Damn Him to Hell

“Your parents didn’t give you the name Legrande,” I countered. Were we just doing our usual boy/girl dance here, or was he offering more? Given the mood I was in, I needed more.

“True.” He caught my elbow and opened the door to the warehouse before I could react. “We’re not equipped to deal with nearly a dozen comatose patients. We need to send them where Acme can’t find them.”

“None of them are coming around?” The news was bad, but at least the subject was safer than anything personal. Although his strong grip on my arm didn’t ease the hormone dance.

“See for yourself.” He led me back to the room that had been cleared for the patients.

I gazed at the array of cots in dismay. Thank goodness it was September and not too hot or cold. I doubted the hundred-year-old warehouse was insulated or thermostatically controlled. It certainly wasn’t sanitary.

Tim was sweeping the floor with a long broom and raising puffs of dust. He’d placed a vase of flowers near Nancy Rose’s cot, which nearly broke my hard heart.

Apparently the med students had divided into shifts. Only a female one was on duty. I had some vague notion that medical residents worked abominable hours, so I was amazed and grateful that any of them found time for us.

Leibowitz lay there like a beached walrus with that ratty mustache. Not a single malevolent twitch from his cot.

I studied Nancy Rose. Mid-fifties would be my guess. Threads of frost in her mousy brown hair, jowls starting to sag, a bit on the plump side. She just seemed to be sleeping. I swallowed a lump in my throat. Tim thought of her as a mother figure. He needed her. I tested her pulse. Beating regularly as far as I could tell. Could she really be sick already?

The baby doc joined us and read her chart. “High white-blood-cell count, an indication of infection, conceivably cancer. Compromised breathing. Normally, I’d order more blood tests and pictures of her lungs. If her lungs are infected, they could be depriving her brain of oxygen and causing the coma. She probably ought to be hospitalized.”

Damn. Not good. What about the others?

I counted ten beds in all. Out of their filthy clothes, the homeless patients mostly seemed unshaven and in need of a good barber. And they all appeared old enough to be my great-grandparents. Odd. I knew the homeless encampment contained all ages. Why did only the old ones turn toes-up? “And the others?”

“Minor contusions and lacerations from the fighting,” she said. “A few bad hearts, possibly a diabetes case, the usual ills of age. Lack of insulin in the diabetes case might cause a comatose state. High blood pressure might in others. They all should have tests run.”

I thought about the other half-dozen patients we’d seen at Acme, all similar to these. “Sixteen people in one small area can’t concuss, have strokes, and fall victim to high blood pressure over a span of a few hours.”

“The causes of coma are too numerous to list, but agreed, having sixteen people fall into one in the space of a few hours does suggest external poisoning interfering with blood or oxygen flow. These people reacted more strongly than others, possibly because some agents strike the elderly and ill harder, possibly for reasons unknown.”

I bit my tongue to prevent a sarcastic magic from escaping. Paddy’s euphemism for the new element could start a full-scale panic or turn us into a laughingstock. The latter seemed more likely.

“They need more medical help than we can provide,” the lady doc concluded.

“I know a few people in the medical community,” I admitted. “It’s been years since I’ve talked to some of them, so I make no promises. But if we can ship them out to hospitals in surrounding states, will they be safe from Acme?”

“Tricky, unless your people are willing to lie about where they found them. Only a few of the patients have IDs. They’re all apparently indigent except for Mrs. Rose and Officer Leibowitz.” She checked the florist’s IV. “They’ll be turned away almost anywhere.”

We’d have to take care of Sarah and Sleeping Beauty ourselves. A warehouse was no place for the others. I began mentally listing some of my mother’s more dubious friends. Most of my college buddies knew better than to do anything for me, since I’d gotten them expelled, but I could ask around. I’d spent a year in a hospital. I could summon names.

“They may be fine by morning,” Andre suggested. “But if not, start prioritizing them. We can’t justify keeping them from Acme if we only kill them ourselves.”

The doc nodded and returned to her rounds. Andre caught my elbow and dragged me on. He had a bad habit of manhandling me, but he knew I could take him down if I objected.

Apparently, we both needed the physical contact for the moment.

“Acme sent street sweepers through the Zone,” he said grimly, clambering down the stairs to the tunnel under the street. He picked up an automatic weapon that had been leaning against the wall.

I glanced warily at the gun. Had he grabbed it when I’d come through the gate? He probably had security alarms and cameras everywhere.

He stopped abruptly to open a door in the wall. The light level was low in here, and to me, a tunnel was a tunnel. I hadn’t considered storage closets.

He shoved the weapon inside, and I caught a glimpse of a whole array of heavy metal before he slammed it again.

Andre had an arsenal prepared for war. I was trying really hard not to freak. Gun and conspiracy wing nuts who stockpiled weapons against the apocalypse seldom turned out well.

Biting my tongue about the weapons, I followed him across the street through his hidden tunnel, contemplating street sweepers. “Are they sweeping with big machines or little Roombas, and how do they keep them working?” I’d never seen anyone cleaning the Zone’s streets before, so it sounded highly suspicious.

“They don’t. The robot vacuums keeled over or rolled into the harbor. They’ve got people out there now with brooms.”

Keeling vacuums were normal in my world. Sweeping in the Zone was the anomaly. “Better they kill people than machines?” I asked dubiously. “Why bother sweeping at all?”

“Paddy says the particles could be dangerous. He couldn’t say whether they’d blow up or turn everyone in town into a zombie.”

“The particles?” Crap. I’d been ignoring my fear all day. I didn’t want it confirmed while I was down and just about out. “The pink confetti stuff?”

“Ashes from the new element,” he confirmed, switching a light off in the tunnel as we entered the bomb shelter. “We’ve been washing it down the drain, into the sewer system, into the harbor, no telling where. We could be sitting on Chernobyl.”

I tried to whistle but my mouth was dry. “It wasn’t a big explosion,” I argued, half running to keep up with his long strides. “A few dust particles here and there can’t wipe out dinosaurs.”

I’d trailed confetti uptown, through the city, into the courthouse. Police cars, ambulances, all would have carried them to parts unknown.

“Too late to stop the spread now,” he said fatalistically. “Those of us living here face constant exposure. We can try, but we can’t sweep it all up.”

“We could all become Sleeping Beauties?” I asked facetiously. I was too tired to imagine all the ramifications.

He shot me a frown. “Sleeping Beauties?”

“Like the lady you’ve apparently been hiding. Is she one of Paddy’s magical element experiments?”

“You won’t quit until you find out, will you?” he asked, stopping in the bomb shelter.

“You’d rather I never asked questions? Went my own way, kept my head down?”

“You’d take my head off if I said yes.”

He was right about that.

Without warning, he jerked me into the infirmary, where they were keeping Sarah and Sleeping Beauty. Neither appeared to have moved a muscle since I’d seen her last.

Andre led me to Beauty’s side. I could see the resemblance even before he spoke.

“Mary Justine Clancy, I’d like to introduce you to my mother, Katerina Montoya. Mi madre, esta