Light filled her eyes, but she couldn’t cover them. Hell, she couldn’t move her arms or legs at all. Something cut into her wrists and ankles.
Muffled voices echoed all around her. She couldn’t understand a word or who was there.
Someone touched her head, which stung like a soccer player’s cleats. She struggled again, but it made her want to throw up. She had to stop.
She asked what was happening, but her own voice sounded far away. She told the phantoms how sick she felt. She didn’t catch a word that was said back to her, but the mystery voice was soothing. She hoped it was Didi.
“There’s nothing to fear,” that soothing voice said more clearly as something stung her arm.
A blurry face broke the light in her eyes. Black hair. Thin-rimmed glasses. Pretty smile.
“We’ll take good care of you,” the woman said.
Rachelle didn’t … believe it. She wanted … Didi. She … wanted … to …
*****
Lights shone in the darkness. Engines roared. Voices shouted muffled words. Then all of it was gone, leaving only the howling wind and the snow gently blanketing this chaotic corner of the world while Paula’s heart pumped her life right out of her body. She grew colder by the second. Her breathing slowed. This was it.
I’m coming, Adam. I’m coming.
Her head fell to the side and found a lump in denim. Sean. Was he dead? Was he coming, too? Maybe when they saw their son, all their problems would be over. They could be a family again, bright and shiny in Heaven as they once were on Earth. Nothing else mattered anymore.
So where was the light? The tunnel? God? Adam? All she saw was the snow in the darkness, its flakes lightly kissing her face in what was turning out to be the only gentle part of this so-called goodnight.
Darkness. Death. That’s what awaited her now. Was she not good enough … for Heaven? Didn’t she always … try to do the … right thing? Where was she … going? Where …
… why …
… unfair …
… can’t just … go like this …
… engine …
… someone coming …
… didn’t matter who …
… although … it looked like …
CHAPTER 22
IN A PINCH
Gilda had to stop herself from panicking, instead breathing through it to perform triage.
Paula was as cold as the ground and she had lost so much blood through both entry and exit wounds, but she was still alive. The bullet had clearly punctured something vital.
“Can you save her?” Cody asked while struggling to get out of the truck.
Gilda didn’t have time to lecture him about it. “I think they hit her heart, or maybe the aorta. I don’t have the tools to do a bypass either way.”
“We’ve gotta try something,” he grunted while Didi helped him over to the patient. “What about Sean?”
“He’s alive,” Isaac said while hoisting the second victim onto his shoulder. “He’s just out.”
“He may have a concussion. Take him back to the Hilux,” Cody ordered, which the big man did without debate. “A-Twins, get Paula into the back of the Ford. Gilda and I will work her.”
“We will?” Gilda snapped at the zealous idiot as the mismatched twins rushed to lift and haul Paula without arguing once. She would’ve been impressed if she wasn’t pissed enough to rip her impetuous colleague a new one. “You can barely stand without help. Lavon, do you have any medical training?”
“Basic first-aid,” the Marine replied from the Hilux. “I was a C.B.R.N. Defense Specialist.”
“Chem gal,” Cody elaborated, to which she nodded. “No offense, but … not what we need right now. Gilda, we don’t have time for this. I can lean over the seat on my good side.”
Gilda groaned and rushed into the Ford, helping the twins center Paula on the backseat. The wounds quickly drenched the upholstery. “Craig is going to be so pissed,” she muttered as she turned on the overhead light and rifled through her medical bag for the best tools, none of which included any kind of anesthetic. The poor woman was losing consciousness anyway, but a sudden sit-up from any pain caused by field surgery could prove fatal. She donned a pair of surgical gloves.
Didi positioned Cody against the top of the front seat, then moved away, leaving him glove up and to hook up a saline bag to the patient. Maybe he would be useful after all.
Gilda ripped open Paula’s top, revealing the oozing wound on her chest … among other things.
“Twins, out,” she ordered the gawking siblings still in her peripheral view.
