by JJ Pike
Maxwell shook his head. “Not going to happen.”
“The kid needs meds. Heavy duty meds. I need to get into the pharmacy and it’s going to be locked. I need your gun.”
“How’s about you stay here and shred sheets and I take my gun and blast my way into the pharmacy, lady?”
Alice didn’t want to waste time, but she wanted to be sure he got as many supplies as possible. Schedule IV drugs weren’t something she had easy access to, but she was going to need the heavy hitters if she was going to get Angelina’s pain under control. She needed morphine, gabapentin, oxy, the lot. She had enough experience managing her mother-in-law’s pain to know that debilitating agony could come at you from any angle and she might need to throw the entire pharmacy at Angelina to get her symptoms to calm down. “Let’s do it together.”
Three minutes and four bullets later and Alice and Maxwell were inside the holy of all hospital holies. The fourth bullet had been for show, but Alice didn’t begrudge Maxwell a thing. If he wanted to take out the security cameras, she was fine with that. The guy was turning out to be an asset. No need for there to be a record of their little shopping spree.
She made a sling out of one of the sheets, just as she had when Midge was a baby and demanded she be carried around everywhere. Alice knotted it behind her back, then proceeded to raid the cabinets with the skill and speed of a Nurse-Jackie-style junkie.
Once she’d emptied the cabinets of all painkillers, she left Maxwell in the antibiotics section, with instructions to stuff the makeshift sacks he’d fashioned out of his sheets with as much as he could physically carry. The man was a giant, so he was going to be able to haul more than she could ever hope to get up the stairs.
“Meet me back in her room when you’ve lugged those up to the roof. Don’t use the elevators if you can help it. They’re still jammed with people evacuating the building and we don’t have time.”
Her phone buzzed. Fran again.
Chopper secured. Be on roof in 15.
Alice stuffed the phone deep in her pocket and ran back down the corridor to the chilling screams of the young girl she had put in harm’s way. As she passed the front desk, she realized her error, slid to a stop and turned back around.
Back in the pharmacy, Maxwell greeted her with raised eyebrows.
“I need syringes. And a saline bag. I need to get a lot of meds into this kid.”
Maxwell pointed over his shoulder and Alice went to work, putting together a med kit that might allow her team to properly medicate Angelina.
She stopped for a brief second, rummaging around under her bulging sling. When she finally found her phone, she hit speed dial. “Tell me there’s a medic on board.”
“Roger that,” said Fran. “There’s a medic on board and a team on standby here when you land.”
Alice nodded. Fran was the absolute best. She could think for herself, as well as follow orders. “How’s Jake doing?”
She heard Fran suck the air in through clenched teeth.
“That good, eh?”
“He’s told Professor Baxter to step down the search for an antidote.”
Alice froze in place. “What do you mean?”
“He’s ordered the hole in the film studio be filled with cement—no insulation, no drywall, no wires or pipes or plastics of any kind—100% pure cement. They don’t need an antidote, he says, they just need to stop it from eating through another floor.”
“It’s eaten through another floor already?”
“Nope,” said Fran. “It’s eaten through five floors. It’s burrowing towards the basement now.”
Alice bit back the urge to swear up a storm. Wouldn’t help either of them. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She turned back to Angelina. Now she needed to do what she had been dreading. She needed to sedate the kid. She closed her eyes and sent up a little prayer. “Please, God. Don’t let me hurt her.” She didn’t have time for more. The chopper would be there any minute. She rummaged in her sling-sack of meds and found a vial of morphine. She thought back to her mother-in-law’s worst days, calculated her weight, estimated Angelina’s weight, and drew what she hoped was “enough, but not too much” morphine into the syringe.
She couldn’t touch the child, but how was she going to find a vein? She pulled up her phone and punched in her search. She didn’t need to find a vein. A muscle would do. But her search had led her down the regular internet rabbit hole and she found herself questioning whether morphine was the right choice. According to the army medics, it wasn’t the first choice in the field. And they’d had their fair share of testing pain meds in Afghanistan.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s either intramuscular morphine, fentanyl, or ketamine.” She dug deep in sack again. She could find nothing that matched the “oral transmucosal fentanyl citrate” that was recommended for battlefield administration. And she knew there would be no ketamine; ketamine was for horses, not humans. Just as she thought that, she came upon some ketamine tabs. “Well, there’s a shocker. It’s made it from the vets’ surgery to the hospital.”
Decision time: should she shove some ketamine under Angelina’s tongue or jab a needle into her thigh? The tongue route would require physical contact. So, the decision was made for her. She stood over the little girl, her heart pounding against her ribs, and hoped with all her might that the morphine would do the trick.
As soon as the needle hit her flesh, Angelina howled.
“I am sorry. I am sorry. I am so sorry, niña querida. Forgive me, darling girl.” Tears streamed down Alice’s face. It wasn’t the injection she was sorry for. It was for everything that led up to it.
