She self-consciously smoothed the lapels of her consignment store, London Fog coat. It was no Burberry but it was nice enough. Deciding to change tactics she moved in front of the doors so that she was easily seen. If she didn’t get off first she would be trapped by the incoming passengers. Some of them backed away and looked frightened when they saw her and she wondered what they knew that she didn’t. The doors opened and they moved back to let her off. She smiled hesitantly and they all looked relieved then practically trampled her in their haste to board.
Making her way past the turnstiles and onto the platform for the blue line she overheard snippets of conversation.
“Bastards made like they were in this with us then we find out they left town before the announcement was even made. Sneaking, lying jerks.” The speaker pushed past her and jumped ahead of several others trying to board.
“Yeah, they bombed the hospital but that was after it jumped. It jumped! They knew and they let us all come into the city today anyway.” This from a woman holding the hand of a little boy in a navy-blue parka.
Bea stopped in front of her. “What jumped? Can you tell me what is going on?”
The woman looked annoyed and kept moving forward in the boarding line. “Where have you been? The virus from Haiti jumped quarantine. They bombed the hospital this morning but it was too late. It spread. Any of us could be infected.”
“What? They bombed a hospital in Haiti?”
“No, here. They bombed the military hospital here.”
Bea knew about the earthquake but hadn’t followed the story after the initial reports. She had only recently gotten cable and Brian kept the television tuned to Animal Planet or Nat Geo almost all the time. She didn’t mind. Both channels were more interesting than the political bickering and sensationalism found in the news. Apparently though, she missed something pretty important. What kind of virus justified bombing an entire hospital?
People continued to board, pushing, shoving, and clawing to get inside. The doors wouldn’t close so the people inside pushed those near the doors back onto the platform. Screams broke out and they turned to see a spray of blood across the windows of the train Bea had just left. She caught a glimpse of the formerly sleeping passenger in hospital scrubs, hands locked around the bloody, torn throat of a teen-aged boy who was fighting for his life. The doors had already closed and the train was moving as passengers beat on the windows and doors, trying to get out. The train picked up speed and was gone.
Bea didn’t know if another train would come and if it did whether or not she really wanted to board. She needed a map of the city and time to plot a route home above ground. She had never walked the entire way home but was used to walking from Foggy Bottom. The only problem was who or what would be out there with her tonight.
While she stood there, biting her lip in indecision, the lights pulsed again. Another train. She moved over to the up escalator, poised to flee, and felt the rumble of the oncoming train. It slowed and came to a gradual stop but she and everyone else there could already see it held few passengers. Sending up a silent prayer she boarded.
Everyone looked at one another with suspicion and seldom made eye contact which was not that different from standard public transportation norms. Bea, however, needed information so she spoke up.
“Does anyone know what this ‘flu’ or whatever it is does to people? Believe it or not, I haven’t seen that much about it.” She looked around expectantly.
A gray-haired woman told her, “It causes vomiting, then coma, then psychosis.”
Bea asked, “How do you get it? Is it airborne?”
“They don’t know for sure. Most people have gotten it from bites so far.”
“Animal bites?”
“No, ma’am, human bites,” a very tired-looking man in military attire informed her. “There may be other ways to contract it. They don’t know for sure but they’re advising people to stay home to be safe. My guess is things will calm down in a week or so.”
A man wearing a houndstooth-checked wool hat put his cell phone away and leaned forward. “I don’t think so, buddy. The president and all his staff left town last night, heading for an undisclosed location. All the other big-wigs left around the same time. With the exception of 9/11, have you ever heard of that happening before? I haven’t.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions based on rumors. You don’t know that anyone left town for sure.”
“I don’t? My brother-in-law’s company has been treating the president’s study in the White House for deathwatch beetles and when he went in there two days ago the staff was grabbing papers and stuffin’ ‘em in bags and boxes, packing up everything they could. When he went back in this morning, almost everyone was gone. The people left told him to go on home and sit tight ‘til things get better but Ray said even they were packing up, getting ready to bug out.”
