by Mark Clodi
“Hm, should. He should, if his wounds don’t get infected. He should be up and running around in couple of days, if it is just his ribs anyway, he is gonna be sore for a long while until they heal up. That is a best case scenario though, he might be down for months. This place has a pharmacy, but you know, I am not a pharmacist. Me mixing up antibiotics might not be such a good idea.” The doc paused in his bloody work, holding one gloved hand up against the gauze on Hank’s back he gestured for Juan to pull the pen out of his breast pocket, “Get the pad too. Beth write this down.” He then listed off several medicines and told the nurse to hand the list to Juan, “You get into the pharmacy and see if there are any pills with those exact names already made up, I have been here a few times and they had the meds in white plastic bags hung with magnets near the ‘pay here’ sign, on the inside of the pharmacy above the counter. If there are any pre-made medicines with these names on the bottles and you bring them to me, okay?”
Juan nodded, said, “sì.” And took off through the door where he ran into a crowd of people looking anxiously on. He rapid fired a few words at them and two younger men ran off back into the warehouse store and one accompanied Juan over to the pharmacy, which was still locked up.
A metal grate was pulled down over the front of the entire store front, next to the open ‘cafeteria’ style service counter was a metal door, which was locked. The two younger men Juan had sent out had returned, one hefting an acetylene torch, the other had a pair of bolt cutters. Juan took the bolt cutters and broke the pad locks holding the metal grate to the floor. The grate came up. The man with the torch set it down and scrambled into the pharmacy over the counter, he then unlocked the door and let them all in. The four of them looked at the white plastic bags arrayed on a metal strip and held up with magnets, right where the doctor said they would be. Juan put the list of names up on the ‘upper’ counter top so everyone could read the four drugs the doctor had written there and the three of them started sorting through the bags. They ended up with seven bottles of medication that matched what the doctor needed.
Rushing back to the garage Juan pushed his way through to the door, quite a few of the men were still there, however enough were gone to make Juan think that the building would be well watched.
Inside the shop Kevin had taken his place by Hank’s head. Juan held out the bag to the nurse who rifled through it and said, “Yeah one of these will do just fine, probably no worry of infection if he takes these.”
Juan watched in fascination while the doctor stitched up Hank’s back, nothing like how he thought stitches would be applied. After he put in a half dozen he looked up and said, “I think that will do Beth, six should hold him together until he heals up, even given that I bet he will be moving around more than a normal patient.” Looking at Juan he said, “Think we can convince him he needs to sit around for a few days?”
“Only if he can drink a few beers and watch television.” Juan joked.
The doc laughed, “Hm, normally I would say ‘no’ to that, but you know we might not have many ways to manage the pain, alcohol and some time in one of those high end lazy boys out there might be all he gets!” Turning more serious he continued, “We have to get these ribs wrapped though, not much else for it, Juan and, excuse me, what is your name son?” asked the doctor towards Kevin.
“Kevin.”
“Kevin, okay, you and Juan are going to have to help me with that, Hank weighs too much for me to handle by myself. Let me get him bandaged up first then we wrap him like a mummy. Almost.”
Another half hour and Hank was wrapped up from his nipples down to his belly button. The doctor had Juan call through the door for someone to get some orange juice out of the cooler, one of the gallons, which he had them set by one of the recliners, then he called in a few men to move Hank gently to a blanket. Three men lined up on each side of the blanket and gently lifted Hank up to carry him over to the chair, where they sat him down. Turning the chair towards a nearby television they pretty much formed a circle around Hank, watching him and waiting.
Juan started to ask the doc a question, the doctor spoke up first, “I don’t know Juan, he probably passed out from a combination of pain and blood loss. Not to mention I bet he has not been sleeping all that well the last few days, I know I haven’t. His body, like yours, needs a break. We need to get some juice into him, plus one of each of these pills, this one for pain, this one for infection. I would start an IV, or rather have Beth start one, but we don’t have the equipment, unless you boys want to head to a hospital and scrounge some supplies up? I don’t know if we need to yet, time will tell. I will say this, I have been practicing a long time and I have seen a lot of wounds from my time in the various emergency rooms I worked in, I think he will be fine. A good sleep and he will wake up screaming in pain, give him some pain killers and let him sleep another day and I bet he will be up moving around, that is what my gut is telling me. Meanwhile, you and a...Kevin, is it? Yeah, Kevin, should probably sit down in chairs on either side of Hank and take a load off for awhile, okay? Let me take a look at the two of you first, make sure you aren’t hurt or anything.”
