Stefan Petrucha - Dead Mann Walking

I stared at her face. She looked like she was sleeping, sleeping without air. Poor thing probably inhaled enough asbestos to kill her all over again in a year just by coming down here.

But I had to remember she wasn’t like me. She was alive, still alive. She could heal. That meant there was hope. And she was strong. Crack hadn’t killed her; maybe the gas couldn’t, either. I kept up the compressions, the breathing.

Did it help? I didn’t know. I only knew I couldn’t risk doing nothing.

Forever passed before the doors opened on an empty ER hallway. There was less dust in the air here, but still enough for the sunlight to illuminate. I did my grunting one-legged dance, got the dolly to a desk, and grabbed the phone. Dead, to coin a phrase.

I had to find help. There had to be something someone could do. I wheeled her toward the Exit signs, stopping twice for more compressions and breathing. We passed the examination area: two rows of cold hospital beds, white and silver. Some had sheets so tight it was obvious no one had ever used them. Others had curtains drawn around, like they were hiding something ugly. I thought about laying her down in one to make her more comfortable while I tried to get help, but I realized no one living would want to come in here.

Windows. A way out. Or if I shouted, someone might hear. I scrambled to the nearest one and found myself looking down on the central plaza. There was a crowd, not just big, huge. It covered the brick field, the sidewalks, the streets.

Jonesey’s fucking rally. I’d forgotten all about it. It was in full swing. I saw an army of chakz, clothes gray and torn as their bodies, moving along the wide avenue toward the plaza. Marching would be the wrong word. With so few being “lucky,” they listed and bumped into one another. They bounced, got turned around. Then they’d walk against the crowd until they hit something else that pushed them the right way. They were like a bunch of giant pinballs heading slowly in the same general direction.

Another mob had also gathered, the gawking livebloods, all sharing a single expression—terror. Parents pulled their children into the imagined safety of the nearest store, nearly yanking their arms off in the process. If it’d looked less real, more like a wild Halloween party by night, the living might not’ve been so frightened. As it was, it was August and the sun was bright, illuminating every patch of gray, every stub, every missing piece of flesh.

Some of the chakz held signs, but the ones I could see weren’t Misty’s work. The handwriting was so bad the letters looked more like multicolored blood splattered against oak tag than words. And, damn, there was Jonesey, right at the head of the disheveled parade. He stood on a rickety float made up to look like a cemetery of broken hearts. He was using a rolled-up piece of cardboard as a megaphone, and whatever he was saying seemed really important. To him, anyway.

The police were out in numbers too big for Fort Hammer regulars. Overweight and unshaven, a lot of them looked stuffed into their uniforms like sausage into pig intestines. The town must have called in reservists, extras, retirees, circus seals, whatever, for backup. From the looks of things they’d even deputized their sanitation people.

Male teens bobbed among the crowd like lower primates, dodging and swinging around obstacles, jostling for position, looking for a way to get past the police and in among the chakz. Some held bottles and bricks.

Misty. I snapped myself out of it and opened the window, but the sound that rushed in made me step back. At first I thought it came from the chakz. It did sound a little like moaning, but it wasn’t them at all. It was the livebloods , their collective disapproving grunts. They were murmuring, gasping, wondering why someone didn’t do something, wondering why they all didn’t do something. But it hadn’t gone south yet. It still might not.

My tongue still hurt like hell, but I screamed, “Help! I’ve got a liveblood in here and she’s dying!” I thought I was being clear, but I didn’t know if I was being loud enough. “A liveblood! Help!”

A few people in the crowd turned and looked up at me, but said nothing. At last a blond woman, curly hair, expensive summer blouse, pointed and screamed.

“A feral!”

“No!” I shrieked, but I wasn’t sure what I sounded like. I probably looked just like a crazed killer corpse.

A cop turned from the line, thirties, fair hair, not one of the reservists. I think I recognized him from the station. Bradley? I waved, thinking for some insane reason that he might recognize me, and that it would be a good thing.

“I’m Hessius—”

“He said he has a liveblood hostage!” someone screamed. The cop pulled out his gun and fired. Good shot. The bullet took out a chunk of plaster right near my head.

I don’t know if that was what started the riot. Given my track record in supporting chak rights, it wouldn’t surprise me, but I later heard a different story. Apparently a couple of the teens with baseball bats went after an old woman chak because her hair looked particularly freaky. When the other chakz tried to protect her, the LBs stepped in to help the kids. That’s what I heard, anyway. The truth is as hard to pin down as it is to remember. Maybe it was one or the other; maybe it was both, or neither.

I fell backward. Screams and more gunshots, followed by some genuine zombie moans, rose from the street.

I lay on my back, staring at empty fluorescent fixtures, listening to the waves of noise. I felt that funny urge to leave my body, to desert my stupid fucking broken hunk of flesh, my long-dead piece of meat, and call it a day. If Misty hadn’t been there, I would have. But she was on the dolly.

She was still twitching, but not nearly as much as she had been. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do about what was happening outside, but there had to be something I could do for her. I was in a fucking hospital, after all. Maybe I could find an EpiPen. Lenore used to carry one of those because of her allergies. Maybe it would jump-start Misty’s heart.

The ER was pretty cleaned out in terms of supplies, so I wheeled her down the hall, looking for something to shock Misty into breathing on her own again. There were oxygen tanks in the hall. Useless without a mask, and I doubted they’d help. Near the tanks was an open door to an MRI room. The giant white doughnut-shaped machine was still sitting there. Better yet, hanging in the center of one white wall was a plastic box marked DEFIBRILLATOR.

Hoping to hell it had instructions, I wheeled Misty as close as I could and ripped the box open. Two paddles tumbled out and dangled by their coiled cords. Inside the door, bless it, were five steps printed in big type, so simple even a chak could follow them.

I yanked Misty onto the MRI platform and flipped the switch to power the paddles. Nothing. No power. I wanted to punch the freaking wall, but I had to keep my head. All those security lights in the basement were on and the elevators worked; there had to be power.

I looked around as if expecting the answer would be hanging in the air. It wasn’t, but it was clinging to the walls. Thick cables led from the top of the defibrillator up to the ceiling. There they joined with a set of even thicker cables from the MRI machine. All of them headed for a junction box on the far wall. It had a single red lever, so I pulled it.

The ceiling fluorescents flickered feebly. Green and red lights glowed on the MRI. I slammed the button on the defibrillator again. This time it hummed and crackled. I didn’t think there was enough time to undress Misty like the instructions said, so I jammed the paddles onto her chest and pressed the second button.