As Emily’s eyes roamed the buildings, she saw a flurry of motion in the street. A group of about twenty people had gathered outside the convenience store. At this distance, there was no way she could hear what the group was saying, but their body language was unmistakable; they were pissed. Fingers were being pointed, fists clenched and people were being pushed. Most of the anger seemed to be directed at a single man, he stood in the doorway of the store, his hands raised to the side of his head, palms out, as though trying to tell the angry crowd to stay back. The crowd, which seemed one wrong word away from being reclassified to mob status by Emily, apparently wasn’t having any of it.
Emily thought she saw a fist connect with the man in the doorway’s face and then he disappeared in a mass of flailing arms and bodies as the crowd pushed their way forward, surging through the narrow doorway and into the little store. Seconds later, she watched as people began running from the store, their hands full of the shop’s stock. She watched a man trip and fall, the cans and bottles of water he carried spilling from his hands, as he sprawled into the road, narrowly avoiding a speeding SUV as it barely managed to swerve around him. The vehicle didn’t even try to brake, Emily noted. By the time the man raised himself to his feet and dusted himself off, others had already grabbed everything he’d stolen. He stood dazed in the middle of the road for a moment, then took off running up the street, quickly disappearing from Emily’s view.
Emily had seen plenty of disturbing incidents during her time at the paper, but there was something uniquely upsetting about the scene she had just watched play out beneath her window. She felt… impotent. It was like watching someone she loved dearly succumb to madness, and there was no one and nothing that could help.
The sound of someone knocking at her apartment door dragged Emily from her thoughts. She wasn’t expecting company so it could only be Konkoly and Frank. They must have changed their minds and decided to take her up on her offer to stay with her. But if that was true why hadn’t they called ahead to let her know they were on their way?
“Coming,” she called and walked to the front door.
The owner of the building was big on security, so every apartment was equipped with a peephole that gave the occupant a fish-eye view of the corridor directly outside. When Emily placed her eye to the viewer it wasn’t her colleagues from the paper, instead she saw a police officer standing outside her door.
Emily unlatched the security chain and opened the front door. The cop was a good six-two, with sandy brown hair cut so short most of it was concealed beneath his cap. A nametag over the left breast pocket of the cop’s uniform jacket read MEADOWS.
“Nathan? Thank God you’re here,” she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek. “Have you heard what’s going on? Do you know anything?”
The cop didn’t answer; instead, he pushed past Emily into the apartment entrance then turned to face her.
“Shut the door, “ he said brusquely, his usually calm voice laced with an edge of panic she had never heard before.
“Jesus, Nathan. Not even a hello?” she replied, allowing anger to creep into her voice, more to cover her own uneasiness than because she was truly annoyed at him.
“I’m sorry, Em.” he said and leaned in to kiss her firmly on the mouth. When he finally released her, she took a single step back and stared up into the face of her boyfriend.
“I thought you were on duty today?”
“I’m supposed to be,” he answered as he walked towards the kitchen, “but Em, it’s crazy out there. I couldn’t even get within ten-miles of the precinct. Everyone’s leaving Manhattan and heading out of the city. The roads are jammed, people are going crazy.” He stepped around the counter to the sink, took a glass from the cupboard and filled it from the faucet.
“I tried calling the Captain,” he continued, as he sipped at the water, “but the lines are all busy. I thought I’d check on you and hold-up here for a couple of hours until the roads clear, and then I’d head in.”
They took a few minutes to talk about what they knew. Nathan had seen the same newscast as Emily and had no more information than she had.
“How bad do you think it will be?” Emily asked eventually, trying to keep her voice from betraying the panic she could feel in the pit of her stomach.
“Honestly, I don’t know, Em. But shit, did you see the red rain? I was on my way out the door when it came and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. You’re the reporter, how do you explain that?”
She couldn’t, of course. She’d seen the same phenomenon and had no idea how the rain had fallen from a clear sky. “I can’t,” she finally said, and moved around the counter to join him. “All I know is that I’m glad you’re here.” She reached out and took hold of the lapels of his jacket, pulled him to her and kissed him again.
As she released him, Emily felt something wet beneath her fingers. She glanced down at her hand and gasped, feeling the world shrink until the only thing that existed were the tips of her fingers… and the dapple of red covering them.
“Oh!” she said in disbelief, and, as realization of what she was looking at sank in, added a sharp: “Shit!” She turned and ran to the kitchen, throwing open the cabinet beneath the sink, she grabbed the bottle of Clorox bleach.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” she whispered through panic stretched lips. She rammed the plug into the drain then emptied the entire liter container of bleach into the sink, tossed the empty bottle onto the counter and plunged her hands into the bleach. She counted the seconds off in her head: one-one-thousand… two-one-thousand… three-one-thousand…
Only after she was sure her hands had been submerged for at least thirty seconds did she pull them out, just long enough to grab a scouring pad from the counter and begin rubbing furiously at the remaining red stains on her hands.
This cannot be happening, she thought. After all the precautions, after managing to avoid contact with that fucking rain all day and everyone who might have come into contact with it, she’d been tripped up by something as simple as wanting to kiss her boyfriend?
How fucking fair was that?
Emily began to sob quietly to herself as the full weight of the day finally broke through the crack of her consciousness, delivering an emotional sledgehammer blow against her chest.
“Jesus, Em. Are you okay?” Nathan was at her side, a hand resting gently on her shoulder.
She spun around and knocked his hand away. “Why didn’t you tell me you had that shit on you?” she yelled, spittle flying from her lips. Nathan flinched and took a step back. While they’d had their arguments since being together, he’d never seen her as upset or as angry as she felt now. “You should have told me, goddamn it. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I… I’m sorry, Em,” he stuttered. “I didn’t even think…”
Emily looked up at Nathan’s horrified face, his concern for her was so obvious and his reaction to her fear so like him. It was a big reason why she loved him.
They had met just over two years earlier at the scene of a multiple car pileup. The accident claimed the lives of a young family of three along with two other drivers. The guy that had caused the crash—smashed out of his gourd, of course—had walked away with just a couple of scratches.
“How romantic is that!” she would usually tell people who asked how two seemingly polar opposites had got together. But the truth was, Nathan was the only cop Emily had met in all her years on the job who was still moved by the arbitrary nature of destruction, loss of innocent life and the pain he witnessed on a daily basis. Unlike other cops, Officer Nathan Meadows still knew how to feel, he retained a human heart, and he wasn’t afraid to allow it to show. And in the often-dark world both she and Nathan inhabited, well, that was a trait she found very attractive.