bandaging busted knuckles and shoved our unorthodox gurney toward Chesty’s.
Before I entered the bar, I stared down the oddly empty street. It felt like a science-fiction film: earth after a nuclear war had wiped out all life forms. Or maybe that was just the effect of the moonwalking suit I was wearing.
Beneath the wispy weird cloud, I could see that the police had barricaded off the end of Edgewater that led up to Acme Chemical. Were they keeping Acme in or us out?
Since there were a dozen official vehicles at the plant and zero on our side, my bet was that they had sealed off Acme in the foolish belief that the cloud wasn’t hurting anyone down here. If a tank had blown, they probably had multiple injuries inside the facility. Out here, we were invisible. Or unimportant guinea pigs.
I followed Ernesto into Chesty’s . . . and walked in on an impromptu town hall meeting.
Or maybe it was a triage camp. Ernesto trundled his burden to a pallet on the floor and unceremoniously dumped him out. Comatose old people sprawled on blankets littered the floor between tables. And men in hazmat congregated around the bar, arguing, giving the place the appearance of a tavern on the moon.
Oddly, there were several people in hospital scrubs circulating from pallet to pallet, testing pulses and bandaging injuries. They didn’t seem any older than me. Medical students? The cheap housing in the industrial district attracted penniless students from the various universities and even Johns Hopkins, but the Zone seemed an unlikely hangout. Why weren’t they wearing hazmat suits?
I saw no sign of Paddy, but Ernesto had returned to the bar, where he was passing out drinks. Hazmat helmets were off or open. My stomach rumbled, reminding me that none of us had eaten this morning. Alcohol on donuts and empty stomachs was unappealing and not a particularly smart idea.
Accepting that Ernesto had been helping and not harming for a change, I tramped through the kitchen as if I owned it. I’d worked at Chesty’s as both flunky and waitress, had friends back here who fed me for free, so I knew my way around.
Pulling off my gloves, I set the coffee machines running, gathered every edible in sight, and, wondering if gas had contaminated the food, carried it to the bar.
“If you’re not worried about the air in here, then I’m assuming the food is safe,” I announced mechanically, still stupidly wearing my hood in hopes of reducing the gas effect. “Coffee will be ready in a minute.”
“Thanks, Tina.” The tallest suit pulled off a glove and swiped a whole mini-loaf of bread from the tray. Polite, with big hands—that would be Schwartz.
Andre was leaning with his back against the bar, watching the students and their patients, only half-listening to the hubbub around him. He’d removed his hood and gloves, so he could only narrow his eyes at my arrival and not complain too loudly about lawyers being a waste of suit.
“Are they dead?” I asked as Andre swiped a handful of brownies.
“Comatose.” Frank pulled off his hood gear and took one of the mini-loaves and a bucket of butter.
“Why aren’t you taking them up to the house then? Isn’t it dangerous down here?”
“Hard to say,” Andre growled. “Paddy was out there earlier. He says the gas is only affecting those who are already sick. But it knocked out Sarah, so keep your suit on.”
Andre didn’t fully grasp what Sarah and I were. Neither did we, actually. But he’d seen the identical tattoos of justice scales on our backs, and he wasn’t stupid. In fact, sometimes, he was freakily prescient.
“Unless you have him, I think Acme got Bill, too,” I warned.
There was true remorse under Andre’s curses this time. If Paddy was right, did that mean Bill had been sick already? He’d seemed plenty healthy, although he’d once been a heavy smoker. Like most men, Bill probably thought himself invincible and had never bothered with doctors.
So I kept my suit on, even though I was starving. But I snatched the last brownie and crammed it under the hood to munch, and fed a sardine to Milo in my pocket.
“Where’s Paddy now?” I asked, intent on my goal of rescuing Sarah.
Ernesto produced a tray of coffee. The aroma was heavenly, but I couldn’t figure out how to drink coffee and keep my hood on. Frustrated, I took it off despite the warning. I could die of starvation or get some caffeine and go berserk with gas. I chose the latter as more interesting.
At my defiant action, Andre asked, “If I was mayor and passed a law forbidding you to go outside without a suit, would you obey it?”
“What do you think?” I greedily sucked down coffee.
“I think lawyers ought to obey the law,” Andre replied grumpily.
“And mayors only make laws the voters want, so you don’t get to be dictator. This voter wants coffee. Now, again, where’s Paddy?” Andre’s charm didn’t work so well on me, and he knew it. Neither did his attempts to distract, although the kiss still burning my cheek had potential.
“Paddy’s probably locked up with Sarah and Bill in the decontamination chamber,” Schwartz answered, averting further squabbling. Leo didn’t talk much, but when he did, it was effective.
“Decontamination chamber?” I’m quick. I got it. I just wanted it spelled out clearly before I flew into a vengeful fury. I was starting to recognize the signs of mindless red rage that meant I was headed for full-out ballistic. Now I had to figure out how to control it.
Hearing the anger in my voice, Andre broke a bread loaf and stuffed a piece in my mouth. “Don’t go berserk on an empty stomach.”
Even a day old, the bread was good. Rosemary with a hint of garlic. I couldn’t yell with my mouth full, but I could glare daggers at the back of Andre’s thick head.
Schwartz added cream and sugar to his coffee. “Acme,” he said.
I rolled my eyes at his terse explanation. “They’re decontaminating the plant but not us?” I asked, chewing as fast as I could but still talking through a mouthful.
“Yup. They’ve got the EPA and all the pros running all over the building, vacuuming up blue goo or whatever. The official reports say the air quality is good, that once the gas hits open air the harmful particles are disbanded, and so the danger is only inside the plant.” Andre sipped his coffee black.
I followed his gaze to our elderly patients. “Right. The best kind of air quality, one that kills the old and homeless and cops. They’re just an albatross around society’s neck anyway.” My opinion of cops wasn’t high, Schwartz notwithstanding, but in this case, I was being sarcastic.
“Ouch,” Frank said. Frank had once been a bum who lived under bridges, according to Andre. The Zone had been good to him, sort of cleaned him up. Short, dark, and wiry, he tended to lurk in shadows, kind of like me. So I didn’t know him well.
“Tina’s a cynic,” Andre said, but he didn’t argue with my assessment.
That’s the thing about me and Andre. We might verbally gouge each other’s eyes out, but underneath, we were often on the same page. Our methods of solving problems widely differed, however. He was sneaky. I was rash, although I prefer to think of it as being blunt and straightforward.
“I want Sarah back,” Ernesto said, surprisingly. “She’s creepy, but she works for peanuts.”
I repeated
At least now I had some clue as to his motive for being helpful. “Did those guys help you load up the wheelbarrow?” I nodded at the scrubs.
“Yeah. They’re med students who live up the hill and sometimes cruise the camp to patch people up,” Frank explained. “They’re the ones who warned us the vans weren’t going to the hospital, and they’ve been helping us hijack the victims from Acme. But we didn’t see Bill go down.”
Impressed, I watched the med students with more respect. They might be using the denizens of the homeless encampment as lab rats for their studies for all I knew, but they risked life and limb out there. I wouldn’t have done it. The EPA had labeled the fenced-off area around the harbor a dead zone for a reason.
They were wandering around without suits. I wanted out of mine.
“So the assumption is that if you don’t keel over after exposure, it’s safe to breathe the gas?” I asked.
“If you don’t beat the crap out of anyone,
“I feel like that all the time,” I countered. “Maybe if I stop feeling murderous, I’ll figure I’ve been gassed and check myself in at Club Acme. Maybe I’ll do that anyway. I want Sarah and Bill out of there.”
“Not easy,” said a weary voice from behind us.