Faster than she could have hoped, Angelina eased her way into the paradise the opioids delivered. Small mercies.
Alice slid down the wall and rested for a few seconds beside the sleeping child. She needed to think through their next steps. By the time Maxwell made it back down from the roof, she’d come to the conclusion that securing Angelina to a marble slab with strips of sheeting was a stupid idea.
“We can’t get the slab on to the chopper,” she said.
“So, the plan is?”
“The plan is for you to carry her up there.”
Maxwell blanched. She’d hit him where he lived. He was no coward, she could see that, but she’d asked the man to carry a child who burned those who touched her. The guy didn’t want to say no, but there was no way he wanted to say yes.
“Hear me out,” said Alice. “I know what you’re thinking.”
Maxwell hung his head. “I’m thinking my grandmother would whup my ass three ways from Sunday if I left a child here to die.”
“I would do it,” said Alice. “If I thought I could get her up several flights of stairs, but I know my own limits. She weighs about 80 pounds. I simply don’t have the strength to do it.” She was appealing, in part, to his vanity, but it was the truth. There was no way she could carry a kid that size up several flights of stairs.
“I saw what she did to those nurses.” Maxwell’s voice was flat. Not devoid of emotion, but rather clamped down as hard as he could get it.
“I’ve thought about that,” said Alice, racing to his side. “It was skin on skin contact. If we cover you with cotton sheets…and cover her with cotton sheets…she won’t be touching you anywhere.”
“Couldn’t we put her in a couple of sheets, make a kind of hammock, and carry her between us?”
Alice gave a wan smile. “If I slip,” she said, “and drop her, I would never forgive myself. I wish with all my heart I could get her up those stairs, but I worry that I don’t have the upper body strength to make it all the way. And we can’t put her down and pick her up again, the pain might kill her.” She waited a few beats, to let the words sink in. “Honestly, I wouldn’t ask if there were any other way.”
And that was all it took to get Angelina from Mount Sinai to the chopper waiting on the roof: just one good man, willing to take a chance and one smart woman, will
ing to bet the odds that he had a good heart.
Now all she had to do was solve one of the worst problems she’d ever been presented with. She needed to work out why Angelina was dissolving before MELT took her life.
Chapter Eight
“Hey! He’s joined the land of the living!” Paul leapt to his feet and was by Bill’s bedside in a second. “You had us worried there for a minute, Pa.”
Midge snuggled herself into Bill’s side. “I knew Daddy was going to be okay. His heart told me so. It’s still thumpity-thumping like regular.”
The room swam. Bill tried to recall what was going on and why his kids would all look so panicked, but it wasn’t coming to him. Then he lifted his heavily-bandaged hand to his face and it came rushing back. There’d been a bear. It had attacked. He’d sustained injuries.
The bandages said someone had already taken care of the wounds. They all knew how to do that: disinfectant, stitches, more disinfectant. They weren’t your average kids. These were super-kids, molded in the shape of their mother.
“I am going to need a little something.” He held up his hand to forestall his eldest’s tirade about the evils of modern medicine. “More than willow bark or capsicum.”
Petra folded her arms over her chest. “I wouldn’t recommend capsicum for this kind of injury, anyway…”
“Where’s the bear?” Bill tried to push himself to a seated position, but it was hard with Midge under one arm and a bandaged paw at the end of the other.
“Out cold,” said Paul. “We gave the cubs a lower dose, but all three of them will be out by now.”
“We need to take them as far as we can,” said Bill. “I want them driven at least 50 miles north of here. Take the lure and leave it with her so she has something delicious to wake up to. We want her to associate where we leave her with good things and not remember that there was anything here that drew her attention.”
Paul nodded.
“Where’s that boyfriend of yours?” he said.
“Ex-boyfriend,” said Petra, “and he’s packing. I told him he needed to go back to Manhattan as soon as we could free up a vehicle.”
Bill shook his head. “Idiots learn nothing if you treat them like idiots.”
Petra rolled her eyes. “I don’t want him around, Dad. Can we just leave it at that?”
“Ask him to come up here,” said Bill.
Petra huffed and headed out to the living room to collect her former boyfriend. No way she was going to have anything to do with him now. She might look and sound like a city chick, but deep in her bones Bill knew she had a respect for the country that wouldn’t allow her to give the moron another look. Okay, maybe not a moron, but certainly clueless and bumbling. You don’t get to let your guard down in the wild. Not unless you want to be someone else’s lunch.
Midge hopped off the bed, giving him the space to roll on one side and hoist himself up on his pillows. “How much of our winter supplies did they eat?”
Paul shrugged. “The canned stuff is all safe, but they ate a boatload of pemmican. And what they didn’t eat isn’t safe for us to eat. All the packaging is damaged. We’ll need to start from scratch.”
Bill tutted. It was what he had feared. “Well, we know what Sean is going to be doing for the next three weeks.”
