"Vomited, didn't you?" she finally said, breaking the silence.
"Yeah."
"I thought you were a soldier."
"I am. ... I mean I was. Not many soldiers, though, are trigger pullers. I was in Desert Storm, exec for a battalion with the First Cav. Saw fighting from a distance, but never actually pulled a trigger. Most of the time I was just hunched over a computer screen trying to direct the action."
"Sorry, that came out wrong," Makala replied. "I didn't mean it as an insult. It's just the way you handled that guy in the drugstore the other day. You struck me as someone who had seen combat before."
"No."
"It's all right. I still get queasy at times during an operation. I damn near died when I walked into that nursing home last evening."
"Thanks for doing that."
"My job now, I guess." The conversation died away.
They pulled into the driveway. The two fools Ginger and Zach came running up, and at the sight of a stranger they showed typical golden retriever loyalty and went running straight to her, ignoring John.
She laughed, scratching their ears as they jumped up to lick her, both starting to bark as they danced around her. John headed for the door where Jen stood.
"Thank God you're home," Jen said. "What happened? I've been worried sick all day about you."
"Went to Asheville like I told you."
She looked past John to Makala, who was coming up, the dogs trailing beside her. Jen's eyes widened slightly and John could sense she was not pleased, that this woman was an invader in her territory.
"Mom, I'd like you to meet Makala Turner. Makala, this is my mother-in-law, Jennifer Dobson."
The two nodded and shook hands.
"Mom, you might recall Makala; she was the woman on the road the first evening."
"Oh, oh yes. My dear, I didn't recognize you, given how you are dressed now."
"She's a nurse, Mom. Head RN with a surgical unit, actually. She came here to check on Tyler, Jennifer, and this." He held up his hand. Jen's talons retracted and there was a smile. "Oh, come on in, dear."
"How is Tyler?" John asked.
"Resting comfortably," she said quietly.
"The girls?"
"Jennifer's taking a nap. Her sugar level was up and she just took a shot. Elizabeth is out for a walk with Ben."
"Fine."
John walked into his office and left the two women, who went straight to what was now Tyler's sickroom.
John took the Glock out from his belt, looked at it, then laid it on his desk. He noticed now that the smell of cordite hung heavy on it, and on him.
Reaching around to the back corner of the desk, he pulled out a dust-covered bottle. There had been several times in his life when drinking had damn near won out, the last time for several weeks after Mary died. The dust on the bottle was a reassurance. He poured a double scotch out into an empty coffee cup and drained it down in two gulps.
The thunderstorm that had been on the western horizon rolled in, rain slashing against the window ... a soothing sound.
When Makala came into the room a half hour later to check his hand, he was fast asleep.
CHAPTER SIX
DAY 10
"John, you look like crap warmed over."
He nodded, walking into the conference room for what had now become their daily meeting.
"Thanks, Tom. I needed that."
In spite of Makala's attention, John's hand was still infected and he was running a fever of just over a hundred and a half.
He settled into what was now his chair at the middle of the table. Interesting how quickly habits form regarding a meeting: sit in a chair once and the following day that's where you sit again, symbolism of who sits at the foot and head of the table the same. Kate still held that symbolic position at the head, but it was actually Charlie now, sitting to her right, who ran the morning briefing, Tom at the foot of the table. Doc Kellor had become part of the team as well, sitting across from John. Two more were present, he didn't recognize either, one dressed in a police uniform, a Swannanoa Police Department patch stitched on his sleeve, the second man in jeans and T-shirt, both in their midforties.
John picked up the cup of coffee that was waiting for him with his left hand.
"Let me look at that," Kellor said, getting out of his chair and coming around the table.
He eased back the surgical gauze that Makala had redressed the wound with the evening before.
"Good stitching job, couldn't have done better myself."
John said nothing. The dozen stitches Makala had sewed had been done without any painkiller other than a swig of a scotch, and he had sweated that out silently, though he had cursed a bit when she had dosed the wound with alcohol.
Kellor leaned over and sniffed the bandage and shook his head. "How did it get infected like this?"
"I think when I was carrying my father-in-law, at the nursing home."
"Treatment?"
"Makala Turner, the nurse who volunteered to help run the nursing home, she put me on Cipro. Got some from the nursing home."
"Most likely fecal contact," Kellor said, nodding and looking at the wound. "But you can also get some pretty tough strains of bacteria and viruses growing even in the cleanest hospital or home, strep or staph.
"Let's talk about this later," Kellor said, and went back to his seat.
Kate cleared her throat.
"Ok, let's get started. We got a new problem. Dr. Kellor, would you lead off?"
The old "town doc" nodded.
"We've got an outbreak of salmonella at the refugee center in the elementary school. It was bound to happen. I've got at least a hundred sick over there this morning. A mess, a damn mess."
"How did it get started?" Kate asked.
Kellor looked at her with surprise.
"Hell, Kate. People are used to running water, hundreds of gallons a day. Food with dates stamped on it; one day over the limit and we used to throw it out. There's six hundred people camped there. At least we still have enough water pressure for the toilets to flush, but no hot water and, to be blunt, no toilet paper or paper towels as well. It's getting nasty.
