by Poe, S. B.
“The MedClinic was a doc in the box. Out by the highway. It had a reputation for overprescribing opioids.” Emma Grace said. “Dreadful place.”
“You sound like Cotton.” Cody smiled at her. “He complained about that place all the time. It was a pill mill. Lots of folks used it. Ask Ed. He could probably tell you all about it.” He laughed.
“I may just do that.” Raj said as he made a mental note.
“So when you wanna get started.” Cody asked. He raised the stump towards his face. “Things starting to stink.” He said.
“Can you walk?” Raj asked.
“If he can’t, I’ll carry him. Where are we going?” Vernon said.
“I think the big table in the kitchen. Let me get my stuff ready and then I’ll come get you. We’ll get this taken care of. Don’t worry.” Raj reverted back to optimistic doctor mode for the last part. He stood and walked out of the room, Vernon in tow.
Devin watched from the doorway. Emma Grace stood up from the chair and sat down on the side of the bed.
“You okay?” She asked.
“We’ll find out soon, won’t we?” Cody said. “What the hell you starring at?” Cody looked at the doorway.
“Nothing man. Nothing.” Devin replied, he turned and walked down the hall.
“He feels bad but he shouldn’t. He saved your life Cody. Quit being an asshole.” Emma Grace said. “I’ll be right outside.”
“You not going to watch?”
“I can’t. It just sounds gruesome. Sorry.”
“Thanks.” He said. She leaned down and wiped his hair back. Her lips brushed against his forehead and she turned to leave.
“I’ll be okay.” Cody said.
“I know.” She walked out of the room.
Devin stood at the end of the hallway and she glanced up at him as she closed the door behind her. She grabbed his hand as she went by and they walked out the front door.
“I’m sorry.” She said.
“For what?”
“For him, for me too. I’ve acted horrible.” A tear rolled down her cheek. He wrapped his arms around her.
“Hey, hey it’s okay. I promise. We’ll get him fixed up and then we’ll all get to know each other. It’s going to be all right. Cody will be fine.”
“But what if something goes wrong?”
“It won’t but if it does, we’ll be able to deal with it.” Devin said.
“Deal with it? You mean put a knife in his skull?” She pulled back.
“No. That’s not what I meant but…” He started.
“But what?”
“But if that’s what happens, I’ll make sure it’s quick.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I’m sure it won’t.” He said.
“I’m positive it won’t.” She walked over and sat down in the chair on the porch and started rocking. He leaned against the doorframe and watched her.
Tilly held the sheet over the table and let it fall. Vernon pulled it tight and tied the corners to the legs so it wouldn’t slide. Raj laid out the kit on the serving table next to the wall and arranged them in the order he thought he would need them. He played the thing out in his head, visualizing the incisions. He thought about the pathway around the bone and how to expose enough to use the saw. The pages of anatomy books filled his head as he traced the nerves and blood vessels he would need to both avoid and repair. The simplicity of the procedure worried him because he kept thinking he had missed something. Finally he decided that he was just mentally delaying. He turned.
“Vernon, I will need you to sit right here. Your job is to talk to him and hold him down. Hopefully the holding him down part won’t be necessary.” He stuck a syringe in the vial of lidocaine. “Tilly, I need you to be here.”
She walked over to the serving table and stood next to him.
“I’ll need you to hand me these as I go. That is a cauterizing pen, keep that handy” He smiled at her.
“You ready?” She asked.
“Yep. Vernon, let’s go get him.”
“What about Emma Grace?” Vernon asked.
“Yeah, that’s why I brought Devin. He’s going to keep her company while we work.” Raj said. They headed down the hallway.
“PETER.” Violet called out.
“Where else could he have gone?” Martin asked.
“I don’t know.” Violet said. “We’ve been everywhere I thought he would be. There’s not that many places left to look.”
“If he’s inside the barricade, he has to hear us.” Jahda said.
“Why wouldn’t he answer?” Ham asked.
“Maybe he’s scared. He doesn’t know who we are.” Martin said.
“He knows her.” Ham pointed at Violet.
“I don’t know why he won’t answer.” Violet said. Her lower lip began to tremble and the tears rolled down her cheek. Martin put his hand on her shoulder and looked in her eyes.
“Jahda,” he said. “Why don’t you and Ham walk over to the next street and we’ll look around here for another minute.”
