“The Bayonne Bloodbath?”
“That’s what you called it in the headlines. I’m not calling it that.”
I sighed. The reporter was a total moron, totally craven. But he did have a job to do. I could give him at least the basic updates, to make sure the right information got out there.
“I can tell you that we have almost fifty people pronounced here,” I said. “And there are a few dozen more who aren’t out of the woods yet. I’m just hoping the stem-cell boosters we gave them, and the surgeries and the stitches, keep them together until the bodies can heal. It looks like they will recover.”
I could hear the beeps in the background as the reporter recorded the phone call. O’Keefe wouldn’t even write an actual story. He’d just play the clip of the interview, like most reporters did. This I was fine with—at the very least, it eliminated the possibility of being misquoted.
“You said that a few dozen are expected to die?” the reporter asked.
“No, I said a few dozen are expected to live. Forty-eight have already died.”
“Oh.” He coughed. “That’s an important distinction.”
“Yes. The most important distinction of all,” I said.
“What else can you tell me?” O’Keefe said.
“Nothing. We can talk in the morning. Try the Newark police about the stadium.”
“Alright. I’ll call them, but…”
I hung up. I ran my hand over my scalp. I had had enough of answering questions and solving problems for the day. It was time to get back home to my Mary. The Atman rang again. But I hung my coat, turned off the lights, and walked out.
I went to the breakroom to check on the trauma surgeons. Earlier I had heard the four trauma surgeons telling jokes, swapping stories and comparing notes on the patients, occasionally cracking an energy stick. But now all was quiet. I stepped inside—and immediately saw why. The quartet sat at the same table, around the light from someone’s Atman. But they were rigid in their chairs, their heads all turned in the same direction off into the shadows, where a dark figure stood at the sink, banging things. Something metal clattered on the ground, there was a man’s voice cursing, and then there was a ripping sound. I approached the surgeons’ table, put my hand on the shoulder of one Dr. Stuart Rothenberg, who leapt out of his chair at my touch. He grabbed my sleeve and pulled me down toward him.
“My god, Barnes,” Rothenberg whispered. “This man is a lunatic, a danger to everybody.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Aye, the night-shift man,” whispered Paddy McDermott, the Irish-born Almachius trauma surgeon at the table. “The creepy fuck, he is. Walks in here, without a word to anyone, goes over there, cuts the lights, and starts smashing and bashing things. The knacker.”
The two other surgeons, reinforcements from Clara Maass, nodded.
“Did anyone ask him what he’s doing?” I said.
“Stuart said something to him about twenty minutes ago. But your man didn’t answer. It’s like he’s in some kind of trance, the freaky fuck,” McDermott said.
“The man is a menace, an absolute nut,” Rothenberg said.
“I’ll talk to the guy,” I said, stepping toward the figure. “He’s going to have his hands full tonight.”
The silhouette came clearer into view, as my eyes adjusted to the dark. The man was standing over the sink, scrubbing furiously at something. I saw the suds flying. I considered approaching and placing a hand on the man’s shoulder, but decided better of it. Best not to startle someone who may be holding something sharp at the sink, I realized. Instead I drifted to the other side of the counter, a row of switches near the appliances and the fridge. With a sweep of my hand, the lights for the whole room popped on. Culling stood there, soap dripping, squinting in the new brightness. In his hand was a soaking piece of fabric.
“Hey, Chuck,” I said, in my most jovial voice. “What are you up to?”
Culling stood, blinking. For a moment he seemed stunned, like a wild animal caught in headlights. But he shook his head and rumpled the wet fabric.
“Stain on my overalls. Figured I’d work on it a bit before my shift started,” Culling said.
“In the dark, ye knacker?” McDermott called out.
“Fluorescent paint. It’s actually easier to see in the dark,” Culling said, turning to face the darkened panel of surgeons, then turning to the sink. He shrugged nonchalantly. “You bloody mick bastard.”
