by Riley Flynn
Still, when the time came to return to Detroit, how would he be able to explain why he’d deserted a wounded person? Someone in pain. Someone calling out for help.
Turning the door handle, Alex thought it felt wet. Cold. It was brass. The condensation in the hallway was clinging to the metal. It felt sweaty. It stuck to the palms. Pushing just hard enough with his shoulder, Alex opened the door.
Inside was an apartment just like his own. The same layout. The windows in the same place, though the view slightly different. There was more furniture here, more possessions. Photographs of a familiar face lined the shelves in a cluttered unit which lined one side of the room. Approaching the picture frames, Alex recognized the face. His neighbor. A middle-aged Hispanic man, pictured in a white uniform beside an airplane. With friends and family. A man Alex must have greeted in the hallway once or twice. The two had never shared their names.
But the sound was so much louder, unmistakably coming from the bedroom at the other end of the apartment. No words, just a closed, dry throat calling. A pained single note reaching out from the bedroom to anyone outside. Alex left the door of the apartment open and inched, cautiously, toward the bedroom.
The door was already open. Ajar. No light on inside but for the beam breaking through the window, brought in by the rising sun. A patch of light crawling across the floorboards, closer and closer toward the bed, yet to arrive. Alex pushed the door further open.
The man lay on the bed, the blankets thrown to the floor. Alex’s eyes began with the feet and moved upwards toward the face. The skin was a gray color. The toenails and the fingers, too, turned yellow. He seemed thin. Dehydrated. Alex could see his ribs.
Upon his face, the man wore a week’s worth of beard. Hairs hung from the sallow cheeks, the black below the eyes exacerbated by the piqued red bloodshot above. Eyes that looked directly at Alex. The man tried to lift a hand. A wrist trembled, raised an inch, and fell. That same, slow moan came again.
The man was a picture of pain, something conjured by a medieval painter and daubed on the wall of a rural European church. Pestilence personified, the kind of person Alex had only ever seen accompanied by scrolling phone numbers and donation pleas. A body which, in the world Alex knew, belonged on a screen in a commercial break.
But here he was, suffering. Still. Screaming in the weakest way imaginable. But already Alex’s thoughts had turned selfish. Arriving at the same time as the self-loathing, the worries of contagions and the dread of infection. Such a self-serving thought in the face of such suffering. But real, all the same. Alex felt his body freeze, refusing to move closer.
The reality of the world came raining down all at once. Finally, Alex felt the same skittish anxiety that he’d seen in the President’s eyes. He could see the illness, could have reached out and touched it. Felt the thickness and the closeness of the air. The struggle to breathe. The smell.
The smell was like nothing else. It had overwhelmed the senses already. Only now, Alex noticed that his nostrils had simply shut down. Refused to work. Overcome. Stunned into submission. This man, flat on his bed and desperate for help, in every amount of pain and too feeble to help himself: this was the future. This was the present. This was the now.
But this was still a person. Alex could feel every muscle in his body, reacting on some instinctual level, telling him to flee. To preserve what was left of his health. But this was still a person. One look into the man’s pupils, each a tiny pinprick abyss drowning in the bloodstained whites, and Alex knew he couldn’t leave. Not without trying to help.
Water. That was the first thought. Alex ran out of the room, heard the man’s renewed groans calling from behind him. Whimpers. The kitchen was in the same place as Alex’s own. Checking around, he saw that there were bottles on the shelves. Some were filled. Wine. Beer. Orange juice.
Emptying them all, washing them out, and filling them with water from his own bottle, Alex returned to the bedroom. There was no way to look the man in the eye. Food next. The fridge was bare. The cupboards had a few granola bars. Apples approaching their end. Alex took it all and threw them on the bed.
Lastly, he searched around the room for a phone. A computer. Something. Some line to the outside world. There was nothing. No way anyone could reach inside. Alex plunged a hand into his own pocket. That piece of crap Chinese phone. Dialing, trying to call 911, there was nothing.
