"c252" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burt Andrew - Noontide Night)
NOONTIDE NIGHT - Chapter 25.2
Chapter 25.2
11:09 P.M., Tuesday, February 22, 2000
Manukau, New Zealand
"Matty, I know it's Tuesday, but would it be impossible for me
to go in as you tonight?" Desiree asked, clearing away their
"breakfast" dishes. She yawned. It still seemed like she should be
going to bed now, not getting up. "I'd really like to check on
Jeremy." She still hadn't told Matty about the food poisoning.
"Of course, Desi!" In the weeks they'd shared the apartment,
the two had become close. "My God, of course! I'm sorry I didn't
offer. I'm getting to quite like that job of yours at PS&B, by the
way. I might stay on there. After the Chaos, I mean."
Desiree wondered, would there be a moment when we'd say
The Chaos was over? Things would almost certainly be different
than if nothing had happened, no matter how quickly the world
recovered. The 1900s were entirely lost to history now, in a
fundamental and irretrievable way. The future usually snuck up
on you, millimeter by millimeter, not like this, not like stepping
through a door and having it lock behind you. With the lights
back on, it seemed like normality should have returned. But it felt
wrong. This was suddenly the future, as weird as anyone ever
predicted it would be.
"Oh, I meant to tell you," Matty was continuing, "Roger, your
neighbor, moved back in today. Guess an electric light or two will
do that for you. By the way, he's a bit of a looker. Know if he's
involved with anyone?"
Desiree shook her head, not fully concentrating. "He's not
married, that's all I know."
"Well, that's a start then, isn't it? D'you realize that if we get
hooked up, it's all on account of the Chaos? I'd never have been in
your apartment here otherwise."
"I thought you had a boyfriend..."
"Back in 1999 I did, but where's he now? I've tried calling
dozens of times. Some commitment there, eh?" She flicked the
TV on again, for the third time that evening. Still static or "please
stand by" on all the channels. "When you think they'll have X-Files back on? Probably be reruns for a long time anyway." She
switched it off.
Desiree tried to find the news on the radio, but found only
commercials, music, and static. How quickly people get used to
things, she thought.
She noticed an enveloped lying on the sofa table, addressed to
"Hylands" in a scrawly ballpoint. "Where'd this come from?" She
waved it at Matty as she began tearing it open.
"Dunno. Never saw it before. Where was it, sitting on the
table? I didn't see anything there when we went to sleep."
"Yeah..." Desiree said absently, reg
Littlefield to go d
landlord..."
"The creep must have snuck in while we were sleeping!"
"I can't believe this!" Desiree whacked the paper against her
leg in frustration. "Listen to this." She read the letter.
I have made every effort to contact you via phone
and in person to inform you of the need to pay
your February rent by 15-Feb-2000. All attempts
have failed, and this is my final one. If you have
not made arrangements to make payment by
12:00pm on 23-Feb-2000, you will be considered
squatters per the Emergency Powers Act and you
will be physically removed by the police. I regret
to have to resort to such measures, but I feel that
I have given you ample time to make the
payment, and I have tried every means possible to
contact you. If you have any questions, or if you
wish to make payment, please contact me.
"What?" Desiree's eyes were wild. "He's made zero,
absolutely no attempt to call or visit!" She suddenly looked hard
at Matty. Matty had stayed here alone most of January. "Have
you talked to him at all?"
"No! I haven't a clue who he is!"
"People have gone nuts!" Desiree grabbed the phone. "The
idiot didn't even give a number." She dug through their drawerful
of receipts and miscellaneous papers until she found it, then
dialed. "Great. It just rings. Voice mail must not be working yet."
She slammed down the phone. "I can't believe he'd only give us
a few hours notice!"
Matty looked over the note. "Well, twelve p.m., isn't that
noon?"
Desiree thought. "Eleven p.m. is at night, twelve comes after
eleven. So isn't it midnight?"
"I'm pretty sure 12:01 p.m. is one minute after noon. But
what's important is what he thinks it is, isn't it. And that we don't
know."
Desiree shook her head. "I thought things would return to
normal. Boy, was I wrong." She rubbed her shoulder, which was
feeling tight from tension. "Well, it'll have to wait. If we're not
here, they can't arrest us! Let's get to work, eh?" She picked up
her bag. "Wait—" She scrawled out a check, stuffed it into an
envelope, wrote the landlord's name on it, and taped it to the door.
"If he comes, he'll find his payment."
It had felt odd to write a check, the first she'd written in two
months; a whiff of a long dead past, like making butter in a churn.
In the electric dawn, all the normalcies of yesterday seemed
peculiar. Would things really return to what they were?
She returned to this thought as Matty dropped her off at the
hospital. Was normal now a moving target? Constant and unusual
change seemed the order of the day: There was no guard outside
the hospital entrance.
Desiree cautiously approached. She peered in the door.
The guard sat on a hospital room's padded visitor's chair,
automatic rifle propped against the wall beside him.