The doc looked both of them over, applied hydrogen peroxide to their scrapes and looked at all their bruises. Finally he said, “You’ll survive, probably you just need some rest, so, rest!”
Reluctantly Juan slide into the chair next to Hank, he immediately had two of the smaller children crawl into his lap, Kevin sat down in the seat next to Juan, one away from Hank. He didn’t get the benefit of a kid, but they didn’t know him as well as they knew Juan. The last thing Juan thought was, ‘I am not that tired.’ Then he was asleep.
A few hours later he woke with a start at Hank’s coughing and moaning. Moaning because he was coughing, most likely. One of the little abuelitas, a grandmotherly matron from the neighborhood, approached him and made comforting sounds to him and tried to get him to drink some orange juice, after the first sip Hank drank from the jug greedily, the old lady stopped him and gave him a couple of the pills to take, which Hank did without protest, his face having a pained expression, then he drank some more juice before trying to sit up. He stopped that pretty quickly as a sharp stab of pain hit him in the back. Looking over he saw Juan and the two kids on the chair next to him, with Nanci sitting on the floor leaning up against Juan’s chair. “Juan you look like shit.” Hank croaked out.
“Sì.” Juan replied. “Y tu tambien. I look better than you though, always have.”
Settling back reluctantly Hank said in Spanish, “Man I gotta wee. Anyway to get me up from here? So I can walk to the bathroom?”
One of the old ladies went off to find the doctor, while Juan tried to get up without disturbing the children who were still sleeping on him. He was unsuccessful in that respect and one of the kids started to cry, grumpy at being woken up from his nap. The kid’s mother was there pretty quick to comfort the toddler and Nanci helped settle the other one. Juan went over to stand by Hank and pushed the foot of the chair down slowly, which sat Hank up slowly. They then grabbed each other’s wrists and Hank grimaced, but pulled himself up.
“So am I gonna live buddy?”
“Sì. I think so. You hurting?”
“Pretty painful yeah. Well if my bladder doesn’t get drained soon I am gonna be in pain and all wet, help me to the bathroom? You don’t have to hold my wang, just get me pointed in the right direction.”
Laughing Juan said, yes and walked Hank across half the store to the bathrooms. They were intercepted by the doctor, who had a Tupperware bowl in his hand.
“Ah Hank you need to take it easy, no moving around for a couple days.” said Doc.
“Let me guess, you want me to piss in the bowl?”
The doctor nodded his head, “Yeah, even if it is in the bathroom, I want to see if there is any blood in your urine.”
The journey to the bathroom was unpleasant with Hank handling his hardware while Juan steadied him from behind and the doctor held the bowl in
front of him. “God this is embarrassing.”
“Get over it Hank, you are an asset to the group and any little humiliation you might suffer is for the good of everyone, if it improves your chances of recovery.” The doctor looked at Hank’s urine in the white Tupperware bowl, “Yep, blood in the urine, figured that, but had to check it. We will need to keep monitoring it and see if it stops.”
Hank held up one of his hands, “Wait doc, uh, lets say it doesn’t, what can we do?”
The doctor looked frustrated, “Good question, normally internal bleeding requires some tests to see what we can find out. Obviously you are not dying from internal injuries yet, you are still walking around breathing and all. If it keeps up though maybe I could go in…I am not a surgeon... Still you never know if one is going to come in off the street. I should keep gathering information if I can, just in case. So we have a history to tell the surgeon.” The doc muttered something under his breath.
Hank grumbled a bit and the doc asked, “What was that? Stool samples?”
