“Eric, what’s going on?”
I unhooked it and brought to my mouth, pausing in uncertainty about which direction I should go.
“Eric . . .?”
“Is the area still clear outside?” I asked Michelle.
“Yeah, are you ready to come out?”
“No . . . you need to come in.”
“What . . . why? . . . I have nothing to say to him.” Michelle’s voice was immediately on guard.
My mind was reeling . . . inundated with an overload of chaos that only seemed to multiply with each second I was still alive. Uncle Andy’s cabin, Walters’s marina, the campground and the people at Richland . . . Tater and Mia and the boys by the bridge . . . the feral that almost punched my ticket at the Pelican Bay Ranger Station, little red-haired Faith and the promise I’d made . . . and now Michelle’s mom. It was stifling. And yet, and the very core of me, I was shocked to find that I had never felt so alive. And there was something else. The tickle of an idea that probably had close to a zero percent chance of success.
“Michelle, you need to come in. And I need you to bring your iPad with you.”
I could hear the hesitation in her voice, and I knew that my picture of her gritting her teeth was probably accurate. “I don’t want to see him, Eric,” Michelle replied, unaware that she was transmitting into open air instead of my headset. Her dad looked at the radio and shrugged, and then lit another cigarette.
“Michelle, your mom is here. You need to come inside.”
“Meet me at the back door,” she said immediately, “we’re on the way.”
I switched the radio back to hands free mode, and less than a minute later, both Michelle and Faith were inside the cabin. Faith was nodding her head, almost falling asleep just standing there, so I carried her up the stairs and laid her on the bed. It was still made, and judging from the amount of dust on one of the dressers, I doubted whether it had been used at all in the past year or so. I covered her with a sleeping bag that I found in the closet, and then went back downstairs.
Chapter 64
“Atrial fibrillation? What are you talking about? I spoke to mom three months ago after her checkup, and she said everything was fine.”
“She lied.”
“Well that doesn’t surprise me, since she had you as the role model for truth and honesty.” Michelle practically hissed at her father.
I was sunk in a chair at center court for the father daughter reunion, and did my best to not get involved any more than necessary. There’s a reason why the most dangerous calls for law enforcement officers to handle are domestic situations, and this one was shaping up to be no different. Cold anger battled resigned apathy, and the flames of intensity in their words, or lack thereof, were being constantly fanned by the mere presence of the one lady in the world who held the power to function as an olive branch. But she was sedated. I thumbed through one of the books I had seen on Michelle’s tablet, searching for the answer that I was hoping I’d find while the battle raged.
“How long has this been going on?”
“Your mom found out, oh, I guess about three years back.”
“Feel free to volunteer some information without me specifically asking, Dad.” Michelle put a special helping of venom on the word “dad.”
“This isn’t my fault. You can blame me if you want, but it won’t make a damn bit of difference. But if it makes you feel better, by all means heap it on me,” he shot back with the first tinge of life in his voice that I’d heard from him.
Michelle had dragged a wooden kitchen chair to the side of the sofa bed, and was lightly caressing her mother’s hair as she sparred with her father. “Tell me,” she said.
He took a hit off of cigarette number seven, and then shrugged his shoulders again. “Like I said, Lynn found out ‘bout three years ago. She was having a few fainting spells, and some discomfort in her chest and throat during her exercise class, so she went to see the doctor. A couple weeks and a zillion tests later, he tells her she has an inoperable heart valve issue. Said it might be from way back when she had a couple bad cases of pneumonia as a kid. No way to tell, though. Anyhow, because of the valve . . . whatever . . . ‘thing,’ your mom ends up with a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation. You know what that is?”
“A little. It’s like a fast heartbeat.”
“Yeah kinda . . . the doctors explained it to us . . .”
“You were with Mom?” I couldn’t tell if the slight change of tone in Michelle’s reply was caused by increased suspicion or a momentary thaw.
Her dad nodded in reply. “Yeah, I went down to be with her when she was getting all the tests done.” He was silent for a short time, and I took the fact that Michelle didn’t throw another dig as a positive sign. “Anyway,” he continued, “atrial fibrillation, or ‘A-fib’ as they were calling it, causes an irregular heartbeat, and a lot of times it can get really rapid. The other thing it does is make her a pretty good candidate for blood clots. Your mom’s got a pretty bad case of it, they said, but the good news is, or was, that it can be mostly controlled with medication.”
“What do you mean ‘was’?” Michelle asked, the danger level creeping back in her tone.
Her dad took a final drag, almost burning the cigarette down to the filter before he lifted his eyebrows and shook his head. “Lynn’s on two medicines. One of them is for thinning the blood to help prevent clots—warfarin I think it’s called. She’s got almost a year’s supply of that one over there in her purse, and in a pinch, the doc said she could maybe get away substituting aspirin.”
“And the other?”
