Spore Series | Book 2 | Choke

by Soward, Kenny

“It’s okay,” the little girl interrupted her. “We have to take care of each other out here. I’ll take care of you.”

  Jessie nodded as tears welled in her eyes, and her throat was so raw and sore it felt like she’d swallowed a cactus. “Kim will be here soon,” she croaked. “Real soon.”

  Chapter 23

  Moe Tsosie, Chinle, Arizona

  It was late into the evening when Moe got his people up and moving. He’d been watching the refugee situation unfold in the FEMA camp all afternoon and into the evening from the Speedway across the street. The military and FEMA personnel were close to being overwhelmed.

  He’d already seen some staff and soldiers setting up reserve tents on the dirt lot they’d commandeered. Several fights had already broken out between the soldiers and some very confused and angry refugees, and the screams of the wounded and dying echoed through the desert sky.

  The camp was hanging on by a thread, and it was only the first day. If things devolved into chaos, the people of Chinle would be overwhelmed next.

  Moe and his people were spurned earlier in the day because Colonel Humphreys didn’t want them interfering. But with the situation taking a downturn, he was sure the army would welcome them.

  “Rex, let’s go,” Moe said, tapping the athletic director where he’d fallen asleep in the back of his truck bed. When the man didn’t respond, he shook him hard.

  “What?” Rex was sleepy as he turned over on his sleeping bag and stared up at Moe in confusion. “What’s going on?”

  “I said let’s go.” He was already standing up and hopping out of the truck bed. He shook his legs to loosen them up. “Get the boys on the basketball team. I’ll grab Sage and her hospital staff. We’re going now.”

  “Are you sure they’ll let us help?”

  “They don’t have a choice,” Moe replied, staring across the street at the camp lit by floodlights. “They need every helping hand they can get.”

  Rex hopped down after him and crossed over to the four tents the town elders had set up for Sage Denentdeel and her hospital staff. Moe stopped at the entrance to her tent, raising his fist to knock, pausing when he realized there was no door.

  “Mrs. Denentdeel.” Moe spoke in an urgent, raised tone. “We’re going over now. Mrs. Denent—”

  The zipper on the tent entrance flew up, and Sage pushed through the tent flaps with her medical bag in her hand. The doctor looked rugged and professional in her jeans, boots, and flannel shirt with her hospital name badge on her left breast pocket.

  Sage flashed him a smile in greeting. “Did they ask for our help?”

  “No, but we’re going anyway.” Moe glanced back over his shoulder. “It looks like they’re starting to become overwhelmed. We need to help them absorb the flow of refugees, and we may want to offer them space in the elementary and junior highs schools while we’re at it.”

  “Understood,” Sage nodded before turning to the other tents, calling out, “Ladies and gentlemen. Let’s go. It’s time to show them what we can do. Let’s go, people.”

  A dozen doctors, nurses, and interns filtered out of the tents. Some of them looked like they’d just woken up, but they were dressed and ready to go. Similarly to Sage, they wore their hospital badges.

  “Be prepared to run into some resistance.” Moe said.

  “I’ve been running into resistance my entire life.” Sage leveled her gaze at him. “It never stopped me before.”

  “Understood.” His smile felt more like a wince.

  Once they had everyone assembled, Moe stepped back and raised his voice.

  “We’ll move down the side street next to the schools,” he called out, looking across the lot of doctors, nurses, and the young men of the Chinle basketball team. “We’ll enter the camp at the far end where the refugees are coming in. Please allow me to head off any resistance. I’m former military, so I think I can get them to stand down and allow us to help. Just focus on finding patients and being helpful.”

  The group nodded in reply.

  “Okay, let’s go.” Moe hopped down from the back of the truck and walked across the street with his small army in tow.

  He guided them down the road between the schools and the FEMA camp. They passed behind Colonel Humphreys hastily-constructed command quarters, but there were no guards and no windows, either.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, Moe continued to the southeast corner of the camp and gathered his people beneath one of the light posts there. He gazed out into the desert and saw the lights of the triage camps a quarter mile away. How many more thousands of refugees were on their way to the camp and when would they overwhelm the FEMA folks?

