Ashes, Ashes

by Charles Atkins

  Hobbs felt for the driver and her partner, their hands tied by bureaucratic threats; if they deviated in the slightest they’d be brought up on insubordination. They were probably thinking of their families and their mortgages. Even so, he couldn’t let up. ‘Please, at least let me talk to Detective Schmitt.’ He could see the man turn to the driver and shake his head. Neither one of them would say anything further as they drove down the West Side Highway across 14th Street and down Broadway to University Hospital. When they arrived they were ordered to put on HEPA masks and were escorted at gunpoint by Guardsmen in hazmat suits.

  Barrett and Carla didn’t stop as they stared into the frightened young faces through the visors of the suits. They continued to plead their case, rattling off the phone numbers and Peter Glash’s address.

  Barrett searched over their heads and between them, hoping to catch a glimpse of Justine among the doctors, nurses and aides gathered at the far end of the corridor. She knew that her sister would be there, even though she desperately wished that both Justine and her mother were far away from the city.

  ‘Barrett!’ Justine shouted over the wall of guards.

  ‘Justine! You’ve got to get someone to listen. Richard Glash is in the city.’ Before she could say more, three guards detached themselves and rushed away Justine and all of the other medical personnel who’d gathered.

  ‘Somebody has got to listen to us,’ Carla pleaded, attempting to make eye contact with the guard next to her. She saw her reflection in his visor. ‘Why won’t anyone listen? You’re making a horrible mistake. Richard Glash is here, in the city. He has the bacteria. It didn’t go into the reservoir.’

  Nothing any of them said seemed to matter as they were led to a small reverse-airflow medical isolation room. To Barrett, the small, windowless room with its three beds seemed more a prison cell than a hospital room.

  ‘Hobbs,’ she said, ‘somebody has got to believe us.’

  A hazmat-suited sergeant leading the squadron of Guardsmen locked them in. ‘Homeland Security has informed us that all of the bacteria was accounted for,’ he said. ‘It was all introduced at the Ashokan Reservoir. It’s been isolated and what we’re doing now is just a precaution.’ His tone was meant to reassure the trio. He’d been thoroughly briefed.

  ‘That’s not true,’ Barrett said, trying to make eye contact through his mask.

  ‘Of course it is,’ he said. ‘Why would they lie to us and put the entire city in jeopardy? That makes no sense. I understand the three of you have been through very traumatic events. That can confuse your thinking.’

  ‘I’m a psychiatrist,’ Barrett said, feeling like she wanted to scream. ‘I know the effects of trauma. But you have three people who all believe the same thing. Richard Glash intends to infect as many people as possible with bubonic plague. He doesn’t care if he survives. You’ve got to believe us. And even if we’re wrong, won’t it have been better to be safe? To just have someone check out what we’re telling you?’

  The sergeant hesitated. He glanced behind him, and then in a low voice said, ‘If you were going to call someone, who would it be and what would you tell them?’

  Hobbs quickly rattled off Anderson’s cell and the message, which included Peter Glash’s address.

  The sergeant nodded, and then closed the door behind him.

  ‘He’s not going to do anything,’ Carla said.

  Hobbs looked at her. ‘You’re probably right.’

  ‘He just did that to humor us,’ she added, ‘to get us to go into our cell – excuse me, hospital room – without a fight.’

  Barrett was frantically checking out the space – three small cots made up in white linen with folded hospital-issue pajamas in faded shades of brown, green and blue. There were three small end tables, a telephone and a fifteen-inch television bolted to a corner stand that jutted from the wall. Overhead, vents sucked up the air, sending it through a series of filters, while fresh air got pumped back through a second set in the floor.

  Hobbs picked up the telephone receiver. ‘Great!’ he muttered.

  ‘What?’ Carla asked.

  ‘This,’ he said, punching the button to put it on speaker. A mechanical voice spilled out, ‘This extension is equipped to receive only. If you wish to make an outgoing call please consult with your hospital courtesy coordinator. Thank you.’

  ‘They don’t want us talking to anyone,’ Barrett said, and the three of them spent the next four hours searching fruitlessly for a way out.