"Come on, people. Think about it. Most of us haven't bathed in ten days, toilet paper's getting scarce, soup line meals twice a day at the refugee center, food now of real questionable safety, I'll bet that damn near every person in there will be crapping their guts out and puking by the end of the day."
He sighed.
"Seven dead this morning. I checked before coming over here. Two of them infants, the rest elderly. Dehydrated out and couldn't get electrolytes into them fast enough. I'll need more volunteers to go down there to help out, because it will be full-blown by the end of the day."
No one spoke. The thought of a school building full of people in that condition ... it left the rest in the room silent.
"Remember Katrina and that god-awful Superdome?" Charlie sighed. "Is that what we got?"
"Worse," Kellor replied. "Screwed up as their administration was, ultimately help was on the way, even though a lot of people started to panic with insane reports of murder and rape. We don't have that here at all, but on the other side, the cavalry is not going to come rushing in with helicopters loaded with supplies. We are on our own.
"We need to get some clean vats for sterile water; we can mix up an electrolyte batch like what is used in emergency relief in third-world countries.
"We are a frigging third-world country now," the police officer from Swannanoa said softly.
"It's simple enough. Just pure water, we still have that, don't we, Charlie?"
"What is coming out, gravity fed, from the reservoir is still clean, at least as of the last time our water department people tested it yesterday."
"I worry about that. All you need are some folks camping around the reservoir, one of them has a bug and relieves himself by the lake, and all of us are sick."
Charlie looked over at Tom.
/> "We better get a few men up there patrolling the lake. No campers."
The fishing in the lake was one of the more poorly guarded secrets of the community across the years. The reservoir, shared with Asheville, was supposedly strictly off-limits to everyone, even before all this had started. But many were the kids who would sneak in there with a rod and pull out a trophy brown trout of ten pounds or more. Until an activist type in Asheville had blown the whistle on it half a dozen years back, there was even a private fishing cabin in the woods just above the lake, a secret retreat for the higher-ups in Asheville and Black Mountain. A good-ole-boys club for a weekend of drinking and catching damn big trout on what they saw as their private lake.
Chances now were that people were already looking to that lake as a source of food, and it would have to be stopped.
"We need to mix up a batch of several hundred gallons of clean water, mixture of salt and sugar; it'll keep the electrolyte balance. Then start pouring it down the throats of those poor people. In nine out of ten cases they'll just be damn sick for a few days and then pull through."
"And the tenth case?" Charlie asked.
Kellor sighed.
"Without IVs, the elderly, children under a year, people already weak from other diseases." He paused and looked at the ceiling for a moment. "I'll estimate thirty dead, maybe fifty by tomorrow night."
Charlie folded and unfolded his hands.
"Who will organize the volunteers?" Charlie asked.
John sighed.
"I'll go up to the campus. See if we can roust out some kids."
"Promise them a damn good meal at the end of it," Charlie said. "One of my men got a deer last night. I got it hidden. Venison steak dinner in exchange for a day's work."
"I doubt if they'll be hungry after what we're throwing them into, but I'll see," John said.
Kellor nodded.
"Have them report to me by noon, right here. I'll have to brief them on their own safety before they go over there." John nodded.
"Ok, that brings me to something we might not want to talk about," Charlie said, "but I think we should. Burying the dead."
"We bury them as we always have, don't we?" Kate asked.
"There's no cemetery within town limits. The nearest one is over two miles away. I'm starting to think long term here, people. Not just this case with the salmonella but across the next several months."
No one replied.
"I'm thinking the town golf course across the street from the park."
"What?" Tom replied. "That's crazy. You're talking about the golf course?"
"Exactly. It's within an easy walk of the center of town. There was a lot of grading done when it was built, all of it soil, easy to dig. The approach up to the sixth green, that's all graded soil half a dozen feet deep or more. Remember, there's no more backhoes to dig graves, it's back to shovels, and I want graves dug deep and quick."
"Damn it, Charlie, that's the town golf course," Tom interjected.
"As if anyone is going out today to do eighteen holes?" Charlie replied sharply. "Hell, even you only play with an electric cart. I think we need a cemetery and close by, not out on the other side of Allen Mountain.
"Doc, do you agree?"
"Keep it at least a couple of hundred feet back from the creek that feeds into the park. On the slope draining away from the creek. Yes, I agree."
"Then that's where we take the dead now."
John remained silent. It was interesting how different things, different changes, shocked in different ways. Tom was a golf addict. Regardless of what was now happening, to turn his favorite piece of real estate into a cemetery ... it was too much for him to absorb at this moment.
"We should get some of the ministers in to consecrate the ground," Kate said. "Folks will want that."
Charlie noted it down on his pad. "I'll talk to Reverend Black; he's sort of heading up the ministers here now.
"Any other health issues?" Charlie continued.
"Four more deaths up at the nursing home last night. They're dying off quick up there."
John thought of Makala. She had pretty well taken over the running of the place and he had not seen her in two days now.
"Three suicides as well. The McDougals and one of the outsiders."
