Bleeders

by Max Boone

  "It's just off the Madison Avenue Bridge. You two weren't far from there earlier from what he told me."

  "Wow, a lot happened when I was out. What else did you talk about?"

  She glanced over at me. "Are you mad we talked?"

  "I don't like secrets. I just want to know where I stand."

  Alison slammed on the brakes. We screeched to a halt and I had to stop myself from face-planting into the dashboard. I was about to ask what her deal was when I saw what was ahead of us: River Avenue was gridlocked, not with rush hour traffic, but abandoned cars at all angles, even on the sidewalk. Whatever had happened there was long gone, but it had taken every driver along with it. "I'll tell you where you stand," Alison said. "Knee deep in shit. We should go back and find another way around."

  "This is New York, it's a miracle we got this far. Did you think we were just going to cruise all the way there?"

  She checked her rearview. A few Bleeders were about a block back, moving slowly. "We can't sit here forever," she said.

  I scanned the street. To our right the suspended expressway blocked our view, but I knew just past it would be the Harlem River. "You said this place is off the Madison Avenue Bridge? That's the turn for the 145th Street Bridge right there. We can cross on foot and from there it's only a few blocks down." The idea of being so exposed didn't exactly fill me with joy, but at that point it seemed like the only way to reach the place Jeremiah thought was our safest bet.

  "And what about the car?"

  The humvee was a valuable find, I had to admit. It wasn't likely we'd find something better. I grabbed the keys hanging on the dashboard and held them out. "Feel better?"

  She snatched them up. "Not really," she said and shoved them in her pocket. The humvee didn't need them to run, but no one was getting in without them, either. At least this way we could come back for it once we were settled and explored the area a bit.

  It took a few minutes to wake up Jeremiah and get him on his feet. By the time we did, the Bleeders a block back had wandered closer, but we stayed low to the ground and they didn't spot us. The two of us helped Jeremiah walk, each of us taking an arm to support some of his weight, me on the right so I could hold the M16. Then we turned right onto 145th Street, walked under the dark overpass and onto the bridge.

  The river ran well beneath our feet, black water in the black night. Harlem River wasn't a scenic point to begin with, but now there seemed to be things floating on the surface which made it even more uninviting. There was garbage and dirt, but there were also larger shapes I couldn't make out.

  I quietly hoped the outlines I saw down there were trash bags.

  We cleared the bridge. As soon as we could, we turned left and continued down the street through Harlem. It was dark with just the scattered streetlights and none of the usual traffic and action to light up the city. I'll admit to being creeped out by the dark, but it did offer us a bit of cover. The Bleeders were human, after all, and if it was hard for us to see at night, I had to assume it was just as hard for them. They weren't suddenly superhuman- thank Christ.

  I spotted a familiar store off to the right. "I know this area, we're only nine or ten blocks from-"

  "The clinic where your girlfriend worked," Alison said.

  "Ex-girlfriend. And thanks, Jay."

  "Name's Jeremiah," he mumbled.

  I shook my head. Fucking guy barely knew his dick from his pinkie the past day, but he'd found the time to tell my life story to a woman he just met.

  Just then I remembered something. "What's wrong," Alison asked, feeling me stop.

  "Around here, somewhere. I never went to it but there's a..."

  I heard them before I saw them. The front of the building was teeming with Bleeders. Some of them stood around staring blankly, while others sniffed and moaned and smashed on cars and road signs and whatever else got in their way.

  "Hospital," I finished the thought.

  "The important thing now is that we don't make a sound," Alison said.

  Behind us, a man with reddish hair came running around the corner so fast he nearly tumbled into the street, and he was screaming, "Help! Help me!" at the top of his lungs. Behind him two small children ran after him, a boy and a girl no older than ten with the same color hair as him, but their eyes were red, too, and they grunted and snarled with their small, bloodied tongues. He glanced back at them, terrified of the small children, and ran into a parked car at full speed. The car's alarm triggered, honking and flashing the headlights.

  Alison and I looked at each other, both of us thinking the same thing: oh, shit.

  The Bleeders crowded in front of the hospital had heard it all. They became excited and began stumbling into each other trying to figure out where the sounds bouncing off the buildings were coming from. By the time I glanced back at the red-haired guy, the two kids had already gotten to him. They began tearing at the face that looked so much like their own, and he screamed again for help, but they didn't care, and we had none to give.

  I took the safety off the M16. "Jay," I whispered. "You think you can run?"

  "Name's Jeremiah," he replied.

  "Fuck you. Can you?"

  He nodded. "I can try." A few of the Bleeders had figured out where the noise came from, their heads aimed in its direction. Then I saw their dark eyes shift and find us.

  "Then now might be a good time to do that."

  One of the Bleeders closest to us let out a scream like I've never heard before. He was a large man missing an ear, and the sound he made was the sound of a starving beast spotting fresh meat. It sent a chill up me like nothing else.

  We let go of Jeremiah and broke into a run as the rest of them started to scream and run after us. They were fast, not inhuman fast, but highly motivated, and we had to run hard to stay ahead of them.

  "Keep going," I shouted to Alison, "I'll try to slow them down!"

