“Jessica, just put the gun down.” Dennis said, and his tone was the one Jessica heard so often at the office. It was the one he used on patients, the one that said he was the doctor and knew what he was doing. The one that promised everything would be okay if you’d only trust him.
Jessica lowered the gun slowly, then clicked the safety on. She drew a breath that shuddered despite her best effort to keep it even. Austin opened his arms, and Candice scrambled away from him immediately. Austin stepped back, moving with a surprising amount of grace, and Dennis took his place at Jessica’s side.
“Damn, he’s right Jessica.” Dennis said, an edge of grimness leaking in around his practiced doctor voice. “Your knee is swelling up like a balloon.” He turned his head, looking over his shoulder at Austin. “Where’s that knife?”
“We should get inside before you start working on her doctor.”
“Knife.” Dennis said commandingly. “I can at least get that wrap off, then we can move her.”
Austin bent down and picked up the knife out of the grass. Jessica blinked at it warily. It really was a big knife, as long as her forearm and gleaming in the moonlight. Dennis accepted it without a qualm and gave Jessica a reassuring smile when she tracked her gaze from the blade to his face.
“Don’t move or this might hurt more.”
“Okay.” Jessica whispered.
Dennis reached down to her leg, and she felt the pain spike as a band of pressure increased across the front and side of her knee. Then abruptly the pressure lessened, and the pain did too. It still hurt, but it wasn’t nearly as sharp and insistent as it had been.
“Oh God!” Jessica said, trying to hold back more tears.
“We need to get inside.” Austin repeated.
“Jessica, can you walk?” Dennis asked. “I won’t hold it against you if you say no, your leg looks pretty bad.”
“I don’t know.”
“Be brave mom.” Candice said.
Jessica laughed, just a single bark of laughter before she gritted her teeth again. “You’re right Candy Bear. Uh . . . I may need someone to lean on though.”
“You want me to take the gun, or you going to put it back in the holster?” Austin asked.
Jessica blinked, then looked down awkwardly to see the pistol was still in her hand. She was still looking at it fuzzily when Austin’s hand appeared in her field of view and took the weapon from her fingers gently. She looked up as he did something to it, then tucked it into a big pocket on the leg of his trousers.
“Alright, up you go then.” he said almost cheerfully, leaning down over her again. Jessica didn’t even have time to reach for him before his hands had slid under her arms and scooped her up to her feet like she weighed nothing.
“Whoa.” Jessica said dizzily, swaying in his grasp. Being vertical didn’t seem to be much of an improvement, even though her leg hurt a lot less now that Dennis had taken the ‘bandage’ off. She looked down, blinked twice, then felt her eyes opening very wide. “Oh God.” she moaned. Her knee was heavily swollen, so much so that even through the jeans she could tell it was bad off. It was obviously a lot bigger than the right one, which had slack within the damp denim.
“We really need to get back inside.” Austin said again. Abruptly Jessica found herself over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, with only a vague memory of him having lifted her up. He started walking.
“Candice? It’s Candice, right?” she heard Dennis saying. “I’m Doctor Morris, I work with your mom. You want to come inside with us?”
“Mom said you’re a good guy.”
Jessica was concentrating on not throwing up. Vertical was worse than horizontal, but this seemed worse than either of those options. Her arms and legs dangled against Austin as she lay draped over his shoulder, her left knee flashing pain every time it bumped against his back. Her stomach was twisting in knots, and she was having to concentrate to avoid feeling like she wanted to throw up again.
Dennis chuckled. “I like to think so.”
“Is he a good guy?”
“Who, Austin?”
“I was a boy scout.” Austin said without stopping. “Does that help?”
“Really?” Candice asked.
“Scout’s honor.”
“Candice.” Jessica called weakly. “Go with Doctor Morris.”
Austin carried her up the steps of the porch’s levels without any sign that her weight bothered him at all. Jessica caught a brief look at another man wearing a black outfit very similar to Austin’s, then she was being carried through the back door and she lost sight of the other man.
