Suffer the Children

by Janden Hale

  “Shenk!”

  Dan Shenk’s eyes roll back, Dressler’s voice floating to him from the depths of a fading dream. Everything seems distant, out of focus. His arm is still clamped in the twitcher’s mouth, skin and sleeve perforated by jagged yellowed teeth. His whole body goes numb, he can still feel the wetness but not the pain. He is dimly aware of a sudden jolt, the creature’s final convulsions, followed by the full weight of the twitcher collapsing over him.

  “Fuck,” Dressler says. “Run and get Landry to meet us at the infirmary.” Dressler flashes his attention back to Amy, who had managed to get away and alert him. She’s there, frozen in the hallway, mouth hanging open like a cavern. “Go, goddammit!” She plucks back from her trance and scurries out the back again. Dressler swipes books out of the way and starts assessing the damage. Dan’s arm protrudes from the side of the twitchers mouth, hangs off at a weird angle. A widening pool of blood on the floor, thickening with dust like dark gravy.

  Buck Weaver appears in the destroyed doorway, completely out of breath and whipping his rifle everywhere like a maniac. Dressler holds a hand up. “Easy, man.” Buck stops whisking his weapon around. He’s toothpick thin and looks brittle, like any part of him is about to snap in two at any moment. His white Santa beard can’t hide his sunken face, a byproduct of not getting enough to eat lately. Or maybe he’s just old. Dressler can’t tell which it is, or if it’s a little of both.

  “Help me get this thing off him,” Dressler says, yanking his combat knife out from the base of the twitcher’s skull. He has to use two hands to get it unstuck. Buck leans his weapon against a bookshelf. Dressler pries open the twitcher’s mouth so Buck can get his arm loose, then together they heave the carcass off to the side. Buck’s contribution to the effort seems so meager it leaves Dressler feeling like he did all the work.

  Buck grabs hold of the bookshelf while he catches his breath. “Boy got some piss poor luck, I’ll say. That’s a biggun. I don’t know about that arm though, chief.”

  Dressler stabs a finger around for a pulse. “Shenk? Shenk, can you hear me? Hang on, buddy.” Dan Shenk’s arm hangs limp as Dressler lifts it up, mangled just above the wrist with two shards of white bone jutting out like icicles. Blood seeps out one of the gashes near the elbow like a mountain spring. Dressler undoes his belt and tears it free in one smooth motion. He cinches it tight in a hasty tourniquet above Dan’s elbow.

  “You think this is the only one that got through?” Dressler asks the old man.

  “Hell if I know. But we need to be sure.”

  “Well it’ll have to wait, we need to get him to Jane Landry. Come on, help me get him up.”

  Buck throws Dan’s good arm over his shoulder while Dressler takes the destroyed one.

  “On three,” Dressler says. He doesn’t know if the old codger can handle the weight, but they’re about to find out either way.

  Landry

  TWO

  Jane Landry, the mayor’s wife and only medically-qualified person left of Ashland’s survivors, is already in the makeshift clinic preparing for their arrival when Dressler and Buck Weaver burst in with a barely conscious Dan Shenk slumped between them. Buck somehow managed to summon more strength than his body appears capable of. Jane could really use an assistant right now but the only person she has in mind, Sandra Rohn, was probably busy trying to get tomatoes to grow in the greenhouse. Too late to get her now. These two will have to suffice.

  Jane has never had any problem issuing commands. She’s not trying to coddle anybody. “Get him on the gurney,” she says. They hoist him up onto the old ambulance gurney she has set up in the small school nurse’s office they reconstituted as their infirmary. Jane flicks on her headlamp and scrutinizes the tourniquet, the wound. The only other light in the room is a gas lantern hanging from a string above the sink. Only a few buildings have electricity and this isn’t one of them. She makes a mental note to get that fixed as soon as possible. Of course, the one best suited for the job is sprawled across the gurney, so someone else will have to figure it out.

