8/7

8/7

by

G. L. Payne

The elevator floor was hard under Emmaline’s ass and her tailbone ached from hours of sitting. Every so often, just to stretch her legs, she’d stand and move about the small box as much as she could, which wasn’t a lot. The space was made more confined by the presence of Cody, her companion from the previous evening, sprawled on the floor. Except for the weak green glow of the buttons denoting which floor the elevator was stopped at—presently showing the bottom half of an 8 and the top half of the 7 below it—there was no light at all, making Cody a stumbling hazard in the near-total darkness. He’d spent hours complaining of feeling sick after the elevator had stalled and, now that he was mostly silent, Emmaline wasn’t sure whether to be worried or relieved.

The elevator most likely wasn’t the problem but power to the entire building was probably out, though why the emergency lights hadn’t kicked on was a mystery all on its own. The car had been stopped at least nine hours and counting. Emmaline and Cody had wasted their phone charges using the flashlights and playing games like a couple of foolish kids. Now they had no way to measure time and didn’t know if minutes or hours had gone past. Despite the hysteria around them when they’d entered the elevator, the hallways beyond the steel doors had been quiet now for some time.

The chaos and calamity they’d witnessed on the streets outside Emmeline’s building from the balcony of her apartment on the 14th floor were intense but for some reason, they’d still expected a quick rescue. Cell service had gone down about the same time the blackout began so they were unable to call for help but people were all over the streets and in the hallways of the building, running every which way. Someone had to know the elevator was stalled. Sooner or later, the doors would open and they’d be released from their small prison. Emmaline only hoped it would be sooner. She didn’t know about Cody but her bladder was beginning to squeak.

“Emmaline?” Cody’s voice sounded from the darkness.

She stared hard at the faint green glow of the floor numbers, willing them to move. Of course, nothing happened.

Cody sounded weak. In the dim glow of the light from the number bar, his shape there on the floor was like a shadow cast without a host. Emmaline had thought it was just his nerves when he’d started bitching about feeling bad even before the lights of their phones faded. Last night was to have been their first date: a getting-acquainted sort of evening. It wasn’t the most auspicious of beginnings. Stumbling conversation and uncomfortable silences had been bad enough but when the sirens and screaming started outside, the floor kind of dropped out under the whole affair.

“Emmaline?” Cody repeated, his tone urgent.

“What?” she snapped, more irritable than she’d intended.

“Just making sure you were still there,” Cody said.

“I’m here,” she sighed. Where the hell else would I be?

“Just making sure,” he said. He sounded sad and weak.

Emmaline felt bad. Cody seemed a decent enough guy. They’d met at Clancy’s a few nights back. The pub was small and not too popular. Subsequently, it was never crowded. An unexpected downpour was the catalyst that filled the establishment and Emmaline had dashed in along with a soaking mob to escape the rain. She had quite literally run into Cody in the crowded windbreak where he and several others were sheltering from the storm. A dozen or more bodies were crammed into that small space that was hardly any bigger than the elevator where they were now trapped. Clancy’s windbreak contained more people than there were patrons lined up at the bar, crowded together back to back and side by side. The wet clothes combined with body sweat to make the whole circus smell like a week-old, fetid sock.

Emmaline and Cody, virtually cheek to cheek amid the mob, talked for a bit and when he’d shyly wound his way around to asking her out, Emmaline felt more afraid of hurting him than interested. But she’d agreed and, now, here they were.

“Emmaline?” he moaned more urgently, sounding vaguely delirious.

“I’m HERE, Cody,” she said, annoyed.

Yeah, definitely not the most auspicious of beginnings.

Their first date, filled with uncomfortable small talk, started awkwardly enough, though it took the sirens in the streets to clue them in that something was really wrong. News outlets had been chattering all day with reports of violent attacks and random murders all up and down the Eastern Seaboard. That was a thousand miles away on the other side of the continent so neither of them had bothered much about it. When the screams of emergency vehicles, followed by muffled explosions and, not much later, scattered gunshots arose with such a clatter in the streets outside Emmaline’s building, they both regretted their lack of interest in current affairs.

The commotion arrived almost unnoticed at first, a rising tide of sound. Seated on Emmaline’s sofa, trying to chat but both wrapped in a numbing web of self-conscious discomfort, they had barely been aware of the disturbances. When an explosion somewhere to the east of the apartment building rattled the windows enough to make the curtains flutter, well, that finally gave them something they could talk about.

Stepping through the sliding glass doors onto the balcony had revealed a wonderland of chaos. The late evening sun was settling toward the Pacific and the flat skyline of Los Angeles was a garden of smoke plumes. Scattered fires stretched to the horizon and a soundtrack of squealing tires, hard-pulling car engines and screaming sirens filled the air. Amid the cacophony were the shrieks and screams of men, women and children in pain and fear echoing through the streets. Below, any number of people were running, seemingly without sense or direction. Behind them followed a mob of other figures, staggering along in a drunken wall of humanity, evidently pursuing the people ahead of them.

