Surviving The Evacuation | Life Goes On (Book 2): No More News

by Tayell, Frank

  “What a day to start your new job,” the patient said. “Down here, then left.”

  “You’re waiting on a cab?” Olivia asked.

  “Everyone is,” the patient said. “No one can get through on a phone. Can’t call Dwight to come get me. They got through to a taxi firm who’re sending cars. Or they were supposed to, hours ago. The police won’t let us leave on foot. Not an option for me, anyway.”

  A little more of the picture swam into focus. With no cell service, no one could call a loved one to come get them. With no dispatch, the ambulances couldn’t respond to calls. With no pedestrians allowed to roam the streets, the hospital was filling with the almost-walking wounded.

  Olivia left the patient in a wide corridor filled with scores of other bandaged injured, and resumed her hunt for signs back to the emergency room. Instead, she saw the nurse who’d given her the scrubs.

  “What are you doing here?” the nurse asked.

  “Helping,” Olivia said. “As much as I can.”

  “You’re a nurse?”

  “I worked in a care home for a few years,” Olivia said. “I know how to push and carry.”

  “Good. There was a pile-up at the university an hour ago, and we only just found out. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  21st February

  Chapter 4 - A New Dawn, an Old Problem

  St Patrick’s Memorial Hospital, South Bend

  A hand on her shoulder brought Olivia violently awake.

  “Jamilla D’Souza,” the nurse said, taking a step back. “Hi, we were never introduced earlier. I brought you some lunch.” D’Souza handed Olivia a steaming mug of instant noodles.

  “It’s lunchtime?” Olivia asked.

  “It’s not even breakfast,” D’Souza said. “It’s three-twenty in the morning, but I think the worst of it is over.”

  “How bad did it get? I mean, compared to an ordinary night?” Olivia asked.

  “I’ve been through worse,” D’Souza said. “But not since I was working for the Red Cross. We’re short-staffed, which doesn’t help. Most people who were on duty when the news broke stayed, but most of the night shift stayed home. Things will improve when the morning news bulletins report the crisis in New York has been contained. It will be. Trust me. And things will get easier now.”

  Olivia nodded, sipping at the mug. She’d escaped the chaos for a few minutes’ calm inside the nurses’ break-room, and must have fallen asleep, though she wasn’t sure for how long. Before then, her night had been a hectic jumble of one patient then the next, pushing, holding, helping as best she could.

  “How long can you stay?” the nurse asked. “Do you think until mid-morning?”

  “I guess,” Olivia said. “I suppose I should stay until the sergeant tells me I can go. I… I can’t go home.” The memories of how she’d come to be at the hospital returned in a flood. She pushed them down. “I can stay.”

  “Good. How are you with a mop?”

  “I almost went pro,” Olivia said.

  “Great. There’s a lot of cleaning up. I’ll show you where the supply closet is.”

  She led Olivia back to the waiting room she’d first entered. It was fuller than before, with people asleep in chairs, and in the aisle between them.

  D’Souza opened a large closet filled with cleaning equipment. “One each then, we’ll make a race of this.”

  “Where are we cleaning?” Olivia asked.

  Before D’Souza could answer, the doors opened and Sergeant Wilgus staggered in, barely holding up a bloody firefighter.

  “Little help!” Wilgus called.

  “Get that chair,” D’Souza said. “What happened?”

  Olivia grabbed the solitary wheelchair, currently unoccupied and sitting in a gap between two seats, and wheeled it over, missing Wilgus’s explanation of what had happened. The moment the barely conscious firefighter was in the chair, Wilgus ran back outside.

  “Follow me,” D’Souza said.

  “What happened?” Olivia asked, pushing the chair after the nurse, through the doors, and into the hospital proper.

  “Some fools decided the best place to survive the chaos was inside a well-stocked bar,” the nurse said. “Then they built a barricade on the street. There was a fight, then a fire. Hundreds are on their way here. Ah. Perfect.” She stopped by an empty gurney. “Help me get him up here. On three.” They heaved the firefighter onto the gurney. “Go help the sergeant with the others,” the nurse said. “Wait, you’ll need this for the doors.” She pulled an I.D. card from her belt, handed it over, and hurried off without another word.

