Blood Red (10 page)

The man is a disaster, a mess of broken bones
haphazardly concealed by jeans and weathered leather. Overweight,
probably fifty years old, he’s now a pulpy scramble of limbs and
road burn. Rachel feels hot tears coming to her eyes.

“Look at his face,” Bonnie whispers, then
adds, “if you can.”

Rachel swallows and inches closer toward the
far end of the bed. The man’s head is cleaved at the scalp,
revealing brain tissue and messy shards of skull. She can also see
that his lower jaw has dislocated and is at a severe angle, his
teeth exposed at his left ear, which hangs loosely. The entire face
is loose, allowing examination deep into the inner workings of the
skull. And in the soft light, the red glow is all too clear.

“Don’t get too close,” Bonnie reminds
her.

Nodding absently, Rachel moves a bit closer,
beholding more of the source of the glow than would be possible in
any other human. It’s the obscene damage to this man’s skull that
has allowed her to see the thing in the open. And what she sees is
part of a glowing orb, three or four inches in diameter, above the
ruined jaw and beneath the hanging ear. Angling her gaze, she can
see that it’s situated deep inside, more deeply than she realized,
behind and below the nasal passages. The glow makes the bloodstains
seem dark, almost tar-like.

“Can I touch him?” Rachel asks, glancing back
at Bonnie, who frowns almost comically.

“Why would you
want
to?”

“Something I noticed before.”

“Go right ahead,” Bonnie says. “Just be
careful, for goodness sake.”

Rachel reaches out and touches the man’s skin
on an unbloodied patch of his upper arm. And yes, the skin gives
more than it should. It’s pliant but not loose. It still springs
back after her touch, but it doesn’t even feel like human flesh.
What comes to mind is not quite overripe fruit, but something like
that.

“What is it?”

“I felt this with my stepmother and my…my
friend,” Rachel says. “The skin isn’t as firm. Go ahead, feel.”

Bonnie does so reluctantly, with a
grimace.

“Do you feel it?”

A nod. “I do.”

“It feels wrong, right?”

Another nod.

“And you know the weirdest part?”

“What?”

“That skin is still warm.”

Bonnie snatches her hand back and looks at
Rachel with her own look of horror. “You’re right, I didn’t even
think of that.”

The two women stand there, considering the
phenomenon that’s taking place in front of them. It’s more than
either can comprehend, more than either wants to fathom in the face
of everything else. But they also feel it’s vital that they make
the attempt.

“I have to tell Scott about this,” Bonnie
whispers.

“He’s in charge, huh?”

“He’s a handful, but yes, I guess so.” Bonnie
can’t seem to take her eyes away from the man on the bed. “I work
in a family practice a block over. I ... had to help. Scott took
control, because he’s the loudest, I guess.” She offers a weak
laugh.

“I’ll tell him,” Rachel says.

In the hallway on the way back toward the
admissions desk, Rachel remembers the cell phone in her pocket and
digs it out. She flips it open and sees signal meter bars, but when
she attempts to call her dad’s phone, there’s nothing—no sound, no
attempt to make the call. She closes the phone and jams it into her
pocket again.

“I don't think anyone has been able to make a
call around here," Bonnie says. "Someone told me that even though
some of the cell towers still have backup power, most of the other
parts of the cell networks have been destroyed.”

“What about landlines?”

“Those are out too. Just dead
everywhere.”

Rachel feels another deep ache for her dad.
She desperately wants to hear the sound of his voice. She shouldn’t
have left the house without leaving him a note or something. Or she
should have gone straight to his work without even thinking,
without stopping for anyone. She should have shut out the rest of
the world and made it her primary goal to find him, whether that
meant finding him alive or finding his body.

That last thought manages to cramp her
insides with anticipated grief, but she doesn’t let it show. And
she doesn’t think the worst is true. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking,
but she believes she can feel that he’s still alive. After her mom
died, she developed an almost umbilical bond with her dad that
wasn’t there before. For two years, they were inseparable—until
Susanna entered the scene. Now she feels that closeness surging
back, that intense connection with him, however geographically
distant he might be. It sounds ridiculous, but she believes it. She
has to believe it.

Her father is alive.

