Blood Red

by Jason Bovberg

  “Well, I don’t know, exactly. I mean, I don’t know what the hell is happening, but I can tell you…”

  “Yes?”

  Commotion continues unabated behind Rachel, and she can see Scott’s attention already wandering. She feels weak and small in the face of this sweaty bureaucrat and has to grind her teeth a moment to kick-start her confidence. She glances at Bonnie, who gives her a patient nod.

  “Their skin,” Rachel says.

  “What about it?” Scott’s attention returns reluctantly.

  “I think it’s…well, I think it’s changing.”

  “Changing?”

  “It’s becoming less firm. More pliable. Softer.”

  Scott lets loose a small, impatient sigh. “Have you ever touched a dead body before tonight, young lady? A recently dead body?”

  Rachel stares at him.

  Scott studies the waiting room as he speaks, his bloodshot eyes flashing. “A body that has recently died really no longer supports the flesh. It has begun to deteriorate. The muscles underneath have relaxed. That is, before rigor mortis sets in. Bacteria is getting in there, you know, and the skin has basically started to melt—”

  “Yes, I know all that, it’s just—”

  “—and then the skin starts to shrink,” he continues, talking over her, “and the internal tissues start to decay, slowly turning into liquids and gases. The flesh literally becomes liquid under the skin. Like soup. Like—”

  “Hey!” Rachel pounds the desk with her fists and stares hard at him. “These bodies are still warm!”

  The admissions area has gone quiet, and now all eyes within a twenty-foot radius are on her. She feels her face go red. Scott’s gaze, in particular, is locked on her.

  “Stop talking to me like a child, all right?” Rachel says evenly. “All I’m doing is trying to help. I’m as scared as the rest of these people. I’m just sharing information, okay?”

  The people surrounding Scott begin to shift uncomfortably, and Bonnie’s eyebrows have lifted.

  Scott’s voice has an even sharper edge now. “It can take hours for a corpse to reach room temperature. You might have learned that in school next year.” He stands straighter, lets loose a sigh as he surveys the room. “Look, I’m sorry to be short with you.” He notices some newcomers hurrying through the door, motions one of the young men at his side to go help. “But right now I have to deal with what’s in front of me. And what’s in front of me is a waiting room full of, as you’ve said, scared people.”

  Rachel glances at Bonnie, who does no more than return her gaze sympathetically before moving back into the waiting room to assist someone.

  “All right.”

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me…” Scott says, already beginning to walk away.

  “Wait, Scott?” She reaches over the counter and touches his wrist. “Do you have any idea what it is? This…this thing—under the skin? Does anyone know what it is?”

  “We have some ideas,” he says. He looks down at her hand touching him, and she takes her arm back.

  “What ideas?”

  He stares at her with his red-rimmed eyes. “Ideas.”

  “Can you share them?”

  “Not at this time. Look, young lady? I really need to—”

  “Fine, fine.”

  Scott moves off to huddle with his impromptu team, and Rachel steps away, joining Jenny again, who, Rachel notices for the first time, seems to be at a complete loss. It occurs to Rachel that she hasn’t yet asked about her friend’s welfare or what her plans are. She knows Jenny has family behind those double doors. Two bodies lying beneath sheets, two sisters with whom yesterday she might have enjoyed fun and laughter. With a pang of guilt, she puts her hand on Jenny’s shoulder and looks out on the waiting room. It isn’t exactly bustling, but there are a few new people needing attention.

  Rachel now believes that there are about fifty survivors in this hospital. Not only the loved ones of the victims but also, she’s noticed, individuals who have come here for the simple reason that others are gathering here. It’s a natural gathering place. She wonders if there’s any way to extrapolate her estimate into some kind of ballpark figure that would tell her the percentage of the population this thing has stricken. That thought leads again to the inevitable and haunting notion that whatever this is, it has struck on a global level. Again, Rachel has to shake herself away from such pessimistic thoughts.

  “What do you think?” Jenny asks her wearily, bringing Rachel out of her daze.

  “About?”

  “I mean, what are you going to do?”

