by Brant, Jason
“Stop being a baby,” she said. “The bullet is still in there and I have to get it out.”
“Baby? Do you ever stop—”
Karen ignored him and shoved the sheath between his teeth again. He started to struggle but he stopped when he saw the stern look on Karen’s face. She didn’t want to keep bantering with him while he bled out on the floor.
“I have to cut the bullet out. This is going to hurt – a lot.”
McCall held her gaze for a moment and gave her a quick, short nod before laying his head on the floor and staring at the ceiling. When she asked if he was ready he grunted but didn’t respond otherwise. As usual she admired his courage and gruff acceptance of the shitty reality they found themselves in.
“Here we go,” Karen said. She placed the fingers of her left hand on the top and bottom of the wound, holding the skin in place. With the knife in her right hand she pressed the blade against the edge of the bullet hole and pulled it downward, making an inch long cut.
McCall’s shoulder muscle twitched, but he didn’t pull away. She glanced at his face to see how he was doing, but he showed no emotion. The only indication that he felt any discomfort was the sweat beaded on his forehead.
Tough bastard, she thought.
She placed the knife on the floor, careful not to have the blade touch the dirty wood, and prepared herself to dig into his skin. She spread the cut open with her left hand and carefully slid her index and middle fingers into his shoulder. The bullet hole wasn’t very wide and she had to force her fingers deeper, feeling the muscle contracting around them.
McCall growled against the sheath, baring his teeth at the space above him. Karen felt a piece of wet cloth about two inches deep and she rotated her fingers in a semicircle, trying to pinch the fabric between them. She got a hold of it and slowly pulled it out, wincing as she watched McCall’s shoulder spasm from the pain.
The swath of clothing pulled free and Mad Dog’s body slumped against the floor. She looked at his face and realized that he’d passed out. Knowing that he was unconscious gave her a little more confidence and allowed her to work without concern for hurting him. She dropped the inch wide piece of shirt to the floor and turned back to the wound.
The bullet must have been resting on top of the fabric as it had been pulled to the surface. She could see it flush with the skin and squeezed the hole, pushing it out of the wound. More blood oozed from the incision and she immediately poured more alcohol over it. She tore part of his shirt away, the cleanest she could spot, and pressed it against the wound.
Gunshots rang out from nearby. She wanted to look out the window to see where they’d come from, but she needed to work on McCall’s leg first. Men shouted back and forth at each other from somewhere down the street and more gunfire followed. She hoped that they weren’t still out in the open and instead were shooting from a secure position somewhere.
She quickly undid McCall’s gun belt and buttons. As she pulled his pants down she couldn’t help but wish that she was doing this under different circumstances. How she had developed feelings for this man in the midst of everything that had happened to them, was a complete mystery to Karen.
The bullet that hit McCall’s leg had gone the entire way through and created a larger exit wound on his hamstring. She felt around the area and her best guess was that his bone hadn’t been broken from the bullet. As long as it didn’t become infected, and assuming that he hadn’t lost too much blood, she thought he might have a chance. How they would escape their current predicament, particularly with him being lame, was something she would have to deal with later.
She cleaned the wounds with alcohol and more pieces of his shirt, tying the cloth the entire way around his leg. A tight knot secured everything in place and she finally sat down beside him and let her body relax. The flow of blood had slowed enough that she felt it would stop soon. She took a long pull from the bottle of booze and coughed as her throat burned from the harsh liquid.
More shouting from outside forced her to get up and walk over to the barred windows, trying to see what was going on. Moaners meandered around the street, a handful of them pushing against the glass of the windows and the wood of the front door. Evans’ body lay in the middle of the street. None of the infected feasted on him anymore. Karen could see that large chunks of his legs and face had been chewed away, making it hard to recognize his features.
Across the street, one door down on the right, Karen could see two men firing guns out of a second story window. Their aim left something to be desired though, and they rarely managed to kill any of the moaners with a single shot. They hooted and hollered down at the creatures like a couple of morons. Watching them now, Karen wondered if their minds had snapped from the horrors they’d seen, or if they were merely simpletons.
Not wanting to loiter around, accomplishing nothing, Karen picked up a rifle and sat at the desk on the right, taking aim at an eyeless, walking corpse scratching at the window.
Chapter 13
McCall startled awake as gunfire echoed through the jailhouse.
He lifted his head, doing his best to ignore the pain that resonated in it, and looked at his wounded shoulder. A bloody swath of his shirt covered the wound. He carefully moved his arm, feeling the scabbed over cut Karen had made pull apart, making him grimace.
In a slow, pain ridden movement, McCall propped himself up on the elbow of his good arm. His pants were down around his ankles and his leg had yet another piece of his shirt tied around it.
“I see that you couldn’t wait for me to fall asleep so you could take my pants off,” McCall said. His mouth had dried out and his throat felt raw as he spoke.
“Yeah, but I changed my mind when I saw the little twig and berries you had down there,” Karen said from behind him. Another gunshot bounced through the room, adding to his headache.