“It’s the more important one. It helps to increase the blood flow and balance her heart rhythm. An antiarrhythmic I think they call it. The one she uses is called diltiazem. Without it, they said she’d start getting her fainting spells again, and then a lot of other things could happen. Things like heart damage or worse.”
“Where’s that medicine?” Michelle moved to the edge of her seat.
He shook his head and reached for another cigarette, tapping it into his hand but not lighting it. “She left it in her car. When all this started a few weeks back, she called me and said that she was coming up to ride out the flu stuff that was all over the news. Anyhow, she gets here, and a couple days later one of the neighbors comes over all crying, saying that her baby was out of formula and yada yada yada . . . so of course, you know your mom, and she lets her take the car. Only your mom forgot to get the new refill out of the glove box.” He flipped the lighter cap open with his thumb and rolled the flint wheel, sending a shower of sparks to the wick. The tiny, dancing flame jumped skyward, and he lowered the cigarette until it caught fire. His eyes sought out mine—briefly holding my gaze—and then turned towards his daughter. They hovered on her for a moment of contact before skipping across the room to rest on his former wife. “She’s been out of that medicine for six days.”
Chapter 65
I was upstairs, seated on the floor and leaning against a wall next to Michelle. Her quiet sobs were being muffled by my shoulder as I held her tightly. On the bed, Faith was sleeping heavily underneath the pickle bag, a name my uncle had imparted to me the first time he’d shown me one of his Vietnam era surplus sleeping bags. It was almost noon, and both Michelle and her father were exhausted from their hour long mudslinging. I turned my neck and looked out the window onto the road. A trio of infected, all of them teenage girls, had walked past a few hours ago. Since then I’d seen only two more. One of them, however, was a fast moving feral that leapt through the front window of a cabin four lots down. I heard vague screaming, but no gunshots. About twenty minutes later, the feral exited the cabin and slunk away. My stomach rumbled audibly, but I ignored it and tried to focus on the options in front of me. Truth be told, I wasn’t fond of any of them, and I honestly felt like I was trapped inside of a cheesy video game plot—every time I managed to survive the onslaught of enemies and obstacles and reach the goal, some villainous voice would sound
in my head saying, “Sorry Eric, but your princess is in another castle.”
Michelle stirred in my arms, and then mumbled into my chest. “What am I supposed to do, Eric? We go through all of the trouble and danger to reach this place, not even knowing if she’d be here, and then we end up in the wrong cabin with another life in our hands.”
“I know,” I said, “but if we hadn’t found Faith, we would have never found your mother.”
“But that’s what I mean. It’s like I don’t know what to believe anymore. We make it here, yippee-ki-ay, but her car isn’t here. One step up, two steps back. We find a child still alive and unhurt, somehow surviving in a house with ghouls in the basement and dead—and dying—grandparents upstairs . . . and she’s able to tell us about my dad’s cabin, and because of that we find my mom—step up. But now I find out that my mom is going to die . . . not because of some red-eyed monster, but because somebody didn’t bring back her car. Two steps backwards. Again.”
I started to say some words that were meant to comfort, but she shut me down with a finger to my lips. “Don’t say it,” she murmured, shifting around to sit cross legged in front of me. Both of her hands reached across the distance and held on to mine. “That’s the other thing. You. I’ve already told you that you’re the one constant in my life. Everything else has always swirled, shifted, and changed, but not you, and that’s what I need more than anything else.”
I looked down and away . . . knowing what was coming but feeling trapped in the situation nonetheless. Her hands shifted to the side of my neck, and she tilted my head up until I met her eyes.
“I love you Eric . . . but I also know you,” her thumbs brushed my earlobes gently. “And I’ve seen that look on your face before. You’re planning something. Something that you think will save me, but will probably end up killing you. I can’t have that. I don’t want that. I . . . need . . . you.” Her emphasis was slow and direct, and she shook my head lightly with each word.
I understood what she was saying, and my own heart was screaming at me to just shut up and hug her. All of my heart, that is, except that one tiny piece at the very core that would give anything . . . do anything . . . and pay any price if it kept Michelle safe or happy. It was that part I had to listen to.
“Michelle . . .”
“Don’t say it.”
“Michelle . . .”
“Eric, don’t say it . . . because whatever it is will be logical and practical and make sense, and then you’ll be gone and I’ll be alone.”
“It’s not that bad.” I was lying, and both of us knew it.
Michelle looked at me, her cheeks already puffy and red from the emotion fraught morning, and I watched as a fresh tear welled up and descended after its brothers.
“‘Chelle . . . I think I can save your mom.” My words ended and her tears began. I slid forward and wrapped my legs around her waist, pulling her tight against me and letting her cry. A moment later I felt a tiny nudge as Faith, apparently awake now, nestled against Michelle and I. Her innocent child’s whisper caressed our ears as she attempted to hug both of our necks.
