BURN - Melt Book 4: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series)

by JJ Pike

  Pete coughed.

  Barb covered Charlotte, quickly. If she could have, she would have put filtering masks on both of them. He did not sound healthy. There was a catch in his throat, like he had an upper respiratory infection. “Has he been coughing long?”

  “I’m right here,” said Pete. “Don’t talk about me as if I’m not here. I’ve been coughing since I appeared on the planet. I’m an asthmatic. I lost my inhaler. It’s going to happen.”

  “I’ll pray for you,” said Barb.

  “Pray harder. It’s been thirty-seven years of wheezing. If your God wants to get his act together, I’d be grateful.”

  Barb had a twang of irritation. He didn’t need to be snarky. Why were they that way, the faithless? Didn’t they get it? They were asking to put the cart before the horse. Faith first, results later, but she didn’t want to get into it with him. There was no point arguing with a sick man. All she could do was extend compassion and show him the way. “I’ll still pray. Jesus sees all and heals all.”

  Pete coughed harder.

  “If we were upstate, I could make you a ginger infusion. It’s good for inflammatory diseases,” said Alice. “Ginger root and real honey.”

  Barb looked in her rearview mirror and smiled. She wanted Pete to like her. The taste of their little spat about prayer sat uneasy in her heart. “Be sure to buy honey that hasn’t been diluted with dextrose, sucrose, or corn starch. If the honey is runny, there’s a good chance it’s been diluted or the bees have been fed synthetic sugars, which ruins its healing properties. You want to find a brand that tells you where the honey was harvested, if you can. If not…”

  She was interrupted by a round of hacking coughs. She wanted Pete and his cough far away from Charlotte, but that wasn’t the right thing to do. “Cover your face,” she said. “Alice, give him something. Even if he breathes through a diaper it’d be better than coughing directly onto the back of your head.”

  Alice rifled through the travel bag and found a diaper.

  Pete didn’t grumble. He couldn’t. Not with all that hacking and straining and sucking and wheezing. He strapped the miniature, makeshift “mask” to his face, covering his nose and mouth.

  “They are the top of the line,” said Barb. “Everything Charlotte’s mom and dad bought for her was absolutely the best on the market.” Pete’s wheezing had worsened. “Did you know that diapers have an absorbent layer that traps urine? Isn’t that incredible? The urine is sucked away from the baby’s body by these micro-beads. If you see little blobs of gel on your face, don’t worry. They’ve been tested and they’re not toxic to humans.”

  “Take it off,” said Alice.

  “I don’t want him coughing on the baby.” Barb was ready to fight Alice on this one.

  “Take it off. The microbeads are made of sodium polyacralate. It starts as a powder, but as it absorbs moisture it turns into a gel. I don’t want you inhaling that.”

  “What are you talking about? That gel is totally safe.” Barb pulled into the parking garage under the Avalond. The timing couldn’t have been better. She didn’t need to be driving when she was so irritated. She’d put herself on the line for these people. The least they could do was honor her wishes when it came to the safety of the baby. Best thing to do was ignore it. Unpack the car, get them to the roof, not get drawn into a fight over a diaper. Charlotte didn’t need to be near that nasty man and his hacking cough a minute longer. She took the baby out of the van. KC was right there, ready for nanny duty. “Look after my little girl.” KC lay on the ground beside the car seat. Dogs were so much better than people. They were made of love and loyalty. She petted the massive head and returned to help Alice with Bill.

  “I want us to steer clear of plastics as much as possible,” said Alice. “Trust me. We haven’t seen MELT damage this far north, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t spreading. It has already spread further than I ever imagined it could.” She was talking to herself, not making a lot of sense. “Put the diaper down, Pete. If there were contaminants in the water that was coming up from the subway, we might have picked some up on our clothes. You don’t want plastic close to your skin.”

  “It’s the contaminant in the air that we should be worried about,” Barb blurted. She’d blocked thoughts of those escaped diseases and roaming sick people while they were getting the guys into the van and was kicking herself for not being more cautious. How could she forget something so important? She’d been excited to find her friends and allowed herself to be swept along by pure emotion. Where was her logical head when she needed it most? That should have been their first conversation. “Have you been near a hospital? Have you been exposed to sick people? Do you have any idea how you got those scabs on the back of your hand?” But she’d said none of those things. She’d been the good girl she was raised to be and gotten her friends into her van, thereby exposing her baby to danger. It was time to speak up. She had to. It was her job.

  “What contaminants in the air? What are you talking about, Barb?” Alice leaned forward on her seat, resting her arms on the back of the headrest.

  “I don’t know exactly,” said Barb. She pointed at Pete’s scabby hand. “I saw cuts like those on a few other people. They’re too similar for it to be a coincidence.”

  “They’re just cuts,” said Pete. “I was in a major accident, underground, or did you forget that part?” He shifted in his seat, but was forced back by another round of coughing.

  Barb stepped away from the van. “They’re not though, are they?”

  Alice had her attention on Bill. Would she see it? Understand? Keep the men and their infection far away from Charlotte? They had been exposed to something terrible. She was 99.9% sure of it.