  Without thinking, Rachel answers, “I want to go find my dad.”

  “Can I come with you?” Jenny asks immediately.

  Rachel turns to Jenny. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Jenny’s smile is surprisingly brimming with emotion. “Thanks.”

  “But I also want to help Bonnie.” Rachel sees Bonnie across the room, attending to a preteen girl who is holding on to a Raggedy Ann doll with a wounded ferocity. Rachel can tell, even from this distance, that Bonnie has the right soothing touch for those who need it. “If Dad’s alive, I’ll find him.” She doesn’t admit to Jenny what she thought before, that a part of her is reluctant to begin a search for fear of finding him dead. “Or he’ll find me. For now, I want to do what I can here. Okay?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  The two of them arrange with Bonnie to help in room 109, administering pain medications and calming those who need it.

  After three hours, the number of maimed grows so that they have to expand to room 111, an equally large space into which other volunteers haul cots and gurneys to handle the overflow. The work is heartbreaking—one case of life-altering wounds after another, most so severe that the best they can do is administer morphine and wait for the end. The morphine supply, branded Roxanol, is kept under lock and key, and both Bonnie and Sofia hold keys around their necks. Scott occasionally appears, briefly, to supervise. He’s also replenishing the medicine supplies from time to time, probably from upstairs storage, Rachel guesses.

  She herself administers morphine to two young children who remind her bitterly of Sarah, their eyes bleached and unseeing, their skin rippled and burned. She carries them to their beds and holds her palm to their ruined foreheads, singing lullabies to them as they drift away, savage tears crusted in their eyelashes. One of them dies right in front of her, her final breaths sounding more like coughs than exhalations.

  After a while, Rachel notices that the pace of arrivals has slowed. She’s lost count of the number of victims in these rooms, most of them probably terminal. Many of the cots have become deathbeds holding sheeted bodies, and as more people have come in through the afternoon, those bodies have moved to the edge of the room where Sarah still lies. Rachel prefers not to let her gaze drift that way, toward the multitude of bodies lined together in orderly rows against the south wall.

  From what Bonnie has told her, as she has moved to and from the admissions area, the number of corpses lining the inner hallways has also grown, to the point at which volunteers have been carrying the dead to the second floor via the main stairwell on the other side of the emergency-room waiting area.

  It’s dusk when Rachel finally breaks away from rooms 109 and 111. Her soul feels hollowed out. She walks slowly, exhausted, needing to find a quiet place, needing to be alone, to push back from the frenzy and deal with her thoughts, which are returning more forcefully to her dad’s whereabouts. How many times now has she realized that she should have gone immediately in search of him? Why is she holding back?

  She curses herself for her indecision, and even finds herself muttering an apology to him.

  I have to get out of here! I have to find him! And then her thoughts turn inevitably to Why hasn’t he found me?

  She’s wandering the halls aimlessly, wiping at tears. No, she knows where she’s going. No sense trying to delude herself.

  She moves deeper into the hospit
al.

  In minutes, she can see the fifth examination room ahead of her on the left. She approaches the closed door warily, casting glances back where she came from to make sure no one can see where she’s going.

  She clasps the door handle and pushes it open, entering on light feet.

  She flips the light switch and makes her way to the back of the room, where the destroyed motorcyclist is still splayed atop the examination table. Rachel stops near his feet and gazes down at the poor mess. The glowing orb at the skull is only subtly visible from this angle, but she doesn’t want to get too near it now. She just stands there.

  “What are you?” she whispers.

  After some minutes, she reaches down and touches the flesh of his calf, which has been exposed by violently shredded fabric. It has been hours—possibly twelve hours now—since the beginning of the phenomenon, when something inside these people began to change them. That’s what Rachel is sure now is happening to these bodies. They’re changing. They’re becoming something else. For the span of hours since she first touched Susanna’s and Tony’s skin, finding it more pliable than it should be, and since she touched this man’s arm, finding it give still more beneath her touch, her certainty has grown only stronger. Scott is wrong about this, and his refusal to listen to her will cost him somehow.

