WHEW!
As always, the feedback has been much appreciated! :) Chapter 4 is finally finished after much tweaking, and I think everything is consistent. The true nature of the epidemic is becoming clear; Davis, Sully, Kim and Alex are planning something ...
I think I said in an earlier chapter intro that there were eight or nine chapters left to go. That was a mistake; there are going to be eight or nine chapters in all, when the story's done. So basically, we're still only at the halfway point right now ...
I'm starting to get ideas for a proper title now, so by Chapter 5 or 6 "Immunity" will likely change ...
Warning: character deaths dead ahead.
Chapter 4
June 25
Day 4
The troops landed at the 55th Precinct sometime during the night. About twenty armed soldiers - all wearing portable respirators with self-contained oxygen supplies - were posted to the house, and according to all the official lines, they were National Guard and were only there to assist and cooperate with the police.
If these guys were National Guard, then Maurice Boscorelli would happily invite them to address him as Queen Priscilla of the Vast Red Desert. They were regular army to a man, and it was obvious they were only here to keep an eye on the police.
Not that it was any surprise at this point, not to Bosco. After his trip to the bar the previous evening, he'd spent an hour or so watching the news on several different networks. ABC and NBC were off the air completely; black screen and dead air. CBC, CNN, and CNN Headline News, however, were all on, and it wasn't long before Bosco became much less interested in the news (which was the usual depressing, innocuous fodder) and much more interested in the newsreaders themselves.
The anchors all had a nervous, furtive look about them that Bosco guessed most people might miss. Someone in his line of work, however, would probably recognize it immediately. It was a look he'd seen countless times and had become all too grimly familiar with. A look that, Bosco supposed, he'd worn himself on more than a few occasions.
The newsreaders were all quite obviously being held at gunpoint.
That wasn't to say the flu didn't receive any attention at all; it did. But it was far from the top story. The flu, the anchors all insisted with shifty-eyed, forced nonchalance, was a "minor outbreak." The National Guard had indeed been mobilized in several areas, but there was nothing to be alarmed about. Indeed, there were already several vicious rumors - vicious, nasty and totally unfounded rumors - that the flu was some kind of biological weapon unleashed not by terrorists, but by the U.S. Government itself.
At approximately nine-thirty-six PM, a CBC fill-in anchor - a youngish fellow named Patrick Hill - had finally snapped. There he was, reading the non-flu news like a good little boy, and suddenly Bosco didn't have to wonder anymore about what was really going on.
"... Lloyd Henreid was arrested by the Arizona State Police outside a rest-stop in the small village of Burrack," Hill said, reading from a paper in front of him and shifting his eyes to a point somewhere to the left of the camera. "His partner, Andrew 'Poke' Freeman, was shot and killed by ... by ..."
Hill broke off and sneezed. Hill didn't look too good to begin with, and after the sneeze his brow furrowed. It seemed that in that moment Patrick Hill decided he had nothing to lose. He then looked directly at that mysterious point somewhere to the left of the camera and said, very clearly: "What are you gonna do? Huh? Are you gonna shoot me on the air, you son of a bitch? Are you gonna-"
The picture immediately scrambled, then turned to snow. There might have been a muffled gunshot just before it did, though Bosco admitted to himself later that it was probably only his imagination. He'd waited another twenty minutes, but the network never came back on.
With eerie, preternatural calm, he had gone to bed at ten o'clock. And oddly enough, he had slept like the dead.
He stayed in bed until eleven o'clock, and at around noon he decided to risk turning the TV on again. A number of channels were off, though some would come back on in short, sporadic bursts. What he did manage to get was a perfectly ordinary offering of mundane crap; game shows, cooking shows, kids' shows. Nothing but fabulous prizes, fantastic recipes, and fucking dancing puppets.
But on the way to work, he passed several military jeeps, two Hummers, and a large canvas-covered truck. He also saw several soldiers on the streets who appeared to be on sentry duty. The sentries and the soldiers visible in the jeeps were all wearing respirators identical to the ones worn by the so-called Guardsmen who were currently crawling all over the Five-Five.
Beyond the soldiers, though, he found the house almost totally deserted. So many cops were off sick now that it was basically just a haphazard mix of people from every Watch; anyone still healthy enough to make it in had been urged to do so, though mostly by informal calls from colleagues.
The result was a confused and disorganized mess, and nobody really seemed to know what they were doing. Lieutenant Swersky was nowhere to be found, and there didn't seem to be anyone of significant rank. Nobody took roll-call. Cops came and went seemingly of their own volition, all of them sneezing and coughing. The soldiers studiously ignored everything and didn't make the slightest effort to help.
