“Those bodies,” he said, gritting teeth through the pain. “What are you doing with those bodies?”
“Taking care of our dead. That was just for today. We set a fire every night, young man.”
Martin got to his feet, wobbly.
“It’s a good thing you have your mask on. Your friend was not so lucky. We can’t have his kind around here. And what you brought in that boat, ah, thank you for that. We’re keeping it.”
“It raises risks of dying of the virus,” Martin said.
“We’re well aware of that.”
One of the men beside him raised a hunting rifle in his direction.
The woman said, “You’re going to have to come with us until we decide what we’re going to do with you.”
The call came in about a suspicious individual flashing money. Martin was still pretty new on the force. He had been paired with Beau, an experienced and decorated officer.
“This is it,” Beau said. “Let’s go get him.”
Miller and Kilgore were first at the scene, Beau and Martin showed up a hot minute later. The individual, a very tall, heavyset African American male, was being disrespectful to the officers. He carried a large leather briefcase; when asked if it was his, he would only respond with answers like, “Why do I have to answer that?” “What business is it of yours?” and “Tell me what I did wrong. Just tell me.”
Miller put his hand up to calm the individual down, and the individual definitely made an aggressive move. Didn’t he? What happened at that point was hard for Martin to think about clearly.
The individual and Miller were suddenly grappling. Kilgore tapped on Martin’s shoulder and then tapped his own nose, which was the signal for them to shut off their body cams.
It was a late afternoon, an empty street in a poor neighborhood. Which meant no smartphones, no street surveillance.
Beau and the other two had wrestled the individual to the ground. Beau was kicking him. Martin stood to the side. He kept yelling at the individual to stop resisting, stop resisting. Stop. Please. Stop.
And then the individual was still.
“You motherfuckers killed him!”
They all turned. There was a kid, Hispanic, late teens, and he was running.
Miller yelled at Martin: “Get him!”
But Martin didn’t move, couldn’t move.
Miller and Beau were on their feet and after him.
Martin stared down at the suspect. Spilling out of the briefcase were bricks of cash.
They found out later the suspect had liquidated stocks, was going to retire early. He was officially listed as missing.
The kid reached an overpass before Miller and Beau finally stopped him with ten rounds. He fell over the rail into traffic. There was no way he should have survived that.
But he did.
The hospital boys played along, said nothing about the bullets. Easy stuff. Reporters didn’t ask any tough questions anymore, only talked about the weather, repeated what the president said, and hawked whatever new movie or TV show was coming out.
In Beau’s man cave, Kilgore put a fat envelope in Martin’s hand and held it there. “If you had done your job,” she said, “that kid would never have been a problem.”
Martin said nothing.
“We talked. We decided. If that kid ever wakes up, he’s yours and yours alone to take care of.”
Martin said nothing. He took the envelope.
The New Vista retirees made him walk twelve feet ahead.
They talked as they walked.
“Josephina, there’s no point in bringing him closer to the houses,” the one with the rifle said to the woman in jeans. “He could be infected.”
“Take care of him by the fire,” a tiny, ancient woman in a sweater offered. “Save the trouble of dragging him.”
Josephina stopped, and they all stopped with her. “What’s your name, young man?”
Martin turned. The tiny woman said, “Don’t ask him his name, that just makes it harder.”
“Martin,” he said. He could see all their faces better now, lit by the horrible bonfire. He saw fear in their eyes, but also curiosity. He gritted his teeth, saying, “I show you something?”
“Watch out. He’s got that holster,” said another of the retirees.
“And Ronaldo has the draw on him,” Josephina said. “Go ahead, young man.”
Martin reached into his pocket and pulled out his badge.
“Fuck that,” the tiny woman said.
Ronaldo said, “Oh, Christ, was the other guy a cop, too?”
“Quiet!” Josephina said, holding up a hand to silence them. “Martin, you may not see the writing on the wall, but we do. That badge means nothing because the law means nothing, not anymore. Not that it ever meant much of anything in this part of town, where the cops like you could do as they pleased. Where the government never bothered to take care of its citizens. You understand what I’m talking about?”
He was ashamed to say that he did. “S’you got your own laws?” he asked. Each word was a stabbing pain to speak. “Made your own town with you as the sheriff?”
She smiled. “You got jokes. No, it’s not like that. Perhaps that would be, if any of us were younger, if any of us expected to last that long. Take a look. There are thirty of us here left. Two months ago, there were four hundred. We just want to be left alone. We’re not afraid of death at all, Martin. If anything, we’re afraid of letting the outside world in again. We want to appreciate and enjoy the time we have left. Without the hypocrisy, tyranny, and disease of the world as it is outside these walls. That’s why I’m not so sure we can let you go. What’s going to stop you from bringing a bunch of pigs back here to get us on the evening news?”
“I won’t,” he said.
“And we should believe you—why?”
Martin scratched his head. “Let me show you something.” He took out a picture of his family, Nellie and the kids. “Girl’s name is Anibel. She’s sixteen.”
“Pretty name,” one of them said.