  Moe’s team stood at a staging area for refugees once they’d passed triage. Wails and groans of pain came from several of the nearby tents, and he spotted groups of FEMA personnel working all along the south edge of the camp, guiding weary refugee stragglers.

  The symphony of groans and wails reached a crescendo, and no military doctors or nurses were coming to help. Sage stared at the nearest tent with blood smeared on the tent flaps. She gave Moe a grim nod. He nodded back, and Sage grabbed one of her nurses and charged across the twenty yards to the tent. Three of the kids from the basketball team followed right behind her, and they almost made it until a soldier stepped from the darkness and stood between the approaching group and the tents.

  Sage held her arm out for the others to stop. The soldier’s eyes roamed across the group, then he pointed his rifle at the captain of the basketball team, Josiah Cooper. The young man held up his hands but didn’t retreat.

  Moe caught up with them and stepped between them with a wave. “Hey, soldier! Don’t shoot!”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” the soldier said, his eyes switching to Moe. “Back up to the edge of the—”

  “I’m Staff Sergeant Moe Tsosie of the United States Marines. We’re just here trying to get in to help.” He gestured at his people. “We’ve got some local doctors and nurses, and these young men can help with the sick and wounded.”

  Hearing Moe’s declaration, the soldier relaxed. Still, he shook his head. “Colonel Humphreys gave a direct order to keep the townsfolk away from the area for their own safety. I just can’t have you in the camp, sir. If they move patients out later—”

  Someone wailed from the tent, and Moe’s shoulders cringed at the terrible sound. When no doctor or nurse came to help, Sage stepped past him and confronted the soldier.

  “Listen, young man,” she said, respectfully but firmly. “We’re going inside to help those people in there. You can shoot us, but you’d be killing them, too.”

  With that, Sage pushed past the soldier who stepped aside.

  “Thanks, soldier,” Moe said, sticking with the young man in case he had any second thoughts.

  “The colonel will have my ass,” the soldier said, gripping his weapon as he watched the Chinle doctors and nurses charge past.

  “But all of those injured people will thank you,” Moe said, trying to provide some encouragement. “And the colonel will, too, once he comes around.”

  Moe and Rex stood with the soldier and a handful of basketball players near the tent’s entrance. He had his head on a swivel, looking around, ready to intercept anyone who challenged them.

  Sage sometimes called out for one of the Chinle basketball players to come in, and when Moe peeked inside, he found the players helping the hospital staff turn some of the fifteen patients.

  It wasn’t long before he met his second challenge of the night. Four people in military fatigues strode toward their tent with two MPs in tow.

  “Aw, man,” the soldier next to him said with a deflated tone. “That’s Dtoctor Reemer. She’ll kill me for letting you hang around.”

  “Don’t worry,” Moe said, stepping around to head the woman off. “I’ll let her kill me first.”

  Dr. Reemer was a willowy woman with pinned back hair and laser blue eyes that fixed on him like she could cut him in two with a look. The woman
had bags under her eyes and blonde hairs falling across her face. She’d rolled up her fatigue sleeves like she’d been in the thick of things all day long.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Dr. Reemer’s eyes darted back and forth between Moe and the soldier.

  He introduced himself and then further explained. “We saw you folks needed some help over here, so we gathered up the staff of the Chinle Hospital and brought them here.”

  “These men and women are from the local hospital?”

  “Yes, some of them are,” Moe replied. “The young men you see assisting are from the boy’s high school basketball team.”

  Dr. Reemer gestured inside the tent. “They sustained their injuries in the chaos of getting out of Albuquerque. There’s been car wrecks, fights, and several trampled people. You think your people can handle that?”

  “Moe, is everything okay?” Sage came out of the tent, and he backed away when he saw her arms stained with smears of blood up to the elbow.

  “Everything is fine, I think,” Moe said, deferring to Dr. Reemer. He made the introductions as the two women sized each other up.