“Candice. Where’s Candice.” Jessica muttered.
“She’s right behind us.” Austin said. She heard other people, but caught only glimpses as she was carried through the house. Austin went into a room that looked like a spare bedroom, judging by the unlived in look and lack of any personal effects, but the bed felt wonderfully soft as he lowered her onto the spread.
“Wow, you’re strong.” Candice said.
Austin turned and did something that made Candice giggle, something Jessica couldn’t see with his back to her. Then he was stepping aside, and Jessica saw Dennis coming toward her with a big plastic box in his hands.
“I’ve been worried sick all night.” Dennis said as he set the box down on the chest at the end of the bed. The lid came off with the dull snap of plastic fasteners being released, then he was rummaging around inside with both hands. “What happened?”
“I wrecked the damn car.” Jessica said, suddenly embarrassed.
“I was told you called in and said something about an accident, but then we had problems of our own, and we couldn’t spare anyone to go search for you.”
Jessica wondered about that, but then dismissed it immediately when Dennis held up a fairly large syringe and started stripping the cap off the needle. “What’s that?”
“Well, you’re in luck.” Dennis shrugged. “Things might be in flux here–”
“No, we’re stable.” Austin said from the door. “Anyone who was going has already gone.”
Dennis shrugged again. “Whatever. But as it turns out, Tyler’s people left some things behind when they scattered.”
“We didn’t all scatter.” Austin said, his tone holding a hint of censure.
“No, you didn’t, but most of your former colleagues are gone now.” Dennis said sadly.
“The situation is . . . pretty new to everyone.”
“Whatever.” Dennis said again. “The good news for you though,” he said – looking down at Jessica briefly before he did the doctor thing with the syringe, thumping it with his finger a few times and squirting some of the contents up into the air – “is they brought a lot of gear with them that didn’t all get taken away when they left.” He tore open a little packet with his teeth, then pushed Jessica’s sleeve back and swabbed her bicep with a cloth pad that was cold on her skin.
“Little stick.” Dennis said, then jabbed the needle into her arm. Jessica didn’t even notice the prick, as the throbbing of her knee was overwhelming nearly all other sensations. A few moments later, as Dennis set the needle aside and rummaged in the box again, she felt a wave of numbness flooding through her body like a blessing.
“Oh . . . oh that’s nice.” Jessica murmured as the pain in her knee just abruptly drifted away. One moment it was there, throbbing and pulsing and making it quite clear that it was injured and she should pay attention to it. The next moment she just wanted to lay there on the table and enjoy laying there.
“Yes, it works quite quickly, doesn’t it?” Dennis said with a grin.
“What?” Jessica blinked, feeling her thoughts ticking over slowly like they were stuck in first gear.
“Morphine.” Dennis said. “Now, what did you do to your leg?” He held up a pair of blunt nosed medical shears.
“Car accident.” Jessica murmured.
“This happened in the wreck?” He was cutting the left leg of her jeans, working up
from the cuff toward her knee.
“I guess.” Jessica said, shrugging slightly. “I hit it then, and all the walking since made it worse.”
“She fell in the stairs too.” Candice said. “She screamed a lot when that happened.”
“When was that?”
“Just after the accident.” Candice said. “When we were running from zombies.” The girl had moved around to the far side of the bed, where she was hovering near Jessica’s head. She didn’t lean on the bed, and she didn’t touch her mother, but her body language made it plain she was not going anywhere.
Jessica heard Dennis make a sound in the back of his throat, and looked down. He’d bared her leg to mid thigh, and she thought she’d probably have reacted pretty badly if the morphine wasn’t taking all the pain and need to be concerned right away. As it was, she felt a faint swirl of nausea in her stomach as she saw what she’d done to herself.
Her knee was very badly swollen, along both sides of the joint as well as above and below, though more below on her calf than up on her thigh. There was a round bubble of flesh just below her knee cap that was pushed out a couple of inches from the normal line of her skin. And the swollen skin across her knee was mottled in hues of red and blue and purple that were quite unsightly.
