The Hours

by Robert Barnard

  “She won’t back down,” Jim said. “Chloe will fight to the bitter end. She saw classmates die, saw her school swallowed by flames. For two years she’s had this drive and this rage and nothing to focus it on. If EV1 is making a resurgence, it’ll be the fight she’s spent the past twenty-four months waiting for.”

  “Then let her have it,” Sherri said. “She’s an adult. You can’t stop her. You can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do.”

  “You’re right,” Jim said, “and she’s a better person than me for that.”

  Sherri placed the back of her palm against Jim’s forehead. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” Jim said. “Just fine.”

  “You look a little white. You’re burning up.”

  Jim gritted his teeth, said: “I’m fine.”

  Sherri folded her hands in her lap, and for the first time since she’d arrived in Colorado—hell, for the first time since she’d started speaking to Jim two years back—she thought to ask him a very, very important question.

  “Jim,” Sherri said. “When’s the last time you’ve been to a doctor?”

  Jim froze solid at the inquiry. “What’s it matter?” he said. “What’s it got to do with anything?”

  “It has a lot to do with everything.”

  “Bullshit,” Jim said, and he tugged at the collar of his shirt.

  “You were bit,” Sherri said. “You came into my hospital, stretched out on a gurney, bleeding from your chest. Who cares if your tests came back negative? That’s something you should have scheduled quarterly, if not monthly, doctor’s appointments for. That’s something you should have been keeping a close eye on.”

  “It’s been two years,” Jim said. “And I’ve been fine.” The words left his mouth unevenly. Of course he hadn’t been fine. There’d been days he coughed up blood for hours. There were the boils and the lesions that bubbled up on his skin without warning from time to time. The past two years had been hell on his health, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.

  Sherri shut her eyes, and it all suddenly dawned on her. “Jim,” she said, quietly. “Who else knew that you were bit?”

  Jim clenched his fist, wanted to lie. He wanted desperately to say that Chloe and Nolan knew—that Dana, his wife, of course she knew too—but he found the lie impossible to mutter.

  “You,” Jim said, “are the only other living soul that knows I was bit that day.”

  Sherri gasped. “But your daughter? Your wife? They came rushing into the hospital with you—”

  “They thought I was in a bad fight,” Jim said. “That’s all they knew. It was half true. They didn’t know I’d been bit. Just that I was roughed up really bad.”

  “This isn’t good, Jim. It isn’t right.”

  “Why?” Jim said. “I spent the better part of NYVO in your hospital, being poked and prodded at like some simple lab rat. My tests came back clear. They came back negative. Why would I tell anyone what happened? Why would I risk being locked away in some hospital room, or worse? I got out of New York. I was free. Tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing?”

  “I wouldn’t,” Sherri said. “This—all of this—is so much bigger than you or me. You could be a risk—”

  “I tested negative!”

  “Then tell me truthfully,” Sherri begged. “Tell me you’ve felt fine for the past two years. Tell me you’ve never had a reason to go to the doctor, or worry about your health. Tell me that and I’ll drop it.”

  Tears were welling in the corner of Jim’s eyes. “I’ve coughed up blood more times than I can count. I get these awful flares on my skin. Boils the size of golf balls.”

  Sherri leaned back on the bed. She thought of Dr. Merrill and all the things he told her before he died. The vaccines weren’t working. The preventative medication for EV1 wasn’t as effective as it should have been.

  “You,” Sherri said. “They used your blood. Dr. Merrill told me that there were several patients—supposedly bit, scratched, infected with EV1—that tested negative for it, despite being exposed.” Sherri’s breathing sped up. “They used your blood for the vaccines. For anti-EV1 medication. That’s why none of it worked the way it was designed to. You’re not negative, Jim. The virus is just lying dormant. EV1 is in you, it just hasn’t shown itself yet.”

  “No,” Jim said, nostrils flaring. “That’s not true.”

  “It all makes sense now. It’s exactly what Dr. Merrill was worried about it. And they killed him for it. They killed him for trying to tell the truth. For trying to warn us.” Sherri pulled her phone from her pocket.

