Lexicon

figure approaching from the side of the hospital, carrying a cleaver. Harry recognized the someone as an orderly. And the cleaver was not actually a cleaver; it just looked like it. It was a bone saw. “Jack?” Harry said, wondering how, exactly, he was supposed to tell the difference between a person carrying a bone saw for self-defense and one who wanted to saw him open with it, and the orderly broke into a run at him, which answered the question. Harry contemplated running but instead opted for waiting for the orderly to get close enough to punch in the face and disarm. This was an option because the orderly was a thin teenager who played a lot of video games, while Harry was not. He looked at the bone saw. But he couldn’t fathom a use for it, and the orderly started to get up, so Harry punched him in the jaw hard enough to keep him down. Then he did run, because more people were emerging from the hospital’s rear, nurses with whom Harry had frequently shared coffee, and, in one case, a bed, and he did not want to face them.
    When he returned to the traffic bridge, Emily had vanished. He turned in a circle, cursing. He didn’t know what to do. Ahead, the street looked clear. To the left, a small group wandered in his direction, one limping. To the right, not far, a woman lay motionless in the gutter. In the streetlights, her hair looked yellow. She was the only thing in this landscape he could understand, so he went to her. He knelt and checked her vitals. Beth McCartney, the town librarian. Her hair was sticky with dark fluid. His fingers found a depression in her skull about the size of a tennis ball. He sat back on his haunches and exhaled.
    The group approached him. He recognized the local math teacher, his two daughters, and a woman who ran a little grocery store. Two teenage boys supported the limper, who was a broad-shouldered guy Harry knew as Derek Knochhouse. Harry had pumped Derek’s stomach twice in the past six months. Both times, he had looked better than this. He could tell without touching him that Derek had a shattered pelvis.
    “Thank Christ,” said the schoolteacher. “Harry, you have to help us.”
    “What’s happening?” said the grocery store owner. She was clutching her necklace, a crucifix. “Oh God, is that Beth?”
    “We have to get Derek to the hospital.”
    “Car came out of fucking nowhere,” said one of the teenage males. “Fucking
took aim
. Then it reversed over him.”
    “
Hnk
,” said Derek.
    “We’ve gotta get him to the hospital, Harry.”
    “You can’t take him to the hospital,” he said. “It’s not safe.”
    “Then where? What should we do?” One of the schoolteacher’s daughters tried to push Derek’s hair out of his eyes. Derek coughed and spat meatily.
    “Find a place you can lay him still and barricade yourself in until this is over.”
    “Until
what
is over?” said the girl. He could see she was looking for a reason to give in to complete hysteria, and this could be it. “Until
what
?”
    “He plays footy,” said one of Derek’s friends. Harry didn’t know what possible reason the kid had for volunteering this, then realized he was saying it was a tragedy. Derek played football and now would probably never be the same again. It was the worst thing the kid could imagine.
    “He’s got internal bleeding, I think,” said the math teacher. “What do you think, Harry?”
    “Is that
Beth
?”
    “Yes,” Harry said. “She’s dead, and I’m sorry, Derek, but nobody can go near the hospital. They’re killing people.”
    They began to argue with him. He looked for Emily. He was becoming increasingly nervous about where she was.
    “Police!” said the girl. She broke from the group and ran down the road, waving her arms, the sleeves of her dress flapping. A cop car was sailing toward them, its lights dark, covered in dents. “Over here! Help!”
    Harry called out to her and there was a hard, flat sound and the girl folded up and lay on the road. The cruiser continued toward them.
    “What?” said the kid.
    “Go,” Harry said. “Move. Run.”
    The girl’s father, the schoolteacher, stared at her with his lips apart. In the streetlight, tiny visible hairs all over his face stood on end. Harry had seen this reaction once before, when a fellow paramedic helped him peel open a wrecked car to find her husband inside. He’d had to wrap her in a space blanket, because she froze. She literally froze. Like she’d fallen into ice. It