by Barry Napier
“Hey…” he said, because there was really nothing else to say.
“What the hell happened out there?” Courtney asked, nearly screaming. She asked it again but the words came out in a strangled sob. “I mean what the hell happened?”
Ray went to her then because it felt like the right thing to do. He put an arm around her and was shocked that it did not feel all that awkward. She leaned into his shoulder and wailed loudly. He let her do it, doing his best to keep his eyes off of the bodies to his left. Instead, he looked to the top of her head and could not keep his eyes off of the dried blood in her hair. And before long, Ray was crying, too.
Chapter 25
Olivia could still feel the impact of some of the bumps from the dirt roads on her backside. They’d cleared those rough dirt tracks in the forest over two hours ago and had rejoined the proper paved roads shortly after. There had been two occasions in which she thought Chen was going to run the truck off of the road and crash into trees, but it had never happened. During the entire escape, Olivia had checked the back glass, sure that at any moment, government trucks would be on their tail. Chen had seemed all but certain that it would happen, but they had somehow made it out of the woods and back to a wasted form of civilization without any real threat.
Still, the speed at which Chen had taken those roads had put the poor truck’s shocks to the test—as well as Olivia’s head and tailbone. Joyce had not complained about the journey all that much, only letting out little yips and yelps of surprise when they hit the bigger ruts and bumps in the roads. As for Paul, he hadn’t said much of anything. Olivia had been afraid he’d simply bled out in the back seat but his occasional grunt or moan signified that he wasn’t as bad off as she assumed.
“Olivia!”
Hearing Chen call her name caused her to jump. It brought her back around to the present moment. And like most moments out of the last week or so of her life, it was a partially insane one. They had stopped in the town of Ebbing, pulling into the back entrance of a Walgreens. Paul was currently lying in the center of the Personal Care aisle and Chen was doing her absolute best to tend to the gunshot in his upper chest. She’d been at it for about twenty minutes now, still dressed in the protective suit. She had been working like a machine while Olivia helped in any way she could, trying to fight off a fainting spell. Paul was spread out on the floor, Chen having torn his shirt off for easier access to the wound, shivering from the pain. Chen had given him four pills she’d found behind the pharmacy counter just before she went to work. She’d been using boxes upon boxes of gauze and a variety of disinfectants.
“Olivia!”
“Sorry…what?”
“Go find me the needle and thread. I’d imagine its somewhere up front.”
“Yeah, okay,” she said. She was relieved to be able to step away from the bloody mess Chen and Paul were creating on the floor. But as soon as she started running to the front of the store, she realized what Chen was going to need the needle and thread for. Her stomach lurched a bit but she carried on.
As she neared the front counter and registers, she spotted Joyce. She’d been sitting by the magazine stands since they arrived. The lower racks were well-stocked with coloring books, little story books, and sticker books. Joyce was not smiling by any means as she worked on a page in a sticker book, but she did look content. She barely glanced up at Olivia as she went running by.
The Walgreens they’d stopped at had been closed, the establishment apparently decided to close its doors before the Blood Fire Virus came through. There were several cars and dead bodies in the parking lot, though. Someone had even attempted to take an axe to the front doors to pry them open, but had failed. The only way Olivia and Chen had managed to get in was by going to the rear entrance and blasting the lock off with the assault rifle Chen had packed up for them when she’d tossed all of their belongings into the truck back at the military site.
The lack of dead bodies on the floor was a welcome change. Still, she was jittery as she searched along the front of the store for a needle and thread. At first, she was sure she wouldn’t find any. Most of the front of the store was stocked with candy, value size bags of chips and gum, and impulse buys like hand sanitizer (which Olivia found darkly hilarious), keychains, and crossword books. But tucked away in a little section with shoelaces and yarn, she spotted thread and packs of needles. She gathered up a few of each and also got a miniature sewing kit.
