Hour 23

by Robert Barnard

  “Holy shit,” Dana cried. Her hands flailed upwards and she dropped her keys. Behind the register a young, pimply faced kid was holding a revolver. He kept it aimed directly at her face.

  “Miss…Miss Nacaratto?” the cashier asked. “Whoa.”

  Dana’s heart was beating out of her chest. The cashier lowered his weapon to his side.

  “What…what? How do you know my name?”

  “I’m Nicky. Nicky Moore. You remember me? I, uh, failed out of your senior composition class last year.”

  “Okay,” Dana said. She swallowed hard. “Nicky.”

  The cashier nodded.

  “Are we okay here, Nicky?”

  “Yeah, are you?”

  Dana bent down and picked up her keys. “Aside from having a gun pointed in my face, and being told I can’t go home, yes. I’m fine.” She could feel the blood returning to her hands and feet. The lightheaded feeling that had crept up on her was starting to subside.

  “I’m sorry I scared you, Miss Nacaratto. Can’t be too careful, you know?”

  Dana just blinked.

  “There’s been a bunch’a trouble at our other store, the one in Riverside. My manager’s there now. Looting and fights and stuff. You’re the first customer I’ve had in quite a while, and with all this stuff on the news, I just thought….”

  “Yeah, sure,” Dana said. “The road is blocked off by the school, and down the road at the start of Maple. So, I wouldn’t expect too many customers, Nicky.” Dana sighed. “Can you help me with something?”

  “Of course, it’s the least I can do,” Nicky said with a smirk.

  “Can you open up the fence to your dumpster?”

  “Uh, I guess. Why?”

  “It’s a long story. The cops up ahead won’t let me back into town, and I really need to get home. I’m going to follow the tracks back to my place.”

  “Huh. Yeah, all right. Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “It might not be,” Dana admitted. “But there’s one roadblock keeping me from my job, and one keeping me from going home, leaving me stuck in the middle of this Godforsaken road. And I mean absolutely no offense by this, but I really don’t wish to spend the rest of my day stuck in the East Violet Xtra Mart.”

  Nicky smiled and hopped out from behind the register. “Do what you gotta’ do, right?” He clumsily tucked his gun into his front jean pocket. The door of the shop chimed as the two walked outside and towards the fence.

  “You’re gonna’ go off roading in that?” Nicky asked, raising his eyebrows at the Prius parked in front of the store.

  “It’s my only option, so. Yeah.”

  Nicky pulled a key ring from a front shirt pocket. “It really wouldn’t be a bother if you stayed here, for now. Just so you know.” Nicky flicked a plastic name tag on his shirt. “I’m the assistant manager, I can make these decisions. I know you wanna’ get on your way but we’ve got food, water, a bathroom—”

  “That’s tempting, Nicky—and I thank you—but I really want to get back home.”

  Nicky jammed a key into the padlock on the fence, then rolled a wide section of fence outward. It opened up the space where a garbage truck would normally back in to collect the dumpster.

  “Well, good luck I guess,” Nicky said. “You know, I couldn’t say it back then because it would be all—weird, and stuff—but you were the prettiest teacher I had at that shitty school.”

  “Gee,” Dana said, half-smiling. “Thanks.”

  “Hey, be careful out there,” Nicky said, and he winked at his former teacher. Dana shuddered and marched back to her car.

  She clicked a button on her key ring, unlocking her doors, then plopped into the driver’s seat and started the car. The vehicle purred to life and Dana drove forward slowly. She gave Nicky an uncomfortable wave as she slipped by him, narrowly squeezing between the fence and the dumpster.

  Dana was thankful that her car was small enough to maneuver into the lot behind the Xtra Mart. An inch or two wider and she might have scraped the right side of her car or slid into the drainage ditch on her left. Once in the lot, there was a wide open clearing between her and the grassy hillside ahead. She clutched the steering wheel firmly and accelerated. The tall blades of wild grass bowed before her as she plowed through.

  It’s working, she thought. I can’t believe it’s working.

  The car wobbled in all directions as it conquered the uneven ground beneath it. Just before she reached the small slope that led up to the train tracks, the front of the car dropped with a startling gshh.

