need something? This is the most secure place in town. I have food, I have medicine. I have my baby. There is nowhere else for me to go. Nothing I need.”
“So you won’t help me?”
“I never said that.”
“You have something, some kind of medicine?”
Unfolding herself, Joan walked around to the other side of the counter. To get there, she had to raise a wooden slat. She left it open, waiting for Alex to follow.
Once he joined her, they began walking into the belly of the building, talking as they went.
“As I tried to tell you, Alex, your friend is not sick. He has the Eko virus. As does everyone. If you had seen the news any time recently, a good deal of the country believed they had the flu. They did not. And now they are dead. The best I can offer is
a selection of high powered painkillers and then space in the back of this building with the rest of the bodies.”
Keeping up with Joan, matching her step by step, Alex could feel the smell overpowering him. It was leaking out of every room. With a hand, he tried to cover his nose.
“How can you breathe this air? It’s disgusting.”
“After a while, I assure you, the smell of death can be quite reassuring.”
“What, how?”
“Because, Mr. Alex Early, it means that you are alive, at least.”
They stopped in front of a door. It was plain, not even fixed with a small sign informing passers-by of the contents. The only people who needed to enter would know exactly what was inside.
“In here is everything you need. At least, everything you need to ease your friend’s pain. I can tell you what to take. But you will need to fetch it yourself.”
“You can’t come with me?”
“Alex,” she said, leaning hard against the wall, “I was the first person in this town to fall sick. I thought I was at death’s door. As did everyone else. But I survived. I survived long enough to watch every other person in this town fall to the same sickness. One by one, I watched my friends and my neighbors die. Now they are all on the other side of this door. And you want me to go inside?”
Dragging the flat of her palm along the paint, Joan tried to stand up straight. It was still dark in the corridor, but Alex could feel his eyes adjusting. Now he could see her, could see how tired she looked.
“What do I need?” he asked. “Just tell me.”
“I’ll call it out. I’ll guide you through. Just… Prepare yourself. Your friend will be joining these people soon. It is best you learn that now.”
Sucking in a deep lungful of rotten oxygen, Alex took hold of the door handle.
“I’m going to save Timmy. We’re going to be fine. We’ll be in Virginia before the end of the week. You’ll see.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself, Mr. Early. I am only trying to help.”
With a curt nod of the head, he squeezed the latch and pushed open the door. At once, the putrid air poured out from within. Joan sighed. Holding on to the same breath, Alex took a step forward. It was dark. And another. With great care, he stepped into the makeshift mausoleum and found himself surrounded by the dead.
25
Eyes adjusting, Alex looked around. The room was large. Much larger than the store. Joan had been correct: this place doubled as a crude medical facility. Drug store didn’t cover the half of it. This place had been the morgue. One wall was plated in metal, five hatches positioned at waist-height for the bodies.
They’d run out of room. Alex knew all too well from his childhood in Virginia that communities like this could drive out to the big cities for serious problems. A person dying was a problem. Two people dying was an incredibly serious problem. Five or more? That meant calling in outside help. In a small town, more than five people dying wasn’t just a tragedy.
It was a population adjustment.
But there was no outside help these days. No power, either. Whatever was behind the metal plating, whatever was in those five doors, it wasn’t being refrigerated. And they were not alone. Along the edges of the room were black bags, zipped up tight.
No dignity here. There must have been twenty bodies, counting those behind the doors, piled up and left to rot. What else was there to do? Already, Alex knew why he hadn’t seen anyone else in the town. Those who were not already in this room were those who had been too sick to make it out of the house. Their homes had become their coffins.
The quaint ranch houses, the white picket fences: the American dream. The rose growing in the garden. The vegetable patch down the side of the house, beneath the kitchen window. The finest coffins money could buy. They’d passed them all on the road into town.
“What do I need? Tell me what to take,” Alex shouted through the walls, calling out to the woman.
When the voice came back, it was muffled. The door had been pulled shut, the air kept inside.
“An IV drip. They should be on your right. Bags of clear fluid. Sectral, too, because you’ll need to lower his blood pressure. I can’t remember which shelf they’re on. There should also be a crate of sports drinks. And, if you like your friend, if you don’t want him to suffer, try to find the Tramadol. Though we might be out of that.”
A long shopping list. Fixed against the wall opposite the metal plating were row upon row of shelves. They were homemade, constructed and painted by someone’s hand many years ago. For as long as the drug store had been standing, Alex guessed, these shelves had been sitting in this room.
The wood was thick and heavy, cumbersome to move. When they’d started turning the room into a morgue, it would have been impossible to drag the shelves out. When the bodies had started piling up over the past week, Alex wondered, would they even have had time to grab all the medical supplies from inside?
