Immortality (38 page)

Alex drank some more of the Southern Comfort and then handed it back to Sarah.

“You can’t imagine what it was like,” said Alex. “One moment you’re the same as everyone one else; then, the next instant, there’s this emotional and physical canyon you can never bridge. You’re now and forever different. Sometimes I catch myself watching a couple while knowing I can never have that again. I’m damaged goods. I can’t run up a flight of stairs; I can’t hike in the mountains – nothing that will heavily tax my body. I want to do some of those little things that everyone else does. It’s corny, but it’s true: you never appreciate little things until it’s too late and they’re gone.

“The doctors said there’s nothing more that can be done to repair the damage. Their opinion is that I’ll probably be dead before I turn fifty, but you know what? I don’t care. I’ve lost so much of my old life that losing what’s left doesn’t matter as much as it might have before. But for some reason I’m careful and I keep going on. If I do all the right things and don’t pop too soon, hey, who knows? Maybe there’s a chance some new treatment will come along. It’s funny, sometimes I catch myself thinking that I can just go out and get a few new parts for my body like you would for a used car. It’s hard to believe that with all this technology there’s nothing for me.”

Sarah wanted to hug him but held back.

“Alex, you shouldn’t be working as a cop,” she said. “It’s too stressful. You’re crazy to be doing this job.”

“You can’t tell anyone!” His eyes were wide with a look of someone who was far too alone. “I’ve lied about my health records. The shooting happened in Louisiana and there’s privacy laws covering medical records. If the Captain found out, he’d stick me with a desk job or worse. I love being a cop – even this lousy detail. It’s the one job where I can make a difference. Every day I wake up is a day that I might save lives. I have to leave some good behind when I’m gone. After I was shot, I never thought I’d get the chance to work as a cop again. It’s horrible and I feel guilty that a new chance for me came out of this plague. The police are desperate for hands and aren’t looking too closely at the applicants. If you have some kind of proof you worked as a cop, you’re hired on the spot.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” said Sarah.

She kissed him lightly on the lips, and wanted him all the more, wanted him for his vulnerability, for his honesty, for his haunted soul. A relationship was hopeless. He looked so desperate.

The moonlight reflected across the lake as streaks of silver. There was a soft lapping of water at the shoreline. Some time ago, they had moved inside to the front seat of the patrol car and rolled down the windows. Both Sarah and Alex were quietly intoxicated from a second bottle of Southern Comfort. She was warmly aroused and sensed Alex was in a similar mood. Maybe if she was gentle, so very gentle? With a sense of shyness, she began to unbutton her shirt. The shyness turned into a smile as she saw a mixture of fear and boyish desire flushing Alex’s face.

The moon was gone. With their tangled clothing straightened and back on, they had lain in each other’s arms for hours drifting in quiet talk and half dreams. Sarah knew that if they had enough time together this man could grow to love her. He was such a caring soul. How could any woman have rejected him the way his wife had? She gently hugged him to her chest in a desire to nurture the man and his soul. He had opened himself to her so completely and vulnerably. She wanted to do the same. She sat up. In the protective cocoon of their world, she told him her deepest secrets – how she’d survived in plague-ruined New Jersey and fled across quarantine lines. She described everything. Her past came out of her in huge gushes of emotion that she couldn’t have stopped even if she’d wanted to. Through it all, Alex had sat facing her, staring wordlessly.

“Look at my eyes,” said Sarah. “They look normal, don’t they? God, it’s hard to imagine these normal-looking eyes could have seen all those horrible things. I don’t understand how they can still be eyes. Why haven’t they been rotted away by what they’ve absorbed? Alex, it’s like I was a different person. I buried my own parents in holes I dug myself with these hands. I’ve seen so much death, felt so much heartache. I’ll be scarred and fleeing from what I’ve been through for the rest of my life; and when I sleep, the dreams… the dreams are worse than what really happened.”