  “Dammit, dammit, dammit,” Dana muttered, stomping the accelerator. The front tires whirred and spun, flinging giant, gloopy splotches of mud and water up on either side of her. She had hit a puddle of mud that was lurking in the tall grass, and she was stuck.

  Dana punched the center of her steering wheel out of aggravation, and the car let out a quick honk.

  Honk-honk, a louder, deeper honk boomed from behind her.

  Dana looked up and saw a colossal pickup truck approaching in her rearview mirror. Behind the wheel was Nicky Moore.

  Nicky parked close behind Dana before jumping out of the truck’s cabin. He approached her window and leaned forward.

  Dana rolled her window down. Chunks of greasy, caked on mud slid off as the glass glided into the door.

  “Well. You got about as far as I thought you would.” Nicky grinned a big, toothy grin. “I’ll give you a push. Keep your tires pointed straight, okay?”

  Dana didn’t have time to object before Nicky was back in his truck. She worried about the back of her car getting damaged.

  The pickup chugged forward slowly, until its chrome bumper was pressed firmly against the back of Dana’s Prius. With an awful grinding sound, both vehicles pushed forward, until Dana was atop the slight slope and on the train tracks.

  Nicky parked his truck behind Dana and walked back up to her door.

  “Thanks for that, Nicky, but I better go. If a train came—”

  “Eh, shucks. Trains back here only pass through at night.”

  “Okay, still, I better go.”

  Nicky leaned forward, both hands on Dana’s door. “What’s the rush?”

  “The rush, Nicky, is the fact that there’s a city-wide quarantine in effect, and I need to be home. Safely.”

  Dana didn’t like how Nicky was looking at her.

  “Might be thinking that you owe me a bit of thanks for helping you out,” Nicky said.

  Dana slowly pressed her door open and stepped out, until she was squeezed between Nicky and the side of her car.

  “You know, Nicky, I couldn’t say this back then—because, it would have been all weird and stuff, but…” Dana reeled her hand back and slapped Nicky across the face. “You were one of the worst students I’ve ever had. A real nightmare, kid.”

  Nicky recoiled and took a few steps backwards. His face turned red.

  “You think I owe you something? For being a decent human being?”

  Nicky was already climbing back into his truck. “Whatever, bitch.”

  “Yeah, get out of here, asshole. Go repeat senior year for the third time.”

  The pickup truck thundered to life and turned around, kicking up dirt and mud as it flew back towards the gas station. It bounced over the drainage ditch and into the Xtra Mart’s parking lot before stopping. Dana held her middle finger up the entire time.

  She hopped back into her car and shifted it into drive. Cautiously, she guided the Prius atop the train tracks. This day has been unreal.

  With her car aligned atop the tracks Dana sped forward, until her car vanished between the trees on either side of the tracks. The gas station, and its attendant, were now completely out of sight.

  For several minutes, the daring plan went off without a hitch. Her car bounced along the tracks and after a while Dana stopped holding the steering wheel with such a tight, nervous grip.

  Eventually, however, she had to stop. There was no light in he
r rearview mirror, no distant train whistle, but the fate ahead of her seemed just as helpless. There was a narrow bridge in front of her, only fifty yards or so long, but the wooden planks of the overpass were spaced far enough apart that Dana wondered if her small tires wouldn’t fall right through. On either side of the bridge were steep drops that led down to a shallow creek.

  Dana let out a sigh. The only way forward was straight across.

  Thoughtfully, she maneuvered the front tires of her tiny car onto the start of the bridge. She applied the slightest bit of pressure to her accelerator and hummed forward, her tires thudding between each wooden plank. She gave the car a bit more gas and proceeded, the car rising as the tires pushed to the next plank.

  Dana continued this method, inching forward plank by plank, until her rear wheels hit the bridge, too. That was when the true challenge began. With both the front and rear wheels resting between the gaps in planks, the car sat much lower to the rails than before.

  Dana pressed on, but each time the car rose between planks it slammed back down, and the underside of the car scraped on the railway. Plank by plank the car rose and fell, screeching on the rails as it did so. After a few harrowing moments, Dana had crossed.

