Apokalypsis | Book 5 | Apokalypsis 5

by Morris, Kate

  “Found a cart,” he said, jogging toward her.

  “Me, too,” she told him and pushed her own over. Both were two-tiered carts on wheels about waist high. She quickly stacked the lower shelf first full of huge cans of fruits and vegetables. Then she piled the top with the boxes of instant potatoes. “Full.”

  “Mine, too,” he said. “Hey, I’ll drag both of these out to the truck. Why don’t you find more of these carts and get the rest?”

  “On it,” she replied with a nod.

  Once he was gone, she easily found another kind of cart in the back near the walk-in cooler. She made the mistake of opening it and gagged. Wren quickly slammed it shut. Obviously, the cooler no longer functioned, and the meat and fresh foods were spoiled. Instead, she pulled the low, long cart over to the shelving again and began placing more canned food products onto it. Then she froze because she heard a noise.

  Standing perfectly still, she listened, barely breathing, waiting in the silence. It couldn’t have been Roman. He’d only just left. He wouldn’t be back that fast.

  After a few moments longer, she exhaled and returned to stacking cans onto the cart. It was about three feet wide and around four feet or so long, so it held a considerable amount, which she stacked high.

  “I’m back,” Roman announcing, startling her. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” she said with a scowl. “I think that’s it for the food.”

  He grabbed towels from a stack near the sink and also took the cleaning supplies from under a metal shelf, which she hadn’t considered.

  “Can’t hurt, right?”

  “I guess,” she said and wished he was quieter. “We need to find the nurse’s office.”

  “Right. Let me run this cart out,” he said. “The nurse’s office is usually near the princi…”

  “I know,” she said with a shudder at the word. “The principal’s office. That’s a place I’m usually familiar with. I’ll head that way.”

  “We shouldn’t split up.”

  “We did when you took out the carts,” she pointed out.

  He looked indecisive. “Yeah, but that was ‘cuz the truck’s so close to here.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “How?”

  She shot him a curious look. “What?”

  “How will you be fine? What’s your story, Wren?”

  That made her mouth turn down. Trust was never an option for her, so she shrugged and did what she did best. She lied despite Jamie’s instruction to tell them the truth. Talking about her family wasn’t going to help her right now. “Juvenile detention. I can take care of myself.”

  He looked taken aback. Then he seemed distrustful of her answer. Finally, he nodded.

  “Go,” she ordered and waved. “I’ve got my gun. I’m fine.”

  “Okay, I’ll catch up. This will only take me a minute to run out. Just be careful.”

  She nodded and let her eyebrows shoot up as if she found him tedious. He offered a lopsided frown before leaving.

  Wren just shook her head and left the cafeteria. A map on the wall outside of it told her which way to go to find the nurse’s station, so she jogged that way with her pistol down at her side.

  The administrator’s offices were locked, so she broke the glass again and cringed at the deafening sound of glass falling to the tile floor. Reaching through, she unlocked it and entered. This area was considerably darker than the kitchen, so she had to pull out her flashlight.

  Stepping through the broken glass made a chill chase up her spine. Ignoring that feeling of apprehension, Wren went forward into the adults-only section of the school and looked behind her frequently to make sure she was still alone. She searched each office she came to, doing a quick sweep with her flashlight. Then she finally found the nurse’s office.

  “Hey,” Roman said, although this time, she heard him come through her broken glass mess, so it didn’t startle her. “Find anything?”

  The nurse’s unlocked oak cabinet contained a plethora of medical items from pills to bandages. It didn’t look like the nurse was ready to serve as an Army medic, but there was a lot.

  “Jackpot,” Roman stated and grabbed a duffle bag from the floor with the school’s mascot and logo on it. “Cool. More inhalers.”

  They swiped everything from the cabinet and even raided the next room over, which was the treatment and exam room. He found another bag, a backpack this time, something left behind by a student apparently and dumped the contents of books and school supplies so they could fill it up, too.