“Quickly,” She heard Chen yell. It reminded Olivia of how the woman had acted while treating her back at the facility. Olivia wondered at what point in the process Chen had decided to help them. When had she made the choice to get them out of there? If she thought about it later, she would have to ask her.
When Olivia returned to the Personal Care aisle, she saw that Paul’s eyes were open and clearer than she’d seen them since escaping into the forest. Chen was slapping some sort of ointment or cream on the gunshot wound which had started to become an angry shade of red. Paul uttered a curse and issued a growl from his throat, clearly doing everything he could not to scream.
“The pills I gave you were Oxycodone,” Chen said, trying to get Paul to look into her eyes. “I imagine they’ll kick in very soon. And to let you know…you’re not going to like me in a bit.”
“Already getting there,” Paul said, trying on a shaky laugh. Olivia saw that he was going pale and wondered just how much blood he’d lost. “So just tell me straight, okay? How bad is it?”
“Not as bad as I thought,” Chen said as she took the sewing materials from Olivia. She set them on the floor and then slowly started to take her protective gloves off. She did it hesitantly and Olivia found herself wondering if having just your hands exposed was an invitation to death via the Blood Fire Virus.
“But stitches…” Paul said.
“Yeah. Stitches. I’ve momentarily stopped the bleeding with the gauze and I’ve lathered you up with enough ointment and disinfectants to hopefully stave off any infection. What I’m about to do is not going to be a walk in the park and I assure you I would not even attempt it if I thought you were going to die in the end.”
Paul uttered another curse but then said, “Thank you.”
Chen looked up to Olivia. Even through the scuffed plastic face covering, Olivia could see how tired and how hot the woman was. She pitied her but, in another totally different way, also envied her; Olivia wished she could be that strong.
“I’ll need your help. I need you to go get rubbing alcohol, a pair of latex gloves, and as many baby wipes as you can find. Be quick, please I’d like to start when his meds kick in and be done before they wear off.”
Olivia nodded and again went off in search of the supplies. She found them all quickly this time, the weight of what was about to be done heavy on her shoulders. Before heading back to the makeshift operating area, she stopped at the front where Joyce had started working on another page in the sticker book.
“You okay, sweetie?”
Joyce nodded, not bothering to look up. She carefully peeled a sticker of a kitten from the sticker sheet and placed it on an overly green lawn on the opposite page.
“You might hear Mr. Paul in some pain in a second,” she said. “But it’s because Dr. Chen is trying to help him. Okay?”
Again, the only response was a single nod. Olivia figured that once they knew Paul was going to pull through, she and Chen might have to work toward trying to make sure Joyce didn’t totally retreat within herself due to the trauma of the last several days.
“Just…you might want to stay away, okay?” Olivia said.
She waited just a moment, hoping for a response and did not get one. Joyce was already peeling her next sticker off. Not wanting to make Chen wait any longer, Olivia ran back to the Personal Care aisle with the items she’d asked for.
“Good,” Chen said as soon as Olivia knelt down next to her. Olivia already saw that she had threaded one of the needles with a doubled strand of black thread. “I need you to h
elp. Nothing major—just be there, right by my side. Have the alcohol ready.”
Now it was Olivia who could only respond with a nod. She looked to the bullet wound, glistening in all of the gels and creams Chen had put on it. Chen then set up a quick workstation, opening a pack of baby wipes and then slipping on the latex gloves. The gloves were not exactly the sort surgeons used, but they were all Walgreens had; they were the basic kind people used to clean houses with, thick and green. Chen seemed to be happy with them though, smiling nervously at the little dimpled grips along the ends of the fingers.
“Okay, Paul,” Chen said, taking one of the baby wipes. “Tell me if this hurts.”
She wiped the area softly once and then again a bit harder.
“Doesn’t hurt,” Paul said sleepily. “Doesn’t feel the best, though.”
Olivia at first thought he sounded drunk but then realized the painkillers Chen had given him had taken hold. His eyes were growing glassy and his words seemed to have soft edges.
