The Pulse (17 page)

Bile rose in her throat and she strove to breathe through her mouth so she couldn’t smell the garbage on the river.

Eventually, after what seemed like they’d been walking forever, thick trees hid the river. They were on the Henry Hudson Parkway, and on their way out.

There were so many cars, many of them damaged, either from crashes after the Pulse suddenly stopped their engines or from vandals after the fact.

Emily and Mason walked, sometimes together, sometimes single file. Mason didn’t seem tired at all. Emily, on the other hand, was ready to call it quits. Her feet felt bruised and broken—every step torture. The dandelions she’d eaten hours before no longer made her feel full. It was like eating a puny salad and then running a marathon.

“Mason, we have to stop,” she said. He shook his head and kept walking.

Emily trudged forward despite her body’s resistance. Her stride became slower and slower until Mason was so far ahead of her she’d never catch up unless he stopped to wait.

Mason didn’t even notice—he kept going.

“Mason!” she called. He finally turned around and looked at her.

“What are you doing? We have to keep going.”

“I’m trying, I really am. But there’s only so far sheer willpower will take me when my legs refuse to cooperate.”

“You’re going to get us killed pulling stunts like this.”

She didn’t respond. It’s not like she was intentionally limping along at the speed of a slug.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll find us someplace out of sight to take a nap.”

Mason walked over to a silver Lexus with a leather interior. The door was unlocked. Opening the rear door, he gestured her inside. “Ladies first.”

Emily slid into the car, grateful to sit on a comfortable seat. The sun shining through the windows warmed the interior of the car. The leather felt smooth beneath her palms.

“Some guy must have been really bummed about losing this car,” Mason said. His sheer size seemed to take up the whole back seat, clouding out all rational thoughts from her mind with his enormous shoulders filling her field of vision. “You can rest now. Take a nap,” he said, gently pulling her down so her head rested in his lap. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

She smiled up at him. The bulge in his pants made all thoughts of napping fly right out of her head. “I’m very glad we stopped to rest,” she whispered, “but I don’t want to sleep just yet.”

She unzipped his pants, freeing his cock, which started to harden even as she licked her lips, preparing herself. Emily made a conscious decision she wasn’t going to waste even a second thinking about the circumstances surrounding the man she killed. She refused to let the late Private Andrews ruin blow jobs for her forever.

Taking a deep breath in anticipation, she lowered her face to Mason’s lap and ran her tongue down his shaft.

“More,” he said, and she swirled her tongue around the tip of his cock, licking the little slit at the end, teasing it with her wet caress until a drop of pre-come shone at the top of his cock, rewarding her efforts. She licked it off immediately.

“I need more,” he gasped, grabbing hold of her hair, fixing her head in place. She wrapped her lips around the head of his cock, sucking slowly until he was completely in her mouth. He groaned and slowly thrust back and forth, his hips raising to meet her mouth.

She held his heavy balls in one hand, gently massaging them. Suddenly he stiffened and ejaculated a steady stream of hot, salty come into her mouth. She sucked harder, swallowing it all. When he finished she sat up, pleased to see the satisfied smile on his face.

“Thank you,” he said. “That was an unexpected pleasure.”

“I needed something to eat, since I’m hungry,” she teased. “And your cock is very tasty.”

Mason smiled. “You know, I heard semen is a good source of protein and calories.”

“That’s not exactly true. There’s only like five to seven calories in the average man’s semen. But,” she said thoughtfully, “it does contain some fructose and protein secreted by the prostate gland to give the sperm something to energize them for their swim.”

He laughed, running his hands through her hair as she closed her eyes. “Where’d you learn that?”

“I’m a nurse,” she reminded him. “Or was the knock on your head so bad that you forgot who nursed you back to health?”

“You should rest now, while you can,” Mason said, his tone serious again. “But you have to take me seriously when I say we need to get out of the city.”

She sighed. “I know. Let’s go now, while we still have some sun.”

Mason opened the car door and slid out. He held his hand out to her and pulled her out. She was still exhausted, but the small break had revitalized her enough to start the journey again.

Mason walked a bit in front of her, his heavy footsteps pounding on the cracked pavement. His ass looked amazing in the cargo pants, but the camo shirt he wore, with the rifle slung over his shoulder, and now even his short hair, made him look so much like a soldier she had to keep reminding herself he wasn’t.

If he were, he would have killed her by now.

A man
stood by the side of the Hudson River Parkway, his face dirty, his hair so long it had become dreadlocked. He mumbled to himself, which was the only reason Emily noticed him. He was so filthy he almost blended into the landscape.

“Mason!” she hissed under her breath. “Look.”

They both ducked down, staring at the man. He talked animatedly to an invisible companion.

“How is that guy still alive?” Mason wondered aloud.

The man saw them and shrieked, throwing his hands in the air.

“It’s okay,” Emily said softly. “We’re not bad guys.”

The man pointed shakily to Mason. “He is.”

“No, no, it’s just a costume. Like playing pretend.” Emily walked slowly toward him.

Mason held her back, putting his arm out. “What are you doing?” he asked her.

“He needs help,” she said. Then again, he wasn’t starving to death. He actually looked quite well fed. But how? “Where do you live?” she asked the man.

“At the hospital. We all do.” He grinned, his mouth filled with rotten teeth. He was doing something with his lips, moving them around all weird. It reminded Emily of psychiatric patients who had been on antipsychotics for so long that they produced irreversible extrapyramidal symptoms—like that lip-smacking thing. Although this guy, like everyone else, was off his meds.

Hospital. Must be the New York State Psychiatric Institute—it wasn’t far away.

