by David Peters
“We need to stitch up some of these larger wounds before I administer the Dust. Once the bio-coagulant from the Hunter is diffused, he could bleed to death before we could get these under control. We’ll focus on that talon wound on his left arm. Looks like that might have gotten deep enough to hit a larger vein.” He spent twenty minutes delicately stitching up the wounds and cauterizing everything that looked to be problematic. He didn’t see any major damage from the cuts that could lead to an internal infection so he closed them up.
“Okay, same as before. Nice, even applications.” He slowly squeezed the Dust into the man’s lungs.
Dylan found that his hands were ready to cramp up after nearly half an hour but finally the last bit of the Dust swirled away into the squeeze bag and through the ventilator.
Doc took one more check from his stethoscope and quickly scratched out some notes on a small pad of paper, “Now we can really do nothing but monitor and wait. You got him here fast so I can’t imagine a better scenario to see how well the Dust can truly function.”
“What do you think...” Dylan was interrupted by a knock at the door to the Q-Hut. He looked at Doc and he only received a shrug back.
He pulled the small curtain to the side and could see the entire field of view in front of the hut was wall to wall people. As he pulled the door open, the conversations immediately died down to a silent whisper. Caperson smiled back at his friend as he rocked back and forth on his boots. Behind him Jen was holding the arm of a woman that looked as if she had been crying heavily. Dylan could see the wave of turned faces as everyone became aware of him standing in the open doorway.
“People are getting a little antsy out here, Dylan.” Caperson turned and introduced the woman next to Jen, “This is Sandy. She was given a fairly bad bit of news about an hour ago. Word is that her husband, Greg, was killed by a Hunter this morning. Rumors began to fly and about twenty minutes ago she was told that her husband wasn’t dead. She was told that the Doc had a miracle cure and that he would survive. We know he’s been bitten but there is a lot of talk that Doc might be able to cure him. Any chance you could set the record straight before she has a full meltdown and the folks behind me start getting a little unruly?”
Dylan could read his friend’s eyes pretty clear. Caperson was concerned about the rumor mill getting out of control and someone in a position of authority needed to fix it before it steamrolled into something much larger and harder to reel in.
He nodded to his friend and turned to greet the young woman, “The rumors of your husband’s death were false. He is currently alive. Doc has given him what we think is a correct dose of the Dust. It will take some time before we know for sure, so all we can do is wait and see. It isn’t the best news but the story would be different if this had happened a month ago.”
Sandy wiped a tear from her face and asked in nearly a whisper, “So you’re sure he is still alive? That he isn’t going to turn?”
“He is very much alive right now. Doc has done everything he can for now and we are waiting to see how the Dust is going to work. We are most concerned about his survival but in the event he does pass it won’t be from the bite. He won’t turn.”
She leaned heavily on Jen’s shoulder and began to cry quietly, “That’s better than him dying a monster.”
Dylan heard Doc step onto the porch behind him.
Jen asked Doc, “Any ideas on when he will be awake?”
Doc frowned, “I really don’t want to set any expectations this early so I’m going to give hourly updates if that’s okay with Dylan.”
Dylan nodded, “This is your show. What you want to do in order to handle it is fine with me.”
He turned back to the crowd in front of the building, “I will be back in another hour to give an update on his condition. It isn’t a fast process so please don’t expect any miracles.”
“Is it all right if I sit with my husband while we wait? Just in case it doesn’t work? I wasn’t even awake to say goodbye to him when he left the tent this morning.”
“I can move another chair into the back room. It won’t be a problem.”
~2~
Niccole was holding Daniel as she quietly talked with Sandy. It had been nearly two hours since the Dust had been given and her husband Greg hadn’t so much as moved a single muscle. His breathing was still very shallow but his temperature had dropped almost immediately after the Dust had been given. Doc would pace about the room and check more often than most thought necessary.
“That’s pretty much how we got here in a nutshell. How about you? How did you wind up in Folkesburg? Where did you meet Greg?”
“We had been fishing in Idaho when everything went sour. Greg always over packed so we were able to stay at the lake for almost a month before we were forced to come into town. We both kind of figured everything would blow over. We expected the radio reports to get better, not go quiet all together. When we were coming down the trail we could see the town below was pretty much burned out so we kept moving south. Eventually, we could see Folkesburg at the end of the road. It was the first place we had seen that didn’t look destroyed or still burning. We just walked up to the front gate hoping for the best. Greg was a writer for a fishing magazine. I worked in the post office that he mailed his weekly manuscripts from. He gave me a copy of what he wrote and I thought fishing sounded fun. He asked me to go to a nearby lake for an article he was researching and the rest is history. I remember one time he...”
Greg’s eyes opened slowly. He looked around the room in a dazed state of confusion and tried to push himself up. He found that his arms were confined under the blankets by unseen straps. His eyes opened wider as he recognized his wife sitting on the chair next to him. They stared at each other for several moments.
Before anyone could say anything Greg spoke, “Am I dead?”
Sandy ran her hands through his hair, “Not even close, sweetie.”
