City of Whispers (City of Whispers #1) (8 page)

“Did she say she was going anywhere else first?” James
asked.

“No, I even saw her walking this way.”

We asked around, but no one had seen Leila. None of us
knew where she lived, so we didn’t know where to look for her. I hoped that
maybe she had stopped back at her place or a store to get some supplies, and
that whatever store she stopped in had been well-lit. We waited all day, until
close to sunset, but Leila never showed up.

11

By the time we had my apartment building and the basement cleared out it was
mid-May. Scott, James, and Paulo had started to move their stuff into three
apartments on my floor. Scott and James moved into apartments across the hall,
and Paulo moved into the apartment next door to mine on the opposite side of
the apartment where we had found my decapitated neighbor.

Despite Beth’s help in the early days of the virus,
helping me kill two men and a vampire, she seemed more vulnerable than I felt.
Facing my fear, going into dark apartments and killing vampires, had helped me
to feel more secure in my own apartment. I became confident in my ability to
protect myself.

As our little group cleared out the apartments in my
building, Beth and I began to grow apart. While I became eager to kill
vampires, Beth looked sick each time we prepared to enter a new apartment. I
began to feel like she was judging me, like she thought I was a cold-blooded
killer. Maybe she was right.

The incident in the basement finally ended our days as
roommates. After she found out I was scratched by a vampire, Beth refused to be
alone with me. I told her that Tony had been scratched at the onset of the
plague and nothing had come of it. Nevertheless, she insisted that one of the
guys sit watch with her the first night. I think part of her fear may have
stemmed from James’s recounting of the ferocity with which I went after the
vampires in the basement.

After enduring a night of her hand-wringing and
whispering to Paulo about me while I tried to sleep, I told her my feelings
wouldn’t be hurt if she moved in with Kim. Kim had helped us move bodies out of
the basement, and wanted to move into our building, but didn’t want to live on
her own. Beth and Kim moved into a two bedroom next to Scott, leaving me to
myself.

We usually gathered in one person’s apartment in the
evenings to share whatever food we had and to talk. We also took some
walkie
talkies from the local Radio Shack “in case of an
emergency,” but I can’t say I kept mine on all the time. As for the scratches,
I put some Neosporin on them and cleaned them every night until the red gashes
began to heal.

Dwayne and some of the others were making plans to
move into the building as well. We accepted that with so many people living
there, the vampires would find out sooner or later, so we boarded the place up
tightly and made a habit of putting fresh garlic around the building every
afternoon.

I don’t think garlic would have kept a truly hungry
vampire at bay, but when I looked out my window at night I saw that the
vampires seemed to avoid our garlic barrier. We took turns sitting watch in the
building foyer, having someone in the building awake at all times.

To top it all off, we had a new crossbow in case we
had to shoot vampires from a distance. The general consensus was that bullets
didn’t do much. I had seen people in the streets try to kill vampires with
guns. It never worked out well for the humans.

Scott found a regular compound bow in one of the
abandoned apartments in my building. He tried using it on a makeshift target in
Bryant Park, but it was made for carbon arrows. The stress on the arrow was too
great when we used wooden arrows, and they broke, splintering dangerously every
time. After Scott almost ended up with a piece of a split arrow in his arm, he
stopped experimenting and asked for professional help.

The military granted us one crossbow that could shoot
one stake at a time and promised that more crossbows would be forthcoming. It
wouldn’t be helpful against multiple vampires at close range, but it would be
useful if we wanted to pick something off at a distance. Seth volunteered to
shoot vampires from the window, but the rest of us refused. I personally didn’t
think it was a good idea to antagonize the vampires unnecessarily and others
agreed.

Seth had talked about moving in, but after the incident
in the basement he began telling us how fortified his apartment and his
building were. A few people may have moved into his building, but I wasn’t
sure. I wasn’t very concerned, so I didn’t pay much attention.

We were all, however, concerned about Tony and his
children. Tony had talked about moving into my building, but hadn’t taken any
action yet. We had picked out a large three bedroom, two bath on the fourth
floor with plenty of room for him and his children. There had been no bodies in
the apartment when we cleared it. I wondered who used to live there, if it had
been a family and if they had escaped safely. Maybe they had even been on
vacation when the plague started and never came back.

