Blood Red (19 page)

“Did everybody leave?” Jenny wonders.

“Guess so,” Rachel whispers.

They move toward the front doors, and Bonnie
rushes in with a preteen boy in her arms. One look tells Rachel
that the boy has suffered the same flesh-mutilating trauma as the
others she saw come in earlier.

“I’ll take him,” Alan insists, going to
Bonnie.

She gratefully, carefully, hands over the
boy, and Alan whisks back through the propped-open double doors
toward room 111. A chorus of hisses greets his entrance into the
dim hallway.

“Poor little soul,” Bonnie breathes. “A
policeman brought him in.”

The strobing lights are coming from a police
cruiser, which is angled at the front entrance, its motor still
ticking. Standing next to it is the policeman Rachel recognizes
from Old Town, the serious-looking cop desperately seeking control
in an out-of-control situation. He’s talking into his two-way
radio. She feels an optimistic jolt, seeing that some kind of
communication is occurring, that even one law-enforcement officer
is still around in the world.

“He just showed up,” Bonnie says. “I was
seeing Irene off, and, well, there she goes.”

Just beyond the police cruiser, a Toyota
pickup is creeping out of the parking lot, and Rachel catches a
quick glimpse of Irene’s profile in its driver’s seat. Despite
their differences, Rachel wishes her well. A sigh escapes Bonnie’s
mouth.

Rachel marvels again at the deep blackness of
the night. Without thinking, she reaches into her jeans pocket and
pulls out her phone to check the time. Then she remembers that the
phone is dead. She repockets it, looking behind her for a clock.
There’s one above the admissions desk, and it reads 1:11 a.m. She’s
pretty sure it’s accurate; it must be a battery-powered clock.

There’s a small group of men farther out in
the dim parking lot; squinting, Rachel recognizes Scott and a
couple of the frenzied volunteers from earlier.

“Did he come with anyone else?” Jenny
asks.

“Just the boy. Said he found him wandering
down Riverside. He could barely talk, said something about his mom
in the car.”

Rachel is still watching the cop, and after a
few moments he twists around to look in her direction. He seems to
be reporting the number of people he’s found here, into his radio.
His gaze catches on her twice, doing a little double-take. He
points at her curiously. He ends his conversation and places the
radio back on his belt. Then he walks over.

“I remember you.”

“Rachel,” she says. “This is Jenny, and
Bonnie.”

He nods at them. “Joel.”

Joel has a layer of soot all over him, most
prominently swiped in sweat at his brow.

“We saw the fire burning for a while,” Rachel
says. “How’d that work out?”

“Shit, burned down half the businesses right
above Oak, the east side of the street there.” He pauses to dig a
half-empty pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and shake one
out, putting it to his lips. “Not a thing I could do about a lot of
that. We finally managed to get a truck over there and got a hose
hooked up to a hydrant, but it was too late to do much. Took the
whole block. Everything pretty much burned out. Still burning,
actually. We took care of a perimeter, though.” He lights up the
cigarette with a blue Bic lighter.

“Where are the rest …?”

“A couple of guys are taking charge at the
college, the student center. I helped corral most of the downtown
survivors over there. They’ve got a generator over there, too.
Going smooth. And I finally got one other cop on the radio, out of
the southeast precinct, and he’s arranged something at an
elementary school down there off Harmony. Between us, we have about
fifty people, I think.”

“Fifty!” Jenny says. “That’s all?”

“I’ve seen others wandering around. Most
people are just lost. But no, there’s not many of us that survived
this thing.”

Bonnie speaks up. “Officer, do you have any
idea how far this thing reaches? That is to say, is it just Fort
Collins, or has it reached Denver?”

“I’ve been getting chatter on the radio all
day, and CB reports from a trucker stuck on Mulberry. Not much of a
network, but it’s there ...” He blows out some smoke and peers
closely at them. “Word is, it’s the entire country. Possibly
global. There’s nothing out there. Hell, there are still planes
falling out of the sky everywhere.”

“Dear lord.” Alan has appeared behind them.
Rachel glances back at him, reaches back to touch his shoulder.

“So who’s in charge here?” Joel asks, looking
like he’s tired of talking about the end of the world. “One of
you?”