“And my son is Martin, Jr.”
“Good-looking boy.”
“Thanks,” Martin said. “I gotta go back to them.”
They were silent for just a minute.
“It’d be a pain to tie him up,” one of them said. “Just let him go.”
“Yeah, let him go,” said another.
“So nice to see a new face.”
“I coulda use him for a sex slave,” said the tiny old woman.
Josephina pointed up the beach. “The exit is that way. Feel free to take a golf cart.”
Martin unfolded the street map he had printed out. It was around five in the morning and the sun was just struggling to rise. His destination was only four miles away. In the cart, that took about forty minutes. After thirty minutes, it ran out of battery power. He pushed the dead cart up to a hydrant and walked the rest of the way. He found the building easily. These kinds of housing developments, the kind that he had grown up in, the kind he had fled, always had back doors for basement access. The lock was flimsy and he got inside easily.
He took the stairs up seven floors. It was hot as hell in the mask, which filled with the stink of his dry breath and the blood in his mouth.
Sean Enríquez had lived on his own in Queens, where he’d had the bad luck to witness three cops beating a suspect to death and a fourth cop who stood there doing nothing.
Martin peeked out of the stairwell on the seventh floor. People lined the dimly-lit hallway, neighbors and family, in masks and six feet apart. There was praying. There was crying. At the far end there was movement, the familiar jockeying that happened now when anybody moved, that effort to keep distance. He soon saw why.
They were bringing a body out.
Martin stepped into the hallway and stopped six feet from the nearest person.
“Not the virus?” he asked an older man who noticed him.
“Nah. He didn’t have a chance to get better from the coma.
They should never have sent him home.”
People scattered or squeezed themselves against the wall as the bier came through.
As it passed Martin, Sean’s right hand fell from sheet, bare and open.
Martin had a momentary urge to reach out and touch the stray hand. If it weren’t for the virus, he would have. To ask for supplication.
Instead, he watched them wheel the body away. Then he took the stairs and left.
Martin flashed his badge to get on the subway without having to show Essential Worker papers. Trains were running on limited service, so it took an hour for one to arrive. Because of the delay, the train became surprisingly packed, with no room for six feet of distance. It looked like all working-class people, sullen and sleepy behind their masks.
After two transfers, he got off at his subway stop by noon. He walked through his neighborhood again, feeling the sun on his face. He took in the grand trees, the overflowing flower-filled fronts. He couldn’t smell any of it.
He was surprised to find a corner bodega was open. It had been so long since he’d been to one—he went in. The boy liked apples. Maybe there’d be some for him and other surprises for the family.
Inside, the woman behind the counter smiled behind her mask. The refrigerated section was empty and turned off. Large signs said, “Six Feet Apart” and “Sorry, No Toilet Paper.” The shelves were mostly empty, except for canned goods and dust-covered spices. By the front counter there was still some produce, wilted lettuce, a lone cucumber, but no apples.
He pointed to a bunch of yellow-orange things he didn’t recognize, which looked like they had thorns on them. “What is this?”
“Prickly pear,” the woman behind the counter said.
The boy might like it, he thought. He bought some and when he got home, he sat on his doorstep and took off his mask. He took one of the fruits out and realized he had no idea how to eat it. With his wounded jaw, he wondered if he even could.
By Terri Lynn Coop
I handed my wife a mug reading Will Trade Medical Advice for Tacos and said: “I don’t see why you have to go in today.”
She added two more sugars before she drank deep. “Josh, you know I’m essential.”
“So am I. However, I have twenty-four glorious hours off. I wanted to spend them with my girl. You’re even more essential to me.”
“I promise you it’ll only be eight today. I have to cover a gap in the ER. When I became chief resident, we knew that was part of the deal.”
Instead of reaching across the kitchen island to refill her coffee, I walked around and took her in my arms. Her hair smelled like lemons this week. It reminded me how, even with our connections, everything was hit-and-miss after more than a year of the creaking supply chain.
“Okay, eight hours, and then you’re out. We’re celebrating tonight.”
“What’s tonight?”
“Doctor Delgado, I cannot believe you are so remiss. Tonight marks fifty days until the end of your fellowship from hell, or in hell, as I prefer to think of it.”
She stiffened, and I was afraid I’d gone too far. I hated her job. County was consistently one of the hardest-hit hospitals in the country. In a macabre twist, she’d catapulted from the resident pool into a prestigious fellowship when her two competitors died during the first outbreak. It gave her the chance to work under one of her heroes, and even though we’d had the worst argument of our marriage, there was no way I was going to deny her that chance. It didn’t keep my heart out of my throat every time she went on shift, especially in the ER.
She kissed my cheek, and the tension melted. “Uh, talking about hell, how about those hundred-hour rotations you’ve been on? We haven’t had five minutes to ourselves in forever.” With those words, she added some bodily friction that I felt down to my toes.
“I have five minutes now.”
