Blood Red (11 page)

“What do you think?” Jenny asks her wearily,
bringing Rachel out of her daze.

“About?”

“I mean, what are you going to do?”

Without thinking, Rachel answers, “I want to
go find my dad.”

“Can I come with you?” Jenny asks
immediately.

Rachel turns to Jenny. “Wouldn’t have it any
other way.”

Jenny’s smile is surprisingly brimming with
emotion. “Thanks.”

“But I also want to help Bonnie.” Rachel sees
Bonnie across the room, attending to a preteen girl who is holding
on to a Raggedy Ann doll with a wounded ferocity. Rachel can tell,
even from this distance, that Bonnie has the right soothing touch
for those who need it. “If Dad’s alive, I’ll find him.” She doesn’t
admit to Jenny what she thought before, that a part of her is
reluctant to begin a search for fear of finding him dead. “Or he’ll
find me. For now, I want to do what I can here. Okay?”

“Let’s do it.”

The two of them arrange with Bonnie to help
in room 109, administering pain medications and calming those who
need it.

After three hours, the number of maimed grows
so that they have to expand to room 111, an equally large space
into which other volunteers haul cots and gurneys to handle the
overflow. The work is heartbreaking—one case of life-altering
wounds after another, most so severe that the best they can do is
administer morphine and wait for the end. The morphine supply,
branded Roxanol, is kept under lock and key, and both Bonnie and
Sofia hold keys around their necks. Scott occasionally appears,
briefly, to supervise. He’s also replenishing the medicine supplies
from time to time, probably from upstairs storage, Rachel
guesses.

She herself administers morphine to two young
children who remind her bitterly of Sarah, their eyes bleached and
unseeing, their skin rippled and burned. She carries them to their
beds and holds her palm to their ruined foreheads, singing
lullabies to them as they drift away, savage tears crusted in their
eyelashes. One of them dies right in front of her, her final
breaths sounding more like coughs than exhalations.

After a while, Rachel notices that the pace
of arrivals has slowed. She’s lost count of the number of victims
in these rooms, most of them probably terminal. Many of the cots
have become deathbeds holding sheeted bodies, and as more people
have come in through the afternoon, those bodies have moved to the
edge of the room where Sarah still lies. Rachel prefers not to let
her gaze drift that way, toward the multitude of bodies lined
together in orderly rows against the south wall.

From what Bonnie has told her, as she has
moved to and from the admissions area, the number of corpses lining
the inner hallways has also grown, to the point at which volunteers
have been carrying the dead to the second floor via the main
stairwell on the other side of the emergency-room waiting area.

It’s dusk when Rachel finally breaks away
from rooms 109 and 111. Her soul feels hollowed out. She walks
slowly, exhausted, needing to find a quiet place, needing to be
alone, to push back from the frenzy and deal with her thoughts,
which are returning more forcefully to her dad’s whereabouts. How
many times now has she realized that she should have gone
immediately in search of him? Why is she holding back?

She curses herself for her indecision, and
even finds herself muttering an apology to him.

I have to get out of here! I have to find
him!
And then her thoughts turn inevitably to
Why hasn’t he
found me?

She’s wandering the halls aimlessly, wiping
at tears. No, she knows where she’s going. No sense trying to
delude herself.

She moves deeper into the hospital.

In minutes, she can see the fifth examination
room ahead of her on the left. She approaches the closed door
warily, casting glances back where she came from to make sure no
one can see where she’s going.

She clasps the door handle and pushes it
open, entering on light feet.

She flips the light switch and makes her way
to the back of the room, where the destroyed motorcyclist is still
splayed atop the examination table. Rachel stops near his feet and
gazes down at the poor mess. The glowing orb at the skull is only
subtly visible from this angle, but she doesn’t want to get too
near it now. She just stands there.

“
What are you?”
she whispers.

After some minutes, she reaches down and
touches the flesh of his calf, which has been exposed by violently
shredded fabric. It has been hours—possibly twelve hours now—since
the beginning of the phenomenon, when something inside these people
began to change them. That’s what Rachel is sure now is happening
to these bodies. They’re changing. They’re becoming something else.
For the span of hours since she first touched Susanna’s and Tony’s
skin, finding it more pliable than it should be, and since she
touched this man’s arm, finding it give still more beneath her
touch, her certainty has grown only stronger. Scott is wrong about
this, and his refusal to listen to her will cost him somehow.