Things were bad, yes, but it couldn't be helped. The best Bosco could do now was simply put on his uniform, take a squad car, go out and do whatever he could. It was becoming more and more clear that he was the only one here who was healthy, the only one not showing symptoms, and with that came a sense of added responsibility. He was worried, oh yes, but that would just have to wait. His mother, Faith, Cruz, his friends ... they would all have to wait because duty still called. Right now he had to make himself useful.
If for no other reason than to just keep himself calm.
He grabbed a pack of Big Red from his desk (gum, yes, gum, that's nice and normal and comforting), wondering where Davis and Sullivan were. He hadn't seen them, but if they were around maybe he could hook up with them, make a trio. Or he might simply grab one of the cops running around loose and press them into service as a temporary partner-
"Bosco."
Or maybe he wouldn't have to.
He turned, and his eyes widened.
"Faith," he breathed when he found his voice. "Jesus, Faith, you look terrible."
"Sensitive to the bitter end, eh, Bosco?" she said hoarsely.
Terrible was an understatement; Faith looked positively gruesome. Her eyes were not just puffy but seemed swollen almost to slits, her complexion somewhere between fishbelly white and charcoal gray. Veins stood out prominently on her cheeks and neck, and it was her neck that was the worst; it had distended visibly and almost freakishly, to the point where it was nearly as wide as her head.
Why not? he thought bitterly. They're calling this goddam thing "Tube Neck" for a reason.
He shook his head helplessly. "Why ... why would you come in like this, Faith? You shouldn't be here. You should be at home with your family."
She smiled thinly. "Fred's handling things at home. I think ... I dunno, I think he might be getting better, Bos. He was bad last night, absolutely burning up, delirious, but this morning he seemed better. He even ate breakfast." She nodded, and he thought it was more to reassure herself than him. "I'm okay for today, at least. I think I might have a chance at nailing this thing, but I need to keep busy."
He looked at her doubtfully. "You seen Davis? Sully? Swersky. Anybody?"
"I got a call from Davis. That's why I'm here. He and Sully are down in front of the Brownstone Laundromat. Kim and Alex are there with them, and they want us to meet them."
"Why?"
"I don't know. But they want to meet there because the whole area's pretty quiet. Things are bad most other places. Looting, 'bangers running around with MAC-10s, I don't know what all." She swallowed hard, and winced at the pain it obviously caused. "Bosco, I've heard that at least 80% of the entire NYPD is down with this thing now. Maybe more."
"No way. Can't be."
Her runny eyes shifted to a soldier who was standing a few paces behind them. The soldier was inching casually in their direction and trying to look nonchalant about it. Under other circumstances it might have been comic.
She took Bosco's arm and led him out of the office area, then down past the unmanned reception desk. "Yeah, well, at any rate Davis and Sully want us to come help out with whatever it is they're doing."
"You have no idea at all what Davis wants?"
"No. But he called me on my cell-phone instead of the box."
"Why?"
Faith glanced at him, and there was actually some wry humor in her expression. In that moment Bosco had no idea that he was seeing the old Faith Yokas for the last time in either of their lives. Sardonic and perpetually exasperated Faith, partnered with an impulsive, chauvinistic bonehead and in some perverse way loving every minute of it. "Why do you think, Bos?"
Because the Army will be monitoring the police band. Jesus.
And of course, they might also be listening in on the cell-phones, as well.
He stopped and put both hands up. "Whoa, hang on a second, Faith. You think Davis and Sullivan want to do something that'll put us up against the U.S. Army?"
"I don't know, Bosco," she said irritably. "The only way we're gonna know is if we go down there, isn't it? If you want to stand here and debate it, do it with yourself. I'm going even if I have to go alone." She started walking again, then turned to him. "Am I going alone?"
Bosco looked doubtfully at one of the soldiers, who stood impassive and unreadable in his respirator mask, M4 assault rifle held across his chest. These guys were not fucking around, that much was clear. And they obviously wanted to keep a lid on how bad this thing really was.
The question was, to what extent would they go to keep that lid screwed down?
The more pressing question was, how bad was this thing?
Faith seemed to decide that no answer was forthcoming from him. She shook her head and started for the parking lot on her own.
After a moment, Bosco wordlessly fell into step beside her.
***
The man was in his early twenties and not much more than five feet tall, wearing khaki shorts, combat boots, a dirty brown trenchcoat and nothing else. He was walking briskly along the street with a stout, gnarled walking stick almost twice his height, grinning merrily.