  At midnight, the lights shut off without warning.

  ‘I guess they’re trying to tell us something,’ Hobbs said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Barrett agreed, but as she lay back on the freshly-made bed, convinced that she would never fall asleep, she was out cold in minutes.

  When she opened her eyes, the room was still dark. She heard Hobbs’s snoring and as her eyes adjusted, she saw Carla curled up in the bed next to hers.

  Easing out of the bed, she went to the small en-suite bathroom with a stall shower. She closed the door and tried the light; she was surprised that it worked.

  She looked at the shower, and realizing it wasn’t exactly the thing to do at the end of the world, she turned on the water and peeled off her torn navy slacks and once-white shirt. Blood had fixed the thin cotton of her blouse to the gash on her right shoulder. She slowly pried it back, trying not to rip the scab. Fresh blood oozed around the edges. She thought about how nice it would be to have fresh clothes – even if it were just hospital pajamas. She put a hand under the spray and adjusted the heat. She unwrapped a bar of white soap and stepped under the warm, cascading streams. It felt wonderful to stand there letting the warmth touch her skin, to let it melt away four days of sweat and grime. She smoothed the soap across her belly. Had it started to swell? She thought about the lie she’d told Glash, that the baby growing inside her was Ralph’s. Who would ever know? ‘Right,’ she said aloud, knowing that three people would know – Justine, Hobbs and George. So what? she argued with herself. If they truly cared for her … loved her … and this is what she wanted … She stopped herself as the fantasy took shape: her with a baby, holding him or her, realizing she actually had a preference – a girl. For the briefest of moments she let an old, cherished dream return. Her own little girl. Holding her, breastfeeding, changing diapers, buying pretty outfits, bringing her to her mother’s apartment in the East Village for babysitting. The vision of her mother, Ruth, still young looking with her Country-Western auburn hair and loving eyes, caused her to gasp.

  She startled at a knock at the bathroom door. It was Hobbs. ‘Barrett, Justine’s on the phone … are you in the shower?’

  ‘Hold on.’ Still soapy, she turned off the water, grabbed the largest of the towels and wrapped it around her. She went out into the room where the lights had come back on and caught odd looks from Carla and Hobbs. ‘It’s not like we’re going anywhere,’ she said, taking the phone. ‘Justine?’

  ‘Barrett, you don’t know the trouble I had finding your room number. What did you do?’

  ‘Justine, let me talk. The so-called authorities have gotten everything wrong and you’ve got to get us out of here.’ She quickly filled her sister in on the salient points.

  ‘Barrett, I understand what you’re saying, but if Glash has been walking around with this stuff, and you’ve been with him for the past few days, isn’t it possible you’ve been exposed?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Justine. What time is it?’

  ‘It’s a little after seven.’

  ‘In the morning?’

  ‘Yuh.’

  ‘Great! Look, it’s been over a day since we were last in contact with Glash. He always kept it bottled up and away from us. If we’d been infected, we’d already … be sick.’

  ‘Jesus, Barrett!’

  ‘You’ve got to get us out of here.’

  ‘They’ve got that entire floor locked off,’ Justine said. ‘It used to be a psyche floor.’

  ‘Yes, I recognize
it, even though everything’s been changed … there’s got to be a way.’ Barrett again looked around the room, taking in the neatly arranged furniture, the oxygen hook-ups, all its typical hospital-room features, minus a window and with a single locked door. Hobbs was standing on the middle bed poking at the ceiling tiles and shaking his head. The vents were bolted shut with the screws on the opposite side. Carla was sitting on the far bed watching Barrett intently and listening.

  ‘People escape from psych wards all the time,’ Carla said.

  ‘That’s true,’ Barrett replied as Hobbs got down from the bed, having given up on the ceiling.

  ‘How?’ he asked.

  Barrett quickly ran through every instance she could think of. ‘Usually in the company of friends and family, or they attach themselves to visitors leaving the unit. You’d be amazed how visitors don’t want to say anything even if they think it’s weird that one of the patients – in pajamas – is following them off the unit.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Hobbs said, ‘herd mentality. Like this bullshit! Is that the only way?’