The train pulled into the Foggy Bottom station. The platform here was empty. Everyone disembarked then mounted the still working escalator up to the next level. A few people were there, looking ready to flee but they relaxed once they got a good look at the newcomers. Lights appeared in the tunnel and a train rumbled along the tracks.
It didn’t stop. She had a confused impression of blood-smeared windows and screams within. The people inside were fighting for their lives against what appeared to be their fellow passengers. The nightmare images flashed by then were gone and quiet returned to the platform.
Instinct told her this must be a terrorist attack even though that didn’t make sense. A missile attack, a plane crash or a vehicle bomb, those made sense in a terrorist scenario. Hand-to-hand combat in and under the streets did not. Whatever this was she had to get out of here and get home. What if the man shaking the gates outside her house was sick and managed to get inside? She texted Brian again telling him to stay inside, sending the message just as a colossal boom and then the screeching crash of tearing steel echoed down the tunnel. Bea thought she must have gone deaf because though she saw people on the platform cry out she couldn’t hear them. Faces contorted in pain from the sound and the realization that fellow human beings had just died, were still dying, in darkness and fear.
Gradually her hearing returned though accompanied by a ringing effect that dampened what she heard. Two men in safety vests and a woman wearing hospital scrubs under her coat jumped down onto the track, carefully avoiding the live third rail, and began to walk toward the crash. The darkness of the tunnel soon swallowed them up then the screams began. Or perhaps they had been sounding the whole time and she was just now able to hear them.
“We’re going to have to try to get home above-ground,” said a young father pushing a baby stroller full of packages. His frightened-looking wife held a sleeping baby tightly. “The trains aren’t safe anymore.”
Bea said, “There was a gun battle going on in the streets near the Federal Triangle. You don’t want to take a baby out in anything like that.”
“They don’t have any choice, lady. Take a look at that.” The man with the exterminator brother-in-law pointed down toward the tunnel.
Slowly emerging from the shadows of the tunnel, the survivors of the crash limped along the tracks. They seemed dazed, so dazed that they staggered to stay upright. A woman wandered dangerously close to the live rail and Bea shouted out a warning but she either didn’t hear or didn’t understand because she stepped on it. Once her foot made the connection her body began to jerk and they heard sizzling sounds before she fell to one side. Horrified, Bea went forward to jump down into the tracks to help her up but a man standing near her grabbed her arm. She tried to shake him off but he just shook his head and held on.
Incredibly, the electrocuted woman got to her knees then stood up. Shredded skin revealed a huge rip in her throat and blood covered the front and shoulder of her blouse. She continued to stagger forward with the others.
All of the survivors were horribly injured, to the point that they really shouldn’t be alive and certainly not a
mbulatory. The woman holding the baby began to make choked sounds that were not quite screams and she ran for the escalator, her husband following. Everyone else on the platform began to move away.
The man holding her arm let go and started up the escalator. He glanced back at her and said, “You should leave too. I don’t think those,” he pointed to the walking wounded “can get up here but there might be others who can.”
“What are you talking about? We can’t just leave them.” Bea had seen callousness before but this was unbelievable.
“They’re infected and you can’t help them. They’ll kill you if they can. Look down.”
She did. The survivors stood just below them, reaching upward but didn’t seem to know how to climb up. She went to the edge of the platform and a man wearing an orange safety vest bared his teeth and snapped at her. His eyes looked completely dead and he showed no emotion other than desperate, vicious hunger. He was also (she drew back with a small scream) missing an arm.
“Hurry! The others are coming,” her rescuer shouted at her from the escalator.
He was right. Dozens of wounded walked along the track. Several wandered onto the live rail but they just kept coming. How was this possible? She ran up the escalator, jumped the turnstile because she couldn’t find her pass, and walked up and out into the dark D.C. night.
