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

by JJ Pike

  The melting diaper had dissolved into a puddle in the back of the van. Alice used the blade of the axe to scoop it out. The place where Pete had lain was stained with his blood. Alice bent in close. “It’s on the cement. MELT is here.”

  Barb tried to see what Alice was seeing, but all she had eyes for was Charlotte. “I’m going to sit in the back with her.”

  “No. Up front with me. I don’t want you anywhere near where the guys were sitting. If I’m right. If they had what Angelina had, then the agent—then MELT—is alive.”

  Barb neither knew nor cared who Angelina was. She pushed the passenger side chair back as far as it would go so she could keep Charlotte and her coal shuttle on her knee.

  “I don’t want the dogs back there, either,” said Alice. “If MELT can live on humans who can say whether it lives on dogs, too.”

  “The dogs come with us,” said Barb. “I can’t leave them behind.”

  “Okay. If they’re coming, we need to cover the floor and the seats. Do you have cotton sheets anywhere? Did you see any in the apartment?”

  Barb nodded. She couldn’t move. She had to sit perfectly still with her perfectly still baby. That was her job now, to love this little one as her spirit left the world.

  Alice ran off. Barb didn’t track her friend. Instead, she hummed to Charlotte. Alice was back by the time she’d hummed all she knew of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Alice draped the back seats in layers of sheets, then herded the dogs into the car. Barb closed her eyes and sought out more Mozart for the baby. She knew she couldn’t hum Charlotte back into the land of the living, but she could honor her short, tragic life by sending her off properly.

  Alice drove slowly but resolutely uptown. She was calm and in control. Barb was relieved someone else was around to take charge.

  “Get a towel from the back and soak it in water,” said Alice. “Get me one, too. We need to cover our mouths against the smoke. I don’t want you, or me, breathing this in. Not sure what we’re going to do about the dogs. Hope for the best, I suppose.” Mouse, KC, and Maggie-loo were in the back. Mouse was snuggled up in KC’s luxurious coat. Maggie-loo had her muzzle on her paws. If the smoke bothered them, they didn’t show it.

  “Barb? Towels? Water? This is going to mess with our lungs.”

  Barb could barely think, let alone move. The coal shuttle was heavy in her lap, but she was glad of the ice on her legs and stomach. She unclipped the baby carrier she still had strapped to her chest and threw it into the back seat, which took her one layer closer to the ice. It wasn’t enough. She needed to feel what it felt like for Charlotte. She raised her shirt, just a little, and squeezed the massive, round shuttle close. Still not enough. She dug her hands into the ice, searching for Charlotte’s little hand. All five fingers, present and accounted for. This was what death felt like: cold and hard and unrelenting. Barb wove her fingers—gently, quietly, so as not to disturb the baby—through the ice until she had both hands cradled in hers. Then she sat back and hummed. More Mozart, of course. What else could she possibly sing?

  Alice pulled the car over. “Are you hearing me?” She climbed out of the car, much to the delight of the dogs who woofed and stood, eager to get out of the car and play. Alice pressed them back with a couple of stern words. She was a natural boss. The dogs knew it, she knew it, Barb knew it. Barb decided she’d best let her do whatever she was going to do while she tended to her goodbyes.

  Alice rummaged around until she found some paper towels and a bottle of water. By the time she climbed back into the driver’s seat, her eyes were streaming. “Take this.” She held out six or seven paper towels, enough to wrap around your head and keep the smoke at bay, but Barb wasn’t interested. She wanted to feel the ash in her deadened throat and let her vision swim in and out of focus.

  But Charlotte. Charlotte shouldn’t be exposed to this soot and muck and smoke. She stole a look down at her precious charge, no less beloved because she was dead. Alice had been tender when she wrapped her in a towel and covered her. No smoke would get through those layers. They could rest together.

  To her left, a tongue of flame shot through the bars of the sewer. “First rivers of red, now flames of wrath.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Barb pointed to the sidewalk where she’d seen the fire.

  “I don’t see anything, Barb. You haven’t put your paper towels on. Here, let me.” She fussed with Barb until she had her mouth covered. “You may not care if you live or die, right this minute, but later you’ll find that place that lives for something and wish you’d taken better care of yourself.”

  “Again. Did you see it this time?” The flames had been higher. Alice had to have seen them.

  Alice turned the key in the ignition and hit the pedal. The car lurched, then clunked. Flat tire. No doubt about it. The women were stranded in a lake of fire.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “I’ve got a lead on some more oxy.” Sean was at the dining room table. He had a Hello Kitty notebook and a couple of Betsy’s crafting pens adorned with feathers and sparkles, laid out in front of him. On the left-hand side of the page he had a series of initials, in the middle symbols, and on the right, numbers. He waved Petra over. “Names,” he drew his finger down the initials, “what they can supply is in the middle column and in what amounts is listed on the right.”

  “Good. No, great,” said Petra.

