A man ran into me screaming a Bleeder scream. He knocked me down and we both tumbled on the street, scratching skin on the blacktop. Before I could stop rolling, he lunged at my face with his teeth, but I kept him from biting me.
That familiar anger worked its way from my gut, up my esophagus and into my eyeballs. I pushed the man off me and jumped on him, punching and kicking him as I screamed his scream back at him. I felt his nose break and watched the gush of blood squirt onto the street. Even when he stopped moving, his blood covering my straining fist, I kept going. It was the most intense tunnel vision I had ever experienced, and I would be lying if I said I wanted it to stop.
A hand grabbed my shoulder as I swung down. I lunged to bite it, but then I caught myself. I looked up into the eyes of the young one they'd called Rat. He tried to look hard but there was fear in his eyes, and I was the one who had put it there.
Past him, Spanish Blood watched us. He had seen the whole scene go down, and I couldn't tell if he was excited to have dirt on me or scared of what I would do. As he stared at me, one of the churchgoers popped up behind him and went for a bite. A gunshot rang out from above, and half a second later a Bleeder fell to his knees and spilled his head brains the street. A second shot sounded, this time hitting a second Bleeder square between the eyes.
"Where did that come from," I asked, still in a fog.
"Who cares, let's go," Silas said.
I agreed. I led him and the rest to the walkway between buildings, and I glanced back and up as I did. Way up on the sixth or seventh floor of the apartment building next door, there was a face in the window. I couldn't get a look look at it, and whoever it was stepped back into the dark.
With the remaining churchgoers chasing us we cut through the walkway and jumped the fence, landing in a parking lot behind the tenement where Alison was waiting at the far end with Nkosi, waving us over. We weaved between the parked cars, hopped another fence and found ourselves exactly where I'd hoped- in the chalk-heavy rear courtyard of the food bank, almost to safety.
We entered the food bank through the back door, first Alison, then Nkosi, then me, followed by the bikers. Silas waited for every man and woman to clear the door before he joined us inside. All panting and coughing, we spilled out the back hallway and into the reception area.
We were safe, the door locked and everything where it should be except for one, tiny detail- the couch was empty.
Jeremiah was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
"Where's your friend," Silas asked.
I turned to the sweating, heavy-breathing group of bikers waiting for an answer. "He has to be in here somewhere. But, uh, full disclosure time...he might be infected."
They groaned and cursed, looking around them to make sure nothing was sneaking up on them in the dark. Silas looked pissed. He walked up to me, stopping a foot from my face. "We just lost three people getting here, and you're saying this place isn't safe?"
"Just a little unsafe." I held my thumb and forefinger together in front of my eye. "Like that much."
"You realize we could kill you both and take it no problem."
"I do." I looked over at Alison to rub it in her face. "But he's only one guy, which shouldn't be a problem for a bunch of hard-asses like yourselves. And he might be immune like us."
"Oh, yeah? And what are the odds of that?"
"Not great, but I have to give him a chance. This guy saved my ass, and he knows the city. The only reason we have this place is because of him. If he pulls through- and I know it's a big fucking if- we could really use him."
Silas straightened up. He didn't love my answers, but he didn't hate them, either.
"Holy shit, Silas," one of his guys said from the other room. He stood in front of one of the huge boxes of food holding up a can of beef stew. "There's enough food in here for months."
Silas walked through the crowd and checked out the room. I could tell he found it just as impressive as I had. "Alright. We spread out and find him."
"No one shoots him until I see him," I said. He turned to me, about to jump down my throat, but he stopped himself.
"You heard the man. Find but don't touch." The guys started to complain but he shut them down quickly and sent them away. The group spread out, their weapons ready and their eyes peeled. I decided to check upstairs, and Silas went with me.
"I'm a big boy," I said as we climbed the stairs at the back, "I don't need a chapperone."
"This isn't for you, this is to make sure you're not pulling any shit while I'm not looking."
"Me? You're the one who threatened me a minute ago."
"And you're the one with the red eyes. For all I know this is a trap so you can cage us up and eat us one-by-one."
My laugh echoed in the stairway. "Trust me, bike-boy, if I was a cannibal I would have much better taste in men." I stopped. "For men. You know what I mean."
"I believe I do," Silas said, passing me on the stairs with a grin. I cursed under my breath and ran to catch up as he stepped out and into the second floor ahead of me.
A good amount of morning sunlight came through the partially-painted windows, making the second floor brighter than the last time I'd been there, but it had so many corners and so much stored in it that there were still plenty of shadows to worry about. I was worried about how we would find Jeremiah, whether he would still be himself or the Bleeder he was more likely to be. At his size, and with his strength, I was even more worried about how he would find us.
We started our sweep of the open floor, moving slowly and checking behind each palette and box. A few more of Silas' people joined us, including Rat and one of the women, who moved like she was in a haunted house looking for ghosts. As I moved toward the furthest corner of the open space, near the back windows I'd looked out before, I started to hear a sound. It was low, and wet, and a lot like chewing.
Silas heard it, too, and we both quieted our footsteps, splitting up to move around both sides of a large stack of crates. As I came around the other side with my heart pounding in my chest, I caught sight of Jeremiah's back. He was crouched low to the ground with something clutched between his fingers. He loudly chewed whatever it was, oblivious that anyone else was in the room.
Oh, God, was it a rat? There was only one way to find out. I prepared for the worst.
