by Jen Blood
“I’m fine,” she said impatiently. “You’ve got a guy in his forties in there with a head injury, and I wasn’t getting any breath sounds on his right side. Probable neumothorax. And there are at least five people still trapped in the kitchen. I can help with victims once you get them out here.”
He looked torn for a split second before he nodded. “Yeah, okay.” He pointed to the second ambulance, which appeared abandoned. “Go on over there, just assess as people come out. Don’t do anything, you hear me? Just red tag the worst cases so we can get ’em out of here.”
“Got it,” she agreed. She led me to the second ambulance and made me sit on the back end while she snapped on latex gloves and checked me out. “I see you didn’t listen to me about pulling out the glass. You’re lucky you didn’t bleed out before you got out of there.”
“It didn’t hit anything; it was just in my shoulder.”
“Actually, it could’ve hit a few things,” she said grimly. “And knowing I was right wouldn’t have been that much comfort if you died.” She took a pair of scissors and cut my t-shirt down the back, carefully peeling it away from the wound.
“You’ll need stitches,” she continued. “Are you up to date on your tetanus?”
“Yeah,” I said “Got a booster last summer, remember?”
“Right.” She put a compress to the wound, then took my left hand and guided it back to my shoulder. “Just hold it there, okay? Firm pressure, and stay still. When Juarez gets here, he can give you a ride to the hospital.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A firefighter carried a teenage girl away from the building, heading toward us. I watched from the sidelines as Solomon worked with another paramedic, setting the girl up with oxygen and checking her vitals. The fire had spread to the front of the building by now, and the parking lot looked like a scene from some war-torn country: people of all ages milling around, clearly in shock, their clothing torn and faces bloodied.
One of the teenagers who’d been sitting behind us stood off to one side. The right side of his body had gotten the worst of the blast, his clothes and body burned, a deep gash down his right cheek. No one seemed to notice him, and Solomon was busy with three of the workers who’d just been pulled from the kitchen.
I jogged over to the boy. He spun toward me in confusion.
“Have you seen Reggie?” he asked. “I…” he trailed off, eyes welling. He was probably Danny’s age, maybe a little younger.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m just gonna take you over to get some help, okay?”
He backed away when I tried to touch him, his voice tinged with hysteria. “Nah—my friend Reggie’s still in there. He’s got a piece of glass… They just left him in there. Somebody needs to help him. Please.”
“What’s he look like?” I asked.
“Red hair. He’s got a pierced lip. And a tattoo.”
“Just hang here a second, okay?”
I stopped one of the firefighters as he walked past, lowering my voice. “Did you see a red headed kid in there—pierced lip. Tattoo?”
“Reggie Bloom,” the firefighter said grimly. “He’s gone. Piece of glass severed his carotid. Bled out before we even got here.”
The world blurred. Smoke made the air hazy, clouds roiling overhead. My stomach burned. I jogged back to the boy.
“I told them to look for him,” I lied, figuring it was better than sending him into a tailspin while he was clearly in shock. “Everyone’s doing what they can. What’s your name?”
He wiped his eyes. His hand came away bloody and he stared at it in confusion.
“I’m Diggs,” I said when he didn’t answer. I still wasn’t touching him, but I’d managed to herd him toward safety.
“Mike,” he said absently. “I’m Mike.”
“Good to meet you, Mike. Listen, I’m gonna bring you over to get checked out, okay? Let’s let these guys do their jobs.”
He let me lead him to Solomon. Just before we got there, he stopped and stared at me, eyes uncomprehending.
“Why’d he do it?” he asked. He shook his head. “I don’t understand why anybody’d do a thing like this. I know he didn’t like us, but why’d anybody go and do this?”
“He?” I asked. Solomon approached. I held up my hand to get her to hang on a minute more. “You saw who did this? You could tell who was driving the van?”
“Yeah,” he said. “He was right outside the door. Casey saw him. We all knew who it was. He coached Little League—we’d been in that van a hundred times.”
