Not that he had any illusion that he’d stay alive long enough to receive any.
Chapter 4
At roughly the same time Officer Devon Ogden was guiding an NYPD police car in front of an ambulance to serve as an escort, Olivia Foster was on the phone with a concerned parent bordering on hysteria.
“I’ll be there in five minutes to pick up Jasmine,” said Yvette Gardener. “I’m trying to get there, but traffic is just…it’s insane.”
Olivia could hear the fear and panic in Yvette’s voice. Olivia, whom had never had children and never would mainly because of medical issues, heard these emotions and tried to imagine how terrified a mother must be in this situation. The city seemed to be coming undone out there as some unnamed threat was killing people at an alarming rate. To know your child was in the care of someone else while you tried desperately to reach them had to be incredibly difficult.
“Be careful,” Olivia said. “Jasmine will be safe until you get here. I promise you that.”
“Olivia, it’s…this is bad. There are…there are bodies in the street. People are just falling over. Ambulances are packed in bumper to bumper and the traffic is awful. People are scared and some have guns, out on the streets and…” She let out a little whimper and added: “I’ll be there soon.”
Olivia put her cellphone down on the counter of the activity room and looked around to the children, narrowing in on Jasmine Gardener in particular. Little Learners usually cared for eleven children, but four parents had already called and said they’d be keeping their kids home because of the morning’s deadly events. Looking at the kids helped her a bit; they had no idea that something bad was taking place outside. They were playing with their building blocks and turning pages in large books featuring Elmo and the Backyardigans.
She looked over to Jacki, sitting on one of the small benches on the far side of the play room. Jacki looked pale, her eyes squinting in confusion as she scrolled through her Facebook feed.
“Anything reliable?” Olivia asked her.
“I don’t know about reliable, but there are some common threads,” she answered in an uncertain and shaky tone. “But it sounds insane. It sounds like there was some sort of explosion about two miles off the coast very early this morning. That seems to be why all of the helicopters were in the air. Everyone is trying to link that to what’s going on. People are getting sick and it’s happening fast. High fever, nausea, headaches.”
“Sounds like the flu.”
“Yeah, but…it says people are dropping so fast no one can keep count. I’ve read two news reports that say people are getting it, reporting one of those symptoms, and are dead within about half an hour. Traffic is backed up going into every hospital in the city.”
“There’s no way…”
As if to prove her wrong, the sound of wailing sirens passed by in front of the building. They’d heard at least a dozen or so in the past fifteen minutes, nearly one a minute. They both looked in the direction of the lobby as if the wailing of the sirens had been ghosts, haunting the place.
At the same moment, there was a pounding noise from the front of the building—the sound of someone knocking on the door. This made sense, as Little Learners locked its front doors at 7:30 a.m. as a security measure. The only way inside was to be buzzed in from the front desk at the lobby. Olivia knew there was no way this would be Yvette Gardener so soon, but Olivia figured there was a good chance it could be another parent coming to pick their kid up in the midst of this nightmare.
Olivia walked to the lobby and saw a policeman standing by the front door. He was on the younger side, there was grime on his face, and he looked scared out of his mind. As Olivia looked out to him, she saw that the streets were now clogged with traffic. There were cops on bicycles doing their best to get through it, but it looked like a lost cause. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear someone screaming. It was faint through the front glass, but she heard it. Somehow, the sound of it was more damning than the helicopters she’d seen this morning or the news reports she and Jacki had been scrolling through. That scream, in tandem with the stalled flow of traffic and this terrified cop, made it more real.
Olivia went to the lobby desk and reached under it to buzz the cop in. When he realized what she was doing, he shook his head violently.
“No!” he yelled. “Don’t open the door!”
Olivia pulled her hand back as if she’d been shocked. She saw the terror in the cop’s eyes and it seemed to inject itself directly into her.
“What’s wrong?” Olivia hollered back, stepping closer to the window. “Why did you knock?”
“To see if you’re okay.”
“Yes. So far…why? Why do you ask?”
“No deaths?” the cop asked.
The two words seemed almost offensive to her. But it also clued her in to just how much the world had fallen apart since she’d come in the back door that morning, looking up at the helicopter headed to the coast.
“No. No deaths. What in God’s name is going on out there?”
“No one knows yet. Just guesses, really.” He seemed to be looking for his next words, wanting to choose them carefully. As he did, Olivia watched the streets behind him. People running, cars in grid lock. A cop was yelling at a man that was leaning against a building. She also noted that a lot of the people out there were wearing medical masks.
“How many children do you have here?” the cop asked.
“Seven.”
“Any chance they could be returned to their parents? I can maybe arrange a police escort but…I don’t know.”
“A few parents kept their kids home. I just spoke to another one that is on their way.”
“Do you have a lockdown procedure?” the cop asked through the glass.
“Yes.”
“Do it. Right now, lock the place down. It’s only going to get worse out here and—”
He stopped here and cocked his head. Olivia thought he was listening to something coming on his shoulder mic. He grimaced at whatever it was he heard and when he started speaking to Olivia again, he was looking down the street, his attention elsewhere.