  ‘Laundry carts and meal carts,’ Carla added. ‘They’ve got to feed us at some point.’

  ‘I wonder if they’ve even thought that far,’ Barrett said. ‘From what little I saw, we’re getting the luxury accommodation.’

  ‘You have no idea how confused things are right now,’ Justine said through the receiver. ‘We’ve been told that no medical personnel can leave for any reason, and that until the all-clear is given, we have to be prepared to quarantine as many as twenty thousand people in a hospital with a twelve-hundred bed capacity.’

  ‘Good,’ Hobbs said. ‘Chaos is good. What’s bad is we seem to have pissed off people in high places.’

  ‘Justine,’ Barrett said, ‘I’m going to ask you to do something that could get all of us into big trouble. I don’t even know how big, but—’

  ‘Stop right there,’ Justine said. ‘This could actually work. I’ve been issued a hazmat suit and I’ve got my hospital ID. I’m assuming this will be two for lunch?’

  ‘I’m coming too,’ Carla spat out.

  Hobbs and Barrett exchanged glances.

  ‘Look,’ Carla said, ‘you need every bit of help you can get. You don’t know what we’re going to find out there. I have friends in the DA’s office, maybe I can get someone to listen to us.’

  ‘What the hell,’ Barrett said, grabbing the closest of the pajamas. ‘Make it three, Justine. And please … hurry.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ And she hung up.

  Barrett, with her hair wet, dripping suds and still dressed in a towel, felt something close to hope flutter in her chest.

  ‘Do you think she’ll be able to do it?’ Carla asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Barrett said, retreating to the bathroom, not wanting to change in front of Hobbs. ‘She’d do anything for me. I think it’s our only shot.’ She closed the door and looked down at her ripped slacks. Her blouse reeked of sweat and blood. She pulled on the pajama top, her filthy slacks and rubber-soled hospital slippers. Her heart was pounding, and it wasn’t just fear. There was something more. She sat on the bathroom floor and hugged her legs. She thought about Hobbs and about Justine and what they’d say if they knew what she was thinking. But there it is, she thought. If I survive, I’m having this baby, and no one is going to talk me out of it. And in spite of everything, she thought of Justine’s bad joke when she was trying to get her to have the abortion; she grinned and whispered aloud, ‘Call me Rosemary.’

  Twenty-Eight

  Chained to a cot and covered by only the blue plastic tarp, George Houssman shivered and stared at Cosway across the brightly lit and windowless basement. The mask on his face caused his broken glasses to steam; he had to keep pushing them up to let them vent so he could see. He squinted and checked the time at the bottom of the monitor that recorded Cosway’s infection. It was 8 A.M. Friday morning and less than one day after being infected, he was clearly dying. The poor man lay on the sweat-stained mattress staring up at the ceiling, his face bloated, an effect of the angry pustules and weeping sores that covered his naked flesh. As a medical student decades ago, George had seen textbook photographs of bubonic plague; then it had been fascinating, now it was horrifying and cruel … and real. His thoughts hammered away at him: Was all of this on some level his fault? Decades-old regret flooded him; he and Delia should have tried harder to save the boy. Tears of frustration clouded his vision as he watched Cosway’s breath take on the odd, bellows-like quality of someone close to death; not yet the agonal rasps of the last hour, but that was near.

  ‘Cosway,’ Houssman called.

  The sick man turned his head, the effort bringing on a fresh wave of coughing. ‘I don’t want to die,’ he wheezed. Tears tracked into the open sores that had erupted on his cheeks and chin.

  It was like Cosway was melting, his blood vessels, and even his cells, exploding out their contents. From what little Houssman recalled from med school, this was what should have happened eventually; but what Albert had developed looked far worse. Plague, he recalled, should take days or even weeks to get to this stage … not twenty-four hours. Houssman couldn’t stop shaking; he gathered the crinkly tarp tight around his shoulders. There was nothing he could do to comfort the dying man. He wondered if there was anything anyone could do. Or was it as Richard had said, that this was something that could not be treated with existing antibiotics?

