Corporeal Nightmares

DNR

Dark ash drifts, dancing with other clumps as they fall. They appear aimless, though they mainly follow the stiff and driving northbound wind. But in the cold February gusts, neither of the two men notice the beauty in ruin. They walk between the edges of aging brick walls. Crackling mortar sizzles while they stalk. Light from the city center is distant but pollutes the sky completely.

In the outer boroughs they walk the grids designated on their displays, one by one. The emerald HUD shows the layout of the site designated "1304-C". Red squares are marked green after they walk through sections of the shattered buildings.

"Pulse," one of two men in smudge-gray apothecary suits says. Their faces are hidden by a sterile layer of translucent plastic, as they crouch near a mound of ash that shivers slightly. The other of the two brushes away a cloud of the black dust to reveal a patch of skin. The once-flesh is black as midnight and cracked by heat like the desert in drought.

There's a monotone beep from the first man's wristband and a muted crinkling as he moves his hand closer to the reflective surface. There's more crackling as he lifts his neck to look at the man across from him. His counterpart hovers above the ash-shrouded body. Shaking his head, he says nonchalantly:

"DNR."

They move in unison. Standing, striding between piles of rubble, waving their aluminum wands in opposite directions until one of them hears a click. The click tells them to stop and crouch, to push their wristband towards the next hump of ash. Fluorescent green bars and wheels show on the wristband's display.

This time the second man says, "no pulse."

They stand again, sweating in confining plastic, moving through each grid on their manifest and repeating the pattern. When a grid is walked without a beep, they mark it green. When they get to the eastern most grid, they stop for another click.

This time the first man says, "pulse."

This time the body moves, shifting the ash off itself with a heaving cough. They jump a bit but wait for the beep.

"DNR." Again, they continue on their assigned route.

When they get to the next grid, the north-most stretch of the sector they've been assigned to sweep, they feel a bit of relief. There are three clicks without a beep and one with.

"DNR," says the first man. They stand to leave but a hoarse voice speaks to them.

"Help." The scorched woman raises her arm towards them, flesh cracking as thick red blood begins to ooze between the charred plates of skin.

The first man stops only briefly. "Sorry. Dispatch has your chip marked as DNR."

"That can't be!" Her voice is that of a wounded animal. "I'm in the system!"

They hear her cries for the rest of the clicks and beeps of the grid.

They hear her cries while loading their equipment into the truck at the edge of the site. Ashes that cake the plastic suits burst into little gray clouds as they're tossed haphazardly into the back.

"Terrible," says the first man. His protective suit is now off. A white name tag reads "Randy" on his blue coveralls.

"Hard to believe," the second replies. His name tag reads "Bill".

"Wish they would just follow the rules," says Randy.

The engine roars to life in the dead silence as they roll onto the debris-laden street. Equipment jangles about. With every bump in the road, they hear the wands and suits clanking about in the steel cages in the back. For a moment, they wish they'd have used the straps.

They know why they didn't. The ruckus keeps their thoughts from wandering back to the site.

A four-hour trip to the central transpohub is the norm for eighty hour shifters so boredom rides with them. They listen to their breathing or the wind screeching in through the partly open window.

It doesn't help them forget.

They listen instead to a broadcast to the boroughs from sector two in the city core. The site they wanded wasn't the only hit on this particular evening. The feeds are ablaze with rhetoric and powerful imagery. High definition video of pyres rising high into the night sky complement the angry voices and faces who accuse and condemn. All look to shift the blame, some of them make strong arguments for one course of action.

But not like her voice.

"We could have helped her."

"She knew the risks and didn't mitigate them." Randy shakes his head, hoping Bill gets a clue.

There are more talking heads on the dashboard, angry about things they're so far removed from. Screaming at each other and pointing fingers, the show is a fine distraction from the body count. Numbers tick higher every few minutes with the words "confirmed dead" next to them.

More details come out on the broadcasts. Ten confirmed bombing sites and one group has claimed responsibility. The blame game abates for a moment, while a static heavy video is played. Scrambled voices from shrouded figures get their turn to accuse, if just for a moment.

Bill changes the broadcast to music until the music is interrupted too. A different tape runs from the menacers in static. It says they've cracked the central hospital datahub. All citizens had been marked as "do not resuscitate".

"Stop the van." Bill asks. Randy obliges.

Bill sits at the edge of the road. Still two hours out from the transpohub, the city looms large. The spires arcing into the clouds so far that he can't see the top. The sprawl pushes the periphery of his vision, distant twinkling almost giving him vertigo.

In its shadow he can see six fires burning in the distance. Three were bombing sites, still smoldering from the blasts. The other three are new.

Bill sits holding a detector wand towards the city. It clicks.