Solomon tried to lead the kid to a waiting gurney. I held her off one more second. “Who are you talking about, Mike? Who was driving the van?”
“Sheriff Jennings,” he said. “He came straight for us.”
Chapter Fourteen - Solomon
There’s a reason I didn’t become a doctor. Actually, there are several reasons—the main one being that, by not becoming a doctor, it was guaranteed that I would piss off my mother—possibly for life. The other reason, however, is one I would never, ever admit to aloud:
I always hated seeing people in pain.
Not because I’m secretly some saint in love with the human race or something. Please.
I just hate the chaos of it all. The lack of control. The loss of dignity. The screaming and the snot and the tears.
If it were just blood and guts, I’d be fine.
But it’s not.
Strangely enough, my mother—the least empathetic person on the planet—seems to thrive amidst the screaming and the snot and the tears. Of course, she was never Miss Sunshine about it, but in New England that doesn’t actually matter so much. Mainers are a pragmatic lot; we’ll take competence over kindness any day. If my mother practiced in Kentucky, she’d probably be burned in effigy within the week.
Despite the screaming and snot and tears, however, about two months after the nightmare in Black Falls last summer, I enrolled in a basic course on first aid. And while I was recuperating and dealing with shitty surgeries and generally trying to pick up the pieces of my life after a year that had included a miscarriage, a divorce, multiple attempts on my life, and saying goodbye to the best friend I’d ever had, I kind of…found medicine again. After that basic first aid course, I took another, less basic course. Which led me to a harrowing eight-day Wilderness First Responder course, followed by my first ride-alongs with Portland Emergency Services.
I told almost no one—not Juarez, and certainly not my mother. I did tell my mother’s partner, Dr. Maya Pearce, since I needed a reference and Maya seemed as good as anyone for that. I swore her to secrecy, though. I’d wondered more than once what Diggs would say about this unexpected development, but, of course, I wasn’t talking to him anymore. And so, this odd new piece of my life became sort of my dirty little secret.
Until now.
Late that night in Kentucky, while doctors were still trying to sort through the casualties and nurses waded through the bleeding masses at Paducah General Hospital, I found a plastic chair and sat alone with my head tipped back against the wall. I was bruised and gashed and stitched in two places. Covered in other people’s blood. My hand throbbed.
I felt movement beside me. Juarez sat next to me and draped his arm around my shoulders. I tensed, strung tight. I opened my eyes when he pressed a kiss to my temple.
“Hey,” he said. He looked tired. I still hadn’t seen Special Agent Blaze since the explosion, but I figured when I did we were all goners. She’d melt us with her poison-dart, über-military death-ray eyes. I snickered at the thought.
Juarez looked at me like I was nuts.
“I’m a little punchy,” I said. “Sorry.”
“You were incredible, you know,” he said. He rubbed my knee. Usually, Juarez has a soothing effect on me, but his touch wasn’t doing much just then. There was no part of me that didn’t ache. Someone should make a PSA about getting caught in a car bombing. Those fuckers hurt.
“Can I get you anything?” he a
sked. “Tea? Soup?”
I arched an eyebrow. Even that was painful. “Have you met me? When have I ever wanted tea? Or soup?”
It came out snippier than I meant it to. Juarez removed his hand from my knee. I put it back.
“Sorry,” I said. “Apparently, tragedy makes me bitchy...er. I’ll get myself something in a minute. What about you? You okay?”
“You mean aside from the fact that my girlfriend and a restaurant full of innocent civilians just got blown up by a guy who was supposed to be on our side, and not one of us saw it coming?”
Right. Dumb question.
“Sheriff Jennings never really seemed like he was on our side as far as I could see,” I said. “And, realistically, who thinks a guy like Harvey Jennings is gonna snap and drive his minivan through the local Dairy Queen? If you’d told me he would grab a semi-automatic and mow down the local chapter of the Sierra Club, I wouldn’t be surprised... But this was a shocker.”