"Greg and Fran?" Kate asked in shock.
"A neighbor heard the gunshots. Greg had shot Fran, then himself. They left a note. She had cancer, you know. She knew what she was facing without her twice-weekly treatments up in Asheville, so she asked Greg to end it for her. Then he did himself as well. Note said for us to use her remaining painkillers for someone who still has a chance of living."
"They sang in the church choir with me," Kate said softly, and for a moment her features reddened as she struggled to hold back her tears.
No one spoke.
"I'll post the notice about the golf course becoming the cemetery as of today and for the duration of the emergency," Charlie said, finally breaking the silence.
Several large whiteboards had been dragged over from the elementary school and tacked to the outside wall of the police station. This was now the official emergency notice board.
"We've got dozens of others who I suspect will not last much longer," Kellor continued. "Those with pancreatic enzyme disorder, the day they run out of pills they start dying. A lot of our severe coronary problems are gone now. Garth Watson dropped dead last night just hauling a bucket of water back up to his house."
"Damn, he was only forty-three," Kate said.
"And fifty pounds overweight with cholesterol of two-eighty," Kellor said. "I warned him. Well, so much for too much fast food.
"We got over a hundred people in town, though, on chemo- or radiation therapy for cancer. Their prognosis ... Well, we saw what happened with Fran. God forgive her, but a lot might decide to take that way out, especially those on serious pain management. We've forgotten what a nightmare the final months of cancer can be like without readily available morphine."
He paused and looked around the room.
"I think we have to discuss that right now," he said. "We have a limited supply of pain meds. Do we impound it and use it only for emergency situations, or do we continue to let those who are terminal anyhow use up what's left?"
"My God, Doc," Tom interjected. "What in hell are you saying? One of those people you are talking about is my aunt."
"I know," Kellor said softly. "God help me I know. But your aunt Helen is going to die soon; we know that. But suppose I get a kid in here that needs major surgery. Shock and trauma kill, and managing the pain might mean the difference between his living and dying. We got to think of that."
"You're talking triaging the dying off, aren't you, Doc?" John said quietly.
Kellor looked at him and then slowly nodded his head. "I'm not ready for that decision," Charlie sighed. "Most of the folks in question still have some meds in their homes. We'll cross that one later."
"But we'll have to cross it," Kellor replied, head half-lowered. No one spoke for a moment.
"Accidents, you would not believe how many we got," Tom finally said, breaking the silence. "Cars are no longer killers, but chain saws still working, axes, shovels. Joe Peterson damn near cut his own leg off with a chain saw last night trying to cut firewood. We had three accidental gunshot wounds yesterday, one of them fatal, by idiots now walking around armed."
"It's food, though, that I think we got to start getting serious about," Kellor said.
"So what in hell do you suggest that we do different?" Charlie replied sharply, and John could sense the tension, as if this had been argued about before the meeting.
"By your estimate," Kellor replied, "we have enough food on hand to feed everyone for another seven to ten days. That means using meat any health inspector two weeks ago would have condemned.
"Charlie, after that... then what?"
Charlie sighed and wearily shook his head.
In spite of the fever and chills, J
ohn found himself focusing intently on this man, who after ten days of crisis, ten days most likely with not more than three or four hours' sleep a night, was approaching collapse.
"Half rations," John said quietly.
Charlie looked at him and then nodded.
"I don't know if that will work with some things," Kellor replied. "Meat that is beginning to spoil, for example, dairy products."
"Then pass that out now, use it up, if need be have a gorge feast tonight with the remaining meat that might be going bad. Just make sure it is cooked until it's damn near like leather. Then anything preserved goes to half rations."
"What about those holed up in their houses with food?" Kellor asked. "Charlie. There's at least half a dozen houses with electricity, old generators that were unplugged and survived. Enough juice to run a freezer. The Franklin clan, for example, up on the North Fork. I bet they're sitting on a quarter ton of meat in their basement freezer."
"And you want that I should go get it?"
Kellor nodded.
Charlie looked at Tom.
"I doubt that will work with the Franklins," Tom said, shaking his head. "At least with them and all my men being alive once we got the meat. Up in these hills we have more than a few of the old survivalist types, the kind that were real disappointed that the world didn't go to hell with Y2K. They're just waiting for us to come up and try."
"Let it go for now," John said. "If we start turning into Stalinist commissars hunting out every stalk of grain and ounce of meat for the collective, you know the fragile balance we have right now will break down and it will be every man for himself.
"And like any collectivization, whether true or not the rumors will explode that we took the food, but now some animals are more equal than others."
"What?" Tom asked.
"You slept through Mr. Quincy's ninth-grade English class, Tom," Kate said. "Orwell, Animal Farm, read it some time."
"Besides," John continued, "even if we looted the Franklins clean, that would be enough food to maybe give six hundred people one meal. It isn't worth the blowback, and in my opinion is a dangerous political and legal precedent. We don't want to be turning on each other at a time like this. Hell, if anything we want people like that Franklin clan working alongside of us. If they're survivalists like you say and we don't threaten them, maybe they got skills they'll teach to us."
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