by Various
“I tried calling the captain,” he continued, as he sipped at the water, “but the lines are all busy. I thought I’d check on you and hole up here for a couple of hours until the roads clear, and then I’d head in.”
They took a few minutes to talk about what they knew. Nathan had seen the same newscast as Emily and had no more information than she had.
“How bad do you think it will be?” Emily asked eventually, trying to keep her voice from betraying the panic she could feel in the pit of her stomach.
“Honestly, I don’t know, Em. But shit, did you see the red rain? I was on my way out the door when it came and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. You’re the reporter; how do you explain that?”
She couldn’t, of course. She’d seen the same phenomenon and had no idea how the rain had fallen from a clear sky. “I can’t,” she finally said, and moved around the counter to join him. “All I know is that I’m glad you’re here.” She reached out and took hold of the lapels of his jacket, pulled him to her, and kissed him again.
As she released him, Emily felt something wet beneath her fingers. She glanced down at her hand and gasped, feeling the world shrink until the only thing that existed were the tips of her fingers… and the dapple of red covering them.
“Oh!” she said in disbelief, and, as realization of what she was looking at sank in, added a sharp: “Shit!” She turned and ran to the kitchen, throwing open the cabinet beneath the sink, she grabbed the bottle of Clorox bleach.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” she whispered through panic-stretched lips. She rammed the plug into the drain then emptied the entire liter container of bleach into the sink, tossed the empty bottle onto the counter, and plunged her hands into the bleach. She counted the seconds off in her head: one-one-thousand… two-one-thousand… three-one-thousand…
Only after she was sure her hands had been submerged for at least thirty seconds did she pull them out, just long enough to grab a scouring pad from the counter and begin rubbing furiously at the remaining red stains on her hands.
This cannot be happening, she thought. After all the precautions, after managing to avoid contact with that fucking rain all day and everyone who might have come into contact with it, she’d been tripped up by something as simple as wanting to kiss her boyfriend?
How fucking fair was that?
Emily began to sob quietly to herself as the full weight of the day finally broke through the crack of her consciousness, delivering an emotional sledgehammer blow against her chest.
“Jesus, Em. Are you okay?” Nathan was at her side, a hand resting gently on her shoulder.
She spun around and knocked his hand away. “Why didn’t you tell me you had that shit on you?” she yelled, spittle flying from her lips. Nathan flinched and took a step back. While they’d had their arguments since being together, he’d never seen her as upset or as angry as she felt now. “You should have told me, goddamn it. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I… I’m sorry, Em,” he stuttered. “I didn’t even think…”
Emily looked up at Nathan’s horrified face, his concern for her was so obvious and his reaction to her fear so like him. It was a big reason why she loved him.
They had met just over two years earlier at the scene of a multiple-car pileup. The accident claimed the lives of a young family of three along with two other drivers. The guy that had caused the crash—smashed out of his gourd, of course—had walked away with just a couple of scratches.
“How romantic is that!” she would usually tell people who asked how two seemingly polar opposites had got together. But the truth was, Nathan was the only cop Emily had met in all her years on the job who was still moved by the arbitrary nature of destruction, loss of innocent life, and the pain he witnessed on a daily basis. Unlike other cops, Officer Nathan Meadows still knew how to feel, he retained a human heart, and he wasn’t afraid to show it. And in the often-dark world both she and Nathan inhabited, well, that was a trait she found very attractive.
Oh, yeah, and he had no problem with her use of “language,” as her mother would call Emily’s ability to swear like a proverbial sailor. Dating was hard enough in this town; finding someone to put up with her inordinate knowledge of cuss words was even harder.
Emily felt the anger leave her. She stepped in close to Nathan and threw her arms around his waist, sinking her head onto his chest, aware that she was probably opening herself to more contamination with this simple act of intimate contact, but not caring anymore. She knew she had deluded herself into a false sense of security from the moment she set foot outside the safety of the café after the red rain had fallen.
How did that happen exactly? she wondered.
The world was literally falling to pieces and she was trying to act as though it was all okay, as though she was somehow outside of it. When had she become so unnerved? At what point in the day had her subconscious started to delude her into ignoring the obvious, terrifying probability that the world was about to suffer through a catastrophe unlike any in modern history? How did that happen? I mean, this could be as bad as the Spanish flu, it could kill millions across the globe, she thought. Maybe even more.
Fuck, her mind shouted at the thought of all the suffering this could bring. She buried her face deeper into Nathan’s chest, smelling the musk of his sweat through the layers of his uniform, fighting the urge to cry. Dark waves of fear smashed through her body. Weakened by the panic that held her firmly within its grasp, Emily felt her legs turn into so much jelly. She just couldn’t hold back anymore; hot tears welled up and began to trickle down her cheeks.
Nathan let her lean against him, resting his cheek against the top of her head until her sobbing gradually began to subside.
• • •
Emily could not think of any other time in her life when she had been quite as scared as she felt right now. Her fear was a gnawing uncertainty whittling away at the lining of her stomach. It seized every bone, nerve, and muscle in its ice-cold grasp, demanding that she stop, right now, and curl up into a ball until everything was back the way it should be.