  Olivia took a deep breath, and returned to the blood-and-soot-stained fray.

  The curtained corridor became an improvised triage centre. With the barely injured kept in the waiting room, the more serious were moved into the hospital proper. By the third patient she brought in, the corridors were filling with nurses, doctors, and paramedics, as well as with the walking and recumbent wounded. Order was dragged from confusion as the living were dragged back from the gates of death.

  Her tenth patient refused the help of the wheelchair, so Olivia helped her walk on unsteady feet through the doors, where she almost collapsed before she could be placed on a gurney. Back in the waiting area, a man with a blood-soaked arm had claimed the vacant wheelchair. Since three of her previous patients had been gunshot victims, she assumed the same was the case with this man.

  “This way, then,” she said, wheeling him towards the doors.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “What happened to you?” she asked as she pushed him through the doors and into the crowded corridor beyond.

  “I was shot,” he said. “Just winged.”

  “That’s a lot of blood for a graze,” she said.

  “Ah, yeah, I got bit first. Damn dog was going crazy.”

  “You were bitten?” a passing woman asked. She wasn’t a nurse. She wasn’t a doctor. She was a wild-eyed woman with singed hair and a smoke-streaked face. “You’re infected?”

  “Do you see any foam? I ain’t got rabies,” the man said.

  “I don’t mean that,” the woman said, taking a step towards them so she was five feet in front of both wheelchair and the man. “I mean the zombies.”

  “It weren’t no zombie that bit me,” the man said. “It was my dog. Damn thing went crazy with all that smoke, all that shooting.”

  “A dog, yeah, right,” the woman said. “Let me see.”

  “What?” the man asked.

  “Show me your arm!” the woman said.

  “Just get out of the way,” Olivia said. “There’s a doctor waiting down—” She froze. For the second time in twenty-four hours, she found herself staring at a gun. This one, a snub-nosed compact, was aimed mostly at the man in the chair, but the woman’s arm waved wildly left and right.

  “Please don’t,” Olivia said, already a vision of the bloody, violent, inevitable future flashing in front of her eyes seconds before it happened. But her premonition was wrong. Before the woman could fire, an arm appeared from behind, grabbing the gun, twisting and turning the woman, pushing her down until she was lying on her front, her hands pinned by Sergeant Wilgus. The woman yelled more in anger than pain as the sergeant quickly cuffed her, then hauled her upright, planting her in a chair.

  “He’s been bitten,” she said. “He’s infected! He’s going to kill us all.”

  “Sir, you were bitten?” Sergeant Wilgus asked, as he ejected the round from the chamber of the woman’s small gun.

  “By my dog!” he said. “Betsy bit me. My dog bit me, not a person!”

  “He’s lying,” the woman said.

  “Easily proven,” Wilgus said, ejecting the small mag. Like the round, neither the magazine nor pistol went into an evidence bag, but into his pockets. “Sir, can you show us your arm?”

  Olivia had to help him with the crude bandage. Underneath, encrusted with oozing blood, was an unmistakable bite wound far too small fo
r any human to have made.

  “Told you,” the man said.

  “Nurse, can you take him for treatment? As for you, ma’am…”

  As Wilgus dealt with the nearly murderous woman, Olivia pushed the man on until she found a doctor in whose care she could leave him.

  When she returned to the waiting room, she found no more patients, but she did find the sergeant, alone.

  “I suppose you’ll want a statement?” she said.

  “No,” Wilgus said. “I sent her home.”

  “You didn’t arrest her?”

  “The cells are full,” Wilgus said. “The hospital is almost full. The morgue will be soon. We had twelve dead at that bar. Looks like at least another twelve died in the fire. Twenty at the university. Then there was the pile-up, the river, the airport. The list goes on.”

  “How… how many?”

  “At least a hundred dead,” Wilgus said. “It’s the fires. The flames spread too fast. The fire crews can’t be alerted in time.” He shook his head. “No, there’s no time for paperwork tonight.”

