Bleeders (5 page)

The nearby screams were getting closer. We needed to get out of there immediately. I could see the inevitable coming. The woman would get a hold of Jeremiah's leg, give him another bite, maybe two. He'd kill her, but he wouldn't be able to run, and I'd be forced to either drag him along out of guilt or leave him behind and feel bad about it for the rest of my life, however long that turned out to be. At the moment, neither option sounded too great.

So, I did what had to be done.

As Jeremiah kept kicking her I moved around to the side of them, and with as much force as I could give it, I stomped on her head.

The woman was stunned for a moment. So was Jeremiah.

I stomped her again. And again. I didn't stop until I heard a crunch and felt the skull crack under my work shoe. Then I stomped her again.

Jeremiah eventually pulled me off her, saying, "She's done, she's done," and I looked down and saw that Officer Miller was done, too. His eyes were staring up and his breathing was so shallow I could barely see it. The blood flowed down from his throat in slower and slower gushes.

Closer now, probably right around the corner, the screams were clearer, and it was becoming obvious they weren't screams of terror at all- they were the angry shouts of more of those goddamn things, whatever people were becoming. Down the block I noticed a roadblock had been put up across the road.

"That's why the street was so empty," Jeremiah said. "The cops blocked it off."

"I guess Miller and Diaz didn't get the memo."

We gave Miller one more look. He may have been an asshole, but he saved our lives in the end. My shoulder was on fire. I didn't know how much longer I could go on without someone looking at it. My head was pounding and my face felt swollen and hot. Jeremiah seemed to have the same idea.

"We need antibiotics," he said. "The pharmacies will be mobbed."

I sighed. "There's a clinic in Harlem we can try. I know someone who works there."

"Why don't you seem happy about it?"

"Because," I said, "I'm probably the last guy she wants to see."

As we took off in the opposite direction of those angry screams, we passed the bus that had crashed into us. It was wedged into a traffic light, one deflated tire up on the curb. Half the windows were splattered with blood. One window had a bloody hand pressed against the glass and wasn't moving that I could tell.

At the front of the bus, the driver was being eaten by two passengers.

CHAPTER SEVEN

New York had lost her mind.

Once we got past the roadblock, the chaotic, overcrowded city I knew so well came crashing back, but there was a new anxiety in the air. People were packing up their cars and closing up shops everywhere we looked. New Yorkers don't have a reputation for being the friendliest people to begin with, but there was a sense that everyone was keeping their distance from everyone else, and you approached them at your own risk. There was no music playing in car radios, only news reports, and every one of them sounded grim. We saw three fights on the way, one of them between two people who didn't even speak the same language.

The small orange and tan building I'd been to so many times was mobbed with people looking for help. They were lined up out the door and spilling past the small, black metal gate out front to wait for booster shots and magic vaccines that didn't exist. I overheard a Caribbean woman talking to another woman about Santeria and how she just needed to rub certain herbs on her head.

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 shaking 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.