Matthew held up his hands in submission. “I know, I’ll be more careful in the future.”
Marcus shook his head. “If you can’t separate what’s happening in here”—he tapped his head—“from here”—he tapped his heart—“you’ll end up doing more stupid stunts like that. I get that your father is ill—”
“Don’t,” Matthew said, his voice tight.
“We were at the gun club when Nikki left,” Shawn said, shifting in discomfort. “Just...be careful, okay?”
“I will. I promise.” Matthew took a deep breath to center himself and knew he had to not let his hopes cloud his reason. He had been incredibly stupid to go into the well, especially since he didn’t know much about them to begin with. Still, he couldn’t let the new discovery, and its implications, go. “But you do know what this means, don’t you? It means this is our best option, even if the repairs will be risky. I can bring down my shovels, and try to find some putty to help stabilize the rocks. We’ll probably need a ladder and a better way to secure the rope—”
“Now hang on,” Marcus said. “We are not repairing the well right now.”
“Why not?” Matthew demanded. Why were these two being such stick-in-the-muds? Yes, Matthew had taken a risk, but that risk had paid off. They said the gun club was running out of fresh water as it was. They should be jumping at the chance to make the well viable again. Matthew didn’t understand their hesitation.
“I want to get Wyatt’s opinion on it,” Marcus said, and Shawn nodded in agreement, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose.
“Is Wyatt some kind of well-restoration expert?” Matthew asked, sarcasm lacing his words. “I know the man can do just about everything, but is this in his repertoire of skills?”
“We want to get his opinion before we head into any project this massive,” Shawn clarified. “This is going to take a lot of collaboration and effort. Lots of manpower. Lots of time, energy, and resources. I know you’re eager and you’ve said you’d share with us, but we need to have Wyatt here to solidify all of that. He’s been, I guess, our leader. I know we would all want his opinion before we end up yanking everyone from the gun club up here.”
Irritation filled Matthew. He got it, he did. They wanted to trust him, but they weren’t sure if they should. They wanted Wyatt to make that final decision before they barreled into a project of this scale. But at the same time, Matthew didn’t know how he could be more trustworthy for them. How could he show them that he could be one of the leaders that they could turn to and accept in their time of need?
What would happen if Wyatt didn’t come back from Galena?
Matthew pushed those terrible thoughts away. Wyatt would return from his trip with medical supplies to help David. Wyatt would no doubt be overjoyed that Matthew had found the well. Then things would be okay. They would.
He just had to do the hardest thing in the whole world. Matthew Riley had to wait.
7
For as long as Jade could remember, she had hated dark buildings. It was a secret fear that stemmed from her childhood. From nights when she would come home to her mother’s ire that Jade couldn’t help but poke and prod at. But, inevitably, her mother’s ire would turn to rage, which in turn infuriated Jade, until they would be screaming at each other, the intensity increasing with the setting sun. Then they would be left with a darkened, silent home where that fury deepened like termite-rot flavored with bitterness and disappointment.
Bluntly, Jade hated darkened buildings because she could always feel that resentment embedded in the darkness. It followed her everywhere she went. It raised its head at dusk. She knew it was a useless fear, but it was hers all the same.
She didn’t like the look of Galena’s hospital.
The windows in the front had been broken and smashed in. The sliding entrance doors had been shattered, with one on a battered hinge that creaked inwards at a strange angle. Yellow lines on the pavement directed them to the emergency room entrance for ambulances, while another yellow arrow pointed them further through the hospital’s front doors. Paper, medical charts, and X-ray results covered the concrete floor, as if they’d escaped from a file cabinet and no one had bothered to pick them back up.
Jade took in a deep breath and glanced at Max standing beside her. It was obvious he didn’t feel well. On the other side of him, Nikki surveyed the seemingly abandoned hospital with her eyebrows drawn together. Concern deepened the lines around her eyes and mouth. In her other hand, Nikki clutched a piece of hotel stationery taken from one of the River Rock Hotel’s rooms. She’d written down a list of medical supplies in blue pen.
