Next to them was a woman in her early twenties, shaking, so terrified that a trickle of urine was running down her leg, pooling at her feet. The next was an old man, eyes vacant, crazed, and beside him was a Hispanic kid, lips moving, the Spanish all but unintelligible but now obviously praying a Hail Mary.
“Kevin.”
Malady came down to John’s side. “Get out your knife.”
Kevin looked at John, hesitated, but then obeyed.
The eyes of one of the three defiant men widened. “Shoot me and be done with it,” he said coldly. “But not the knife, man.”
“Cut their bonds.”
“What?”
“I said cut their bonds.”
Kevin stepped behind each and cut their hands free. None of them moved.
John looked back at his students, his neighbors, his friends. “It’s over,” he said.
There was a murmur of complaint from the crowd. “What’s to prevent those bastards from coming back tonight and trying to cut our throats?” John shook his head. “I was wrong.”
“For killing them?” someone shouted.
“They killed our wounded without mercy!” a girl cried, one of his students, a girl who had been a Bible major long ago.
“And we have killed theirs. Washington and I ordered it because there is not even a fraction of the supplies needed to take care of our own.”
“Cannibals!”
John nodded.
“Yes. Some undoubtedly yes. I won’t bother to ask these, because they will lie to save their lives.” He wearily shook his head.
“I’m stopping it because I started to love it. I hate them. I hated that bastard hanging there more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my life….
“But I will not become him…. I will not let us become them. Because God save us, we are on the edge of that now, here at this moment.”
He did not wait for a reply but turned back to face the prisoners.
“I’m not going to go through some bullshit ritual of you swearing to me that you will leave, never return, and repent.”
The Hispanic boy started to nod his head, went to his knees, and made the sign of the cross repeatedly.
“Remember what you saw here. Don’t ever come back. All of you, if you survive, will carry the mark of Cain upon you forever for what you’ve done. If you come across other bands like yours tell them what happened here, and tell them they will face the same defeat.
“I ask but one thing. We’ve given you back your lives. Do not take any more lives, for then you surely will be damned forever.”
He started to turn away. Go!
Six did not hesitate; they simply turned and ran. The boy on his knees looked up at John wide-eyed and moved as if to kiss his feet. He backed away from the boy and motioned for him to get up and leave.
“Gracias, senor.” He turned and ran off.
The young woman who in her terror had urinated just stood there, unable to move.
“Go,” John said softly.
“Where?”
“Just go.”
“I’m sorry. God forgive me, I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can live now with what I’ve done. I’m sorry.”
Sobbing, she turned and slowly walked away. John turned and faced the crowd.
“Cut those bodies down,” he said, then paused. “Except for their leader. I want a sign under him. ‘Hung as punishment for leading the gang known as the Posse, murderers, rapists, and cannibals. May God have mercy on his soul and all who followed him.’”
John holstered his Glock and walked back to the rest, his soldiers, his neighbors, his friends parting as he passed, many with heads now lowered.
“You were right, John,” someone whispered.
His soldiers. He looked at them as he passed. Some were now beginning to break down. Postbattle shock, perhaps what had just happened here as well.
Some started to cry, turning to lean on one another for support. Others stood silent. More than a few were kneeling, praying, others wandering back now, stopping to roll over a body, then collapsing, crying, hugging a fallen friend.
John felt weak, sick to his stomach.
“John, let me take you back into town.”
It was Makala, who had come up alongside of him, slipping her hand into his.
He stopped and embraced her.
“Thank you for stopping me,” he whispered. “I was out of control.”
“It’s ok, sweetheart. It’s ok.”
She leaned up and kissed him, the gesture startling, for so many were walking by him now, seeing this and respectfully not looking directly at them.
He suddenly did feel weak, as if he was about to faint, and had to kneel down.
“Stretcher!”
He looked up and shook his head.
“John, you have a concussion. You’re suffering from shock; you need to lay down.”
“I must walk out of here. Just help me.”
He leaned against her, walking across the battlefield.
A battlefield, he thought. Memories of photos of the dead at Gettysburg, bodies lying in the surf at Tarawa, the dead and wounded marines aboard a tank at Hue. Always photos, but never in a photograph was there the stench.
The battlefield stank not just of cordite but also the coppery smell of blood, feces, urine, vomit, the smell of open raw meat, but this raw meat was human, or once human. Mixed in, the smell of vehicles burning, gasoline, rubber, oil, and, horrifying, burning bodies, roasting, bloating, bursting open as they fried.
The forest fire to either side of the highway had been a tool of battle but an hour ago. Now it was a forest fire raging, the heat so intense it could be felt from hundreds of yards away, moving with the westerly breeze, already over the crest of the mountain, moving down into the valley towards Old Fort, bodies, the enemy but also his own, roasting in those flames.
Now that it was over, hundreds were moving about, looking for loved ones, sons for fathers, mothers for sons, young lovers and friends looking for lost lovers and lost friends.
Film, yet again film. The scene from the Russian film Alexander Nevshy, after the battle on the ice, the mournful music, the haunting twilight effect of the lighting, wives and mothers weeping, looking for their fallen loved ones.
