Hour 23 (7 page)

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 her 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.

“How are you feeling, Jim?” Ingram asked.

Jim took a seat beside his sergeant, tucking his paper night gown between his bare hind and the bed as he sat. “Like a shivering, drugged raccoon,” Jim said.

Ingram looked forward from the foot of the bed. He held his hands clasped in his lap. “I’m sure the doctor gave you the news earlier that you’re being mandated.”

“He did.”

“I hate to do it, Jim. You look like shit. But it’s bad out there.”

“Yeah?” Jim grunted. “How bad?”

“Bad. What you and Chow came upon this morning…that was just the start of it. It’s happening all over. First in the city, and now in East Violet.”

Jim scratched at the thin layer of stubble starting to form on his face and neck. “Min’s dead, isn’t he?”

Ingram sighed. “He’s not doing well.”

Jim nodded. “Hmph.”

“This morning,” Ingram said, “he picked up whatever that woman, Mrs. Cooper, had. They’re calling it a virus, but—all these doctors and scientists, they don’t know. They have ideas and theories, but deep down, they don’t know. It seems to be blood-borne. You weren’t cut or scratched, so you came back clean. But Min—”

“Min was doing his job,” Jim interrupted.

Ingram nodded. “Yeah, and he had to be a hero.”

Jim turned away and looked out his window.

“There’s a town-wide quarantine in effect now, Jim. They’re not letting anyone in—or out of—town. Chief Lehman hasn’t spoken up yet, he’s a damn mess. He wouldn’t know what to say.”

Jim reached over to his table and opened the pint of water that Sherri had left for him. In one hard swig he swallowed it.

“You’ve been under for a couple hours, Jim. I don’t want to give you any illusions about how bad it’s getting out there. C.D.C. has boots on the ground here, and in the city. But, it’s bigger than that. The National Guard is on standby, things are going to get worse—”

“Twenty-four hours, Sarge. I’ve been working for a day straight, my partner is dead—or dying—and I just woke from a codeine coma.”

“I know what you’re going to say—”

“I need to see my kid. I need to know that she’s all right.”

“She’s fine, Jim.”

“Yeah? How would you know?”

“Blankenship is stationed up at her school. The school’s on lockdown, too. She’s safe there, Jim.”

“Twenty-four fucking hours. I could resign right now.”

Ingram leaned back on the hospital bed and clicked his tongue. “You could. Hell, half the force has. But I know you, Jim. You’re one of the good ones. You’re gonna’ throw out a pension and any hopes of being hired as a cop ever again, and for what? To be a chicken shit and run for the hills? To see your kid and get a couple hours of sleep while this town burns itself down? If you want to help your daughter, you’ll stay and help those that need you.”

“You’ve got kids, Sarge?”

“I don’t, you know that—”

“You don’t. So cut the bullshit. Put me at the school with her.”

Ingram sighed. “I can’t do that Jim.”

“Why the hell not?”

“A quarantine is a quarantine. I can’t wave a magic wand and have it not apply to you. C.D.C. shut down Maple between East Violet and the high school. It’s a major roadway into town. It’s out of my hands, Jim.”

Ingram patted a duffel bag at the edge of the hospital bed and stood up. “New phone, fresh uniform, fresh shirts. A badge—didn’t have time to personalize one, obviously, so it’s  a temp. A Glock nine with two magazines, and a pair of boots I found in the station. If you decide you want to stay.”

“Where’s the stuff I came in here with?”

Ingram said, “Incinerated.”

Jim let out a deep, sarcastic chuckle. “Seriously?”

“Again, Jim. Out of my hands.”

“That’s just great. I had fifty bucks in my wallet. My lucky two dollar bill. A picture of Chloe.”

Ingram shuffled over to the door. His thick, chunky legs waddled as he walked. “I’ve got other officers to visit. Whatever you decide, I’ll understand. Ask the nurse at reception for me when you’re ready.”