“I sure feel like it. I haven’t ever felt this bad in my entire life. I feel like something chewed me up from the inside and spit me out.”
Doc heard the deeper voice speaking and entered the room, “Good to see you awake.” He loosened the straps holding the man down and slipped a blood pressure cuff over his arm. “Is it all right if I ask you a few questions while I’m doing this?”
“Not sure I’ll have the answers but go for it,” he said in a tired voice.
“Are you aware that you were bitten by a Hunter?”
The man nodded weakly as Doc took his pulse and checked his heart and breathing, “We were able to kill the infection in time to keep you from being turned but there will still be some lingering effects.”
“Like what?”
“Your heart rate is lower than I would expect. Your lungs sound as if there is excess fluid and your motor responses seem slow. Most of your wounds appear to be far more healed than I would expect. I guess we can call that one positive in all this. How are you feeling?”
“Doc, my entire body is sore. I mean my whole body, even my insides feel like they were taken out and tenderized. My hair feels like someone tried to pull every single one of them out one at a time. My fingernails hurt like hell and my joints feel like every one of them was bent backward.”
“Do you have any burning sensations anywhere?”
“No. I would say most of my pain is just normal hurt, no burning. Best way to describe it? It feels like someone tried to pump me up with an air compressor.”
Doc made several notes on his small pad then without looking up continued his questions, “What is the last thing you remember?”
“Ben had just thrown the end of a logging strap around the tree. I bent down to pick it up and next thing I know I’m on the ground trying to breathe. At first I thought the other team had dropped a tree on me. My face was covered in dirt and branches so I couldn’t see anything but then I felt the claws tear into my chest. I knew what it was then and just tried to keep those damn teeth away from me. Guess I failed. How com
e I’m still here?”
“You are still here because you are the first successful test of the Dust in a medical application.”
“So I’m not going to become one of them?”
Doc shook his head no, “No, you will not. That is unless you decide to take another spin at getting chewed on.”
“Not if I can help it,” he coughed several times and several flecks of blue spit landed on his sheet. His eyes filled with alarm, “That doesn’t look right, Doc!”
“I would expect that for some time to come. You may find other, shall we say, fluids, may have a blue color also.”
“I’m going to pee blue?”
Doc nodded.
Greg shrugged his shoulders, “So instead of roaming the mountains looking for people to kill, I get blue snot, blue pee, and feel like I got stomped on by a bull?”
“That about sums it up.”
He nodded slowly, “I’m okay with that.”
~3~
Dylan shifted uncomfortably in his chair as Travis continued to set up seemingly random items on a small folding table. The group had been sitting in relative silence for nearly twenty minutes as they waited for him to finish his preparations.
“So what exactly are you going to show us, Travis?” Dylan asked as he struggled to maintain some level of comfort on the small metal chair.
Caperson and Jen sat on his right and Niccole and Doc were sitting to his left. The workshop shed door was wide open in front of them.
Travis finished arranging things on the table then cleared his throat nervously, “I will cut right to the chase.” He held up a small paint can filled with Dust, “I think I actually have a big piece to the solution for our Folkesburg Corrupted problem.”
Dylan and Niccole raised their eyebrows as they gave each other a look. “Please continue,” Niccole said, “You have our undivided attention!”
“So I got this idea when Dylan and I were verbin’ the other day. He was hammering me on...”
Dylan stopped him, “Sorry to interrupt so soon but what exactly was I doing when I was verbin’?”
“It’s just another way to say that we were talking, sorry, Boss. So back to what I was saying. When you had stopped by the other day I was working on welding the baseplates to the mortars and I got an idea.” He held up the paint can of Dust in one hand then held up a small device with a hand crank. He fitted the device to the can and placed it on a small stool then disappeared into the shed.
Several moments he came back out while he removed a heavy set of gloves, “So the furnace is heating up but it will only take a few moments. I got an idea when Dylan bumped the strap I use to keep the door open. He wasn’t the first and won’t be the last to hit it.”
John leaned out from the shed and gave Travis a thumbs up.
“Thanks, John.” Travis walked over to the stool and began to crank the small handle. The machine gave a loud whining sound as if a heavy weight was being spun up faster and faster. “I have this geared pretty tightly, the noise is the small fly wheel that lets me change the gears and get the spinner to go fast enough.” He cranked the small machine several more times while he moved another lever and switched the gear again. “Once I have this up to speed, I flip the venturi on.”
He gave the device several more strong cranks then flipped a stout lever on the side. A small tornado of Dust shot out of the top of the can. The tornado twisted several feet into the air before being pulled into the front door of the shed. Several moments later a plume of Dust rose from the shed smoke stack and continued to rise several dozen feet into the air while forming a large rolling mushroom cloud as it blasted out of the furnace. The cloud rose nearly sixty feet in the air before it began to roll back down toward ground level coating the small group watching in a fine powder coat of light blue Dust.
Travis positively beamed, “What do you think?”
