The Postmortal (30 page)

“You look good.”

“Well, you caught me early in the day. I always look my best before noon, before the day starts pounding away at me.”

“How’s the little one?”

“Tony’s climbing now,” she said. “He climbs up to the top of everything—stairs, boxes, shelves, desks. It’s like he thinks he just won a gold medal in something. It’s very cute. Everything is good. Everything is fine. Dave and Tony are fine. Everyone’s happy and healthy, and we can afford water, and that’s all I can ask for.”

“Ever hear from Mark?”

“I saw him at the store a couple of weeks ago. He had his new kids with him. We did that thing where we spotted each other and gave a friendly wave. That was about it.” She paused. “I still feel like he’s my husband, you know. I see him with these new kids of his, and my wiring starts smoking and shooting sparks. Something doesn’t compute. It’s like I’ve been reincarnated, but God or whoever let me remember every damn thing from my past life. Then I come home to Dave, and I think to myself, wait, did I hire a substitute Mark? And shouldn’t this kid I have be my grandchild? Shouldn’t I be handing him off to some nice, sensible daughter-in-law somewhere? How many more husband iterations am I going to go through? Two hundred years from now, will I realize I already married my eighth husband five husbands earlier? I go to buy a couple of oranges, and I end up tied in an existential square knot. So that bats my head around the tetherball pole pretty good.” She stuck out an open bag of chips. “Dorito?”

Just then a nurse called my name. I sprung up and jumped for her attention, in case she decided to pass me over and send me to the back of the ER’s deli line. She waved me forward. I gave Ken a limp hug and thanked him for his help. He left without asking for his clothes to be returned.

They brought Polly and me into the emergency ward and sat me in a lone chair in the center of the hallway. I still wasn’t sick enough to merit an actual room. Dozens of patients lined the corridor in wheelchairs and on gurneys. They stripped me, dryshaved a couple of patches on my chest, hooked me up to a WEPS screen, got an EKG reading, and left Polly and me there for another three hours. We passed away the time betting on whether nurses passing through the corridor would trip and eat the floor. I said nothing about Julia.

I noticed, as we gambled, one patient being escorted down the hall. Unlike every other patient I’d seen in the ward, this one seemed to be getting treated as if his condition were a real emergency. There were nurses
and
doctors surrounding him. I hadn’t seen a doctor all night and day. It was like catching a glimpse of a movie star walking along a red carpet.
There he is!
And they moved with alacrity, as if they were genuinely interested in saving his life. Again, not a common occurrence in hospitals these days.

The man looked older, perhaps in his fifties. He lay on his back, head turned to me as they wheeled him by. I could see mottling on his skin, particularly on his face. Dark violet spiderwebs had spread over his cheek and down his neck to the opening of his shirt. Copper-colored fluid drizzled out the side of his mouth, like tainted maple syrup. He hacked and wheezed violently, a disturbing half retch. It was enough for everyone lining the hall to sit up and take notice. They hurried him into one of the side rooms. One of the nurses in the battalion tailed off and let the rest go in without her. She grabbed an IV bag and a needle kit from a cart left out in the hall. She took off her latex gloves and began approaching me. She went for my arm. I saw some of the copper fluid dotted along her wrist. I reared back.

“I have directions to give you some fluids,” she said.

“Could you wash your hands before you do that?”

She was either mortified or pissed—I couldn’t tell which. “Of course.” She went back to a hand-sanitizer dispenser, squirted once, and rubbed her hands together. Again, she approached.

Again, I recoiled. “With soap and water?”

Now she was annoyed. She went to the bathroom and came back out, wiping her hands dry on her scrubs. She stuck me with the saline bag and disappeared. Two hours later I was sent for an MRI. Another two hours later, well into the next day, the molded plastic of the chair and my backside now fused together, a doctor casually appeared before me. He wasted no time. I could tell he was already thinking ten patients ahead of me.

“Your EKG looks steady, Mr. Farrell,” he said. “But the MRI shows a 95 percent blockage of one of your arteries. I think it’s clear that you suffered a mild heart attack. As long as the artery is blocked, you’re going to occasionally feel that tight discomfort.”

“Can you clear the artery?” I asked.

“No insurance will cover the cost of that. Not at your age. Can you afford to pay for this yourself? I can probably book you for something in December.”

“December? Jesus. I don’t know.”

“Well, you don’t have to decide now. Go home and talk it over with your wife.”

“That’s my sister.”

“Talk it over with your family. But don’t wait too long. You don’t want this spilling into 2060.”

“What do I do in the meantime?”

“Just don’t do things that will make your heart uncomfortable.”

“Can you be more specific than that?”

“Not really. Just try to take it as easy as possible. And take this.” He gave me a prescription for meds and left. Polly walked me out of the hospital to her plug-in. Thirty-six hours at the hospital, and nothing in my body had been fixed. Polly took out her bag of chips and started eating. I reached for the bag, then remembered the withered muscle beating meekly in my chest and drew back. A small pleasure, now surgically removed. Polly stopped eating out of sympathy. She studied me, not bothering to press the ignition. She didn’t want to start it up until she saw in my eyes that I was ready to go on.

I dropped my veneer of patience and began to seethe. The hospital seemed more like a mirage than a resource for medical treatment. They didn’t give a shit. They just let everyone loll around suffering. I thought back to Julia and saw her dying in ecstasy. I treated her better than any doctor would have. I helped. I went out of my way to give her what she needed.

