The Coward's Way of War (3 page)

“Yes, Sergeant,” Pearson said.  He didn’t sound insufferably confident, much to Al’s private relief.  He’d seen too many rookies who thought that graduating and becoming an officer meant that they knew everything they needed to know.  The good ones learned rapidly; the bad ones got people hurt before they either shaped up or were transferred into less vital departments.  “What are they protesting about this time?”

Al shrugged.  “Believe me, Rook,” he said.  “It doesn’t matter.  Whatever it is, it is our duty to try to stop it from getting out of hand.”

The radio buzzed before Pearson could say anything else.  “Al, we have an alert for you,” the dispatcher said, as the small computer monitor in the car blinked into life.  “The neighbours are reporting screams from a small apartment and want someone to investigate.”

“Acknowledged,” Al said, as he gunned the car into life.  They’d been parked near the coffee shop, only a few minutes from the location on the display.  He keyed a switch and the siren howled into life.  Traffic should start getting out of their way at once.  “Are there any other details?”

“Nothing important,” the dispatcher said.  “Good luck.”

Al frowned as he drove onto the streets and started to zip past traffic that hastily tried to get out of the way.  Someone screaming was sufficient evidence to force entry into a building if necessary, yet it wouldn’t be the first time that an NYPD officer had broken into someone’s home, only to discover that it was perfectly innocent.  The precinct’s wags were still teasing an officer who had broken into an apartment only to discover that the couple owning the apartment enjoyed a BSDM relationship and weren't actually abusing each other.  The department had been lucky not to be sued over that little mistake.

Two minutes later, he pulled the car into a parking space and checked his belt before climbing out and glancing around.  The area was one that had hundreds of fairly cheap apartments – to rent, at least – that housed workers for various companies.  They tended to be hotspots for crime because the inhabitants were rich enough to possess luxury goods, but too poor to afford proper security measures and safety precautions.  The streetlights flickered ominously as Pearson climbed out of the car and stood beside him, one hand on the pistol in his holster.  The area might not have gone to the bad, but it was on its way there.

He led the way into the apartment block and saw an elderly woman standing there, wearing a nightgown that covered everything under her neckline.  “Thank god you’re here,” she said, before Al could say a word.  He guessed that she was the person who had made the call.  “There was screaming coming from Apartment 22B, sir.”

Al listened, but heard nothing.  “It stopped several minutes ago,” the woman said.  She had a hectoring voice that reminded him of his third grade teacher, a woman the kids had joked was an alien in human form.  She was the kind of person who would happily mind everyone else’s business.  “It really was unpleasant screaming.”

“We’ll take it from here,” Al assured her.  “I suggest that you go back to your flat and put on some warm clothes.  We may want to speak with you later.”

Pearson looked up at him as the old woman headed back into her flat.  “We’ll want to talk to her later?”

“We might,” Al confirmed.  He grinned suddenly.  “Or perhaps we could do without having her in the area when we discover what’s going on.”

He led the way up the stairs and onto the landing, where he was surprised to discover several other people glancing nervously at one of the doors.  Unsurprisingly, none of them had made any attempt to force open the door and intervene.  It was one of the few reasons he disliked big cities and New York in particular; no one cared enough to intervene if someone was threatened, if only out of the fear of being sued.  He waved them back to their apartments – the rookie could interview them later, if necessary – and stepped up to the door, examining it quickly.  It was made out of cheap plastic and one good kick would allow them access.

“Wait,” he ordered, and pressed his ear against the door.  There was no screaming now, just a faint whimpering sound.  “I hear something.”

The sound seemed to grow louder and he swore.  It sounded like someone – a woman, he was sure – in pain.  It tore at his heartstrings, for the last time he’d heard someone whimpering like that had been a rape victim, several months ago.  She had been so badly terrified that she’d lashed out at everyone, including the police officers who had responded to the distress call.  Al knocked loudly, but there was no response.  He doubted that anyone who sounded like that was going to be in any fit state to open the door.

“Stand away from the door,” he ordered, as he pulled a small tool from his belt.  There was no need to kick in the door when he could pick the lock himself.  Pearson looked on in astonishment as Al worked the lockpick and unpicked the lock.  The fact that some police officers carried such tools was something that was carefully not mentioned to the media.  “We’re coming in.”

The door opened and he recoiled as the stench struck his nose.  He heard Pearson gagging behind him, but he had no time to spare for the rookie.  The stench was horrifying, a mixture of blood and piss and shit…and something else, something that nagged at his mind, something he’d smelled before, back in the old days.  He drew the flashlight from his belt and clicked it on, staring into the darkened room.  Something was moving towards the other side of the apartment…

Pearson found the light switch and clicked it on.  A half-naked woman was lying on the ground, desperately reaching towards them with weak feeble gestures.  Al was beside her with no clear memory of having moved, finding himself looking down at her.  For a moment, he was honestly perplexed; she didn’t look like a rape victim, so he reached down and swore.  She was feverish, her skin so warm that sweat seemed to be dripping off in waves.  He turned her over, hoping to see her face, and recoiled.  Her face was covered in ugly red pustules.

“My god,” Pearson breathed.  He sounded as if he were on the verge of vomiting, contaminating the scene.  Al heard him swallowing hard before he spoke again.  “What’s wrong with her?”

Al barely heard him.  Now he knew what to look for, he ran the flashlight down the woman’s semi-transparent nightdress and realised that her entire body was covered in dark red pustules.  He touched one of them before he thought better of it and swore again.  They felt like BB pellets embedded under the skin.  Gently, he opened her mouth and saw red spots on her tongue and the inside of her gums.  Old memories from briefings on diseases that could be used as biological weapons rose up within his mind and he swore silently at himself.  The chances were that he’d exposed both himself and his rookie to something lethal.

