Ashes, Ashes

by Charles Atkins

  He looks behind and sees the bread truck with Dr Conyors and Carla Phelps. He let them live and now they’re decreasing their chances of survival by following him. Carla Phelps had been right: she had helped him. If it wasn’t for her he’d have never escaped; it wasn’t fair for her to be the guinea pig – the Martin Cosway. And Dr Conyors was pregnant and had never cheated on her husband. It was better for Dr Houssman, who he wouldn’t think about, to write the book.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Father shouts back, as the engine revs in preparation for the sprint across Seventh.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ Richard says, hugging his father tight, wishing he had a pad of paper and pen to draw each passing moment. ‘I’m going to die,’ he says, the words barely out of his mouth before hacking coughs rattle through his body. He pictures the delicate tissue of his lungs ripping apart as the deadly bacteria spews out of his mouth and his nose. It reminds him of a dandelion, after the flower has gone and the puffball of seeds is formed; that’s what he is. His only regret – and it’s big – is that he won’t be alive to marry Mary. He wonders if she will miss him. Will she cry?

  He tries to keep upright, and get a view of University Hospital. And he struggles to hang on. The clock in his head has stopped; he can’t predict with any certainty now how much time remains.

  The scene in front of the hospital is not the one he’d predicted; the one he’d drawn countless times. Rows of squad cars and military vehicles are barricading the broad front steps. They stretch in all directions, and he sees cement barriers positioned in front of the emergency-room bays.

  He reminds himself that it was here that it started nearly forty years ago. He’d tried to play cowboys and Indians with Mary, and then they’d kept him in a locked room, and made promises. All lies.

  He stares at the fast approaching building. He’s so close, yet the probability of failure, of being shot to death before he can kill them all, is mounting. ‘“A” and “B”,’ he whispers into Father’s ear, as he coughs and grips tight, trying to not fall off. He rests his face against his father’s back, and feels the vibrations of the motor. ‘“A” and “B”.’ His gaze falls on a chain-link-fenced schoolyard, filled with hundreds of children and teachers. It’s Friday morning, and the summer day-camp kids are pressed against the fence, to see what the commotion is all about.

  The cops are waiting. They’ll shoot him and Father dead with a high probability of doing it before he’s successfully infected an adequate number. He’d sure fooled them with the reservoir, but then they’d figured it out. Well, maybe he can fool them one last time. Even with Mary, after all those years, he’d found a plan B; he didn’t have to kill her. The schoolyard would be perfect. He tries to steady his breath.

  ‘Father … Dad, the schoolyard …’ He coughs. ‘Plan B. I’ll do it there.’ He braces himself, digging into the sides of the bike with his thighs, with each movement feeling pustules burst open, the warm and sticky liquid running down his legs, his face, his back, his arms. He’d always wondered what it would be like to attend a normal school – not the barred rooms at Albomar. He thinks about Houssman and that this might have been the school for him, if the old man hadn’t lied.

  The motorcycle swerves and aims for the unlocked gate of the schoolyard. Richard hears the screams of the kids as they catch sight of them. He lifts his head from his father’s back so they can get the full effect.

  ‘He’s coming this way!’ a little girl shrieks.

  A young female counselor dressed casually in jeans races toward the gate and hurriedly attempts to lock it. The bolt jams; she makes eye contact with Peter Glash as he bears down on her. Her fingers wrap in the links; she holds on and braces. Others shout for the children to run inside.

  Like stampeding cattle the children try to run back into the redbrick building, but they jam up at the closed doors; no one is calm enough to step back so they can get them open. Patrol cars peel off from the hospital. Richard Glash braces for the impact as his father slows the bike and rams the vintage BMW into the gate.

  His eyes connect with the wide-eyed terror of the young teacher attempting to hold the gate shut. He smiles at her as a wave of coughing shakes him. Yes, he thinks as they burst through the gate and Father takes aim at a group of little children and their counselor huddled in a corner of the playground. I’m like a dandelion puffball.

  Thirty-Three

  Barrett braced herself as she stared through the windshield of the speeding bread truck. She felt Carla tense up next to her.

  Oh, shit! she thought as alarms rang in her head – this was the city block where April, Carla’s seven-year-old, attended P.S.85 summer day-camp.