“We might all be safer if we stayed together and there is strength in numbers. Which way are you going?” It was the same man who had held her back from the track. “I’m David and you are…?”
“Bea, Beatrice actually, and I need to get to Georgetown. I live near the C&O. Nice to meet you and thanks for- for down there, you know. Which way are you going?”
“Nice to meet you, Beatrice Actually. My apartment is up toward Rock Creek so that should work. You wouldn’t happen to have a weapon with you, would you?”
Odd question. Why would she have a weapon? Bea shook her head but thought of the tightly-locked old footlocker in the linen closet. She had a gun. Three really but none were licensed to carry. She found them in with some of her mom’s things not long after she left. Typical of her mom to leave something that dangerous in a place that a six-year-old could reach. Bea locked them up immediately, along with the ammo. She suspected they belonged either to her dad or maybe the grandfather they had never met. She knew her dad had been in the Gulf War and her grandfather had gone to Vietnam but little more than that. Family stories around the fire in the evenings were never a feature of their home life.
“I don’t either but maybe we can pick something up along the way. Let’s see if anyone else is going in our direction.”
The couple with the baby huddled next to the streetlamp. The man in the houndstooth-checked hat stood next to them, talking and gesturing down the street.
“… have seen Reagan International! Everyone fighting to get on a plane out, didn’t matter where, as long as it was out of town. Of course there weren’t enough flights and I guess they either tried to rent a car and drive out or they went back to their hotel or whatever. I didn’t stick around once-”
“Hey, sorry to interrupt but are any of you headed north-west? If it’s practical it might be better to stay together for as long as we can,” David said.
“Sure, that works for us,” said the woman holding the baby. “I’m Sophia and this is my husband, John.” She shifted the sleeping baby on her shoulder. “And this is Hannah.”
As if she knew she were being discussed the baby opened sleepy brown eyes, yawned and then went back to sleep. The wind picked up and Sophia turned to keep the twirling snowflakes from hitting the tiny, brown, pink-cheeked face.
“Jackson Brown, nice to meet all of you. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking and no, I’m not the rock-star diva. Just call me Jack” said the man in the checked hat. “Staying together is a good idea and I think we’d better get going now.”
Bea tucked her scarf into the neck of her coat; it was cold and getting colder. They climbed the steps up and out into the frozen streets.
Away from the Metro, Foggy Bottom bustled with activity. The corner bodegas were packed and one store had already put up a sign proclaiming they were out of milk. Cars, some abandoned, blocked the streets. Bea looked but didn’t see a Circulator bus anywhere.
She remembered the pizza Brian wanted but the queues to get in the stores snaked outside onto the sidewalks. She doubted anything would be left even if she did eventually get inside. Screams pierced the night down the street but nothing was visible through the crowded mass of people.
Their little group kept going, past the George Washington University Hotel and onto the backstreets. The snow-encrusted tree branches sparkled white in the street lamps and the brick sidewalks were slippery with re-frozen slush. Television screens shone through windows of the charming little row houses back here and Bea thought that she should have told Brian to either close the blinds or turn the TV off. Or would signs of habitation scare the ill people away? She thought again of the man shaking the gates and increased her pace. They came to K Street.
Sophia and John split off here and headed for Twenty-second and Jack turned the corner to his place near the church. Bea and David were alone. He walked along, testing the bars in the occasional wrought iron fence to see if he could break a loose one off for use as a weapon. Just as they came to the end of the block, he found one and bent it back and forth until it snapped off. He looked incongruous in his suit and tie and expensive Brooks Brothers coat, destroying someone’s fence.
“I think that’s stealing if not vandalism, David.”
“I’ll take my chances. It’s dangerous out here and much worse than the Feds are reporting. It’s quiet now but we’re not safe.”
“How do you know it’s much worse?”
“I work with Homeland Security and we- well, let’s just say that we are confident this is going to be big, maybe bigger than we can imagine.”
“So this is a terrorist attack?”
