“Hey everyone,” the doctor said in a shaky voice. “I know the news out there is getting very confusing, so I want to set the record straight. First of all, my name is Frank Parks, a resident here at Lennox Hill. It’s currently 10:07 AM, and here’s what we know so far. It’s not much, but it’s all we have.” His voice took on an almost conspiratorial tone as he dropped his voice a bit. Olivia could also tell he was fighting back a swell of emotion. “The sickness going around is a virus of the likes that no one here has ever seen. From what we can tell, patients have about thirty or forty minutes between noticing the first symptom and death. Symptoms are stomach pains and nausea, reported to be absolutely brutal. We’ve also seen headaches that come on strong, out of nowhere, accompanied by an insanely escalating fever. One such incident with a patient this morning had them with a temperature of 100.9 upon first reading and then, just five minutes later, 104.2. That patient was dead less than five minutes later, their temperature having reached 105.4.”
Dr. Frank Parks struggled a bit here. Olivia struggled right along with him, still hugging Joyce. “We are also certain it’s highly contagious. So if you are watching this and are inside, please…stay inside. I can’t stress that enough. And as terrible as it sounds…stay home if you are showing symptoms. Right now people are leaving their homes to come to the hospitals or their family doctors and are dying on the way. Streets are clogged, our waiting rooms are filled…and…and right now, it’s mostly the dead bodies of patients that were alive half an hour ago. We just don’t know what this thing is yet and have no idea how to stop it. The only medical advice we can give is to stay inside, stay hydrated, and…that’s it.”
Dr. Parks showed the first true signs of emotion here as his bottom lip quivered and a tear rolled down his face. “Stay safe, everyone. And God help us all.”
Olivia set her phone down and started rocking nervously back and forth. She looked to little Donnie, happily eating his snack of dry cheerios and an applesauce packet, and held tight to Joyce. The reality that she may very well be stranded here with three young children sat heavy on her and she wanted to cry, scream, and curl up in a corner.
Her phone rang then—the landline. She got up quickly, setting Joyce down on the playmats. Joyce went on playing Barbies while Olivia answered the phone.
“Hello?” she asked, not seeing the point in answering with Little Learners. At this point, even pretending things were anywhere close to normal seemed stupid.
“Thank God, Olivia,” said a trembling female voice. “Please…please tell me Donnie is okay?”
It was the voice of Nancy Alterholt, who had called about twenty minutes ago to let her know she was on the way to pick up Donnie.
“He’s fine, Nancy. He’s eating his morning snack right now.”
“And you? How are you?”
“I’m good. Is everything okay?”
“No. Not at all. I wanted you to know that Donnie’s uncle will be coming to pick him up. Donnie’s father and I…we’re both sick. He started throwing up ten minutes ago and my head…oh sweet mercy, my head…”
And with that, Nancy Alterholt broke into a series of sobs. “Please…keep Donnie safe until his uncle gets there…his name is Steve…tall, spiky black hair…and he…”
Nancy sobbed a bit more and then the line went dead. Olivia stood there for a moment, the receiver in her hand. She squeezed it tightly and then finally letting at least some emotion out, she threw it hard against the wall and let out a little cry.
“Hey…” said a little voice from behind her. “You ‘kay, ‘Livia?”
Olivia took a deep steady breath and turned to Joyce. She still carried her Barbies, looking up to Olivia with concerned eyes.
“Yes, sweetie. Olivia is fine. Come on…introduce me to this Barbie’s boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend?” Joyce said, frowning. “Eww.”
As Joyce led Olivia back over to the playmat, Olivia had to literally force the image of that dead ten year old out of her mind, hanging limply from a car. And beyond that car, there had been the Lincoln Tunnel, congested with unmoving traffic—blocking up one of the ways out of a city that had become a living nightmare.
Chapter 6
By 11:00 that morning, the only real question Officer Paul Gault had was why he wasn’t dead. Everyone else sure as hell seemed to be and he found it hard to believe that the flimsy little mask he was wearing around his face was stopping the ungodly force that had taken so many people down. He’d received no communication from the precinct in over half an hour, and that had been nothing more than a bureaucratic version of “do your best, cover your ass, say a prayer.”
He was walking down Lexington Avenue in a daze. He knew he was a cop; he knew the badge on his chest and the sidearm on his hip had meant something. But taking in the sights of the city, he understood that his position no longer mattered. He was walking because even if he knew where his patrol car was, there was no way he’d be able to use it. The streets of Manhattan were clogged and congested. There were accidents involving two or three cars every block or so. Five blocks farther back, there had been an honest-to-God pile-up involving four cars, a city bus, and a city maintenance truck. Even now, five blocks away, on Lexington, Paul could smell the fire from the pile-up. Thankfully, he could no longer hear the screams and he did not waste time wondering why this might be.
And if it wasn’t traffic and accidents blocking the streets, it was the bodies. Paul had not stopped to mark down the exact moment it had happened, but he was now seeing far more dead bodies in the streets than living ones. They were on the sidewalk, in the streets, and in the cars that had been blocked from making it any farther.