“Don’t cry. Everything will be all right.”
I reached out an arm and pulled her into the hug. “I know it will Faith . . . I know it will.”
Now I just had to convince myself.
Chapter 66
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Michelle said as she stirred a package of ranch and salsa instant rice into the pot of water.
Her father had several dozen cases of bottled water stacked against the wall in the kitchen, but his food supply was just about as scarce as ours. In the end, we settled for a family sized box of macaroni and cheese and the instant rice. Faith was already happily munching the mac and cheese. Michelle’s mother had woken out of her stupor long enough to get a few spoonfuls of the overcooked yellow pasta down as well. Her father had refused everything, preferring to chain smoke as we ate.
I turned down the flame on my rocket stove, covered the rice, and then powered up Michelle’s iPad. My index finger swiped the screen and brought up one of the satellite images we had transferred to her tablet from my mapping program. “When you zoom in close enough, you can see different businesses classified by little icons. Banks are little green circles with a dollar sign in them, restaurants are orange triangles overlaid by something that I guess is supposed to be a fork and knife . . . churches are white squares with a cross in them—you get the idea. The last time I updated this mapping quad was about six months ago, so it should be fairly accurate.”
I skewed the iPad sideways so Michelle and her dad could get a better look. They both nodded, so I zoomed the map even closer. “Blue diamonds indicated medical facilities of some kind. Not only hospitals, but also medical clinics, outpatient fast track facilities, doctors’ offices, and pharmacies. Devils Lake,” I continued, “has one small hospital—more of a large medical clinic. It also has an urgent care facility that’s run by a conglomeration of doctors when they’re not working at the hospital or out on the lake fishing. Other than that, there’s maybe a dozen individual medical buildings. Most of them are small from what I remember, with maybe two or three specialists sharing the cost for office space. Then you have the pharmacies. By my count, Devils Lake has seven of them. Of the seven, five are located inside larger stores like the food marts or the supercenter. The other two are the big name chain stores.” I pulled back the tablet and set it on my lap.
“I’m not gonna tell you what to do Eric, but you’ve got to know that the town is lost. Those things are probably everywhere, especially where the large concentrations of people would have gone, like the hospital and the grocery stores.” An exhalation of harsh cigarette smoke accompanied the “I’m not gonna tell you” start of his speech.
I nodded, and he continued—this time without first sucking in a reload of nicotine. “All of those stores that might have carried Lynn’s medication have probably been looted days ago. Don’t forget, I’ve been in war zones and watched what happens firsthand when people panic or revolt.” He pointed at the map that was still displayed on the iPad screen. “Besides, almost everything in Devils Lake is right on the main drag. That’s bound to be crawling with those freaks.”
“I know,” I said.
Michelle’s face might as well have been chiseled out of stone as she listened.
“Then you’re an idiot for thinking you can just waltz right in there and pick up a refill from the pharmacy. You’ll die, and nothing about that will help Lynn . . . or Michelle. The best thing to do is to just let her keep taking them sleeping pills,” he nodded towards the covered figure on the sofa’s mattress, “and maybe she’ll pass quietly.”
“I don’t intend to go into town,” I said.
Both Michelle and her dad turned my way.
“Well then you ain’t getting no medicine, Eric.” Another puff of smoke accompanied his reply.
Michelle laid her hand on top of mine and squeezed. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“When your dad told me about Lynn’s condition, it brought back the memory of a conversation I’d had with my regional supervisor about a year ago. He had a Great Dane with a heart defect. I recommended the same veterinarian that works with Max, and even went with him on the first visit to kind of break the ice. My vet is a good guy, but I’m almost positive he likes animals more than people. Anyhow, he put the dog on a medicine that I was ninety-nine percent sure is the same stuff your mom’s on. To fill in the other one percent, I needed to check one of the books on your tablet. It’s a veterinarian’s guide you downloaded from somewhere, and FYI, it lists the same drug that Lynn’s on in the pharmacology for cardiovascular issues. Anyhow, I even remember asking my vet something about it, because some of the potential side effects seemed pretty harsh, but he said that they use it all the time in dogs, horses, and get this—bison.”
Michelle's eyebrows arched, but she said nothing. She was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
&nbs
p; “Yeah . . . bison. North Dakota’s most famous resident and the model for the twenty-five foot tall statue in Jamestown.” I added the color commentary, but it was unnecessary since both Michelle and I had grown up in Jamestown and knew about the world’s largest bison tourist attraction. “Anyway . . . apparently a lot of larger dog species are prone to heart arrhythmias.”
“So you’re thinking that you might be able to find this medicine at a veterinarian’s office?” Michelle's dad asked.
I nodded.
“Well then you’re screwed just as bad, because the only one I know about is right in the middle of town in a little strip mall between the elementary school and the grain seed processing plant.”
Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending Page 56