"Heeeeeeeey MARY!" this nut-job was chanting at the top of his lungs. "Whatchoo gonna call that BAY-BEE? For the Christ-child will be born again! The time of the Rapture is almost upon us! Somewhere He awaits birth, and we await His return, praise the Lord, we sure do! Heeeeeeeey MARY! Whatchoo gonna call that BAY-BEE!?"
There's always one, Bosco thought dismally. There always has to be at least one of these freaks. I'm surprised it's taken this long to see one.
The Reverend (as Bosco christened him almost immediately) would punctuate every Mary and every Bay-bee by bringing his walking stick down on the sidewalk in one or two quick, crisp beats.
"Heeeeeeey MARY!"
Clak!
"Whatchoo gonna call that BAY-BEE!?"
Clak-clak!
The Reverend saw them, grinned, raised his walking stick in salute, sneezed, and returned to his mixed song/sermon down the street.
Faith, leaning against the door with her eyes closed and a hand across her brow to shield the sun, sensed the car slowing down. "What are you doing?"
"Pickin' that guy up," Bosco said tersely. "What do you think?"
"For God's sake, why?"
He looked at her incredulously. "Let him run around spewing that shit at a time like this?"
"Why not?"
"Oh, I dunno. How about inciting panic, Faith?"
She sneezed wetly and blew her nose into a wadded clump of about four tissues. "Oh, gimme a break, Bosco. Let him go. We're past him now anyway."
"I'm gonna go around the block."
"No, you are not. Davis and Sullivan are waiting on us. We're not stopping for anything."
He raised an eyebrow. "Anything? What if we see looting? What if we see 'bangers waging bloody turf-wars in the streets? I seem to recall somebody telling me such things are going on. Not that we've seen any of it yet ..."
"And that bothers you? Look, we're not stopping unless it looks like there's something we can do. Something useful." After a moment, she put her head against the window again and said softly, "I don't think I'm in such good shape here after all, Bos. Christ, I can barely breathe."
Bosco swallowed hard and ignored that. He didn't want to hear that kind of talk. That might be a little harsh, yes, maybe a bit unkind, yes, but he was sticking by it. Some part of him realized - right now, at least - that he was cruising along in the grip of low-key denial.
Cruising.
Cruz.
Oh, no. Not goin' there, not right now. Put it away and think about it later.
He saw something ahead and pointed. "How about them? Should we stop for them?"
Faith lifted her head. There was another NYPD squad car up ahead, parked haphazardly in the middle of the street. Two cops - one male and one female - were sitting on the ground next to it, their backs up against the passenger side. As Bosco neared, he saw that they were passing a cigarette back and forth between them and appeared to be enjoying the burning wreck of an '89 Dodge that was sitting across the street.
The two fire-watchers both looked up as Bosco pulled alongside. The male cop was heavyset, balding and was probably somewhere in his forties, while the female cop was very young, almost comically doe-eyed, and certainly not long out of training. The classic team; the grizzled veteran showing the ropes to a wet-behind-the-ears novice.
"You guys all right?" Bosco asked, getting out of the car and glancing doubtfully at the burning wreck across the street. He was marginally aware that Faith had remained in the cruiser.
The male cop looked up blandly. "Fine. Fine."
Bosco peered at them, trying to see the number on their collars. "You guys are ..."
"From the eighty-seventh," the female cop said. She gestured at the burning car. "And don't bother to ask about that. We called it in. They said Fire was on its way, but that was almost forty-five minutes ago and nobody's shown up yet."
"What are you doin' here?"
"We're on the run," the male cop said with a thin smile. "My name's Dolan, by the way. Bert Dolan. This fine young rookie here is Pattie Wells."
Bosco smiled uneasily at her. He guessed that once, not so long ago, Wells had been extremely pretty. Maybe even a real head-turner, on a level worthy of oh, say, a certain dark-eyed Anti-Crime sergeant he was trying very hard not to think about right now.
But Pattie Wells' pretty days were behind her. Pattie Wells was hurtin'. Pattie Wells and Bert Dolan each had themselves a fine old case of Tube Neck, or Captain Trips, or superflu, or whatever the hell you wanted to call it. The fact that they were sharing a cigarette while Faith could barely breathe struck him as vaguely obscene.
"On the run?" Bosco asked. "From what?"
Dolan shrugged with bizarre indifference. "We're screwed, my friend. You want to talk about being outgunned? We saw what the word 'outgunned' means. Hell, it's not that hard for our friendly neighborhood homeboys to get their grimy little paws on military hardware at this point; we already saw a couple of 'bangers with Army-issue assault rifles. But here, now, it's pretty quiet here in your neck of the woods. You're lucky. So far, anyway."
Bosco found his eye drawn back again and again to a small smear of what looked like powered sugar on Dolan's shirt, just under his badge. It made him hate the man a little. "So you guys just cut and run?"