“I’m surprised you were able to walk on that.” Dennis said sadly.
“Mom is brave.” Candice said.
“I’ll say.” Austin muttered loudly enough for Jessica to hear.
“Well, more good news, mostly.” Dennis said. “I don’t have everything I’d like to, but what I do have I can use to drain all that fluid out. I have some antibiotics here that I can load you up on to counteract the risk of infection since I’ve only got the one needle to use to drain you with. I don’t know what we’ll do about later, maybe we can make a stop somewhere and pick up some more supplies.” He looked over at Austin questioningly.
Jessica wasn’t sure what Dennis meant, but apparently Austin did. He frowned a little, but his voice was still calm and even when he spoke. “That’s a question for the boss. But you’re the doctor, so I suppose he’ll listen to you.”
“I’m his big brother.” Dennis said with a casual familiarity Jessica recognized from having watched her own children interact with each other. “He’ll damn well listen or I’ll thump him a good one.”
“Doc, I gotta tell you, I’d have to try and keep that from happening.”
“You just remember who’ll patch you back together if you screw yourself up.” Dennis snorted. “And make yourself useful, go get me a container. I’m going to need something to drain all this into.”
“How big?” Austin asked agreeably.
“Big.”
Austin left, and Dennis sighed. “Jessica, why didn’t you call again?”
Jessica blinked up at him. She heard and understood everything that was going on, but when she tried to formulate an answer it seemed to take her considerable effort to find the words. “The phone broke. I don’t know, something happened to it.”
“You couldn’t find another one?”
“The closest buildings didn’t have any power.”
“Damnit, that’s right.” Dennis grimaced. “Power’s out all over the city.”
“Not here.”
He shook his head. “No, here too. But there are two big generators running in the garage. Tyler’s people set them up before they began leaving.”
“What’s wrong?” Jessica asked. “Why are people leaving?”
“It’s . . . complicated.” Dennis sighed.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Jessica murmured.
Dennis smiled. “Yeah, not on that leg you aren’t. How far did you have to walk?”
“From Peachtree Industrial.”
“You came down Abbotts Bridge on foot?” his eyebrows were raised, and his eyes wide.
“We came through the woods.” Candice said. Jessica turned her head and saw her daughter was looking up at Dennis calmly. She reached out a hand, which Candice took immediately. Her little face looked, well not content, but far more at ease than it had since . . . well since dinner time. Since before everything had gone to hell.
“You’re damn lucky.” Dennis breathed. “You have no idea.”
“Why? It was that or stay where we were, and I didn’t know if anyone was coming for us.”
“That was sort of the last straw for when Tyler’s people started leaving. They were already on edge about the announcement about the bombing runs, and when hordes started appearing out here, they said all bets were off.”
Jessica frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”
Dennis grimaced. “I don’t want to get into it right now, not with you all hopped up on morphine, but the short version is we had maybe fifty or sixty people here, and now we’re down to fourteen.”
“Sixteen, counting you and your daughter.” a female voice said. Jessica turned her head and saw a red haired woman standing in the doorway. Austin loomed behind her, though to be fair he was just standing there. Jessica supposed it took work to avoid the appearance of being threatening and dangerous when you were as big as he was.
“Vanessa Morris.” she said, moving forward with a deep porcelain bowl that had an intricate design of flowers encircling it just below the rim. “Dennis says you’re the heart and soul of his office.”
“I just keep it running.” Jessica shrugged. “The rest of us are out of work without him there.”
Vanessa wore a skirt suit and a polite expression of attention as she handed the bowl to Dennis. “I want to apologize for the mix up that resulted in you getting stranded out there.”
Jessica frowned slightly. “I wrecked my car when a zombie stepped out in front of me. I don’t see how that’s your fault.”