Dylan gave him a confused look, “Maybe I’m not able to understand what it is I’m seeing. Could you possibly enlighten us a little? I don’t see how this helps us in any way.”
“Certainly. When you hit the door strap and the shed door slammed shut, a little light bulb went off. Every building needs air flow, the bigger the building, the bigger the flow needed. This isn’t a human thing, it’s simply how shit works. I remember some buildings, like sports arenas and things like that have entire secondary buildings dedicated to keeping airflow and temperature under control. The Corrupted have the same issues. They like heat, but they need to breathe air just like we do. Their hives are deep. After Bossman and Caperson hit Sumter with the nuke, we knew just how deep they went. I began to think that maybe their stacks do more than pump heat into the environment. If you kind of step back and take a look at their tunnels and the flow of air, it starts to seem fairly obvious that they have a dual purpose. The entire design seems to lend itself to it.”
Caperson asked, “So you found a way to exploit this?”
“We have information on several hives now. It’s nothing as detailed as Sumter, but the descriptions seem to follow. We’ve only ever found a single entrance, larger hives may have more, but Sumter only had a single entrance. Remember when we were there? It stunk outside but the smell didn’t get really bad until we were several meters inside the tunnel. The fresh air from outside was being pulled in through the door.”
“Okay, now I’m starting to see it,” Dylan stood and walked around the small tornado of Dust, “Do you think this would be enough Dust?”
“Oh, hell no! When do I ever do things small scale? John, can you wheel it out here now?”
John wheeled a fifty-five gallon drum with a larger version of the device on the top of the small paint can. The fan at the top was driven by the remnants of a bicycle converted to be cranked by hand.
“Now this has enough Dust. I have two more just like this. We can get about one hundred and fifty gallons of the Dust airborne in a fairly short amount of time. I think their own ventilation system should do the rest of the work for us. Not only that, but this will leave the hive uninhabitable for as long as the inside of it remains dry. Judging by what we have seen of that crap they put on their walls that would be a pretty long time. It also doesn’t leave us with radioactive fish.”
Dylan looked at the new bio weapon, “How exactly do we get this to their doorstep? I’m pretty sure they don’t have a welcome mat out front.”
Travis held his hands up, “I made the weapon, man. You guys are the warriors. You get to figure out how to get them there.”
Dylan looked to Caperson, “Do you have any ideas?”
“I have so many ideas I’m having trouble choosing only one.”
Niccole added, “We still have a hell of a lot of Dust to deliver. How long would you need to be at the entrance to run these things, Travis?”
“I don’t really have any way to test it without wasting a lot of the blue stuff but if I had to throw a number out there I would say around five minutes.”
Caperson leaned back and ran his hands through his close cropped hair, “Five minutes at the entrance to a monster hive might as well be a year.”
Travis shrugged his shoulders, “Between the ‘nades and the Duster packs I think we could keep the area uninhabitable to the ‘Rupts for that long easily. No way in hell anything is coming back out of that hole once we fill it up. Only have to worry about any scouts that come running back because of all the screaming they tend to do while they are busy getting turned into piles of sludge.”
Caperson nodded as he thought about the plan, running through possible scenarios in his head, “Needs a little polish, maybe just a little clarity here and there. This can work though. How soon can you get the other two devices ready?”
“End of the day. All I have to do is fit the chains and drill the holes in the drums. John is already prepping the next can as we speak.”
“Sounds like we need to get this show on the road. Let’s build a plan and start packing for this little field trip.”
~4~
<
br /> Dylan leaned over the side of the horse-drawn cart and looked at the barrels and boxes carefully stored against the sidewalls, “How much Dust does that leave in the shed when we go?”
“We still have three barrels full and sealed with a fourth nearly full. We’re taking half of the Dust grenades but Zeus said he would sneak them on the wagon overnight if we didn’t load them ourselves.”
“Is Zeus running the armory now?”
“Travis was more or less running it with Erica and the occasional two cents worth from Jokester. All three of them came to me asking to hand that off to him. He had the experience and he was requesting so many changes that it made sense to just hand it over to him.”
Caperson nodded, “And Travis was okay with us taking that many ‘nades?”
“Apparently, he stayed up the entire night after we made the decision to go and filled every soup can in the camp. The huge amount of canned goods coming in from Folkesburg have been great for that use.”
“I talked with Doc late last night. Greg is up and walking now. Says he feels like crap but he’s happy to be alive. Doc is going to keep him for observation for another week. Other than the general complaints about minor aches and pains he has been having some really wicked nightmares.”
“I’d take bad dreams over being dead. I guess we have a cure?”
“We do indeed have a cure. As long as you get it fast. I’ve already talked to Doc about developing some field kits so we can have them with the first-aid kits they already have. We don’t have any of the breathers but he thinks getting the dust on a wound early can help.”
“I would say that is a pretty big leap forward in New World Medicine.”
Caperson was cinching down a rope when he saw Niccole walking up, “She doesn’t look happy.”
“She didn’t take me leaving on this mission too well. What did Jen say when you told her?”
“I’m guessing she stormed off to the same place Niccole went.”