“Yeah I would like those too, if you don’t mind.” The doc crossed the bathroom and dumped Hank’s urine into a toilet before coming back to the sink and rinsing the bowl out. “Speaking of people coming in off the street, we have gotten a few more this afternoon, about half of them are kids. No sign of Michael and his crew yet.” Michael and his friends had been at the clinic the day before and had refused to travel with Hank and Juan, saying they needed to get to where their parents worked and check on them, if they could. They promised they would come to the Mike’s club and join Hank when they were done. The teenagers were unique in that they had been members in some sort of fantasy group and they had ‘suited up’ before leaving home, they wore steel mail and carried swords and axes in addition to baseball bats. The other people at the doctor’s clinic had included a police officer and she had given the older kids a couple of hand guns and ammunition too.
“Well that is too bad. I don’t know how much longer their armor is going to be useful, but I suspect they will do better than most people.”
“Anyway, we got these newcomers coming in and we are going to have to move to, or expand to a different base of operations, maybe the sports stadium or someplace huge like that.”
“Geez doc didn’t you watch that whole Katrina thing? There ain’t no food in a stadium, we gotta stay around grocery stores for now, so we don’t end up starving anyway. Plus I don’t mean to sound bad, but I bet the flow of survivors starts to trickle off pretty soon. Any sign of Dave or any other smart zombies?”
“You have only been out a few hours Hank, nothing yet. Okay so no stadium. What about a hospital? It has kitchens, lots of private rooms and we could use the medical equipment. Hank, the stragglers, they have some bitten among them. The boys won’t let them in, they are keeping them in the parking lot away from everyone else.”
“Shit.” Hank thought for a moment, then said, “Shit. Okay who is kinda leading the men at this point?”
“Jack.” said Doc and Juan at the same time.
Hank’s eyebrow went up, “Really? Talk about rising to the occasion. Well have him come talk to me if he wants to. The bitten are probably dead doc, unless you managed to whip up a cure in the last few days?” the doc shook his head 'no', “Well we heard nothing new on the radio either. Kevin, he knew an old man who had been bit and didn’t turn, even after a day or two so there might be a chance for some of them.”
“Someone survived? How many days exactly? Is he still alive?”
“Ah, well you might want to talk to Kevin about that, say where is Kevin?”
“He was on the other side of me, when I fell asleep next to you Hank.” said Juan.
“Yeah, he only slept a couple of hours and then wanted to see the sights a bit. One of the boys is probably still showing him around. The younger guys have broken out all the video games and they have some sort of tournament going on, he might be over there.” said Doc.
“Well, you might ask him about it, I can’t remember if he told us how long the guy lived, but he is not alive now. Just ‘cause you got bit doesn’t mean you are safe from them. All I know is the guy’s wife got bit and she died and turned.” Hank shrugged his shoulders, winced in pain and then said, “Ask Kevin.” The doctor nodded, then checked Hank’s bandages before heading off to try and find Kevin.
Hank and Juan made it back to their chairs and Hank was surprised to see the little girl and boy they had pulled out of the SUV sitting in their chairs, the other kids were not really playing with them, not ignoring them, but just kind of holding back. Both kids were dressed in clean white t-shirts, gray sweat pants and were bare foot. Hank could see that they had been cleaned up and outfitted from the club supplies, as he recalled though the place did not stock a lot of children’s clothing. The t-shirts looked like women’s smalls to him, they were just a little too big. The boy would probably die of embarrassment if he were told he was wearing a girl’s t-shirt. Seeing them Hank raised his eyebrows to Juan, who shook his head, unknowing as to what was going on.
The girl spoke up as they got close. “Hi Hank, hi Juan.” Then she couldn’t say any more, but started crying and ran over and hugged Hank tightly.
Wincing again in pain Hank said, “Oh girl! Oh girlie, hold on a minute here, you are hurting my ribs!”, the girl heard him and softened her embrace, she did not let go or stop crying. Her brother, seeing his sister cry, started crying himself. One of the women nearby came up and picked him up and held him while big, silent tears rolled down his cheeks.