  She has a selection of medical instruments already lined up on the counter nearby, all glistening and perfectly silver, even in the limited light. By the look of the surgical cutlery, she expected the worst. If Dressler didn’t know any better he’d think he stumbled into a butcher shop. Amy Runkle tarries in the doorway, wringing her hands. Seeing everyone rushing around with purpose makes her wonder if she should be doing something. But the knives and needles are making her feel woozy. She wonders if things would have turned out differently had she never been there with him. This is probably her fault. She wonders if things would have been different had she just gotten to Dressler a little bit sooner.

  “We have no way to anesthetize other than a local,” Jane says. “That’s about all we can do as far as the pain. This is going to hurt.” Jane looks at Buck Weaver, then she stares Dressler in the eyes, her face a statue. She doesn’t know Dressler well at all, being that he arrived in Ashland after catastrophe chewed the world up and shit it back out. She had only heard about Dressler from her husband. He was prior military, but that’s all she knows about him. That information leads her to assume he’s not squeamish, but her higher instincts have always been to distrust people and assume they’ll disappoint you until they can prove otherwise. He’s about to get a solid chance to demonstrate his mettle.

  “I’m going to need both of you for this. Hold him down.” She grabs a syringe for the local, jamming it into the flesh above the tourniquet. She pivots toward Amy as she shoves the plunger down. “Need you to wait outside, dear. You don’t want to be here for this.”

  Deletion

  THREE

  Dan Shenk lies pale, out cold on the ambulance gurney beneath a grey wool military blanket. He didn’t start out that way. When Jane started in on him with the saw he jolted right into focus and screamed until his throat went raw, but it wasn’t long before he passed out. Jane was thankful for that, not as thankful as Dan though. She currently has him on a morphine drip for the pain, which will come in handy for when he wakes up, only their supply won’t last long. Jane Landry is certain it’s going to pose a problem. It’s the same story with the antibiotics.

  They’re in what used to be the nurse’s office at Ashland High School, which they’d set up as their official infirmary, hoarding all the medical supplies they could scrounge here. Which doesn’t amount to much. She scribbles something in a folder and adjusts the boy’s blanket, then turns to address those now present, which would be her husband and Dressler, who actually stomached everything better than Buck Wheeler had. Immediately after they were done, Buck evacuated to clear his head, but ended up only clearing his stomach. After that he decided to go patrol for other twitchers.

  “I had to do it,” she says to her husband, Ed Landry. She knows the question of the day is going to be why she didn’t just set the bones and stitch him back together. “The bones were mangled. I had to be proactive. Wasn’t any way around it. It’s just one of those things.” That’s what she says whenever she makes a statement she doesn’t feel like explaining anymore. Ed had heard it so many times he can almost predict when she is about to say it. “I’m not a doctor. He’d have probably required hardware or something. I’m also not a mechanic.” She glares at Dressler to continue her preemptive defensive tirade. “I don’t know how to weld.”

  “Well you seemed to’ve managed that,” replies Dressler, nodding at a mass of bandages on the end of what’s left of Dan’s arm. “You basically already did surgery.”

  She shrugs, dipping her hands into a metal bowl of reddened water. “Anyone could’ve managed that. And besides. Throwing things away is easier than fixing them sometimes.”

  “You’re talking about his arm. Not some piece of trash.” She is as cold as if she’d just deleted an unwanted file from her hard drive. She doesn’t have time to give a shit about someone else’s ruined l
imb. She figured Dressler to be a practical man, but now she’s not so sure. As far as she’s concerned he’s still the stranger who showed up after the world went to hell. The full extent of his character remains to be seen.

  She drops a glance down at the waste basket. “It’s trash now.”

  “Unbelievable.” Dressler throws a look to Ed Landry, who doesn’t seem affected by her icy demeanor. It almost seems like he’s accustomed to it.

  She doesn’t respond or even look at Dressler, just continues with her cleanup. “You were here, you know it had to happen. There’s no room for sentiment nowadays. He’ll live, long as we keep it from getting infected.” She turns to him now. “What’s it to you anyway? Wasn’t your arm.”

