Bleeders

by Max Boone

  We had to push our way in past all the arguing faces just to reach the front counter. One or two people cursed me out, but no one seemed to want to pick a fight. It probably had something to do with having Jeremiah behind me. A guy his size, arguments tend to stop before they start.

  The clinic's staff all wore surgical masks over their mouths. It was a scary reminder of what was going on out in the world. Their eyes were puffy and tired and they looked like they hadn't taken a break in days.

  Lunch breaks are overrated anyway. I was pretty sure my last one got me killed.

  Amanda was behind the counter, set back a bit trying to enter something on her old-ass computer. She was a young Asian girl with fake blue eyes that always weirded me out, like I'm just supposed to keep talking and pretend they're not contact lenses.

  "Hey. Amanda." I leaned over the counter and tried to get her attention. She glanced over at me and mouthed a curse. "Nice to see you, too. I need help." I nodded at Jeremiah. "We need help. Both of us."

  Amanda looked up from her screen. "You have to wait in line, Brody."

  The other girl at the counter who I didn't know asked me to take a step back. I ignored her. "Listen, I know I'm not your favorite person in the world, but we really need a doctor."

  She sighed and came over to the counter, telling the other girl she had it handled. "Everyone needs a doctor right now. Even the doctors need doctors." She motioned to the noisy waiting area crammed wall-to-wall with people. "Look around. You're not special. I know that's hard for you to hear, but it's the truth."

  "Just tell Rebecca I'm here."

  "She's not here." There was a look in her freaky, blue eyes I couldn't read. Was it a lie? Did Rebecca see me coming and run to the back to hide?

  "That's horse-shit and you know it. There's no way she's not at work with all this going on."

  "It's not, actually, she was here earlier but she had to leave."

  "Rebecca?" I leaned around Amanda and shouted at the door behind her. "I just need to talk to you for one minute."

  "Stop it," Amanda said.

  "The sooner you come out here, the sooner I'll leave!" The waiting room started to get restless with all the shouting going on, which was the idea. It was a dick move but I was desperate for results. "I'm not going anywhere until I see you."

  "She's at Mount Sinai," Amanda shouted back. She caught herself and lowered her voice. "I shouldn't even be telling you this."

  It made no sense. "She said she'd never work there," I said.

  "She's not working. She was hurt, alright?" A few people nearby heard what she said and started to mumble to each other. "A patient went crazy. Becca tried to hold the guy back, but-" Her voice cut out. Her freaky eyes started to water up.

  I didn't know what to say. Rebecca wasn't my problem anymore, but that didn't mean I enjoyed hearing she'd been hurt. Jeremiah stepped in and talked to Amanda with a calm voice that matched her own. "We know you're having a rough time. Can you just get us some penicillin? We were both bitten, you see." He showed his arm to her. What would normally draw concern from a clinic worker like Amanda only pushed her away. Clearly they'd seen some shit.

  "There's a treatment center-"

  "Yeah, we know all about the treatment center," I cut her off. "I don't think you get what's going on out there. People are attacking each other. It's becoming a war zone."

  "I can't help you, Brody. I'm sorry." She retreated to her computer as the other girl called the next idiot to the counter.

  "Great. Have a nice life, Amanda," I called out as I backpedaled to the door. "Hopefully you don't burn in hell for turning us away." As I passed the Caribbean woman, she looked up at me with what I can only assume was fear. I leaned in close and said, "You're better off with the fuckin' herbs, lady."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jeremiah had decided we would head for the hospital to get whatever medical treatment we could. "We need penicillin," he said. "We may not know anything about the Red Flu, but I know bites are bad news."

  "Mouths are disgusting," I agreed.

  I didn't think it was a good idea going to a hospital with the city falling apart, but it was hard to argue with how I felt. The nausea and the dizziness had gone away for a bit, but another episode was just around the corner. It was hard to explain, I could just feel it in the back of my head. So I went along with his plan, even if I didn't like it. Hospitals skeeved me out on a good day.

