by JJ Pike
Paul shook his head.
“Okay, well…she’s not going to make it. You can either sit here with her while she dies or you can move to the other side of the ward.”
Paul stood, then sat down again. He couldn’t let her die alone even if she was a stranger. He’d already been exposed to whatever was out there; not just from the ash but from Robeson and Briefcase Man. They’d died in close proximity to him and they’d been in much worse shape than this woman.
The nurse nodded and walked on.
Paul pulled his face mask down so his voice wouldn’t be so muffled and reached for her hand. The nurse stepped back. She must have been watching. “No contact. We have no idea how it spreads. And keep your face mask on.” She talked to herself as she walked away. “Civilians. They’ll get us all killed. Though…” Her voice was fading. “If this thing is airborne we’re all screwed.”
Paul turned his attention to the dying woman beside him. Her dress was stained with blood, her hair full of ash. She wasn’t young, but she wasn’t ancient either. Maybe 30 or something. So, she’d at least had a life. Not like Firefighter Robeson who was just a kid. Still, it wasn’t fair that she was dying. Maybe she had a family? Children or a husband or parents who were looking for her. He ducked under the gurney and found her handbag. Even though his hands were gloved he was careful not to touch the dust on the outside of her bag. He picked out her wallet and opened it. She did have kids. Two of them, both under three years old by the look of things. “They’re lovely,” he said. “I know they love you. I know you’re the most important person in their lives.”
Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open. She was a fighter. She was hanging on longer than Briefcase Man.
“I’m looking for my mom and dad,” he said.
She didn’t respond but he hadn’t expected her to.
“My mom went missing before this all kicked off. And my dad ran into the dust to find her. Now it’s my job to find both of them. I can’t go home without them.” The reality of it hit him. It was possible that they were already dead. Did someone sit with his mom when she was dying? Did they say kind things, remind her that people loved her? What would he want them to say? Screw it, he was going to hold her hand while she died. He was going to let her know that people in the world cared about her. He’d been lucky so far. He rapped the side of the bed, even though it wasn’t wood. Stupid—he knew that—but he couldn’t stop himself. “Lucky is as lucky does.” He had no clue what that one meant, but it was reassuring to know his mom was still rattling around inside his memories, as active as she’d ever been. “Luck is a matter of preparedness meeting opportunity.” He was wearing full-body protection from almost the first minute they’d been exposed. The dust hadn’t gotten to him. He could risk it.
He slid his hand towards hers and took her fingers in his.
Her back arched up towards the ceiling. She screamed that terrible, terrible soundless scream they all had, then she fell back on the bed, dead.
Chapter 8
Jo wasn’t kidding when she said she was going to step on the gas. They were headed south on Route 87 at approximately 1,000 mph towards the nearest hospital. She had adopted an easy-breezy tone and was talking about trivial details—local history, types of trees typical in the region, why clouds were flat on the bottom—probably deliberately, to stop Petra from going nuclear on them.
For once, Aggie wouldn’t have faulted her sister for losing it; she did have a potentially dying, almost ex-boyfriend bleeding in her lap in the back seat. She’d be within her rights to yell or cry or have a hissy fit. She wasn’t doing that, though, she was spookily quiet. Aggie couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she was still whispering to Sean.
Traffic was unusually heavy. Most of it headed north.
“These are the early evacuees,” said Jo.
“Early?” replied Aggie. She wanted to block Petra’s whispers out. It made her too sad to think this might be Sean’s last ride. Ever. Anywhere. Not just because it would be terrible if he died, but because it made her think about her dad and where he was and why he wasn’t calling and what it meant about finding Mom. She needed to talk every bit as much as Jo.
“There are two basic kinds of people in a crisis. There are the early actors—the ones who think something bad is going to happen and are willing to take action to avoid it—and the late ones.” Jo checked her rearview mirror as she swerved around a couple of cars and merged back into traffic. “It’s not that simple, but you’ll see. There will be people in the city who won’t even try to leave.” She leaned on her horn until the car in front of them pulled over into the slow lane. “Even when things are as bad as they can be…bombs going off, buildings falling down, no one knowing what’s going on…they will stay. Some of them are false optimists and some of them are too tired to be bothered.”
“What about the people who don’t have cars?” Aggie held Midge on her lap, a little too tight and not tight enough at the same time. The world was spinning off its axis and she needed to get it back under control. “They want to leave, but they can’t.”
“Good point,” said Jo. “Some of them will get to the ferries and others…well, they’ll walk, I guess.”
Aggie realized, too late, that Midge was as stiff as an ironing board. She didn’t need to hear stories of people being trapped in Manhattan with no way out. Not when her mommy and daddy were stuck down there. “But everyone will get out,” said Aggie, willing Jo to understand her.