“Here’s what we should look for,” Nikki said, opening the list and smoothing out the edges where she’d crumpled it.
Jade’s mind went blank as Nikki rattled off a series of complicated words. She couldn’t even imagine what they were. She knew IVs, but the list of medicines was pretty much just mush to her ears. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt dumb in familiar company. Wouldn’t be the last. She patted the butt of the handgun with affection. There would be medics and math teachers and marketing professionals, but Jade had found her purpose in being the muscle. She was good with a gun. That was all that mattered these days.
“Why don’t you read that list when we get inside?” Wyatt suggested with a hint of a drawl. “I can’t remember the first thing on that list, Nik.”
Nikki gave him a side-eye of annoyance. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll tell you what to look for when we reach certain areas.”
“Sounds good to me,” Max said, his eyes skirting around the hospital as if cartel members might jump out at him at any moment.
Jade nudged him with her elbow. What a scaredy cat. “Don’t look so worried,” she told him.
He flashed her a sick glance, but didn’t have the chance to respond. Nikki motioned them forward and they walked through the front doors of the hospital.
Inside, it had that dim and dark quality of a place left alone for a long time, something that was at odds with Jade’s impression of hospitals and how they were usually lit to the brim with electricity. Any other time, overhead industrial lights would shine 24/7. Bedside lamps would be on even in broad daylight. But now, the lobby was deserted. No chairs, couches, tables, or even a magazine could be seen. She could make out where the furniture used to be by the indentations in the carpets. Either someone had taken the chairs for comfort or maybe they’d been used for firewood. Manila folders full of records covered the floor. Front desk computers had been toppled over and left hanging over the sides by their electric plug-ins, or had been crushed on the ground. Technology. Completely useless now, and everyone knew it. Potted plants were more important than the screens and motherboards and servers now.
Glass crunched under her feet. She eased further into the hospital and felt that familiar fear of the dark tighten inside of her. She ignored it. A darkened building couldn’t hurt her. It was just the people waiting inside who would.
Nikki studied the place as if it were a home she’d come back to see ransacked. Worry crossed her face again, and she pointed to the right. “The pharmacy should be around the corner down the hallway. We want to look for medicines there, and then we’ll go to the Central Supply for everything else.”
“What’s the Central Supply?” Max whispered to Jade.
Jade shrugged. “Think it through, Max. I’d hazard a guess and say a central place where supplies are at,” she said and winced at the cruel edge in her tone.
“You got that right,” Nikki said as she began to head down the hallway. “But more importantly, it’s where supplies are either autoclaved and ready to be used again, or packaged for one-time use. We don’t just want to pick up any old scalpel or bed pan. We want things that have been sterilized so we’re not carrying any unknown germs back from the hospital.”
“Like a staph infection?” Max asked, sounding horrified.
“Sure,” Nikki said.
“There you go,” Jade said to Max
. “Now you have your answer.”
“Good thing you know all this stuff,” Max whispered solemnly.
“Who, me?” Jade asked, feeling surprised but knowing she’d said her words sarcastically.
Max shook his head as if he was done talking, and they picked their way after Nikki.
As soon as Nikki reached the pharmacy, she walked behind the counter and began rifling through the shelves. Shelves that should’ve been filled to the gills with pill bottles, but instead were barren and empty. Jade watched as Nikki picked up a couple of bottles that had fallen to the floor, making Jade flash back to when she’d been at the smaller pharmacy off some exit with David and Matthew, before everything had gone wrong. They’d looted medicines there, too, and hadn’t found much worth keeping.
Nikki stuffed the pill bottles in her satchel, though, and quickly moved toward some rows of empty shelves. She made a sound of frustration as she picked through the shelves, pulling out a couple of IV solution bags.
“What are those?” Max whispered into the quiet.