“Well, it’s my job to anticipate these things,” he said.
We sat there in a mutually miserable silence until he squeezed my hand and stood. “I’m going to speak with the doctors one more time, then we should go.” He hesitated. “If you’d like to stay with me at the hotel, there’s room. Unless you wanted to go back to the Durhams’ with Diggs.”
I thought of sleeping in the car the night before. My whispered screaming match with Diggs. The Kiss. The feel of his body sheltering mine when the world exploded around us.
If I didn’t have a headache before, I sure as hell had one now. “No,” I said. “I’ll stay with you. Thanks.”
He left. Five minutes later, I was half asleep when someone pressed something warm into my hand. I opened one eye as Diggs sat down.
“You brought me coffee?”
“Only half-strength—I figure eventually you’ll want to sleep. And here.” He set a Hershey bar on my leg.
“Coffee and chocolate,” I said. I looked at him. “Did you hear what Juarez tried to give me?”
“Rookie mistake. He’s just trying to take care of you.”
“I don’t need someone to take care of me.”
He harrumphed, but wisely let it go. We sat there in silence for a long time, arms touching, sipping our coffee. I closed my eyes again. Bloody faces swam through the darkness. Kids screaming. The smell of burning flesh. I thought of the look on Sophie’s face—the terror she must have felt in those instants before she died.
“So, you’re doing this now,” Diggs said.
The bloody faces vanished. “Doing what?” I asked.
“Fixing people up,” he said. “Don’t tell me all that was just your mother’s lessons from fifteen years ago kicking in. You knew what you were doing.”
“I may have taken some courses over the winter.”
When I opened my eyes again, Diggs was grinning at me. “What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “I just love it when you surprise me.”
“Glad I could oblige.” I started to lean back again, but something about the way Diggs was looking at me stopped me. Like he was getting ready to dive from an airplane and he didn’t have a lot of faith in his parachute. “You have something else you wanted to say?”
He thought about it for only a second more before he spoke. “My brother was a vegetarian,” he said.
It took me a second to figure out what he was talking about. Then it came to me: our fight back at the house the day before. Everything’s this deep dark mystery with you. I looked at him. He looked back at me. No flinching. No deflection. Despite that, there was no doubt how hard it was for him to share this piece of himself with me.
“He had been since he was six,” he continued. “I told him where burgers came from, and that was it. The kid was crazy about animals.”
“So, you stopped eating meat.”
“I haven’t had so much as a fish stick since the day he died.” He got quiet and looked down, rubbing his palms on his jeans. “You know me better than anyone, Sol. You always have.”
We sat there a second more before he stood. He lay his hand lightly on my head. “You should talk to Juarez. Let him be nice to you. Who knows—you might actually like it.”
He walked away.
I sat there with my coffee and my chocolate and my bruises. I could still feel the weight and the warmth of his hand.
Chapter Fifteen - Danny
Danny sat on the cool ground with zip ties cutting into his wrists. He didn’t know what time it was. He’d been fuzzy about details when he first woke up, but they were getting clearer now. Behind him was a cement wall. A big, thick steel door was the only way in or out. Above the door, angry red numbers below a bare red light bulb counted down:
24:09:52
He’d been watching those numbers so long he thought he’d lose his head. When he first woke up, they’d been at 38:42:20. He’d memorized that number. Couldn’t get it out of his mind now.
His body ached. His mouth tasted like he’d swallowed a wool blanket.
Just like he’d been doing since he woke up, he thought back to the night before. Tried to remember what happened. He remembered talking to Dougie over to Casey’s house. Playing guitar. Smokin’ up.
He remembered somebody calling to him from outside. A lady’s voice. Familiar, but none of the girls he knew. Saying sweet things that made him leave the garage like he was a puppet on a string. I been watchin’ you, Danny Durham, she’d said in a low, whispery kind of way that made him ache in a way he never had before.
He’d taken his stuff—his backpack and his cell phone and his keys. Gone out into the dark night.
