by McBain, Tim
Lucas’ grimace widened, mouth pulling down at the corners, a sliver of his bottom teeth exposed.
“The collapse of society plunged us back into the stone age. We’ve slowly crawled out of it. Made a better life here in this camp. We all want things to get better still, to make a better world than the one we have. But I promise you that if we fight this war, we throw all of that progress away. We’ll bring about a new Dark Ages. Worse even than the chaotic time just after the collapse. Maybe the worst the earth has ever seen. And I don’t know how we’d get out of it. Not again.”
By the time Father finished his thought, the women on the council, at least, were nodding along with his words.
Lucas scowled in the corner, face wrinkling into a mask of aggression. He stood when father was done, his lips twisted as though to rebuke the words the man in the wheelchair had just spoken. But then his eyes flitted over the others in the room, and he thought better of it. Sat again.
It was always a matter of time, Father thought, until Lucas got his way. Not today perhaps. But soon.
Crazy to think that after all that’s happened, we’ve learned not at all.
Erin
Ripplemead, Virginia
9 years, 37 days after
After Marcus intervened and convinced Erin to put her gun away, he and Delfino carried the wounded man from the living room to the bedroom they’d nicknamed “the infirmary.”
It had three beds and a stockpile of medical equipment Erin and Izzy had scavenged over the years: stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs, scalpels and forceps, swabs, bandages, alcohol, iodine. The list went on. Marissa slept in the next room over so she could be “on call” whenever they had a patient.
Erin took her turn washing her hands at the pedal-operated camper sink they’d set up in the bathroom across the hall, and then she suited up into one of the surgical gowns Marissa insisted they wear.
She couldn’t believe Delfino had brought him here. But of course Delfino, of all people, would have the balls to show up and expect them to save some stranger.
Marissa was assembling a tray of tools when Erin entered their makeshift hospital room.
The man on the bed shivered and moaned. Erin leaned closer, trying to make out the words, but they came out muffled and slurred.
“Has he said anything intelligible?” Erin asked, snapping on a pair of surgical gloves.
Marissa held a syringe filled with liquid in front of her face and flicked it a few times with her finger to dislodge any air bubbles.
“No, and I doubt it would matter if he did.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s delirious with the fever. His temperature is over 102.” Marissa pulled a mask over her mouth and nose. “Take that thing off his head, will you?”
“What?”
“The sack. Take it off.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?” Marissa snapped. “Because we have to.”
“But the wound is on his arm, not his face.” Erin’s gaze ran over the coarse texture of the canvas bag. “I mean, it’s obvious he wears the thing for a reason. He doesn’t want people to see.”
“I don’t have time to argue about it. Just remove the damn thing already.”
Erin crossed her arms.
“No,” she said, refusing to flinch when Marissa turned her fierce eyes on her. “It feels wrong. Like taking off someone’s underwear when they’re asleep.”
“I’m a nurse.” Marissa scoffed. “I’ve removed underwear from unconscious people more times than I can count. It’s part of the job.”
Her eyebrows twitched expectantly, but Erin held her ground, returning Marissa’s glare right back at her.
After several seconds, Marissa’s eyes fell. She let out a disgusted sigh and threw her hands in the air.
“Fine. Have it your way.”
She snatched up a pair of shears from the tools she’d laid out earlier and wheeled her stool closer to the bed. Just as she began to unwrap the crude dressing on the stump of the man’s arm, there was a quiet knock at the door. Erin and Marissa both looked up as Izzy’s head poked into the room.
“Can I help?”
Erin and Marissa answered at the same time.
“No.”
“Yes.”
Now Erin was the one giving Marissa the look.
“She wants to learn,” Marissa said, shrugging.
Erin cocked her head to one side.
“Yeah, but maybe we could wait for a slightly less gruesome case?”
Marissa gave one of her patented little laughs. It was a bitter sound, utterly without humor.
“You think we get to pick and choose?” Marissa swiveled back to the patient. “Wash your hands and gown up, Izzy. Erin’s going to show you how to start an IV today.”
Erin clamped her jaws together, waiting until Izzy had left the doorway before she spoke again.
“Is this because I wouldn’t take the bag off his head?”
“Honey, you need to get over yourself,” Marissa said, rolling her eyes. “This is about what’s best for the group. I won’t be around forever, and the more people we have trained in even basic first aid, the better.”
Now Erin was the one staring at the ceiling. That was Marissa’s go-to response these days when she wanted to win an argument. I won’t be around forever.
“Besides, Izzy’s not a kid anymore,” Marissa went on. “She’s old enough to make her own choice in this. I was younger than she is when I got my first job as a nursing assistant.”
Erin opened her mouth to argue that if anyone was deciding when Izzy was old enough to make these decisions, it would be Erin, but Marissa had finished removing the towel that covered the man’s stump. The words on her lips disappeared when she saw what was underneath.