  “I want to show you how to read it. There’s a key, but it’s complicated. I don’t want anyone to be implicated if they’re stopped or searched.”

  “Later,” said Petra.

  Mimi and Jim were still in the kitchen. Since she’d been gone, someone had added a box of tissues and a bottle of Baileys to the table. Mimi had an empty glass in front of her. The sticky smear of beige on the inside of the glass spoke of the shot (or, being Mimi, shots) she’d already had. Her face was flushed and puckered, her mouth still set wrong. If Petra hadn’t known she’d been crying, she’d have assumed Mimi had had a stroke. She was good at holding back the tears. Usually. Midge having a crainiotomy had pushed her over her threshold.

  Petra checked in on herself, mentally. Nope, her normally-roiling emotional center remained calm. The universe wasn’t challenging her to make disgusting deals that pitted the people she loved against each other or forcing her to make impossible choices which were made all the worse for not being “real.” Neither was she beaming desperate messages at Paul. She wanted him beside her. He’d be impressed. Correction: if he saw her keeping it together under this much pressure, he’d be shocked out of his gourd. Soon, bro. We’ll be back together again soon. He’d said his goodbye when he’d called and left a message with Jim, but she had to believe he’d still make it back to her.

  Mimi poured herself another Baileys. It was a big one. “Did you get through to the hospital?”

  Okay, that was definitely suspect. Hadn’t Jim fully briefed Mimi? Or had he relayed all the relevant information except the fact that Midge was already in the back of a car in a surgical helmet protecting her exposed brain while being kept in a sleep-like state by the constant application of mega-duty drugs? Was it her job to tell Mimi the rest of the facts?

  Petra pulled up a chair. “The situation at the hospital has changed.”

  Mimi banged her glass down on the table. Jim held his hand over her shoulder, the needle ready to go back for the next, perhaps the final, stitch once she calmed herself. “Do not withhold information from me, Petra Everlee. Your parents may not have picked me to be their stand-ins—and that’s their business, not yours—but I have a right to know what’s going on if I am to help make crucial decisions for this family.”

  Jim nodded at Petra.

  “Jim mentioned that the hospital is running out of drugs.”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot. I’m seventy-two, not twenty-seven. Jim said Manhattan was imploding and exploding and on fire, the hospital is dangerously low on drugs, and the plan was to bring Midge here. I’
d like to go on record as being violently against this plan, but go on. If there’s more, tell me more.”

  “We have moved Midge from the hospital to our own transport.” She couldn’t say it was a Lexus and not an ambulance. Mimi would lose her mind. “There’s a nurse with Betsy, so there’s no chance Midge is in danger.”

  “You’re insane, all of you. You have no clue what you’re taking on.” She downed the rest of her drink.

  “The hospital is now under quarantine.”

  “Why?”

  “It is?” Jim put the suture needle to one side.

  Petra held up her hands. “Before you ask, that’s all I know. I advised Cassie to start driving before they expand the quarantine to the parking lot.”

  “Who’s Cassie?” Mimi reached for the Baileys. It was early enough in the day that Petra was tempted to tell her to slow it down, but she wasn’t the boss of Mimi any more than Mimi was the boss of her.

  “Cassie’s the nurse who’s helping us.”

  “Maybe it’s connected to the acid in the ambulances.” Jim placed the needle in the trash and packed the suture kit back up.

  Mimi’s Baileys glass crashed against the stove hood sending shards from the back door to the entrance to the living room. “I’m done asking. Now I’m telling. One of you is going to sit down, right now, and tell me what in the name of blazes is going on here.”

  “We’re piecing it together as we go, Mimi. No one is holding information from you. Midge lost her sight…”

  Mimi slumped back into her chair, her eyes fixed on Petra.

  “Honestly, Mimi, it’s so stressful and everything has happened so fast. I’m doing my best.”

  “Do better,” said Mimi.

  “That’s not fair,” said Jim. “Petra has shown exemplary forward-thinking and tactical skills. I mean no disrespect, Petra, but you surprised me today. You handled yourself with both grit and grace.”

  Petra was torn between running for the Durango and staying to relay everything that had happened to Mimi. She wanted to see Midge, know for a fact that she was okay. “Mimi, Jim will fill you in. I have to go collect Midge. Can I have the keys to the SUV, Jim?”

  “You can, but want to run the plan by me first?”

  “Cassie’s driving, which means no one’s in the back with Midge. If I find them—no, when I find them—I can drive, Cassie can stay with Midge, and Betsy can continue to supervise from the front.”

  “But if you’re driving the Lexus…” He frowned when the penny dropped and he worked out what she was planning to do. “You’re going to abandon my Durango? Now? We’re going to need vehicles that can handle off-road driving.”

  “Not abandon. Park and go pick it up later, once the crowds have thinned.”

