by Demers, Matt
The two-lane road expanded into the Kingston Expressway. Tweaks and stalled cars spread evenly over the north and south lanes — James avoided them easily. The skyline came fast and James drew to a stop at a crosswalk on Third Ave. Hard horizontal and vertical lines of the office buildings appeared cold and functional. The drab Dominion Trust Bank , and Spruce and Associates buildings stood tall and grey, memorials of a frivolous monetary system.
Six blocks to John Hopkins. Two choices — take advantage of the relative calm and walk, or drive as close to the hospital as the pileups let him. That might attract attention, but the Express might prove the only getaway car available if — or when — things went south.
Sinatra sang about fools rushing in. James cut the engine.
“What do you know about rushing in, Frank?” But James listened anyway.
He snatched the Spas-12 shotgun and bow from the passenger seat and exited the Chevy.
The Spas-12 dropped from his grasp immediately and it bounced on the road. James keeled over in pain, cupping his hands over his knees. He waited for the fire in his spine to subside, then grabbed the shotgun’s sling, stood up and took a step. His foot felt nothing beneath. His leg bowed; and his body crumpled. The shogun whipped around James’ arm and rammed butt-end against the pavement. A round went off.
“Shit.”
The roar of the Spas slapped against the looming buildings. His leg tingled. A pinched nerve. The oncologist warned him that pinched nerves became inevitable as the disease progressed around his spine. It had been weeks since he’d felt anything like this.
Paralysis is a real possibility, he had reasoned. Thankfully, your Medicare covers—
James planted his good foot and pushed his body up with his arms. He walked his hands toward his feet until he stood bent over.
“Come on, fuckers. I know you heard me.”
James raised his hips and slowly turned back to the Chevy. He took a careful step with the numb leg. His body bowed a little, but found its footing and staggered on.
He heard the sound of a car hood flexing behind him, took another step, grabbed his bow and sluggishly turned around as he readied the arrow and yanked the bowstring. A lanky Tweak in a wool skirt vaulted a sedan roof and raced down the centerline. James released the arrow. It zipped on target, and speared through the Tweak’s open mouth. She dived face first into the pavement and slid lifelessly along a trail of gore.
James clutched the side mirror of the Express. He leaned against the van’s door. A half-block toward the highway, another Tweak roared out from behind a pickup. James readied his last arrow and fired. This one fluttered. The arrow spun in circles until it sunk into the Tweak’s leg. The Tweak fell to his knees. It snarled, jumped to its feet and darted onward.
James reached for the door latch, opened the van and dragged himself inside. He jammed his key in the ignition and turned. Sinatra reminded James about fools rushing.
Through the rear-view, the Tweak approached from the center of the van’s rear. James twisted around so that his good left foot reached the accelerator. It felt awkward. James cranked the transmission into reverse before slamming the gas. Tires squealed. The van bolted backward erratically while the Tweak trudged head-on. The van slammed against the Tweak, warping the door beneath the windows. The Tweak flew several feet before crunching against the road in a mangled contortion. James jammed the shift lever into drive and drove on.
Silhouettes came for him from several blocks away. Nine or ten of the buggers. He peeled right at Third Ave where the road became thick with wrecks. He aimed for a small opening between two taxis. The passenger side mirror slammed the top edge of the taxi’s doorframe. The mirror snapped off and dangled by its wires. Sinatra taunted on until James finally punched the eject button and flicked the disk into the backseat.
More of them raced down Third straight on. A few more only shuffled. James took a left, but a fire truck lay across Second Street flipped on its side. He made a three point turn and kept going down Third. He clipped a wobbly, snarling bike messenger. It crashed through a display window.
James slowed at First Street as he checked for openings. John Hopkins stood straight ahead, past a jumble of vehicles, across the intersection and up a long flight of steps. The front entrance doors stood open and clear, except for a crunched, bullet-holed SUV.
Someone must have climbed the entire flight with that vehicle.
Good thing. He couldn’t climb those steps himself.