“Yes, but you did manage to call in with your location.” Vanessa said, stepping back and standing next to the door. Austin had taken up a position in the doorway, his hands hooked on his belt casually. “The person who took your call was one of those who left, and he neglected to do so in an orderly fashion. Your information was lost in the transition.”
“Jessica, this is probably going to feel a little weird, but don’t move, okay?” Dennis said.
Jessica looked down and saw Dennis had the syringe in his hand again, along with another alcohol pad. “I’m fine.” she assured her boss. “Or, I guess the morphine is.”
“Okay.” He swabbed her knee gently with the pad, leaving it tingling and cold. “You might not want to watch this, it could get a little gross.” He paused for a few moments, as if waiting for her to look away, then just shrugged slightly and dropped the pad.
Setting the needle against the side of the big bubble of swelling on the front of her knee, he pushed it in, then started pulling the plunger back. Fluid, yellow but with a red tinge to it, began filling the syringe. Jessica took one look at it, realized that was inside her, and hastily averted her eyes.
Vanessa had crossed her arms, and she smiled when Jessica looked around at her. “So anyway, like I was saying, I’m glad you made it here, and I’m sorry you had to go though so much to do so.”
“We’re here now.” Jessica said. Dennis was right. It did feel extremely odd as he drained her knee. Not painful. More like there was pressure that was being released. She felt the needle leave her flesh, an odd sensation that also didn’t hurt, then heard something splattering against porcelain. She had to suppress a shudder when she realized that was probably the drained fluid being emptied into the bowl.
“I’m also sorry, but after Dennis gets done treating your knee we’re going to need to examine you.”
“What?” Jessica blinked.
“It’s a safety precaution.” Dennis said. He jabbed the needle back in her. Jessica did not look down again. He knew what he was doing, and she didn’t need to see the details. “Vanessa, I guess that’s why you’re in here?”
The woman nodded. “It occurred to me you might not want to disrobe for Dennis, even though he is a
doctor. So I’m your other option.”
“I’m not following you.” Jessica said slowly, feeling like maybe she should be alarmed or something. The morphine was still working though, stealing away all the sharp edges and heaviest parts of her emotions. She felt nice and relaxed.
“You’ve been out there, on foot from what I heard.” Vanessa said briskly. “Did you encounter any zombies?”
“Yes, we had to run from . . . well many I guess.” Jessica said. “Do you need a count or something?”
“No, but we need to be sure your only injury is that knee. By the way, Dennis, I assume it’s just a bruise or something?”
“Probably a very bad sprain.” Dennis said. “I can’t know for sure without a scan, or until she’s had a few weeks to fully heal so I can see how it reacts, but I think it’s just a sprain.”
“But no broken skin?”
“No, not until I started poking needles into her.”
“Right.” Vanessa nodded. “But we need to be sure.” she repeated, looking at Jessica. “I hope you understand. It’s just a quick peek, and we’re done.”
“Peek at what?”
Vanessa sighed, looking a bit frustrated, but Dennis spoke up. “Ease up Vanessa. She’s had a rough night, and I just gave her a big dose of morphine. Exercise a little patience.”
“I – you’re right, of course.” Vanessa said, her expression smoothing over contritely. “My apologies. Jessica, you need to be examined to make sure you don’t have any bites on you. Everyone here who’s left the house and returned has been examined, and if you’re going to stay you and your daughter need to be as well.”
Jessica blinked, then nodded slowly. “I suppose that makes sense.”
“I’m glad you agree. Like I said, it’s just a precaution, but it’s an important one. I doubt you’ll have to go through it again, since your injury and your daughter’s age make it unlikely we’ll need to have you do anything outside a secured area.”
“I won’t mind if you want her to do the exam.” Dennis said. Jessica heard him emptying the syringe again, and she risked a look down. The big bubble on the front of her knee was already half the size it had been, and the pressure was lower. The morphine was working beautifully to kill the pain, but she knew even without it her knee would be hurting less. All that pressure that wasn’t there anymore had to mean less pain.
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