Paul laughed. Making pemmican was not one of their favorite chores. There were no shortcuts. Bill would make Sean hunt the deer, skin and gut it, hang the meat to dry and, while that was drying, find the chokeberries that would even out the protein bars that Alice swore would one day save their lives.
The door creaked open and one hangdog teenager slunk into the room. Bill let him stew in the silence for a few seconds. Wouldn’t hurt the kid to feel the consequences of his own thoughtlessness.
Paul and Petra were used to a Bill-style telling off, so they stood to one side, as relaxed as anyone could be under the burden of all that quiet, while Midge clung to the edge of her chair, eager to see how it was all going to play out.
“What do you have to say for yourself, young man?”
“I can’t even tell you how sorry I am, man. That was completely not the cool thing to do. Petra tore me a new one…”
Petra coughed, her signal not to say more. Or perhaps she’d already explained that they did not use that kind of language in front of Midge. Whatever her meaning, Sean stopped speaking.
Bill swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “You’re right. It was idiotic. You need to be alert and aware of your surroundings at all times when you live in the country.”
Sean dug his hands deep into his pockets. “I hear you, Mr. Everlee. I’ll remember that next time.”
Bill motioned for Paul to come over and lend him a shoulder. He was feeling just a little bit unsteady and wasn’t sure he could stand on his own. “No, son. You’ll remember it this time.”
Sean looked at Bill, confused.
“You’re going to work off your debt by contributing to the future well-being of this family.”
“You mean I can stay?” Sean was practically on fire he was so excited.
“Not with me,” said Petra. “You’re on your own.”
Sean went right back to his hunch-shouldered slump. He didn’t meet Petra’s eyes. He was even more scared of her than he was of Bill. What a hoot. His daughter was a pistol, he’d give her that.
“As soon as the twins get back with the truck, you and I are going to load up and head out.”
“We are?” said Sean.
“You’re going to bag yourself your first deer.”
“But I’m a vegetarian, Mr. Everlee.”
“That’s fine,” said Bill. “We’re not.”
Sean pushed his hands even deeper into his pockets. “I can pay for the damage I’ve caused. I’ve been working all summer. I have savings. I can, like, buy food for the stock pantry or whatever.”
Bill stopped still. “It’s not about money, son.”
Sean’s eyes were wide, though his gaze was still on the floor. “I don’t want to kill an animal, sir.”
Bill nodded. “I hear you. And I respect your beliefs. But we have lost a substantial portion of our emergency back-up supply of food. The pemmican is a last resort, high-protein bar. It’s the kind of thing you need if you’re going to hunker down and wait out a crisis.”
“Or if you need to bug out and want something that isn’t too heavy and packs a nutritional punch,” said Paul.
“The First Nations used it long before the European polar explorers.” Midge swung herself around on her chair, legs kicking at the bed. “Shackleton ate it when he was trying to get to the South Pole. So did his sled dogs.”
Bill grinned. She’d been listening to all his educational bedtime stories. Go figure. He thought she just endured them so they could get to Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the never-ending adventures of Captain Underpants. But, no. His sweet girl had been soaking it all up and learning. “She’s right. Without pemmican, those polar expeditions would have ended in many more deaths.”
“But it’s a life, Mr. Everlee.” Sean had more spine than Bill had given him credit for.
Bill nodded. “Let’s talk it through. If you’re still not on board with taking down the deer yourself, I’ll do it and let you make the pemmican afterwards.”
Sean nodded, the relief showing up in his shoulders before it migrated to his face. He even managed a smile.
“Let me make my case first,” said Bill. “There’s a reason I think you should be the one to take down a deer, and I don’t want you to think of it as just a punishment for putting the bear on high alert.” He paused for emphasis. “You need to know how to survive.”
The room was silent. The kids all knew the spiel, but they took it every bit as seriously as he and Alice did. They believed, deep in their marrow, that it was your sworn duty to learn how to survive. All eyes were on Sean.
Sean was looking directly at Bill, his face a mask of sincerity.
Bill found hims
elf warming to the kid. He hitched his pants up and leaned forward, though the pain in his hand caught him off guard, making him wince. “A day will come, here’s hoping it’s not too soon…” he knocked on the underside of his chair for luck, “…when there are no protein shakes or dietary supplements or stores to buy them from. A day will come when you might need the protein a deer supplies. A day will come when you will thank that deer for saving your life.”
For half an hour, Bill laid out the Everlee Family Philosophy on self-reliance and the possibility of the economy, indeed the entire infrastructure that supported their lives, collapsing. His argument was polished, but not glib; chilling, but not alarmist; and backed with hard facts, which led to an inexorable conclusion: “You have to be ready for anything. And if that means a deer needs to give its life for my family to survive, I am going to respectfully, humanely, and gratefully take that life. I know it’s harsh and if you still don’t want to do it, I will say no more but this is what we believe. We believe we’re doing what we must in order to make it through the oncoming disaster.”