Read Online Apocalypse Atlanta by David Rogers - Free Book Online Page A

have dealt with.  She wilted under his stare almost immediately, and pushed back from the desk.
    He watched her scurry away from the window and disappear around a corner, and looked down at a sharp pain to see he was gripping the plastic coated ID card hard enough for its edges to start biting into his hand.  Forcibly, he relaxed his grip, but he didn’t put the ID away, in case he needed it again.
    He waited almost a minute, and was considering if yelling might speed things up, when the door on the wall to his right opened, and a tall woman in a doctor’s coat came out.  She looked around, and came over to him as he turned.
    “Mr. Gibson?”
    “Yes.” Peter answered.  “Where’s my wife.”
    “I’m Doctor Lambert.” the woman said.  “Come with me please.”  She turned back to the door and pulled it open.  Peter followed, catching the door on his shoulder as he did so.  She led him down a hallway bordered by offices, most of which looked to be dedicated to admitting clerks, then turned the first corner.  She stopped at a doorway and gestured for him to enter.  Peter looked, and saw only another office, and stopped in the hallway next to her.
    “Where’s my wife?” he asked again.  Amy was not in the room the doctor wanted him to go into.
    “Mr. Gibson, I need to talk to you about her, and it might be best if we did that in here.”
    Peter resisted, again, the urge to shout, and made no move to enter the office as she’d requested.  He felt a cold feeling spreading through his body, but marshaled his willpower to gaze back at her calmly.  He felt like screaming, like yelling.  Or throwing things, that was always a good release.  But he didn’t do any of that.  He just stood there facing her.
    “Tell me Doctor, what’s wrong.” he asked, his voice as calm as he’d made his face.  It was simply the only thing he could think of to avoid delaying things further.  He knew that civilians would not respond well if he went into a full on shouting fit.  Hell, towards the end of his last tour some of the younger Marines hadn’t responded like they should have.  What was the world coming to?
    The doctor’s face contorted with something, an expression he recognized after a moment as a mixture of embarrassment and sympathy.  He began to brace himself.  “Mr. Gibson, we don’t know what’s wrong with your wife.”
    “Is she dead?” Peter asked, his voice still even only with the most intense of effort.
    “That’s . . . we don’t know.”
    Peter blinked, then his eyes narrowed.  “How can you not know?” he asked sharply.  “Is she alive?”
    Lambert was looking increasingly uncomfortable.  “We don’t know.”
    Peter opened his mouth, closed it, then closed his eyes and drew a deep breath.  Exhaling very slowly, he opened his eyes and looked at the woman, who was still watching him awkwardly, sympathetically, and with no small measure of embarrassment.  “Doctor, I’m just barely holding it together here.  My wife is either dead, or she’s alive.  So can we stop . . . whatever’s happening here, and you just tell me what her status is.”
    “Mr. Gibson.” The doctor said in a strained voice.  “I assure you, I am not playing games, and I am not trying to make this any harder than it already is.  But we honestly don’t know what’s wrong with your wife.”
    “Explain.” Peter said, only just barely keeping from snapping the word at her like an order.
    She thrust her hands into her coat pockets, and sighed.  “The paramedics couldn’t find a pulse, and couldn’t hear a heartbeat, or breath sounds when they were transporting her.  But they reported she was still moving.  When we admitted her, we confirmed what they’d told us before arrival.
    “I thought they were just poorly trained, rookies or something.  Or that they were missing something, or maybe in too much of a hurry.  But I’ve had a number of medical personnel check your wife after I did,