I let the constraints of my conscience go for a moment and basked in the fulfillment of having given her a proper send-off. I embraced the memory. And suddenly everything shifted. I didn’t feel hopeless or helpless anymore. I felt charged. I felt eager to go back to work
now
, this very instant. Matt was right. I didn’t know this job the way the others did. But I do now. I get it.

Polly patted my shoulder and gave me a fresh bottle of water. “It’s gonna be okay, John.” She still thought I was afraid and despondent.

I sat up and addressed her, as if in perfect health. “I know that. I know precisely how I’m gonna deal with this.”

“You do?”

“You can turn on the car. I’m ready.”

 

I got back home to the apartment and stripped the sheets. I called Matt. He was busy eating an Italian sub.

“Where the hell have you been?” he said. “The suspense has been making me eat.”

“I had a heart attack after finishing the ES.”

“Holy shit.” He finished his sandwich, then picked up a second one that was just like the first and began eating it. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“Because I was having a
fucking heart attack
. I went to the hospital.”

“A hospital? Oh Jesus. Those things are roach motels. You know that. You should have called me.”

“There’s a huge blockage in my arteries, and I need it fixed, and I want you to pay for it.”

“Fine. Fine. We have a guy. No hospitals. It’s our own network with the government. You won’t have to deal with that crap again.”

“Good,” I said. “Put it in writing. I want to be covered, I want to do what Ernie does, and I want more pay.”

“Well, look at you! Little puppy wants his own bone now. This is good, Johnny Boy. I’m glad you found the ES part to your satisfaction. You are officially broken in. You’re a real end specialist now, kid. Now we can start the real work. I’m telling you, John—you’ll be glad you didn’t croak from that heart attack. Business is about to boom. I can feel it. You made the right decision. You’re good at this. You’re good at death.”

 

This just came up on the DC8 feed:

I spent the day preparing to go back to work and looking at more footage from China. Aerial shots showed entire sections of land blasted clear and clean. It all seemed so futile—empty swaths just waiting to be restocked by the fresh, burgeoning masses of humanity immediately surrounding the blast areas. They zoomed in on sections of Harbin, showing terraced palaces that had collapsed down flat, as if they had been made of cardboard. They showed the remains of recently built glass towers that had been crushed and scattered about the rest of the city like shards of ice. You could click an option alongside the KBNR feed to see some of the casualties. I never took a look.

On the WEPS I watched a story—another one—about a postmortal ambushed and killed by an involuntary organic, one of those poor old folks who somehow couldn’t access or afford the cure. I watched a story about the U.S. destroyer that got sunk in the Arctic Ocean by a Russian sub. I clicked over to music and sat around, taking up space. I longed to put my new purpose to good use.

The doorbell rang. No one ever comes to our door, but I suspected it was a hospital or police official looking to finish the paperwork for Julia’s ES. I opened up the door and saw Ken, the nice collectivist David sent to help me at the hospital. Denim shirt. Khakis. All that.

He had a look of deep concern on his face. “I wanted to check on you, to see how you were coping.”

“Oh, it’s a blocked artery,” I said. “But I’m working on getting it fixed. It’s terribly nice of you to stop by like this.”

“I wasn’t talking about your heart.”

I paused. “Is this a sales call?”

He cocked his head and opened his eyes in surprise. “You don’t know what’s happened.”

“I guess I don’t. Why?” I grew alarmed. “What’s happened?”

“Can I come in?”

“Of course.” I let Ken in. He walked past me and stopped, with his back to me for a brief moment. He turned around.

“Something happened with David,” he said.

“What’s happened? What the fuck is going on?”

Ken took out his WEPS and enlarged the screen. I saw a picture taken of the outside of a church. I could tell from the little symbol of a man with outstretched arms in a circle that it was a COM congregation. Half of the church was on fire, shrouded by a mountainous plume of thick, oily, black smoke. Ambulances and fire trucks were crisscrossed haphazardly in front, as if they had been parked there by the blind. Paramedics and congregants in casual clothing were running out of the church carrying stretchers. I made out a pregnant female victim on one of the stretchers. She had blotches of blood all over her white shirt, like red sunspots. She held her hand to her head. I couldn’t tell if she was dead or unconscious or just in a state of shock so severe that she couldn’t stand to open her eyes, to be reminded that what was happening wasn’t a fabrication. It was Sonia. To the left of the photo was a reverend wearing pleated chinos and a white shirt, trying to go back into the church but unable to because a firefighter was restraining him. People were still in that church. People he desperately had to find. But the picture told me nothing of his fate, or the fate of whatever people inside he was trying to rescue. He was frozen, agonized. Below the picture was a link to a feed report with this headline, posted thirty minutes earlier:

I looked to Ken. “David?”

“Yes.”

“Nate?”

“Yes.”

I pointed to the woman in the picture. I knew the answer before I asked the question. “Sonia? Ella? The baby?”

“They’re all gone,” he said.

My blood cooled and my skin turned to a thick, coarse armor. “Who? Who did this?”

“We don’t know. Could be Terminal Earth. Could be any number of insurgent groups. We get threats every day. I want to assure you that we will get to the bottom of it.”

“Who the hell are you to get to the bottom of it? My son is dead. What the fuck did you people do to protect him? You just let anyone walk into that church because you think every person on earth is so fucking perfect and beautiful. And now David is gone and Sonia is gone and Nate is gone, and they’re all dead forever. Because of
you
.”

“You’re lashing out, John. You’re taking out your grief on—”

“Fuck you,” I hissed. “What will you do if you catch the people who did this? Huh? Stick them in a room until they’re ready to take my son’s place in your congregation?”