The sounds of screams, scattered sirens, and an odd sort of malignant droning had filled the city, but even now, the screams were getting more and more infrequent. Several minutes ago, a group of six helicopters had gone blasting across the sky. Paul was pretty sure most of them had been military. The churning sound of the blades had added to the eerie noises that now permeated New York City, and had made him want to scream. It was like walking through a nightmare and knowing he was never going to wake up.
“Please…sir…help.”
The voice came from his right, where a woman in a pantsuit was leaning against the doorway to an insurance firm. Even if the sight of vomit on her legs and the sidewalk next to her had not been there, Paul would have known she was sick. It was a look he’d come to know well over these last few hours. She looked incredibly weak in appearance and had dark half-moons under her eyes. Her face was blotchy and red, a feature he was starting to assume was a result of the high fevers the ambulance driver had mentioned not too long ago.
Paul walked over to the woman because he felt it was his duty. The badge, the gun, his oath to honor and protect—he figured it all still meant something even at the end of the world.
“Water…” the woman croaked.
Paul frowned and shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t have any.”
The woman nodded and when she did, it seemed like it took every bit of strength left within her. She looked to Paul with sad eyes and started to tremble. “My husband…his name is Jimmy Cousins. Let him know I love him. Let him…let him…know…”
The woman took one last, hitching breath that served as her last. Paul watched her slip away, her wide eyes looking towards the sky. Paul stepped back a bit, closed his eyes, and resisted the urge to start crying again. He wasn’t sure if it was a battle he would win or not. As it turned out, he didn’t get the chance to find out. His shoulder radio hissed with static and then a ghost-like voice spoke.
“This is Sergeant Myers. Someone…anyone…please, come in.”
Paul knew Myers, but only vaguely. When he recalled the man’s face from the quick huddle at the precinct that morning, it felt like the memory of watching a very bad television show. Still, that memory from before the city had started dying felt pure and filled with such hope that it had Paul yanking the mic from his shoulder ri
ght away.
“Myers, this is Gault. I read you. Where are you?”
“I’m on…um, I think Thirty-Sixth Street. Gault, everyone is dead. Everyone.”
Paul was opening his mouth to respond to this when another response came through the open channel. The officer was screaming and crying at the same time. Coming through the mic’s speaker, it sounded like the man was reporting from an insane asylum.
“…down to the subway and it’s…oh God, everyone is dead. There’s hundreds, and it’s…ah, what happened? What in the hell happened?”
This was followed by another burp of static. Another officer responded, this one weeping uncontrollably. “The ambulances can’t get out…and the driver of the car killed himself, right there on the street and…saw a reporter running towards the barricade the military has set up near the coast and they…they shot her. I can’t believe they…”
“Gault, it’s Myers,” the officer called through the confusion. “You still there?”
“I am.”
“Go to channel six.”
Paul did as he was asked and responded: “Myers, you there?”
“Roger. You okay, man? You sick?”
“No, I don’t think so. You?”
“Yeah, pretty sure. Haven’t puked yet, but I started burning up about ten minutes ago and my stomach…feels like I’m being stabbed from the inside.”
“I’m on Lexington,” Paul said. “There’s no way I can reach you…”
“I don’t want you to even try. Look, there’s this house over in Gramercy. An old lady lives there…I stopped by to check on her…saw a sign for help in her window. She was healthy when I was there, just needed her meds and couldn’t get to the drugstore to get them. I swore to her that I’d try and even if I couldn’t get them, I’d check back in on her. She was terrified, Gault. Please…check in on her?”
It sounded like a fool’s errand as far as Paul was concerned. But what else was he going to do? Walk around the streets, taking in the sight of death everywhere and not do anything to protect and serve?
“What’s the address?” Paul asked.
As Myers gave it to him, he stopped for a moment to cough. Even through the mic, Paul could tell that Myers was doing more than coughing. When Myers finished reciting the address, he was weeping.
“Myers?” Paul asked. “It’s okay, man. Hang in there.”
There was only silence in response.
“Hey, Myers? Come in, Myers.”
But Myers did not respond.
***
On any other day, the walk from where Paul had taken the request from Myers to the address he’d been given would take about eight to ten minutes. But on the morning the world seemed to be ending, it took nearly twenty. During the twenty minute walk, Paul only passed by four people that were still alive. None of them asked for help or even seemed to notice Paul was there at all; they were running along on their own gruesome adventures, trying to find safety, shelter, and answers.
When he reached the small house located on the western rim of Gramercy, he found that most of the streets here were corpse-free. There were signs of chaos and confusion, but the number of bodies had dropped significantly.
How sad is it that I can make such an observation? Paul thought. The world was normal six hours ago. The only bodies on the streets six hours ago were the homeless, and now there’s all this…
He pushed that thought from his mind, sensing that lunacy might be right on its heels. He walked up the stairs to the door and knocked. It was one of four houses within a single row, all connected but separated by well-designed stoops. When there was no answer from his knocking, Paul tried the buzzer by the doorframe.
“Ma’am, my name is Paul Gault, with the NYPD. I’m here at the request of a friend of mine, Officer Myers. He asked me to stop by to check on you.”