  “Oh. What about the other statement? I mean, my apartment.”

  “Ah, that. Sorry, I don’t know if Tactical have been yet. Everyone’s deployed to the streets. We’re a visible presence, responding to what we can see. I’d advise you stay away from your apartment for now. I spoke to D’Souza. She says you’ve been helping out.”

  “Just pushing and carrying,” Olivia said.

  “It’s more than most. Is there someone you can stay with? A friend? Family?”

  “I suppose. I really can’t go home?”

  “If Tactical haven’t been, they’ll go sometime after dawn. If they have, it’s a crime scene. Either way, you can’t go there unaccompanied. Although…” He trailed off. “Look, honestly, it’s going to take weeks to clear up the chaos of the last few hours. If you know somewhere you can sleep, eat, go there, do that. And then come back. I’ll be here. I’ll take you to your apartment so you can get your things. But one way or another, you can’t stay there. You understand?”

  “I guess so. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “Where do you work?” he asked.

  “A carpet store, but it’s being refurbished. I’m on vacation.”

  “Then you can help out here.”

  While she was still processing what he’d said, a shout had him hurrying outside. She took a step after him, but decided no. He was right; she needed some sleep. Afterward, she could come back and help.

  The doors swung open and a paramedic entered, alone except for the chill wind that slipped in behind him. On a chair lay a brown overcoat seemingly belonging to no one. She picked it up and checked the pockets, but they were empty. Pulling it on, she stepped outside.

  Chapter 5 - Old Boss, No Boss

  Lilac Road, South Bend

  Since she’d begun her early morning runs, she’d become used to the quiet frenzy of pre-dawn South Bend. Today, the city sounded different. It looked different. It smelled different. Despite the streets being utterly deserted, she could sense the eyes behind every curtain, every door’s peephole, watching her traipse across the icy sidewalk. She pulled the coat tight around her shoulders. The chill was worse this morning, beyond a frost and turning to a freeze. There’d been snow the night Pete had left. Most had melted, but a dusting remained, and the air held the promise of more. She thrust her hands deep in the coat’s pockets, and wished she was wearing something warmer. That brought up memories of how, for her, yesterday’s nightmare had truly begun. Memories she had to avoid at least until she was somewhere inside. She couldn’t go home, but she had to go somewhere.

  Her phone was in the apartment, and on it was her address book. It didn’t have many entries, but since she didn’t have the phone, it was academic. What addresses did she know? There was Kelsey Wannamaker, who worked installations in the afternoons, and the projector at the movie theatre in the evenings. But Kelsey had taken advantage of the two weeks paid leave to attend a steampunk convention in California. There were plenty of other co-workers who’d open their doors to her, but she had no idea where to find them. In the safe in her office, Mrs Mathers had kept a giant binder with the addresses of all her employees. But the safe, and the office, had been torn out during the retrofit.

  Mrs Mathers! Of course.

  Olivia mentally kicked herself for not thinking of her sooner. Mrs Mathers was still in town, but only just. There were a few bits of paperwork to tidy up before her former boss went down to Florida to begin her retirement. Olivia knew where she lived, and so that was where she would go. On foot, in scrubs and borrowed nurse’s shoes that were pinching after a night on her feet. In the cold, against which the borrowed coat offered little protection. Through a city that had slept as little as she had.

  It was nearly five miles from the hospital up to Mrs Mathers’s home on the other side of I-90, just off Lilac Road, near the very northern limits of the city. She’d walked the route before, twice. Though, on both occasions, in the other direction, walking from Mrs Mathers’s place to her own apartment. The first time, Mrs Mathers had been unable to drive herself home from work, and so Olivia had driven her, leaving her own car at work. The second time was after she’d loaned her boss her own car after Nora’s ancient Studebaker had lost its exhaust on a pothole near the airport. Both times had been in the fall, when the weather was still warm, and in the middle of a day when she’d had no reason to be anywhere else. She’d taken the sometimes-scenic route, mostly following the river. Today, that wasn’t an option since it would bring her far too close to her old apartment. Instead, she kept to Portage Avenue, following it north to I-90.