It was done. She had emptied herself and stopped talking. It had felt good to unbottle her soul like that without any holding back. She knew they were now in some way married by their shared secrets. They each knew things that could ruin the other. Sarah waited in silence for Alex to say something…

Artie had no memory of coming to the window. He had no idea why he had been looking down from their apartment at the exact moment when it had happened. The rush of people returning from lunch was crowding the streets. On the sidewalk people began falling in their tracks. Out-of-control cars went into a chain reaction of collisions that were chewing up everything in their path. The noise was horrible. Artie was speechless. At some point, Suzy had come to the window. He became aware of her crying. The horror quieted down for a moment; then, he saw a bus coming along the avenue amid sparks from glancing impacts with stationary cars and trucks. The bus was gaining speed. Cars were whacked out of its path, some torn in half as if they were made of foil. A channel of crashed vehicles held the bus on course down the middle of the avenue until a gap in the wreckage allowed it to escape. The bus veered toward the curb and over a wedge of flattened car that sent it airborne in a graceful leap. The thirty-ton missile came to ground at the base of a newsstand, obliterating the structure in a spray of wood fragments, fiberglass, and cement. The bus careened a hundred feet more, straight into the side of a building, and stopped; but its engine continued to run, its rear wheels trying to jam it deeper into the building. He could see the tires slipping and then gaining traction. Something in the bus exploded with a bang that rattled the glass in his face.

An hour later, Artie and Suzy were sitting in the living room of their apartment. Fear was in Suzy’s eyes. Artie was certain his eyes looked the same to her. The television screen was filled with static. The drapes were pulled tight. The radio came back to life with an updated news bulletin on the disaster which had begun an hour ago: New York had been hit with the plague at one in the afternoon. The entire city and its suburbs were affected. Chaos and mob violence were ruling the city. Artie had no idea what to do. He had to save Suzy and the tiny life they’d created in her womb. With all he had done in his secret violent past, with all he knew about survival in the streets, there had to be something he could do. He knew with conviction that he was ready to die to save her.

The sun was fading. They had been sitting in silence on the couch for a long time. The telephones had not worked for hours. Like clockwork, every hour Suzy would mechanically pick up the phone and dial her parents in Washington. Artie was grateful that his parents had not lived long enough to witness this kind of end. He had his arm around Suzy and felt her sobs come again. She squeezed a pillow against her chest as if she were trying to wring the pain out of this world. A tone came from the television. Suzy jumped.

“
This is the emergency broadcast system. The civil defense has declared a state of emergency in your area. Please tune your radio to seven sixty on the AM dial.”

Artie felt worse than useless and it angered him. The same message played from the television every ten minutes. The radio was tuned to seven-sixty, but nothing had come through since he changed the channel. Earlier, the news had been horrible; but now any news was better than this emergency message which seemed to come from a system that no longer had people manning it. The last piece of information he’d heard was that the National Guard was being mobilized. The flames of anger grew hotter in Artie’s chest. The only National Guard he’d seen was a Humvee that had gone out of control and crashed into the first floor of their building. A fire truck siren began wailing far off in the city. The sound faded; then, was gone. A terrible thought occurred to Artie. What if the Humvee started a fire? He stood up. Suzy looked at him.

“Where are you going?”

“Downstairs to check on that Humvee.”

“No! You can’t. You have to stay here.”

Artie sat back down and hugged her.

“I have to take a look,” he whispered. “What if it starts a fire?”

Suzy went limp in her embrace. She was letting him go.

“I’ll be right back.”

There was this look of fear in her eyes that hurt him. He felt she was preparing to watch him die. He would be alright. He had to do this. He had to protect her. He picked up the loaded .357 magnum from the coffee table and left the smaller nine-millimeter behind for Suzy. Not that she would touch the gun, but he hoped if she was scared enough, survival instincts might take over. He locked the door behind him without glancing back. In the hallway, he put a scarf over his mouth and nose. He was worried about contagion. He walked up to the elevator, then thought better of it and took the stairs. He had a flashlight in his back pocket in case he needed it.

The lobby was in shambles. Water from a broken pipe was draining like a small river out into the street. The Humvee was embedded in a wall. The driver and his passenger were both dead from bullet wounds to the head. Artie didn’t want to get too close. He heard the crunch of a footstep in broken glass and swung around with his gun pointed.