  “Sherri…” Jim said. His voice cracked. “What are you doing, Sherri?”

  “I’m calling an ambulance,” she said. “You need care. You need isolation. I slept with you! They’ll probably quarantine me, too—”

  “No,” Jim said. “I’m not going back there. I won’t be locked away, never allowed to see my family again.”

  “We don’t know that’s what will happen,” Sherri said. “Think about Nolan in the other room. Think about your daughter and about this town. You’re a ticking time bomb, Jim. Like I said—this is bigger than you. Bigger than us. We can’t risk infecting them—”

  In one rapid, sharp movement, Jim stood. He ripped the phone from Sherri’s hands. She let out a little gasp as he snapped it away from her and hurled it towards the wall on the opposite end of the room. The phone cracked into three big pieces and hit the floor.

  And Jim’s world went black.

  Jim woke up on his bedroom floor. The ceiling was blurry, out of focus. His back hurt. His muscles ached.

  He groaned, and rolled over onto his stomach. There was something trapped in his mouth—in is throat—and it was making it difficult to breathe.

  What’s happening? He thought. His world was hazy. Numb.

  He arched onto his hands and knees and crawled across the floor, patted at the carpet. I’m going to be sick, he thought. Sherri. Help me. I’m going to be sick.

  Jim let out three big coughs from deep inside his chest. A glob of blood and vomit hit the floor in front of his face, spread out in each direction.

  “Sherri,” Jim moaned, able to talk now that the obstruction in his throat had cleared. “Sherri. Call 911.”

  Jim punched the floor, winced his eyes, prepared for the second wave of nausea racing up his throat. His mouth watered, his eyes teared, and he retched again.

  “Oh, God,” Jim said, shakily. “Please. Call 911.”

  The room was still dim and out of focus. A light in the corner of the room burned electric hot. Jim pawed at his ears, the sound of it humming was driving him insane.

  I can hear it in the walls, he thought. I can hear the electricity. None of this makes sense. None of this makes sense.

  “Sherri, please,” Jim groaned. “Where are you? How long was I out? Please call for help.”

  He crawled along the floor. His head hit the foot of his bed with a thunk. He tried to stand, but couldn’t. His legs were jelly, his knees wouldn’t work.

  Weak, he collapsed onto the floor on his belly.

  His vision dulled, then focused again. When he opened his eyes, he was face to face with the expulsion that’d left his mouth a moment earlier. It was swamp colored, murky.

  In the middle of it were two small, human fingers.

  “What…” Jim said. His voice was weak. “What happened?”

  He summoned all his strength to raise his head. Across the room from him, spread across the floor and writhing, was Sherri.

  Her entire body vibrated from shock. A pool of blood had formed beneath her head.

  “No,” Jim said. “No, no, no.”

  He crawled on all fours towards Sherri, pulled himself across the carpet. When he was near enough, he witnessed the extent of his rage. Her right hand dangled from her arm by a thin piece of flesh. Fingers were missing. It’d been gnawed nearly clean off. A hunk of flesh was missing from the side of her neck. Her face was
pulverized, beat so badly that it was barely recognizable. Her head flopped towards Jim and her wide, panicked eyes locked with his. A thin trickle of foamy red blood left the corner of her lips, and her shaking stopped.

  “No,” Jim said, and he started to sob. He wrapped his arms around her, held her tight. “You were the only one who understood me. I did this to you? I did this to you. I did this to you, how could I? Please, Sherri. Please don’t go.”

  He felt a warmth return to his arms and legs, felt the strength to stand again. He took eight big, heavy, deep breaths. He thought of Nolan, lying in his bed on the other side of the house. He thought of Chloe, who should be home by sunrise.

  Those two thoughts were enough, and he knew what he had to do next. He stumbled to his nightstand drawer, pulled a thirty-eight revolver from it, pressed the barrel of the gun against his head and slid his finger for the trigger.

  And pulled.

  TEN

  “This is exciting,” Hannah said.

  “Exciting isn’t the word I’d use,” Chloe replied.