  Stopping for a second, I spun around, tucked the M16 into my shoulder and lined up a shot. I squeezed the trigger and the gun leapt in my hands with the pop of gunfire. The kick was more than I expected, like getting punched in the arm, and my first shot went over the heads of the Bleeders bearing down on me.

  I didn't have time to make corrections and fire again. The Bleeders didn't even flinch at the gunshots like a normal person would, and in fact the psychos were drawn toward the light and sound. I turned and ran some more, then fired at the running crowd again, holding the weapon tighter, and this time I hit a few. One of the rounds caught a woman in the chest, drawing a strange gasp from her mouth. Another clipped a man's thigh. It took out a chunk of muscle which brought him down and tripped up a few more behind him. The rest of the group didn't slow down even a little. They weren't scared and they didn't care if they were next.

  They only wanted my flesh.

  I ran again, surprised by how far ahead Alison and Jeremiah had gotten. Alison could have been even further along but she kept pace with Jeremiah and made sure he kept moving. Jeremiah pointed ahead and to the left, showing her where to turn. Meanwhile, the Bleeders were gaining on me and I wasn't sure if I could stay ahead of them much longer unless I did something soon.

  "Almost there," Alison shouted back. All the more reason to do something about the crowd- wherever it was Jeremiah was taking us, we didn't need these fuckers beating on the door. Jeremiah said the address and I repeated it in my head. From Jeremiah's face I could tell he wanted to help me, but he was in no shape to do anything but stay alive. Alison and Jeremiah cut close to the hospital to make the left, and that's when I saw my answer. It was just to the right of them, on the street corner, painted in that beautiful, shitty green I knew so well.

  A subway entrance.

  "I'll try to lose them," I shouted to the others. I glanced back at the Bleeders on my tail. They were even closer than before, but I had to make sure they'd follow me and me only. "Come and get it, assholes," I yelled and fired a round into the air, feeling good about myself until the kickback jerked my arm down
and nearly dislocated my elbow. As I reached the stairs, I made a mental note to stop doing the things I saw in movies.

  I took the stairs down two at a time with the Bleeders fumbling down after me. There was no way for me to look back and make sure they were all there, but from the sounds they made there was no shortage of bodies following me down into the ground.

  The station was empty of people on both sides. Not a single train ran on the six tracks that spread out in the dark ahead, and if my guess was right it would be like this all over the city, with transit completely broken down in a matter of hours when people abandoned their jobs or didn't show up in the first place. My plan wasn't the safest idea I'd ever had, but if I was right at least I wouldn't be struck by a train.

  So I had that going for me.

  I hopped down off the platform and onto the tracks, very carefully landing at the center before jumping between the metal columns to reach the next so I didn't trip and fall.

  The Bleeders followed me onto the tracks, but they weren't as careful. The first tumbled off the platform and cracked his face on the metal track. He grunted but was silenced as the next ones trampled him and crushed his skull and limbs into the ground.

  If my other guess was right, I had to put a little distance between me and the Bleeders before the fireworks started. You see, I was careful where I stepped because I didn't want to trip, that's true, but it was more than just that I was avoiding.

  An explosion went off behind me, like a lightning strike trapped in a bottle, and I crouched down into a ball and covered my head. The air lit up white-hot for a second, then sparks followed, showering down in the dark where the Bleeders had crushed the first into the third rail.

  A series of electrical explosions followed all down the line as the system overloaded. Circuit-breakers tripping if I had to guess. I stayed still and waited for the show to finish, watching the tangle of Bleeders fry on the line as more jumped down from the platform and joined the party.

  Alison said the virus gave them brain damage, and I had to agree. It wasn't even like they'd lost their intelligence, more like they were so angry, so focused on what they wanted, that they ignored everything else. Even the things that could kill them.

  Once the electricity died and I'd had my fill of the stink of cooked skin and hair, I came back up to street level and followed the address Jeremiah told me, which was only half a block away. I took the right down a dead end to what looked like a random building where Alison waited under a half-open sliding metal door to let me in. There were signs out front that said what the building was, but I didn't bother to read them. All I wanted to do was get inside. I ignored everything else.

  Once I was inside, Alison slid the metal door shut and locked it behind us.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The building was bigger on the inside than it had looked on my way in. The front of it was a fairly large reception area with benches, a television, and a community board with all kinds of announcements and kids' drawings. Jeremiah was already out cold on an old, beat-up couch in the corner. The way he was curled into it, I could tell it had been his goal to get to that couch, the image of it the target in his mind. All there was left for him now was to see which way the virus took him.

  "It's a food bank," Alison said. She flipped on the lights and showed me the next room, where large, open boxes were packed to the top with applesauce, powdered milk, boxes of pasta, cereal, cans of tuna and tomato sauce and whatever else you could think of. The walls were lined with shelves of the same, organized into categories and labeled clearly.

  There was a doorway in the far wall that led to a musty stairway. The second floor was just as good as the first. There, wooden palettes held cases of bottled water and juices as well as blankets, portable heaters, first aid kits and batteries.

  All I could think to say was, "Wow."

  "I know. It's not bad."

