Paul supposed it was just instinct that had him hurrying over towards them. In doing so, his right foot struck the arm of a corpse on the street. He went sprawling to the ground but managed to prevent breaking his nose or shattering his teeth by throwing his right arm up just in time. As he picked himself up slowly, he realized that he had fallen directly beside a young mother and a child that was no older than ten.
He couldn’t stop the moan of disgust that rose up from his throat. When he heard it, though, he forced himself to close his mouth. If he started moaning or screaming or crying now, he sensed that he might fall over a mental ledge that he had so far managed to barely cling to throughout the day. He’d heard the screams of others that had fallen from that ledge throughout the day, off in the distance, wailing through the madness of it all.
He shook the imagery of the dead child away, focusing his eyes instead on the two military vehicles. But that did no good, either. The passenger door to the jeep was open and a young soldier was lying face down on the sidewalk, just a few feet away from the street. He’d fallen into his own puke and had busted his head open during his fall.
Paul clenched his jaw, not allowing another noise to come out. He hurried past the jeep and open bed truck, rushing to the precinct. When he reached the building and started up the short set of concrete steps, he did his best to look past the five dead people on the stairs—three of whom were dressed in police uniforms. He rushed past them like a child tearing down a dark hallway at night, anxious for the hope of a light switch along the wall. He took each step with a nervous energy that had his legs shaking when he opened the door and stepped inside.
He took two steps in and came to a stop. His hand came up to his mouth as he slowly shook his head. It took his brain a moment to understand what he was seeing—that it wasn’t quite as bad as it looked at first. The place was a shambles; chairs had been turned over, papers were scattered among desks and along the floor, and the Keurig coffee maker had been overturned in the back.
The first mercy was that the place seemed to be empty of people for the most part. As he stood in the little lobby area, looking at the bullpen and open hallways beyond, he saw only four bodies. Three seemed to be citizens that had come in, looking for help. The fourth, though, was a man he knew rather well. His name was Jake Rundie, a thirty-five-year-old detective from somewhere down south. He was propped awkwardly on the floor, leaning against the printer and fax machine combo. His blood was all over the wall, placed there by the gunshot wound that started just under his chin and came out of the top of his head at an angle. The gun he’d used to do this to himself lay on the floor directly beside him. It was the exact same make and model of Glock that Paul currently had holstered to his side.
Paul steadied himself and walked into the bullpen. Every desk was empty and the place was unnaturally quiet. He saw laptops open on a few, spilled coffee and breakfast leftovers on others.
He stopped by the first desk he came to and checked the laptop. He was not at all surprised to find that the internet was dead. But the screen still contained the last page that had been viewed. It was from CNN.com and it showed a barrage of military trucks heading toward a large barricade guarded by armed Coast Guard members. The headline read: MASS DEATHS IN NYC PROMPTS EMERGENCY MILITARY RESPONSE. The caption beneath the picture was just as grim. People are dying so quickly that it is hard to get an accurate count, but it is believed that as many as eighty thousand have died within the past three hours.
Paul didn’t bother to read the article. It would all be guesswork, anyway. He thought of the brief press conference he’d seen from the mayor while in the elderly lady’s apartment earlier in the day. The mayor had no answers, the doctors had no answers, and the media was just as clueless as everyone else.
Paul looked to the back of the building, to the open hallways he and his fellow cops walked up and down every day. “Hello?” he called.
His voice fell flat and he got no response. Still, he walked to the hallway just to be certain. He passed several offices and then came to the conference room where they had been given their vague assignment that morning.
Keep the peace. It seemed like a very crude joke at this point.
He did see where someone had written a lot of information on one of the dry erase boards on the wall. It was written in red, in a hurried hand, but he understood most of it.
Explosion off coast around 3:45. Coast Guard boat down, chopper down
Deaths from sickness start about 2.5-3 hours later
Coast Guard? NG?
8,500 confirmed dead @ 10:15
Masks seem to work but ultimately ineffective
Paul piled this news on top of what he’d read on the laptop and what he’d gathered from the press conference. All he knew for sure was that the entire city of New York appeared to be dead, and it was not something the military had been able to stop.
“Hello?” Paul said again, the word coming out in a shout this time.
Again, there was no response. He stood there, looking to the dry erase board, focusing on the note about how masks seemed to work but were ultimately ineffective. It made him reflexively touch his own mask which triggered a thought so sudden that he spun on his heels as if doing some strange dance.
He ran back towards the bullpen and then took a right. He found the supply cabinet already opened, with the large chest filled with medical supplies pulled out. The box of surgical masks was empty, though there were a handful that had been dropped on the floor. He grabbed one up and looked at it like he’d just found a one hundred dollar bill on the street.
Slowly, he removed the one he had been wearing since he and Devon had gotten out of their patrol car that morning. When it was away from his mouth and nose, it felt like pulling off a layer of skin.
He had already started taking a deep breath of un-blocked fresh air when he realized it might be a mistake. From what he knew, the sickness was highly contagious. But it did not stop him from taking another deep breath. He did so, fighting back the urge to cry. He looked to the mask he had taken off and was appalled to find that it was beyond filthy. It was nearly black, and the ridge along the nose had nearly been worn thin.