  ‘Please don’t let her be here. Please, Bill, please have listened. Not here …’ Carla fretted.

  Barrett white-knuckled the wheel. ‘What’s the plan?’ she spat out, as she raced after the Glashes. In the distance stretched University Hospital, barricaded by cop cars and humvees. Sirens rang thick, coming from all directions.

  ‘He’s not getting through that,’ Hobbs shouted, his attention glued to the motorcycle. ‘What are they thinking?’

  Carla shuddered. ‘Oh my God; he’ll go for plan B.’

  Barrett gasped as the motorcycle wobbled, Peter Glash’s booted leg touched down and the agile bike made a ninety-degree turn to the right.

  ‘He’s going for the school!’ Barrett shouted. ‘Hold on!’ She slammed on the brakes. The truck screeched, the force lifting the back tires off the ground, and for a second there was the stomach-lurching sensation of gravity and momentum threatening to roll them. The wheels bounced down and they now faced the school yard gate – too small for the truck – but the Glashes had no trouble bursting through.

  They saw the Glashes advancing on a group of small children pressed into a corner. Peter was using the lightweight bike with finesse to herd the children and two young day-camp counselors into an ever-tighter wedge at the corner of the yard. The two women were standing in front of their charges, trying somehow to protect them as they got forced up against the chain-link fence.

  Carla bolted over Ed’s lap and raced from the truck and through the gate.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Barrett shrieked, but knew that this was her daughter’s school, and that Carla’s ex had enrolled her in the summer day camp. In Glash’s horrible world everything was connected. She wondered for a second if this hadn’t always been the plan, and the hospital – yet again – a feint that they’d fallen for.

  Carla didn’t answer, her eyes fixed on the Glashes. ‘Richard!’ she screamed over the revving of the motorcycle. He couldn’t hear her, and even if he could there’d be no reasoning with him.

  She ran toward them and tripped over a discarded white plastic whiffle bat. She caught herself from falling and grabbed the bat. She sprinted across the playground.

  ‘Mommy!’ a blonde girl trapped in the corner shouted over the herd. ‘Mommy!’

  ‘April!’ Carla screamed. ‘Stay away from him. Stay away from him!’

  ‘Carla!’ Barrett shouted, out of the truck and running fast. ‘Don’t do this!’

  Peter Glash revved the engine, his sights fixed on the children and the two frightened counselors.

  Carla raised the bat overhead, still running as fast as she could. Barrett watched as Carla threw every ounce of strength into the swing, her focus fixed on the back of Richard’s head.

  The motorcycle swerved to the right, dangerously close to Carla, as two children on the left side of the pack tried to make a run for it. It foreshortened her swing, costing her precious pounds of force. Still, the hollow plastic bat connected with the right side of Richard’s head, grazing his ear and rupturing small pustules. Barrett saw splatters of liquid fly on to Carla’s face and her fingers wrapped tight around the bat.

  Richard swayed and shook his head. He reached back to try and steady himself, but his hand waved out on empty air. His father, sensing something was wrong, slowed. The bike barely moved, its engine low
and throaty, Peter Glash caught sight of Carla in the mirror and pulled a pistol from his jacket. ‘Too late!’ he shouted, as he took aim from the idling bike.

  Carla ducked to the right of the bike and grabbed Richard around the waist; she yanked back hard. The weakened man lost his grip and they tumbled to the asphalt.

  Barrett knew that Carla’s only concern was to keep him away from her daughter. She heard the little girl’s screams: ‘Mommy! Mommy!’

  Carla was like a woman possessed. She held tight. Glash struggled like a fish on the line; he was burning with fever and dripping sweat and blood. A bullet pinged overhead.

  Barrett turned at the sound of booted feet pounding the playground. A battalion of Guardsmen raced in with weapons drawn.

  Horrified, she looked back at Carla wrestling Richard on the ground. Her hands were coated with blood and the sticky yellow fluid that oozed from his sores. Glash started to cough.

  The scene was repulsive, intimate and frightening; her heart pounded fast, the rhythm beating through the thin fabric of her pajama shirt. She wanted to help and knew that she mustn’t.