  “Dr. Reemer,” Sage nodded, but she didn’t offer a bloody hand to shake.

  “Dr. Denentdeel.” Reemer nodded.

  “You’ve got two people with abdominal bleeding,” Sage stated. “One of them in the retroperitoneal area around the kidneys. And I’ve got a surgeon who can work on them. So, don’t even think about kicking us out of here.”

  “Kick you out of here?” Reemer leveled her gaze at Sage. “You folks are more than welcome. I wish we would have known about you sooner.”

  “Colonel Humphreys gave an explicit order not to allow civilians inside the camp.” The soldier said in a plaintive tone.

  Reemer turned the young soldier away from the tent. “You tell Humphreys to come see me if he has issues with these people being here.”

  The soldier nodded, relieved to have Reemer’s backing.

  “What kind of diagnostic equipment do you have here?” Sage asked the woman.

  Reemer stood and placed her hands on her hips. “We’ve got three MRI machines, two CAT scanners, various x-ray machines, two mobile labs, and three mobile surgical facilities.”

  “That won’t be enough for thousands of people.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Reemer replied, raising her chin. “What do you need?”

  “We need to get those two I mentioned prepped for surgery.” Sage replied bluntly. “And I’ve got another two I need a consult on.”

  Reemer nodded and motioned to one of her doctors to follow as she and Sage entered the tent, leaving their MPs outside. Moe, Rex, the soldier, and the remaining basketball players stayed outside the tent, too, in the cooling desert air.

  “What now?” Rex asked with a glance around.

  Moe’s eyes drifted out to the desert to a bustle of activity beneath the triage lights. “Soldier, can you get us a ride out there? Maybe we can help with the incoming refugees.”

  “Give me two minutes.” The soldier shouldered his rifle and ran off in search of some transportation.

  Chapter 24

  Moe Tsosie, Chinle, Arizona

  Moe stared south toward the Chinle airfield as a trail of headlamps rolled toward them. He spotted several pickup trucks, some sedans, and a long bus that looked like something out of a 1970s hippie movie. They reached the edge of the field lighting and approached the parking slots, kicking up dust along the way.

  “Are you boys ready?” Moe asked the Chinle basketball players, and they responded with affirmative nods.

  Rex stood next to Moe with his QLOG tablet tucked under his arm. “I should probably say that I was born ready, but I wasn’t.”

  He scoffed and dug his elbow into Rex’s side. “I’ve done some triage in my day. It’s controlled chaos. Just let it come to you. You must accept that you will make mistakes. Don’t let it frustrate you.”

  “Great pep talk,” Rex said as they rushed out to greet the vehicles.

  The triage camp comprised a swath of land forty yards across with a staging area out front. Moe and Rex waved the vehicles into numbered spots. The medics spread out, assessing each situation and getting vital signs. Moe and Rex logged the patients’ basic information into their QLOG tablets and took pictures of any wounds. The Chinle boys carried wounded to their assigned tents where nurses prepared them for transportation into the greater FEMA camp.

  A man screamed as the medic opened the back of a sedan. Peering over the medic’s shoulder, Moe grimaced at the bone protruding through the man’s pant leg beneath his knee. He logged their information with a queasy stomach as Josiah and a big kid named Tyler, the team’s center, helped him out of the back.

  Moe glanced at Josiah, though the boy didn’t seem fazed by the blood and protruding bone. Once they had the man out, they placed him on a stretcher. Then Josiah and Tyler carried the man away.

  Next, Moe logged information for a family of dazed but healthy individuals. He guided them to a tent where they had bottled water, cots, and basic rations to tide them over until a transport arrived. Josiah met him, and Moe tossed him the car keys to park the family’s vehicle.

  “Where’s Tyler?” Moe asked, glancing over.

  “They need him to help set that leg,” Josiah said.

  Moe shook his head. “I don’t want him doing those things.”

  “He’s the only one strong enough to pull it straight.” Josiah’s lips spread in a wry grin.