“Scott over there has been managing things
since this morning,” Bonnie answers charitably, but her voice goes
quieter. “To be honest, though, since things started getting out of
control, he’s been less than reliable.”

“Getting out of control? You’re talking about
the bodies,” Joel says on a rush of smoke.

“They’re waking up,” Jenny says.

Rachel cuts in, “I wouldn’t put it that way,
exactly.”

“That boy I brought in—I’ve seen a few others
like him. In fact, I sent a couple others like him this way, with
some other people. I guess I hoped someone here might be able to
help them. But this poor kid. It happened right in front of me, in
the front seats of a goddamned Hyundai. He was locked in there. Or
he didn’t want to get out. He just wanted his folks to wake up. And
it…burned him, or whatever. So yeah, I see what’s happening.” He
takes a pull on his cigarette. “I don’t
understand
it, but I
see what’s happening. That’s one reason I’m here. I was hoping
someone here might be working on some answers.”

“Well, I don’t think Scott’s your man,”
Bonnie says with a glance at Rachel.

“He doesn’t appear to be interested in
talking to law enforcement, such as it is.”

“Listen,” says Alan, clearing his throat,
“it’s probably not my place to say this, but I need to mention it.
It’s important. While I was tending to the wounded, Scott was
taking from the morphine supply. He told me he needed it for
survivors in the lobby, but I never saw those people. He was…he was
not particularly friendly when I asked him about it. I suspect he,
well—”

“You are shitting me,” Jenny says, eyes
flashing. “With all these people around him who really need
it?!”

“Now, I’m not completely sure that he’s
taking it for himself,” Alan says, “just that I suspect it.”

Bonnie is glancing down in guilt, nodding
against her chest. “I saw the same. I never added it up, I guess,
in the stress of everything.”

“Well,” Joel says, weighing this bit of news.
“That’s just great.”

Rachel glances over her shoulder at Scott,
who’s clustered with two of the young men he was working with
earlier. Scott is whispering and gesticulating about something,
pointing back at the hospital. One of the younger men is shrugging
incessantly.

“Anyway, I sure thought there’d be more
people here,” Joel says. “I thought survivors were gathering here.
In fact, I know they were. What happened?”

“There
were
a lot of people here,”
Bonnie responds, “and not that long ago. But after those bodies in
there started twitching, and it was clear that they weren’t just,
you know, waking up, well, people went from hopeful to—”

“Scared shitless,” Jenny finishes.

Joel takes a final drag off his cigarette and
tosses the butt into the grassy area beyond the small parking lot.
He blows out the rest of his smoke, rubs his neck.

“Hell of a goddamn day.”

Joel looks completely exhausted. This quiet
little conversation has given his body the opportunity to catch up
with him and let him know that it has been pushed to its limits.
Rachel wonders when this man slept last. He might have been at the
end of a night shift when this thing hit. And suddenly Rachel can
feel the mirror image of his exhaustion, made worse by the
knowledge that there will be no sleep in her immediate future.

“Okay, I need to know what’s happening with
these bodies,” Joel says. “What are we dealing with?” He’s looking
from face to face.

The group is mildly stunned for a moment.
Rachel finds herself overcome with an irritating case of stage
fright. She’s all too aware that she’s a teenager in the midst of
adults and even professionals—a policeman, a medical specialist,
not to mention the serene, somehow wise older man who was the first
survivor she met at the start of this madness. Nevertheless, she
feels the eyes of Bonnie and Jenny on her now, and she manages to
open her mouth.

“They’re becoming something else,” Rachel
tells him.

Joel focuses on her, shaking his head. “All
day, these bodies have had no pulse, no respiration, no response at
all.”

“Oh, they’re quite dead,” Alan speaks up.

The cop looks increasingly frustrated. “I’m
not really in the mood for horror-movie shit.”

“Can we show you something inside?” Rachel
asks, glancing at Bonnie. “There’s a body in there that will make
things much more clear. It did for me.”

“What is it?”

“It’s easier just to see it.”

“She’s right,” Bonnie offers.

“Then lead the way,” he says. “Wait, let me
settle down these lights.”