“You ready?” Chen asked him.
He only grunted. Chen then looked to Olivia and said: “Alcohol, please.”
Olivia uncapped it and poured some on the needle when Chen held it out to her. Chen then went to work. Olivia could only stand to watch the needle pass through the damaged flesh a single time before she had to look away. But even with her eyes averted, Paul’s strained groans and hisses of pain told her all she needed to know.
***
An hour later, Olivia was sitting behind the pharmacy counter, rolling idly back and forth in a cushioned office chair. She was trying to get Joyce to perk up, assuming the girl would want a little ride on the chair. But Joyce showed no interest. She was sitting under the pharmacy drive-thru window, keeping to herself. She had taken a wordsearch and was painstakingly circling all of the A’s she came to.
Chen was somewhere on the other side of the pharmacy counter, tending to Paul. The stitching had gone well. By Chen’s own admission, it had gone much smoother than she’d expected and she credited the success of it to Paul’s toughness. Paul, still a little out of it, gave the credit to the drugs. The area had started bleeding slightly, so Chen had taken him back out into the central part of the store to clean the area and rebandage it.
“Joyce?” Olivia said. “You want a ride on the chair? I’ll push you.”
Joyce shook her head, though she did look up out of curiosity. Olivia wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or not, but she thought Joyce might look slightly pale. She tried to remember the last time Joyce had eaten anything of real substance but couldn’t recall.
“Stay right there, okay?” Olivia said. “I’m going to see if I can find something to eat.”
She got up to do just that but saw Chen and Paul walking their way. Paul was carrying one of the Walgreen’s plastic shopping baskets in his right hand. His left arm still hung rather limply by his side. In any other situation, he may have looked funny; once the stitch job was done, he’d taken a shirt from the very small selection of clothes located near the summer party supplies aisle to replace the one Chen had to rip off of him. The only thing that fit him that was not designed for a woman was a grey tee shirt with a picture of a massive powder keg on it. The lettering beneath it read: I’ll Bring the Fireworks.
He set the basket on the pharmacy counter and she saw that even in his pain and borderline high, Paul was thinking of others. He’d gathered up a few cans of Ravioli, some Spaghetti-Os, a loaf of bread, peanut butter and jelly, and a box of plastic cutlery.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, his words coming clearer now, “but I’m starving.”
“Other than that, how are you feeling?”
“Shaky. Nervous. I don’t know. It’s odd. I really just need a good night’s sleep, I think. But I doubt any of us will be getting one of those anytime soon.”
“I beg to differ,” Chen said, bumping open the swinging door that led into the pharmacy. “I can find you at least six things back here that will help you sleep like a baby.”
Olivia picked a can of Spaghetti-Os, knowing it was one of Joyce’s favorites. Back at Little Learners, on the few times they had food like this, the girl would pick them one by one out of the bowl and carefully place them on her tongue.
“Want some Spaghetti-Os, kiddo?” Olivia asked.
Joyce finally looked up. She nodded, setting aside her word find and marker. Olivia popped the top and then tore the box of cutlery open. When Joyce saw that Olivia was handing her the entire can, her eyes went wide.
“Out of the can?” Joyce said.
“That’s right. Some people do it like this when they’re camping. You can think of it as all part of the adventure.”
Joyce took the can and the spoon, carefully setting the can between her legs on the floor. She sank her plastic spoon into the can with a smile and then looked up to Olivia uncertainly.
“’Livia? I don’t want to be on an adventure anymore. I just want to go to my Daddy. Can we do that?”
“We’re trying, sweetie,” Olivia said. “It’s just…there are a lot of things in the way right now. It’s a lot harder than just getting in a car and driving.”
“About that,” Chen said. She was walking slowly along the back wall, looking at the inventory. She had taken off the cleaning gloves and had replaced them with the ones that went with the protective suit. “I may have some inside information that could make the whole thing a bit easier. Notice I said may, though. The speed at which plans and strategies are changing in the face of this virus and the bombs is scary.”