  I turned to her. "Not bad? This place is a fucking goldmine. I told you Jay's worth keeping around. Who knows the streets better than someone who's lived on them?"

  She nodded. "Hopefully for his sake the night is good to him."

  I went to the back window. It looked down on an enclosed courtyard with a makeshift basketball court. The blacktop was decorated in colorful chalk, on one side a hopscotch court and the other a few drawings. "How is it some of us become Bleeders and some don't," I asked. Alison was rifling through a box of flashlights and looked up.

  "Frank, he uh, he noticed a small amount of people survived the infection, with some side-effects. The aggression. The hunger. You feel it, don't you?"

  "I'm always hungry."

  "Not like this. It feels like an addiction, like an itch you can't scratch."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," I lied, turning away from the depressing courtyard. "Did he know why?"

  "He had a few theories, mostly genetics. Recessive genes, inherited immunity."

  "Are you saying I should thank my mom for this?"

  "Maybe."

  "What else did he think it could be?"

  "If I told you, you wouldn't believe me."

  "After the day I've had, you could tell me aliens had come to resurrect Abraham Lincoln and I would believe you."

  She tossed the flashlight back into the pile. "It doesn't matter anyway. If the virus doesn't kill you, someone infected with it does. There's almost no point in looking for a cure for this thing. It's a perfect killing machine."

  I nodded. "Like Dolph Lundgren."

  "What?"

  "Dolph Lundgren. Did you know he's a marine, a chemical engineer and a black belt? He speaks like seven languages."

  She paused, then half-smiled. "You're a weird guy, Brody."

  "Yeah. Yeah, I know."

  There was no point in going on and on about how fucked we were. I volunteered to stay awake while Alison slept, which she did, under a blanket on one of the benches. Aside from watching the windows and door for unwanted visitors, I was also keeping an eye on Jeremiah, making sure he didn't wake up with any new cravings.

  I hit the bathroom before settling down. In the mirror I did a double-take, forgetting what my eyes would look like. With all the running I hadn't taken a second to look at myself, and now that I had I didn't know how to feel. It wasn't just the red irises, my face looked different somehow. It was me, yet not me.

  By the time I came out of the bathroom Alison was asleep, but unlike Jeremiah who looked half-dead, her sleep was uneasy. She looked like a junkie coming off the junk, and she moved and cried out like she was having the same nightmares I'd had back in the stadium. Even now I could remember the visions I'd had, and wished I didn't.

  Confabulations, she'd said, the inability to separate dreams from waking life. What if the Bleeders were locked in that same nightmare, feeding the shadows for as long as they could until the darkness came for them, too?

  Worse, what if my own nightmares were here to stay?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  "Give them to us."

  My eyes shot open at the sound of a voice whispering in my ear. I jumped out of the chair and to my feet, ready to throw down with whoever had the balls to sneak inside our walls and come at me when I was sleeping.

  Except I was alone. The only other soul with me in the reception area was Jeremiah. He was still sleeping, but he was starting to get restless. His comatose breathing had become fast and hard, and he tossed and turned in an already very familiar way. His skin was flushed and his shirt soaked with sweat. There was no way the whisper had been his. He was too far away, and the voice was nothing like his. The more I thought of it, the more I remembered drowning in nightmare visions of blood and death and screaming before I'd woken up.

  The voice had come from inside my skull.

  A thought occurred to me, and I glanced around the reception area. "Alison?" She wasn't on the bench where I'd seen her last, just before I dozed off. It was still dark out, but the sun was starting to come up outside, which meant I only could have been
asleep for an hour at most.

  I checked the other rooms. No one there. Upstairs was just as empty, but after a full check I found the roof access door had been left open, so I climbed the stairs and came out onto the roof, taking it slow and checking around the corners before stepping out. If someone other than Alison was there I wanted to catch them by surprise, and if it was only Alison I wanted to know what she was up to by herself at such an early hour.

  I found her at the front of the building. She stood at the edge, looking out at the city. Brick apartment buildings fifteen stories high surrounded us on each side like dead towers in the waking light. "Are you alright," I called out. She glanced back at me, not surprised.

  "Depends on your definition."

  "Getting looser by the hour." I joined her at the edge of the building. The city was relatively quiet yet, at least for New York, where the sounds of people and machines normally never stopped. I wondered how many people had survived the night, but the quiet seemed like answer enough. The birds were the loudest thing that morning.

  Alison stared in the direction of the hospital. There was motion through its windows, like people moving around inside. It took me a second to realize they were Bleeders. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, filled every floor of the place, people who had sought treatment and found a mass grave instead. I thought of Rebecca at Mount Sinai.

  "The flu," Alison said. "It came out of North Korea, you know."

  "And?"

  She shifted to look at me. "It could be a weapon. Chemical warfare developed by their people. They could be responsible."

  "Are we talking about the same North Korea here? I thought those guys could barely get a rocket into space. Besides, on the news they said it was running train on the Koreans before it crossed the border. Why would they use it on themselves?"

  "Maybe they didn't mean for it to go off. It's a lot easier to make a monster than it is to control one."

  I thought about it, but I shrugged it off. "What's done is done. Doesn't make the bites any softer."