“Try to keep them all in the same room, as close to the center of the building as you can. Do not open this door for anyone other than parents. And even then…well, use your discretion.”
“I don’t understand,” Olivia said, glaring at him through the window. “What’s happened? Are the things we’re seeing on Facebook true?”
“I don’t know what you’ve read…but probably. This is bad…this is…just stay inside, okay?”
Before Olivia could ask any further questions, the young cop started hurrying away. All there was to see in his place was the chaos that had erupted in the streets—chaos that had been nothing more than slight disturbances in the New York City routine about an hour ago. She saw that the cop was no longer screaming at the man leaning against the building on the other side of the street. The man was currently kneeling on the concrete, hunched over in pain. The policeman was turned around, looking down the street and waving for assistance.
Olivia forced herself to turn away. As she headed back for the play room, she felt tears stinging her eyes. Lockdown…she was going to have to put the place into lockdown. While the kids would be gloriously unaware of the danger they were in, it would come down to her and Jacki to keep them calm. And based on what she had seen through the lobby windows behind the scared young cop, she wasn’t sure how she was going to do that.
When she walked into the play room, she saw Jacki sitting on the floor with two of the kids, rolling a plush ball back and forth. When Jacki looked up to Olivia, it was clear that she was worried. She didn’t look quite as uneasy as the cop Olivia had just spoken with, but it was close.
“I heard some of that,” she said. “What’s going on?”
“Lockdown,” Olivia said. It was the first time the phrase had been uttered inside of Little Learners ever since they opened the doors. “We have to go into lockdown.
”
***
Lockdown at Little Learners consisted of closing and locking the door that connected the feeding grounds to the hallway that led into the lobby, as well as locking the employee entrance in the back. This left most of the building open, and the kids were obviously none the wiser as they remained in the playroom. The one exception was Joyce Bates. Even at just four years of age, she seemed to sense something was amiss. Olivia supposed it could be the look on her face or the tension hanging in the air like unseen smog; whatever the reason, Joyce tried to cling to her several times in the five minutes that had passed after she’d muttered the term lockdown.
Shortly after locking off the hallway and the lobby, there was a knocking at the front door, followed by the rarely used buzzer that was installed outside. Jacki pulled up the security system on the laptop, giving them a view of the street just outside the front door. Olivia assumed this would be Yvette Gardner, but instead, it was another parent—the father of Xavier Nelson. Not an hour and a half had passed since he’d dropped Xavier off. In the clear black and white shot of Mr. Nelson standing at the door, it was clear that he was worried out of his mind. Olivia considered it a blessing that they could not see what else was going on out there in the street.
Jacki clicked on the Unlock button on the system settings below the security feed and a second later, the footage showed Mr. Nelson entering through the lobby door. Olivia came to their side of the hallway door and, trying not to sound too unsteady, said: “I need you to stay out there, Mr. Nelson. I’ll bring Xavier to you.”
He gave a thumbs up sign, looking nervously back down the street. Olivia and Jacki quickly gathered Xavier’s things and then walked to the locked door that led to the lobby. Olivia knew what had to happen next and she felt awful doing it. If things out on the street were as bad as she was thinking, they had to take every precaution. People were getting sick, and many of those running for their lives were wearing masks; Olivia had seen this while speaking with the cop through the glass. She figured they also had to treat this almost as a quarantine-type situation.
“Okay, Xavier,” Olivia said. I’m going to open this door, and I need you to walk to the front door. Your dad will be there waiting, okay?”
“Uh huh,” was all the two and a half year old said.
She kissed the little boy on his forehead, unlocked the door and sent him out through the door. She saw his father and she was relieved to see that he looked perfectly fine—scared out of his mind, but apparently healthy. As she and Mr. Nelson shared an uncertain glance while he scooped his son up, Olivia saw Yvette Gardener hurry to the front door. She looked scared out of her mind and when she tried to open the door only to find it locked, she yanked furiously at it.
“Jacki,” Olivia yelled back through the door. “Unlock the door for Mrs. Gardener!”
There was a brief hesitation before the tiny buzzing noise sounded out as the door unlocked. Yvette came into the lobby like a woman possessed, frantically looking around.
“Where’s Jasmine?” she asked. Her voice was shaky, threatening tears at any moment. She was also marching directly towards the back of the lobby, towards the door that led to the rest of the building.
“No, wait Mrs. Gardener, Olivia said. “Don’t go back there!”
“My daughter! Where is sh—”
Jacki came through the door, holding Jasmine. While Jasmine could sort of walk at the age of thirteen months, she wasn’t fully capable on her own. “She’s right here, Yvette,” Jacki said.
Olivia watched Yvette take her daughter with a greedy sort of protectiveness. And with five people in the lobby—Yvette and Jacki within a foot of one another—Olivia realized that any hope of keeping distance from one another had been shot. This terrified her deep down, but she did her best to keep it down.
Yvette gave them both a weary gaze. She looked like she might say something for a moment, but then she turned and headed out of the door, nearly colliding with Mr. Nelson and Xavier as they made their way out. There were no niceties or small talk; they were both in a hurry to get home in the hopes of riding this madness out. Yet even as Olivia watched them leave, her gaze fell upon the streets through the window and it was more of the same. Right behind the Gardeners, three people went running at full speed. One was a woman, bawling her eyes out and looking like she might pass out at any moment.