Apparently not.
It was dark, but the boxes were labelled with large, stark words. The IV drips were easiest to find. An entire box of them hid on the bottom shelf. Joan had been right about the placement. Shouting back and forth through the slightly ajar door, she helped Alex search.
The blood pressure tablets were on a top shelf. Not many of them. Bumex did a similar job, apparently. Everything seemed easy to find. Apart from the Tramadol. Alex couldn’t find it on the shelves. Outside, racking her mind, Joan shouted out suggestions. It should have been there, she said, it was in the store room.
She stopped, mid-sentence. Alex half-climbed up one of the shelving units, pushing past boxes with complicated names he didn’t know.
“Any help, Joan? We’re so close. I don’t want to be in here a second longer than I have to.”
The air was utterly putrid. Every time Alex breathed, it felt as though a thin trail of slime was slipping down the back of his throat and into his lungs, only to be huffed back up and dribbled through his sinuses and out through his nose. The bodies in this room had turned. From solid to liquid, they were in a mixed state.
For a while, Alex wondered about the risk of infection. But he had already found himself exposed to the sick. In his apartment, in the various cars along the road, and here, in this room. So far, it was only Timmy who had displayed any symptoms. And now Timmy needed help. There was no choice.
“I-I… I remember where it is. But you’re not going to like it.”
“Just tell me,” Alex shouted. “I need to get out of here quickly.”
“The last person who had it was the pharmacist. He works here. Worked here.”
Right then, Alex knew exactly what the problem was going to be.
“Joan, please don’t tell me what I think you’re going to tell me.”
The door creaked open. Standing there, one hand held on her hip, one on her belly, she stared into the room. It brought in a new flood of light, which reflected on the surfaces of the black plastic body bags.
“He was one of the first. He’s in the drawer furthest from you. They were in his jacket pocket, I remember it so clearly. We didn’t even have time to undress him...”
From where he stood, Alex could see the door in question. As high as his waist. Sealed shut. Shiny in a way only metal can shine. For years, someone must have been polishing that surface. It must have been easier without any bodies inside.
The floor between the metallic wall and Alex was not empty. It was fifteen feet, at least, to the other side. Crossing that was not a problem. The issue was the black bags which lined every wall. They were under the drawer, too.
Each person had been laid perpendicular to the wall on that side of the room. The bags were a foot or so high; some were lower and some were higher. A fleeting reminder of what lay inside. All shapes and sizes; all creatures great and small. The farthest from this part of the room, she’d said. Alex could see the hatch now.
“Joan, how long has this person been inside?”
No answer. Jus
t the deliberate footsteps of a man caught between a hurry and a hard place. Trying to reach a destination, dreading what he would find when he arrived, Alex tried not to look down. Almost there, he caught sight of one of the bags. It was barely three feet long, the loose end tucked back under the body to save space.
“Joan?”
“Two weeks. But only a few days since we lost power. It’s in his pocket. There should be at least fifty pills in there.”
Though the door was open, she’d turned her back on the room. Two weeks. What could happen to a person in two weeks? If he’d been on ice for long enough, maybe he’d still be thawing out. Even as the thought crossed his mind, Alex knew it was nonsense.
Arriving next to the hatch, he looked for the handle. It was not hard to find. It was ten inches long, a thick stainless-steel bar pointing down toward the ground. As he wrapped his hand around the grip, preparing to heave it up and open, he heard Joan’s nail scratching the paint off the outside wall.
There was no time to waste. Alex turned the handle to his right, upward ninety degrees. Taking its time, the hatch swung out. It moved with a slow creak, the banshee hinge complaining all the way. The sound of nails against a wall, that worried scrape, came again.
Inside, it was dark. Alex held his breath. He knew he’d not be able to hold it long. Fishing around in the murk, he found a flat metal surface and tugged. The sound of oiled wheels on ruts came from inside and a tray slid out and into the room. With it came the body.
Lungs trembling as his throat retched, Alex tried to tame his impulses. But the body was horrific. It was not the bodies of the infected he’d seen already. It was older. The virus, Eko or whatever it was, had been here earlier. Two weeks of the illness, Joan had said, kicking around a quiet country town. None of the folks in the cities would listen, he imagined.
Probably had a lot on their plate.
No one had undressed the pharmacist. He was still wearing his lab coat. Slacks and a woolen vest. Glasses on a gold chain around his neck. Even the brogues.
The clothes were still present. But the skin was sagging. Sinking. Whereas the other victims had been gray in color and bloodshot around the eyes, this man was already fading from existence. Soon he would be gone entirely, just bones in a bag of mush.