Ingram left the room. Jim spent the next several moments leaned up in his bed, lost deep in thought. He grabbed the duffel bag that his sergeant left him, yanked the zipper open, and picked around inside. Right away he found a basic flip phone, opened it, saw that it had a decent charge. He dialed Chloe’s number.

“Hey it’s Chloe, and if you’re hearing this, who leaves voicemails anymore? Text me.” Jim smiled at the sound of his daughter’s voice. “Chloe, it’s dad. Listen. Stay where you are. Stay with Officer Blankenship and do what you’re told. Don’t be scared. I love you, I’ll see you soon. Everything will be all right.”

“Aren’t you looking spiffy?” Sherri said as she looked up from the nurse’s desk and gave Jim a once over.

Jim smirked and tugged at his uniform. The pants were too lose and the shirt was too tight.

“I need to find Sergeant Ingram,” Jim said.

“Of course. I’ll page him right away.” Sherri reached for a phone and announced Ingram’s name over the hospital loudspeaker.

As if by magic, Ingram quickly appeared in a hallway opposite the nurse’s desk. The portly sergeant toddled towards Jim, looked him up and down, and gave him a heavy pat on the back.

“I knew I could count on you, officer.”

“I want to see Min. That’s all I ask.”

“Jim, that would be difficult—”

“I want to see my partner or I walk.”

Ingram raised his eyebrows and his smile slinked away. He turned from Jim, pulled a phone from his pocket, and dialed a number quickly. The sergeant mumbled back and forth with someone on the other end for a moment, then snapped the phone shut and returned it to his pocket.

“All right, Jim. Follow me.”

Ingram marched off towards an elevator, with Jim following close behind. Ingram called the elevator, and the two stood waiting.

“I’m not sure you’ll want to see this,” Ingram said.

Jim said, “I don’t want to, but I need to.”

The elevator chimed and the two stepped in. Ingram inserted a key into a panel inside the elevator, then pressed a button for floor twelve. The two stood side by side quietly for the elevator ride up.

When the doors opened, Jim and Ingram stood in front of a long tunnel of plastic. A group of astronauts and deep-sea divers clamored around the policemen before leading them towards a decontamination chamber.

Jim turned to Ingram, who nodded. The two followed a yellow suited space ranger who brought them into a small tent. Ingram and Jim each put on a hazmat suit, layer by layer. A strip of duct tape at their ankles sealed their boots to their pant legs; a strip at their wrists sealed their gloves to their sleeves. The last step involved putting on a bulbous, astronaut-like helmet, which clamped into a plastic liner in the neckline of their suits. Breathing apparatus’s whistled to life in each of their helmets.

“We’ve got about fifteen minutes of breathe time. Twenty, tops,” Ingram said.

The pair headed down a long and winding passage of plastic tunnels before coming upon a stairwell.

“We hike to the next floor from here,” Ingram explained, and he opened the door to the stairwell. The two walked up the stairs to a landing with a large number thirteen spray-painted onto the wall.

Jim followed Ingram into the thirteenth floor and down another set of plastic passageways. This time they were shorter. After a brief walk, they stood in front of a window of what was once a nursery.

Min was barely recognizable, strapped to a gurney inside the nursery. His features were eerily lit by the mix of haphazardly hung industrial lights shining through the layers of plastic.

Jim ached to cover his mouth. His knees started to buckle slightly. He had to lean forward and put a hand on the window in front of him to keep from falling over.

“I’m sorry, Jim,” Ingram said. He patted Jim’s back.

Inside the nursery, Min’s body jerked and twitched as it tried to escape the shackles that restrained him. He was missing whole patches of hair from atop his head. Pustules blistered up around his eyes, cheeks, and the corners of his curled back lips. Min looked nothing like the spunky, youthful officer Jim had known from so many years working together. Min’s mouth clicked open and shut; sometimes slow and with long pauses between, and other times in bursts like a camera shutter. His eyes scanned the room around him, bloodshot and yellowed. Lifeless.