Feeling almost like an intruder, he walked to the other side of the bullpen and into the men’s restroom. It smelled rancid, making him assume that quite a few people had gotten sick in here today. He knew that not wearing the mask in here was basically a death sentence but he did not care. Part of him wanted to join the fates of those outside, dead in the streets—to not be left to make sense out of what the hell had happened.
Still, when he approached the sinks and washed his face with tap water, he did so quickly. The grime and dirt of the day swirled down the drain in splashes of brown water. He dried his face with hand towels from the dispenser and then went back out into the hallway. Looking back towards the doors, it was easy to want to give up, to give in to that little tug to just let the sickness take him if that was in the cards for him. But then he did what he knew any good compassionate cop would do; he looked for a reason to keep going, for some way he could help. In doing so, he thought of Olivia Foster and the child currently in her care.
He needed to keep his head if for no other reason than to make sure they were okay. he ran through other steps he could take and then felt like an idiot for ignoring the most logical one. He’d thought to go by the supply closet for a new surgical mask, but had not even considered taking a trip to the armory.
With his mask back on, he made his way out of the restroom and headed down the hallway, past the medical supply closet and to the back of the building. The gated door to the armory was standing wide open and he knew this was a bad sign; it also have him a small preview of what he was likely going to see when he stepped inside.
Sure enough, the room was totally wiped out. The shelves upon shelves of ammunition had been ransacked. There were usually a few different riot-based weapons to select, but those were also gone. Also missing were the riot gear, tasers, tear gas canni
sters, and NBC gas masks. The only thing left in the room was a single handgun—an older Smith and Wesson model revolver, but when he checked it, he found the cylinder was jammed.
The sight of the completely empty armory was haunting and gave a perfect glimpse of the madness and confusion that had swept through the city. He felt it start to sink into his mind, to try to convince him that everything beyond this room was hopeless. Paul managed to shut those thoughts down, turning away from the empty armory and storming back through the doorway.
If there were no answers or hope in the precinct, there was one other thing he needed to do. It was probably going to make him lose his mind a bit, but that was okay. After the day he’d experienced, he figured he was owed at least one moment of flat out lunacy.
***
His apartment was two miles away from the precinct and though he could think of nothing he needed there, he felt a duty to see the place. He had a feeling that if he made it through the rest of this day, he might not see the place again. Also, he had something akin to a plan putting itself together in the back of his mind and if he had any hope of bringing it to fruition, he was going to need to pack a bag.
During the walk between the precinct and his apartment building, he was more convinced than ever that he and Olivia Foster might be the only people remaining in the city. The logical side of his mind told him that this was ridiculous, but it certainly felt like it. For the better part of the walk, he didn’t hear a single scream or gunshot. This was broken, though, when he was several blocks away from his apartment. He heard a woman moaning from somewhere remarkably close by. It was close enough that he thought about going to help her but then the woman started to violently cough. It lasted about five seconds and then the sound of a gunshot silenced it.
Paul listened to the gunshot echo and fade in the dead silence of the city and then carried on his way. He reached his apartment building fifteen minutes later. The glass on the front doors had been shattered at some point during the day. He saw an empty Tylenol Cold and Flu bottle on the front stoop and something about it made him want to laugh. It was a very real urge, but he was certain that if he gave in to it, he may not stop. And Lord only knew he’d already heard enough sounds of madness today. Hearing it from his own throat would be too much to handle.
He stepped inside and saw Mrs. Florence in the lobby. Mrs. Florence lived three doors down from him and always brought him a loaf of her banana bread when she baked it on her birthday, random weekends, and Christmas. She was pushing seventy and was a huge fan of Dolly Parton, usually singing either “Jolene” or “Nine to Five” when she was in her better moods. But now, Mrs. Florence was sprawled out on the lobby floor, staring up to the ceiling with dried vomit on her chin and cardigan.
Paul shuddered a few times, trying to hold back the emotions that surfed forward. He lost the battle this time. He hurried up the stairway, sobbing uncontrollably. As he rounded the flight to the third floor, he started to make a noise very similar to a growl and he wondered if he might be losing his mind. When he came out of the door on the third floor and started down the hallway, it occurred to him that some of the people in these apartments could have ridden the sickness out at home. Maybe there were some still alive, cowering in their apartments.
The thought filled Paul with just enough hope to cause him to bang on every door he passed. “Hello! This is Paul Gault, with the NYPD! Is anyone here? Is anyone alive?”
One door, then two, then three—and no responses from any of them. He continued to knock, undaunted, as he made his way to his own apartment. And then, slightly over halfway down the hall, he hammered on the door to apartment 313 and got a response.
“Who is it?” a man’s weak voice asked.
“Office Paul Gault, NYPD! I live in apartment 322.”
“You stay out there!” the man demanded. “Don’t you even think about touching my door. I don’t care if you’re a cop. You try coming in here and I’ll blow your head off!”