  At first she was utterly alone. There were no sirens, no pedestrians, no cars, just an occasional distant shot that made her hurry even faster. There were lights, though. An indication that the city wasn’t as empty as it first appeared. At first they were only behind windows, but the further she walked, and as the sun crawled above the horizon, people came out onto the streets. Their bags were already packed and went straight into the backs of their cars before they, just as quickly, threw themselves in and drove away. At one house after another, from one below-ground parking garage and then the next, cars flew by, heading in both directions. When she finally reached the interstate, again she saw cars, and again heading in both directions, though there were more heading west than east.

  Where were they going? Why? Where were the police? Where was the National Guard? The questions danced across her mind, her only companion as she hurried north.

  Mrs Mathers’s house was one of six built in a cul-de-sac off Lilac Road. The dinosaur of a station wagon was missing from the un-swept drive. Now she was looking for it, she realised that none of the neighbouring properties had a car outside either. Ice, and a little lingering snow, crunched underfoot as she walked up the S-shaped path to the un-lit door. She shivered, only partly because of the cold. She rang the bell. There was no answer. There hadn’t even been a buzz. She pressed it again, but heard nothing inside. The curtains were drawn in the den’s bay window, but it was obvious no one was home.

  Not wanting to think the worst, she made her way to the wooden gate that never properly locked. When she pushed upward on the frame, the lock disconnected, and the gate squeaked ajar. Never had she heard anything so loud in all her life. Auditory memories of gunshots and screams flashed across her brain. Fear, exhaustion, cold; it was all beginning to wash over her. In the four-tiered, white limestone rockery, she counted four rocks to the left, and found the fake rock with the hider-key inside. She went to the back door and opened it.

  “Hello?” she called. “Mrs Mathers? Nora? It’s Olivia. Are you home?”

  No reply came. She pushed the door closed, and brushed a foot against the floor. The doormat was gone. As was the dryer in the small utility room. She stepped into the kitchen and found it empty. No stove, no refrigerator, no table, no chairs. No framed cross-stitch on the wall. No photos on the shelf. No alphabetically
arranged jars of herbs grown and dried by Mrs Mathers herself. It was all gone. She tried the lights. They didn’t come on.

  The hallway was just as empty. The den wasn’t. She stumbled into the boxes, but with the curtains drawn, there wasn’t enough light to count how many. She returned to the hall and checked the other rooms, then upstairs. The house was empty. Mrs Mathers had already left.

  She sat on the top stair, head in hands, letting herself wallow in misery for half a beat. First Pete, then Nicole, now Nora Mathers. Gone. All gone. And she was alone.

  No.

  Despair Solves Nothing: that was the embroidered missive Nora had stitched and hung in her kitchen. After Mr Mathers had died, a misguided well-wisher had given her a ‘Bless-This-House’ kit with which the grieving widow was supposed to occupy herself. Mrs Mathers had taken out her anger in an utterly Nora way, stitching her own message instead.

  Mrs Mathers had told her she was heading down to Florida in a couple of weeks. She’d said she wanted to see what a billionaire would do with her store before she went south. She and Olivia were supposed to be having lunch later in the week, just the two of them. But she must have left early. Left and slipped away, without saying.

  As frustrating as that was, Olivia had a house to sleep in for the night. Or, considering the hour, for some of the day. There was no bed. No lights. No heat. No food. Nothing but some old boxes in the den. She went back downstairs. Water still ran from the faucet. The toilet still flushed, and there was a half roll of paper.

  “Well, who packs toilet paper when moving across country?” she said aloud. Speaking helped. Hearing words banished the creaking, hissing, auditory hallucinations haunting the dark and empty house. Dark, empty, and cold. Very cold. Increasingly so, now she’d stopped moving about. The house was well carpeted, but insulation wasn’t the same as heat.

  In the den, she slowly felt her away around the boxes neatly stacked in the centre of the otherwise empty room. She opened the curtains an inch, letting in just enough light to see the pair of folded lawn-chairs. She recognised them instantly, and didn’t need to read it to know that Generation Twelve would be etched on the frame.