  Dressler shakes his head. “I understand that. I don’t blame you. I just feel bad for him. He’s been begging me to take him out with my crew. Now, well, that’s just going to have to wait a little longer. If it happens at all. I don’t know if he’ll ever be ready now.”

  Ed Landry taps the hat in his hand against his leg nervously. He tries to intervene, ease the tension. Being the town’s former mayor, he feels uniquely equipped to act as moderator.

  “Jane, you did great. You all did,” he adds, looking at Dressler. He points at the gurney. “That boy is lucky to have you. We all are.” He winks at her and taps the hat a couple more times. “If you say it had to be done, then it had to be done.” He knows her better than anyone, which means he knows she needs to feel like her services are appreciated or she’ll go on strike to prove a point. She would refuse to do anything medical, even at the expense of someone’s life, until everyone realized they needed her skills and vocalized it. It’s precisely the kind of petty shit he wants to avoid at all costs, so he front-loads the praise. He cocks a thumb toward the door. “Think I’m going to go see how Amy’s doing, let her know he’s stable. I imagine all this has her frightened to death, considering.”

  “You mean her husband and kid,” Dressler adds. He heard the stories. Ashland is a small community.

  Ed only blinks.

  “Legend has it they still don’t know what happened to her husband. Never found a body or anything,” Dressler says, looking out the small pane of glass in the door to the hallway. That Mike Runkle had disappeared was no secret. Same thing with her kid, though on that account they all pretty much knew that he was likely no longer human. “But I get your point. She’s probably freaked out.”

  Ed Landry lingers by the door. He doesn’t want to talk about Mike Runkle right now. In fact, he’d be fine if the subject never comes up again. There comes a time when it’s best to just move on, and he thought that time was months ago. But people love to speculate on rumors and mysteries. People will resuscitate a good story for years if they can’t find a better one to replace it.

  “I’ll send her on back in a bit,” Ed says. “You want me to tell her about the arm?”

  Dressler shakes his head. “Nah, we’ll take care of that part, sir.” Judging by Jane Landry’s lack of bedside manner, he feels he should probably be the one to break the news to Amy. Ed gives him a wave as he moseys out the door; Dressler leans against the wall and crosses his arms, returns his attention to Jane.

  She transfers a bucket with the medical instruments they used to the counter so she can clean them off in the sink. It’s a wonder she still has any energy left. She’d actually broken out into a sweat from the exertion of the sawing.

  “You ought to get some food in you,” she says. “Or at least some coffee.” She points at the gurney and crosses her arms. “Truth be told, I’ve never done that before.”

  “I can tell.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Dressler shakes his head, wonders if she’s always this combative. “It’s not an insult. Relax. You don’t need to impress anybody. The job is done. Mission successful. Good job.”

  She scowls at him. His tone is like a prod on an exposed nerve. She doesn’t want to sit here talking all day with this insolent prick. The faster she can get rid of him the better.

  “We’re going to need some more bandages. But more than anything he’ll need antibiotics. Pain killers. Since your group has scavenge duty this week.” Like her husband’s not wanting to talk about Mike, this is a problem she’d rather not have to deal with. It’s one thing to have to forage for it already, another thing entirely adding desperation into the mix. They’d been in that situation before, with food, and they’re about to be in it again with water when the town’s water tower runs dry. Luckily they managed to reach a comfortable situation as far as food was concerned. For now. As today’s events prove, having just enough can escalate into an emergency without warning.

  “It’ll be top of mind,” Dressler assures her.

  She exhales a tendril of greying hair out of her face. Her shoulders sag. For the first time she looks exhausted. At one point during the procedure Dressler had offered to take over, but she wouldn’t allow it.

  “Check the nicer houses for the painkillers,” she suggests. “Seems like everyone was on some kind of medication, before everything. That would be where I’d look.” She wipes the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve and sighs. “I’m not going to lie, this puts us in a real bind. We can’t afford to lose anyone else. And we’re running thin on everything.”