We told Tony about the apartment several times, and he
would nod and say something like, “Yeah sounds great, sounds perfect,” but he
never took any action.

One morning, while John and Rebecca were playing with
Beth, Scott told Tony, “We really don’t have anything better to do today and
the weather is perfect. Why don’t we get some guys together and help you move
your stuff into 4A?”

Tony tried his usual evasion tactics, “No, no, don’t
worry about it. We still need to get our stuff packed. It’ll take a few days.
Thanks for the offer though.”

“What’s really going on?” Scott asked outright. “I
don’t want to tell you how to raise your kids, but if something happened to you
and they were all alone in that building...”

 “I know, I know, don’t you think I’ve thought
about that? I’ve thought about asking Beth and Kim if the kids could stay with
them for a while, but they’re my kids and they need me.”

“What are you talking about?” Scott asked. “Why don’t
all three of you just move in? Why would they move in with Beth and Kim?”

“Look, it’s complicated, okay?” Tony shook his head.
“Just give me some time.”

“Is it your wife?” I asked.

Tony didn’t answer, but I could see his eyes grow
moist as he looked at the ground. That was enough for me.

“Your wife?” Scott asked. “She’s not...I mean you
know, she isn’t...”

“Yes, she’s like them...a vampire,” Tony said, staring
at the ground.

“Yeah I mean, but she’s not...” I saw where Scott was
going and I shook my head, trying to signal him to stop, but he wasn’t looking
at me. “You don’t keep her in your...”

Tony’s head shot up, his face bright red. “In my
apartment? With my kids? What kind of person do you think I am?”

“I didn’t mean that.” Now Scott’s face was red as
well. “It’s just she is your wife and you’re not moving. I can’t figure out
why,” he said.

“No, of course I don’t keep her there. Maybe if I
didn’t have the kids...” Tony looked at the ground again. “It happened in the
beginning, when it was all just starting. My wife, Sophie, she’s from New York, most of her family lived in Queens.
Her aunt lived in Manhattan
though, just a few blocks away in a rent-controlled apartment. She was old and
lonely and was always calling Sophie and asking her to come over for one reason
or another.”

Tony paused, then went on. “Do you remember when they
first shut down the bridges and tunnels?”

Of course I remembered. I had woken up to the news
that the FBI had received a credible tip that there would be a terrorist attack
on a New York City
bridge or tunnel. Everyone was freaked out, but we believed what we were told.
I assumed the bridges and tunnels would be closed for a day, someone would
catch the terrorists, and everything would go back to normal. I even went to
work that day.

Tony continued, “That night, Aunt Caroline called us
and told Sophie that a crazy woman had bitten her. I was inclined to think Aunt
Caroline had gone a little crazy herself, and I told Sophie so. I got on the
phone with Aunt Caroline and told her to call the police and we could come and
see her in the morning. She started crying and saying that she had already
called the police but they never came over. I was a little surprised, but I
thought it might have something to do with the terrorist threat.

“Then, Sophie got back on the phone and Caroline
begged and pleaded until Sophie promised to come over. I told her it was out of
the question. It was already late and Aunt Caroline could wait until morning,
but Sophie insisted and went over anyway. When she came back she said Aunt
Caroline had actually been bitten, right on the neck. Sophie said she cleaned
up the bite and tried to get Caroline to go to the hospital, but she refused,
saying it would cost too much. She promised to call her doctor in the morning
to set up an appointment. When Sophie came back to the house, she said she had
seen a lot of strange, sickly looking people on the street, coughing and giving
her strange looks. It made her very uncomfortable. She thought something must
be going around.”

I nodded. I remembered those people too. They sounded
like they had bad colds or the flu. They had dark bags under their eyes and
were oddly quiet. The New Yorkers I was used to loved to talk, and talk loudly,
whether to someone at the other end of their cell phones, to their companions,
or to anyone who happened to get in their way.