  “We can’t be sure what’s going on,” said Alice. “Let’s get them to safety first, then ask questions. I’ll monitor Bill and Pete. We’re going to be fine.”

  Barb had checked Charlotte so many times she knew her little girl didn’t have a scratch on her but the urge to check her when Alice said they were going to be “fine” was overwhelming. “Fine” was such a limp, lifeless word. It made her feel like the world might spin off its axis and crash into the sun. Nothing was “fine” and it hadn’t been for days.

  Barb ran to the car seat and snuck a look at Charlotte, rubbed her cute little fingers, tucked her back under her plush blankie, and turned to her friend. Alice was wrong about this MELT compound being in the water and on the diapers, but the woman was scared. Let her have her say, so long as she didn’t put Charlotte in the way of any danger.

  Alice had gotten out of the van. She was still harping on when she ought to have been focused on getting her husband to safety. “When the fire department took Klean & Pure’s headquarters down, I told them it would be disastrous. I had no idea it would be this virulent. The damage we were seeing back on 19th Street where the paint on the cars had begun to melt, I believe that’s related. I have no idea how. MELT was designed to eat plastics, but the amount of plastic in car paint is…” She paused.

  Pete peeled the diaper off his face. There was a red rash where the sticky straps had been.

  “There’s resin in car paint. If memory serves, a lot of resin.” Alice reached into the back seat and took the diaper from Pete. She folded it and put it on the floor, clear on the other side of the vehicle. She rubbed her hands together, then checked them.

  Barb couldn’t help herself; she checked her own hands, too. Even though she’d had her share of bashes and bumps, she wasn’t cut. She held off checking on Charlotte again. Let the baby sleep as long as she could. The helicopter ride would surely wake her.

  Pete clawed at the bumps on his cheek. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to break the skin and whatever had infected the backs of his hands would spread to his face.

  “Don’t scratch,” said Barb. “It’ll only make it worse.”

  “You have no idea…” Pete doubled over, hacking hard. When he sat up his face was crimson. He listed to one side, then col
lapsed onto the seat.

  “Is he breathing?” Barb had her door half-way open.

  “I don’t think he is.” Alice folded down the seat to give Pete room to get out.

  Pete had both hands around his throat. His eyes were bugging out, his skin blotching.

  “Lord, you can make him breathe again. Come on. You can do it.” She knew the answer, though. Our fate is in our own hands. That’s the whole point of Free Will. You pray, but you act. They go hand in hand. She was supposed to act.

  Pete wasn’t making any sounds and his eyes had rolled back into their sockets. The silence was worse than the cough. It allowed her to hear Bill’s groans, the dogs panting, the faint sound of car alarms in the distance.

  Alice was shouting at her to come around and help her. Barb raced to the back of the van and together they got Pete out onto the concrete floor.

  Maggie-loo followed, then Mouse.

  Barb slammed her fist into Pete’s chest. “Breathe. Breathe, breathe, breathe.” She folded one hand over the other and threw her entire weight behind the next series of compressions.

  Maggie-loo whimpered and paced.

  “Don’t you worry, girl. I won’t let your human die.” She talked in time with her resuscitation effort. “You.will.not.die. You.will.not.die. You.will.not.die.”

  She needed to give him mouth to mouth, but if he had a communicable disease she didn’t want to expose herself to it. She grabbed a burping cloth from the bag—boy, had they ever proven to be useful—and draped it over his mouth. “Better than nothing.” She bent over, tipped his head back and sealed his mouth with hers, blowing as hard as she could. His chest rose and fell, but the minute she stopped breathing for him, his chest was still.

  “Keep his head back,” said Alice. “You need to keep the airway clear.”

  “I can’t do compressions and tilt his head at the same time. I have to alternate.” She resumed compressions. “Come on, Pete. Maggie-loo is counting on you. Don’t you be sneaking off to Heaven without her. She would never bear it. Believe me, I know. You might be all happy and running around with the angels and seeing your Nana and all that good stuff, but the people left behind are wrecked. Do you hear me? Wrecked.” She continued with the compressions.

  “How long has he been out, do you think?” Alice crawled across the pavement and put a finger on his neck. “One minute? Two?”

  “I checked for a pulse already. He doesn’t have one.”

  “Did you clear his airway?”

  Barb stopped her compressions. “Help me roll him.”

  The two women rolled Pete onto his side.

  “I don’t remember how to do this part. Do I just stick my fingers down his throat?”

  Alice nodded.

  Barb stuck two fingers down Pete’s throat. Nothing. He didn’t cough or gasp. She rolled him back and continued compressions. “We still have time.”

  “Should we attempt a tracheotomy?” Alice was already hunting through the glove compartment. She returned with a Bic pen. “Have you ever done this before? In your CPR class? Did they teach you how to do this?”

  “No, they did not, but I’ve seen it done. Do you have a knife?”

  Alice shook her head. “We lost everything.”