“Whoa, partner,” said the man.

Artie recognized him from an occasional nod in the hallways. He was a big man with a western accent and wavy gray hair. He held a pump shot gun with a flashlight attached to the barrel. The muzzle was pointed at the ground. He wore a gasmask, the kind used by rescue workers. The man’s face was completely visible behind the mask’s visor. He had deep wrinkles around his eyes.

“I’m Jesse, Twelve C” said the man. His voice had an odd vibration caused by the gasmask.

“The name’s Artie…” He held out his hand, but didn’t give his apartment number. Suzy was there by herself.

“You been down here long?” asked Artie.

“’Bout an hour. I figured someone had to look out for the building and check into things. Glad to see at least one other man’s thinking the same way.”

A series of faint pops echoed from outside in the street. The sound was dozens of blocks away. Someone was killing his fellow New Yorker – nothing new, just more obvious. Jesse walked over to what remained of the front doors. Glass crunched under his boots. He shook his head.

“Looks like the party’s finally over,” said Jesse. “You know, for a long time I thought if it came, it’d be a terrorist with an a-bomb trying to finish what they started at the twin towers. Who’d have figured it’d be some goddamn natural born germ that’d take down all we built?”

“I’m not giving up,” said Artie.

“Neither am I, son. All I’m saying is our way of life is over. The world’s crashing out there; and I suspect for years to come, it isn’t going to be pretty. All those angry people living in poverty just got their lottery ticket cashed, and you can bet they’re gonna be joined by lots of other folks who feel entitled.”

“I’ve got to go check on my wife,” said Artie.

“You do that, son; and remember what I said. I know what I’m talking ‘bout. You see something that doesn’t look right – you either run or shoot. Don’t give the bad one’s a second chance, ’cause sure as shit they won’t be handing out any breaks to you.”

“See you, Jesse.”

Wyatt Erp, thought Artie as he walked toward the stairs. Then it hit him. He remembered hearing from a neighbor about this guy. He was as rich as they came and made every penny on his own. He started as a roughneck on oil rigs down in South America. There had been a story about him in the Wall Street Journal or some other paper.

Artie turned around to say something more, but Jesse was gone without a sound. Artie walked back out into the lobby and looked around. The man had vanished. There was only the sound of water draining out into the street.

The hike up the stairs was taking a long time. What Jesse had said about everything being over was starting to really enrage Artie. He wouldn’t let it end like this. Halfway up and badly winded, Artie was thinking about using the elevator; but getting stuck was worse then getting tired.

As Artie entered the front door, Suzy leapt into his arms. She kissed him and hugged him fiercely as if he’d been missing for years.

“I was so scared. I’m sorry about what I said.”

Artie had no idea what she was talking about. What had she said?

“You were gone so long. I thought you might have been hurt or worse.” Suzy began to cry. “I hadn’t told you I love you.”

“I’m here, Suzy. It’s alright. I’m sorry I was gone so long. This guy was in the lobby and...”

The emergency broadcast symbol dropped from the television. A reporter was speaking from a helicopter. The channel was re-broadcasting CNN. Entire blocks of the city were on fire. The aerial views reminded Artie of 9/11, only worse. The image shifted to a telephoto view of groups of people breaking into storefronts. The scene was lit by fire as much as by building lights. A piece of amateur video came on showing a gang member walking out into the middle of traffic and shooting someone in their car.

“
The streets are impassable. There are no fire companies to respond. Government estimates are placing the dead and injured at over one million. The spirit of community and pulling together that stood out during 9/11 is nowhere to be found. We have received numerous reports of gangs roaming the streets, killing and robbing at will. There has been a complete breakdown of law enforcement. The governor has made an urgent request to the federal government for the Army to be sent in. We understand that several companies of soldiers are on their way to assist the National Guard and will be on the ground within a few hours. These are troops who have been trained for urban warfare. Those who are trapped inside the city appear to be on their own until then.”