“Saline,” Nikki said shortly, stuffing the liquid-filled bags into her satchel. “They will be helpful in case we need to combat dehydration later.” She rooted around a top shelf just a touch too high for her and grabbed what looked like a couple of looped tubes tied nicely with Velcro. “So we can make our own bags or lines if we need to,” she said, as she stuffed those into the bag, along with some empty but clear bags similar to the filled IV ones.
Seeming satisfied, Nikki led them away from the pharmacy and down the hallway to another big room with CENTRAL SUPPLY in white block lettering on the door. This new door opened easily, showing more rows upon rows of empty shelving. Max peered at some of the shelves and picked up a handful of white packaged bandages. “Are these useful?” he asked, and Jade rolled her eyes. Duh.
“Yes,” Nikki said, walking over to him and opening her satchel. Max dropped the bandages inside. Nikki continued to pick through the remains. “Surgical kit,” she listed off, “surgical tray, pliers, hammer. Couldn’t they have left anything else?”
“Maybe we should try looking in patient rooms,” Jade suggested. “There might be leftover materials in there. They might be contaminated, but I bet we could stick them in boiling water and make do.”
Nikki heaved a sigh. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” She motioned the rest of them out of the room. “There should be nurse servers in the rooms, maybe in the walls or on carts that are stocked with medications and narcotics. Makes them easy to find when nurses are moving from room to room.”
“Would most people know about those?” Jade asked, worried that others would have picked through them already. They didn’t need more disappointment. They needed a win.
“Probably not,” Nikki said. “They’re usually well stocked, but they keep them locked up and at least somewhat hidden so the patients don’t steal from them. Let’s hope we’re lucky, huh?”
Jade bit her lip and didn’t respond. Nikki’s tone, while factual and to the point, grated on her nerves. She had to smush the desire to argue with the woman and try to take her down a peg. It was the same thing she felt when Nikki wanted to look at her gunshot wound. There were more important things to focus on. Jade wasn’t one of them. Jade, after all, was a grunt.
As they continued down the hallway, Jade took lead while Wyatt brought up the rear. A strange musty scent filled her nose, becoming stronger the further she walked. Her nose scrunched up and she glanced behind her. “Do you smell that?” she asked Nikki.
Nikki gave her an irritated look, as if Jade had diverged from the mission, and shook her head. “I don’t smell anything.”
“I think it’s coming from in here,” Jade said and put her hand on the handle of the door closest to her. The smell was almost overpowering. She turned the knob and found it to be unlocked. As she pushed in, the smell hit her full-on, making her gag and take a step back. It was thick and sickening.
A hand landed on her shoulder, pushing her out of the way. Max suddenly stood in front of her, and Jade felt a wash of annoyance. Was he trying to protect her from a smell? But his low cursing under his breath filled her ears, and she followed his line of sight to the dark shape motionless on the hospital bed near the window of the room. Oh god, she thought as the realization finally hit her. Oh god. Whoever was on that bed had died, and they had died a long time ago.
Jade took a step back right into Nikki. She turned on Nikki, who had a horrified look on her face. Her hazel eyes looked exhausted and sad, the lines around her mouth deepening as if she were trying to hold her sadness inside. “Oh no,” she whispered.
“Why would they be left here?” Wyatt asked from behind. “Wouldn’t they have been moved to the morgue?”
“Wouldn’t someone have come and got them?” Jade asked. Seeing the body there meant that the person had probably died forgotten and alone. It was a thought that did not sit well with her at all.
Nikki gaped, seeming to search for words. “We tried to keep everyone alive after the electricity went out, but there were too many patients reliant on oxygen or hooked up to machines that were regulating their breathing or heartbeat for them. When the inevitable deaths began to pile up, we filled the morgue with those bodies in the first wave of casualties. I never…” She trailed off and then shook herself as if coming out of a fog. “I never thought that people would be left behind. At some point, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I had to leave, which was when I sought out Wyatt and the gun club. I thought that my colleagues would contact the patients’ families, or that someone would come back looking for them. Not that they would just be left here.”