  ‘Mommy!’

  Richard’s coughing worsened and he started to choke.

  Barrett winced as a bullet tore the leg of Carla’s pants. The redhead gasped, and seemed to redouble her hold on Richard, wrapping her arms tight around his chest, holding him close to her and away from the children. Blood started to ooze and spread through the dark fabric of her pants.

  His cough turned to a gurgle; fluid was rushing out of his lungs. He choked and convulsed in her arms as bright red blood spilled forth from his mouth.

  She gripped her left hand over her right and pushed hard into his back. She squeezed, struggling to keep her grip.

  Even from a distance, Barrett heard something crack inside of him as a fresh wave of blood gushed out of his mouth.

  ‘Put down the gun!’ Hobbs shouted. ‘Put down the gun!’

  Peter Glash turned the bike and glared at the advancing throng of law enforcement officers crowding through the open gate. He revved the engine. ‘Get up, Richard! Get up, boy!’ he shouted. His face was red, his mouth twisted and angry. ‘Get up!’ But his son had stopped struggling in Carla’s blood-soaked arms.

  ‘Put down the gun!’ Hobbs ordered. ‘Get off the bike! Do it now!’

  Carla kept her grip on Richard’s limp body; she looked across at the frightened children huddled like sheep in the corner of the yard. Her eyes connected with her daughter’s. ‘April,’ she gasped, and then shouted, ‘Get them out of here!’

  Peter Glash looked down at his son. ‘No …’ he whispered, too low to be heard. He felt his finger on the trigger, the barrel pointed at the redhead; she was drenched in blood and sweat, her battle with his son would take her life. It was his single most awful moment ever, as he faced the onslaught of armed men, his last remaining seconds of freedom. He felt a queer clarity in that moment, his hand gripping steel as the August sun beat hot on his back. Children sobbed behind him, sirens blared, a little girl shouted, ‘Mommy! Mommy!’

  He knew that his next move would be his last. If he put down the gun, they’d put him back in prison – in a sense he’d never left, all those years alone in the building on Delancey, rarely going out. His entire existence these last years had been fixed on finding a way to connect with the child who’d been stolen from him. To stop now would be to fail Richard yet again.

  With the first of the cops – Hobbs, the one who’d tried to bully him – less than twenty feet away, he raised his hands over his head.

  ‘Put the gun on the ground!’ the cop shouted again.

  He felt the fever building in his flesh, as awkwardly he dismounted, his left leg swinging back over the low-slung bike.

  ‘Put down the gun!’

  With those children right there and their two frightened counselors behind him, Peter knew they wouldn’t fire. His ears had tuned in to the sniffles and the sobs.

  It was the redhead on the ground who met his eye and immediately understood.

  ‘Shoot him!’ she shrieked.

  ‘Don’t shoot,’ Peter said, as he edged back toward the children, and the advancing wave of law enforcement and Guardsmen came at him.

  ‘Mommy!’

  ‘Shoot him!’ Carla screamed.

  The circle of cops grew tighter. Peter saw fear in their young faces as they approached Richard and the redhead, who still clung to his son. He could also see their hunger, their lust for blood, his blood. He edged back from the bike, towards the sound of the children. An eye for an eye. His breath felt hot in his mouth; he could feel a moist rattle deep in his lungs.

  ‘Put down the gun! Now!’

  Still closing the gap with the kids, Peter Glash started to bend as though about to comply.

  ‘Hobbs!’ the redhead shouted. ‘He’s infected. Keep him away from April! Shoot him!’

  Peter spun around; his eyes focused on the closest boy, a seven-year-old in jeans and a Thomas the Train tee-shirt. He lunged.

  The first bullet felt like a rock against the back of his head. At first he didn’t know what it was, his brain needing time to comprehend. The second ripped through his throat; the third caught him in the chest.

  ‘April, get back!’

  Those were the last words he heard as he fell to the ground; he grasped for the little boy, but found only air. With what life remained he managed to turn his head in the direction of his son. He wanted to see Richard’s face, but saw only the redhead. His eyes met hers, and the final thought in his dying brain was, There is nothing a father won’t do for his son.

