The Blood Artists

The stockroom was bright and empty. She slipped past the manager’s office to the delivery bay, and found the door half open to the security lights outside. She pulled back before grasping the knob, and clasped her hands. She was not wearing gloves. She had to protect her glands and her blood.

She peered around the door edge and saw him in the alley, small and thin, half running, half limping away. His gloves, loose white nylon jacket, toque, dirty tan pants, and hiking shoes turned from the light around the corner of the alley, disappearing into a side street.

She shrugged off her wool cardigan, taking a preemptory hit off her inhaler before shoving it into her jeans pocket, then started out after him. She crossed the alley gingerly, careful not to scuff her sneaker soles against the tar.

The only lights on the side streets came from the high windows. There were no other people around. She saw him well ahead of her, turning right, crossing a one-way without looking back. This is crazy, she thought to herself. She was chasing a lethal virus through the streets of Atlanta. She rushed silently to the same corner and watched him move over a broken sidewalk farther away, toward a brighter corner, slowing there to a loping jog, then a hobbled walk. He stopped at a side street opening, and she watched him from a half block away.

His bony shoulders fell under his jacket as he stared down the unseen street. He appeared greatly troubled by what he saw there, and hesitant as to which way to turn now. With a sudden grunt that kicked off the dark, silent buildings, he turned and looked resolutely across to the bright, wide street opposite, and set off limping that way.

She crept along to the corner where he had stood. She looked down the two narrow blocks and saw a number of yellow suits moving about, lit by car headlights. Maryk’s men had converged on Zero’s car. In doing so, they had cut off his only means of escape.

She turned toward the busier street, seeing his skinny, shadowed back against its bright lights as he shuffled off the sidewalk. A large structure of concrete stairs faced him across the street, rising, and there were people crawling all over the steps, and great, elevated train rails running from the building. The bright sign in front read MARTA, and even without understanding the acronym, she knew that it was a mass transit station.

She looked back down the two long blocks to the BioCon agents. Her yell would not be heard. And if she ran to them now, she would not be able to tell them where Zero had gone.

She turned and hurried after him to the bright, busy street, and across it toward the bustling station. Every commuter there was a potential host. Zero’s only form of safe transportation was gone now, and he was desperate, and in pain. He had been forced to flee, and doing so, to infect.

He remained hunched over, head down, moving to the far curb as cars dropped off and picked up passengers around him. No one seemed to notice him at first. He stopped on the sidewalk and looked up at the MARTA station above him as a sleek subway car slid away on an elevated rail like a centipede.

She slowed and waited for cars to pass before reaching the sidewalk, wheezing as she hit the curb. She looked around frantically. She had lost him.

She pushed ahead through the evening commuters, onto the stairs. She hurried up a few more steps, then stopped and looked back, and Zero was right behind her. He was gripping the handrail and climbing the stairs one step at a time. Somehow she had passed him, and she froze now as he moved up to her step, moving right next to her. She could see right into his bleary red eyes, and the pain fluttering his lids.

He moved right past her, pulling himself step by step up the high stairs. She exhaled and looked around her as though she were invisible, then brought her hands up to her face. She felt the odd strands of fiber there. Her wig. Zero hadn’t recognized her without her cranberry hair.

The commuters were now becoming aware of this gaunt, sick-looking figure rising through them, and ceding him ample room. He used the handrail to haul himself over the top step — this sick, hobbling thing — onto the mezzanine, into the Atlanta subway system.

Melanie pushed through to the top. She didn’t see him there, only the turnstiles ahead. She looked back from the landing high above the street, and could see a Mack truck blocking a road two blocks away, part of Maryk’s plan to cut off Zero’s perceived escape. She scanned the street below, but there were no yellow suits from the BDC following her.

She clambered over a turnstile, jumping the fare. She stumbled as she landed but righted herself and pressed along a rising, spiraling brick wall, a walkway leading to twin open-air platforms.

Zero was there. He was standing at the yellow safety line at the edge of the platform, sagging slightly like a drunk. Others were cleared away from him, though not far enough. This was it. They were all being infected. She was witnessing the spark of what would be a catastrophic urban outbreak.

She searched the platform desperately. A sign on the wall told her she was on an outbound track, and she found a wall map and searched madly for a “You Are Here” arrow as the platform began to rumble. A train was coming. She wanted to scream, and finally found her station on the map as the subway cars approached. She was at the second-to-last outbound stop. She traced the line to its next and final destination.