  She continued driving forward, following the tracks, until the thicket of pine and maple trees on either side of her had receded. Not far up ahead were signs of town.

  Dana could see a used car lot in the distance. She couldn’t be sure, but from the looks of it, it was the same one that sat at the end of Washington Street, near the commercial district in town. Her car sputtered forward and creaked a bit from the stressful bridge encounter. She rolled undetected past the side of the dealership and then into the customer parking lot, before buzzing up onto Washington Street and into town.

  “Heck yes,” Dana whispered, patting the dashboard of her car. Her palm still stung from smacking Nicky.

  After continuing down Washington Street, Dana came to a stop and a line of traffic. It was the intersection where she witnessed the cop car crash into the maroon sedan earlier. Though the wrecked vehicles were still present, their occupants were not.

  A cop in a reflective, orange vest was directing traffic with a glowing wand. Dana sat in the jam for ten minutes before it was her turn to pass through the intersection. When at last her car was at the front of the line, the cop motioned her to continue on, aggravated that Dana wasn’t going fast enough.

  Sure you don’t want to check my license first? Dana wondered to herself.

  Dana’s Prius sputtered into the Raintree Village parking lot. She drove into her usual spot, parked, grabbed her briefcase, and hopped out of the car. As badly as she wanted to run inside, she could not resist walking around the outside of her car to inspect whatever damage had occurred.

  “That’s not good,” she said. The front bumper was crumpled and scratched. There were dings all along her front, passenger side door. The back bumper was dented and scarred from Nicky Moore’s assistance at the gas station.

  It wasn’t enough to be upset about. It was just a car, after all. Dana was just thankful to be home. She raced up the steps of her building and swung open her front door. Elliot waited inside, wagging his tail back and forth. He gave his owner a curious look, unsure of what she was doing home at such an unusual time.

  “My bubby,” Dana said. She leaned down and scratched Elliott’s head. “I’ve never been happier to see you.”

  “If you’ve just tuned in with us, please be warned that some of what you see may be disturbing or graphic.…” In her rush out the door earlier, Dana had left her television set on.

  “Enough of this,” Dana said. She plopped onto her couch with Elliot and picked up her remote control. “What else is on?”

  Dana thumbed the remote control and changed the TV to the next channel. News. Again she clicked. News. She flipped over to MTV, then C-SPAN, then a home improvement channel. Each one was superseded by a news broadcast.

  “What…” Dana mumbled, changing the television back to channel five. Images of New York City flashed back and forth—in Battery Park, in the streets, on rooftops, in shops, people attacking one another. Clawing at each other. Biting. Grabbing. Chewing.

  Dana clutched a pillow and watched as a ticker at the bottom of the screen repeated the words “boil water advisory in effect for all of Orange, Rockland, New York and Suffolk Counties.…”

  She picked up her phone to call her mother in Albany, to see how she was doing, to maybe get advice on what she should do next. Her father lived in Wyoming, but she could call him, too. And there was her younger sister, Mia, a freshman at Dana’s alma mater back in Albany. Suddenly, and all at once, Dana had an overwhelming urge to be close to her family, even if it was only through a phone call.

  With a swipe of her thumb, her cell phone screen unlocked. She opened her contacts, scrolled down to “Dad,” and tapped call. The phone tried to dial, then immediately dropped the connection.

  Dana read the text on her cell phone screen out loud to herself. “No service—Emergency calls only.”

  SEVEN

  Jim opened his eyes and blinked a few times, his surroundings blurred. When the room around him came into focus, he realized that he was no longer in the dark chamber he awoke in earlier. Gone now were the plastic sheets draped from the walls and the tight leather bounds keeping his arms strapped to his hospital bed. Instead he sat in a traditional care unit, which he had all to himself. The room was painted a bright pastel blue, and a window to the left of him gave an exceptional view of the bleak sky outside.

  He stretched his legs. Jim could feel that the leg straps were gone, too. He patted his body, relieved by the sudden sense of freedom. Maybe he hadn’t realized just how badly of a claustrophobe he was before today, Jim thought.

