Nate Kenyon - Day One

“Don’t make eye contact,” Hawke said, but it was too late. One of them had spotted the group and nudged his friend, and the two of them sauntered across the street.

“What the fuck you looking at?” the one holding the gun said to Price. He was short, stocky, with the broad shoulders and thick neck of a bodybuilder. A brightly colored tattoo ran around his forearm. The other one, taller and thinner, had the sickly, hollow, twitchy look of a heroin addict. He edged around to flank Price and Hawke but said nothing.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Price said. His voice broke slightly. “We didn’t see anything, okay?”

The gunman grinned. “It’s a fire sale,” he said. “Everything one hundred percent off.” He looked at Hawke. “You see anything, amigo?”

Hawke shrugged, trying to keep his fear from showing. “You want to risk your life for a few bucks, go for it,” he said. “Me, I’d rather get out of the city alive.”

The man’s eyes narrowed, and he took a step closer. “You think you know what the fuck is going down around here, huh? You think this shit matters? My brother’s in Philly, talked to him before the phone went dead. Same thing’s happening there. So where you gonna go at the end of the world?”

A chill ran through Hawke’s body. He had held out hope that the attack had been mainly focused on New York, but if this was true…

“Hey!” Vasco shouted. The others had realized what was going on and circled back, but they stopped short when the man raised the gun. “Whoa,” Vasco said, taking a quick step back. “Take it easy.”

The man pointed the gun at Hawke’s face. “No po po around here,” he said. “Nothing to stop me.” The barrel loomed as he cocked the hammer. “Pow,” he said. Then he glanced at his friend and started backing away, gun still trained on Hawke. “Good luck staying alive,” he said. The two of them turned and ran down 79th, back the way Hawke’s group had come.

“You okay?” Price said.

Hawke realized he’d been holding his breath. He nodded. It had all happened so fast, and now the adrenaline rush was making his knees shake. “You think he’s right about Philly?”

“I don’t know,” Price said. “Maybe so. Sarah said she’d heard something about other attacks on the radio.”

“It’s like the Wild West out here,” Vasco said. “Goddamn punks, taking advantage of this to rip people off.” He scanned the street. “The faster we get to the checkpoint, the better.”

Hawke had expected to hear the crowd and emergency vehicles long before they reached the hospital checkpoint. But as they neared 77th Street and Lenox loomed over them, a series of connected buildings taking up most of the block, they found an eerily quiet scene.

Nothing moved. They passed the conference center and emergency entrance where the sliding glass doors under the green awning were shut tight. Farther down, the hospital’s main entrance doors stood open, while a second set of interior doors was closed. A bed of flowers had been trampled, dirt spread across the concrete.

Vasco stopped on the sidewalk, waiting for the others to gather. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “This place should be filled with people.” He walked through the first set of doors to the interior set, which remained shut. He cupped his hands against the glass. “Nobody’s home,” he said. “Some checkpoint.” He rapped a fist against the doors, tried to pull them apart, but they were locked tight.

What about all the patients? Hawke glanced up at the tall face of the building. There must be hundreds of patients in there, many too sick to move. Where had they all gone?

A sudden noise made them all jump. It was coming from around the other side of the building, a rattling, clanking sound like metal being dragged across concrete.

They looked at one another as the sound stopped as quickly as it had begun. Young started backpedaling away. “Jim,” she said. “He would have come here. He would be looking for that case.” Before anyone could say anything else, she had turned the corner on Park Avenue and disappeared.

Closest to the back of the hospital, Young heard the baby first.

The others had followed Young to the wide expanse of Park and around the building, Vasco cursing under his breath. A few feet in on 76th Street, on the backside of Lenox, Young had stopped short, frozen in place, her head up.

Hawke heard it seconds later: the distinctive wail and hitch, furious and plaintive, of a child in distress.

Just ahead of Young was a double-bay loading dock. The first metal door was closed, but the second one was open, the black entrance yawning wide enough to accommodate at least two trucks. The rattling sound they had heard must have been the door going up.

Vasco came up next to him, breathing too hard, Sarah Hanscomb right behind him. “What the fuck is she doing—”

Hawke tilted his head. “Listen,” he said. They all stood quietly as the haunting cry of the infant drifted through the opening. He thought of Thomas as a baby, imagined him abandoned and alone as strangers passed him by on the street. He thought of the unborn child in his wife’s womb. Young glanced back at them with a look that Hawke couldn’t quite read. It might have been fear, but whether it was for herself or for the child he couldn’t tell. “Jim’s not in there,” he said. “Anne, wait a minute.”

Price walked past the loading dock to another entrance a few feet away and yanked the handle of the door. It was locked. The crying went on and on, constant in its urgency and tone. Young shook her head. She ducked into the darkness without waiting for the rest of them.

Hawke turned to Vasco and Hanscomb. “We can’t leave it there alone,” he said. “I’m going after her.”

Vasco shook his head. “What if it’s not alone?”

“You don’t want to go in, then stay outside. It was your idea to come here in the first place.”

“Goddamn it.” Vasco rubbed his face and sighed. “All right, but any sign of trouble, we’re gone, understand?”

Hawke followed Young into the dark loading dock, pausing for a moment to let his eyes adjust. The light from the street illuminated dim shapes; a brand-new ambulance was parked on the left, dark and silent, a series of large trash bins along the right wall, packing skids stacked in the back. A short set of stairs led to a concrete loading ledge and a double metal door that was slightly ajar. Light spilled out around the frame.

The wailing was coming from behind the door.

Young was already halfway up the steps. Hawke followed, his stomach beginning to flutter, warning bells going off even as he reached the top of the ledge and Young pulled the door open, standing framed in antiseptic hospital light.

A faint, nearly imperceptible odor wafted over him, slightly acrid and rotten. A hallway loomed beyond, wide and white and empty except for the woman curled in a ball on her side. She was dressed in nurses’ scrubs and looked as if she had decided to lie down and fall asleep. Young knelt by her still form and shook her gently. The woman rolled onto her back, head lolling loosely on her shoulders. Her eyes were open. Young touched the woman’s throat, feeling for a pulse, then stood up and took a step back.

There were no immediate signs of violence, no blood or bruising. The nurse’s skin held a strange, cherry-red flush, mouth slack and crusted with vomit. Hawke stared at her face, blank doll’s eyes reflecting the ceiling lights.

A noise from the steps made him turn. Vasco stood in the doorframe, Price and Hanscomb just behind him. “Is she dead?” Hanscomb said. Hawke didn’t bother to answer. Young looked to where the hallway joined with another in a T. The baby’s cry was coming from the left branch.