“You bloody—” McDermott shouted, rising from his chair. But the other surgeons leapt to restrain him, shouts erupting. Culling and I were only the ones who hadn’t moved.
“Why fluorescent paint?” I asked, raising my voice amid the scuffle.
Culling put the white togs down on the rim of the sink. He turned to face me.
“What is this, twenty questions? My shift doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes,” Culling said. He placed his sponge next to the overalls and folded his arms on his chest. “What do you really want, doctor?”
I scratched my head, taken aback by the nurse’s hostility.
“Just wanted to prepare you for tonight, Chuck. Don’t know if you heard about the massacre today.”
“I heard something. Innocent people dead. Totally tragic. Et cetera.”
Without a change in expression, Culling turned back to the sink, picked up the sponge and the fabric, and started scrubbing again. Something about his body language was off. After a moment’s pause, I kept talking.
“It was even worse than February. What some people call the Bayonne Bloodbath,” I said. “But you weren’t here for that one.”
“No, I was not. But we got some of the spillover at my last place. Most of them ended up dying.” He scrubbed harder, grimacing downward at his garment. “Lots of sepsis. It was filthy. Disgusting, actually.”
I nodded slowly.
“This should be a bit easier, since we took care of most of the initial triage. You just have to keep them alive overnight.”
Culling stopped scrubbing, looked at me. His eyes were beady, black, glinting. I could see absolutely nothing in them, like they were those of a wild beast.
“I’ll do what I can. That’s all I promise.”
“That’s all any of us can promise.”
I flicked off the row of light switches, casting the room back into darkness, and I walked away. As I passed, McDermott’s hands gripped the table, his reddened face twisted in a grimace, as his colleagues held his arms.
“Relax, Jerry,” said Rothenberg.
“I’ll knock that racist fuck’s teeth in,” McDermott barked, his brogue nearly unintelligible, except for the clear consonants.
As I let the door shut behind me, I heard voices, hateful hissings. They came from around the corner, near the patient rooms. I stepped quietly in that direction. The voices grew louder and more insistent the closer I got. Finally, I reached one of the nurse docking stations at the eastern side of the hospital, when I could make out two voices. The growl of Wetherspoon sparred with the nasty tics of the Kraken. I stopped at the corner to listen.
“…and can’t have doctors going around checking on patients whenever they feel like it. It’s against the law,” she said.
“You’re wrong, you’ve always been wrong, and you’ll kill people,” Wetherspoon said. “If we don’t allow our nurses and doctors full access…”
“Take it up with the Bureau, Neal,” the Kraken said.
“It’s terrifying that you’re in charge of a hospital, you bureaucratic mouthbreather.”
The Kraken gasped. I bit my fist to keep from bursting into laughter.
“And furthermore, your hiring practices leave something to be desired,” Wetherspoon continued. “For God’s sake, Suzanne, you hired that new night-shift nurse, Culling, with that track record? The people at Clara Maass called him Florence the Nightmare.”
“I don’t even know what that stupid nickname means. He’s got a better track record than some of the doctors here,” she said. �
��Better than your golden boy Barnes.”
My innards upended at the mention of my name. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to be drawn into this battle of wills. But Wetherspoon just laughed.
“You’re delusional. Joe might be the best young doctor on staff,” Wetherspoon said. “Even as the supposed boss, you can’t just create elaborate fictions.”
“Your golden boy. I’ve got something he may regret,” Kraken said, something jangling, and I knew it was the portable drive she’d taken from me.
A moment of silence. I listened, my heart hammering.
“Oh—is that all?” said Wetherspoon. “Well look here, Suzanne.”
Something jangled hugely, like windchimes in a gale. Wetherspoon cackled.
“Take a good long look,” the Old Man said, “because you’ll never get them. And I’ll make sure that every ethical doctor and every ethical nurse in this hospital rebels against you every moment of every day if you prevent them from doing their jobs. You stupendous twit.”