  He heard the cellar door open and looked up. Peter Glash descended, ducking his head to miss a low-hanging beam. His face, like George’s, was covered with a protective mask; his eyes with shiny black and purple bruises from Hobbs’s fist. He glanced at Cosway. ‘It won’t be long,’ he commented. He looked at Houssman. ‘Richard says he’ll be dead within eight hours.’

  Peter then checked the camcorder to insure it was still recording. He fished a fresh tape from the breast pocket of his denim work shirt and inserted it into the machine.

  Houssman tried to calm himself, to stop shaking. After fifty years of dealing with mentally-ill criminals he was not easily flustered. The difference now, he realized, was that he’d always been able to keep his children safe from his work. Their very real peril was eating away at him, making it hard to think straight. He thought of Barrett and the horrible risks she had taken; it’s what most worried him about her. She’d not developed the skill, the distance that was so important to keep the work at arm’s length. He hated to fault her, but she had jumped right into Glash’s truck, and she was carrying the child of another killer and …

  ‘Peter,’ he said.

  ‘What, George?’ Glash’s tone was sarcastic.

  ‘Why don’t you stop him? What he’s intending is inhuman.’

  ‘So?’ Glash replied, and then settled in a folding metal chair across from Houssman. ‘Richard wants me to tell you my story. He thinks it’s important. Some of it you know. Pick up your pad. He’s excited about the book you’re going to write.’ His tone was dull. ‘Personally I’d just as soon see you dying in that cage.’ He reached toward Houssman.

  George recoiled as Glash took off his broken glasses, wiped the condensation off on his sleeve and then put them back on. George stared into cold blue eyes that held a deep hatred. The bruises on Peter’s face were like a second mask or some kind of circus make-up.

  ‘He tells me that several of your others have been bestsellers. He wants me to read them. Perhaps I will one day … if I survive.’

  Houssman looked at the yellow pad, now over half-filled with his small, careful script. ‘What if I refuse?’

  Peter glared. ‘You think my son is joking?’

  Houssman tried to quiet his breathing; he didn’t want Peter to see his fear, his weakness. ‘No. I realize this is deadly serious.’

  ‘Yes, many are about to die.’

  ‘You could stop this,’ Houssman said, keeping his voice low in case Richard should be trying to listen in.

  ‘Of course I could; I choose n
ot to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Write, and I’ll tell you. It’s all connected, and part of what needs to happen is the recording of it. Should you choose not to do this he’ll kill you … or I will; I’d like that. Your purpose will be gone’ – he paused, and then added – ‘you did have another purpose for Richard. You failed him.’

  ‘He wanted me to be his father.’

  ‘Yes. But because Richard is special, you refused. You failed him.’

  ‘I did,’ Houssman admitted, finding it hard to catch his breath.

  ‘Correct, you were given something precious – my son; you failed us both. Now I’m going to tell you my story. Either you write it down, or I’ll tell him that you refused and he’ll come down here and put a bullet in your very old head. It’s your choice. You know, as I think about it, I could just tell my story on to a tape – anyone could write the book then.’

  Houssman picked up the pad and the pen. The tarp gaped, exposing his thin chest to the damp basement air. ‘I’ll write.’

  ‘Of course you will,’ Peter Glash said. ‘You’re a smart man. I know what you’re thinking, that as long you’re alive there’s still a chance. You’re wondering if there’s some way you could escape and stop this. I imagine there is some small chance … while you’re alive. That goes to zero if you’re dead. Richard knows where your children live. He knows the names of your grandchildren and what school Faye attends on West Third Street.’ Peter Glash smiled over rotted teeth. ‘Shall we begin?’

  ‘Yes.’ Houssman seethed, his fear gone, replaced with surging adrenalin at the mention of his children … of his granddaughter, Faye. She’d be arriving at school right now, lining up with her classmates outside the old brick building in Greenwich Village.

  ‘Good. You think you know me,’ Peter went on. ‘You don’t. You knew that I killed Dorothea; she was a whore. It’s a husband’s right to punish his wife. Richard understands that. That’s why I made him watch.’