And he’s at his office.

There’s a comfort in that certainty that
prevents her from leaving immediately in the Honda; she doesn’t
want to challenge it. If she were to actually go out and find him
dead, her world would be over. Better to believe that he’s
alive.

When Rachel and Bonnie reach the corridor
full of bodies, Rachel notices that some of the family members are
leaving the bodies of their loved ones, perhaps to go in search of
others in town? She watches one woman say her goodbyes, touching
what appears to be the body of her husband with a note of finality
and rushing forward out of the hallways in tears.

While the two women approach the double doors
that lead back into the admissions area, they hear heightened
commotion at the front of the hospital—yelps of pain or anger. They
glance at each other, pick up their pace into a jog, and hurry
through the doors. Perhaps half a dozen new people have arrived,
and the volunteers have their hands full with their needs. Most
have new bodies to add to the corridor of bodies behind the double
doors.

“Oh my!” Bonnie says, already hurrying to the
new arrivals. She calls back to Rachel, “Can you give me a
hand?”

Rachel follows Bonnie to a man who has
stumbled through the front doors, cradling a boy in his arms. The
boy is writhing in pain, obviously suffering from the same
affliction that befell Sarah. The father keeps crying, “Help him!
Help my son!”

Before Bonnie can reach him, the poor man
stumbles against a waiting-room chair and goes sprawling, the boy
flying from his arms and landing awkwardly against one of the
magazine-littered tables. The boy cries out wretchedly,
alarmingly—that same wounded-animal mewling that Sarah made.

And now Jenny is back at Rachel’s side,
helping her lay the boy flat on the ground. There are several
large, pale swatches of skin across his face, and his eyes have
gone blind; the pupils are thick, gray, unseeing dots. Rachel
places her hand softly against the thick, damaged flesh of his
cheek, trying to soothe him. Then he’s being lifted away from her,
onto a stretcher and whisked away with his father by one of the
volunteers. She knows they’re on their way to room 109 and to Alan,
and for some reason that comforts Rachel.

She surveys the waiting room, which is about
half full of survivors—like Rachel and Jenny themselves—who remain
stunned by what has happened to their world in the space of a few
hours. They stand there, pale, scared, staring blankly. People move
hesitantly to the admissions area to ask a question, receive
earnest though uncertain replies, after which they wander away, not
having received any kind of answer they were hoping for. They even
seem to be glancing to Rachel for answers. Their loved ones are
mysteriously gone to them, probably forever, lying on beds and
stretchers behind those double doors, and no one can tell them
anything.

“Rachel?” comes Bonnie’s voice from across
the room.

Both Rachel and Jenny turn. Bonnie is
standing with Scott at the admissions desk. Rachel walks over, and
Jenny follows. The admissions desk still has a look of stressed-out
disarray. A few seemingly anonymous volunteers huddle together in
confused consultation. Scott looks intensely weary, as if he’s been
on official duty here for thirty-six hours, and the others
surrounding him look dazed. But despite his look of bleary-eyed
distress—which Rachel can certainly empathize with—he has a look
about him that repels Rachel at once, particularly as she gets
closer, arriving at the desk. Rachel takes in Scott’s shock of
sweat-matted red hair, the deep concentration of freckles all over
his face and arms. He has the look of a man in charge who has no
doubt that he should be.

“This is Rachel,” Bonnie says, gesturing, and
Scott gives Rachel a curt nod. Her tone goes lower. “I was talking
to her about the bodies, and she might have some information we
haven’t heard yet. Rachel, can you tell Scott what you told
me?”

Rachel feels the eyes of several people
turning her way, and she feels a current of teen inadequacy wash
over her. She takes a breath. “I’m sure you’ve already seen—”

A slash of a smile crosses Scott’s face.
“We’ve seen quite a lot this morning.”

“Well, um, I discovered something strange
about these bodies.”

Scott gives Bonnie a look. “All right.”

“These bodies have no pulse,” Rachel says,
haltingly. “And obviously they aren’t breathing. They’re
unresponsive. Like probably everyone here, I woke up this morning
to find everyone around me dead.” Her voice warbles at that last
word, and she has to clear her throat. “And by now, we all know
about that red glow coming from inside them. But something is
happening to these people. I don’t know, it’s…it’s like they’re
somewhere between life and deat—”

“You’re suggesting these corpses aren’t …
dead?” Scott cuts in.