“What exactly can you tell us?” Paul said. He was trying to open a can of ravioli but was hesitant to use his left arm just yet. Olivia took the can from him and popped the top for him.
“Well, the mobile site you were kept at was not the only one. About twenty-four hours before we left there, I know of at least a dozen more that were set up across the east coast. There were originally more, but they all kept falling apart at the seams. People were just getting sick too fast. The people that were tasked to study the virus and the blood of those that appear to be immune were dying before any real results could be found. There was one just outside of Pittsburgh where the men in charge saw what was happening and executed the immune. That was what made me decide to help you.”
“Why are we immune?” Olivia asked.
“I can’t give you an astute scientific answer,” she said. “Like I told you, there doesn’t appear to be anything overly remarkable about your blood. We found nothing in the samples to pinpoint any one thing that would fight off the virus. So it had us just tossing our hands in the air and falling back on this old but apparently very true theory—that there are undetectable genetic flukes in some people. I’d be willing to bet that all three of you have rarely gotten the flu. Might be a bit of a longshot to assume such a thing about a four year-old, but what about the two of you?”
“It’s a rarity that I ever get anything worse than a sinus infection,” Olivia said.
“Same here,” Paul said.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that’s not the only qualifier,” Chen said. “If that were the case, there would be a lot more survivors. There’s also just a longstanding idea that there’s something that has happened in the course of human evolution that just won’t let any single biological threat wipe out the entire species. Sort of an evolutionary failsafe, if you will. If this is the case, it just comes down to you guys winning the lottery.”
“And what about you?”
“Well, I’m not wearing this suit as a fashion statement.”
“But there were others back at the facility that died even with the suits on, right?”
“We think so. But in a situation like this, thinking so isn’t safe enough.”
Olivia slowly started to understand what this meant and shook her head slowly. “My God, how are you even supposed to eat or drink, then?”
“I’m about to try my luck in the supply closet over there,” she said, pointing
to a small door along the backside of the pharmacy. “It’s a risk, but so is starvation I suppose.”
“Dr. Chen, I’m so sorry,” Olivia said.
“My name is Claire,” she said. “I’d really you rather not think of me as a doctor anymore.”
Paul gave a shaky laugh and said, “I’d like to think of you as one until I can get these stitches out if you don’t mind.”
Chen nodded and looked to the food. “Would someone mind making me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”
Olivia gladly set about making it, glad to contribute in some way. She was only now starting to fully understand the level of risk Chen had taken in saving them. Even now that they had managed to get away from the men in charge of the facility they’d left behind, Chen still had the uncertainty of the virus to worry about. And despite it all, she’d chosen to help them.
“What’s it look like after it spreads?” Olivia asked as she opened up the jar of peanut butter. “How long would it be before someone that likely isn’t immune would be safe to go back outside?”
“There’s no safe estimate, but I wouldn’t personally take the risk for another two weeks. Once a virus or disease runs its course and there’s no one else out in the open to infect, the pathogen that causes it is going to die out. If there are no hosts, it’ll die pretty quickly. Of course, there are plenty of hosts west of here. And that was the original reason for the roadblocks. And yes…it was the emotion behind the ruthless army men having us imprison people. We desperately need to stop this virus before it gets any further.”
“How far out has it gone?” Paul asked.
“We just don’t know for sure,” Chen said. “About two hours before I helped you escape, we got reports that it is now as far south as North Carolina. And because of that bomb in Texas that we now know without a doubt was a catalyst to spread the virus, we expect the wave of infections coming out of Texas and the wave heading south to merge. We also think the nuclear detonations on Richmond and Louisville helped to spread it because right away, people started dying from the virus just outside of the blast radius. This is guesswork, though, because everything we know about viruses tells us that it would have been fried in the nuclear blast. So quite frankly…we’re all still guessing.”