There was still no response, though he did hear four successive reports of gunfire from somewhere nearby—maybe a block or two over. When he looked in that direction, he noticed a slight haziness to the sky for the first time. Apparently, in all of the chaos, there were enough small fires burning to have created a vague smoke cloud over this side of Manhattan.
Paul tried the buzzer one more time and got nothing. He tried the knob and was not surprised to find the door locked. He nearly turned and walked away but that was not the honorable thing to do. He knew if the old woman Myers had visited was sick, there was nothing he could do for her. But if she had simply fallen and injured herself or was perfectly fine but terrified to come to the door, maybe there was something he could do.
He drew his Glock and used the butt-end to smash the rectangular pane of glass along the center of the door. The sound of glass sprinkling down to the doorsteps and the floor inside was almost musical in the eerie quiet along the street. He then carefully slid his arm in, mindful of the glass shards. He fumbled for a bit, found the bolt lock, and turned it. He did the same for the knob lock, having to extended his arm a bit farther and feeling the bite of broken glass through his sleeve. He turned that lock too and then pushed the door open.
“Ma’am?” Paul said, stepping inside and closing the door behind him “I’ve entered. I’m only here to help.”
He stood in the tiny foyer, waiting for a response and getting none. He heard the light murmur of a television, but nothing else. He stepped out of the foyer and into a living room that was unmistakably the living space of an older woman. There were shawls, doilies, and afghans here and there, on the couch, on tables, and in a wicker basket. Family portraits were placed almost sporadically around the room. A single coffee mug sat on an ornate coffee table between the couch and the television. The TV, which sat on an older entertainment center, was on the news.
Paul looked away from the screen, not wanting to get sidetracked. But even as he stepped farther into the house, he knew what he was going to find. He could sense it in the air of the place. He could literally feel the bad news, luring him in.
Directly to his right was a small and tidy kitchen that smelled of baked bread and fresh coffee. He turned to his left and saw a small hallway that held three rooms. The first was a bathroom; the mess he saw on and around the toilet told Paul all he needed to know. Still, he had to keep searching, had to know for sure.
The next room he came to was the bedroom. Like the living room, it had a distinct elderly lady vibe to it. It was very tidy and the modest furniture looked to be a few decades old, though well-polished and taken care of. The bed was a twin-sized and an old woman was laying in the center. Her hands were folded over her stomach and she was lying flat on her back. An old, tattered Bible lay just to her side, nearly on the edge of the bed.
“Ma’am?” Paul said.
When he got no response, he was not surprised. She did not speak, nor did she even move at the sound of his voice.
He approached her and saw that her eyes were closed. He saw no rise and fall of the chest but checked for a pulse anyway. When he found there was none, he placed his hand on the Bible and, though he was not much of a believer, said a prayer for her anyway. He swallowed down a sob and then turned away.
When he did, he noticed the digital thermometer on her bedside table. It looked very much like the one he owned, stored away in his bottom bathroom cabinet in an apartment he could hardly even remember in that moment. If this thermometer worked like his, it would show the last temperature taken when it was powered on.
Taking the chance, he pressed the power button. There was a quick beeping noise, just like his, and then the screen flashed on. Sure enough, the old woman’s last recorded temperature was on the little screen: 104.9.
Paul set the thermometer back down and walked back out into the living room. He passed by the television and saw that a reporter was speaking rapidly into a camera. She was sitting behind a desk, her hair in disarray, being handed a sheet from someone off-screen. She did not look sick, but flustered and tired. Above her and to the right was what Paul had always thought of as a pop-in box
, where a graphic or live footage played while the reporters or newscasters spoke. In this pop-in box, Paul could see the mayor quickly walking to a podium. Paul turned the TV up and listened. It was oddly comforting to see a newscast, even one in this state of confusion. It was like hearing a whisper of the world that had existed yesterday.
“…from his very brief press conference just thirty-five minutes ago,” the report said, finishing up her lead in. Her face was then replaced by a full-screen version of the press conference where the very panicked mayor took his place behind a podium.
There weren’t many people in the crowd—no more than six or seven from what Paul could tell. Somewhere further off in the filmed footage, he heard someone shout a few words that mingled together in what sounded like one long string of curses.
“First and foremost,” the mayor said, “there will be no questions. The purpose of this conference is to give the public the little bit of information we now have in the hopes that we can save a great many lives.” He paused here, looked at a sheet of paper, and tried to compose himself. “Most of you already know that New York has been struck by a biological menace this morning. Based on what we are getting from local hospitals and medical experts, it is an extremely contagious virus. It presents as the flu, but is lethally quick. Symptoms include, but may not be limited to: extremely high fevers, sudden headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach distress, extreme fatigue, and dizziness. Our latest information is estimating the time between first symptoms and death at about forty minutes.”
There was an audible gasp from the few people in the crowd. Someone snapped a picture of the mayor while someone else tried to ask a question, which the mayor quickly interrupted.
“Hospitals and police departments are already overwhelmed,” he went on, “so we are advising that everyone stay at home. New York City is currently under lockdown. Do not go out on the streets unless it is of life-and-death importance.”
It Falls Apart Series | Book 1 | It Falls Apart Page 5