Read Online Blood Red by Jason Bovberg - Free Book Online

emergency response except yours
truly. This fire is going to take out half of downtown. There’s
about a thousand vehicles crashed within the few square miles I
know about, and most of the goddamn people in this town appear to
be dead— dead! —right in their goddamn beds. If they’re not
dead in their cars, that is.” He gestures toward the airliner. “I
picked up some chatter on the CB, and a guy on Mulberry way out
near the interstate said he was seeing explosions like this in
every direction, especially down Denver way. Airplanes falling from
the sky.”
    “I saw one,” Rachel blurts out. “A passenger
plane, to the north. It just broke up and fell.”
    He glares at her, dry-swallowing
involuntarily, then looks back at the devastation in front of
them.
    “It’s some kind of attack, I’m sure of it.”
This comes from the thin, shirtless young man behind the policeman.
He has to practically yell under the crackling whoosh of the
flames. “I was out running before dawn, and way ahead of me I
watched two cars swerve and crash into the curb. I mean, one
minute, they were just people on their way to work, and the next,
it was like they both fell asleep at the same time, right in their
seats.”
    “Everything happened at once?” comes another
voice, panicked, high-pitched.
    The young man is nodding, his eyes darting
around.
    This revelation jibes with what Rachel has
seen so far. At some point before dawn, something happened to this
town. Possibly more than this town. People just turned off. No
pulse, no respiration, nothing. For all intents and purposes,
dead—simultaneously. It was some kind of cataclysmic event,
culminating with that red … presence … beneath the skin.
    “But what kind of attack?” Rachel yells into
the maelstrom of flames and booming clatter. Her first thought, she
remembers, had been terrorism.
    “I ... I don’t know. Biological?” the young
man says.
    “You’ve seen what’s happening to all the
people, right?” She asks this of the loose group around her.
“You’ve seen the bodies? You’ve seen what’s happening under the
skin?”
    There are a few nods.
    “I saw it,” says one of the bleary-eyed kids
at the cruiser, a middle-school kid with a mop of brown hair.
    “Wait, what?” the cop says. “What are you
talking about?”
    “Red,” says a woman off to the left, a
grimace of painful memory slashed across her mouth. “Red light
coming from…from inside them, inside their bodies.”
    The cop looks confused and flustered.
“ What?! ” He shakes his head. “I don’t even know how to begin
to deal with that right now. Jesus Christ. All I know is I
got this fucking plane burning a hole in the city. I need to deal
with that right now . ”
    One woman calls out, “Where’s the fire
department?!” and then moans raggedly when the answer is reflected
in the small crowd’s silence. During the silence, minor heat
explosions continue to burst from a dozen buildings beyond the
crashed jet. The woman’s outburst causes a couple of women in the
near distance to begin crying, and at the sound, Rachel’s own tear
ducts well up. Others are reacting with silent dismay. A crushing
hopelessness settles over them. Rachel can feel the collective need
for some sense of control, and fortunately the cop senses it
too.
    “Okay, the closest firehouse is on Remington
by the library,” calls the cop. “I need volunteers!” Most of the
group surges toward him at the suggestion. “Let’s go there and get
a truck. I won’t know what the fuck I’m doing, but I can give it a
shot. Let’s go!”
    Rachel feels the same urge to help, to do
something, to be a part of recovery. But Alan and Sarah are waiting
for her in the car. She needs to get the little girl to the
hospital. Rachel can handle a young child and an old man. She
thinks she can. What she can’t handle is a city in ruin.
    She finds herself backing away from these
suddenly scrambling people. They’re crowding around the