A gap beside a city bus with an ad that said something about driving safely appeared large enough for the van, barely. He steered left onto First, still chopping the accelerator with his untrained foot. The van zoomed past a lethargic police officer with one arm missing. The driver side’s front quarter panel pelted the city bus. The headlight blew, but the van straightened. His boot sank further and the engine roared in complaint.
The van zipped through the intersection straight for the stairway. The chrome bumper slammed against steps and blew off. The van drove over it. Something loud popped and the van tilted. It seemed to hang balanced for a long moment before landing on the driver’s side. Windows shattered; the airbag popped James’ nose and it snapped. A stream of wet — too warm and free flowing to be just a runny nose — streamed from his nostrils and across his lips.
Witch-like shrieking echoed off the high rises. The acoustics made it seem they came from everywhere. With the city tilting and growing dark in James’ vision, he grabbed the shotgun and swung at the windshield — one bang after another. Nothing. James worked the pump-action and blew the windshield to bits.
James climbed over the dash, through the frame and onto the steps, one hand on the shotgun’s pump. He stood and limped upward, not bothering to glance back.
A few more steps.
James’ boots crunched over the broken glass from the entrance doors. He kicked at bits of decaying flesh. He passed over the top step. Just before the shadow of the lobby embraced him, glass crunched from behind him, beneath someone else’s shoes. He listened to the crunch grow louder, until the sound of heavy breathing became throaty and detailed, waiting for the right time to—
He torqued his hips. The Spas-12 cracked against the Tweak’s chest. The pain of his body twisting sent James downward. He landed right on top of the Tweak, their bodies slanted across descending steps. James starred at the Tweak, a teen Goth with purple highlights in her hair.
James tightened his grip around the shotgun, grabbing it with the butt with one hand , and the barrel with the other , and held it beneath her chin while pressing on its windpipe. He looked away from the gargled choking. The Tweak seemed resigned to die, as they often did. Its body stiffened for a moment, then relaxed.
James stumbled to his feet and made his way up the steps onto the walkway, as the shrieks from the street grew louder. He opened the rows of glass doors that lead to the lobby. When the shroud over his eyes adjusted to indoors, he saw a front desk flanked by two corridors.
Down one corridor — a row of elevators with no power running to it. The other — a row of offices with a stairwell opposite them. James headed for it, knowing that he had very few steps left in the tank.
One of the front entrance doors creaked open. A Tweak grunted something about playing hide and seek. It was in the building, now.
This is it. I can’t.
James lumbered through the stairwell door.
Just to the second floor. Hide there.
James stepped wide. Too wide, and his leg gave out again. He dropped shoulder first and it slammed the concrete. He screamed in pain and frustration. He no longer cared if it gave him away. Tweaks screamed in reply, and thudded down the hall.
“It won’t hurt a bit,” James lied to himself, and turned over to lay back against the cold concrete.
They were close. So close. Just a few more feet, and the Tweaks would be on him, biting through his pitiful frame. That is, if they felt hungry enough. James supposed they most definitely did.
He gra
bbed the Bearcat from his holster. The poly grip no longer calmed him. He stuck the barrel beneath his chin and fixed his eyes straight ahead.
There, at the base of the stairwell’s foundation — a large vent grate leaned against its vent hole enough to show it wasn’t bolted on. James lowered his weapon and glanced at the door. Shadows flickered through the crack beneath it.
James gritted his teeth and crawled to the grate. He slid it aside as the door cracked open. He crawled in. The door slammed against the wall stop. He pulled the grate across, and sat back against the duct wall, gasping into his microphone.
Had they seen him? At least three stood just outside. James peered through the vent at the tattered blue denims that stopped not three feet from where he hid.
“It hurts soooooo bad,” a male one moaned.
You and me both, brother.
It sobbed as it shuffled out of sight and thudded up the steps. It sounded like the others followed. James waited for the sobs to trail off before reaching for his shirt pocket and popping the tab of the pill bottle. He shook out five times the recommended dose, palmed them into his mouth, and chewed. James passed out before swallowing.