But the sick people were quiet except for rasping
coughs and the occasional whisper. They spoke as if they had a bad case of
strep throat. Some of them huddled together in the streets whispering. One even
came up to me that first evening the bridges and tunnels were closed. “Excuse
me please,” he asked, barely audible, “can you point me to the nearest
drugstore?” I leaned back as far as I could to avoid being breathed on. I
didn’t want the swine flu or whatever it was he had. If only it had been the
swine flu…

Tony went on, “Sophie told me she had tried calling
the police, but only spoke briefly to an operator who said the police would be
there as soon as possible. They never came. I saw on the news the next day that
a bad case of the flu was going around and everyone was advised to stay
indoors. I felt bad that we hadn’t gotten the kids vaccinated when they offered
it for free at their school the week before. I also started to get suspicious
and wondered if this virus was the reason they had closed the bridges and
tunnels. I thought maybe it was biological warfare or something. I stayed home
with the kids while Sophie went to see Aunt Caroline. She came back in a couple
of hours, visibly shaken. She said Aunt Caroline was so lethargic she didn’t
even come to the door. Sophie had to use her own key to get in.

“Sophie said Aunt Caroline lay in bed with her
curtains closed, moaning. She could barely speak, but managed to beg Sophie for
some pain-killers. Sophie went to Duane Reade, but they were sold out of every
kind of cold remedy and pain-killer. Sophie bought some soup instead, but Aunt
Caroline only sipped it and spit it out. As Sophie tried to wipe the soup from
Aunt Caroline’s face, Aunt Caroline suddenly grabbed Sophie’s arm and bit her
on the wrist. Sophie was so shocked that she hit Aunt Caroline in the face and
the old woman backed off. Sophie dialed 911 to ask for an ambulance for Aunt Caroline,
but no one even answered. She was terrified and didn’t know what to do so she
ran all the way home.

“I told Sophie she was not going out again. People
were sick and it was obvious that something serious was going on if we couldn’t
even call the police or the hospital any more. She cried, but I told her to
think about the kids, so she cleaned up her bite and went to lie down. That
evening, she started coughing and complaining about a sore throat. We had some
lozenges in the apartment and that seemed to help for a while. She coughed all
night, and the next morning she could barely get out of bed. I told her to stay
put and I would make her breakfast and take care of Rebecca and John. She
seemed happy enough as long as I kept giving her throat lozenges.

“She held out for that first night, but by the next
day, we were starting to figure out something was really wrong. I wanted to
leave, but the bridges and tunnels were still closed. I heard rumors from one
of my neighbors whose son worked security at City Hall that some special
people, like the mayor and some of the VIPs were able to leave, but they had to
take a blood test. I knew it had to do with the virus that was going around,
and I knew in my gut that Sophie had it. Even if they had let me and my kids
leave, I couldn’t leave Sophie alone.

“The night after she got bitten, I woke up and saw
Sophie sitting up in bed, staring at me. Her eyes were awful, yellow, I thought
she was jaundiced or something. The worst part was the way she was looking at
me, like she was some kind of animal. ‘Tony,’ she whispered…Jesus, I can still
hear that awful whisper. ‘Tony, you have to kill me.’ I sat straight up, ‘Honey
you’re delirious, you’re so sick. Let me get you something,’ I said. ‘No,’ she
said, and then she hissed at me, I swear to God. ‘Maybe I am delirious, but I’m
dangerous. You have to kill me or I’m going to hurt you and the kids.’ I told
her I knew she would never do that, but I was scared.

“What scared me most was the way she said those
things, with no emotion. She just stared at me without blinking with those
yellow eyes. ‘I’m telling you now Tony, I want blood, I want
your
blood.
Soon I’m not going to care whose blood. Kill me now.’ I was scared, I was
crying. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t kill her. So I took some rope we
used for camping and tied her to the bed. She just stared at me. She didn’t
fight at all until just before I tied up her right hand. I was just about to
tie it when she suddenly snatched her hand away, scratching my arm. She got a little
of my blood on her fingernail. She looked at it as if it fascinated her, then
she licked it. I took her hand back and she didn’t fight any more, but she
couldn’t take her eyes off the scratch on my arm.