“Shh, shhhh, you will be okay now kid, you will be okay. I am sorry. I wish we could have saved your mom and dad, we just got there too late, I am so sorry!” Hank whispered to the girl. She continued to cry, while Hank shuffled over to his seat, “I gotta take a load off girl, will you help me sit down again?”
The girl helped Hank sit and lean back before asking if she could sit with him. Hank reluctantly agreed, soon enough she was joined by her brother and all three of them made the chair positively full, it was not completely uncomfortable, just a little awkward when any of them shifted position. Hank learned the boy was named Cage and the girl was Sylvia. After crying for awhile Sylvia said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I am just so scared. And sad, I have never been so sad before.”
Hank nodded agreement to that, “You are going to be sad when you think about this for the rest of your life Sylvia. No one can make that go away, but you’ll have good times again too.”
“I don’t want good times! I should have helped dad when they got him, then helped mom, and all I did was hide in back of the car, I should never have good times again ever.”
Putting his hand on her back and rubbing it Hank said, “No you did what your mom wanted. You saved your little brother and yourself. I bet she told you to hide I the back of the car, didn’t she? Sylvia?”
Nodding, Sylvia, said, “Ye-yeah, but I could have done something! They took off my mom’s clothes! And she was bleeding! And her arm! Her arm was gone after the accident, they bit off her arm!”
“No, no dear, try not to think of it, you just don’t think of it like that. The zombies, the bad guys, they didn’t bite your mom’s arm off, it happened in the accident, we think, when the car rolled over. You did what she wanted, she must have known Sylvia, she must have known Juan, Kevin and I would be along to save you. That’s why she told you to hide, so she and your dad could fight the bad guys off until we got there. Only something went wrong and the bad guys got them too soon, before we could save all of you. I am so sorry Sylvia.”
Sylvia seemed to digest the lie, she wanted to believe she had done the right thing, but even at eleven years old she knew a lie when she heard one, if only she could believe she had done the right thing, maybe then she could forgive herself for not dying alongside her parents. Not admitting Hank was right, she gave him a curt nod that seemed to say, “I will think about your explanation of events and regard them as true until such time as I can come up with a better arg
ument as to what really happened.” Of course Sylvia did not say that, Hank just took it that way, then nodded back and pulled her close in another hug. From an aisle over Evaine was watching Hank intently, even though he could not see her, she smiled slightly to herself as she walked away to help the women with lunch.
Cage was not arguing any points with Hank, he was just keenly aware that his mother and father were gone and would never be back. Thankfully, he did not carry any survivor’s guilt on his conscious.
Juan, meanwhile had safely settled back into his chair and was surrounded by kids again, mostly boys and younger girls. The kids all had hand held game players and were eager to show Juan how they could all play together wirelessly. Juan watched them for a minute or two coaching them when he noticed Cage watching them with interest. Juan tousled one boy’s hair and whispered in his ear that he should go and get Cage a game too. Eager to please the boy ran off and was back and showing Cage how to play in less than five minutes. They had a little bit of a language barrier, the boy was Hispanic and not yet in school, and spoke little English, however video game playing would not be denied and through gestures and much button poking the boys got Cage playing the racing game they were all in. This made life easier for Hank as Cage soon wandered off with the pack of boys, who were already teaching him to say things in Spanish. They didn’t go far though, just over to an outlet where they could all plug in their games instead of running off battery power. They sat on a carpet, which had been rolled out by the women, who had also set up a play area for the toddlers which was ringed in with boxes and chairs so they could not easily escape. The thirteen to fifteen year old teen girls were assigned the task to watch the children and Hank noticed that one girl in particular was keeping an eye on Cage.
Juan saw Hank’s interest, “I asked Nanci to clean them up and keep someone watching them.” He said in Spanish, “Nanci said they don’t have many kids cloths here, no shoes either and their shoes were all bloody so they washed them and set them to dry up on the roof, not that they seem to mind going without shoes. She wants us to raid a clothing store or a Wal-mart to get all the kids and some adults the essentials, underwear, socks, shoes, that sort of thing. Plus she says the doc is complaining about no equipment, he stitched you up with thread one of the women had boiled up in water on a hot plate, he was not happy about it either.”