  She presses the motorcyclist’s flesh now, and it gives sickeningly, her fingers sinking too far, too fast, into the warm skin. Rachel yanks her hand back, not only at the sensation but also because of something else. A jitter of movement out of the corner of her eye.

  Something in this man’s body reacted to her touch.

  She backs away clumsily, her heart thudding, then refocuses. She finds the courage to move closer to the man’s fragmented skull, stepping lightly, afraid he might hear her and wake up. Silly, she knows, but alone with this man, in this claustrophobic room, she feels an almost irrational, spiking fear like heat in her chest. Still, she edges closer.

  What she sees makes her breath stop in her throat.

  Above the ruined jaw, the man’s cheek is experiencing the slightest flutter, like the twitching of an eyelid after too little sleep. She watches the movement with frank curiosity, her breath still trapped in her lungs. The incongruent slant of his dead gaze sickens her, and she tries to avoid those flat, dilated, half-closed eyes as she studies the movement of the skin below them, but it’s difficult. The wide pupils are gazing in two different directions, from the horrific violence of the collision. Rachel instead focuses her gaze intently on that cheek.

  Until one dead eye swivels in her direction.

  And then Rachel isn’t seeing anything but a swirl of light and dark as she flails backward, crashing, out of the room, one hand clamped like a vise to her mouth.

  Chapter 7

  “Okay, we have to get the hell out of here.”

  Jenny looks at her, fearful of Rachel’s shaky tone. “What’s the matter? Rachel, you’re white as a ghost!”

  “I have to find my dad.” She feels that she might melt into tears at any moment.

  Room 111 is alive with the sounds of agony—moans of anguish from both the injured and bewildered loved ones. Jenny is holding a hypodermic needle, readying it for the next arrival. Rachel, feeling so dizzy she might faint, closes her eyes against all the horror and braces herself against a wall, leaning over, breathing heavily.

  “Rachel, what happened?”

  After Rachel catches her breath, she recounts what she’s seen, and Jenny reacts with a confused look of horror. She’s shaking her head, struck mute. She sets the syringe down carefully.

  “I’ll tell Bonnie,” Rachel says, straightening. “Then I’m out of here. I don’t know what the fuck is happening to these bodies, but what I do know is that it’s only just started. Something horrible is just starting. And this hospital is filling up with them. I have to find my dad before—I don’t know. You still want to come?”

  “Yeah,” comes Jenny’s distant reply.

  Rachel moves off, noticing Jenny deflating against an empty gurney, her eyes glazed. Rachel stops, grabs her by the shoulders, and stares at her intently.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  It takes her a while to find Bonnie. She’s forced to search through the front area of the hospital’s first floor, weaving through several clutches of human misery. The dimly lit corridor of bodies is now only sparsely attended by the living. Only three steadfast family members have stayed with their loved ones, and all three are bent over the bodies, praying. Rachel eyes them warily, knowing that sometime soon, those bodies are going to start moving.

  Not waking up—that’s for sure. But moving. She’s certain of it.

  With the help of a sweaty volunteer, she finds Bonnie in an office room beyond the admissions area, half-seated on the corner of a desk, sneaking a cigarette. She glances at Rachel guiltily as Rachel walks in.

  “You caught me.” She blows out a rush of smoke. “Can’t imagine a day like this without cigarettes.”

  “Bonnie, I—”

  “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

  Rachel nods. “I have to find my dad.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “Listen, I paid another visit to our motorcyclist friend.”

  Bonnie stubs out her cigarette and stands up. “Okay.”

  “These things are…are coming back to life.”

  “What?” Bonnie is already shaking her head. “Oh my lord, what do you mean?”

  Rachel tells her exactly what she saw, the way the dead eye swiveled in its socket to look at her. An adrenalized shiver travels her spine at the recalled image.

  “That man can’t be alive!” Bonnie almost whines.

  “He’s not.”

  “Oh, Rachel, that’s too fantastic to—” She pauses, her mouth working. “It could…it could be an involuntary movement, a muscle spasm. I’ve heard of that happening even after death—long after death!”