“No. If it were I would still be at the office. This is beyond anything we’ve ever run into before. It’s not- well, it’s just too big. You need to arm yourself.”
“I’ll be home in twenty minutes. I’ll be fine.”
“Suit yourself but-” he paused and kicked and bent and twisted another piece of railing until it broke off then handed it to her. “It practically fell into my hand,” he said with wide, innocent eyes. He had nice eyes and a charming, somewhat reluctant smile. “Take it, you might need it.”
“Since you’re offering, I’ll take it.” She hefted it in her left hand and touched the very sharp, fleur-de-lis tip. An unpleasant flashback of her hair skewer going into Ben’s eye arose in her mind and she lowered the bar to her side. “But I won’t need it.”
“We all prefer a war in which we don’t have to fire a shot but that seldom happens.”
“What are you talking about? This isn’t a war. It’s a health scare like H1N1 or Swine Flu. People are over-reacting. It’s going to blow over in a week, maybe two.” Bea tried to read his face but it was too dark.
“Let’s hope so. Anyway, this is where I leave you. My place is two blocks up this way. Good luck, Beatrice Actually, and be careful.”
He walked off, swinging his piece of wrought iron like a cane. She turned left. Farther down the street, light spilled onto the sidewalk from the little corner grocery where she had shopped for years. She sort of knew the Vietnamese family that owned it even though their knowledge of English was mostly confined to numbers and money while her knowledge of Vietnamese was non-existent.
She saw Mrs. Ngo behind the counter and she smiled but the woman did not see her. The door appeared to be locked so she knocked on the glass. Mrs. Ngo dropped the zippered money pouch she held. Coins rolled across the black-and-white checked tile floor and she scrambled to pick them up, all while making go-away motions in Bea’s general direction. Puzzled she moved closer to the glass at which Mrs. Ngo screamed and ran into the back of the store.
There was
something smeared on the glass. She gave it a light scrape with her fingernail and it came off black and flaky. Great streaks of it obscured the lower part of the glass wall and continued on down to the sidewalk where it turned into dark splashes then ended in a thick, congealed pool a few feet down the street. After that, dark footprints led out into the street then faded away. A part of her mind identified the substance while another part shied away from acknowledging that identification.
Walking as quietly and quickly as possible now, she continued on her way. Psychosis. That’s what the woman on the train had called it. Mrs. Ngo hadn’t looked psychotic, just spooked. But those people on the train and near the museum were definitely around the bend.
The mixture of apartment buildings and stores soon gave way to last century row houses that in turn yielded to large houses just glimpsed through towering trees. The wind had picked up and moaned and whistled through the streets, rustling the dry, leathery leaves still clinging to the pin oaks. Twice she thought she heard dragging footsteps behind her but she saw no one. She crossed the street and soon walked beside a chiseled, granite wall.
After their mother left, Bea and Brian continued to live in the subsidized housing complex until her sophomore year at Towson when she was awarded a scholarship and transferred to Georgetown. Between her jobs, the scholarship and student loans she had just enough money to rent the pool house of a rundown Georgetown estate close to the C&O Canal. It only had one bedroom and the canal smelled in summer but they were allowed to use the pool in season and the rent was not unreasonable since she agreed to mow the grass as needed. She enrolled Brian at the Foggy Bottom magnet school.
Trying not to crunch on the snow and ice she approached carefully, remembering the man Brian said was at the gate. No one was there now but the snow was heavily trampled. She walked around the corner, lifted the heavy fall of English ivy, and slipped in through the narrow break in the wall.
Light shone from the windows in the back of the small columned building, flickering, moving lights from the television. The main house was purely Georgian in design but the pool house had been built as a tiny, Greek temple, complete with myrtles lining cracked, marble steps that were treacherously icy-slick tonight. She clomped carefully to the top and, propping the iron fence rail against the wall, opened the unlocked back door that led directly into the kitchen.
The Living Dead Series (Book 2): World Without End Page 3