She had never been one to simply give in to fear, and she certainly wasn’t going to start now, she told herself, despite what had just happened, but her body was in the grip of an ancient, primal survival instinct and she found it very hard to resist.
Nathan had finally managed to connect with the precinct and had spent the last ten minutes stalking back and forth through the apartment while he spoke in a hushed voice to whoever was on the other end of the line. When he was finished, he snapped his phone shut, slipped it back in his pocket, and joined Emily in the living room.
“They’re pulling everyone’s leave,” Nathan said, sitting next to her on the couch. “They aren’t telling us much other than the city’s going into full lockdown.”
“Is that just here or throughout the state?” she asked, blowing her nose into a tissue Nathan handed her from a supply he kept in his jacket pocket.
Nathan considered her question for a second. She knew him well enough to know when he was pondering whether he should divulge some piece of private info.
“Christ, Nathan. It’s not like I’m going to run off to the paper and publish your every word. You can’t hold out on me with this. Not now. Not today,” she said, unhappy with the whiney tone her voice had taken on.
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you,” he said. “It’s just that I don’t want to scare you any more than you already are. Besides, the intelligence we have isn’t much more use to you than what you’re seeing on the TV. The captain told me the word is they’re prepping for massive casualties. The CDC has absolutely no idea what to do. They can’t even fathom what the red shit is, let alone what it’s going to do to us, so there’s no chance of a vaccine. They don’t know how it’s communicated or why it does what it does, Em.”
“So what are we supposed to do while these guys sit on their thumbs? Just wait and hope for the best? Shit!” Emily jumped up and began s
earching for the TV remote. She found it sitting on the kitchen counter and pressed the power button.
The TV was tuned to a movie channel from the night before. It was playing some fifties science fiction flick, so she quickly tapped in the number for the local news station. Unsurprisingly, the presenters were talking about the red rain: “… seems to be confirmation that the news out of most of Europe is as devastating as we have heard. The president issued a statement just a short time ago stating, and I quote, “While there is no reason to expect the same problems here in the US, I recommend that you practice an abundance of caution and avoid anyone who has come into contact with the red rain until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has had time to analyze samples and can determine exactly what we are dealing with.” The president went on to say that he thought it best if all citizens return to their homes and remain inside for the next twelve hours. Reports are also reaching us that National Guard units across the country have been mobilized to help deal with any unrest and to ensure the security of major population centers. Going back to our main story, all contact with Europe and the Russian Federation appears to have ceased approximately eight hours after the first reports of the so-called blood rain. However, news agencies across the US have received numerous videos and messages apparently depicting mass casualties from countries including Britain and France.
“Similar incidents of the red rain phenomenon have been reported across the continental US, Canada, and South America. Again, if you’re just joining us, the president of the United States has announced that—”
Nathan turned the TV off. “I’m not reporting for duty,” he said. “Fuck ’em. I think it’s better if we just ride it out here.”
“They’ll fire you, Nathan,” Emily said, surprised that he would be willing to risk losing his job.
Nathan thought about what she said before answering. “I don’t care,” he said finally. “Besides, I don’t know if there’s even going to be a job to go back to.”
• • •
“How much food do you have, Em?”
Nathan’s question left Emily stumped for a moment because she hadn’t even given her supply of food a thought. Her job wasn’t your standard nine-to-five, so most days she would eat lunch at her desk or at the nearest café, as she had today. When she got home, she would usually grab something light like a salad or a sandwich. She didn’t exactly keep a well-stocked pantry.
She checked the shelves, inventorying what food she did have: a six-pack of instant soup, two six-packs of V8 juice, a couple of cans of fruit, a can of peas, and a can of mixed vegetables. There was a half a loaf of eight-grain bread in the breadbasket on the counter. The fridge held the remains of a quart of skimmed milk, an almost full bottle of orange juice, half a pack of honey-roast ham, enough fresh vegetables to make a couple of decent salads, some leftover vegetable lasagna from two nights earlier, and four cans of Bud Light beer. It wasn’t what anyone could call a stockpile, but it would be enough to last them a couple of days until this all blew over.
It couldn’t take any longer than that, right?
Nathan apparently didn’t agree with her assessment because when he saw how much food was left. Emily had to stop him from leaving and heading out to the store to pick up more supplies.
“You can’t,” she said. “It’s not worth the risk. We have to minimize our exposure, and you traipsing off to the store is only going to heighten our chances of getting sick. We can survive for a couple of days on what we have; we’ll just have to be careful.” She paused for a second then added with a coy smile, “We’ll just have to find ways to take our mind off the lack of food.”
Nathan seemed on the verge of going anyway. Emily reached out and took his hand in hers. She could see the frustration written across his face; he was a man used to acting in situations, to being in control, a solution-finder who was now faced with an insolvable problem. “It’s okay,” she said, squeezing his hand. She saw the look of resignation on his face now, but that quickly transformed into a smile. He leaned in and kissed her gently on the lips, then placed both hands on her shoulders and held her at arm’s length, looking deep into her eyes. “I love you, Emily Baxter,” he said.
She thought about it for only a second. “I love you too,” she said, and then pulled him close and kissed him again.