I could hear the shuffling steps of the Old Man moving down the hallway. I leaned around the corner and saw Wetherspoon walking to the far end, toward the east stairs. The Kraken shook her fists at his back.
“This is the last time, you old bastard,” she called out after him. “You think you’re untouchable. But I’ll have you kicked out and pensionless so fast your head’ll spin…”
Wetherspoon kept walking, his gait growing exaggerated and defiant, as her voice harangued him. But I didn’t wait to gloat. I turned and rushed back the way I’d come.
I walked past the patient rooms. In one nearest the end, a figure drifted in the darkness. Who could be in there, stalking a patient’s room without a light? I stared for a second, then knocked. A pause. The shadow moved.
The door cracked open, and Culling’s face leered out at me.
“Can I help you, doctor?” he said softly, his eyes blank underneath the severe Caligula bangs, the bulbous cranium.
“I just want to know why you were walking around in the darkness in a patient’s room,” I said. “This is not Almachius policy.”
Culling stepped outside the room, and then door clicked shut behind. He put his thin hands together in front of his chest, like in prayer. He blinked, long and slow, like a lizard in winter.
“That’s one of the recovering patients,” the nurse said. “In fact, she’s doing so well all she needs is sleep. I left the lights off while I checked the terminal, so I wouldn’t wake her.”
“What’s her name? The prognosis?”
“Nancy,” the nurse said. “Substitute French teacher at a local high school. Shrapnel wound to the chest. The hemorrhage stopped two hours ago.”
Sounds reasonable, I thought, remembering the patient. We had barely saved her. Still, the night-shift cretin stalking the darkness without supervision was…unacceptable. Alarming, somehow.
“Leave the terminal light on at least, Chuck,” I said. “You know—the lamp next to the medicine cabinet. There needs to be light in case something happens. It’s hospital policy.”
Culling leaned back on the closed door.
“A little light’s not going to help the patient sleep,” the nurse murmured, crossing his arms.
“Just turn the light on. And leave it on,” I said. “Please.”
Culling shrugged, hit a button on his Atman, and the room inside was filled with a soft glow. The woman in the bed stirred, her eyes fluttering under her wrinkled eyelids. She moaned in a druggy stupor. The nurse let the door shut. Together we walked to the next doorway.
“You know,” Culling said, putting his Atman back in his pocket, “I will never understand how everyone needs lights on all the time. When I was a kid, you had to learn to conquer your fear of the darkness. To feel and listen, instead of just seeing around you.”
The nurse swiped his Atman and ducked into the new room. He moved over to the bedside, to a young dude with a thin moustache and no sleeves. From outside the doorway I recognized the patient as the celebrity from the TV show, How Low Can You Go. Joe Steelman looked exactly as he did on the screen, except without his trademark sunglasses. Tattoos like inky tentacles swirled up from the collar of his gown to the edges of his jaw, stopping just short of his oversized head, which was still fixed in the cynical smirk that had so captivated American audiences for the past six weeks. I couldn’t hear anything through the soundproof window. Steelman spoke hurriedly, gesturing madly with his hands, evidently dissatisfied with some aspect of his care. Nodding, Culling walked to the terminal and tapped the screen.
Room 371. I made a mental note of the celebrity patient’s location, then went down to the front entrance. Culling was not the best person to be caring for these patients in need—but we needed every pair of hands we had, in that moment of necessity.
Cameras followed me on my way out. As I walked from the hospital back out to my car and topped off my tank at the natural gas port, I reminded myself to check on the two patients—the substitute French teacher and the celebrity—first thing in the morning.
The ultrahighway was choked with traffic. The sun sank behind the office buildings on the hilltops, aglow in the smog. The holographic billboards twinkled in the twilight. I sat in silence, gripping the steering wheel, watching the other drivers talk to themselves, pick their noses, watch TV.