  “Think that’s it?” he asked as they took everything they could find.

  “Yeah, I think we got it…”

  Her words were cut off as they both heard it at the same time. Someone else just stepped on the glass leading to this section of the school.

  Chapter Twelve

  Avery

  Her phone rang, surprising her. She hoped it was Tristan letting them know he was doing okay with the group.

  “Hello?”

  “Avery?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Jane. Your neighbor Jane.”

  “Oh, hello, Jane,” she said so that the others in the room, Renee and Ephraim, would know to whom she was speaking.

  “Um…Avery,” she started nervously. “I wasn’t sure I’d get a signal, but I’m sure glad that I did.”

  “What is it, sweetie?”

  “I…I think my father is…I don’t…”

  “Sweetie, just take a breath,” she told the girl, who was clearly panicking and speaking erratically. Tell me, Jane. What’s going on with your father?”

  “He’s not doing well. And my friend, Destiny, she’s gone, ma’am. Noah said he didn’t see her leave. Neither did Connor. I’ve been taking care of my father all morning. We’re here all alone. I can’t find her. I looked outside. I called out, but I don’t want to yell too loudly. And my father’s really bad, so I can’t go look for her.”

  “Did she take a vehicle?”

  “Um, no. I don’t think so,” she said and made a rustling noise. “No. The other truck is still out there.”

  “Okay, it’s okay. I’ll come over. How’s that?”

  She heard the girl sigh audibly as if that suggestion were what she was hoping to hear.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she answered and sniffed.

  “Give me a few minutes to get there.”

  “Please, be careful,” she implored.

  “I will. I’ll bring help, too.”

  Avery hung up and regarded her friends and little brother. “I need to go over there. Jane’s group is having trouble.”

  She rushed to the kitchen and took down two tea bags of her mother’s favorite fever-reducing tea. As she packed some other items in a canvas bag, she explained the situation to them.

  “Her friend’s gone?” Spencer asked as he and little Finn came into the kitchen.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. I’m not sure what’s going on yet. Perhaps she went for a walk and got lost?”

  “Hm, maybe,” Spencer said. “I’ll go with you.”

  “What about here?”

  He paused at that and looked at Renee.

  Avery said, “I’ll take Ephraim. We’ll go together, walk the road. It’ll be safe. They don’t come out during the day. The sun’s out. We should be fine.”

  “We should probably wait until Tristan gets back,” Renee suggested.

  “Yes, love, that would be ideal, but with this snow and cold, what if her friend is lost in the woods? We grew up here. Ephraim and I know these woods, probably better than Jane even. Her friend doesn’t. She could be in trouble if she’s lost.”

  “True,” Renee said.

  “Fine,” Spencer agreed after a moment of hesitation. “But, Ave, take my truck. You’re going to need to put it into 4x4 to get down her lane. It’s steep. I don’t want you to walk.”

  “But I thought we all just agreed on conserving gas.”

  “Not in this instance. Just you and
Ephraim on foot? Not a good idea. We’ve got plenty of gas from the bus garage.”

  She sighed on a frown and nodded. “Okay, Spencer. I’ll take it.”

  “And your gun.”

  “Of course,” she agreed.

  Her Lexus SUV was never recovered after the accident, not that it mattered since it ended up on its roof. It was still in that field, and anytime she drove past it, that night of horrors when her father attacked her came rushing back and always caused her breathing to stop, maybe even her heart. At least, it felt that way. There was a gaping hole in the middle of her chest from the losses she’d suffered, but she had to be strong for the children. Her surviving siblings lost the same people in their lives and had nobody but her to console them. Without Tristan in their lives, she didn’t know what they’d do. He literally saved them, was still saving them.

  “I’ll check the woods on our property and out in the pastures. If I find that girl, I’ll try to call,” he offered.

  “Thanks, Spencer. That’d be great.”

  A few minutes later, loaded down with medicine and some food from last night’s meal in case they didn’t have a working stove again, Avery pulled out her lane with Ephraim in the passenger seat. She pressed the remote to close the gate, which luckily did.