She tugged the drawstring of my old scrub pants, and they puddled around my feet. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Even with the never-ending sirens, the city view from our balcony worked its magic on me. Okay, I was already in a pretty damn good mood. Everything from her velvet touch to her diamond-sharp brain to her parents’ bank account reminded me just how far above my weight class I’d punched when Dr. Eliana Delgado had decided I was worth her time and attention. My life was on a golden trajectory until UNSPEC hit the scene.
I popped a day-off morning beer. The virus that had recently ticked its body count to over two million worldwide had cute names, official names, and imaginative names, but those on the front lines still used that first label. When the victims started choking ambulances, hospitals, and morgues, harried doctors had charted “idiopathic organ failure resulting from unspecified infection” as the cause of death. As the pace picked up, the chart code became a scribbled UNSPEC. It stuck with the people who understood what it represented.
The intercom interrupted my reverie. Tossing back the rest of my beer, I called to the voice-activated system, “Corrine, what’s up?” We’d had to change the name after Eliana’s nephew kept triggering it, including an accidental order for two cases of creamed corn.
The honey-smooth computerized voice replied, “There’s a package downstairs from DGI. Shall I sanitize and send it up touchless?”
“Yes.”
I grabbed another beer and wondered what El’s dad was sending this week. With our job classifications, we ate better than most, but the boxes of questionable-market goods were always a treat. I barely had time to guess before a soft tone told me the package was in the bin outside our door. Not for the first time did I marvel at weathering the pandemic in this well-feathered nest. Apartments were a lot easier to get in the cities these days, but this wedding gift from the in-laws was a palace by any definition.
After pulling on gloves out of habit, I slit the tape and quality seals. Peeking inside, I shouted: “Holy shit, baking supplies. And chocolate. Thanks, Dad.”
That’s when my plan came together. I was going to bake brownies and take them to the hospital. I wasn’t being totally altruistic. I wanted to make sure Eliana didn’t get talked into overtime.
“What’s the point of having a travel pass if I don’t use it? Corrine, I need Nana’s brownie recipe.”
I clipped my gold-banded ID to the pocket of my “outside” jacket. With my mask and wraparound sunglasses, I couldn’t count on being recognized. At the hospital, the guard waved me to the VIP entrance. After stepping in front of the infrared thermometer, I waited for the beep to let me exit the “welcome chamber.” All the government and public service buildings had them now, and we avoided the real name: Lucite Man-Traps. If you had a fever, the doors stayed locked, and you were escorted, under guard, to a screening facility. Even after my hundreds of passages, I still held my breath until the light flashed green.
My job class rated me a small locker. I swapped my outside mask and glasses for inside ones and grabbed a pair of shoe covers. Personal protective gear, the sacred PPE, was in chronic short supply, so anything that helped keep the outside out was a help.
I was greeted with smiles as I headed toward the ER. I kept opening the plastic bin and showing the individually wrapped baked goods. I planned on leaving them in the cleanroom reserved for staff breaks.
“Where’s Dr. El?” I asked an intern, wearing a gray trash bag duct-taped over his lab coat as a gown, who pointed toward Room 5. Before I could thank him, the klaxon sounded, along with a red strobe light. The message was simple: An ambulance with a body fluids trauma patient was on the way, and all non-essential personnel needed to get their asses out of the hall. Then someone shouted something over the intercom that sent my heart into my throat: “Five.”
“No,” was all I said as I ignored the order and sprinted toward my wife’s trauma room, the brownie container against my chest like a shield.
“CLEAR.” The outer bay doors closed and the inner opened with a hiss as the negative pressure of the isolated HVAC system equalized. I knew the ambulance
techs, even through their masks and goggles. From their expressions, I could tell this was a bad one. As UNSPEC took its toll on law enforcement, the streets had taken to policing themselves. A limp arm covered in tattoos sagged off the gurney and confirmed my suspicions.
Fucking banger. Probably a dealer.
I wanted to enter the trauma room but knew even I couldn’t breach that protocol. Instead, I pressed myself against the hallway window. My wife’s rank and seniority rated her a stained cotton gown and gloves. I knew her mask was a week old, and the wrap-around safety glasses were barely adequate for painting, much less front-line medicine. I also knew she was a professional. Her team worked mostly on hand signals at this point. A nurse pulled back the red-sodden field dressing, revealing multiple wounds.
Looks like an AR. If it was an AK, he wouldn’t still be breathing. Even with the beer in my system, my mind clicked into mission mode. Evaluate, isolate, remediate.
There was another sound over the beeping equipment and rapid-fire exchanges of the medical team. A deep booming cough erupted from the victim, leaving bloody foam on his lips.
Shit. He’s hot. Baby, step back. Let him go. He’s gorked.
I wanted to beat on the glass but clutched the brownies tighter, willing her to stop. Instead, the woman I loved beyond all reason took a fresh dressing and leaned her weight into the oozing hamburger that was his chest and belly.
Blood gouted from his mouth and wounds, driven from his lungs and arteries by her pressure and the beating of his diseased and dying heart. The red wave splashed across her face, covering the edges of her mask, and dripped from around and under her glasses.
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