Again, though, this was no film; this was real. A boy, one of the tougher kids from the ball team, collapsing, lifted up the shattered body of a girl, cradling her, screaming, friends standing silent around him and then suddenly pinning him down as he dropped her, pulled out a pistol, and tried to shoot himself.
John staggered on.
A line of vehicles on the highway ahead. Wounded being loaded onto the flatbed trailer. Makala motioning for help. Hands reaching out, pulling him up, Makala climbing up by his side.
The sound of the diesel rumbling, exhaust smoke, they started to move, picking up speed as they cleared the ramp for Exit 65, the driver holding down the horn as the trailer came up State Street and then stopped in front of the furniture store in the center of town. All the furniture had been moved out, tossed into the street, except for the beds and sofas in the main display room.
But the facility was already overflowing.
“All ones here!” someone was shouting. “Twos over here!”
Four of the ones, all of them on stretchers, were lifted off and rushed inside.
John looked at Makala.
“I need to go in there.”
“John, it’s a concussion, not too bad, I hope. I think it’s best I just get you home and into bed. You should be all right in a week or so. Jen can take care of the burns.”
“No. I have to go in there. Those are my kids . .. my soldiers.”
She didn’t argue with him. A couple of townspeople helped him down. The last of the wounded off the truck, the driver revved it up, swung around the turn to Montreat Road, then turned through the parking lot of the town hall complex to race back to the battlefield.
John stood outside the door, hesitated, took a deep br
eath.
He let go of her embrace, stepped aside from her, and walked in.
He almost backed out but then froze in place.
It was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life up to this moment. Worse than holding Mary as she died, worse than anything.
“Jesus, give me strength,” he whispered to himself, and then he walked in.
Dozens were on the floor, all with ones marked on their foreheads. Some were crying, others silent, trying to be stoic. Fortunately for some, they were unconscious. Every wound imaginable confronted him.
He walked slowly through the room. If any made eye contact he stopped, forcing a smile. Some he recognized, and he was ashamed of his lifelong inability to remember names. All he could do was bend over, extend a reassuring hand, and kept repeating over and over: “I’m proud of you.… Don’t worry; they’ll have you patched up in no time…. Thank you, I’m proud of you….”
He left that room and in the next one he truly did recoil and Makala came up to his side. He looked at her, wondering how in God’s name she had ever handled what he was looking at.
The two towns had nine doctors and three veterinarians Day one. One had since died. There were eleven tables in the room and on each was a casualty and around each was a team at work, the veterinarians as well in this emergency.
The anesthesia saved from the vets’ offices and the dentists’ offices was now in use. He saw Kellor at work and the sight was terrifying. Kellor was taking a girl’s leg off just above the knee. The knee was nothing but mangled flesh and crushed bone. Her head was rocking back and forth, and she was weeping softly.
Horrified, John looked at Makala.
“We’re using local for amputations,” she whispered. “We have to save the general for the more serious cases.”
“More serious?”
But he did not need to be told. Head wounds, shattered jaws, chest wounds, stomach wounds, though, were being triaged off because there were not enough antibiotics to treat them after the operation, if they even survived that.
He went up to the girl on the table. She looked up at him, wide-eyed, panicked, eyes like a rabbit that had just been shot, waiting for the final blow, and his heart filled. He knew her.
He grabbed her hand.
“Laura, isn’t it?”
“Oh God, I can feel it,” she gasped. “Hang on,” John said.
The sound was terrifying. Kellor was now cutting the bone with a saw. John spared a quick glance down. It was a hacksaw, most likely taken from the hardware store. My God, they didn’t even have the right surgical tools.
“Oh God!”
John squeezed her hand tight, leaning over, looking at her. “Look at me, Laura; look at me!” She gazed up at him.
“Laura, remember your song ‘Try to Remember’….”
“‘The kind of September…’ Jesus, please help me!”
The sound of sawing stopped; someone assisting Kellor lifted the severed leg off the table. Kellor stepped back from the table.
“Nurse, tie off the rest….” He pulled aside his surgical mask and looked over at John, then down at Laura.
“Laura honey, the worst is over,” Kellor said. “We’ll give you another shot of painkiller shortly.”
Sobbing, she nodded, John barely able to let go of her hand.
Kellor looked at John as they turned away.
“We’re out of painkiller except for some oxycodone,” he whispered. “God save her and all these kids.”
Kellor tore off the latex gloves and let them drop to the floor.
“Nurse, I’m taking five minutes; prep the next one.”
John felt guilty leaving Laura, but Kellor motioned for him to follow him out of the operating room.
“John.”
It was Makala.
“I’m needed here now. I’m finished with triage up at the gap.”
He nodded to her, but she was already turned away, motioning for an assistant to pour some rubbing alcohol on her hands.
John, following Kellor, walked past the other operating bays. The floor was slick with blood, and as John looked down he was stunned to see that it was covered with sawdust, an assistant throwing more down on the floor even as the doctors continued to operate.