“Don’t you, like, need more help?” Aaron asked, the concern in his tone dubious at best.
“I’ve got help. I don’t need you leering at my patient while I’m digging around in her chest, now be somewhere else. Go collect snow or something. I’ll need lots of water.”
Aaron stomped off like a kid denied his candy. Alan just followed with his eyes in the air. Though she wasn’t sure, she could swear she heard Isaac snickering.
Cody finished sticking Paula’s arm, taped the line down, and checked her distal pulse. “I got something. Barely.”
“I’ll take what I can get,” Gilda replied as she cut open the sides of Paula’s bra, then crumbled what was left into a makeshift pressure gauze, which she did not have enough of in her bag.
“Didi,” Cody hollered with great effort, “hand me that … emergency air mask … in my bag.”
The truck mildly rattled while Gilda applied pressure to the wound. Then Cody had the ball cock air mask with an added breathing tube, which she always thought looked like a translucent elephant trunk in a safety cone holding a small balloon. He lubricated the tube with some water from a bottle, tilted the patient’s head back, and carefully shoved the tube down her throat until seating the mask on her face. “Got it,” he grunted as he pumped the ball, huffing up a storm.
Paula’s chest rose and fell with each pump. Now for the bleeding.
Gilda grabbed the only gauze she had in the bag and handed it to Cody. “Stick that under her exit wound.”
“That bra won’t be enough for the entry,” he noted while tearing out the pressure gauze.
A quick look around gave her a good substitute. “I need someone to cut out a clean spot on Paula’s dress.”
Didi appeared in the open doorway with her sword drawn, reaching for the skirt. “On it.”
“Sterilize that first,” Gilda barked.
Didi made a sarcastic so-rry! face before grabbing a bottle of rubbing alcohol and carefully dousing her blade and her gloves with it. She cut out a large section of Paula’s floral print, from hip to hem, and handed it over.
Gilda took the improvised gauze, replaced the blood-soaked bra with it, and nodded to Cody to hold it in place. She removed a scalpel and a thin set of forceps from the bag, had Didi sterilize them, and readied them just above the gauze. “Ready.”
Cody tilted the cloth away, keeping it under the flow of blood.
“Sterilize the wound.”
Didi poured alcohol over the wound, which barely even roused the patient. Good but not good.
“Pray,” Gilda said softly, then incised the wound.
The patient stirred faintly, which, in itself, was pretty serious. Nonetheless, Gilda cut open a star flap around the wound to allow access that would heal easier. She used the forceps to feel her way around for remaining bullet fragments. The patient’s weak thrashing was not liking that.
Unfortunately, her efforts blocked the overhead lighting. “Flashlight,” she called out.
A tiny one appeared, but she didn’t dare touch it.
“Shine it on the wound.”
Whoever held it kept the beam just above where she needed it. She used her wrist to adjust the aim until she got it where she wanted it, then found the source of the problem—a much smaller one than she feared. She sighed gratefully as she set her instruments down on her patient’s sterilized chest. “It just nicked the
super vena.”
“You can fix it, right?” Cody asked.
“Yeah, but I need a really steady pair of hands right now,” she called out as she dug the suture thread and needle out of the med bag.
To her surprise, Nick appeared at her side, looking confused. “What?”
“Didi, give him the bottle.”
Didi tossed the alcohol bottle to Nick, who regarded it like a complete mystery.
She held out the needle and thread. “Douse your hands with it, then thread these for me.”
Nick looked down at the bottle, shrugged nonchalantly, and poured the remainder of the bottle all over his hands before taking the thread and needle.
“Are you kidding me?” Gilda snapped. “You didn’t need that much!”
Nick ignored her, perhaps in his own world with the task he was given.
“Got another one,” Didi said while brandishing a fresh isopropyl bottle.
Gilda smiled at the amazing zombie, then took the bottle, opened it, and lightly sprinkled some onto a set of tweezers. “How’s she doing, Cody?”