Jo snorted. “They will not. This situation is highly volatile. You can see from the press briefings what they’re not saying. You always need to listen between the lines…”
Midge burst into tears, gripping Aggie’s shirt.
“Oh, no,” said Jo. “I didn’t mean it like that. Oh, sorry. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Midge wasn’t consoled. When the sobs finally slowed and turned to hiccups she reverted to sucking her thumb. Aggie had a vague memory that it had taken them forever to curb her of the habit and here she was, right back where she’d started. She was going to have to find the Bitter BiteStop and put it on her thumb before bedtime. Or was that just cruel given what was going on? Maybe she should just ignore it and let it go away by itself. She rocked Midge in her lap, kissing her hair and murmuring sweet things to her.
“Me and my big mouth.” Jo pressed her foot down, whipping her head over her shoulder and back as she wove through traffic. It was extra scary. Two-lane highways, tall trees, no way of knowing what was around the corner. Aggie held Midge tight and rocked her as best she could with her seatbelt around the two of them.
“How’s that boyfriend of yours doing back there?” said Jo.
“I don’t know,” said Petra. “He’s hot.”
Jo nodded. “Can’t be helped. Almost there now.”
But they weren’t. They had another twenty-three miles to go. They had been to their local ER enough times to know how long it took to get there. There had been all the usual childhood mishaps: broken arms, the measles, a split lip. But Jo was true to her word. She had a police scanner on her dash, so she was able to slow down in all the right places and speed up—to 70, 80, 90 miles an hour—when there were no cops around. They made it to St. Augustine’s in record time.
She pulled into the ambulance bay, ignoring the shouts and waves of hovering EMTs, jumped from the car, barked orders at them, and miraculously Sean was lifted from the back seat and onto a gurney without a single scream.
Jo briefed the intake nurse, then a doctor, then a surgeon, quickly moving her way up the chain until she was sure she had the best person for the job. Sean and the plank sticking out of his thigh were whisked through the ER and into a surgical suite.
“How did you do that?” said Aggie.
“What?”
“How did you get them to see him so fast?”
Jo frowned. “I told them he was dying, which he is.”
Whatever Petra had done to keep the waterworks at bay was completel
y undone in that second. The floodgates opened and she took her turn blubbering on Aggie, yakking on about how mean she’d been and how she’d never forgive herself and how she really loved him.
Jo steered the fragile trio to the family waiting room and secured coffee and hot chocolate. Even though it was from a vending machine and the lowest quality ever, Aggie sucked it down, hoping the sugar would help with the jitters. Taking care of Petra, when there was no Paul on hand to calm her, was like sitting on the edge of a geyser waiting for it to blow.
“We should call his family,” said Jo.
“No.” Petra wiped her nose on her sleeve. “They’re away. They’re in Brunei or Borneo or Boracay.”
“Are there no phones in Brunei or Borneo or Boracay?”
Petra grimaced. “Just drop it, okay?”
“I’m just saying…”
Petra stood, throwing her half-full cup into the trash. “They’re very rich,” she said. “And very…I don’t know…very judge-y. If they know he’s been in an accident, he’ll be in trouble.”
“Parents want to know,” said Aggie.
“Whatever. I don’t care what you say. You haven’t met them. I have. They’re horrible people. That’s why he stayed, okay? Because even when I was being a total ass to him, that was better than being with his folks.” She broke down again, flopping into the chair beside Aggie. Midge climbed into her lap, sucking her thumb, and the two of them rocked together.
There was a TV on in the corner. Shots of flames, falling buildings, tattered people stumbling out of the smoke, shattered streets and fractured sidewalks were all intercut with smart, well-coifed reporters who had their “serious” faces on. The sound was muted, so all they could do was watch the cycle of pictures over and over: flames, falling debris, fleeing people, then a talking head. There was nothing about the pictures that held together. They could have been shot on the Upper West Side or Chinatown or anywhere there were buildings packed too close together. Aggie didn’t recognize her mom’s building in the chaos.
“Looks like a war zone.” Jo said what Aggie was thinking, but Aggie needed her to stop. She swiped Jo on the leg. It wasn’t a hard hit, just a reminder that she needed to watch what she said in front of Midge.
“I’m just going to take myself over here,” said Jo, “and wait on my own.” She smiled at the trio. “I’ll be here if you need me.”
The pictures repeated over and over. Even without any sound it was mesmerizing. Aggie knew she should look away, but she didn’t dare. What if there was some new footage? What if her mother stepped onto the screen? What if Dad was right there, one of those people staggering about, looking for help? She searched the faces for any sign that her parents were alive, but it was all a blur.
“Have you got a signal?” said Petra, waving her phone in Aggie’s face.
Aggie pointed at the sign on the wall. “No cell phone use.”
“Here,” she said, and lowered a sleeping Midge into her sister’s arms, “I’m going to go outside and see if there’s any reception. Someone in the city has to know what’s going on.”
