“I’m still a doctor Doreen. I have a duty to help these people out as long as they aren’t going to harm our family.”
I couldn’t believe our good fortune. “You have my word that we won’t harm your family Doreen,” I said as I used her name to attempt to help calm her down. “My name is Chuck, this is Jesse. Our friends, Robert and Sam, are downstairs and they’re hurt very badly. If Greg could check them out, we’d really appreciate it.”
She glanced worriedly back at the three children. “Alright, Greg, take them downstairs. We’ll stay up here, but we’re locking the door,” she said.
“That’s totally fine, Doreen. We just need a place to stay the night,” I said.
“Alright, let’s go,” Greg said. I gestured for him to lead the way. Even though this seemed like a decent family, we couldn’t afford to trust them too much.
We turned the corner back towards the kitchen and Robert whispered from the back door, “Jesus. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, sorry it took so long. Greg, this is our buddy Robert.” Greg started to reach out to shake his hand but thought better of it and crossed his arms across his chest. “Greg and his family live here. He’s a doctor and he’s going to take a look at you, see if there’s anything he can do.”
Robert nodded his head in understanding. “What’s wrong with him?” Greg asked as he gestured at Sam.
“She was knocked unconscious in the auto accident when we were trying to escape the city,” Jesse replied.
Greg knelt beside her and unzipped her hood a little to expose her neck. He placed two fingers along the side of her throat where her artery ran. After a few moments he said, “She’s breathing fine and her pulse is steady. We’ll let her rest for a little while and then check to see if she has any broken bones. Let me grab my bag from the closet so I can start working on Robert,” Greg said and started towards the hallway.
Jesse cut him off and covered the door. “Not so quick! We don’t know what you’ve got in there.”
“It’s just my medical bag, but sure, you can open it up,” Greg stepped back from the door.
Jesse opened the door and Greg told him where the bag was located. A few seconds later the two of them returned to the kitchen. We spent a few minutes blocking the back door with the table and chairs then helped Robert to the bathroom where we could have some light and not worry about people seeing it through the windows. Greg lit a match and the candle on the counter burst into flame.
“We found out from watching through the windows that it’s best to not have any lights showing or to have a fire in the fireplace. Our neighbors across the street were butchered by a group roving the neighborhood in these trucks with sheet metal and spikes welded to them. They were something right out of a sci-fi movie,” Greg stated while he prepared a little area on the floor in front of the toilet.
He set a child’s footstool in front of Robert and sat down so he could be on the level with his foot. “Probably pretty functional given our current situation actually. The vehicles looked like they could run right over an enemy,” Greg rambled on. I filed that information away and decided that maybe I’d have to revisit some of the things that I’d thought were silly from movies I’d seen over the years. Maybe they had some of it right.
Greg laid out a surgical prep pad and pulled on a pair of gloves. “Are you allergic to latex?” he giggled a little as he said it. Robert just glared at him. “Alright, tough crowd. Sorry, I get a little nervous around patients. That’s why I became vet instead of an M.D.
“Alright, let’s see what we’ve got here,” Greg continued. “How long have you had that tourniquet on for?”
“I don’t know, maybe four hours,” Robert answered.
The vet reached up and tugged on the belt and Robert grimaced in pain. “Well, the good news is that the tourniquet isn’t tight enough to cause permanent damage, but it did the job to stop blood flow. If it would have been as tight as you’re supposed to make a tourniquet, then we’d probably be sawing off his leg about two inches below the belt.”
“So it’s a good thing then, right?” Robert asked through clenched teeth.
“Oh, yeah. People tend to use tourniquets even when they don’t have to. They’re good for stopping blood flow to a massive injury, but the problem is that when they’re done right, everything below the tourniquet doesn’t get any blood and the remainder of the limb dies.”
Greg unwrapped the mess of cloth strips that Robert and Nick had put together to stop the blood flow around his foot. The glass had chopped right through the top of his foot less than two inches from the ankle. “Well, that’s a done deal,” Greg said as he examined the wound. “I can clean the wound and put some antibiotic on it. Then I’ll sew it up with these flaps of skin that are dangling down here. It will be up to you to keep it clean and let it heal up.”
“Okay, sure. I just want to be able to walk again,” Robert said.
“Well, if it heals correctly, you should be able to. Probably even be able to wear normal shoes, but you’ve got to keep it extremely clean. If this crap gets inside of you, there’s no telling what will happen,” the vet remarked as he gestured around the air.
He went to work on Robert and I dozed in the bathtub while Jesse stood guard at the windows of the house. Either we’d successfully thrown our pursuers off of our trail by hopping streets or they simply didn’t care and didn’t follow us. Both were fine by me. I used my gas mask as a pillow and drifted off to sleep with the sounds of Robert hissing and sucking in air every so often.
* * *
Greg woke me with a gentle shake on the shoulder. “Hey Chuck, Robert tells me that you need some medical attention as well,” he said exhaustedly.
I rubbed my eyes and glanced at my watch, it was 2:43 a.m. Greg had worked for over three hours fixing up Robert’s foot. He looked as tired as I felt, but I appreciated that he was willingly helping us out.
