Free Blood Red by Jason Bovberg Page A

Jenny from her history class at Front
Range Community College, a class she shares with both her and Tony.
Rachel feels a kind of elation recognizing her. She’s known Jenny
in passing since grade school, but now she seems like the closest
friend she’s ever had in her life. Her heart swells with
emotion.
    “Jenny!” she says, feeling a grateful smile
come to her lips. Jenny seems to share the elation, and her
expression melts into tears upon seeing Rachel. They move to each
other around the seats of the waiting room and embrace, holding
tightly to each other.
    The simple fact of finding someone she knows,
even slightly, grounds Rachel in the real. It has the effect of
bringing immense calm to her nerves but also reinforcing the fact
that she’s not imagining anything. She finds herself clutching
Jenny tightly, welcoming that sense of calm even as new tears begin
flowing from her eyes. Soon, both young women are sobbing, and they
fumble down into seats and hold each other.
    “Are you okay?” Jenny asks, finally pushing
away. “Are you with the little girl?”
    Rachel nods. “I was. She died on the way
here.”
    Jenny’s hands fly to her mouth, and behind
her glasses, her eyes fill with grief. “Oh my god. Is she your
sister?”
    “No, no, a neighbor, but…terrible.”
    Jenny appears confused. “But I thought…I
mean, I haven’t talked to my parents, they’re in Boston, and there
are no goddamn phones working, but people here thought whatever
happened, it happened all at once. Like, in the night.”
    “This was different.” She nods toward the
woman in the wheelchair, now being pushed, dazed, into the
corridor. “Like her.”
    Jenny follows Rachel’s gesture. “What do you
mean?”
    Rachel tells her what she believes to be
Sarah’s tragic story, of a little girl wanting desperately for her
parents to wake up, even as her proximity to them was killing her.
Tells her what happened with Susanna this morning, when Rachel
first encountered the red glow. She shows her the scaly skin of her
own palm.
    Jenny listens with a horrified look on her
face, her head reared back. Still, there’s a dark curiosity in her
expression, too. “So that’s what’s happening,” she murmurs.
    “Tony’s dead,” Rachel says flatly.
    At this news, Jenny appears merely numb. “You
found him?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Oh, Rachel, I’m sorry. I know you two—”
    “It’s okay. Thanks.” Rachel reaches up to
touch Jenny’s eyewear. “I almost didn’t recognize you with your
glasses.”
    “Oh, right…not much time for contacts this
morning.” Her eyes go watery again. “I brought my sisters—” She
can’t go any further, her voice wobbling up several octaves, and
she falls into Rachel’s embrace again.
    Over her friend’s shoulder, Rachel watches
with a kind of detached curiosity as two more people enter the
emergency room’s main double doors. They don’t seem to be
communicating anything, and no one jumps to their aid. They have to
search around to find someone to offer help. Rachel was hoping to
find some sense of control here. Someone in charge.
    Rachel sees that Alan is now against the
north wall, still holding Sarah, and talking quietly with an
elderly woman who is examining Sarah’s face. She’s moving the
little girl’s hair aside to assess the damage. When Jenny lifts her
head from her shoulder, Rachel gently extricates herself from the
embrace and stands.
    “I need to—”
    “Have you talked to them yet?” Jenny
asks.
    “Hmm?”
    Jenny gestures to the admittance desk, where
Rachel noticed a clutch of arguing people before. Taking a closer
look, she sees several bleary-eyed people arranged into a somewhat
haphazard group. They seem to be the center of operations here, a
modest focal point amid swirling human chaos. And now two young
men—a studious-looking guy with dark armpit stains on his blue
shirt and a well-built African American teenager—burst into the
room from the inner door and seem to