"Don't get all pissy, kid," Dolan said without rancor. "We didn't have a chance. The Russians and the Triads are blowing the holy hell out of each other in our precinct. Half of 'em are all but falling down with this disease, but that doesn't stop 'em. It's fuckin' biblical. I think the Russians are winning, too. When Chevchencko got taken out, all it did was piss them off.
"Besides, you take your chances pretty much anywhere you go right now. I heard the Army shot a bunch of civilians at a guard-post near the Lincoln tunnel. Machine-gunned them. No warning at all."
"Bullshit," Bosco said simply.
Dolan shrugged. "Maybe. But that's nothing compared to what Pattie here saw." He put a hand on the young woman's shoulder. "Wanna tell him?"
Wells looked at Bosco with an expression that was, oddly enough, almost insolent. "You know what burning flesh smells like?"
She was smiling slightly as she said it, and Bosco felt a chill. He nodded wordlessly.
Wells shook her head. "Not like this, you don't. They're burning bodies. The Army, I mean. In Brooklyn, probably other places too. They're bringing them in by the truckload from the hospitals. Bonfires, factory incinerators, everywhere they can. I've seen it. Arms and legs sticking out every which way." She held his gaze, and her smile never wavered. "They use pitchforks. To get them out of the trucks, I mean."
"They actually think they can keep something like that under wraps," Dolan snorted. "Can you believe that? Maybe they can, too, with so many people stuck in their homes. Pattie and I are gonna catch our breaths and then we're gonna go and try to snap a few pictures."
Bosco now found himself feeling rather lightheaded. Big dream? Yes, it had to be. Big dream. This was a big ol' bad dream. He never got out of bed this morning, that was it. Nightmare. Of course it was. All that shit from yesterday, Alli ... and then Faith ... and then the bar ... and then watching the news ...
"Why the hell would you do that?" he heard himself ask. The stench from the burning car was making him nauseous. Come to think if it, the smell wasn't much better than burning flesh, and that thought only made him sicker.
Wells shrugged. "People have a right to know. They can't cover this up forever."
"Where are you two headed?" Dolan asked mildly.
Bosco looked back at the cruiser. Faith was still leaning against the door and now appeared to be sleeping.
That ... or she was unconscious.
Or ...
He cut the thought off, suddenly wanting to get away from Dolan and Wells. Dolan and Wells, the Fire-Watchers. Both so deep in shock they didn't even seem to realize it. Creepy. Just too damned creepy, the both of them.
"Just going to meet some friends," he said.
"Yeah? Want us to come along?"
"No!" Bosco said, perhaps too sharply. "Uh, no, we can handle it."
Both Dolan and Wells shrugged, neither appearing terribly disappointed. Wells looked down at the cigarette, now smoked almost down past the filter, and flicked it aside.
There was an endless, awkward moment where the only sound was the crackle of flames from the burning car.
"Better get going," Bosco said with a forced smile, and started back for the cruiser.
"My boyfriend died last night," Wells called after him for some damned reason. There was no emotion in her voice at all. "I woke up this morning and he was dead next to me."
Now why, he thought, feeling a hot spike of anger rise up in his chest to join the terror that was already there. Would she think I wanted to know that?
Bosco started to ask her, then thought better of it. Instead he pretended not to hear and got back into the car. He looked over at Faith and swallowed hard; she was breathing, but it was broken and uneven and he could hear the dank rattle deep in her chest. Tentatively, he reached out and touched her shoulder.
"I called that fire in," she said drowsily, without opening her eyes. "You know what I got? Dead air."
"What?"
Faith groaned and took hold of the radio handset on her shoulder. "Five-Five David to Central," she said rustily. "Central, respond please."
She then held the radio under his nose, as if for his inspection.
There was nothing from the Five-Five. No response at all.
"We have a fire here," Faith said into the radio. "Please send a fire truck or two if it's convenient. We could also use some pizza. And beer. Make sure to send some beer." She turned to him. "See?"
He saw, all right. Over the dashboard, he saw the Fire-Watchers. They were still staring at him with their spooky, empty eyes.
At last - thankfully - Dolan began to cough, and Wells started clapping him on the back.
With their attention finally drawn away from him, Bosco threw the car in gear and resumed course.
***
"There they are."
"I see them."
Bosco parked the cruiser opposite Davis and Sully's and turned to Faith. "You okay?"
She nodded. "Mmm."
"You gonna stay in the car?" A note of mild accusation crept into his tone seemingly on its own, and he hated himself for it. But coming here had been her idea.
"No," she murmured. She took a deep breath and ran her hands over her face. "No, I'm okay. Let's go."