As they passed the last table one of the doctors, a woman, stepped back.
“God damn it!”
She tore off her gloves stepped back, and leaned against the wall, sobbing, and then looked over at John, glaring at him as if he had intruded into a world that he should never have ventured into.
Two assistants lifted the body off the table, the boy’s chest still laid wide open from her frantic attempt to save him.
Kellor took John by the arm and led him out of the room.
“A friend of her daughter’s,” he whispered. “They were neighbors.”
The next room was set up as a postop, barely any floor space left. There was a precious small supply of plasma that had been saved from the clinic over in Swannanoa. Half a dozen bottles were hooked up, not necessarily to those who needed it the most but instead to those for whom a single bottle could ensure survival.
Some volunteers from the town who had not been in the fight were now sacrificing their own lives. They had volunteered to donate blood. In their weakened state not more than half a pint would be drawn, but even that was too much for so many of them. But they volunteered anyhow.
Those who knew their type were being matched up with the wounded. The letters had been marked on the chests and backs of those who had known their blood type before the fight with a grease pencil. The blood transfer was direct. To John it looked absolutely primitive, using old-fashioned rubber hoses, squeeze balls, and needles, the donors lying on cots higher than the patients receiving the precious fluid.
Kellor led John through a side door and out into the open air. After the last twenty minutes, it was impossible for John to believe that there was still a world out here of sunlight, a warm summer breeze… but then he saw the long line of bodies in the parking lot behind the store… the dead.
He fumbled in his pocket. There were but two cigarettes left. With trembling hands he pulled out one and lit it.
Kellor looked at him, started to hold up a finger. “Makala already diagnosed me. Concussion.”
“And some burns. You better get some ointment on that face and sterile bandage. Have Jen boil a sheet and cover it. You can’t risk another infection. You’re still weak from the last one.”
“Sure, Doc.”
“John, we’re going to have a terrible problem in a few days.”
“What? What after this?”
“Disease. I was up at the battle site after you pushed them back from the bridge. Saw some of the Posse. Talked to a few of them before…” His voice trailed away. “Before Tom’s men shot them.”
“John, their camp was loaded with disease. Flu, hepatitis, I think some exotics as well, typhoid perhaps. You look at their bodies you could see they weren’t much better off than the people they were terrorizing. I think we’re going to have some kind of epidemic here in a matter of days and it will be far worse than the last one. All that blood splattered about, many of them obviously drug users, we might be looking at hep B and C, maybe even HIV.”
“Tell Charlie,” John sighed. “I can’t bear any more.”
“Charlie?”
John looked at him.
“John, didn’t you know? Charlie’s dead. He was killed in the fight at the overpass.”
“Oh Jesus. I told him to stay back here. He was too weak. His job wasn’t in the front lines.”
“You knew Charlie,” Kellor said with a sigh. “He wouldn’t stay back, not at a time like that.”
“Damn.”
“John, you’re in charge of this town now.”
“What?”
“Charlie appointed you. He told me just before he died. Kate was in here, witnessed it, and agreed. You’re in charge now under martial law.” John sagged against the wall.
>
“I just want to go home right now.” Kellor nodded and put a reassuring arm around him. “Things will run by themselves for the rest of the day. I’ll take care of it. And John…” He hesitated. “I think you should go home.”
“Why?”
John took the last puff of his cigarette and tossed it to the ground. Kellor reached into John’s breast pocket, fished out the last, the last of all his cigarettes, and offered it to him and helped him light it. “My God, what else?”
Kellor reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring, a high school ring. “What is this?” John asked. “Ben’s ring.”
He couldn’t speak. He just held it, looking down at it, flecks of dried blood coating it.
“He died an hour ago. He was triaged off as a three, but I saw him by the bridge and brought him back anyhow, John.”
Kellor nodded to one of the bodies, one of the few with a sheet covering it.
“He was a good kid, John. A damn good kid. Stayed on the bridge even as it was getting overrun. A lot of people saw it, saw how he rallied people about to panic, shouting for them to charge, and then he went down. I thought you knew. You passed within feet of him when the counterattack started.”
John couldn’t speak.
Kellor sighed.
“John, he’ll leave behind a child you shall be proud of. Proud that Ben was the father. Someday I’ll come up and tell Elizabeth about him. Hell, I helped to bring him into the world seventeen years ago.”
He shook his head.
“We might of lost the fight without kids like him, a lot of kids like him. “John, he asked me to tell you that he was sorry if he had disappointed you. And asked that you love the child he and Elizabeth will have.” Kellor began to cry.
“Damn all of this,” he sighed, then looked back at John. “Now go home to Elizabeth.” John could not speak.
He walked over to the body and was about to remove the sheet, but Kellor stopped him.
“Don’t, John; remember him as he was.” John looked down at the body.
“You are my son,” he whispered. “And I will take care of your baby; I promise it. Son, I am proud of you.”
Woodenly John turned and walked away.
Going around the building, he came out onto State Street. Another truck was pulling up from the front, half a dozen wounded in the back, three of them with twos marked on their foreheads, the others with ones.
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