She presses the motorcyclist’s flesh now, and
it gives sickeningly, her fingers sinking too far, too fast, into
the warm skin. Rachel yanks her hand back, not only at the
sensation but also because of something else. A jitter of movement
out of the corner of her eye.

Something in this man’s body reacted to her
touch.

She backs away clumsily, her heart thudding,
then refocuses. She finds the courage to move closer to the man’s
fragmented skull, stepping lightly, afraid he might hear her and
wake up. Silly, she knows, but alone with this man, in this
claustrophobic room, she feels an almost irrational, spiking fear
like heat in her chest. Still, she edges closer.

What she sees makes her breath stop in her
throat.

Above the ruined jaw, the man’s cheek is
experiencing the slightest flutter, like the twitching of an eyelid
after too little sleep. She watches the movement with frank
curiosity, her breath still trapped in her lungs. The incongruent
slant of his dead gaze sickens her, and she tries to avoid those
flat, dilated, half-closed eyes as she studies the movement of the
skin below them, but it’s difficult. The wide pupils are gazing in
two different directions, from the horrific violence of the
collision. Rachel instead focuses her gaze intently on that
cheek.

Until one dead eye swivels in her
direction.

And then Rachel isn’t seeing anything but a
swirl of light and dark as she flails backward, crashing, out of
the room, one hand clamped like a vise to her mouth.

“Okay, we have to get the hell out of here.”

Jenny looks at her, fearful of Rachel’s shaky
tone. “What’s the matter? Rachel, you’re white as a ghost!”

“I have to find my dad.” She feels that she
might melt into tears at any moment.

Room 111 is alive with the sounds of
agony—moans of anguish from both the injured and bewildered loved
ones. Jenny is holding a hypodermic needle, readying it for the
next arrival. Rachel, feeling so dizzy she might faint, closes her
eyes against all the horror and braces herself against a wall,
leaning over, breathing heavily.

“Rachel, what happened?”

After Rachel catches her breath, she recounts
what she’s seen, and Jenny reacts with a confused look of horror.
She’s shaking her head, struck mute. She sets the syringe down
carefully.

“I’ll tell Bonnie,” Rachel says,
straightening. “Then I’m out of here. I don’t know what the fuck is
happening to these bodies, but what I do know is that it’s only
just started. Something horrible is
just starting
. And this
hospital is filling up with them. I have to find my dad before—I
don’t know. You still want to come?”

“Yeah,” comes Jenny’s distant reply.

Rachel moves off, noticing Jenny deflating
against an empty gurney, her eyes glazed. Rachel stops, grabs her
by the shoulders, and stares at her intently.

“I’ll be right back.”

It takes her a while to find Bonnie. She’s
forced to search through the front area of the hospital’s first
floor, weaving through several clutches of human misery. The dimly
lit corridor of bodies is now only sparsely attended by the living.
Only three steadfast family members have stayed with their loved
ones, and all three are bent over the bodies, praying. Rachel eyes
them warily, knowing that sometime soon, those bodies are going to
start moving.

Not waking up—that’s for sure. But moving.
She’s certain of it.

With the help of a sweaty volunteer, she
finds Bonnie in an office room beyond the admissions area,
half-seated on the corner of a desk, sneaking a cigarette. She
glances at Rachel guiltily as Rachel walks in.

“You caught me.” She blows out a rush of
smoke. “Can’t imagine a day like this without cigarettes.”

“Bonnie, I—”

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

Rachel nods. “I have to find my dad.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“Listen, I paid another visit to our
motorcyclist friend.”

Bonnie stubs out her cigarette and stands up.
“Okay.”

“These things are…are coming back to
life.”

“What?” Bonnie is already shaking her head.
“Oh my lord, what do you mean?”

Rachel tells her exactly what she saw, the
way the dead eye swiveled in its socket to look at her. An
adrenalized shiver travels her spine at the recalled image.

“That man can’t be alive!” Bonnie almost
whines.

“He’s not.”

“Oh, Rachel, that’s too fantastic to—” She
pauses, her mouth working. “It could…it could be an involuntary
movement, a muscle spasm. I’ve heard of that happening even after
death—
long
after death!”