Bosco stepped out of the car and surveyed the scene, glancing at the ambulance parked directly behind Davis and Sully's cruiser. Kim Zambrano sat on the ground next to it, leaning up against the front tire in a way that made him think of the Fire-Watchers. Kim's head was down, her knees pulled up under her chin, and she was visibly trembling. Alex Taylor was kneeling beside her, a hand on Kim's shoulder. Alex seemed to be comforting her, talking to her, giving her the occasional encouraging pat.
"Fine day to be alive, isn't it?" Ty Davis said dryly as he met them. His complexion, usually a light coffee color, was now the color of ash, and his eyes were discolored and baggy. His throat was only moderately swollen, however, and overall Bosco didn't think the superflu had done as bad a number on him as it had on everybody else.
Sully was a different story. Almost visibly collapsing in on himself, he was holding a ragged handkerchief which he kept coughing into, and Bosco noted grimly that it was spotted with what was undoubtedly blood.
"So what's up?" Bosco asked. Once out, it sounded magnificently stupid.
Davis gestured to Alex. "Ask her."
The two paramedics joined them, and Alex handed Bosco a tattered and much-folded piece of paper.
"That's a happy little fact sheet a couple of ER docs put together," she said. "Everything they could figure about this disease."
Bosco scanned the paper. It had been typed hastily and was full of spelling errors and simple, point-form language. He had no interest in reading the whole thing, but his eye picked out random bits:
Susceptibility may run high as 90%. Probably more.
Government has repeatedly promised a vaccine. No doctor is currently aware of any plans to distribute such a vaccine. No doctor has been contacted by any government official. General consensus is that a vaccine would be almost impossible to produce anyway, as this particular virus mutates almost constantly. This is the same reason it is so deadly.
Since morning of June 24, all hospitals have become overloaded to point where patients are being left on floors and on tables in cafeteria. Many dead. Dead are being removed in trucks, but many still remain and more patients arrive constantly. Rate of new arrivals here is currently about twenty per hour. Bodies will become a health risk, and we DO NOT need another at this point.
And then Bosco saw the final line. It was not technically the final line, actually; there was some other inconsequential material after it. But it was the line that said all that needed to be said, it was the final word if not the final line, and Bosco felt that same lightheadedness again, that same sense of titanic unreality. This could not be real.
Could not be.
It was in the same small, sensible typeface as everything else, unremarkable and undramatic:
Superflu mortality rate is 100%.
He looked up at them. Ty. Sully. Alex. Kim. Faith. He suddenly had a compelling urge to run away from these people, to turn and run and not look back. For the first time the reality came home to him that he was the only person he knew not suffering from this thing. He was clean, free and healthy. No-one said it, and no one needed to say it. The eyes, the empty, sallow, accusing eyes were all watching him, and in that moment he knew exactly how those GI's had felt when they threw open the gates of the camps after World War II, those healthy and robust and well-fed GI's, looking at all those scrawny bodies, skeletal faces, bulbous eyes.
His expression stayed perfectly bland as all of this went through his head.
"So what's the point?" he said tightly, handing the paper to Faith.
Ty shrugged and put his hand on Alex's shoulder, almost tenderly. Bosco knew that once, not too long ago, the two of them had something going. Did they still? Did they again?
Did it matter?
"The bus has a public address system in it," Ty said, pointing to the ambulance. "We want to get the message out to as many people as we can."
Despite his shock, Bosco couldn't help sneering at that. "Message? What message? 'Abandon all hope?'"
"I think people have a right to know, man," Ty said softly. "At this point I don't really think we have a lot to lose."
Speak for yourselves, Bosco thought bitterly.
Out loud he said: "No. It's stupid, it's pointless, and it won't do anything but make a bad situation worse. We're not doin' it."
Kim, silent to this point, stepped forward. She studied Bosco for a moment with almost detached curiosity. Then her hand abruptly shot out and grabbed a wad of his shirt. She pulled him forward and thrust her face into his until their foreheads were almost touching.
"My son died this morning," she whispered hoarsely. "My little Joey ... he died this morning ... so you ... so you listen, you arrogant son of a bitch! We're doing this! I have to do this! Because my son ... my little son ... my little Joeeeeeey-"
Kim let go of Bosco's shirt, dropped to her knees, and began to sob. Except that wasn't even really quite right; she began to bray. On each intake of breath she produced a loud, whooping cry and on each exhale the cries became coughs. Alex dropped to one knee beside her and held her. Kim clung to her immediately, grabbing a swatch of Alex's shirt and kneading it compulsively, weeping her son's name over and over.