  “Okay,” he nodded, but he wasn’t happy about it. Tyler stood six-feet, four-inches tall and was built like a bulldozer. If he could use his size and strength to help, Moe wouldn’t stop him.

  Someone screamed from a truck bed, and he sprinted over with one of the medics. He dropped the tailgate, and the medic climbed up next to an older woman where she knelt beside a teenage girl. The woman held the girl’s hand, a look of anguish on her face.

  They’d rested the girl on a foam mat with her head elevated. Moe took pictures and prepared to log information as the medic examined her. The girl didn’t seem injured at all. There were no broken bones or bleeding.

  “What happened?” The medic took her vital signs and then lifted her shirt to expose her abdomen.

  “Somebody hit her with their car,” the woman sobbed. “We were walking to my brother’s along Hodge’s road, because we wanted to leave town together. People were flying up the road when someone skidded into the yard…” The woman shook her head.

  “Is the person who hit her still in camp?”

  The woman glanced at the men lingering around the pickup and shook her head. “They didn’t make it out of our yard.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Moe raised his eyebrows.

  “Colonel Humphreys won’t tolerate vigilante justice,” the medic said as he pressed his fingers against the girl’s abdomen. “Just letting you know.”

  The older woman nodded.

  Moe winced at the tightness of the girl’s skin. As the medic prodded, the girl squeezed her eyes tight and released a low whine of pain.

  His eyes watered as the medic fed him the technical information he didn’t understand. “Got it. Anything else?”

  “After we get her fluids started, we’ll need to assess the internal bleeding,” the medic said. “They’ll do that up at the main camp. Just list her as priority one.”

  “Got that, too,” Moe said, marking down the information and sending it ahead to the camp.

  He helped the medic move the girl to a stretcher, and the Chinle boys delivered her to a medical tent.

  “Thanks for helping,” the medic said as they watched one of the boys pull the truck off to the side lot. “We were all about dead on our feet.”

  “I’m just glad to help. You—”

  Shouts and jostling drew Moe’s attention. He took two paces back and cast his eyes to the right. In parking spot two sat the big hippie bus he’d seen drive in.

  It was an older model school bus with
a faded paint job of purples, greens, and blues. The faint black and white writing on the side read Light and Venom, and hippie graffiti adorned every inch of space.

  A group had gathered at the back of the bus where the emergency door lay open. An enormous man wearing threadbare farm clothes gripped big Tyler in a headlock. The rest of the team gathered around, hollering at the man to let the boy go.

  Moe clenched his fist and jogged over. He swept in behind the man and punched him in the lower back more to get his attention than hurt him. The big hippie released Tyler and reeled on Moe with a glare. The man wore a heavy medallion around his neck and smelled like he hadn’t showered in a century.

  He swung at Moe, but Moe deflected his arm upward and threw his shoulder forward into the man’s chest. Then Moe wrapped his arms around him in a diagonal hug, squeezing hard to close the triangle and force the hippie’s arm up at an odd angle. The big man grunted as he tried to throw Moe off, but he squatted and forced the hippie to bend forward.

  “I’ll break it,” Moe growled. He squeezed again, causing the man to collapse to one knee with a pained expression.

  A smooth male voice drifted from the open emergency door at the back of the bus. “Take it easy, Cash. Easy.” A pair of soft moccasins set down on the hard dirt, and a man approached Moe with a soft expression. He stood five-feet, seven-inches and was as thin as a rail, though his eyes held crafty intelligence. He wore the same threadbare clothes as Cash, and his light brown stringy hair hung to his shoulders.

  A woman dropped behind the man with the ease of a gymnast, yet she was no gymnast. She was an Amazon, wearing crimson bell-bottomed pants and a button up flower shirt. Her chestnut hair rested on her shoulders in waves. She kept back, yet her blue eyes focused hard on Moe.

  The smaller man stepped around to face Cash, flashing the big hippie a knowing smile. “Cash, my man. Are you causing trouble? We just got here, man!”

  Cash relaxed with an affirming grunt.

  The leader stepped in close to Moe. “You can let him go, mister. He won’t hurt anyone now.”