“No, you don’t understand.,” Paul said, staring at the door in a mild state of shock. “I think most everyone outside is dead and if you’re still alive, we can—”
“No! I’ve got plenty of food here, plenty of water. I saw what was on the news before all the feeds went out. I know what’s out there and I’m not opening this door!”
“But if you—”
“I said no!” It wasn’t simply a scream, but a sort of brutal plea. It was so intense that it caused Paul to jump back, looking to the door as if whoever was inside had reached out and suddenly slapped him in the face.
Paul looked down to the other end of the hall, to 304 where Mrs. Florence had lived, and frowned. He hung his head slightly as he headed for his own apartment. Taking his keys out and slipping them into the lock felt dumb, like a child playing make believe. Keys in a lock, paying bills, making a phone call to say hi to a friend…all of that was gone now. It had been uprooted and replaced with the dismal reality out on the streets.
And it was then that he knew he had to go through with his plan. He was going to get the hell out of the city. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy because the roads were all clogged and congested. Getting out of New York would be a nightmare. But if he could find his way out somehow, he had a place in mind to go—a place he’d known since childhood and often thought fondly of when life got a little too rough.
First, though, he needed to pack a bag. When he was inside his apartment, he clicked on the television and wasn’t surprised to find every local channel blank. He had a basic cable channel, though, so he scrolled to CNN, then to FOX News, only to find those channels also off the air. Curious, he tried every channel listed and found that the cable was apparently out. Only, that made no sense because when he attempted to watch a local channel via his cable subscription, he found the emergency broadcast screens. He sensed there was something amiss there, but didn’t allow himself to focus on it. There were more important things to do and if he burdened himself with even more questions about the day’s events, he’d get stalled. Besides, if he wanted any real answers about what had happened today, he’d have a better chance of getting them outside of the city.
He went to his landline phone and picked it up. He was slightly amazed to find that there was still service but was pretty sure trying to make any calls out would result in clogged lines. Besides, who was he going to call? His ex-wife? She was living in California with some guy eight years younger than her. His father? They hadn’t spoken in two years and while there was no bad blood or grudges between them, what would he say?
He didn’t know. But in that moment, Paul felt that he needed to speak to someone. He dug his wallet from his back pocket and found the old scrap of paper with his dad’s number on it. He wasn’t sure why he was trembling when he dialed the numbers—maybe the stress of the day, or the fact that he and his dad hadn’t spoken in so long. Whatever it was, Paul did not get a chance to properly explore it; his hunch had been right. The phone lines were jammed and he only got a click-click response in his ear.
Just as well, he thought. That’s one less traumatic event I’ll have to deal with today.
He hurried to his bedroom and the small adjoining bathroom. He packed quickly, taking the only backpack he owned out of his bedroom closet and throwing four changes of clothes into it. With this done, he went into the bathroom and stripped down out of his police outfit, finding that it was just as filthy as his first mask had been. He hung the clean mask on the sink faucet and then got into the shower. It was a temporary bliss not only because he felt the day being washed from him, but because it almost felt natural to cry under the spray of cool water.
As he showered and then dried off, he thought about his grandfather. More specifically, he thought of his grandfather’s old cabin in the small mountain town of Brownstone, West Virginia. It had always bored him as a kid whenever the family had gone to visit, but even as a child he’d appreciated the beauty and solitude of the place. Now, as a fifty-two year old with very li
ttle life outside of his career, he saw it as a safe haven and an escape from the absolute hell the city had become. He hadn’t seen his grandfather in nearly two years and it had been at least six months since they’d spoken, when he’d called Paul to wish him a happy birthday. Still, the thought of the cabin sent a spark of shaky hope through him even when he thought of his invalid grandfather in the face of what was taking place outside.
Yeah, he thought. But that’s West Virginia. Surely this thing won’t get that far, right?
He dressed in a tee shirt and jeans and then finished packing by adding his toothbrush, some deodorant, and the wad of cash he kept hidden under his mattress for emergency situations. There was no way to know what things were like outside of the city, but he had to hope the government had managed to contain it to New York City. Maybe the sickness had made it out into surrounding communities, but surely no further than that.
Thoughts of the oddity with the cable occurred to him—local channels at emergency broadcast screens or blank shots while nationwide channels had featured a disruption of service message. This tried to scream some large message at him, but he wasn’t ready to hear it. Instead, he slung the backpack over his shoulder and headed for the door. He didn’t bother looking back to his apartment in a poetic or sympathetic sort of way. He’d never cared for the place, anyway; it had simply been a means to an end.
Paul made his way back out into the hallway, giving apartment 313 a sad glance as he hurried by. He could not imagine holing up in an apartment, waiting to either die or be rescued by a government that had been absolutely blindsided by whatever had passed through New York City. It made his coming journey all that more pressing and added a bit of speed to his step.
First, though, he would remain true to his word. He would stop by Little Learners again to check in on Olivia Foster. He had no idea how he could help her, but he had to at least try. There were many things about himself that Paul did not like, but he had always honored his word when people were in need. Apparently, it was something that had not changed about him even in the face of unspeakable tragedy.
It Falls Apart Series | Book 1 | It Falls Apart Page 8