  Dressler rests his palm atop the holster on his hip. He’d come into the library with every intention of using it, but he opted for the knife instead, not wanting to shoot the boy in the process. “Then maybe my group should do Soquili tonight. They had that hospital there I hear.”

  This is exactly what she was afraid would happen. Dressler going there would exacerbate the problem a hundred-fold. She needs to change his mind, and if she can’t do it the task will fall upon her husband. Whatever it takes.

  She shakes her head and turns to face him. “It’s too dangerous. Soquili is...hell incarnate. Completely overrun, both with those...things...and hostiles. Vicious, wicked folks. I’m sure you’ve heard.” This is perhaps the best piece of information with which to redirect him to another area. Everyone knows about the rovers and what they do to people. They’ve made sure this legend doesn’t die. “You’ve not been here long, nor have you seen what they are capable of. But my husband has. He’ll tell you. The other folks, they call them the rovers. Because they rove around looking for loose people. I don’t think you want to get caught by any of them. It’s said to be brutal. But you can take it up with my husband, of course. Isn’t that outside your team’s territory?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  She needs to make it seem like she’s not trying too hard here, lest he get suspicious that she has some other motive. “Edward’s team knows the area, for one. It’s a really rough patch, from what they say. The things those people do.” She shudders. “You really don’t want to get caught,” she says again.

  He pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. She makes it seem impossible, but in his experience nothing is insurmountable. The mind is the biggest obstacle, and he’d had plenty of practice in the military getting familiar with what his limits are. The mind has a tendency to lie about what the body is capable of. The mind seeks the most comfortable route.

  “Then it would have to be tactical,” he says, already working out a plan of action. “An untrained team won’t work. They’ll be a liability.” He’s thinking of his team. He’s the only one with any combat experience. There’s a good reason Ed had placed him in charge of it. He snaps his fingers a couple times, which helps him think. The only thing that works better than snapping his fingers is clicking a pen, but he doesn’t have one. “I’d need to do it alone. In and out without being seen.”

  “I suppose you could, but it would be risky.” Jane is getting the impression that risk doesn’t phase him. Any other situation, she would consider that a virtue. Now it’s just a pain in the ass.

  He smiles a
t her. “I’d have the advantage, I assure you.”

  “Your confidence is admirable, but hubris without temperance is a vice. Should anything happen to you, well, I don’t want to think about it. We can’t lose you either. You’re the only one with this kind of training. Take this for what it’s worth, but I would advise against unnecessary risks until you can get more people trained. We need you. You have a purpose outside of killing you know.” She resists the urge to bite his head off. She doesn’t like this guy, and she typically likes to tell people when she doesn’t like them. But years of playing a variety of roles to better support her husband’s political aspirations has taught her to be more persuasive. Abrasion only leads to resistance when you want something from somebody.

  Dressler squints over at the gurney, Dan’s chest rising and falling steadily. “That was the plan. To train more people. But warriors don’t happen overnight.” He had taken it upon himself to train the others. Combat skills are a necessity now, for everyone, like it or not, and he is uniquely qualified to instruct them in such things. He leans back against the wall and crosses his feet. “All I’m sayin is I can go to Soquili if you need the stuff. If you think he can hold out for a while, we’ll try Oak Point, maybe Marysville.” He feels like it will be futile, though, trying those locations. His team had already scoured them top to bottom it seems.

  “There’s Parkdale, too.” She wipes a spot of blood off her finger onto her top. “Does anyone know where the thing got in?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Edward will want to reinforce the wall. Probably wouldn’t hurt to bring back anything you find that might help in that regard.”

  Dressler nods. “We don’t have enough people. We can’t be everywhere at once.” He pauses, thinking. “Might be in our best interest to try finding other survivors, too. Numbers matter, now more than ever. Maybe try getting to them before the rovers do. What are we going to do when these rovers show up here? It’s inevitable. We’re going to have to fight.”