  “Forget everything else for a second. We’re cops now, Chlo’. Everything we’ve worked so hard for these past few months has paid off.”

  “I’d rather we have become cops—officially, at least—at the graduation ceremony. The circumstances are a bit disheartening.”

  Hannah sighed.

  A call came over the radio from dispatch. A voice over the radio said: “Car thirty-two, please respond to a possible five-eleven on the corner of Elk and Pine.”

  “That’s us,” Chloe said.

  “It’s going to be the start of a very long night, isn’t it?” Hannah asked.

  “The first of many,” Chloe said, and she stomped the accelerator of the police cruiser and hooked onto Elk street.

  “What’s a five-eleven again?” Hannah said.

  Chloe laughed. “Breaking and entering.”

  “Sure,” Hannah said.

  “The corner of Elk and Pine…” Chloe said, thinking out loud. “Why does that sound familiar?”

  “I can’t picture it.”

  “Jeeze,” Chloe said. “How did you get hired?”

  Hannah scoffed. “Like you have a map of this town memorized?”

  “I have a pretty good idea of where everything is.” Chloe looked at the computer screen mounted to the cruiser’s dashboard. A GPS map guided the way.

  “Elk and Pine…Elk and Pine…” Chloe tapped the steering wheel. “The Church of Daylight. They’re on that corner.”

  “The cult?”

  “Yeah,” Chloe said. “They set up shop there about eight months after NYVO. They go around preaching their weird thoughts about the apocalypse. They thought NYVO should have been the end of the world. I guess they were bummed it wasn’t.”

  Hannah laughed. “Yeah. They came by my house one night. Freaked out my kid. Dressed in robes, talking about the end times.”

  Chloe picked up the radio handset in the car. “Dispatch? This is Officer Whiteman.”

  “Go ahead, Whiteman,” a voice on the other end answered.

  “I’m on route to that five-eleven on Elk and Pine.”

  “Ten-four,” the dispatcher answered.

  “What are the details on that call?” Chloe said.

  “A neighbor phoned in three minutes ago. Said they heard glass breaking and shouting. Two more cars are on the way, but you’re closest. You’ll be there first.”

  “Right,” Chloe said, and she set down the handset. “Ten-four.”

  “What’s wrong?” Hannah asked.

  Chloe said: “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  Hannah hit a switch in the center console, and a set of blisteringly bright red and blue lights strobed atop the cruiser. A siren blared from the hood of the car, and it sped down Elk towards its destination.

  When Hannah and Chloe arrived, the corner of Elk and Pine was unnervingly calm and quiet for supposedly just suffering a break in. The “church”—a former book store store that’d been transformed by The Church of Daylight—stood still in the night, eerily silent. Two windows at the front of the building had been smashed. Chloe stepped out of the cruiser, immediately noticed that there was little broken glass on the sidewalk. Whoever had smashed the glass had been trying to get in, not out.

  “Shine some light, would you?” Chloe said.

  Hannah, who’d yet to leave the vehicle, positioned the car’s spotlight onto the front of the building. Chloe squinted, looked inside. The rooms of the building were dark, empty.

  Chloe unholstered her pistol. She held the gun with one hand, a flashlight with the other. “You got my back?”

  Hannah hurried out of the car, shuffled beside her partner. “You know it.” She clicked on the radio clipped to her shoulder, leaned her head into it, and said: “Dispatch, how far away is that backup?”

  Dispatch replied, “ETA: Four minutes.”

  “We should wait,” Hannah said, “until the others get here.”

  “No,” Chloe said. “Someone went in there. They can’t be up to anything good.”

  Chloe pushed the front door of the church open. Inside was a small lobby that funneled visitors to the left and right before they entered the church. On the front wall of the lobby, scrawled in barely legible still-wet paint, were the words:

  AND NOW THE DAY HATH COMETH

  AS WAS TOLD AND IS TOLD AGAIN

  MAY GLORIOUS LIGHT SHINE OVER US

  MAY THE COMING FIRE PURGE US OF ALL GUILT

  Chloe covered her mouth. The paint was fresh. Many of the letters dripped.