***
A smudgy glow behind a black veil. James opened his eyes.
“Shit.” James flinched.
A husky, Paul Bunyan lookalike squatted in the duct beside him. He cupped a red Bic with both hands, his white lab coat open, revealing a tie-dye shirt beneath. To James, the bright colors countered the starkness of his Viking beard. A bizarre sight to look up to, though.
“Whatcha looking at, hobo?”
The man tapped a finger to his lips. “Cancer,” the man responded. “I’m looking at cancer.” Hobo’s lips pinched into a half smile. Bum deal, his smile said.
James nodded. Hobo pointed at the pitch-black to their left, away from the vent hole, deeper into the ductwork. James nodded again.
The man placed one hand on the shotgun’s pump as he held the lighter with the other. James yanked it away, which caused wave of fire to engulf his spine. The barrel dropped against the vent wall, reverberating metallically into the darkness.
“Jesus, that smarts,” James mumbled. He couldn’t carry it. Not anymore. The man picked it up.
“I’m here to help, friend. I know why you’re here, and I can give it to you. But I have to warn — it won’t be pleasant.”
The lighter blinked out and they began to crawl. The only light — bars of grey coming through the shutter behind — disappeared. James followed the sound of flexing sheet metal for what seemed like hours.
“Not far,” the bearded man said.
But it felt far enough to James. This was it. The last hoorah. It was as if James’ body took a sudden turn off-road and now travelled a rutted trail. The dead end loomed somewhere ahead, impossible to tell exactly where, but close for sure. James wheezed as he struggled to crawl up the duct’s slope.
“A few more steps,” the man assured.
One small step for man, one giant leap for terminal kind.
The sheet metal ticked and thudded, and they took a sharp left turn. Ten feet up, a square of light bloomed from an open vent hole, illuminating the stranger’s silhouette until he crawled through and out of sight. Finally, James crawled through, too.
The man grabbed James by the arms and helped him up. “Take a load off,” Hobo said. “This floor is bottled tight, friend.”
They stood in a well-lit hallway. Protruding signs with room numbers hung above a long line of doorways. At the end, a barricade of CRT monitors and printers stood on top of a photocopier to secure the floor’s exit door.
The man looked James in the eye. He appeared younger, more filled out in the light. His grey eyes shone with intelligence, making up for the air of indifference vibe of his baggy tie-dye and cargo pants.
“Any tightness in your chest? Shallow breathing, rapid heartbeat?”
“Yes on all fronts, umm...Doc, is it?”
“You bet. Dr. Orsol. Oncologist.”
“You don’t say.”
Orsol gently leaned James against the wall. “Stay here,” the doc said, his smile hooked with sarcasm. James didn’t smile back.
Orsol bounced down the hall, turned into room 3G and returned a moment later with a wheelchair, whistling as he pushed it toward James.
James let gravity plop him into the seat and Orsol whisked him away. It felt amazing to not have to move, to have someone take the wheel. Crawling through the vent was the hardest thing he ever had to do, physically. If only he knew what lay just ahead.
As they rolled toward the exit door, reggae thumped from a whinny speaker. The singer rhymed about bleak social strife, but with an upbeat tone in a way only reggae can get away with. The Jamaican accent and steel drums almost drowned out the generator, which hummed and chugged from somewhere out of view.
“The patient floors of John Hopkins are soundproof,” Orsol assured James. He steered the chair into 3J.
James blinked. Unlike the many, many fine hospital rooms he’d examined, the walls of 3J brimmed with overlapping medical charts, Polaroids of people fishing, barbequing, and posing for wedding shots. Dog-eared posters of Reggae artists cheered the space between — Bob Marley, Yellowman, and other dreadlocked black men James didn’t recognize.
A CD player sat on a filing cabinet, preaching now about propaganda and deceit being a plague togetherness can defeat.
Orsol wheeled James to the bed.
“My focus was initially palliative care research, mostly medical marijuana as end-treatment pain relief.”