  “The crowds aren’t thinning, honey. This is how it’s going to be. We need to be talking about better fortifications, a smaller perimeter, stockpiling things that people will barter for, just as Sean said. If we’re going to bug in, it’s all happening here and now.” He waited until she’d acknowledged that she understood what he was saying. “Let Cassie bring her here. She has Betsy with her. Between the two of them, they’ll keep Midge safe. We need you here. We have work that only you can do.”

  “I don’t know…” Petra was torn.

  “Do they need you as much as we do?” said Jim.

  Mimi unscrewed the top off the Baileys and drank straight from the bottle. She’d never been a daytime drinker as far as Petra knew. She liked the odd hot toddy and a snifter of something when she was off cruising the Caribbean with her friends, but she wasn’t a “slug it straight from the bottle Grannie.”

  Jim ignored Mimi. “If Midge wakes up, Cassie can pull over and get in the back and tend to her.”

  “As long as she can do it one handed.”

  Mimi laughed. It was a “throw your head back and let a sarcastic sound come out of you” laugh; like no laugh Petra had ever heard her grandmother make. “One handed? You have a one-handed nurse taking care of my granddaughter when she’s just out of surgery?”

  When she put it like that, it did sound foolish.

  In the back of her mind a new, ghoulish thought began to brew. It was a noxious mix of eyeballs and bat wings and squid ink. She’d missed something. She slowed her frantic mind to a crawl, pulling each fact up in order and examining it at length.

  Cassie was on desk duty when Nigel asked her to step up and help them.

  Cassie had been in one of the ambulances that they’d watched melting after everyone had been removed to the hospital.

  She’d injured her hand in that ambulance.

  The burn victims she’d been responsible for had no medical history. They were random Joes off the street. They could have anything.

  Though Cassie said she’d never been in contact with the patient who was infected with something “communicable” she’d been written out of the roster and placed on desk duty.

  Both the patients in Cassie’s ambulance and the patients in the other ambulance could all be infected with diseases that could be transmitted via blood.

  Cassie said her hand needed to be re-bandaged. That meant it was still bleeding. She’d had stitches, hadn’t she? Professional stitches put in by a nurse. Not the cross-stitch, home-made kind Jim had just given Mimi.

  Knowing she’d been exposed to possible disease, Cassie would have changed her own bandages and done something to stem the bleeding. Outside the car. Touching no one and nothing and making sure Betsy and Midge were safe.

  Not that she didn’t want Cassie to be safe, but if this “communicable disease” was airborne (which was suggested by the fact the hospital had since declared a quarantine), might she have been exposed to the—what was it? a virus? was that the kind of thing they were up against?—before she joined them in the car.

  Had they been exposed when they were in the hospital or by the acid-drenched ambulance or in the parking lot?

  Petra didn’t want to send Mimi into hysterics. Ironic. Mimi had virtually accused her of that only minutes earlier. She knew what they thought of her. She was too “emo,” too expressive, too “extra.” Not anymore. This was New Petra, Petra who’d risk anything, Petra who’d shed her old skin and was growing into her new shape and colors. She was Petra the Fearless. Okay, a bit extra, but who’d know if she didn’t let it show? She’d model calm and poise and good sense. “Jim, could I have a word?”

  Mimi snorted. “Not without me.”

  “The infected patient?” said Petra. “The one who’d been moved from the Manhattan hospital? Might we have been exposed to whatever he or she was carrying.”

  Mimi was speechless. Not in a good way.

  “No use dwelling on that,” said Jim. “We need to make a list and prioritize. Mimi, put the Baileys away and help us. You can sterilize the guest room.”

  “I will not.”

  “It’s for Midge. Take everything out, including the bed. Sean can help you.”

  “Sean can barely walk.”

  “Fine, I’ll help you.”

  “Take away one crippled patient and give me another. Great.”

  “Petra, get rid of the bodies. I don’t care how. Use the backhoe. Bury them. Incinerate them. Whatever’s fastest.”

  “Sean,” Jim shouted. “Can you come in here?”

  Sean limped to the kitchen entrance.

  “How long will it take you to get your supplies?” Jim had the pen and paper from beside the phone and was jotting down notes.

  “A day.”

  “Your parents are rich, you say?”

  “Very.”

  “Can you buy us a fence?” Jim was dead serious. That was a lot of fence if they were going to secure the compound.

  “I guess.” Sean was flicking through his contacts, though how drug dealers would be connected to fences, Petra couldn’t guess.

  “If we hire people to put it up, we’re going to need to pay them a lot to keep their mouths shut,” said Petra.

  “No,” said
Jim. “You don’t want to draw attention to the fact that you have funds. In fact, you’re going to have to dress down, lose the designer shoes…”

  Petra mounted a defense. She’d been in heavy rubber boots or sneakers the whole time she’d been at their house.

  “I know what you prefer…” He didn’t need to finish the sentence. He was right. She’d have been in Gucci or Prada or Louboutin if she were back in New York. Their cabin had burned to the ground and though Aggie and Jo had brought their Birth Certificates back from New Paltz, Aggie had neglected to bring any clothes or, as Jim pointed out, flashy, designer shoes.