The sun was all the way up. The light which had lingered on the floorboards was crawling up on to the bed. It fell across the gray flesh. This man was dying. Alex threw the phone beside him, near the food and the water. There was nothing else to be done. Almost nothing else.
Alex ran from the room and tried to ignore the sounds. There was one more thing which needed to be done. He hurried. Timmy would be terrified. This was well past dawn. They should have been on the road.
Stepping into the hallway and then out of the front door, Alex turned around. He’d found a piece of chalk in the man’s kitchen, beside a blackboard for chores. Hastily, his fingers continually catching on the corners, Alex sketched a huge white cross on the front door of the house. There was nothing else to be done.
Getting into the Chevy, turning on the engine, and driving away into the morning, Alex tried to catch his breath. He’d heard the man calling, even as he left. Driving along the street, there was no way of knowing how many other people had fallen sick in exactly the same way.
There could be one behind every door.
14
Block after block went by. As he looked now, there were white crosses on many doors. It was impossible to count. No one was outside any more. Any of the families that had been packing cars before dawn had hit the road. Shattered glass still in the streets, boards over the windows. Alex was afraid for his tires and decided to drive the long way back to Castle Ratz.
This route passed Beaumont. Closer to the lake shore. At the moments when the buildings fell away, paused, along the side of the street, Alex could see the Detroit skyline. Pillars of smoke rose up everywhere. Thick, clogging pillars of black smoke, their tops scratching at the sky, trying to get into the heavens. There had been trouble all over the city.
The closer the road to Grosse Pointe, the less empty it became. It was not other people. There was a police presence. Not the cops on street corners which had briefly been seen yesterday. These were armored cars, heavy plated vehicles which labored along coughing smoke. Looking left, looking right, looking in the rear-view mirror, Alex saw them headed in every direction.
At first it had been one, spotted stopping outside a home with a white cross on the door. A rare sighting. Human life, clad in a biohazard suit and body armor. Then there had been another. And another. Soon, almost in Grosse Pointe, Alex had slowed down and seen one on every other street.
The homes they had visited were clear. There were three types of door. The plain, indifferent, and unchanged doors. These were about half. Then the doors with the white crosses, done in paint or chalk or whatever it took. These were most of the rest. But the third, smallest category, were the doors with tape. The windows, too. Sealed shut. Black and yellow. Warning. Don’t enter. Quarantine, written in big letters.
The once-empty streets had filled with the police and, the closer he came to Beaumont, Alex found them thickening. Cars. Pedestrians. People with covered faces doing everything they could to get to the hospital. It strangled the roads closed.
By the time he pulled on to East Jefferson, there was actually traffic. Moving slowly, crawling toward the hospital. It made sense. This was the newest medical facility around. Millions of dollars poured into the medical center in recent years. For anyone scared of being sick, it was the obvious choice.
The cars were moving. The parking lot at the hospital was only small. But people were pulling up on the sidewalk and ditching their vehicles, walking the remaining distance. Most of them wore masks. Alex made sure his windows were sealed tight. If he could see anyone–anyone official looking–he could tell them abo
ut the man back in his apartment block. Maybe they could send someone.
The minutes ticked by. Alex was ten blocks from the hospital. Then eight. Then five. Cars were joining the line behind him. Bumper to bumper. Every time he reached an intersection, the thought of turning off and heading straight to Timmy was there. The temptation.
Three blocks away and Alex could see people walking from car to car. They wore those hazmat suits. Directing the pedestrians into the building, they knocked on the rolled-up windows and began to question those waiting in the road.
Just one block away, a person knocked against the passenger’s window of Alex’s car. As he pressed a button and the glass slid down, a head leaned into the vehicle. The person was wearing an orange jumpsuit made from some kind of plastic. It rustled. It was tightened at the waist, where instruments and devices were clipped. The gloved hands and booted feet were colored slightly lighter. Made from the same material. The face was covered with a curved panel of darkened glass. Or plastic. There was no way to tell. It was reflective. They could see out. Alex could not see in.