“What a shocker,” James returned dryly. He tried to recall if Marley died from cancer or something else. HIV maybe, hopefully? No, definitely cancer.
“Palliative care is more complex than you might imagine.”
“You know, doc…I thought I was ready to die. But…” It felt cathartic to finally admit it: “I’m scared.”
“That’s perfectly OK. Being terminal is all kinds of scary.” Orsol grabbed a stethoscope from the bed tray and placed the diaphragm beneath James’ shirt. “But it’s also your heart, which is rapid and faint, causing at least some of that anxiety. Let’s get you on the bed.”
James took his boots off the wheelchair footrests. Orsol put a shoulder under James’ armpit and wound an arm around his upper torso. The doctor heaved him onto the bed with surprising strength. James winced from the pressure. The doctor swung James’ legs onto the bed and James fell against the pillow — a warm cloud around his aching neck.
“I’ve never told this to another man, so don’t take it the wrong way,” James began. Orsol stopped where he stood. “You’re beautiful,” James admitted.
Orsol bellowed a belly laugh, deep and jolly. “If only a kind woman said that.” His smile shrunk. “Just don’t speak too soon, friend. I meant what I said: AIV will attack that cancer the moment it enters your bloodstream, but...God, will it hurt.” He said it with unfocused eyes, as if recollecting an old patient.
“How do you know?”
Orsol talked as he took out a pack of antiseptic wipes from a cupboard.
“I’ve done this plenty of times. Still do. Some are terminals who heard from another in their support group what a godsend AIV is. Others were accepted to the AIV trials, only to have the carrot swiped from just in front of them when everything went to shit. Whatever the reason, you’re the first one I’ve seen in sixty-one days.” Orsol opened the package, drew a few wipes and scrubbed his hands and arms.
“Then why stay?” James asked.
“This is my life. I’ve never been interested than anything else but cancer, cancer, cancer — even as a kid. I’m the closest I’ve ever been; if only I had more…” Orsol hesitated. “More patients.”
“I thought it did work?!” James coughed into the bed sheets. Thick, odorous gunk streaked his phlem.
“We better get on with this,” Orsol warned.
Don’t ignore me, fucker. James suddenly felt like a patient again. A ter
minal one. Ignored, tip-toed around. A patient indeed, even though he felt anything but.
Orsol left and returned rolling an IV stand. He placed a bottle of capsules on the bed-tray.
God, will it hurt.
Orsol disappeared again, this time for several minutes
“But tell me what you really think,” James said to the empty room.
James wondered why doctors did that whenever something crucial came up — postpone a cat scan, place the biopsy needle in the room then leave — their talent for building suspense knew no bounds.
James searched the room for anything sharp and pointy that might indicate the kind of pain that awaited him. On the nightstand, a red Duo-Tang notebook leaned against a plastic fern. James grabbed it and opened to the first page. A handwritten reminder about “sensitive medical information” and “privacy” was scribbled on the page.
Why did he get the sense the contents held more than the names of treated patients? Was this how Kovac felt day in and out? A sense of ‘oh, I can see what’s next?’ James got the feeling he was about to find out a lot more about his cancer and the Tweaks than he really wanted to know. He opened the Duo-tang anyway.
Orsol’s Log
I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of the pharmaceutical business, and it seems too easy to blame Big Corp for stuff these days…
But it seems that paying off the big politicians (and I mean White House big) is the only explanation. That’s the only way AIV could have gone to where it’s at with so little preliminary testing, so little understood.
Now it is up to the little guy to shovel up the mess. Big Pharm came in demanding answers as if we were the culprits. Like WE had bullied them into these trials. Some of them didn’t even introduce themselves. Just eyed us , flat lipped in their Armani/Gucci. We had to swear secrecy.
“Have you figured out why?” One asked me. I asked if he wanted the biological answer or the real one. I’ve been in trouble plenty of times, sticking my neck where it didn’t belong, offering theories that were far too “summer of love” as one colleague put it. Nonetheless, I’m seldom off and the first to admit it when I am — anyone in the cancer ward would back me up, including my patients.