“How’s Sam doing?” I asked.
“She’s fine,” Greg answered. “Woke up on her own while you were asleep. She’s sleeping on the couch in the living room.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “My finger got cut off in the truck accident.” I pulled my pinkie out of my pocket and held it up for him to see.
He took my finger and turned it over as he examined it. “Let me see your hand.”
I gingerly pulled off my glove and held out my hand for the doctor to look at. “Hmm. Well…” he muttered to himself as he examined where my finger had been torn off at the knuckle. “I’m not going to be able to reattach your pinkie. It’s been ripped off and the muscle has had too much trauma. If this was five months ago, then you’d be able to get this sucker sewn back on and expect ninety to ninety-five percent mobility. But now? Well, we’ll be lucky if your hand doesn’t get infected and have to be removed entirely.”
My heart dropped. I’d actually expected him to be able to sew it back on and I sure as hell hadn’t thought about losing my entire hand. I looked at my hand and tried to imagine what life would be like without it. I could make it work, but I’d do whatever I could to avoid it. “Tell me what you need me to do, Doc,” I said as calmly as I could. “I don’t want to lose my hand. Do you like, put a hot iron to my hand to burn it closed or something?”
“Oh God no!” he exclaimed softly. “You’ve seen too many war movies. If you stick a hot poker in a bullet wound like in the old Westerns, all you’ll end up doing is damaging the uninjured tissue around the wound. Cauterizing is usually only used for internal injuries when other methods won’t work.” He trailed off and busied himself with preparing his tools for his next patient.
I watched him for a moment and finally I burst out, “So, what does that mean for me?”
“Hmm? Oh, I should be able to clean the wound, remove any of the meaty flaps that won’t be useful and then sew it up,” he replied. “We’ll see as we go, but it should be similar to what I just completed with Robert.”
I glanced at Robert and he gave me a weak gri
n and a thumbs-up. I wasn’t convinced.
I switched places with Robert and sat on the toilet while he tried to rest in the tub. The first thing that Greg did was rinse the lint and dirt from the stump of my finger. It stung, but I assumed that my body was just used to the pain because it actually wasn’t that bad. Then, with no warning, the bastard dumped alcohol on it. I jerked my hand back from his grip and was rewarded with smacking my elbow on the back of the toilet.
“What the fuck! You’ve gotta warn me!” I hissed as I cradled my burning hand.
“Probably better that I didn’t. You might not have let me do it.”
“I would’ve let you do it. The other option is losing my hand,” I retorted.
“Alright, sorry. Let me see your hand, I need to do some more cleaning before I can even start to sew it up.”
I reluctantly slid my hand back towards him and gripped my forearm and pressed it hard into my knee so I wouldn’t move. Greg poured more of his sanitizing solution on my stump and had me turn my hand in different positions while he moved pieces of flesh out of the way so he could use more alcohol. The pain lessened each time he poured so I guessed that my body was getting used to the feeling.
My hand was finally as clean as he could get it, so he reexamined it and used some tiny scissors to clip away the unneeded tissue. I thought that my body was past being able to feel the pain but I was wrong and I could feel the blades squeezing together and the sound of my skin being cut off was maddening. He was finally satisfied with his cutting and poured more alcohol on my wound. After it was clean again he pulled out a needle and some string that looked like fishing line. I glanced at Robert’s foot and he had the same type of string, so I assumed that the stuff was standard-issue for sutures. I didn’t play sports as a kid and I wasn’t particularly daring so I’d never gotten stitches before. I was prepared for the needle to hurt like hell when he poked it in my skin.
I barely felt the needle, but oh my God! When he pulled the thread through my skin, that hurt like hell! I could feel every single inch of that suture as it slid along between my bone and muscle as he folded the skin flaps together to seal the injury. He initially tried to do a simple X of stitches to sew up my skin, but in the end he had to put another line of stitches to sew more of the wound up. Greg put in a total of twenty stitches and I hated every one of them.
He cleaned the wound again and sprayed some purple disinfectant shit on my hand. I glanced at the bottle. It said that it was intended for equine use only. Fuck it, if it saved my hand, I didn’t care. Lastly, he slapped a Popsicle stick beside my ring finger and taped it to my middle finger. He couldn’t do anything about the big contusion on the side of my face or any of my other minor injuries except wipe me down with alcohol give me some aspirin for the pain.
“Thank you so much, Greg,” I said to our host once he was complete. “You’ve done more for us than we would have ever expected from you.” I thought for a moment and then said, “Do you want to come with us to Virden? We have a safe place for your family, plenty of food and we could definitely use the medical care.”
“That’s a very nice and generous offer, Chuck, but I don’t think that’s best for my family. Before your group barged in here, no one knew we were here. We’ve been holed up for almost four months without those loonies in the street finding us. We were only upstairs because we were trying to see what the huge gunfight was about.”
He glanced unconsciously at the bathroom door and continued, “I was one of those crazy preppers so we had over a year’s worth of food down in the basement when all of this started and I don’t want to leave that. Maybe when our food actually begins to deplete and things settle into some type of normalcy we’ll take you up on your offer to move to Virden. But until then, we’re staying put in the basement.”