“Help,” the woman croaked.  He wasn’t sure if she was even aware of their presence.  She sounded delirious.  “Please…help…”

“We’ll help, I promise,” he said, although he suspected that it was a promise they would not be able to keep.  “Rook, fetch her some water from the sink, and then…”

His voice trailed off.  Whatever had struck the girl wasn’t something mild, like the common cold or even the flu.  It was something far more dangerous.  There were procedures in place for dealing with a disease outbreak, but it would take time to get organised and God alone knew how far it would spread by then.  If the two policemen were infected – and he’d touched her bare skin – they might spread it by their very presence.  If only he knew what he was dealing with!

“Here, sir,” Pearson said, passing him a glass of water.  Al held it up to the girl’s mouth and she sipped slowly, seemingly unaware of her location.  “Sir…”

“Listen carefully,” Al ordered.  “I want you to go down to the lobby and secure the doors.  No one is to come in or go out of the building.  Check with the janitor – if the building has a janitor – about how many other exits the building has and get him to seal them.  No one comes in or out; do you understand?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Pearson said.  He didn’t understand, not yet, that they might have both been infected.  “What are you going to do here?”

“Go,” Al snapped.  Pearson left, leaving Al alone with the girl.  She moaned as she finished the glass of water.  Al wanted to move her, but he didn’t quite dare.  She needed expert medical help as soon as possible.  Grimly, he keyed his radio and began to report in.  The dispatcher wouldn’t want to believe it – the emergency code he used had never been used outside of drills – but there was no choice.  The entire building had to be sealed off and everyone else checked before they started to spread the disease further into New York.

He hoped he was wrong; he prayed he was wrong, but he’d seen images back when he’d been in the Marines.  There was a disease that matched the girl’s symptoms, one that humanity had attempted to exterminate fifty years ago.  Perhaps he was overreacting, but somehow he suspected otherwise.  If it truly was that disease, all hell would be out for noon.

Al stood up and started to check through the apartment, hoping that the girl would survive long enough for doctors to stabilise her condition and hopefully allow her to answer questions.  He wondered about giving her some medicine, but there was nothing in his medical kit that would do her any good…and besides, he didn’t know enough to be useful.  The doctors would have to come quickly, yet it might take too long for them to arrive.  The NBC team would be suiting up now – New York maintained a dedicated team for dealing with biological or chemical emergencies – but they wouldn’t be able to arrive until the area was sealed off, which would probably mean that the media would be all over them within an hour.  The bastards would probably start a panic by broadcasting some half-heard rumour to the world.

He found a set of papers in one of the girl’s drawers and read through them quickly.  The girl’s name was Cally Henderson – the picture of her in happier times was unmistakable – and she worked as an air hostess.  That suggested that she might have picked up the disease on one of her trips outside the USA, although he wasn’t sure where she might have picked up the disease he suspected.  He studied her picture for a long moment and compared it to the sick girl, wincing inwardly.  Cally had been young enough to be his daughter, pretty enough to attract men like flies to honey.  Whatever she had done, he was sure that it wasn't enough to deserve such a horrible fate.

There was no one else in the apartment; there was no boyfriend or flatmate.  Even so, there were clearly two bedrooms in the apartment, both apparently occupied by women.  He checked their drawers and found bras and panties, confirming his suspicion that Cally had had a flatmate.  If she was somewhere else, the chances were that she’d been infected long before Cally realised that she was ill.  Al cursed under his breath.  He knew enough about how epidemics spread to know that the more widely spread the first infections; the further the disease could spread before modern medicine brought it under control.

His radio buzzed.  “Al, we have an emergency response team coming out to you now,” the dispatcher said.  He was keeping his words vague, as procedure dictated.  Some media moron was probably using a scanner to listen into the police band and would happily start a panic, just for the sake of claiming a scoop.  “They want pictures ASAP.”

Al cursed himself as he went back to look at Cally, pulling the tiny camera off his belt and holding it up, snapping shots from every conceivable angle.  He should have thought of taking pictures, something he was sure his superiors would point out to him during his debriefing.  Al felt a moment of pity for the girl as he pulled up her nightdress and snapped her bare body, wincing as he saw how the spots had formed on her breasts and down between her legs.  Even if she survived, which he suspected was unlikely, she was going to be pockmarked for life.  A once-pretty girl would have been transformed into a freak of nature.

He keyed the camera, using it to upload the images into the police network.  The emergency response team would get first look at them, but they’d also be passed on to the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta and USAMRIID, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.  Perhaps they’d tell him that he was overreacting and the girl had nothing more than a very virulent case of measles…no, he was deluding himself.  Whatever the girl had, it was far nastier than anything mundane.

“I'm sorry,” he said, to Cally.  Her eyes were wide and staring, barely tracking his hand as he moved it in front of her eyes.  It dawned on him that she was unable to stand the bright light, but there was nothing he could do about it except kneel beside her and cast his shadow over her face.  “We’ll do our best to save you.”

Despite the risk, he reached out and took her hand in his, squeezing it gently.  After a moment, she squeezed back, her face twisting into a faint smile.  Al couldn’t imagine what had happened over the last couple of days.  Had she thought that she had nothing more serious than the flu, or had she just woken up and discovered that she was covered in spots…or had she lost awareness before the disease really took hold?  There was no way to know.  He heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs and hoped – prayed – that the emergency response team was on its way.  Cally needed help desperately.