“Still weak,” he replied, “but I think the air is helping.”
“Paula? Where are you?” Sean. Damn it.
Gilda called for Isaac, who appeared behind her. “Keep him away from here; I don’t care how, short of giving me another patient.”
Isaac nodded and rushed away just as Nick handed the threaded needle back.
Gilda thanked the scrawny computer geek, then climbed further into the truck to get a better look into the patient’s wound while enduring the wailing of a frightened husband somewhere outside. She clamped the needle with the tweezers, then gently eased them in for the first stitch. The patient didn’t respond to the initial pinprick. “Cody?”
“No change. Trying not to worry here.”
“You and me both,” she admitted while pressing the needle through both sides of the oozing wound, using the forceps to brace the exit side of the vein. Once the needle was out the other side, and she tied the first knot without losing her patient, she thanked God and kept working.
*****
Rachelle awoke with a start in a single bed, surrounded by metal lined walls and a plastic table in what looked like a tiny morgue. She reached for her forehead when something tugged at her arms. Her elbows were bandaged, and the rest of her was garbed in a baby blue hospital gown. She flexed her arms to see if they hurt, but they didn’t. She pulled one of the wraps open and found track marks.
What the hell?
She tried to get out of bed, but a wave of dizziness stopped her. She grabbed her head and waited for the blood rush to subside, thinking back to how she ended up wherever she was.
Didi was in the diner with that psycho. The Lieutenant looked interested in something off the truck stop pavement; some lump of limp grass that seemed to move. She went for a closer look and the lump jumped up and placed a hand over her mouth. She tried to hit the skull face under the grassy robes, but something stung her neck and sapped her strength right out of her.
A buzz startled her into grabbing the only thing within reach, which was her pillow. The door slowly opened like it was auto-matic. She may not have done much pillow-fighting in her life, but she did train to use whatever was available to defend herself.
In walked a pretty woman with the big glasses, smiling at her over a white lab coat and a covered metal tray in her hands. She moved with fluid elegance, her lithe frame very well put together in a lavender silk blouse and black pencil skirt. Her soft black hair was all up with only a few strays spilling down her delicate cheeks. A mildly glossy lipstick accentuated her thin lips. She didn’t carry any weapons, but the Army guy in the doorway sure did.
“Good evening,” the lady said with a slightly chipper tone, her melodic voice ringing familiar, her warm green eyes belying nothing of her true intentions. “How are you feeling?”
“There’s nothing to fear,” Rachelle remembered. “We’ll take good care of you.” It was her, the voice in the light. “Where am I and what did you do to me?” she snapped.
“I’m Doctor Sitton,” the doctor-lady said as she placed the tray on Rachelle’s lap and lifted the cover, “and no jokes, please. I get the Sitton Pretty line all the time here.”
The smell of baked chicken both delighted and sickened, its aroma nowhere near as good as Hashim’s. The utensils on the tray were tiny plastic ones. Damn it! “Where is here?”
The doctor-lady traded the tray cover for a chair with the guard, sat down on it, crossed her legs, and clasped her fingers on her knee all demure-like. “Have you ever heard of NORAD?”
A chill ran through Rachelle’s spine, but she had to play it cool. She set down the pillow and asked like a little kid, “Like in the movies?”
Doctor Sitton smiled and nodded. “Yes, just like in the movies. We’re in an underground command center, where the President of the United States was evacuated with his staff to secure the future of our country.”
“The President of the United States,” that Lieutenant guy had said. Oh, my God, that rapist bastard wasn’t lying! This was the second mention, but she still couldn’t believe it. “He’s been down here this whole time?”
Doctor Sitton pushed her glasses up her nose. “We’ve been working on curing the zombie plague, but it’s been quite a struggle. We don’t even know where it came from in the first place. Go on. Eat up.”
Rachelle looked warily at her food.