“Wouldn’t the doctors have done something for them?” Jade demanded.
Nikki swallowed hard and shook her head. “We nurses and doctors stayed for as long as possible, but we had people and families, too. I’m sure that things got so overwhelming with people dying at such a high rate that there was nothing they could do but cover the bodies with a sheet and promise to come back.”
“Except they didn’t come back,” Jade pointed out.
Silence met her words, but even though Jade wanted to be angry at those responsible for care, she couldn’t blame them. At least they had covered the bodies. There was a degree of respect in a time of crisis. No one could judge those doctors, and Jade couldn’t judge Nikki for leaving when things got to be too much for her. She had no idea what Nikki’s circumstances were, or who she had waiting for her at the end of the day.
Nikki shivered and ran a hand down over her face. “Let’s work quickly,” she said. “Try not to breathe too deeply. The fact of the matter is, if we found this person here, the telemetry floor is going to be a whole lot worse.”
“What’s the telemetry floor?” Max asked in a small voice.
“The cardiac unit,” Nikki answered.
“And why do we have to go there?” Max asked.
“For David,” Jade said harshly. “We have to get medicine and supplies for David. Where else did you think we would find that stuff?”
Max didn’t answer, but he looked wounded. Jade shrugged off her concern and followed Nikki down the hallway and up to the second floor.
“There would be patients waiting for surgery up here,” Nikki explained as they pushed inside. “I knew some were at death’s door when I left, so I can’t imagine things got any better.”
Jade steeled herself as she took in the room. Nikki was right. It was worse. It wasn’t the hospital beds full of humanoid shapes covered with sheets that unnerved her, though. It was the awful stillness. The quiet. Room after room was filled with that terrible smell, and Jade tried to breathe as shallowly as possible as Nikki broke into shelves and cabinets in each room until she found what she was looking for.
Nikki brandished a good stethoscope and box of glass thermometers as if they were gold. Jade couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm. “Are we finding everything on the list?” she asked.
Nikki glanced at it. “Some of it.
It sucks that I can’t take a blood pressure cuff with us. They switched over to electric ones on carts a couple of years ago, and we either donated the old pressure ones or threw them out. How wasteful we were. But, bright side, the thermometers don’t have mercury in them.”
“So we won’t go mad as a hatter?” Max asked.
Jade gave him a blank look.
“Like Alice in Wonderland?” Max stuttered. “You know, the Mad Hatter was insane because of mercury poisoning…?”
“Whatever,” Jade said pushing past him and continuing to the next room. Nikki followed her while Max hung back with Wyatt.
“Are you mad at him?” Nikki asked as she began to rifle through the room.
“No,” Jade said shortly. “He’s just so annoying. Always saying the wrong thing. And he’s selfish.”
Nikki snorted. “Most men are. I think that one is just scared and tends to cover up his fear with humor. Terrible humor, but humor nonetheless.”
Jade turned around to respond and watched as Nikki popped open the top of one of the bottles from the pharmacy and dry swallowed a couple pills. She slipped the bottle back into her satchel so quickly, it seemed she thought Jade wasn’t looking, and Jade quickly turned back around. Behind her, Nikki made a small cough.
“Hey, look,” Jade said brightly, turning around with a packaged tourniquet kit. “Is this helpful?”
“Heck yes,” Nikki said, giving Jade a bright smile that Jade hadn’t seen before. Nikki’s shoulders were looser, as though some of the weight of the day had been lifted off of her.
“Good,” Jade said.
“All I’m saying is be nice to the young man,” Nikki said with a wink. “Times are tough, you know? Not like we can go speed dating or anything.”
“No, thank you,” Jade said, finding it weird that Nikki had oscillated from feeling sad over her patients to talking dating tactics. Jade peered at her a little more closely. Nikki didn’t appear as though she were high, but whatever pills she had taken had had some kind of effect.
EMP Catastrophe | Book 3 | Erupting Chaos Page 6