It all went black from there.
And he woke up here.
His backpack was gone. So was his cell phone, and his smokes.
“Hello?” he called out again. He’d been calling out since he got here. Nobody ever answered, though. His voice echoed in the small room.
Quite a pickle you got yourself into, boy, his daddy said. He sat down on the floor across from Danny, stiff ’cause his daddy never sat on the floor. He was wearing jeans and that flannel Rick and Danny got him for his last birthday—not the ugly brown suit they buried him in.
Tears needled behind Danny’s eyelids. “Quit hauntin’ me, old man.”
You really wanna be alone in this place?
Danny shook his head. Fear knotted up his insides.
Nah, his daddy said. I didn’t think so.
Somewhere above him, Danny heard music—he’d been hearing music for a while, actually. Not too bad, either: mostly classic rock, but a little of that indie stuff Diggs always sent him. Sometimes, he heard footsteps off in the distance. He wondered what would happen if he made a racket—a big one. Took off his shoes and threw them at the door. Screamed bloody murder.
“You think they’ll kill me like they done you?” he asked his daddy.
His daddy just looked at him. I don’t reckon they brought you here for a game of checkers, son.
Part II: The Countdown
Chapter Sixteen - Solomon
24:00:00
At exactly midnight, someone blew up the power station that generated electricity for Justice and its outlying areas. Juarez got the call, and I watched a shadow fall over his face. He hid it well, but the fear in his eyes in that split second before he regained control spoke volumes. Juarez isn’t the kind of guy who scares easily.
“They’ve called the National Guard in,” he told Diggs and me. We were outside the hospital, standing in an ambulance bay far from prying ears. “They’re talking about evacuating the town.”
“Forget it,” Diggs said. “Nobody will go with you. They don’t like outsiders telling them what to do—and if they think there’s a holy war coming, they’re sure as hell not gonna want a bunch of Feds telling them they have to leave.”
“That’s what we assumed,” Juarez said. “They’ve also taken out a cell tower, so communication is spotty. I’d like you two to stay back here until we can get you out of
the area.”
He said it like he was giving us a Christmas wish list: A shiny red bike, a new sled for Jimmy, and for you two to stay the hell home. Not surprisingly, Diggs shook his head.
“You know I can’t do that,” he said. “Danny’s missing. These people are family to me.”
I didn’t mention that Einstein was still with Mae, and there was no way I was sitting back and letting my dog get swept up in a zombie apocalypse. Einstein was occasionally a sore spot between Juarez and me.
Juarez held up his hand. “I know you won’t stay. I said it was what I’d like—not what I thought would actually happen. Agent Blaze wants you both back at the station, anyway.” He looked at Diggs. “You know the area, which could prove invaluable for us. That and your knowledge of Barnel and several of the key players in this plan mean Allie isn’t anxious to see you go just yet. But it’s my job to let you know the risks.”
“We’re fine,” I said. “We’ll go.”
Diggs nodded, his decision already made.
We moved out.
22:48:01
About an hour into the drive, Diggs made me tune the radio to WKRO and his Buddy Crazy Jake came over the airwaves.
“If what our friend Reverend Barnel tells us is true,” Crazy Jake said, “and we’ve got just a few hours left here on the planet, you know there’s no place I’d rather be than right here, brothers and sisters. I’ve got a generator, a six pack, and a carton of smokes to carry me through, and to celebrate the end of the world as we know it, I’m spinnin’ the full length, top twenty-four records of all time…”
I could all but feel Diggs perk up. “Damn. This’ll be good,” he said from the back seat.
“We just heard Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Jake continued. Diggs groaned. “By the legendary Simon and Garfunkel, and now we’re into an album that started as a rock opera but never quite—”
“Who’s Next,” Diggs said. Juarez looked back over his shoulder. I rolled my eyes when, sure enough, Jake listed the Who’s sixth album as number twenty-three in his End of the World list. Diggs reached up front and turned down the volume.