My body ached—that bone-jarring numbness of a day pushed to the furthest limits of stress and exertion. I’d felt it before—after the Bayonne Bloodbath, back in February. In the aftermath of that massacre, Betty and I had managed to save at least a dozen more patients than could have been considered possible. By the end of that fifteen-hour winter’s day, I could barely lift my arms to drive. But I had felt an undeniable satisfaction glowing within, knowing I’d beaten those odds.
This was different. After New Jersey’s single worst slaughter since the Great Purge, I felt nothing but disquiet. Betty and I, along with the other nurses and doctors and trauma surgeons, had achieved the impossible. We’d done the undoable, salvaged the unsalvageable. We’d beaten even greater odds than those of Bayonne. But there were so many we couldn’t save. The faces of my parents, the dead stares on those dirty gurneys just hours before, came to me—and mingled with those other dead faces of a night so long ago when I was left an orphan.
And somewhere deep inside, there was a feeling, the overwhelming dread, that something was amiss. I clenched the steering wheel tightly.
I turned the radio on, which had two men bickering about something while a third person egged them on. I couldn’t follow the debate. It was something about European politics. But my brain was spent. I turned it off and called Mary to ask her to stick the beef-flavored instant tofu in the microwave. No time to give in to thoughts of the past—or a sense of impending doom. I waited for the traffic to clear on the high-speed ultrahighway ahead.
THE MAN, THE WOMAN, THE GIRL
U.S.A., 2087
Everywhere, water crashing. Everywhere, all around. I coughed, I gagged, I choked.
No air, anywhere.
The river flowed around me, through me. Stuck fast in the midst of the current, I was heavy and unmoving as a rock. I couldn’t breathe. I saw nothing through the rushing gloom. The dark flow swirled through the unseeing cracks of my eyes and my notch of a mouth. No air. It broke me apart inside, splitting me, washing away fragment after fragment in its turbulence. Something came at me through the murk. Some shape waggled toward me on the current—impossibly fast, dark, growing. No air. I tried to raise my hands to defend myself, but I had no arms. No limbs at all. A gaping mouth—bigger than me, bigger than anything in the world—came at me and swallowed all light.
“…and the Department of Homeland Security has increased its Nuclear Warning to Mauve, in the wake of the Pyongyang Summit and the tensions within the East Asian Federation. Twenty-four-hour fighter-interceptor flights over Korea begin at noon today local time.
“In other news…”
Saxas spoke from deep within the At
man’s alarm function. I gasped in the bedroom air greedily. My tired eyes opened and shut. I could not move. The newscaster’s voice kept on rattling off the state of decay in the world—untiring, automatic, relentless.
“…and in New Jersey, the gunman who shot up an audition for How Low Can You Go at the Lockheed-Martin Center is still at large. The police are withholding all details about the investigation, under the Freedom of Justice Act,” Saxas said.
The broadcast abruptly cut to the sounds of gunfire: an advertisement for a weapons manufacturer.
I sat up in bed and flicked the radio off. Mary breathed under the covers, the gust of her Dormus mask the only sound in the room. I leaned down and kissed her soft brow. Then I turned and hobbled to the bathroom.
Forty minutes later I was in my crispest suit, and I cracked an energy stick into my black coffee. Mary appeared at the doorway, rubbing bleary eyes.
“How are you, hon?” she asked, kissing my cheek, brushing past me to the sink.
“Fine, I guess,” I said. “Going to be a huge day. All those victims from yesterday.”
She sipped her water, smacking her lips.
“I’m going to the gym for a couple training appointments. Make a few bucks while I still can, before I get too big to do anything active. I’m swinging by Almachius at noon for my first check-up with Abbud. Don’t forget,” she said.
“The guards will probably let you in,” I said, stepping close, pulling her to me. I gave her a sly look. “You don’t look too threatening.”
She held a hand over her womb, the outline of her camouflage-patterned nightie. She shook her head, her braids swinging around her shoulders.
“Yeah, I’m pretty unassuming for a Force Recon vet of three tours abroad,” she said, poking me playfully in the chest. “But seriously. Make sure you’re there. I’m a little nervous.”
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