  Plus, what if I ran into Rebecca? That would be awkward.

  Things were getting rougher by the minute, and after a few blocks we spotted the first of the looters. A group of kids with bandannas over their faces threw a crate through the window of a camera store, shattering the huge plate glass window. Alarms blared as they jumped into the display and started grabbing everything they could get their hands on.

  "Sorry about your girlfriend," Jeremiah said as we watched them work.

  "Ex-girlfriend."

  "Sucks either way."

  "Yeah. I guess it does."

  Everywhere things were falling apart, and I doubted the cops could do much about it. It was simple math- if the whole city was like this, they couldn't be everywhere at once, even at full strength, which they surely weren't by now. Between cops getting sick and their families getting sick, I'd be amazed if they were working at half capacity.

  After we worked our way north a while, we hit 116th Street and found a big crowd blocking the way. Thirty or forty men with ski masks and towels around their faces were standing their ground. They had chains and baseball bats, and they were looking to bash some heads in. We stopped behind a dumpster and watched them chase anyone away who got close. One guy wasn't so lucky and got a broken jaw for his trouble.

  "They're just protecting their neighborhood," Jeremiah pointed out.

  "That's great. Go over and tell them we're just passing through, I'm sure they'll understand."

  He shot me an angry look. "We'll have to go around. There's a park that way we can cut through."

  It was a nice spot I had spent a little time in myself, waiting for Rebecca to get off work, but that was ancient history. Now all I could see was what was wrong with the neighborhood.

  We carefully sneaked away from the crowd and ran the other way down Martin Luther King, then turned left onto Fifth Avenue. I could see the entrance to the park ahead, the trees sticking up at the end of the block over the street.

  A wave of sickness kicked me in the gut. I stopped and held myself up on a fire hydrant. It was bad this time, and I felt like puking up my insides.

  Jeremiah stopped and looked back. "You alright?"

  I couldn't even talk, I just shook my head.

  "Come on." He motioned to the trees. "Just make it to the park and you can rest for a minute."

  It took everything in me, but I pushed myself and ran the rest of the way. Each step felt like an earthquake. We made it through the entrance gate and I sought out the first bench I could find and collapsed into it.

  I sat at first, but my body had other ideas. I instinctively curled up into a ball and started coughing, a fit that felt like it would never stop. Jeremiah kept a worried watch as my vision cut in and out. Mixed with the sight of him standing over me, violent images flashed through my mind. It was like a strobe light made of everything that had ever pissed me off in my life. The teacher who told me I wouldn't do anything with my life because I was lazy. The girl who cheated on me in college. My dad slapping me around because I'd mouthed off to him. As much as it was disturbing, there was something oddly comforting about the anger inviting me in to stay. It was like a red tide trying to pull me down, and I was tempted to just give in and let it win.

  "We have to move," my dad said. That piece of shit never cared about me, just about his job.

  "Fuck you." I shoved him off me and wiped the blood from my mouth.

  "Brody! Brody snap out of it!"

  My dad's face became Jeremiah's for a second, but then it slipped back. He had me by the arms and was sh
aking me hard. Our kitchen walls faded in and out of existence, just like my mom. He quickly grew tired of the fight and struck me across the face, sobering me up and slapping my senses back into me.

  Jeremiah helped me up off the park bench. "You were screaming," he said. He looked scared of whatever he'd seen.

  I grabbed him by the shoulder. "I feel better now."

  "Good, because I'm starting to feel like hell itself," he said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  As we got a block from New York Presbyterian, there started to be a lot more people milling around, mostly doing a lot of arguing and shoving, and when we got closer to it we saw why.

  A crowd of at least two hundred people were gathered in front. Blocking the entrance were two Emergency Service vehicles, heavy trucks that looked like armored boxes painted blue and white, and a line of police officers trying to hide how nervous they were. The crowd was anxious, a few of them shouting at the officers to let them past. A lot of them were obviously sick. Some of them were just kids.