"Jay?"
He picked his head up and turned to face me. With the sun to his back I couldn't make out his face, but I could see what was in his hands.
A peanut bar.
"I've never been this hungry in my life," Jeremiah said.
Back downstairs, with everyone regrouped and relaxed, Alison sat next to me and cleaned and dressed the wound on my arm with proper first aid supplies. Most of the bikers were raiding the food and checking the place out, except Silas and a few others who stayed close-by.
"What were you doing upstairs," I asked Jeremiah. He was sitting in one of the chairs eating his fourth peanut bar. He didn't look like death anymore, just hungover. His irises were dark red like Alison's. Like mine.
"It's a blur to be honest." He rubbed his head. "I remember waking up starving. I stumbled into the other room to look for food. Then I must have wanted to look out the window, but I heard people coming, so I hid."
"You heard us?"
"I think so." Jeremiah looked around the room. "The group is a bit bigger than I remember."
"Things change fast these days."
He said, "Tell me everything."
I caught Jeremiah up on what had gone down since he passed out the day before- from the search for guns that led me to the pawn shop, to meeting Nkosi and his former business associate, Oyibo, to our dip in Harlem River, to meeting the bikers and hauling ass back to the food bank. He listened intently to the whole story, then crinkled up the wrapper from his fifth bar. "It was a stupid move going out there," he finally said.
"Well, gee, dad, thanks for the advice. I didn't know if you'd live or what I would do when the M16 ran out of ammo, what was I supposed to do?"
"Definitely not drop the gun in the river."
"Listen, I'm not looking for a pat on the back here or anything, but you'd be a stain in the outfield right now if it wasn't for me, so how about you cut me some slack?"
Jeremiah smiled. "You're right. Thank you. Besides, I have a plan to get us out of here. Isn't that right, doc?"
Alison glanced up from dressing my arm at the mention of the word.
"Why did you call her that," I asked, looking back and forth between them as Alison finished wrapping my arm and stood up. "You're a doctor?"
"You didn't tell him," Jeremiah asked. Alison was faced away from me. She shook her head at him.
"I thought Frank was the doctor," I said.
"Frank was my cat when I was twelve." She held up her hand. "The ring is fake. I wore it to keep the guys on the team from being interested."
"What team? What are you talking about," Silas asked.
"It was me," Alison said. "I worked with the WHO, studying Red Flu patients."
I felt like I'd gotten punched in the face. I'd trusted this woman with my life and she wasn't even honest about who she was. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"It wasn't important at the time."
"I'm sorry...not important? How the fuck is you being a doctor who studied Red Flu patients not important?"
"Because."
"Why?"
"Because they're all dead," she shouted. Heads turned across the food bank. "They're all dead and we learned nothing. If we did anything we made things worse. It's like you said, it doesn't matter now. It's all coming to an end. Everything is crashing down, and all we can do now is watch." She turned to address the group that had started to gather, including Nkosi. "You people want food, water, guns, that's fine, you deserve a chance. But if you don't show respect to what this virus can do, it will eat you alive. I've seen what it can do. I've watched as people became monsters and mothers ate their own daughters." She started to tear up, her voice breaking. "This isn't going to end well. No one is coming to help you. There's no clean-up with the government sweeping in to save the day. Their plan is quarantine, plain and simple. They'll keep those bridges closed until nothing moves, as long as it takes."
"Wait, that doesn't make sense," I said. "The flu isn't just in New York, it's all over the world. Why would they bother to shut down the city?"
"It's not just New York, this is happening in every major city right now. Cities have the densest populations, if you keep letting the infected spill out you never gain control. The idea is to slow it down as much as possible, preserve the outer areas. That way you buy enough time to build fences, create safe zones, and eventually develop a vaccine."
"No," I said, "I'm not buying it."
Silas leaned in. "We tried to get out on the GWB and we got shot at just for trying. Whether you buy it or not, little man, she's right. They have this city locked down tighter than a nun's pussy."
"So what's the plan," I asked Jeremiah.
"Tell him," he said to Alison.
She hesitated, then let out a long breath. "I...I still have contacts with the WHO. I might be able to secure us safe haven on a vessel anchored off-shore."
Everyone hooted and talked excitedly. "I don't know if they'll take all of you," she cut them off. "I can't promise anything."
"It's still a hell of a lot better than waiting around to die," Silas said, and everyone nodded.
I stood up from my chair. "That's great and all, but how are we supposed to reach this boat, swim? It's probably miles off shore, if it's even still there."
Everyone was quiet. Then Nkosi raised his hand and said, "I have a boat."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I wanted to wait until the next day to leave, or the day after that, or maybe never, but everyone decided it would be a good idea to leave as soon as possible. The longer we waited, the less likely the boat would still be anchored off shore. I couldn't argue with that, and I wasn't about to be left behind, so come sunset I helped pack for the trip, though I didn't exactly do it with a smile.
As Nkosi explained it, he had a small boat tied up and ready to go near where the Bronx Kill met the East River. I asked him which dock it was, but his response was, "None that you know."
He didn't tell us how the boat had gotten there or what it was there for, and no one asked. Even the dirtiest bikers were respectful of his privacy. Quietly, when Nkosi wasn't around, I asked Silas if he didn't think the whole thing sounded sketchy. "My guys don't ask dumb questions," is all he said. Obviously he didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, even when the horse was clearly some kind of smuggler.