Bleeders (12 page)

By the time I came out of the bathroom Alison was asleep, but unlike Jeremiah who looked half-dead, her sleep was uneasy. She looked like a junkie coming off the junk, and she moved and cried out like she was having the same nightmares I'd had back in the stadium. Even now I could remember the visions I'd had, and wished I didn't.

Confabulations, she'd said, the inability to separate dreams from waking life. What if the Bleeders were locked in that same nightmare, feeding the shadows for as long as they could until the darkness came for them, too?

Worse, what if my own nightmares were here to stay?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Give them to us."

My eyes shot open at the sound of a voice whispering in my ear. I jumped out of the chair and to my feet, ready to throw down with whoever had the balls to sneak inside our walls and come at me when I was sleeping.

Except I was alone. The only other soul with me in the reception area was Jeremiah. He was still sleeping, but he was starting to get restless. His comatose breathing had become fast and hard, and he tossed and turned in an already very familiar way. His skin was flushed and his shirt soaked with sweat. There was no way the whisper had been his. He was too far away, and the voice was nothing like his. The more I thought of it, the more I remembered drowning in nightmare visions of blood and death and screaming before I'd woken up.

The voice had come from inside my skull.

A thought occurred to me, and I glanced around the reception area. "Alison?" She wasn't on the bench where I'd seen her last, just before I dozed off. It was still dark out, but the sun was starting to come up outside, which meant I only could have been asleep for an hour at most.

I checked the other rooms. No one there. Upstairs was just as empty, but after a full check I found the roof access door had been left open, so I climbed the stairs and came out onto the roof, taking it slow and checking around the corners before stepping out. If someone other than Alison was there I wanted to catch them by surprise, and if it was only Alison I wanted to know what she was up to by herself at such an early hour.

I found her at the front of the building. She stood at the edge, looking out at the city. Brick apartment buildings fifteen stories high surrounded us on each side like dead towers in the waking light. "Are you alright," I called out. She glanced back at me, not surprised.

"Depends on your definition."

"Getting looser by the hour." I joined her at the edge of the building. The city was relatively quiet yet, at least for New York, where the sounds of people and machines normally never stopped. I wondered how many people had survived the night, but the quiet seemed like answer enough. The birds were the loudest thing that morning.

Alison stared in the direction of the hospital. There was motion through its windows, like people moving around inside. It took me a second to realize they were Bleeders. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, filled every floor of the place, people who had sought treatment and found a mass grave instead. I thought of Rebecca at Mount Sinai.

"The flu," Alison said. "It came out of North Korea, you know."

"And?"

She shifted to look at me. "It could be a weapon. Chemical warfare developed by their people. They could be responsible."

"Are we talking about the same North Korea here? I thought those guys could barely get a rocket into space. Besides, on the news they said it was running train on the Koreans before it crossed the border. Why would they use it on themselves?"

"Maybe they didn't mean for it to go off. It's a lot easier to make a monster than it is to control one."

I thought about it, but I shrugged it off. "What's done is done. Doesn't make the bites any softer."

She was surprised by my casual attitude. "If it's true, someone has to make sure they pay for this, for all the damage they've done, the people they've killed."

"I'll put it on my list. Right now, getting us some more weapons is at the top."

"We already have a gun."

"And when it runs out of ammo? What if it breaks, or we're separated? Jeremiah told me we need to think long-term, and I'm starting to see how right he is. No one's coming to help us, so we need to help ourselves. This place has food and water, which is awesome, but at some point it's either going to run out or we'll have to protect it from someone who wants it worse than we do."

"Fine."

I paused. "That's it?"

"I said that's fine. But if you're planning to rob a gun store-"

"Gun stores are out of the question. Even if there was one around here, I don't need some paranoid NRA freak holed up with a roomful of guns while I'm trying to break in. I need something a little less obvious, something no one would give a second look to when shit hit the fan."

"What do you need me to do?"

"Watch him."

"You know I will."

"What will you do if he wakes up one of those things?" She didn't answer, staring off again at the hospital. "Alison," I said louder, snapping her out of it. "If Jeremiah becomes a Bleeder, will you put him down, or will you let him kill you?"

She was quiet. Her expression told me she wasn't sure what she'd do when the time came. What worried me most- and excuse me for being so selfish- was that I didn't want to risk my ass out there looking for guns, only to come back and get my face chewed off the second I stepped back through the door. A little stability at home, that's all I was asking for.

Alison opened her mouth to speak, but then her eye-line shifted to the street a little further west, by a small playground. Two cars, a white Honda and a green tow truck, were speeding along 135th Street toward the hospital, their tires screeching, both cars drifting across both sides of the road as the Honda tried to lose the tow truck, which was trying its damnedest to ram it to the side. Even from a distance, we could see the Honda had a couple of young girls inside. We both understood immediately that we were looking at some kind of carjacking, but we also both understood there wasn't a damn thing we could do to help. All we could do was watch and wait to see how it turned out.

Just at the point where we could still see them before they disappeared behind one of the apartment buildings, the Honda ran into trouble. The driver didn't see a busted motorcycle abandoned in the middle of the road until it was too late. They tried to maneuver around the obstacle, but they overcompensated and lost control of the car. The Honda jumped the sidewalk, careened through the loading area and plowed into the hospital doors.

There was a loud crash from deep inside. A second later, an explosion rocked the hospital. Alison and I flinched and crouched down.