“What the hell is this shit?” Cody had asked. Emmaline had no answer. She watched fearfully as one of the running people strayed too near one of the awkward, slow-moving figures. Arms reached out and caught the man as he tried to pass and both fell to the ground where one of them—Emmaline couldn’t tell which—began a horrible screaming.

“I think the whole world has gone crazy,” Emmaline whispered.

They were startled by a hard pounding on Emmaline’s apartment door. It was an urgent banging followed by a muffled voice.

Get out. Run before it’s too late.

It was just late enough in the evening that lights had started flickering on around the city but now, entire sections of the cityscape went dark as the power failed, leaving the strobing red of emergency vehicles and the yellow glow of scattered fires the only light to be seen in those areas. It was the pop of gunfire from all directions on top of it all that convinced both Emmaline and Cody that perhaps the voice in the hallway had been right: they should run before it was too late.

They made it as far as the elevator.

Cody squalled again, this time loud enough his voice echoed off the elevator walls.

“I’m dying,” he shouted. “I’M DYYYIIIINNNNG!”

Emmaline was trapped between fear and anger. Why couldn’t this guy get his shit together? He wasn’t claustrophobic—she knew that. It was one of the topics they’d discussed after the elevator had first stopped.

“Cody, c’mon, man,” she said. “It’s bad enough being stuck in here but your screaming isn’t making things any better.”

“Emmaline?” He spoke as if he had forgotten she was there and was startled to remember it. “I . . . I’m dying,” he whispered. He sounded resigned.

“We’re going to be fine,” she told him. Honestly, at this point, she couldn’t wait to get away from him.

“Please, hold my hand. I’m scared.”

“Jesus,” she sighed. “Fine.”

She settled next to him, shocked to feel the heat radiating off his body. Whatever was wrong, it was causing him to have one hell of a fever. For all she knew, maybe he was dying.

Cody grasped her hand tightly enough that it made her fingers ache. She wriggled loose and then, feeling a pang of guilt, took his hand and lightly entwined her fingers with his.

“Like this,” she said.

Whatever was making him sick, she could only pray it wasn’t contagious. He’d seemed fine in the apartment. The sickness, which she’d thought was all in his head at first, hadn’t started until they had been in the elevator for hours. The only thing they’d done in the meanwhile was run from the apartment down the hallway to enter the elevator. They’d had to thread a huge mob of people thundering up and down the hallway, some screaming, others issuing a horrible moaning wail. One of them had knocked Cody down and, clutching Emmeline’s hand, he’d nearly pulled her down on top of him. Somehow, they’d scrambled to their feet and made it to the elevator just as the doors were closing. Insanely, some of the people tried to chase them into the car but the doors closed just in time.

Emmaline felt Cody’s hand squeeze hers and he issued a soft groan. He really was very sick, she realized. She listened to the heavy, harsh sound of his breathing, a regular but gasping respiration, as though he was having trouble getting enough air. And, Jesus, his fever was intense. Laying there next to him was like being next to an open oven.

Exhausted by the insane series of events and with no stimulation except the sound of Cody’s breathing, shortly, Emmaline closed her eyes.

The Emergency Lights came on. The elevator car jolted as if trying to move and froze again.

Emmaline dragged herself awake, surprised she’d manage to fall asleep. She had no idea how long it might have been.

Looking over to Cody, she said, “Hey, we’ve got some lights now.”

It wasn’t much. The Emergency Lights were a dull yellow color that made Cody’s face look pale and drawn. He didn’t move when Emmaline spoke and she pulled herself into an upright seated position next to him, trying to extract her fingers from his hand.

His cold hand.

His fever broke, she thought, desperately trying to reason why his body was so cold. Why she couldn’t untangle her fingers from his stiff grasp.

He’s all right. He’s not . . . He can’t be . . .

Dead, she realized. Cody had died while she was sleeping next to him. But that made no sense. How could any illness move so quickly? He’d been fine, just hours ago. He wasn’t sick. He wasn’t hurt.

So how?

She reached down to pry his fingers loose from hers and managed to roll back the sleeve of his shirt. On his wrist, she saw an injury. He hadn’t mentioned it and she hadn’t seen it in the dark but she was certain he hadn’t had it back at the apartment because he’d bled enough the whole sleeve of his shirt was crusted. Whatever it was, it had to have happened in the hallway as they ran for the elevator.

When we ran through that crowd of people.

It was a ragged tear in the skin that looked for all the world as though someone had bitten him.

Emmaline shook loose from him and stood, moving as far from his body as she could in the confined space. Through the doors, she heard a muffled chaos of moans from people in the hallway outside the elevator.

What the hell is happening? she wondered.

Then Cody opened his eyes and started to rise.