  Thirty-Four

  Barrett, dressed in a blue hazmat suit, had not moved from the garishly upholstered floral chair next to Carla’s hospital bed. Despite the three potent antibiotics that were being pushed into her through intravenous tubing she was dying. Fluid-filled pustules had erupted all over her. The capillaries in her eyes had started to burst. The coughing that signaled the beginning of the end had begun.

  Around University Hospital there were dozens of other vigils, desperate parents watching and waiting to see if their child had contracted Clarence Albert’s bubonic plague.

  ‘Check again,’ Carla said, her lips parched and cracking.

  Barrett dialed the room where Carla’s daughter was quarantined. ‘How’s she doing?’ she asked. ‘No signs of anything,’ she told Carla. ‘She’s going to be fine.’

  ‘They don’t know for sure, yet,’ Carla said. ‘How much longer till they know?’

  To Barrett, whose tears were very close, Carla’s question had a second meaning: How much longer do I need to stay alive to know that my child will be all right?

  There was a knock at the door, and a tall man in a white hazmat suit entered.

  ‘Carla,’ he called out softly.

  With effort, she turned her head and squinted to find her ex-husband, his face barely recognizable behind the shiny Plexiglas shield, standing in the doorway. ‘Bill? Who’s with April?’

  ‘Kelly, she hasn’t left her side.’

  ‘I suppose I should be grateful,’ Carla said, her every word an effort. ‘Does April know that … I’m dying?’

  ‘No,’ Bill said, ‘we didn’t want to tell her until …’

  ‘Makes sense.’ Carla coughed. She struggled to push herself up. She reached for the glass of ice water on the table positioned over her bed. She carefully sipped through the straw.

  Barrett helped steady the plastic cup as her hands shook. ‘Do you want me to leave?’ she asked.

  ‘Please don’t,’ Carla said. ‘Stay with me … what did you want, Bill?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ he said, staring at the woman he’d once loved and subsequently abandoned.

  Carla, trying hard not to start coughing, spoke slowly. ‘I’ve been so angry, Bill. You didn’t even give me a chance.’ She took a careful breath. ‘You thought that I was somehow defective, you just threw me away.’

  ‘I was frightened,’ h
e said, stepping closer to the bed, but still leaving a good eight feet between them.

  ‘I know that,’ she said, ‘and I know that I should have told you about my condition. I had so much fear, fear that you’d leave me, fear that I couldn’t be a mother. In the end, I don’t think any of that matters. I loved you, Bill.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I loved you too, Carla.’

  She looked at Barrett, and attempted a smile. ‘So much for unconditional love.’ She coughed violently, and when she finally managed to catch her breath, looked up at her ex. ‘Bill, if you want forgiveness, it’s yours, just take care of our daughter. Love her better than you loved me. Don’t break her heart … like you did mine. Now, I’m really tired. Please go.’

  The two women watched as he left.

  ‘You’re a psychiatrist,’ Carla said after he’d gone, ‘men are just weaker, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed.

  ‘When the going got tough, Bill took off … I don’t want to die,’ she whispered.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I don’t have a choice.’

  ‘What you did was heroic,’ Barrett said, as tears tracked down her cheeks. ‘They came so close … you stopped them.’

  ‘It’s something my mother taught me: “If you make a mess, clean it up.” I have a favor to ask, Barrett.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘Look in on April. Manic depression runs in my family.’ Barrett could see it was getting hard for Carla to breathe, her words were labored. ‘If she got it …’ She coughed. ‘If she got it, I don’t know what Bill would do.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Barrett said, ‘I’ll find a way.’

  ‘I’ve kept a journal,’ she said. ‘They’re in a box in my closet. And one next to my bed. Take them. When April’s old enough, give them to her. She needs to know …’ She couldn’t finish the sentence. She coughed, and couldn’t catch her breath.

  Barrett watched helpless as a stream of blood trickled between Carla’s lips. The cough worsened as blood vessels burst in Carla’s lungs. Blood poured from her mouth. Her eyes bulged as she gasped for air, but found only blood. There was nothing Barrett could do; she kept her eyes on Carla’s and watched as death came and took her. Barrett’s tears flowed and condensation formed on her Plexiglas mask.