Aggie nodded, her eyes still on the screen. It was wearing on the soul and she knew it. If she’d had enough energy, she would have gone to the receptionist and asked if they could turn it off. But first of all, she knew other people would be annoyed if she did that and secondly, she wasn’t sure she could bear to not know what everyone else knew. All this had been going on while they were feeding goats and talking about building an extension on the barn and pulling the cabin apart. The two worlds could not have been further apart. She’d been kidding herself that anything good could come out of Manhattan. She shifted her weight. Her right leg was falling asleep. There was a couch in the middle of the room and not that many people around. She needed a time out, a few minutes not to think about her parents being in a war zone. No one would mind if she lay Midge down, just for a few minutes.
She had no clue how long she’d slept. She hadn’t meant to. She was just keeping Midglette warm. She’d wrapped her arms around that tiny, frail body and before she knew it, she was off in a safe, happy place where none of this had happened.
Waking up to Petra’s frantic voice was not her idea of a good time.
“You will not believe it.”
“Believe what?”
Petra sat beside her on the couch, her voice dropping to a low whisper. “Francesca Haslow, whose dad works for the State Department, says it is definitely the work of a terror group.”
Aggie’s mouth hung open.
“How does she know?” said Jo.
Petra jumped. “I didn’t see you standing there. You shouldn’t creep up on people like that.”
“How does she know it’s the work of a terror group? Because if her father does work for the State Department, he’d have signed the Official Secrets Act and would be unable to tell your little friend anything until it had been declassified.”
“Are you saying she’s lying?” Petra was indignant in a way only Petra could get indignant: two parts incredulity, two parts huff, and two parts “you hurt my feelings.”
Jo shrugged. “If you want me to make some calls, I can.”
Aggie’s eyes narrowed. “You know those kinds of people? High up people? People with answers?”
Jo flicked on her phone and walked towards the automatic doors that led to a little garden behind the family waiting area.
“Who do you think she knows?” said Petra. Francesca had lost all cred, now that there was the possibility of getting real info.
“But if she knows people,” said Aggie, “why didn’t she call them sooner? I mean, if I had been in a war zone, like she says she has…”
“I don’t know,” Petra interjected. “She knew her way around those meds.”
“Sure, but…why wait this long? Does it add up? Why not call her people right away?”
The two girls watched as Jo paced the patio outside. She was talking, though she could have been talking to her Great Aunt, for all they knew, swapping recipes and talking about her pugs. She slid her phone back in her pocket. Aggie and Petra did their best to look as if they hadn’t been watching her the whole time.
“No terror group has claimed responsibility,” she said.
“Does that mean it’s not a terrorist attack?” said Petra.
“Not always. There are instances when a group wants to spread fear more than cause harm. So, not declaring who they are is a tactic in itself, but it’s pretty rare. Most groups want the world to know what they’ve done and why. The chatter on the wires doesn’t line up with any one particular group having bombed Manhattan. Which is not to say some of them aren’t celebrating. There are people out there who hate us and all we stand for, so they’re happy if we suffer but that’s not the same as having initiated an attack themselves.”
“I don’t know if that’s good or bad news,” said Aggie.
Jo rubbed her face. She was just as tired as they were. “That’s the nature of intelligence work. You know a little of something and a lot of maybes. Piecing it together takes time, patience, and a lot of savvy people thinking hard about the data.”
“Aren’t there big machines just listening in on everything and tabulating all the key words?” said Petra.
Jo nodded.
“Why wouldn’t the machines know?”
Jo laughed. “They’re not that clever. Not yet. They follow directions, tabulate what we ask them to tabulate, feed us answers based on the questions we ask. AI is only as smart as we are, for now.”
“So…all this stuff Mom says about them listening in? It’s not true?” Petra looked like herself for the first time in over an hour: alert, engaged, and hungry for information. Her eyes were red and her nose raw, but she didn’t have that desperate look she’d been sporting since Sean had been speared through the leg with a jagged piece of old wood. “They’re not actually listening to us?”
“Oh, they’re listening. It’s just whether you’re saying anything interest
ing enough to get flagged up the chain.”
“I don’t get it,” said Petra, “if…”
“It’s not important, right now,” said Jo. “The important part is while this doesn’t look like a terrorist attack, it does have all the hallmarks of industrial sabotage.”
The doors to the family room swung open. A tired, frazzled doctor hung in the doorway, looking apprehensive. “Sean Heska’s family?”
Petra ran to the door. “Is he okay? Is his leg okay?”
“Are you family?” said the doctor.
“No,” said Petra. “His mom and dad are traveling. I’m…”
Jo joined Petra, draping her arm around her shoulders. “This is my nephew’s girlfriend, Petra. She’s been through a lot tonight.”