The wound was truly horrific. Mottled patches of angry red and putrid yellow and the distinct smell of rotting flesh.
Then she saw it. The solid patch of jet black on one side. It looked so very wrong that even a novice like Erin knew it was bad.
Izzy came in then and made a bee-line straight over to the raw stump on the man’s arm.
“Whoa,” she said.
“Don’t stick your face in it, Iz,” Erin said.
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again,” Marissa said. “She’s a natural.”
Erin sighed.
“That’s what you always say when someone doesn’t instantly vomit or faint at the sight of something disgusting.”
“Well what else do you think being a nurse is? Anyone can learn the practical skills. Starting IVs. Stitching up wounds.” The scrap of towel that had served as the bandage was stuck to the wound in a few places, and Marissa used her shears to carefully snip the fabric away. “But the part that really matters is having balls big enough to do it in the first place. To look at something like this and not gag or run away screaming. To not let the fear in. It’s about putting your own self-interest to the side to help someone in need.”
This was another disagreement they’d played on repeat over the years, so Erin said nothing.
“You remember how to take vitals?” Marissa asked Izzy.
Izzy nodded.
“Why don’t you do that while Erin and I get this wound cleaned up,” Marissa said, injecting the site with a local anesthetic.
While Izzy wrapped a blood pressure cuff around the man’s good arm, she wrinkled her nose at the infected stump.
“That looks nasty.”
“That’s gangrene,” Marissa explained. “It means the blood supply to that area has been cut off, and the tissue is no longer receiving oxygen.”
“So what do we do to fix it?”
“We’ll debride the wound, which is a fancy way of saying we’ll cut away the dead tissue. And then we’ll try to keep his fever down and give him antibiotics to hopefully clear up the infection.”
Izzy noted the vital signs on a clipboard beside the bed before reporting them out loud to Marissa.
“Heart rate is 130 beats per minute. Respirations, 32. Temperature, 102.1. Blood pressure 148 over 98.”
Marissa gave a single nod.
“Good girl.”
“They’re all really high,” Izzy said. “Is that bad?”
“It just confirms what we already knew. He’s got sepsis. Sometimes people call it blood poisoning, because it means the infection isn’t just in his arm now. It’s in his whole body. And that’s definitely not good.” Marissa checked her watch. “The fever is our biggest concern right now. And I’m actually kind of glad that his blood pressure is high, to tell you the truth. A drastic drop in BP will mean he’s gone into septic shock, and then we’ll really be in trouble.”
Marissa’s eyes slid over to Erin.
“I think we’ve given the lidocaine long enough to take effect. Ready?”
“I’m ready,” Erin said.
While Marissa used a scalpel to scrape and cut at the dead tissue, Erin stood by with a bottle of sterile water, using it to spray the area clean.
When they’d finished with the grisly task, Marissa asked Izzy to take another set of vitals.
“What are his odds?” Erin knew better than to ask questions like this, but she couldn’t resist.
Marissa clicked her tongue and considered it.
“I’d say fifty-fifty.”
Erin frowned and shook her head at the idea of the man’s fate being only as certain as a coin flip.
“And just so you know, this will pretty much clean out our supply of broad spectrum IV antibiotics,” Marissa said, wrapping a fresh bandage around the raw flesh of the man’s wrist.
“Shit.”
“Yep. Speaking of which, you might as well go ahead and start the IV on his good arm. Give him 250 mls of saline to start, and take Izzy through each step. We’ll figure out the dosage of the vancomycin after I get cleaned up.”
Izzy took Marissa’s seat, watching eagerly as Erin went through the process, just like Marissa had taught her. She palpated a vein on the back of the man’s hand and then showed Izzy how to tie a tourniquet. While Izzy swabbed the site with rubbing alcohol, Erin’s focus wandered up to the rumpled fabric concealing the man’s face, wondering what disfigurement the bag might conceal.
It was only later, as she inserted the IV and let Izzy flush the vein with saline solution, that she realized she’d never asked Delfino how the man had come to lose his hand in the first place.
Louis
Rural Tennessee
1 year, 53 days after
The car stopped just before dawn, jerking to an abrupt halt that shook them in their seats, then settling downward.
Louis held his breath as he felt it happening. Eyes staring into the gray. Even with the dark of night giving way, he couldn’t see much out there. Smears and blurs and cloudy water.
Their forward momentum had waned, and he’d felt them riding lower and lower. He’d chewed his lip, braced himself for the final plunge, and here it was.
The current had ebbed along the way. Slowed at a steady pace. All of that thrashing energy seeping out of the rapids little by little.
Time tames all the wild things eventually, doesn’t it? Until it keeps them still.
Thankfully, the water wasn’t deep enough to consume them. Not here. Not anymore. The sedan hunkered down, touched bottom, and a suction cup like sound emitted as the tires settled into the thick muck.