Mason nudged her. “Maybe he was really obese to begin with,” he whispered, as if he could read Emily’s mind when she wondered how he could be a normal weight while everyone else starved. “Hey!” he said, startling the man. “What do you eat?”

The man kept grinning, smacking his lips in that freaky way. “Are you hungry? There’s lots to eat at the hospital. You can come, if you want. Come.”

Emily’s stomach rumbled at the mention of food. Was it possible? Maybe, if a food truck had broken down nearby, or if they had just had their kitchen fully stocked, and then everyone’s family came and got them, so there were only a few people left to share the food… no. No way.

“It’s a trap,” Mason said warily.

“Or maybe they really have a ton of food at the hospital,” Emily said. “We can go check it out, see if the other patients are willing to feed some travelers, and go on our way.”

Mason nodded. “But I’m keeping my gun in my hand.”

Emily looked back at the psychiatric patient. “I’m Emily, what’s your name?”

“Chaz. You can follow me. You’ll like it where we live.”

Emily took Mason’s hand, for support, and they followed Chaz down off the highway. His feet, Emily, saw, were barefoot and bloody. She shook her head sadly. All the doctors and nurses must have left the hospital, leaving those poor patients to fend for themselves.

Like she had done to her patients.

No! That’s wasn’t true. Her supervisor had
told
her to leave, told her everyone would be okay. But maybe all her supervisor really wanted was to feel better about leaving as well.

She didn’t want to think about it. Everyone who hadn’t evacuated was dead now anyhow.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Mason whispered. “We should leave.”

“I want to see how he’s so well fed,” Emily argued. “As much as I love living off your come, it’s not really going to keep me going indefinitely.”

Mason sighed. “You’re right.”

Chaz was apparently excited to be showing them around his hospital. “Welcome welcome,” he muttered, still smacking his lips.

Emily stepped inside, nearly gagging at the horrible stench. There was no dedicated toilet area, and from the urine and feces covering the tiles, the patients had been going wherever the mood struck them.

Mason covered his nose with his shirt, and Emily would have had to follow suit if she weren’t so used to horrible smells from her career as a nurse. Instead, she breathed through her mouth.

There was an underlying smell, too. Like something rotting.

Emily and Mason followed Chaz down the hallway. She peered into one of the rooms. A putrefied corpse was in restraints on the bed. Emily could imagine what had happened.

After the Pulse, the nurses tried to keep everyone safe, but after a month, maybe less, the meds would have run out, and the patients would be, at least some of them, dangerous. As much as modern psychiatry preferred to not restrain patients, if it was a choice between the patient killing himself or someone else and pulling the old restraints out of the supply room, Emily knew all too well what would happen. What
did
happen.

And then—the nurses left, or died themselves. And the patient was left to die, strapped to the bed. The thought horrified her.

She wanted to throw up, but there was nothing in her stomach.

“Come on!” Chaz said. They continued down the hall. A doctor sat behind the nurse’s station—dead.

He had a bloody wound on his head and his skin was blue and mottled. One of the patients must have killed him—or maybe, she reasoned, he had an accident and died, and they had set him in his rightful place. She shuddered.

“That’s Doctor Gupta,” Chaz said cheerfully. “Good doctor, good doctor.”

Emily and Mason looked at each other. She realized now the stupidity in coming here. “Chaz, we’re hungry, do you have food for us?” she asked sweetly, trying to redirect him.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “This is my girlfriend, Amy,” he said, pointing to an older woman, who looked to be a bit chubby. How was that possible?

“Hi, Amy,” Emily said carefully. Amy ignored her, her eyes glazed.

Then she opened her chapped lips and belched. Without looking at Chaz, she said, “Make me dinner.”

Chaz grinned at her and turned away, going into a room across the hall.

Emily looked at Mason quizzically. He shrugged, standing awkwardly in front of Amy, who continued to ignore them.

Chaz came out of the room fifteen minutes later holding a plate with a chunk of pink meat of some sort on it, blackened in places from the fire it seemed he had grilled it on. “Here,” he said, kissing Amy on top of her greasy hair as he handed her the plate. Amy grunted and started shoveling the meat into her mouth, barely pausing, it seemed, to chew.

It smelled, and looked, like pork. But where had they gotten pork from? There certainly were no pigs roaming around New York City that Emily could think of. Her stomach grumbled again and she looked at Mason.

Mason coughed. “Where’d you get the meat, Chaz?”

Chaz smiled that rotten-toothed smile of his and gestured for them to follow him. “We have plenty, you can have some.”

At this, Amy looked up. “No, they can’t. They don’t live here.”

“Maybe they
will
live here,” Chaz said. “At least they move around and talk, which is nice. More than the others. More than the doctor.”

Emily got a sinking feeling in her stomach. It was possible, she realized, that Chaz and Amy were the only survivors here. The “others” who lived there, if they were anything like Doctor Gupta… were dead.

She gulped, suddenly not hungry anymore, not wanting to follow Chaz into the room with the fire and the meat.

But Mason was already walking with him, and Emily couldn’t stay alone with Amy. She hurried to Mason’s side, grabbing his shirt desperately. “I was wrong, this place is bad, we need to leave,” she whispered.

“I want to see what they’re eating,” Mason said.

Chaz opened the door. Inside a small fire was going in a metal wastebasket topped with a homemade grill made out of wire hangers. Clever.

And hanging over the hospital bed was a carcass. A human carcass.

Grand Central Terminal

JENNA

Jenna didn’t know
what to make of Emily’s message about the radio. The fact that the army, which was supposed to keep her safe, had been lying to her all this time about the outside world made her so angry she could spit.

Part of her wanted to tell everyone. To let all the girls on the Tracks know there was another way, another life, perhaps. Out there—outside of Grand Central.
But there’s no point
, she realized sadly.