He gave her his patented grunt, moved to a seated position, and gingerly spun around, careful to hold his wounded leg just above the dusty floorboards. Karen sat at one of the desks, a rifle held in her hands, and shot a moaner that walked toward the window. She ejected the empty casing using the level on the bottom of the rifle and turned around, facing McCall.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Like someone decided to dig a hole in my shoulder,” McCall said. His pants were still around his ankles, but he didn’t have the energy to pull them up yet. “I’m guessing that you got the bullet out?”
“I did. It was such a tiny little thing though. I’m surprised you whined and carried on about it so damn much.” Her lips bent up at the corners a bit and she winked at him.
“I guess all of us aren’t used to being poked by things,” McCall said. He tried not to laugh, but every time he saw the look on her face when he cracked wise about her profession he couldn’t stop himself. His chuckles hurt his shoulder, which only made him laugh harder.
Karen looked at him like he was a loon, but her smile broke even wider and she laughed along with him. They only stayed in a jovial mood for a few seconds as a short, hefty moaner stuck its chubby arm through the barred window, trying to grab Karen. She let out a sigh as she turned around and shot it in the head.
“How long have I been out?” McCall asked.
“About half an hour,” Karen said as she started reloading the rifle.
A bowl of water sat off to McCall’s right. He slid it along the floor before lowering his mouth to its surface and taking a long drink. Not wanting to vomit as he had before, he forced himself to stop before his belly felt full.
After another moments rest, he struggled to a standing position. He pulled his pants up and secured them in place. Most of the buttons on his shirt had been torn off when Karen pulled it open, and large pieces of it were missing. He took what remained of it off, hissing as he tried to work his injured shoulder.
Karen came over and helped him pull it off. She stood in front of him and gently removed the makeshift bandage covering his bullet wound and incision,
inspecting her handiwork. McCall watched her as she worked, ever impressed by her broad range of knowledge.
“It doesn’t look like it’s infected. Not yet anyway,” she said. She tore another long strip off his shirt and wrapped it over his shoulder and under his armpit.
“I guess I won’t be needing my shirt anymore,” McCall said, looking at the scraps of it that remained.
“I’m trying to keep you alive, and you’re worried about that disgusting shirt,” Karen said as she tied the knot.
With his good hand, McCall grabbed a hold of hers and gave it a squeeze. “Thanks.”
She placed her free hand on his chest and held it there for a moment before turning away. “You probably shouldn’t be thanking me. Things aren’t looking so good out there.”
He turned back to the windows and looked outside. Bodies were scattered everywhere – most of them had large holes somewhere in their heads. Karen had been busy while he slept. It looked like she’d killed several dozen of them. Many more wandered around, moaning and groaning as they stumbled over the twice dead bodies.
“There are less of them than I expected,” McCall said.
“I thought the same thing,” Karen said. She stood beside him and pointed to a building across the street. “There are at least two men in there. They pop up every now and then and shoot out of the windows. They seem like complete idiots though.”
“Have you heard any other shooting?”
“Actually, I’ve heard a lot, but it’s usually followed by screams.”
McCall stepped closer to the window and inspected the bodies directly in front of it. A few of them appeared fresh, likely citizens of Sheol, but most looked like they’d crossed the desert. Their skin had split and darkened and their eyes and tongues were dry and shriveled. They had accumulated a lot of damage in the trek from Gehenna, or wherever they had come from, and their tissue had begun to decay.
“These ones here, with the rotting skin, they look like shit.”
“They’re in bad shape, that’s for sure. I’ve been wondering if that’s why I’ve seen fewer of them than I thought. Maybe their succumbing to the elements,” Karen said.
“Succumbing to the elements? You mean the sun cooked their heads?”
“Jesus Christ, McCall. Yes, I think their brains have been cooked. Damage to their bodies doesn’t seem to stop them, but a shot to the head will. It stands to reason that their brains getting scrambled from exposure would have the same effect.”
“You think we could wait them out? They might all die off eventually.” McCall didn’t buy that theory, but he figured Karen to be the smart one.
“Sheol isn’t anywhere near as hot as Gehenna, or the desert. Who knows how long they would last out there.”
McCall hobbled over to the desk by the left window and plopped into the seat. If the moaners could be killed from exposure, there might be a way they could use that to their advantage. They wouldn’t be able to survive another trip along the rail lines, let alone get past the cannibals between them and it, but they might be able to head north.
“What about the cold? If their brains can cook, maybe they can freeze.”
“You mean go up north? Could we even survive up there? I’ve heard it gets impossibly cold.”
“What other options do we have?” McCall asked.
A man appeared in a window of the building across the street with a rifle in his hands. He popped off a couple of shots, taking out a moaner or two, and then disappeared again. Karen had been right – they were idiots. At the shot-to-kill rate he’d just seen, those men wouldn’t have ammo for long.
“I don’t know how much longer I can keep running,” Karen said, sitting in the chair at the other desk. “What if we go up there and somehow survive, only to find that the cold doesn’t stop them?”