Bosco watched this, his face working through an odd and undefinable series of expressions. He realized with something like dismay that even now they were still seeing him as they always did; angry, stubborn and obnoxious. It was kind of ironic. What he was above all else right now was confused.
And scared half out of his mind.
Sully spoke, his voice clotted and thick. "This is the plan: the bus rolls along, we each take a flank and keep 'em safe ... " He raised the handkerchief to his mouth, coughed violently into it, and looked at them over his hand. "You in or not?"
Bosco shook his head and opened his mouth to tell them absolutely not-
"We're in," Faith said. She met Bosco's eyes and held his gaze hard and steady. "We're in."
Sully coughed again and spat a thick mix of blood and phlegm onto the pavement. "Damn right. We're not gonna let these bastards bury this thing."
"Okay then!" Alex said sharply, standing up and gently drawing Kim up with her. "Can we just do this thing, please?"
Bosco took a long, deep breath and shook his head again. This - whatever this was - it was stupid and it was pointless and it was utterly, utterly crazy.
Five minutes later they were rolling. Davis and Sullivan, Five-Five Charlie, were on the right. Bosco and Yokas, Five-Five David, took the left. Kim Zambrano, only a moment ago barely able to speak, seemed to find her voice. Through the bus' PA system, she told the people of New York about the bogus claims of a vaccine, the overloaded hospitals, the disposal operations.
Bosco noted that she did not, however, mention that other little fun fact: one hundred percent mortality rate.
Shit, he thought sourly. So much for "right to know." Dolan said that, too, didn't he? He and that partner of his, that kid who barely looked old enough to drink, they were going down to take pictures of these supposed disposal operations. Because people have a "right to know." And the Army's putting the screws to the media because they don't think people should know. Christ. In a mess like this, I don't really think what you know or don't know matters a whole lot.
In the bus Kim switched microphone duty with Alex. Bosco looked at his watch; they'd been at it fifteen minutes already. And already it was starting to grate on his nerves.
"This is nuts," he murmured. "And why the hell does an ambulance even need a public address system installed, anyway? God, if they want to do this so bad, why not just let Sully and Davis do it? Why do they even need us? Huh? Faith? ... Faith?"
But Faith appeared to be asleep.
A few minutes later he heard the helicopter. He craned his neck forward and caught just a glimpse of it as it disappeared behind a building. Military? You bet your sweet ass. Doing a little recon? You bet your sweet ass. Who the hell else would be up there today?
Next to him, Faith stirred. "Bosco?"
"Yeah?"
"After this ... whenever we're done ... can you take me home?"
"Absolutely," he said. "It was a mistake for you to even try to come in today, Faith. When we're done." He grunted. "And how do we know when we're done, Faith? What's the sign we look for? Riots? When we've got everybody runnin' around screamin' hey-Mary-whatchoo-gonna-call-that-baby?"
"Bosco, look around ... most people are too sick to ... to even come out ... There are people at home who will never get out of their beds again ... they have a right to know ..."
"Christ, Faith, don't say it! I don't want to hear that again!" He slammed his palm against the steering wheel. "Goddam it, there are better things we could be doing! We oughtta be out there trying to help get this situation under control! Calm people down, not be out here winding 'em up!"
Faith sighed. "Don't ... just ... just don't, okay? This is mainly for Kim, I think. Something she needs to do ... And when she tires herself out, I want you to take me home so I can be with my husband and my children."
Then, very softly, she said, "I ... I dunno ... I think maybe I'm dying here, Bosco."
He bristled at that, but inside he felt another needling jab of deep, black terror. "Jesus, Faith, don't say that! You don't know that! You're tough, you can beat this thing, I know-"
"Just shut up, Bos," she murmured, though not unkindly. "Just shut up."
Bosco shrugged helplessly, clenched his teeth, and shut up.
Another fifteen minutes bled away and Kim took over microphone duty again. They'd covered several blocks, crawling along at parade-speed, and so far they'd seen absolutely nothing. They had entered a residential area now, and the houses were all quiet, closed up, shades drawn. The streets were almost totally deserted.
The radio crackled. "Uh ... guys ..." Ty Davis' voice said uneasily. "Sorry to break in here, but we might have some ... uh ... some trouble ahead ..."
Bosco cursed. There were cars parked on both sides of the street they were on, and it had forced them into single-file. "Five-Five Charlie, we're on the ass-end here and I can't see a fuckin' thing around the damn bus. You're gonna have to be a little more specific."
"You'll be able to pull out again just ahead," Ty's voice said. "Stand by ..." -he moaned- "Oh, shit guys, we've got some major trouble here. They're flaggin' us down."