  Jim turned his head towards the window, his face warmed by whatever rays of sun could penetrate the dreary clouds above; he was thrilled to have a view and be out of the dark room he’d awoken in earlier.

  While looking out the window, Jim noticed a short rolling table had been pulled up beside him. Atop it was a pint sized water bottle and a note.

  “Please ring when you wake up,” the note read, with a hastily drawn smiley face at the end where a period should be. Jim patted the blankets on either side of him. He found a white hunk of plastic connected to the bed by a long, curly cord. He fumbled the plastic around and found a set of buttons: up and down, for the bed, and two call buttons, one for emergencies and one for non.

  Jim thumbed the non-emergency button and expected some delay, but quite quickly a woman came shuffling into the room from the hall outside. She was short, petite, and very cute, Jim thought. Her shoulder length hair bobbed with each step, and Jim caught himself staring a bit too long at her lips. With a thin layer of gloss, they glimmered beneath the fluorescent lights.

  “Hey sleepy head,” the nurse said. She greeted Jim with a smile.

  “You’re, uh…you are…”

  “Sherri,” the nurse said.

  “Of course. I almost didn’t recognize you without your astronaut suit.”

  “Oh, that. Yeah. I was moved out of quarantine after your tests came back clear. They needed more nurses on the general floor. Some of the staff on the last shift were nearing twenty-four hours and needed relief.” As Sherri spoke she monitored a stack of machines and screens beside Jim’s bed.

  “Busy morning, huh?” Jim asked with a stupid smile.

  “That would be the understatement of the century, but yes.” Sherri walked over to the opposite side of Jim’s hospital bed. She placed her hand on the part of Jim’s wrist where his IV entered. Her hands were soft and cold.

  “Hey, what’s that over there?” Sherri said, motioning her head towards the doorway. Jim spun his head around to look, and just as he did he felt a quick sting snap away from his wrist. By the time he turned back, Sherri was already pressing a piece of gauze against the area of skin where the needle had just been.

  “What was that for
?” Jim asked, a bit upset. “You could have given me a warning.”

  “Oh, please,” Sherri laughed. “You cop types are all the same. It’s all ‘protect and serve’ and ‘guns’ and ‘rah rah rah’ until a little butterfly needle gets waved in front of your face.” Sherri was grinning ear to ear. “Sorry for the deceit, but trust me. I’ve been doing this long enough. My bag of tricks never fails.”

  Sherri taped a gauze pad against Jim’s wrist and headed towards the door. She paused, spun around, and leaned in the doorframe. “Your sergeant is going to be here soon. Ingram, right?”

  Jim nodded.

  “He’s finishing a visit to another officer, but he’ll be right in. Can I get you anything in the meantime? Coffee? Juice? A lot of officers have, um—been asking for a copy of the bible.”

  “No. No thank you, that’s all right,” Jim said, shaking his head.

  “Okay. Buzz if you need me.” And with that, Sherri slipped into the busy hallway outside.

  Jim swung his legs over the side of his bed and leaned forward hesitantly. Before the nurse had entered the room he was holding back wetting himself; now, after a few moments of chit chat, he was ready to burst. He felt a bit fuzzy, no doubt a result of the countless sedatives pumped through him during his morning stay. One bare foot hit the chilly tiled floor, and then the next, as Jim slowly stood up. For the first few steps it felt almost like he was walking on the moon. The frigid floor and brisk breeze at the back of his open hospital gown helped to snap him out of his sedated haze.

  Standing in front of the toilet, Jim could hear someone rattling around his room. “I’ll be right out,” he yelled, and he gave the toilet a flush. He was sure that it was Ingram, and he was in no mood to see him. He took his time washing his hands.

  When he opened the bathroom door, Sergeant Ingram was sitting at the foot of his hospital bed.

  “Sarge, as I live and breathe,” Jim said, walking back to his bed.

  Ingram let an uneasy smile come over his face, and he patted the hospital bed. Jim didn’t know what to make of it. It was peculiar seeing such an intimidating figure look so uncertain and worried.