Maybe he was already infected. Maybe that was why the drops of blood splashing against the plastic sounded so loud in the stillness of the room.
The other side of Don’s bed started to leak, creating a new puddle.
A speck of movement, down near Don’s bare feet. Tommy squinted, but saw nothing else. Maybe it was simply the maddening stuttering of the fluorescent tubes, creating buzzing, shadowy static among the tufts of hair along the top of Don’s feet.
Tommy wondered if the virus was already in his system, wondering if he was about to face the long sleep, followed by the horrible itching, until finally the rage rocketed through his system, and he had to endure the agony of spending his last days, screaming hoarsely, pathetic, weak, strapped to a goddamn hospital bed.
Something definitely moved on Don’s skin. Tommy blinked, squinted again. There. It was a bug. Something reddish-brown, creeping along like a crab, although it wasn’t any bigger than one of the spatters of blood on the floor. He wondered if Don had lice. The bug scurried across the mattress and disappeared behind the rails.
A thought struck him, and he forgot about the bug. This thought was something that he deeply understood to be true, but had never dived deep to examine. Now, faced with the icy, stark recognition, Tommy knew he was going to die. This was something most people held off at a distance. It fades into the background. Nobody but the suicidal and teenage goths linger intentionally in that part of the mind.
There was no pushing it away. He was going to die. One way or another, sooner or later, he was going to die. It might be the virus now, it might be some organ or another falling apart when he was an old man, seventy or eighty. He would’ve preferred to live to old age, but he started to understand that either way, quick or painful, he wanted to die having lived his life as best he could, taking care of himself and his family.
He remembered the tune, and a couple of words, to an old Monty Python song that his old man used to listen to once in a while. He couldn’t remember much of the words so much as the intent, to remind you that you live in a universe hell bent on reaching for infinity, and you were but a speck of nothing.... However, the simple fact of your birth amid such vastness told the math to go to hell.
He understood the universe was entirely indifferent to his existence. He could not look to anyone for help. His parents? God bless ’em, but they couldn’t make it to Dominick’s for the weekly groceries without getting lost. Kimmy had stopped caring where he was at least four years ago.
His partner was dead.
And his boss wanted him here.
There was no one else. No one but Grace.
Tommy slumped in the wheelchair, fighting to slow his galloping heart. The panic fed at his consciousness like a fast-moving fungus, crawling underneath his sanity, tugging gently, looking for weak spots.
He tested the straps again, listening for that elusive sound of leather or thread ripping. Nothing. The restraints might as well have been made of steel. He pulled harder, harder. There was no give, no tearing noise, no nothing. Had he imagined the sound earlier?
He struggled to slow his breathing. Tried to refocus. Tried to think of anything except the fact that he was strapped to a wheelchair and locked in a room with a corpse. He found himself staring at the figure on the bed.
There should have been some sort of peace, now that Don was dead. His partner wasn’t screaming anymore. He wasn’t thrashing around, he was simply motionless.
Tommy decided the silence was worse. The stillness was worse. He tried to remind himself of how tortured Don had sounded, but already the memory was beginning to fade, that sound of utter hopelessness was gone, and all that was left was complete fucking silence and so all Tommy could focus on was his own hope, his own faith, that somehow it would all somehow work out in the end, and that the universe or God or whatever would recognize that he had been a decent, caring human being.
There wasn’t much left of that feeling.
God did not care.
The universe did not care.
There was nothing left inside.
It was either fight or die.
And fighting was futile.
PHASE 5
CHAPTER 50
7:43 AM
August 14
OMG. Mr. Ullman could be such a bitch.
No, Janelle decided as she rubbed her temples, bitch wasn’t strong enough. He was a cocksucker, that’s what he was. The city was half deserted, and hardly anybody was left in the whole damn Fin, but he wanted her here right at the crack of dawn. Didn’t he know that she had a life outside of this friggin’ job?
Apparently not. He met her at the employee entrance, all looming angles and aggressive cologne. Yes. Yes, Mr. Ullman. Of course she would give today everything she had. Oh, yes, you cocksucker.
It’s your own fault, a voice said inside her throbbing head. The voice belonged to her roommate, Brandi. Now Brandi, she was a bitch; that was for sure. Yes. Brandi was a bitch, and Mr. Ullman was a cocksucker. That declaration felt right, but it didn’t ease Janelle’s hangover.
She sat by herself behind the desk in the grand lobby for ten minutes, and quickly realized that if she didn’t make it to the restroom, there was going to be a mess that she didn’t want to explain. Instead of using the more convenient restroom on the first floor, she decided it was imperative that she reach the employees-only bathroom downstairs. She hated going number two at work, and would avoid it if at all possible, but this morning was an emergency. She knew that very few employees would be around at this time of the day, and she could probably slip in and get out before anybody came in and smelled what she’d left.
Janelle massaged her temple and squeezed the bridge of her nose with her left hand while her right clutched the stairway railing. She eased her way downstairs, down the concrete steps to the employees-only restroom. Why the hell had she decided to wear her highest heels this morning? Any other day, she could practically run a marathon in any of her shoes, but right now, the tequila and tacos from last night at Taco Loco were threatening to erupt, and Janelle, quite frankly, wasn’t sure which orifice they might spew from. The way she felt, the contents of her entire intestinal tract might just squirt from her goddamn ears.
You knew you had to be at work at six, so quit’cher bitchin’, Brandi’s voice sang in her aching head. Brandi, that tanned bitch, didn’t have to be at work today. Brandi worked at some chic travel agency, fawning over rich pricks and gushing about Caribbean vacations all damn day, but her boss had told her to stay home until this mess with the rat flu was straightened out. So she was home, curled up in her bed in their apartment in Lincoln Park.
And to top it off, Janelle’s period had hit with a vengeance last night. She’d slapped the shit out of her alarm clock only to find her eight-hundred-thread-count sheets spotted with blood. She couldn’t win. She’d dragged the sheets and comforter off the bed, praying she hadn’t stained the mattress, and dumped the mess in a corner of her room. Somehow, she’d managed to find her way into the shower, where she’d watched the sad remnants of last night’s chicken and lettuce collect on the silver holes of the drain after she vomited. Twice.
Still. She’d made it to work, even with only half the buses running. So fuck everybody. Who cared if she could barely walk. She’d punched in, dammit. And just like she had thought, there was nothing happening at work. Nobody was checking out, and there sure as hell wasn’t anybody checking in. Not at six in the fucking morning anyway. And the thing of it was, nobody else was at work either. That was the worst part. She’d been the only one dumb enough, the only one desperate enough, to actually come in to work.