“Symptoms?” The voice came from a small black speaker box positioned on the person’s shoulder.
“No, it’s not me,” Alex told the figure.
“If you’re not sick, please leave, sir. We have plenty more people to see.” The voice was detached. Reading from a script.
“It’s not me,” Alex continued, “it’s someone in my apartment block. He’s sick. Needs help.”
Listing the address and the man’s symptoms, Alex began to search for the nearest corner, the quickest way to pull out from the line and return to Timmy’s place. And then he realized.
“Hey, why aren’t you writing any of this down?”
“We have plenty of people to see, sir. We will dispatch a unit to the address as soon as possible.”
“You remember the address?”
“Thank you, sir,” the voice from the speaker box crackled. “Please move along and have a nice day.”
There was nothing to do. No way to force this person to check up on the neighbor.
“Just tell me you’re going to help him, okay?”
“Sir, we are trying our best to help everyone.”
Unsatisfied and helpless, Alex resealed the window and focused on the road. In his mirrors, he could see the figure moving on to the next vehicle and watched as they held a conversation, which ended with a gloved hand pointing toward the rear of the hospital.
Following the finger, Alex turned his gaze to Beaumont. He was close now, barely a block away. The moving parts were visible. Orange hazmat suits flickering from place to place. Kevlar and facemasks and guns accompanying them.
There was a truck, not huge but big enough. The hazmats were loading black plastic bags into the back, slapping the side of the truck and closing the doors. As it departed, another truck arrived in its place.
Breath tightening, Alex stomped down on the accelerator. There was no space. He hit the car in front, which hit the next car in line. But it made a bit of room. Wrenching the wheel to the side, the Chevy mounted the sidewalk. Driving hard and fast, he saw the corner was close. People shouted behind. Alex turned. The road was open ahead. He drove, putting as much space between the car and the Beaumont as possible.
Faster and faster, as quickly as possible back to Castle Ratz. Alex could feel his lungs pushing hard against his ribs, trying to escape. His throat was tightening. Hands shaking. There was one turn. Then another. This was the route back to Timmy’s place? Probably. Another turn.
The flashing lights in the mirrors lit up and Alex heard the siren. His foot hovered over the gas pedal. He almost did it, almost stormed his way along the streets and, in his mind, he could see himself racing across Detroit, his heart thumping faster and faster and faster until it finally exploded. But he caught himself. Pulled over.
The police vehicle was one of the armored patrol units. Catching his wheel against the curb, Alex stationed the Chevy at the side of the road. They stopped, too. The lights stayed on. The noise stopped. An individual detached themselves from the patrol unit and marched toward the car.
The man was wearing military fatigues and a helmet. It covered the top of his head and the sides. Over his eyes were a pair of clear plastic glasses. Over his mouth was a bandana, printed with a skull pattern. The lower jaw. Black and white. From the neck down, that heavy police military uniform Alex had seen on news channels. SWAT gear.
The man rapped a knuckle on the window and Alex shook himself back to life. What had happened there, after he’d seen the bags loaded into the truck, it was strange. Something had taken hold of him, snatched him into a panic. Rolling down the window, Alex tried to smile.
“You going somewhere?” The voice was detached. The man’s beady eyes peered through the plastic shield. He looked tired.
“Just trying to get home before the curfew, officer. Didn’t want to get in people’s way.”
“Too fast.”
“I’m sorry, just running late, you know. Got to head out to Virginia tonight.” Alex could feel his tongue running away with itself. He couldn’t stop talking.
“No one leaves the city.”
“Sure, officer, but we heard on—”
“It’s shut down. Return to your home.”
Spluttering an answer, Alex couldn’t figure anything out. His mind had tried to overcompensate, to make conversation, and now it had got so far ahead of itself it had tripped up. Alex was a mess and he knew it.