Then she realized, this was a good thing. Discipline was
slipping already. She assertively walked past him; he hardly
glanced at her. The testosterone twins still had no lack of
discipline in frisking her, however.
Once inside, and after a worried check on Jeremy, whom the
doctor said was stable on the ventilator with what was "probably"
pneumonia and "almost certainly not the bug going around," she
began looking for other signs her collapse-the-middle plan was
working.
She didn't have far to look.
Though its lights were dimmed, the intensive care unit was
abuzz. Desiree went in on the pretext of tracing ducts. She
carefully spied on Sir Howard to make sure he didn't go apoplectic
again on seeing her. But Sir Howard drearily slept, tied down
with tubes and monitor wires like Gulliver in the land of
Lilliputians. He was the only patient so lucky.
Moans punctuated the night's normal calm. The ICU rooms
were filled to capacity, with additional beds wheeled against the
walls. IV racks blocked doors and walkways and clattered as they
were moved in passage.
As Desiree watched, a pair of orderlies helped another
camouflaged figure through the double doors. "Oh, my stomach,"
he moaned, holding his gut and doubling over.
From the open door of a bathroom, she heard the unmistakable
sound of vomiting.
"Don't scratch!" a nurse scolded one of the burly patients,
swatting his arm.
"Do your lips still tingle? Tongue? Throat?" another nurse
asked a brawny fellow, checking off his symptoms on a clipboard.
"Goddamnit, get a doctor in here!" a patient yelled from one
of the rooms. "I've got fucking diarrhea all over my fucking legs!
I'm the Goddamned commander of this nation, and I won't tolerate
this disrespect! Get a fucking doctor in here now!"
Desiree smiled, then suppressed it. It was working! The elite
of the Strong were getting sick. She went over to a nurse. "What's
going on here? I've just come on duty. Is there something
contagious? Should I get out of here?"
"I don't know, Miss. Could be an epidemic, but we're all
trapped in the same building here, so we'll all catch it if we will,
likely as not. Doctors aren't sure what's happening just yet. Them
Nation of the Strong blokes are spreading something amongst 'em
if you ask me. They've been staggering in all day. 'Course, men
are so sensitive when it comes to a few cramps, you know. Think
they're the first people in the world to get a cramp. Serves 'em
right if you ask me, and not just because they're terrorists. Because
they're men, I mean. Let 'em see what we go through every
month. Ha!"
The nurse didn't seem too concerned. Perhaps the doctors
knew exactly what malady they suffered from, and were playing
it up. If they had half a brain, of course they wouldn't tell
terrorists their food had been poisoned. Terrorists tended to shoot
people who crossed them.
"Nurse! Get over here and help me!" An older terrorist,
looking frailer for his scrawny legs poking out of the hospital
gown, held onto a door jamb. "Help me walk to my bed, damn
you."
"Got to go," said the nurse Desiree had been talking to. "Now,
now, you're just a little wobbly," she said on her way over. "Be
thankful you're past the messy parts."
From across the room came the sound of breaking glass.
Desiree caught the follow-through of an arm; the remains of a
drinking glass lay near a wall. "What are you trying to do, burn
me to death? If I could get up, I'd beat the crap out of you!"
"That was barely chilled water," an orderly said.
Desiree couldn't tell who was high up in the Strong's pecking
order, but from their demanding tone, she felt sure she'd hit the
target. She left with a smug grin. Why hadn't the police thought
of this tactic long ago?
She checked back on Jeremy and the Strong several times
during the night. Jeremy was holding his own, with what, she was
getting more and more worried to believe was simply pneumonia
from his weakened condition and extensive time on the ventilator.
Her anxiety was tinged with relief that she hadn't caused it by
sloppily giving him food poisoning; but pneumonia was so much
worse she almost wished it had been ciguatera. He was
responding slowly to the hospital's dwindling supply of
antibiotics. She refused even to consider the prospect of brain
damage. It wouldn't matter, she told herself. She'd love him all
the more.
The Strong, on the other hand, were piling into the ICU. A
second ICU was hastily established on an upper floor. The new
victims were reporting with diarrhea, vomiting, cramps, rashes,
and tingling around the mouth area. Apparently as the poison
worked onwards, their muscles became painful, weak and they
lost their coordination. Desiree almost laughed aloud when a
nurse told her that one of the first recovering patients demanded
"real" food, and after he was given some of their gourmet store,
he'd had an unfortunate relapse. More of the Strong limped into
the ICU. As she'd suspected, as the second tier of terrorists took
over for their ill masters, they had the sudden need to sample the
better food.
After her shift Desiree dropped Matty at the flat. The rent
check was still affixed to the door. Desiree yanked it off and
resolved to deliver it by hand during lunch. It would be tight,
given the distance to the landlord's house, but better that than a
silly eviction.
On the way to work she shuttled Matty to school, which had
decided that with power restored, education must press on, the
need for more short-term labor be damned. Desiree felt like a
mother hen, driving Matty to and from her jobs while she juggled
all the errands plus her own two jobs, but in her heart she knew
Matty would do the same. It was the Chaos that created the extra
burden. And her damn landlord. Yet upon reaching HHF
Architectural's office, Desiree found she'd have all the time in the
world to deliver the rent check: The sign read simply, "Out of
business."
