Maybe what she needed was a drink.
An idea came to her. "Hospital," she said aloud, fumbling with the telephone dial for the emergency number.
It rang seventeen times.
She hung up. "It's got them, too," she whispered, suddenly afraid.
The police? She thought over the possibility, then dismissed it. What would the police do, give her a breathalizer test while the world fell apart?
Outside her apartment door a long, protracted banging seemed to be moving toward her entranceway. Staggering wildly, she made it to the door and flung it wide, just in time to see her upstairs neighbor, the lady with the cats, rolling end over end down the last steps in the stairway and come to rest at a crazy angle on her doormat.
"What's going on?" she screamed.
An old man, the cat lady's husband, crawled on all fours to the top of the stairway. "Sara?" he called sleepily. His face was ghostly white.
"She's down here," Ann Adams shrieked. "She fell down the stairs. I think she's dead."
The old man raised his head. "Honey," he managed slowly, "you got any coffee?"
Ann Adams slammed the door. It was a national emergency. She would have to find the number. By the phone. Call the number. But first stop the room from spinning. So tired.
So dead tired. Maybe a small cup of coffee to perk up.
"Perk up, get it?" she tittered as she chugged down the rest of the pot.
She was feeling better. Somewhere, out there beyond the confines of her apartment, a national emergency was going on. But that was outside. Inside, the world was growing rosy and warm and sleepy. Just another pot of coffee for the road, and she'd go to bed.
As she brewed the pot she saw, through her kitchen window, the body of a man hurtling slowly— oh, so slowly, as slowly as her breathing, an eternity for each graceful turn of the man's falling form— off the roof to the sidewalk below. He landed with a soft, gushy splat.
"One tee many martoonis," she teased, shaking her finger at the inert form eight stories below.
As she polished off the second pot, fire and ambulance sirens wailed all over the city. "National emergency," she said stolidly.
She had to do it. There was a dead woman right on her doormat, and another body on the sidewalk in front of her building, and it was her duty to call, even though the prospect of dialing the phone did look like an insurmountable task.
With a long yawn, she unfolded the piece of yellowed paper, studied the numbers until they came vaguely into focus, and dialed.
"Please identify yourself," a metallic computer voice on the other end said.
"Ngggh."
"Please identify yourself," the machine repeated.
"Adams," she growled, realizing that she sounded like a recent stroke victim, but unable to do anything about it. "Awful Annie Adams, they call me at the bank."
There was a whirr of machinery on the line and then a human voice spoke. It sounded lemony and sour. "Proceed, Miss Adams."
"I need a cup of coffee."
"Would you repeat that, please?"
"What?"
"What you said. I didn't understand you."
"What'd I say?"
The voice faltered. "Miss Adams, are you intoxicated?" It sounded angry.
"No!" she shouted. "Nash'nul 'mergency. But then..." She trailed off.
"Miss Adams?"
"Mush be," she said. She sounded tiny and faraway to her own ears. "Mush be one tee many martoo..."
The phone dropped out of her hand.
"Miss Adams?" the voice called. "Miss Adams?"
But Ann Adams didn't hear, because at that moment she had passed out of consciousness and slipped quietly into death.
Along with Leith and Drexel Blake, Harriet Holmes, and 2,931 other people in the United States. And the epidemic was just beginning.
?Chapter Two
His name was Remo and he was racing a truck. On foot.
And winning.
The truck was a pickle truck, and the toll collectors at the George Washington Bridge passed glances at one another as the six-foot-tall blur whizzed past them down the inside inbound lane into New York City.
"For a second, I thought it was a guy," one of the toll booth operators said to his companion in the next lane.
"Yeah, me too. Must be the light."
The first operator looked at the twilit sky and nodded uncertainly. "Must be."
"This work can get to you," the second operator said, and they both laughed, because the blur had been barreling along at sixty miles an hour through the toll gate, and had actually sped up once the pickle truck behind it moved through its gears. And now the blur was in front of the truck, seeming to turn into a ball. The ball was rising off the ground and rolling over the truck's cab and onto its canvas roof and over the length of it and disappearing down the back, tucking neatly inside the back end of the pickup.
Remo came out of the spin near the end of the bridge, landing on both feet. He'd almost blown it when he caught a glimpse of the driver's face as Remo rolled with the wind up onto the hood of the cab. The driver's mouth had opened and he had begun to yell something to his partner in the cab, and then Remo had halted the momentum of his spin to stick his head inside the driver's window.
The passenger, a lanky fellow whose features had turned gray instantaneously, screamed. The driver only stared, his eyes glassy and his lips forming a rubbery "o" at the apparition on the hood of his truck.
Horns honked. Several cars skidded out of the way as the pickle truck veered into the center lanes. Remo reached in and grabbed the steering wheel.
"Who— who are you?" the driver stammered.
"I'm your conscience," Remo said. "What's in the back of the truck?"
The driver took a deep breath and scowled. "Pickles."
"Funny. I didn't know they made pickles at the nuclear reactor in Jersey."
"They're special pickles," the driver said belligerently.
The passenger leaned past the driver to get a better look at Remo, who was hanging onto the window by one hand, his legs stretched out along the side of the vehicle. "Say, how's he doing that?" he whispered to the driver.
"Shaddup," the driver said, poking him. He turned mockingly to Remo. "He ain't real. He said so himself."
"Whatever you say, pal," Remo said, smiling.
The driver's face became menacing. "Oh, yeah? Well, what I say is, you better get off my truck before I drive up next to that semi." He jutted his chin in the direction of a sixteen-wheeler in the left lane ahead. He speeded up with a crash of gears until the pickle truck rolled beside the semi.
"Now get off, or I'm going to move in closer," the driver snarled.
"Like this?" Remo yanked the wheel. The pickle truck careened toward the sixteen-wheeler. A deep foghorn boomed from the semi, but it was drowned out by the screams of the men inside the pickle truck.
"We're dead, Sam!" the passenger screeched.
"Shut your face." The driver struggled to get the wheel away from Remo. He pummeled Remo's thick wrists with both fists until he felt as if every bone in his hands was broken. Remo's grip never wavered.
"You know what's back there," the passenger cried, sweat beading on his forehead. "We're gonna blow!" He closed his eyes and waited for doom.
Then, in an instant, Remo was gone. The driver swerved his vehicle to narrowly miss a collision with the semi.
"Where'd he go?"
The driver loosened his collar and coughed weakly.
"Let's turn back, Sam. I don't like this."
"Shaddup," the driver said.
"But—"
"Look, it's already dark out. It'll be okay. Besides, the sooner we get rid of this shit, the better."