Rachel has to admit, Bonnie’s explanation
brings the smallest amount of comfort to her, enough for her to
drop her defenses the tiniest bit. And then she sighs, knowing that
she can’t give in to overreaction or hysteria.

“All right,” she says. “Please promise me
you’ll keep your eye on them.”

“Of course I will. I’ll put James and
Stephanie on it. And I’ll have someone take a look at the
motorcyclist.”

“Someone you trust.”

“Right.” Bonnie straightens up, wipes a hand
across her brow, ready to return to work. “Where are you
headed?”

“My dad works south on College, near
McDonald’s down on Harmony. That’s where I’ll start.”

“Don’t forget it’s Saturday.”

“That’s my dad.” She exhales a weak laugh.
“Overachiever.”

“Okay.” A significant pause weighs heavily in
the small office. “Be careful.”

Impulsively, Rachel steps forward to Bonnie
and embraces her. She can tell that Bonnie is surprised, reacting
stiffly for a moment, but Rachel needs the closeness all of a
sudden, needs the touch of this woman who reminds her so much of
her mother.

“I will,” she says. “And I’ll find him.”

“I know you will.”

“Listen,” Rachel says in the midst of the
embrace, “say goodbye to Alan for me, will you? I’ll start sobbing
if I have to say bye to both of you.”

Rachel removes herself from the hug and
leaves the room. She feels emotion in her throat and wetness at her
eyes, but she shakes herself away from these unbidden tears,
working her way back toward the front of the hospital.

In ten minutes, she’s walking with Jenny out
the double doors of the front entrance. It’s full dark outside now,
and with the power out seemingly citywide, the darkness is inky,
with virtually no visibility beyond the weak glow of the hospital’s
generator-powered lights. Making matters worse, the lingering smoke
carries its own blackness across the night. There is no starlight
or moonlight.

“Oh my God,” Jenny whispers. “It’s so
dark
!”

The blackness takes them both by surprise;
it’s almost breathtaking. Rachel surges forward, pulling Jenny with
her. She has to get away from this hospital and find her way to her
father.

She sees the rear of Susanna’s car, which is
now surrounded by other hastily parked vehicles. Her eyes are
watering from forcing them open so wide in the darkness. They
arrive at the Honda’s trunk, splitting up to go to either side.
They fling open the doors and drop into the bucket seats. In the
glow of the cabin light, Rachel sees her backpack, undisturbed at
Jenny’s feet, and feels a jolt of anticipation. She grabs it and
unzips its main pouch, drawing out two of the water bottles. She
hands one to Jenny.

“Awesome,” Jenny says, taking it eagerly.

“There’s food in there, too.”

Jenny is already gulping down her water. They
both drain the bottles quickly, nearly without taking a break.

Rachel twists the key in the ignition, and
the Honda cranks to life. The clock in the dash reads 9:14. She
pulls out and carefully exits the parking lot, just as another
vehicle, a red Jeep, is angling in. The woman behind the wheel is
in hysterics, wiping her eyes as she veers around the Honda, coming
to an abrupt stop behind two parked cars at the front entrance.
Before Rachel can witness another awful display of extreme grief,
she turns the Honda onto Lemay, headed south, while Jenny cranes
her neck, watching the hospital’s façade recede behind them.

“She’s got a body in her arms,” Jenny says
quietly, sadly. “Looks like a child.”

“Yeah,” Rachel says, defeated.

A long moment passes.

“Where do you want to start?” Jenny asks,
turning back.

“I think he was at work when it happened,”
Rachel replies. “So we’ll start there.”

“Well, what if—”

“He’s alive.”

“Okay, but—”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

Jenny looks forward at the oncoming road and
is quiet. Even after Rachel flips on her high beams, it’s like
looking at the world through tunnel vision. There are no vehicles
moving at all now, in either direction, just the same halfhearted
collisions dotting the road all over the place, butted up against
the light poles, guttered, angled over curbs. And as Rachel strains
to adjust her eyes in the blackness, she can see indistinct red
illumination coming from every car, like crimson jack-o’-lanterns.
Rachel points them out sickeningly to Jenny, who visibly
shivers.