“Well, I don’t know, exactly. I mean, I don’t
know what the hell is happening, but I can tell you…”

“Yes?”

Commotion continues unabated behind Rachel,
and she can see Scott’s attention already wandering. She feels weak
and small in the face of this sweaty bureaucrat and has to grind
her teeth a moment to kick-start her confidence. She glances at
Bonnie, who gives her a patient nod.

“Their skin,” Rachel says.

“What about it?” Scott’s attention returns
reluctantly.

“I think it’s…well, I think it’s
changing.”

“Changing?”

“It’s becoming less firm. More pliable.
Softer.”

Scott lets loose a small, impatient sigh.
“Have you ever touched a dead body before tonight, young lady? A
recently
dead body?”

Rachel stares at him.

Scott studies the waiting room as he speaks,
his bloodshot eyes flashing. “A body that has recently died really
no longer supports the flesh. It has begun to deteriorate. The
muscles underneath have relaxed. That is, before rigor mortis sets
in. Bacteria is getting in there, you know, and the skin has
basically started to melt—”

“Yes, I know all that, it’s just—”

“—and then the skin starts to shrink,” he
continues, talking over her, “and the internal tissues start to
decay, slowly turning into liquids and gases. The flesh literally
becomes liquid under the skin. Like soup. Like—”

“Hey!” Rachel pounds the desk with her fists
and stares hard at him. “These bodies are still warm!”

The admissions area has gone quiet, and now
all eyes within a twenty-foot radius are on her. She feels her face
go red. Scott’s gaze, in particular, is locked on her.

“Stop talking to me like a child, all right?”
Rachel says evenly. “All I’m doing is trying to help. I’m as scared
as the rest of these people. I’m just sharing information,
okay?”

The people surrounding Scott begin to shift
uncomfortably, and Bonnie’s eyebrows have lifted.

Scott’s voice has an even sharper edge now.
“It can take hours for a corpse to reach room temperature. You
might have learned that in school next year.” He stands straighter,
lets loose a sigh as he surveys the room. “Look, I’m sorry to be
short with you.” He notices some newcomers hurrying through the
door, motions one of the young men at his side to go help. “But
right now I have to deal with what’s in front of me. And what’s in
front of me is a waiting room full of, as you’ve said, scared
people.”

Rachel glances at Bonnie, who does no more
than return her gaze sympathetically before moving back into the
waiting room to assist someone.

“All right.”

“Now, if you’ll excuse me…” Scott says,
already beginning to walk away.

“Wait, Scott?” She reaches over the counter
and touches his wrist. “Do you have any idea what it is? This…this
thing—under the skin? Does anyone know what it is?”

“We have some ideas,” he says. He looks down
at her hand touching him, and she takes her arm back.

“What ideas?”

He stares at her with his red-rimmed eyes.
“Ideas.”

“Can you share them?”

“Not at this time. Look, young lady? I really
need to—”

“Fine, fine.”

Scott moves off to huddle with his impromptu
team, and Rachel steps away, joining Jenny again, who, Rachel
notices for the first time, seems to be at a complete loss. It
occurs to Rachel that she hasn’t yet asked about her friend’s
welfare or what her plans are. She knows Jenny has family behind
those double doors. Two bodies lying beneath sheets, two sisters
with whom yesterday she might have enjoyed fun and laughter. With a
pang of guilt, she puts her hand on Jenny’s shoulder and looks out
on the waiting room. It isn’t exactly bustling, but there are a few
new people needing attention.

Rachel now believes that there are about
fifty survivors in this hospital. Not only the loved ones of the
victims but also, she’s noticed, individuals who have come here for
the simple reason that others are gathering here. It’s a natural
gathering place. She wonders if there’s any way to extrapolate her
estimate into some kind of ballpark figure that would tell her the
percentage of the population this thing has stricken. That thought
leads again to the inevitable and haunting notion that whatever
this is, it has struck on a global level. Again, Rachel has to
shake herself away from such pessimistic thoughts.