The hospital doors blew out onto the street, along with wood and glass and flaming debris. It seemed like too big a blast for just one car, and I wondered if either they'd been carrying extra gasoline in the car or they'd gotten unlucky enough to hit a gas main inside the building.

"At least they died quick," I offered.

The green tow truck kept its distance. After slowly drifting past the hospital and around the flaming papers, they thought better of things and turned around, leaving the place to burn.

I straightened back up, watching the fire spread. "Now's my chance," I said. Alison looked from me to the flames and back.

"Half of New York just heard that."

"Exactly, which is why I'm heading that way." I pointed the other direction, south-west along the river.

"Their loss is our gain, huh?"

"Something like that."

From the gaping hole that used to be hospital doors, we saw the first Bleeder step out of the flames. Her legs were on fire, her shoes melting to the concrete as she walked. She was free of her grave, and more of her friends were close behind.

"I suggest you walk quietly," Alison said.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Walking quietly with the M16 at my side, I exited the food bank through the back and crossed the small courtyard. As I passed the hopscotch court, I saw that one side of the courtyard wasn't as enclosed as I'd originally thought. There was a half fence for most of it, but in some places there were cut-throughs for delivery trucks to pass through. If we were going to stay put a while and really try to make the place work, I would have to fix that.

As I left the courtyard, I glanced back at the building and noticed Alison was watching me from the second story window. I had the brief thought that it might be the last time I saw her, and I was surprised to find the thought bothered me a little. She may have been moody and suicidal, but the idea of going it alone, being out there with no one to annoy the shit out of, wasn't fun. Just for safety's sake, I gave her the finger. Alison gave me a small wave before turning away, most likely to check on Jeremiah.

I went down a block, made a left and went two blocks over, trying to make as little noise as possible while moving quickly. It was still early, and I wanted to use as much of the low light for cover as possible. About a block before I hit the river I reached Park Avenue, which ran under an elevated train track. Using the platform to stay out of sight, I jogged down Park Avenue, keeping the M16 steady in my hands. Most of the eight block run was quiet. Only a few times I had to slow down and hide behind a support column or an abandoned car, and I made good time, reaching the store I was looking for while the sun was still low in the sky.

I knew the shop would be there because I knew the neighborhood. I was only a couple of blocks from the park Jeremiah had cut through yesterday, where I had to stop and rest on a bench while the virus tore me up. It seemed like so long ago already, like I was thinking of a different person, and it bothered me to think that, in some ways, I was.

The front of the pawn shop was all yellow signs with big, red letters that said things like "24 HOURS" and "WE BUY GOLD." I'd never set foot in it before, but if you've seen one dingy pawn shop you've seen them all. They would have guns for sure, even if they said they didn't.

I ran along the row of stores, crouched low with the M16 ready to go. A man was laid out face-down on the sidewalk with a big, yellow sign that advertised the pawn shop around his neck. The sign half-covered him, but the half I could see was very dead. His blood was all over the sign and his intestines trailed into the street.

The door of the pawn shop, I was excited to see, was not locked and not smashed in. If they'd been paying a guy to stand outside with a sign around his neck, they'd obviously been open when everything went down. Twenty-four hours, like they advertised. And if the door was unlocked, the owner must be long gone- deserted or dead. Any thought of taking my time going in was erased quickly when I spotted three Bleeders up the block, dragging a guy out of a furniture store.

"Terrible time to buy a couch," I mumbled to myself.

The inside of the pawn shop was exactly as dark and dirty as I'd expected. A counter-to-ceiling metal cage separated the register side from the store side, with no less than six cameras mounted through the small store. Tapes and CDs and videogames took up one display. Bicycles hung from the ceiling. There was a wall of guitars and other instruments on one side and a section with power tools and all sorts of electronics on the other. I made my way to the counter quietly, still staying low as I passed glass cases of jewelry, which weren't even broken like I thought they might. It was a good sign.

Or I thought it was. As I got closer to the register I heard slight shuffling noises, like cloth rubbing against cloth. At first I thought it might be coming from outside, or just my imagination- voices had apparently come from there an hour ago- but then I very distinctly heard the whispers of two men in a language I didn't understand. It sounded almost Dutch, but more forceful, and one of them said the word "doodmaak." I took a step back toward the door. As I did, I heard the click of the safety coming off a gun.

Fuck.

I ducked behind a display case of clocks and silverware as the gunfire started. Only one of them fired, the other stayed hidden behind the counter. It was handgun fire, but fast, the pak-pak-pak of the shots overhead. He fired six times before stopping, destroying a cuckoo clock and my hearing in the process.

"Hold up, hold up, I'm unarmed," I called out.

"No, you are a liar," one of them said with a thick accent. I couldn't tell what it was, maybe some kind of South African, but more importantly I didn't understand how he knew I was packing. Then I looked up at the camera across the shop aimed right at me, a red light blinking on its side.

"Ahh. Okay, yeah, that wasn't true. But no harm done, alright? I'll leave, no problem. You can have whatever you want, just don't shoot me as I'm leaving. Deal?"

They whispered to each other in their language. Again I heard that word, doodmaak. Finally one of them said, "Deal."

I let the M16 hang loose from my neck and stood up slowly, showing myself over the broken clocks. Behind the counter one of them stood up as well, showing me his empty hands. He was a black guy, early forties maybe, with a shaved head and very dark skin. His clothes didn't look American and neither did his watch.