"Who is flaggin' us down, Davis?" Bosco snapped irritably, but then he was able to pull the squad car back out around to flank the ambulance again, and he saw.
It was a roadblock. Two brown jeeps and a Hummer were lined up across the street ahead of them. The Hummer sat in the center, the jeeps on either side. Bosco's eye was drawn immediately to the jeep on the right, which was mounted with a .50 caliber machine-gun. The gunner was not aiming at them precisely, but he was in the general area.
"Five-Five David, be advised they want us to keep coming towards them," Ty said. "He's waving us forward."
"I can see him now," Bosco snarled. "Cut that Five-Five David shit out, would you, Davis?"
They crept forward until they were about twenty feet away from the three Army vehicles, the two squad cars still flanking the bus. A convoy truck pulled out of the driveway it had been hiding in and blocked them from the rear.
They were boxed in.
Bosco put his hand on the doorhandle and felt Faith's hand clamp almost painfully onto his knee. "Don't, Bosco."
The Voice of God issued from the Hummer, either through a megaphone or built-in public address system: "Shut that motherfucker down, right ... NOW!!!"
"Go to hell!" Kim Zambrano shouted back over the ambulance's PA system.
War of the PA systems! Bosco thought crazily. My speakers are bigger than yours! Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah!
He glanced in the rearview mirror at the truck blocking them from the rear. Troop truck. But no troops were pouring out of it, and that was a good sign. Also, as big as it was, the truck still couldn't cover the whole width of the street, and there was plenty of maneuvering room.
That was an even better sign.
A new voice over the radio now: "This is Sergeant Michael Sawyer, U.S. Army. You are in a big fuckin' heap of trouble, officers. Over."
Then, before anyone could respond: "This is Captain Fred Hanson. Stand by, Sergeant Sawyer. You in the ambulance and the police cars, please step out of your vehicles. Over."
"Don't, Bosco," Faith repeated urgently. Bosco looked over at Kim and Alex; no movement from the ambulance. Davis and Sully were on the other side; all he could see was the nose of their car. If Sawyer was the roadblock, then where was this Hanson guy? The helicopter, maybe; Bosco could hear it again, somewhere close above and getting louder.
"You're out of your assigned sector, Captain," Sawyer said coldly. Then, presumably to his new captives: "But you'd still better do what he says, folks. Get out."
Ty Davis' voice: "Uh, what exactly have we done? What do you want - ?"
"I want to blow your goddam heads off, that's what I want!" Sawyer snarled. "Now extract your fat asses from the goddam vehicles, now!"
Oh, those wacky sergeants, Bosco thought, and dimly he realized he was terrified almost to the point of numbness. You gotta watch those wacky sergeants. Never know what they're gonna do.
"Let's just take this a step at a time, shall we?" Hanson said. His voice was pleasant and mild, more suited to a benign sitcom dad than an army captain. "I'm the ranking officer here. Now, officers, if you'd just like to-"
"Shut the fuck up, Hanson!" Sawyer broke in. "I have my orders straight from Colonel Landon! My orders are to neutralize anyone who engages in any activity which is not in the public interest during a time of national catastrophe, and that is exactly what I mean to do."
"Landon's been relieved, so stand down, Sergeant!" Hanson barked. Ol' Sitcom Dad was suddenly gone and a cold, merciless career soldier was in his place. "Those are New York City Police Officers down there, along with two unarmed paramedics! If you or any of your men do anything, I repeat anything without my express permission, I will classify you as deserters and you will be dealt with accordingly! You hear me? Sawyer? Answer me, goddammit! Do you hear what I'm say-"
Faith saw it first and screamed. "Oh Christ, NO!"
The jeep's gunner opened fire on the ambulance.
Bosco would spend the rest of his life bitterly wishing he'd missed what happened next. But from where he and Faith were sitting, they were cursed with an unobstructed view.
Kim Zambrano jerked violently in her seat, a fan of blood spraying across the milky remains of the front windshield and up the side windows, mercifully obscuring the view. A half-second later, the gunner seemed to realize what he was doing and swung the .50-Cal on a downward arc. Unfortunately, he forgot to release the trigger, and drew a smoking line down the front of the bus and along the pavement.
It might have been as long as ten seconds before anything else happened; Bosco never knew exactly. But there was definitely a short, shocked moment when he could hear nothing but quick, overlapped snatches of conversation over the radio.
Ty Davis' voice, small and wounded: "-oh Jesus ... oh dear Jesus Christ ... did you see tha-"
Captain Hanson: "-Sawyer! You son of a bitch, you son-"
Sully: "-kill 'em! We're taking them out! They shot Kim! They shot K-"
Behind them, the driver and passenger of the convoy truck both leapt out. The soldier from the driver's side turned and ran off down the street, throwing one terrified glance back over his shoulder. The soldier from the passenger side ran past Five-Five David - so close that Bosco could have reached out the window and grabbed him if he'd had a mind to - dropped to one knee, and started firing his M4 at the Hummer.