“We’ll figure that out when the time comes.” He spotted his Peacemaker sitting on the floor by his desk and picked it up, trying not to groan as he bent over. The notched handle felt at home in his palm. He held it up for her to see. “I told ya – good luck charm.” He dropped it into the empty holster and gave her a satisfied nod.
“Your definition of good luck and mine are very different,” Karen said, rolling her eyes.
“We’re still alive, and damn near everyone else is dead. That’s pretty lucky in my book.”
“I’d buy that if you’d ever actually read one,” Karen said.
McCall raised the Peacemaker and shot a one-armed woman that was advancing on the front the jail. The cannibal dropped to the blood-soaked street with one final death twitch. He went about reloading the gun with his good hand, placing the pistol on the desk as he did so.
After finishing with the Colt he looked back out the window and couldn’t see Evans’ body anywhere. “What happened to Evans? The last thing I remember was a couple of people chowing down on him.”
“He got up and wandered off a while ago,” Karen said. “I tried to shoot the son of a bitch, but I had a misfire. They’d chewed off most of left leg so he had a hell of a limp.”
They sat in silence for awhile, taking shots at random stragglers in the street, filling the ground with more bodies. The men across the road would pop up occasionally and help out, but they stayed mostly quiet. Gunfire could be heard every few minutes, sometimes followed by cries of agony, and occasionally by cheers of victory. McCall wondered if Karen’s plan had worked better than they thought.
“What were you doing in Gehenna when all of this started?” Karen asked, finally breaking the quiet between them.
“What? You know I was sitting in a cell.” The question took McCall off guard.
“Someone asked me something similar and I couldn’t answer it. What were you doing before you were in the cell?” She had an odd expression on her face that he couldn’t quite identify.
“I almost shot that young deputy, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it,” McCall said. Memories of the young lawman consuming his uncle flashed in his mind. That had only been a few days ago, and at the time it had shocked Mad Dog to his core. Now he only had to look out the window to see things much worse. “I let him throw me in jail for a while rather than kill him.”
“When did you step foot in Gehenna?”
“Why are you asking me stupid questions? Who gives a shit?”
“Just answer me. When did you get to Gehenna?”
McCall leaned back in his chair, feeling the ache in his shoulder every inch of the way. He thought back to the general store where he’d been captured by Deputy Aaron. He could remember having a gun drawn on him and watching it waver as the young man shook in fear.
“Before he arrested me, I was....” McCall stopped in mid-sentence, cocking his head to the side as he thought. What had he been doing before his arrest? How had he arrived in Gehenna? When?
“You can’t remember, can you?” Karen asked.
McCall stared at the floor as he rummaged through his memories at a furious pace. How could he not remember such simple details? Had he been on a horse or the train when he stopped in Gehenna?
“I... no, I can’t. What the hell?” He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs, and regretted it immediately, grinding his teeth at the pain that resulted from the motion.
“I remember my last customer smelling like a pile of donkey shit, but I have no idea how he even got in my room. I can’t even remember waking up that morning.”
“But I can remember what happened before I got to Gehenna. I remember my childhood, my time as a sheriff, running from the federal government....”
“Same here. It’s just that specific time that is gone.”
“What does that mean?” McCall asked. Their mutual amnesia concerned him much more than the flesh eaters roaming the streets outside at that moment. He didn’t know of anything that could cause such symptoms. Then again, he’d never seen a walking dead man before a few days ago either.
“I have no idea, but it scares the shit out of me,” Karen said.
&nb
sp; “Could it have been whatever it was that made these ugly bastards rise from the grave?”
Karen rubbed her chin as she thought it over. “That’s a pretty good theory.”
“It happened at the same time, didn’t it? Those men came into town pretty close to our first memories, right?”
“It does seem related... maybe this disease, or whatever it is, didn’t just affect the dead, but also the living. Perhaps—”
An earth rumbling explosion rocked the building, shaking it violently.
“What the hell was that?” Karen asked as the shockwave passed.
McCall didn’t answer her. He leaned toward the window, making sure that no moaners were close enough to reach between the bars and grab him. A large pillar of smoke rose into the air from off in the distance, behind a row of buildings down the street. Someone must not have given up their stash of black powder for the battle in the field. Most of the cannibals in the street were struggling back to their feet, having been knocked over by the blast.
Most of them turned their attention to the rising plume of black smoke and stumbled toward it, enraptured by the sight and sound of the blast. Karen looked out the other window, her eyes following the creatures outside as they staggered past the jailhouse. She glanced over at McCall and held a finger to her lips. He nodded back without a word.
Even the men across the street remained silent. McCall could see them sneaking quick peeks out of their windows at the receding horde. He hoped they wouldn’t be stupid enough to start firing off more shots. If the crowd outside continued to dwindle, McCall and Karen might have a chance to escape.
Karen let out a small gasp and pointed out the window at something McCall couldn’t see. She tiptoed across the room and dropped to a knee beside McCall, whispering in his ear. “This is how we’re going to get out of here.” She put her hand on his forearm and looked directly into his eyes. “But I can’t leave without seeing if Stephen is still alive.”
Chapter 14