“Alright, I respect that. I won’t be in Virden by then though. As soon as this is over, I’m heading south with my family. The winter is only going to get colder and darker, so be prepared for a drastically different world than what’s out there now,” I said with my good hand on his shoulder.
He nodded his head and bid me goodnight before leaving the bathroom. I heard the stairs creak softly as he went up and went into the living room where Sam was snoring softly on the couch. Jesse sat in the recliner that he’d turned around to face the front door. He wanted to continue his watch for a couple of hours and then he’d wake me to relieve him. I told him that I appreciated it and lay down on the loveseat across from Sam.
I was almost asleep when Jesse said softly, “When you and Rebecca leave Virden, Trish and I want to go with you.”
I lifted up on my elbow and looked at his shadowy form sitting across from me. “Okay man. We’re going to go as far south as we can to try to escape some of the cold.”
“Sounds good to me. I’m done with Allan and his thirst for power. He’s going to bleed the region dry,” Jesse said hoarsely. “We had such a beautiful plan for what our new society could be, but that’s gone now. It’s just a perverted, twisted shell of what it could have been.”
“We never should have tried to attack Springfield,” I admitted.
“No, you’re right. We should have found a way to stand up to him and stop this. How many people are dead because of our orders?” he asked.
“Hundreds. Maybe even thousands,” I replied. “But they weren’t our orders. We can’t think like that. The bastard is holding our wives hostage and forced us to come here. The blood is on his hands, not ours.”
“Maybe you’re right. Hell, I don’t know. I just know that I’m done with Allan and Virden.”
“Alright. Our bags are already packed, how much time do you need?” I asked.
“Thirty minutes, tops. I’ve kept a bug-out bag prepared in case the zombies made it into town. I just need to pack a few extra things that aren’t packed because I use them all the time. After that, we can go get the ladies from Allan.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “Alright, let’s plan on going to our homes, getting our gear and meeting back at the stage in an hour. From there, we’ll go together to get Trisha and Rebecca from Allan’s house.”
“Agreed,” he said with a renewed strength in his voice. There was a glint of shiny metal in his lap and I realized that he had that big pistol out, ready to shoot anyone who opened the front door. Or maybe he was visualizing the things that he could do to Allan with it.
I lay back down and began to drift off again when I heard the light footsteps of Greg and his family coming back down the stairs. In the darkness of the house I could see five pairs of eyes glittering as they glanced furtively into the room where Jesse and I were. The door to the basement opened and then a large metal door clanged shut like a vault. Several locks were thrown from the inside and that was the last time I ever saw Greg.
* * *
We left Greg and Doreen’s house in the morning. It was a good bet that they wouldn’t resurface for several more weeks so I took the purple spray and the bottle of alcohol and crammed them into Jesse’s pack. I also took their broom and cut off the bristles to make a crutch for Robert. Sam wasn’t nearly as lippy this morning as she usually was, but I assumed that would return with time as she regained her strength.
We crept slowly out their back door and secured the broken lock as best we could. The world that met us outside of the house that morning was absolutely different than when we left it last night. The sounds of gunfire from the night before were gone and birds flittered from dying tree branch to dying tree branch. It was a blessing that I couldn’t detect the ever-present smell of ashes and death through my mask. If I suspended reality for a moment and closed my eyes, then I could almost visualize that we were going out for a fun-filled day in the snow.
The exhaustion of the previous night was replaced by a deep, total body ache from being pitched all around the cab of the SUV when we rolled. We hobbled along slowly and Jesse suggested that we remove our arm bands since we were in “Indian country” as he phra
sed it. It was a good suggestion, so we pulled them off and hid them away where they wouldn’t be easily found if we were stopped and searched, but where we could still reach them if we ran into a group from Virden.
It took about two hours to make it to the edge of the field where our trucks had been parked outside of Springfield. We huddled together inside a row of thick bushes and observed the carnage. They’d found our assembly area like Jillian had said. About half of the trucks still sat where they’d been parked, but there were several bullet holes in the windshields of most of those. My guess is that they had snipers in the very bushes we sat in now and picked off the drivers. I wondered how many actually got away or if the trucks that weren’t on the field had been confiscated and already driven off.
“It looks like they hit us hard—like we’d been planning to do to them,” Jesse observed as he scanned the scene.
“Well fuck, what do we do now?” I asked dejectedly.
“Look, over there. There’s a group of people!” Sam said as she pointed off to the far eastern side of the field.
I followed her arm and saw a group of five or six people shuffle slowly along. Each went to one of our trucks and pulled dead bodies from the cabs. Then they got in and drove them back into the city. Guess that answers the question about what happened to our trucks, my inner voice remarked sarcastically.
“It looks like our entire strike force got wiped out,” Jesse said. “We should skirt this field and head back to Virden.”
“It’s thirty miles!” Robert exclaimed quietly. “I can’t walk that far on my new stump. Hell, just the mile or so from Greg’s house is killing me.”
“I know, Robert. I thought we’d have transportation once we got here too, but we don’t. We have to go. Maybe in a few miles we can find a vehicle, but we can’t afford to be seen or heard here,” Jesse stated.
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