Doctor Sitton grinned, took Rachelle’s fork, cut off a small piece, and ate it without pause. She took the time to chew and swallow, smiling the whole time. “It’s safe.”
“What did you put in my arms?” Rachelle asked before taking a bite for herself, which tasted as plain as school cafeteria food.
“Standard immunizations and some blood work to make sure you’re not infected. We want you to be healthy and well taken care of.”
“Why do you care?” Rachelle asked through a mouthful of her second bite.
Doctor Sitton chuckled, then apologized. “Like I said, our efforts here are for the future of our country. One could say the entire world, given its state.”
“So the plague did wipe everyone out?” Rachelle tried her steamed vegetables, though its blandness suggested boiled.
“It spanned the entire globe, I’m afraid,” Doctor Sitton said with a kind of sadness. “It reached places like Hawaii, Indonesia, and Australia; people running to the farthest corners of the world, whether they knew they were infected or not.” She pouted. “Some flights never made their destinations because someone turned in midair.”
Rachelle felt bad for whoever was on those flights, which usually carried children. That brought her back to being one of the many “children” Denver had said these Mountain Men stole. “So, what are you going to do with me?”
Doctor Sitton smiled again. “Give you the chance at a normal life while we repopulate, you and all the people in the local area we brought down here. We hope to go back up soon; we’re working hard to make that happen,” she concluded proudly. Then she removed a small writing pad and a pen from her coat pocket. “Now, may I ask your name and where you came from?”
Rachelle hesitated, the only beans she wanted to spill being the slightly burnt pintos on her plate, but she needed to keep playing along. “Rachelle Ortega. North Bend, Wisconsin.”
The pretty doctor nodded while she wrote. “How did you end up here?”
“I found a good group of people in Iowa and lived there for the last two years, but a gang in a big convoy hit us. We had to run.”
“How many came with you?”
Rachelle didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t rat out her friends.
Doctor Sitton caught her hesitation and smiled. “I just want to know who needs rescuing.”
“Where are my weapons?” Rachelle asked pointedly. “Hell, where are my clothes?”
“Your clothes are being laundered; you’ll get them in the morning. Your sword and guns are in storage; you won
’t need them here. We’re well protected here, so you can grow strong for the benefit of society.”
Rachelle’s gut churned. “To do what? Breed?”
The doctor chuckled again, which was starting to piss Rachelle off. “A normal life means a normal life. You’ll go to school, hang out with the friends you’ll make here, eventually graduate, and start a career field. Someday, when we succeed in our efforts, you’ll help repopulate the surface however you see fit.”
“Under your guys’ rule, though, right?”
“Well, there are going to be laws, just like before.”
Rachelle didn’t buy it, which must’ve showed when the doctor pursed her lips.
“You don’t trust me,” the doctor observed.
“Very astute,” Rachelle replied. “Go to college or something?”
Sitton Pretty grinned impishly as she pocketed her writing stuff and stood. “I’m going to let you get some sleep. Maybe, when you’re more refreshed, you’ll let me show you around. Good night.” Then she walked out.
The soldier gave Rachelle a warning glance before shutting the door.
She looked around at her room again and realized sleep was all she could do now. Perhaps in the morning, with the doctor’s help, she could find a way out of here.
CHAPTER 23
EYE OPENERS
Isaac felt more refreshed than he expected to after such a long night. Watching soldiers put one in Paula’s chest and crack Sean over the head, keeping the husband away from the priss while Gilda saved her life, spending the night in a cold barracks bed. He was surprised he could get any sleep at all, even with all the blankets he had found, worrying about being found, but Nick assured them he had hacked the satellites to keep them hidden from the government.
The government, Isaac thought uneasily. He had always heard about conspiracies against his people. Now, they looked more like fact. He suddenly felt even more righteous about knocking out their child molesting prisoner last night to keep him from giving them away.
He walked into what Cody called a day room, which sported a useless widescreen and a dusty pool table. At least the vending machines weren’t empty, but man, were those drinks flat.
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