Joel gets to the cruiser, reaches in and
switches off the lightbar. He takes a moment to lock the doors,
then heads back toward them. The group begins heading inside, and
almost immediately Scott turns from his little group and approaches
them. One of his cohorts takes the opportunity to detach from the
group and run off in the opposite direction, into the night.

“What can I do for you, Officer?” Scott says,
inserting himself between Joel and the front doors.

Face to face with him again, Rachel can see
that Scott is shiny with perspiration, and his eyes are shifty.
Earlier, he seemed simply a confident asshole; a man in charge by
virtue of his ill-contained sense of superiority. Now, however,
there’s something oddly desperate about him. He knows things have
gone out of control on his watch but he’ll be damned if his pride
will allow him to lose his oversight of the deteriorating
situation.

“Scott, right?” Joel says, offering his hand
to shake. “Joel Reynolds.”

Scott takes a moment too long to return the
gesture.

Bonnie steps in. “We’re showing Joel the
motorcyclist, so he can get a better idea what’s happening to these
bodies.”

Scott is shaking his head, moving another
step to block their way. “I can’t authorize that. In the interest
of safety—”

“I’m going in there, Scott,” Joel says
calmly.

“Look,” Scott says, attempting to stand
taller, “this situation has evolved. It’s
dangerous
in
there. Those bodies were toxic to begin with, and now they’re
undergoing some kind of involuntary—”

“He’s aware of what’s happening,” Rachel
interrupts him. “What we have to do now is find out
why
it’s
happening.”

“
We?”
Scott says. “What
we
have
to do?”

“We’re all in this together, man,” Joel says
evenly. “Come on, this is your turf. Lead the way.”

“I’m not going back in there, and I don’t
think any of you should, either.”

“You want to stay out here in the dark,
that’s your business,” Joel says. “But if we’re going to find out
what’s going on with these bodies, we’re not going to do it in a
parking lot, or out in the street. It’s going to happen in there—in
a hospital. And why am I even saying this? Shouldn’t
you
be
the one arguing this?”

He’s pointing a finger straight at Scott, who
glances fleetingly at each one of them, grinding his teeth.

“Are you not aware of what’s going on in
there?” Scott asks, his voice betraying him by breaking. “Those
bodies are hurting people—killing people!”

Rachel steps forward. “That’s happening
everywhere, not just in there.”

Scott looks directly at her, albeit
reluctantly. “The difference being that, in there, you have
hundreds of those things in a small space, just waiting—to—”

“I’m done talking,” Joel says. “Get out of
the way, Scott.”

“Well, then, hell, be my guest,” he says,
backing off and managing a dark laugh.

Rachel regards Scott with curiosity as the
group moves through the doors. She doesn’t think it’s cowardice,
exactly, that’s motivating this man. Or at least, not totally. It’s
something like selfish entitlement. When she passes, Scott gives
her a supremely childish look, his expression exaggerated as if to
say,
“What?”
She looks away and follows the rest inside.

They make their way through the open glass
doors into the dim admissions area. The long desk is littered with
papers, the computers still hauntingly darkened. Joel peers up at
the weak lights above him.

“Has anyone checked the generator for
fuel?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Bonnie says.

“This hospital goes dark, it’s not going to
be a happy place.” He stops and glances back. “Hey, Scott, can you
have someone check the generator for fuel?”

Scott is still standing there staring after
them. “I have no idea where it is.”

“It’s on the roof,” Joel replies. “It’s a
diesel unit, and I’m sure there’s fuel up there.”

Scott stares daggers at the policeman, but
finally, resigned, he turns to the remaining young man behind him.
“Let’s go, Greg. The cop’s got a chore for us.”

The two men trudge inside and head for the
wide stairwell that leads up to the second floor. They give the
body on the floor a wide berth. Just beyond the tipped-over gurney,
from Rachel’s perspective, it continues to twitch, and it’s still
subtly arching its back. In the generator lighting, the red
luminescence is visible, particularly when the head twists beyond
the edge of the gurney, and Rachel can see it deep in the throat.
Just as Rachel shivers at the sight, Scott staggers in his own
step, watching the corpse with distaste.