Above, the helicopter opened up with some sort of heavy machine-gun, the gunfire raking across the jeeps and the Hummer. The gunner who had killed Kim was torn apart, and Bosco found that despite it all he could still find righteous satisfaction in that. Bosco could see the chopper now, too; he thought it might be a Black Hawk. Not that he cared. He had absolutely no idea who was where or who was shooting at who or who was on who's side.
He decided that he didn't care about that either, and didn't particularly want to stick around to take sides.
He threw the cruiser into reverse and jammed the pedal down. The car lurched backwards, and at the last second he realized he'd forgotten to correct for the truck behind them, viciously swinging the wheel around in time to avoid backing directly into it. The rearview mirror on the passenger side caught in the truck's grill and was torn off with a grinding shriek.
Once he'd cleared the truck, he brought the car around in a one-eighty spin so absurdly perfect it would have brought tears to his Academy driving instructor's eyes.
The next step is summed up in one word: run.
With the insane free-for-all not even a block behind them, the radio came alive again, this time with Sully's voice. "Boscorelli! Where are you, you son of a bitch!? I see ... I see Taylor ... Taylor got away ... she's running ... Bosco! Pick her up! Bosco! Pick Taylor up-"
Bosco reached up, tore the radio handset from his shoulder, snapped the cord, and threw it out the window.
"Bosco!" Faith gasped next to him. "Bosco! Stop! Stop! Stop the car!"
He ignored her. He ignored her until he was sure they were safe and far enough from the melee to stay that way before finally pulling the car over.
He looked over; next to him, Faith appeared to be slowly and exquisitely choking to death. She writhed in her seat, one hand clutching at the air, fingers hooked into claws, opening, closing, opening, closing ...
Oh that's just perfect, he thought wildly. That would be just the perfect ending to this, wouldn't it? Faith dies on me right here and right now.
Helplessly, he reached out to do something, slap her on the back or something, and was surprised when she viciously slapped his hand away. Then she uttered a meaty urking sound low in her throat, groped blindly for the doorhandle, and got the door open just in time.
"You ..." she gasped when she fell back against the seat. She at last managed to get a good lungful of air and promptly used it to scream, "You left them to die, Bosco! You left Alex to die!"
Bosco swallowed hard. He had, hadn't he? That was just what he'd done.
But then, a nasty little voice said. They were already dead, weren't they?
Well, yes, but what did that matter? Kim was sick, too. Did that make what those bastards did to her RIGHT? They murdered her. They murdered her in cold blood.
Yeah, the nasty little voice chuckled. Each time that voice spoke, it sounded a bit more familiar. Kind of like what you wanted to let Sergeant Cruz do to Dougie Francis that night, huh?
Bosco froze.
"No," he said out loud, softly, firmly. "No. This is different. So different."
Faith watched him, still fighting for air, her expression best described as puzzled rage. "What?"
He ignored her. No, what Cruz had wanted to do to Dougie was different. Dougie was scum, a failure, a loser, and dangerous to boot. Kim Zambrano wasn't. Was that judgmental? Why, hell yes! Self-righteous? Why, hell yes! That didn't mean it wasn't true.
No, it was different.
Is it really? Cruz' purring, deadly voice said. Is it really so different, handsome?
"What the hell were we supposed to do, Faith? Huh?" he snarled finally. "We had no choice!"
"You left them to die," she said again, but there was no power in it now, no conviction.
"There was nothing we could do, Faith. You understand that?" He looked at her, put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched, but this time she didn't slap it away. "Faith? You understand that, right? Faith-"
"YES!" she shouted. She started to weep thinly, and after a moment, she reached for him.
"Kim," she cried softly as they embraced. "God ... Kim ..."
"I know."
She sobbed into his shoulder. "What's happening? Oh, God, Bosco, what's happening?"
He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling tears forming around the edge of his vision but not allowing them to fall. "I don't know, Faith."
Bosco held her, and she held him, drawing what little strength they could from each other for better than an hour and a half. And as he held her, as he felt the terrible fever-heat from her sinking into him, as he smelled the sour sweat and fear and death on her, it kept running through his mind like a rat in a wheel ...
Superflu mortality rate is 100%
Superflu mortality rate is 100%
Superflu mortality rate is 100%
Perched on a dead and darkened stoplight not terribly far away was a large black crow, watching them with twitchy, alien curiosity.