  “Look in the front seat. In the foot well. There’s a kit. Get me the knife.” Thank you, Neal. Thank you for your inestimable kindness. “Sterilize it.”

  Barb ran her finger down Pete’s throat. His Adam’s apple was pronounced, so it wasn’t difficult to find the soft spot about an inch and a half below the bulge where she was going to make the incision. She didn’t remember what it was called, only that she needed to find it. Alice handed her the knife. She’d used a baby wipe to sterilize it. Better than nothing.

  Barb held her fingers over the incision point, keeping the skin taught, but not stretched too tight, and pressed gently with the knife. The skin didn’t break. She needed to press harder, but not crush the windpipe. She closed her eyes and asked God to guide her. If ever He needed to take the wheel, this was the moment. The skin gave way. There was a little blood, which meant she’d gone in at the correct depth. She took the empty Bic tube and wiggled it into the nick in his neck. She had to blow into the tube now. “Protect me, Lord.”

  She blew, his chest inflated. She blew again and waited. Would he breathe on his own? Could they get him upstairs and convince Neal to pilot them to safety?

  Pete’s chest moved. Whatever had closed his throat was above the line of incision. They could worry about extracting that when they got upstairs.

  “I’m going to take Charlotte upstairs first, then come down and get you. It’s going to take two of us to carry each of the guys.”

  Alice nodded. “Help me get Bill out and onto the ground, so I can watch them both at the same time.”

  They wrangled Bill, now as much of a rag doll as Suze the functional quadraplegic had been, out of the van.

  “What’s that?” Barb pointed to a mess on the floor. “Was that the diaper Pete had over his face?”

  “Don’t touch it,” said Alice. “I’ve seen this before. It’s on the diaper. That means it’s on his skin.”

  “What’s on his skin?”

  Alice’s face was pinched and drawn. She had one hand on Barb and the other inside the van.

  “If I shouldn’t touch it, neither should you.”

  “You’re right. I need something that isn’t plastic.”

  Barb dove into the passenger side foot well and handed Alice the axe Neal had used to break into his neighbors’ apartments.

  Alice flipped the diaper over with the axe head, revealing a gooey mess of decomposing matter.

  “He only wore it for a few minutes.”

  “Give me a second. I need to think carefully,” said Alice.

  Barb wanted Charlotte away from whatever was eating a hole through the diaper.

  “Look at his neck.” Alice dropped to her knees, checked Pete for a pulse, then started compressions again.

  Pete’s neck was red, the incision site swollen.

  “He’s reacting to the plastic. I need non-plastic tubing.”

  Barb dug around in the back of the van, desperate to find something that wasn’t made of plastic. She threw aside the diaper bag, the canned food, the energy bars. She hadn’t prepared for everything, only for a drive downtown and back. She switched to the front seat. Neal’s supplies were there. The Taser was made of plastic components, as was the walkie-talkie. She grabbed the walkie-talkie. “Neal? Are you there? It’s Barb. We need your help. Our man Pete is dying. We need tubing. Copper or metal. Anything but plastic. Help us.” She rolled her eyes, hoping that he’d answer.

  The roof of the parking lot was covered with pipes. Big pipes, small pipes, no micro-pipes, but he was dying. Did it matter if the copper piping was a couple of inches thick? God provides for those who trust in His mercy. It was madness, but so was a needless death. When you have no good choices, you select the least-bad of the options you’re left with. She took the axe to the closest copper pipe she could find and hacked until she had a gnarled, ugly piece of tubing that had to be better than the plastic that was choking him.

  How to clean it? She couldn’t put this filthy thing inside his throat. The baby wipes wouldn’t cut it. Charlotte’s mom would never have allowed ethanol-drenched wipes to touch her baby’s tush. She had a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer in her bag. She drenched the pipe in the gel-like substance, then washed it off with bottled water.

  She handed the pipe to Alice. “It is the best I can do.”

  Alice nodded. “He’s dead if we do nothing. So, here goes something.”

  They worked on Pete, while Maggie-loo looked on, for several minutes. Alice performed a second, lower tracheotomy. His throat was a mess, but they got him breathing again.

  “He needs to get to a hospital, now.”

  “Let’s get him upstairs. We have to be on the roof or our chances of Neal taking us are slim to none.”

  “I
thought you said we had a ride.”

  “I believe we do.” Barb swiped her oily hands down her trousers. “All we have to do is believe.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The place in her chest where Petra had had her happy, victory dance was vacated, replaced by a sickening wash of bile and horror. Mimi couldn’t die. She’d made it through how many rounds of chemo and radiation and terrible months? Petra looked at her phone again. Sean had said “HIT” not “KILLED.” She couldn’t waste time texting with her boyfriend, just to satisfy her own curiosity, even though it threatened to claw its way out of her chest like one of those monsters from Alien.

  Changing her plan, mid-plan, had gotten her hit. It would have given her immense pleasure to march over to wherever this sad sack’s friends or relatives were hiding and unload on them, too, but Jim had been right; they needed to round the house and come at them face on. She headed away from the de facto firing range and towards the trees.