Olivia started back for the playroom, setting the lock on the door with the button beneath the lobby desk.
“Hey, Olivia?” Jacki said.
“Yeah?”
“I need to leave. I have to—”
And then she started crying. She leaned against the doorframe between the lobby and the hallway, trying to catch enough breath to say what else was on her mind.
“Jacki…?”
“My sister-in-law called when you were dealing with Xavier. My brother…he caught this thing that’s out there…he caught it and he’s dead. I have to go…”
“Oh my God, Jacki, of course.”
Jacki nodded and staggered down the hallway. Olivia closed the door to the lobby, locked it again, and started after her. They both paused by the playroom, looking to the five children remaining. Jacki let out a heart wrenching gasp and turned away.
“I’m sorry, Olivia. I don’t want to leave you, but…”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Go. I’m fully capable of handling this.”
Jacki looked to her with a pleading expression and Olivia was pretty sure they were thinking the same thing. What happened to the remaining kids if she, Olivia, got what was going around? In lockdown, with no other staff, what would happen to the children?
Olivia was able to look beyond herself and strictly to the welfare of the children because she had no real family to worry about—and no one, in return, to worry about her. Her mother had left her father when Olivia was three, and her father had died when she was fourteen. The grandparents that had raised her from sixteen to college were both dead (her grandmother having passed from breast cancer two years ago) and the only remaining family she knew of was an estranged aunt she’d not seen for almost three years. She supposed enduring madness like this was a bit easier when there were no strong attachments or connections with family.
But before either of them could dwell too much on it, Jacki started for the door, walking like a woman being pulled by a drunken puppeteer. Olivia felt her own wave of sorrow coming on—for Jacki’s brother, for all the deaths in the city, for the absolute nightmare they’d all been thrown into in the blink of an eye.
But she looked to the children and knew she had to keep it together. Even when she heard gunshots in the distance three minutes later, Olivia buried her grief and sorrow deep. She had to make sure these children were taken care of. She had to make sure that she could somehow keep them safe and smiling while the world fell apart just twenty-five feet away.
Chapter 5
By 10:15, two other parents had come by to collect their children, and two others were en route. That left Olivia with only three: Brayden Tenet, a one year old; Donnie Alterholt, nineteen months; and Olivia’s self-proclaimed favorite, four year-old Joyce Bates. With Brayden down for his morning nap and Donnie eating his morning snack, it was the first time Olivia got a chance to sit down with her phone, trying to get some sort of idea of what was going on outside. As she watched news footage and scanned hastily put-together articles, Joyce sat in her lap and played with two Barbies. As Olivia read about the devastation outside, Joyce had a Barbie and Ken making smooching noises. It was surreal to the point of almost being funny in a morbid sort of way.
Most of the articles she read agreed on a few key points. There had indeed been an explosion about two miles off the coast last night. At least six members of the Coast Guard had been lost. Some reports said there were two boats involved while others said there were three boats and two helicopters. While there had been no confirmed link between that event and the illness that was currently tearing New York City apart, a lot of the articl
es seemed to suggest it.
She watched a few news clips but found them completely useless. It was all speculation and guesswork. As usual, she found more trustworthy information in videos people were posting to Facebook and Reddit. The footage was shocking and brutal, but it’s what she needed to see. So far, the safety of Little Learners and the inability to sit down and digest the news had kept her willfully ignorant. But the videos she saw brought reality slamming directly into her face.
One video filmed from a phone showed a scene from somewhere in Queens, posted twelve minutes ago. Paramedics wearing ventilated masks were hurrying inside an apartment building, pushing gurneys. As they trudged the gurneys up a handicapped ramp, a middle-aged man collapsed on the stairs. He struck his head on the curb and started to puke. He cried out for help but no one came; everyone was busy running in all directions, presumably to what they hoped would be safety.
Another video showed a traffic jam in front of the Lincoln Tunnel. There were numerous accidents, but the person taking the footage wasn’t focusing on the accidents. In an absolutely gruesome bit of footage, the video showed people dead behind the wheels of their cars. Some were tilted forward, leaning on the steering wheels while others had craned their necks back, mouth opened in a final gasp with their skulls against the head rests. When the footage showed a child no older than ten leaning lifelessly out of a partially opened car door, Olivia made herself look away.
She didn’t realize it until Joyce took her hand, but she was squeezing the little girl to her tightly. Olivia started to whimper, doing everything she could to keep the wailing in. As she fought it, she refreshed her Facebook feed and saw a new headline, posted one minute ago. It read: Mayor Jergenson to Address Public at 10:30.
She also saw that another video had been posted, shared by several people. Like a woman making her way through a very bad dream, she pressed the Play icon. The video showed a very tired-looking doctor. The shot was very close up, so she could not tell where it was being filmed. There was a lot of commotion behind him, though. She could hear crying and the beeping of machines.
It Falls Apart Series | Book 1 | It Falls Apart Page 4