  Rachel has to admit, Bonnie’s explanation brings the smallest amount of comfort to her, enough for her to drop her defenses the tiniest bit. And then she sighs, knowing that she can’t give in to overreaction or hysteria.

  “All right,” she says. “Please promise me you’ll keep your eye on them.”

  “Of course I will. I’ll put James and Stephanie on it. And I’ll have someone take a look at the motorcyclist.”

  “Someone you trust.”

  “Right.” Bonnie straightens up, wipes a hand across her brow, ready to return to work. “Where are you headed?”

  “My dad works south on College, near McDonald’s down on Harmony. That’s where I’ll start.”

  “Don’t forget it’s Saturday.”

  “That’s my dad.” She exhales a weak laugh. “Overachiever.”

  “Okay.” A significant pause weighs heavily in the small office. “Be careful.”

  Impulsively, Rachel steps forward to Bonnie and embraces her. She can tell that Bonnie is surprised, reacting stiffly for a moment, but Rachel needs the closeness all of a sudden, needs the touch of this woman who reminds her so much of her mother.

  “I will,” she says. “And I’ll find him.”

  “I know you will.”

  “Listen,” Rachel says in the midst of the embrace, “say goodbye to Alan for me, will you? I’ll start sobbing if I have to say bye to both of you.”

  Rachel removes herself from the hug and leaves the room. She feels emotion in her throat and wetness at her eyes, but she shakes herself away from these unbidden tears, working her way back toward the front of the hospital.

  In ten minutes, she’s walking with Jenny out the double doors of the front entrance. It’s full dark outside now, and with the power out seemingly citywide, the darkness is inky, with virtually no visibility beyond the weak glow of the hospital’s generator-powered lights. Making matters worse, the lingering smoke carries its own blackness across the night. There is no starlight or moonlight.

  “Oh my God,” Jenny whispers. “It’s
so dark!”

  The blackness takes them both by surprise; it’s almost breathtaking. Rachel surges forward, pulling Jenny with her. She has to get away from this hospital and find her way to her father.

  She sees the rear of Susanna’s car, which is now surrounded by other hastily parked vehicles. Her eyes are watering from forcing them open so wide in the darkness. They arrive at the Honda’s trunk, splitting up to go to either side. They fling open the doors and drop into the bucket seats. In the glow of the cabin light, Rachel sees her backpack, undisturbed at Jenny’s feet, and feels a jolt of anticipation. She grabs it and unzips its main pouch, drawing out two of the water bottles. She hands one to Jenny.

  “Awesome,” Jenny says, taking it eagerly.

  “There’s food in there, too.”

  Jenny is already gulping down her water. They both drain the bottles quickly, nearly without taking a break.

  Rachel twists the key in the ignition, and the Honda cranks to life. The clock in the dash reads 9:14. She pulls out and carefully exits the parking lot, just as another vehicle, a red Jeep, is angling in. The woman behind the wheel is in hysterics, wiping her eyes as she veers around the Honda, coming to an abrupt stop behind two parked cars at the front entrance. Before Rachel can witness another awful display of extreme grief, she turns the Honda onto Lemay, headed south, while Jenny cranes her neck, watching the hospital’s façade recede behind them.

  “She’s got a body in her arms,” Jenny says quietly, sadly. “Looks like a child.”

  “Yeah,” Rachel says, defeated.

  A long moment passes.

  “Where do you want to start?” Jenny asks, turning back.

  “I think he was at work when it happened,” Rachel replies. “So we’ll start there.”

  “Well, what if—”

  “He’s alive.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  Jenny looks forward at the oncoming road and is quiet. Even after Rachel flips on her high beams, it’s like looking at the world through tunnel vision. There are no vehicles moving at all now, in either direction, just the same halfhearted collisions dotting the road all over the place, butted up against the light poles, guttered, angled over curbs. And as Rachel strains to adjust her eyes in the blackness, she can see indistinct red illumination coming from every car, like crimson jack-o’-lanterns. Rachel points them out sickeningly to Jenny, who visibly shivers.