  She knew exactly where Jane’s father’s property ended and theirs began, and she turned down their driveway, which was, indeed, very steep and winding. When they arrived, Jane came out with a big yellow Labrador beside her. They were immediately ushered inside.

  “What’s going on with your father, dear?” she asked and set the bag on the nearest chair.

  “His fevers. I can’t get them down. His wound looks like it has gangrene or something. I don’t know,” she said, looking frazzled and frightened.

  “Alright, sweetheart,” she said and placed a calming hand on hers on the back of the chair. “Let me take a look at your father.”

  “What about Destiny? She still isn’t here.”

  Her other friend, Noah, walked down the stairs with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

  “How long has she been missing?”

  “It was right after Roman and Stephanie left this morning. I guess a few hours. I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I lost track of time trying to take care of my father.”

  Ephraim petted the dog’s head, and it rubbed against him.

  “It’s not your fault. Let’s deal with your father first. Noah, get dressed and go look for Destiny, please,” she ordered. “We can’t have idle hands right now. Go put on some warm clothing and try looking for her. Take a gun with you, too.”

  He looked startled that she would boss him around since they were clearly close to the same age, but he was being ridiculous just standing there in his pajamas with a blanket wrapped around himself while Jane was going out of her mind trying to hold down the fort. Even Roman’s brother, Connor, was clinging to the young girl.

  “Y-yes. Okay. I will,” he said and turned around to go back upstairs.

  “Good. And Ephraim, why don’t you teach Connor some of your magic tricks with cards? They’re in my bag, darling.”

  “Sure,” he said and led the little boy away. She was so proud of her little brother. At fifteen, this was a lot to deal with for someone so young who’d just lost his parents and three siblings.

  Jane led her to her father’s bedroom, and the first thing she noticed was the smell of sickness upon entering the room. She went straight to the small window in the attached master bathroom above the toilet and opened it a few inches, then did the same with the other near his bed. She also opened all the curtains. One of his windows was boarded up, but the slats in the wood let in a little light.

  “Is it too hot?” Jane asked as if she’d done something wrong.

  “Too stuffy. We need to air it out a bit. Jane, show me his wound.”

  The girl rolled the covers back gently and pulled back his bandages. His stomach wound was, indeed, festering. Pus oozed from the hole, and the entire area around it was a deep angry reddish-purple. Avery held down bile. She and Tristan had drained and cleaned the wound before, but she was on her own this time. It didn’t necessarily seem worse, though.

  “I think it needs to be lanced again,” she said, although, in reality, she didn’t know at all what it needed. She just remembered seeing something like this in a documentary her mission group showed about helping indigenous persons in the Amazon. The person doing the work was a doctor, not some website marketing specialist with zero experience at such things.

  “Like cut open again?”

  “Yes, I think so,” she answered. “Oh, dear. I don’t know. That’s just a guess. This isn’t my area of expertise, but I know that pus can’t stay inside the wound.”

  Her father’s head lolled to the side, and he opened his eyes slightly. “Jane.”

  “Dad? Are you feeling any better?” she asked and took his hand.

  “Listen to her, Jane,” he said of Avery. “I looked down at it this morning. She’s right. You need a sterile knife. Then cut it open and clean out the wound with some peroxide or something, maybe even something stronger like alcohol. I have a bottle of vodka in the freezer downstairs.”

  “Alcohol,” Jane repeated.

  “Yes, and you’ll need to give me a few shots of it first to get through the pain.”

  Jane’s hazel eyes widened at that. “Oh, okay.”

  “If it doesn’t heal soon, it’ll cause blood poisoning.”

  “What? No!” Jane swore.

  Avery was surprised he was even awake. The last time she’d seen him and helped Tristan lance it open, he wasn’t.

  “Just do as this lady is telling you. Cut it open to drain it. I don’t know after that. Maybe sew it up or maybe leave it open. I’ve heard of putting maggots in wounds to heal them, too.”