The water still flowed around their vehicle — more like a lively creek than a raging river at this point. The current lacked that deep rumble it had for a while there, back when it was really moving, toppling trees and the like.
Louis remembered to breathe finally, his lips popping as they parted, the wind filling his chest.
He looked at Lorraine, who blinked back at him. Her face showed more shock than anything. Eyes wide. Faint rumples forming on her chin.
A quick glance in the rearview showed him that the same was true for his own expression — shocked above all else. Maybe that made sense. Their minds hadn’t been able to catch up to the idea that they’d actually survived.
“I believe it rained last night,” he said, surprising himself with the deadpan joke.
Lorraine gasped before she laughed. A stutter-step of a sound hitching on its way out of her throat as though she’d tripped on the giggle.
That finally broke the tension some. Louis could feel the muscles in his neck and shoulders let go a touch. Could close his eyes and feel a physical sense of relief in them.
Some kind of survivor’s euphoria washed over him then. Awe. Disbelief. Joy. They’d just lived through a nightmare. Lived.
Now that their immediate safety looked OK, some of the sensory details finally started to filter in for Louis.
His feet were wet.
He’d noticed that the flood had breached the cabin to some degree, muddy water flowing into the crack around the door probably. But he hadn’t felt how saturated his toes were until now.
He stripped his shoes and socks off and folded his legs up so his feet could rest on the edge of the seat, out of the muck. Right away, this felt better.
Leaning into the backseat, he put the shoes up by the back windshield, hoping the sun might help dry them out faster once the daylight hit in full.
When he turned back, Lorraine handed over her Chuck Taylors. He tossed them next to his.
Then he rolled down his window and rang out his socks like a pair of dishrags. He thought about draping them over the open window to let them dry out, but then he remembered the corpse that had crouched on the hood for so long. Better to keep the window closed for the most part. These waters were crawling with the dead.
His arm moved in circles, putting the window up, but as the pane of glass neared the top, he stopped. Hesitated.
He left it open just a crack and stuck his face to the opening. Felt the cool air on his skin. Refreshing even if it was on the sticky side. The rain drops pelting his brow were light, barely more than a mist.
He closed his eyes. Felt that soft touch of moisture. Breathed that fresh air. Listened to the flutter of the water babbling outside.
He focused a moment on only these sensations. And he felt very alive, very grounded in this moment, very thankful to exist in it.
After a few seconds, he put the window up the rest of the way. That small connection to the rest of the world seemed to close off as the glass muffled the sound, but it was OK. He could still feel it. Inside.
“I know this is a stupid question,” Lorraine said. “But where are we?”
Louis looked through the droplets spattered on the windshield, cast his gaze to the world beyond them before he spoke.
“I really don’t know.”
It was still mostly dark out. Too dark to get much of a feel for where they were. On the road? Near the road? He couldn’t say.
He suspected they’d moved many miles from their previous location. He could make out trees still standing in the distance. They were lucky the water hadn’t slammed them into one of those, though it had seemingly been too busy uprooting most of the trees around them.
Gazing into the water around the car, he thought he could see various branches and a few full tree trunks lying in crisscrossed piles beneath the surface, though it would be hard to say for sure until the sun came up. Part of him thought he could be imagining things.
Would it be asking for too much luck to hope that they were still on the road? Any road. After thinking about it for a second, he realized it wouldn’t be any help.
For the first time, it occurred him that this car was almost definitely done for. All that water, mud, filth, sludge jammed into the engine block. He couldn’t imagine it coming out of that unscathed to the point of still functioning. All the fluids would have been contaminated, and anything beyond a simple oil change out here would probably be too much hassle to be worth it.
Shit. They’d have to find another ride, and then they’d have to come back for all the gas they had loaded on
this thing. At least that would be OK — the fuel supply — having been sealed in cans and plastic bottles, much of it safe in the cabin with them.
He turned to say something to Lorraine about it, but when he saw her, he stopped himself.
Her eyes were closed, the flesh of her face slack. Asleep. Eyelids twitching as though she were dreaming.
Crazy to be able to sleep after something so intense, Louis thought. Maybe pregnancy did that to someone, made them more able to get sleep because they needed it more, required it. Some biological mechanism to protect the baby.
When he closed his own eyes, however, he too drifted quickly. Exhausted.
A light, fitful sleep descended upon him, bringing with it dreams of flowing water.
Delfino2
Ripplemead, Virginia
9 years, 37 days after
Ruth ran through the yard with the other kids, arms outstretched at her sides like an airplane. The kids circled a vegetable garden fenced in with chicken wire, even a mesh plastic of some type laid over the top of it, which must be there to keep the birds out. They seemed to be chasing each other, but it was hard to tell who was chasing whom, what if any order there was to the mystery game they played.
Sitting on the concrete stoop beyond the back door of the house, Delfino watched for ten minutes or more, trying to find a pattern, a sense of order, any explanation. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what the hell they were playing.