  “What the fuck is that about?” Hannah asked.

  “They’re doomsayers,” Chloe said. “They’ll always have a knack for the theatrics—”

  Chloe turned into the main room of the church and gasped, caught her breath mid-sentence.

  Hannah asked: “What’s wrong?” But before the words had finished leaving her mouth, she’d turned into the room and found out for herself.

  In the center of the room, hung from the rafters, were what Chloe estimated to be thirty bodies. The exact number, she’d later find out, was actually thirty-three. Each one swung slowly, lifeless. Their bodies bloated. Their eyes bulged.

  All except one.

  “For the love of God,” Chloe hollered. “One of them is still alive.”

  In the center of the room, a young girl hung by her neck, kicked her feet feverishly in all directions. Chloe inspected the knot, saw that she hadn’t tied it tight enough. She was suffering. It was slow. If she’d intended suicide, she had made a horrible, painful error.

  Chloe grabbed a chair from the room, set it beside the flailing young woman, and climbed up. She yanked a switchblade from her pocket, opened it, and sawed at the narrow piece of rope that hung the girl so lowly in the air. In a matter of seconds the rope was cut, and Chloe and the girl tumbled to the floor.

  “What are you doing?” the girl screamed. “Why are you here?”

  “Who are you?” Chloe asked. “What the hell is happening here?”

  The girl grinned, knelt above Chloe, who had fallen on her back.

  “I am Sunray, Daughter of the Light,” the girl said, and she grinned. “They started without me. They all started without me!”

  “Who started what?” Chloe gasped.

  “Today, the Church of Daylight felt the magnificent scream of impeding doom. The final day has arrived! There was a ceremony to be held, so that we could all join one another together in the fire, simultaneously. But you ruined it!”

  Hannah sniffed. She could smell smoke. “We’ve got to get her out of here,” she said.

  “You’re nuts,” Chloe said, and she leaned up to restrain Sunray.

  Sunray hissed. “You’re nuts,” she murmured, “for being so complacent in a word gone insane. Now begins the start of your twenty-four hour journey toward equilibrium. At the end of it, all you know will perish! All chaos will be vanquished, and order will be restored to this awful world!” In a swif
t motion, Sunray grabbed the pocketknife beside Chloe—the same one Chloe had used to cut her down just a moment earlier—and held it above Chloe’s head, prepared to plunge.

  “Join us in the fire!” Sunray screamed, and right before she could slash the knife at Chloe’s face, Hannah raised her pistol and shot her thirteen times.

  “Holy shit,” Chloe screamed. Her face was wet with Sunray’s blood. The young girl slumped onto the floor beside her, motionless.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Hannah said. “The crazy bitch started a fire.”

  Chloe leaned up, wiped the blood from her face. She could smell the smoke now, too. There was no denying that a fire had been set somewhere in the church. She looked up at the darkened ceiling one last time, felt time standstill as she watched each body sway back and forth, listened as the rafters creaked from the weight of them all.

  Hannah and Chloe tumbled out onto the street. Behind them, smoke poured out of the broken windows. Flames flickered and nipped at the walls of the church.

  In the distance they heard sirens, and in no time flat Sergeant Fuller and six other officers were on the scene.

  Fuller was the first one out of the car. He picked up Chloe, who’d collapsed, coughing for breath.

  “You’re in shock,” Fuller said.

  “They’re dead,” she said. “Everyone inside is dead.”

  The flames burned brighter now. In no time at all they had swallowed the structure, rose high into the night sky.

  “Are you okay?” Fuller said, and he helped her to her feet.

  Chloe smiled. “It all makes sense now. Austin. The neighborhood on fire. They stood out there and let it burn. Why?”

  Fuller shook his head.

  “Because,” Chloe laughed. “There was no one inside to save.” She kicked at the sidewalk, felt the cool night air kiss her face as more and more sirens screamed down the road. “I don’t know what was in those homes in Texas. I don’t fully understand what I just saw in that church. But I know it—I can feel it in my bones…”

  “Feel what?” Fuller asked.