  “Maggots?” Jane asked and swallowed audibly. Her father smiled gently as his eyelids became heavy again.

  They left the room for a consultation after he didn’t open his eyes again.

  “I don’t know about the maggots thing,” Jane immediately said and shivered.

  “No, me, neither. But I have heard of that, too. It doesn’t matter, though. I don’t know where to get those right now anyways. We’re going to need that alcohol, maybe the peroxide if you have any…”

  “We do.”

  “We opened it last time with tweezers. Make sure they’re sterile. I brought a shot of the anesthesia the nurse gave Spencer the other night for that Elijah boy. I know how to do it. The needle just goes into the muscle or not necessarily the muscle but the fat, not a vein. Oh, dear. I hope we can figure this out.”

  “You can. I know you can.”

  She smiled at the girl’s unwavering support. “Okay, we need clean bandages and a really sharp knife. I mean really sharp, Jane. We don’t want to have to slice and hack our way in. I don’t have a scalpel or anything.”

  Jane grimaced, and Avery felt bad for the petite girl with the frightened hazel eyes. She wore her emotions on her sleeve and had a very expressive, pretty face.

  “Sorry. Let’s just get this started, okay?”

  Jane nodded. “I’ll get the alcohol. My father has a hunting knife in the bottom of his gun safe. I’ll get that, too. I don’t know what else kind of knife we’d use.”

  “That might work. Does your electricity work today?” she asked since all the lights were off.

  “Yes, I just thought we should conserve.”

  “Good, I’ll boil some water to sterilize that knife.”

  “Okay,” Jane said and turned to go. Then she turned back. “And, Avery, thanks. I mean it. I owe you.”

  “You don’t owe me anything. We’re neighbors. Friends.”

  The girl offered a nervous little lopsided smile, and Avery got the feeling that she didn’t have a lot of friends from that one, almost sad expression. Stephanie certainly wasn’t nice to her. Roman was, though, and she believed perhaps he liked her as more than just a friend.
They attended Jackson High School up in the city, and it was notoriously a snobbish area of Canton. Even she knew that, and she was homeschooled.

  She found a pan in the kitchen and turned the stove on to ‘high.’ This was going to be maybe the worst thing she ever had to do, definitely the goriest. And Tristan wasn’t here to help this time.

  Jane returned with the nearly full bottle of vodka and the knife. She was right. It was very sharp because Avery tested it and nearly cut her finger.

  “He used to skin deer or gut them or whatever with that,” Jane explained with a frown.

  “I suppose it will work then.”

  Jane went to give her father some of the alcohol, which she said he drank three shots and immediately fell back to sleep. The boiling water hopefully did the trick for sterilizing the used hunting knife. She took a smaller paring knife out of a drawer that she found and boiled it, too, just in case she needed something with a finer tip. Jane gathered fresh bandaging and tape and some towels, and they both washed their hands before going back to his room.

  “We aren’t going to be able to hold him down,” Jane realized with a frown. “What if he wakes up and…”

  “Jane, tie my hands and feet to the bed frame,” her father said softly. His eyes were dilated, maybe from the vodka.

  “What? No, I couldn’t.”

  “Yes, do it. I’ll try to stop you two. Don’t let me. Cut it open. It’s going to be painful. It’s going to be bloody and disgusting for you both, but this is the only way. Tie me until you’re done.”

  “I have some local anesthesia, Mr. Livingston,” Avery told him. “I’ll inject it into the tissue around…”

  “No, don’t. Don’t waste it on me. Save it for someone like Jane or one of the other kids. I can handle this. And don’t use hydrogen peroxide to clean it. Use plain water. Now, tie me up. Just do it, Janie. Tie me.”

  Jane nodded and blinked away unshed tears. This girl was no wilting flower. She looked even younger today with her hair pulled back into a ponytail.

  After they tied him with pieces of rope she found in the shed behind the house and two neckties he owned, he nodded and asked for another shot of the alcohol.