• • •
There was little real news on any of the TV channels. Most of what was being broadcast was just speculation or reruns of video and audio collected from webcams and phone messages recorded at the time the effects of the red rain hit Europe. And, of course, there was sensationalism, lots of it. Depending on whom a reporter was interviewing, it was variously the Rapture, a Chinese-backed attempt to exert a stranglehold over the world, or just a big hoax to try to frighten the American people into paying more taxes for health care. No one actually knew what was going on. It was all just so much speculation, but mainly it was depressing and incredibly frightening. So, after an hour of staring at the same talking heads, Emily switched channels and searched for anything that would take their minds off what was going on outside the apartment. She settled for a rerun of an old black-and-white movie.
Emily and Nathan sat next to each other on the sofa and allowed themselves to be soothed into a sense of normalcy, her head resting against his shoulder, his hand resting in her lap. Her eyelids became heavy and, rather than struggle against it, she allowed the gentleness of the moment to sweep over her. Within minutes, her eyes closed and she was asleep.
• • •
Emily awoke with a start, unsure of where she was. It took her a moment to realize she was stretched out on her sofa, Nathan’s jacket was lying over her chest, but he was no longer sitting next to her. For a brief moment, she thought he had decided to chance a trip out to the stores for supplies but, as she sat up, she heard his voice from behind her.
“Hey there, sleepyhead. How you feeling?” She turned in her seat to face him. He was standing in the kitchen working on a cup of coffee.
“Want a cup?” he asked.
“No. Thanks,” she replied, then stretched and stood up, placing his police jacket on the arm of the sofa. She glanced at the stove’s digital clock: she’d been asleep for almost two hours.
At some point during her impromptu nap, Nathan had switched the TV back to CNN. He had lowered the volume to just above a whisper.
The news anchor spoke in an urgent rapid tone, but he didn’t have anything new to add and was just repeating the same news she had already heard. Emily was reaching for the remote to switch the TV off, still tired of feeling terrified, when she noticed something odd. The anchor was bleeding from his nose; it started with just a few drops splashing onto the pile of loose paper he held in front of him then quickly turned into a rapid drip. It took him a couple of seconds before he realized he was bleeding. He dabbed at his nose with his right hand, a look of surprise and embarrassment crossing his face as it came back bloody. He began to apologize for the unscripted interruption but stopped midsentence as the blood suddenly streamed from both nostrils. His hand fluttered up to his face to staunch the bleeding, but the blood was flowing so quickly it ran straight over the back of his hand and between his fingers.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I… I’m terribly sorry about this…” He began to cough, pulling in huge gulps of air, then to choke, his face turning as white as the blood-splattered sheet of paper he still clutched in his free hand. Emily could see the fear in his eyes as he and probably several million people across the country realized what they were witnessing. With a sudden spasm, the man’s head flew back, exposing his throat and the thick bright-red engorged veins pulsing beneath the skin. A violent muscle spasm snapped his upper body forward, and his face and chest smashed into the desk, sending a spray of blood flying across the room. One globule hit the camera and slid slowly down the lens, leaving a pink translucent smear behind. The man convulsed again, his body flying back into the upright position; his eyes stared directly into th
e camera as a slow wet gurgling escaped from his throat.
The man’s microphone picked up screams of terror from the studio staff but they were barely audible above the sound of the TV anchor as he slowly drowned in his own blood, his body gripped by violent convulsions as though he was in the midst of a grand mal seizure. A thick red stream of blood exploded from his mouth, sloshing across the news desk. He continued to shake violently for a few seconds and then abruptly stopped. His jaw fell open and he exhaled a long sigh as his head slumped forward until his chin came to rest against the lapel of his bloodstained shirt.
The screams the microphone picked up as the anchorman died had been replaced by the sounds of faint gurgles and cries.
Emily realized she was shaking. “Oh my God,” she cried, through hands clasped tightly to her mouth. “Shit! Shit! Shit! Nathan? Are you watching this? Dear God almighty, it’s here.”
Emily turned to look back at Nathan. Her boyfriend was still standing in the kitchen, his face pale with shock, bloodshot eyes locked on hers as a stream of red gore exploded from his mouth, flooded onto his shirt, and began to form a crimson pool on the carpet.
Sharon Joss became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “Love in the Time of Dust and Venom” in Fiction River: Time Streams (Aug. 2013), edited by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
Visit her website at www.sharonjoss.com.
* * *
Short Story: “Love in the Time of Dust and Venom” ••••
LOVE IN THE TIME OF DUST AND VENOM
by Sharon Joss
First published in Fiction River: Time Streams (Aug. 2013), edited by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• • • •
USING HIS WALKER to brace himself, Keiko watched her ancient grandfather stoop beside the packed dirt path and tug at a weed. Nearby, sprinklers sang shoop-shoop-shoop in the stillness, sending cascades of water across the wide expanse of lawns. She saw his eyes twinkle as he slapped the roots against the side of his worn black trousers. The scent of moist earth joined the fragrance of lavender and eucalyptus in the quiet July morning. The old man stood and slowly put the dandelion in his pocket. He knew she didn’t approve, but this had become their little ritual.