The officer leaned back, out of the window, and knocked three times on the roof. It was a sign. It meant get the hell out of here. As he strolled back to the patrol unit, the man paused and stared at the license plate on the Chevy. He took out a device and punched in the number. It was a marked car.
As the patrol vehicle roared into life and pulled past, it left Alex at the side of the road. That had been too much. The combination of the hospital and the officer, one after the other. A one-two punch. Smash and grab. This changed things.
Leaning down over the wheel, Alex tried to read the street signs. He’d been driving hard and fast. Forgotten where he was. Forgotten who he was. Reading the sign helped. It centered him. In actual fact, he wasn’t too far from Timmy’s place. A couple streets over.
With care and consideration, Alex turned the key in the ignition. A spare hand felt for the ring in his pocket. It was still there. Checking the mirrors, finding the gear, the ride back was nothing special. Blissfully uneventful. Alex wanted to bottle the feeling and keep it locked up. He knew he’d need it soon.
15
Alex didn’t knock. He walked right in. There was a crashing sound from the kitchen, the sound of boots on tiles, and then Timmy burst through into the hallway, shotgun primed to fire.
“No, no, no,” Alex shouted. “It’s me, it’s me!”
“Oh, for f—” Timmy lowered the gun and turned back to the kitchen. “You can’t be serious. Where’ve you been? I thought something had happened. I was freaking out.”
“You nearly shot me.” Alex followed his friend.
“You’re damn right I nearly shot you. You’re lucky I didn’t. Christ.”
The two of them entered the kitchen, each muttering under their breath. All of the bags were packed, stacked, and ready to go. Even breakfast had been attempted, which meant unpacking a couple of the meals and arranging them on a plate. The cracker and the cracker spread was staring up, beguilingly. To hungry eyes, it almost seemed tempting.
They sat and ate. Alex told his friend about the trip. The man, stuck in his bed. The hospital, packed with people. The trucks, the police, and the roadside stop. It was a lot to cover. Occasionally, the conversation would pull up to a halt and they’d have to discuss some minor detail. The symptoms. The black bags. The lockdown of the city.
“So this changes everything, doesn’t it?” Timmy had licked the spread off his cracker.
Nodding, Alex knew he was right. It didn’t just mean that they’d struggle to get ou
t of the city, but the police had taken his plates. They knew his car. It must be on some kind of list by now. First attempt to drive anywhere and he’d be pulled over. The Chevy was a no go.
But the SUV wasn’t getting anywhere either. They’d locked down the city and anyone trying to escape was going to be stopped. In the age of electrics, there wasn’t a less subtle vehicle on the road than Timmy’s SUV. The vehicle demanded the attention of everyone else. That was the last thing they needed.
“You said he was gray, man? Those eyes, the way you’re telling it. I got the chills, man.”
Again, all Alex could do was agree. There was no way of knowing whether he’d been able to help. The man had water and food. He had Alex’s phone now, for what that was worth. Whether the hospital would send anybody out to help, who knew? The white cross on the door might do something.
“This is no flu, man. There’s something happening. We really need to get out of here. We’re so screwed.”
Pushing his food around on the plate, Alex couldn’t help but agree. Seeing the man, stuck in his bed, his eyes stuck with blood. If that was what was coming, then he needed to be as far away as possible. Even when driving through the last few blocks, he’d seen a group of masked people ripping the wooden boards from a store. This was just the morning.
The meal had come with a cake. There was a fruit puree, too, designed to be mixed in together. Mashing one substance into the other, the plastic fork did all the work. Alex wasn’t even sure whether he wanted to eat. But he went through the motions anyway.
They’d been all packed and ready to go. Right now, Virginia seemed an even better plan. The house, in the middle of the farm. There was no one there. No roving bands of people to rip boards from windows. No police patrols. No crowded hospitals. Just a few walls, a roof, and enough space to sit this whole thing out. That farm meant survival. It always had, in one shape or another. Now more than ever.