  The officer in charge was a gray-haired man in good shape for his age. He climbed onto the bumper of one of the vehicles and aimed a bullhorn at the crowd.

  "Your attention, please," he announced through the speaker. "We know you're looking for help, however this hospital has no room for you." People started to boo, but he continued. "It is filled beyond capacity. We ask that you leave and return to your homes, where you are to await further instructions."

  The booing and shouting started to get worse. It reached a point where the officer with the bullhorn couldn't be heard, though he didn't stop trying.

  "This is going from shitty to shittier," I said, and Jeremiah nodded.

  In the middle of all the noise, a single scream just barely heard over the shouts caught my attention. It was a woman's voice, and I scanned the faces. A few shouts went up from the right side of the crowd. One man pointed and shouted something I couldn't quite make out.

  "What did he say," I asked Jeremiah.

  "It sounded like he said, 'Bleeder.'"

  I followed the shouting man's eye line to a young Colombian woman holding a little boy, but I couldn't tell what he was yelling about. The woman looked fine to me, kind of hot, actually, maybe a little worried and stressed out but so did everyone.

  Then I noticed the little boy's eyes.

  He must have been asleep in her arms, because he was leaned over her shoulder looking around at the crowd as if for the first time. But it wasn't the look of a little boy. Maybe that's what he fell asleep as, but he had woken up something else. There was anger in those red eyes. Anger, and hunger.

  "I think it's time to go," I said, looking around for a way out. The crowd had only gotten thicker, and behind us was no different.

  The mother realized the growing shouts were aimed at her. She checked her boy's face and gasped at what she saw. It was heartbreaking to see, even for a prick like me.

  Even with the way he looked, she tried to cover him up, to protect him from the eyes of the crowd. In return, he attacked her, viciously biting her face.

  Her screams became the screams of the crowd. Panic moved through them in seconds, sending people scattering in every direction. They pushed and shoved and tripped over each other, desperately trying to get away.

  "Go, now," I shouted, and Jeremiah pushed through the people behind us. I followed in the wake he made, like a running back cutting a hole up the field. In the middle of all the panic and running a gunshot rang out. Whether it was from the cops or someone else I couldn't tell, but in moments like that you realize it doesn't matter much. A bullet is a bullet.

  Jeremiah tripped over a man huddled on the ground and went down hard. I helped him up and we ran again, finally clearing the thickest part of the crowd. We caught our breath behind an abandoned food cart and looked back the way we came. It was still absolute chaos, and a freaking miracle we somehow made it out.

  "Shit," Jeremiah said. "He was just a kid."

  "Not anymore."

  With panicked people running around us, and screams that sounded like a second attack starting, we took off again. As we ran, that word was still echoing in my head, the word I'd heard from the man in the crowd. It was the first time I'd heard it, yet somehow I knew it wouldn't be the last.

  Bleeder.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jeremiah knew of a place in Hamilton Heights where we could hide until things blew over. Getting help for our bites was still right near the top on our list of priorities, but we decided there wouldn't be much point in finding meds if we had no throats to swallow them. I asked him why we couldn't pick somewhere closer and he said it was because he was "Thinking long term." I asked what he meant but he didn't explain himself any further. I wasn't in any condition to argue, and he was starting to look worse by the block, so I left it alone.

  The thing that amazed me was all the people we saw just going about their day. Lawyers taking cabs. Kids staring down at their phones. Halal stands and newspaper booths operating business as usual. I knew us New Yorkers were a stubborn group, but by now there had to be reports of what was going on. The hospital alone, what happened there, should have been scary enough for half of Manhattan to call out sick, but the streets were still busy with the rat race.

  I had a flash of myself watching TV earlier that day, like nothing could hurt me, about ten minutes before something did. If I could go back in time I'd punch that asshole in the face.