Desiree fumed. They'd been open yesterday! There'd been no
office rumors, no furtive glances, no hints whatsoever. She peered
inside the glass doors. No movement or lights at all. But the
power was back! Things were supposed to return to normal!
Desiree replayed her disbelief endlessly as she drove to the
landlord's. She'd loved that job. She felt like she was contributing
to the world, not acting as a human computer. She could feel the
world was withdrawing into a sort of Darwinian shell, winnowing
the dead elements that couldn't compete during this crisis. It was
fair that the weak shouldn't survive, she couldn't entirely argue
that; but HHF wasn't one of the weak. She knew in her heart they
were collateral damage, killed off because their food source, so to
speak, was in hiding for a time. Nobody was interested in
building new buildings just now. Someone would fill that void
when it was needed later, she admitted, but the upheaval of
realignment seemed so unnecessary, so cruel.
And of course the landlord wasn't there. His split-level home
looked well manicured despite the Chaos, and had a porch light
on, but nobody answered the doorbell or her knocking. She taped
the rent check to the inside of the metal screen door, then hastily
added a note, "Please call me when you get this so I can get a
receipt. Thanks." Given how unreliable things were, who knew
when, or if, she'd get a canceled check back.
Sitting in the car, she realized she hadn't had a day off in
nearly a month. What should she do with herself? Working seven
days a week had become so routine. She felt so wired she couldn't
even relax. She'd get sick if she did, she knew it. So long as she
kept running on adrenaline she'd be fine, but she had to keep
moving, had to have a purpose. Phantoms began to dart at her
from the corner of her mind. Was Morgan okay? Was Jeremy?
Were the Strong going to fold before the police made a mess of
things? No! She had to push it all away, concentrate on some task
at hand. Errands. That was it. She had two months' worth of
errands that must be done! Must! Morgan's shirts that needed
laundering—it took hours to find a cleaners still in business and
open. Groceries; it took great concentration to remember what
they needed and find it amongst the empty store shelves.
Her doubts plagued her during her shift at PS&B. She felt a
balloon slowly inflating in her stomach all night, worrying
whether anything was going wrong at the hospital. What if the
Strong uncovered her treachery? She struggled through on pins
and needles, until momentarily relieved when, with her abdomen
feeling ready to burst, Matty perkily jumped in the car after her
hospital shift on Thursday morning, and said everything was as
crappy as ever. Jeremy was stable on the ventilator. Thankfully the
Strong were getting sicker, but she hoped it wasn't contagious.
The first cases were weak as rag dolls; the newest ones still barfing
in the halls. She was cheery, noting that only a few of the hospital
staff seemed to be catching the bug, and even fewer of the
hostages. Desiree smiled inwardly, knowing that the Strong
controlled their food so rigidly that those hostages or staff who got
sick were turncoats getting what they deserved. Desiree couldn't
breathe she'd been so wound up; her relief was so great she almost
told Matty about the food poisoning. Only fear that Matty might
not let her swap jobs again prevented her. But then that balloon in
Desiree's stomach began inflating again all day long. She had too
much time to stew. What if things were going wrong now at the
hospital. She had to busy herself.
She dropped Matty off at school and drove around, trying to
focus on some task. There were plenty of errands she should run,
but none of them seemed important, not like it was important she
be with Jeremy. She gridlocked. The errands went undone. She
drove down country back roads to Raglan, a beach popular with
surfers, a spot she and Morgan frequently picnicked. She walked
in the wet black sand, the waves crashing on craggy rocks and
sucking at her feet. Yet she still couldn't shake the balloon feeling.
She'd have to sneak in as Matty again tonight. The tightness in her
chest eased when she thought that. She decided it. She had to.
Matty wouldn't mind; she never did.
On her way back to town, she found herself driving to the
landlords'. Yes, this was at least a small something she could deal
with.
The note was still taped to the screen door. The porch light
was still on, despite it being almost eleven in the morning now.
That was odd. He'd been so insistent in his note. Maybe he'd
moved out? Maybe he'd been living in a relocation camp? Odd.
One would think he'd come home now that the power was on.
Desiree assumed he'd been home to get the envelope, paper, and
write the note. Not that he had to, but why wouldn't he? Was
there something wrong with his house that it was uninhabitable?
Desiree walked halfway down the side of the house, thinking she
might see if anything was wrong... then thought better of looking
like a burglar and went back to the car.
Something just wasn't right. The note was there, the porch
light still glowing dimly under the hot sun.
She glanced around. No eyes appeared to be watching. The
residential street was deserted.
She slunk around back. The curtains were drawn on the side
windows, and again on the back windows. She edged up onto a
redwood deck in the back, and peered in the large glass door. She
could see a little bit through the slats of the vertical blinds.
On the kitchen floor, lying next to a gun and in a brown pool
of dried blood, lay the landlord.
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