  We got as far north as West 131st Street without seeing anything crazy. Jeremiah said we were getting close as he slowed down to peek around the side of a building. "Which is usually when everything goes to shit," I mumbled. He said it was all clear and we turned the corner.

  As we waited for the signal to change to cross the street, a woman waiting on the opposite corner caught my eye. She wore a red dress with white patterns, and she looked confused about where she was. She looked back and forth frantically until her eyes landed on me with what looked like recognition.

  "Shit," I hissed. Through the passing cars I could see now her dress wasn't red with white patterns- it was white with red bloodstains.

  Just like her eyes.

  "It's a Bleeder," Jeremiah said.

  She broke into a run, bolting into the street without looking. One taxi swerved to miss her and she didn't even notice the car screech around her, the front bumper just missing her leg. She continued to run right at me.

  The moment she stepped into the next lane, a second taxi plowed into her. Her head bounced off the taxi's hood so hard we could hear the dull thud from where we stood fifty feet away. The driver slammed on his brakes and she rolled off the car and onto the street where she rolled to a stop face down.

  Brakes and tired screeched. Traffic stopped dead. The woman wasn't moving. The driver of the taxi jumped out, already on his phone. He was freaking out, and I felt bad for the guy. If only I could tell him the blood he saw on the woman's dress was already there when he hit her.

  The woman stirred and tried to get up off the street but her arms were broken. She got to her feet somehow and stumbled toward the taxi driver. At first he walked toward her, trying to help her, but then he saw the look on her face and began to realize what he was looking at. In that moment, I could see everything he'd seen on the news crashing down on his head.

  He was realizing what we already had- that it was all true.

  Before he could get back into his taxi, the woman lunged for him. With broken arms she fell on him and knocked him into his seat. His screams rose up from inside the taxi, while all around them other drivers began to catch on.

  We didn't want to wait for the woman in the blood dress to remember us. As we ran the other way, I saw what I thought were fellow citizens coming to help the man. Then I got a good look at their faces, and that's when the real fear set in.

  Bleeders, five or six of them. They were making their way through traffic, attacking people at random. There was no pattern to their movements, which made them all the more unpredi
ctable. It seemed there was also no pattern to the kind of person the Red Flu preferred. They were old, young, man, woman. It didn't matter what race they were; the sickness didn't care. An equal opportunity virus.

  Two of them came at us. One was a heavy man in a striped sweater and light blue coat with half his mouth hanging down his chin in flaps. The other was a blonde woman in a denim coat and pink skirt with a hole punched in her gut. Like the woman who had just been struck by the taxi, neither of them seemed the least bit bothered by their injuries. It was as if their pain switch had been flipped to the off position.

  "Yeah, so we need to get the fuck out of here," I said to Jeremiah.

  He agreed. "This way," he said, and we ran.

  We cut back a block and turned right, trying to circle around wide enough to go around the mess on 131st Street, but the Bleeders weren't giving up. They followed us, and they were fast. Their speed wasn't superhuman or anything, but it was like they were hopped up on adrenaline. They didn't care if they fell, they didn't care what they looked like, and they definitely didn't save anything for later. They were pure drive, and what drove them was killing and eating.

  Every move we made, they followed. Every step we took, they gained one. I noticed an alley up ahead, blocked by a security fence, and I shouted at Jeremiah to take the turn.

  We hit the fence hard and climbed it as fast as we could, clambering up and over it and jumping down on the other side as the Bleeders crashed into it. My body hated me. My fingers hurt from the fence, my joints from the impact, and meanwhile on the inside I could feel the infection burning me up like a poison soaking through every part of me.

  The Bleeders clawed and smashed at the fence and screamed at us from the other side. "Why don't they climb," I asked Jeremiah, trying to catch my breath.

  "I don't know. Maybe they're too dumb."

  "Too dumb to climb a fence?"