Jahda looked him in the eye and saw the expression. She nodded.
“Come on little girl, let’s go find this boy.”
“Okay. But don’t call me that.” She said as she walked out into the road. Jahda looked at Martin and smiled before joining her.
He turned his attention back to Violet and led her over to one of the benches that sat sporadically lining the sidewalk in this little town. He thought about what this place must have been like. He could imagine the folks sitting on benches in the summer sun, walking their dogs and kids playing in the big quadrangle in the center of town. It was probably nice, he thought. They sat.
“That little girl there.” He pointed towards Ham. “That’s my granddaughter. She’s about to turn thirteen and I still look at her like she’s three.”
“Pete’s thirteen.” Violet added, choking back a tear.
“He been with you through all this?”
“Most of it. After his father died.” Violet said.
“My granddaughter, Ham, her real name is Katie, has been with me since way before. Her mother, my daughter, abandoned her when she was barely walking. Left her with my wife and me. My wife died a few years later and it was just Ham and me. Then Marionette happened and she’s walked with me every step of the way. But she’d been through a few hard days before all this. Her momma leaving in the dead of night was bad but the things she’s had to endure over the last year have been worse. She’s seen folks get killed and seen bodies rotted down to nothing but bones in the road. She endured it all. She never wavered and she never lost hope. That’s what you need to hold on to. Hope. The world is just one big potter’s field now with forgotten names and forgotten places. But you can still have hope.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re still here.” Martin said.
“It’s tough. This wasn’t the most hopeful town.” She wiped the wetness under her eyes. She stood and started to say something. He stood and looked over her shoulder as she turned her head towards the sound. Jahda and Ham paused and turned towards it too. Across the town they stood and listened to the chime of the ringing bell.
“Maybe things are changing.” Martin said, she caught the wink in the moonlight.
Violet could see the others gathered across the open field. She saw the shortest one and took off running. She swept him up and swung him around, hugging him as she did.
“Peter, thank God.” She sat him down. “Where were you?”
“The Davis’s tree house.”
“Where?” Ed asked.
“Mickey Davis’s tree house.” Pete said.
“How long have you been up there?”
“Since last night.”
“Why?”
“Well, Mickey’s mom’s one of the goners now and since Mickey’s been gone a while, I figured maybe I could go inside. They never let me before.”
“Why did you stay?” Violet asked.
“Saw these folk
s. Didn’t know who they were, so I just stayed.”
“They found you there?”
“Oh no.” Josh said. “We found this little shit walking down the road. He ran from us.”
“Then he kicked Josh in the nuts when we caught him.” Lori giggled.
“Sorry.” Peter said.
“PETER!” Vernon yelled as he came into the street. “What’s up bud?”
Kate turned and looked back at the big house. Bridger walked over as Tilly and Raj followed Vernon into the road.
“Well? Are you going to do it?” Bridger asked.
“Already did.” Vernon said.
“What?” Evelyn asked. They all looked stunned.
“Yep. It was really good.” Tilly said.
“So what did you do?” Kate asked.
“I cut away the dead stuff and stitched him up. He’s going to be in a lot of pain when the lidocaine wears off but he’ll be able to get a few hours sleep before then.”
“He’s doing good?” Bridger asked.
“He seems to be. When the pain hits him, it will be tough.” Raj said. “But he said that Ed might be able to help.”
“Me?” Ed asked.
“He said to ask you about the MedClinic.” Raj said.
“Oh, yeah. I guess. They probably had some if someone hasn’t cleaned it out.” Ed said.
“What are you talking about?” Kate asked.
“It’s a doc in the box, had its own in house pharmacy. Maybe they got a reputation for being an easy place to get some Oxy.”
“Oxy? Drugs?” Kate asked.
“Yeah, that’s what the man needs ain’t it?” Ed retorted.
“Is it Raj?” Kate turned to him.
“It is.”
She looked around the group. They all looked tired. The moon had risen and the light from the stars fell softly over the trees. The wind blew a breeze around them and the night got a little quieter.
“What are you thinking Kate?” Bridger said.
“We can go get that stuff. How far is it?” Kate asked.
“A couple miles. Back out by the highway.”
“When will he wake up Raj?”
“I don’t know for sure, but he’ll start to get his feeling back over the next few hours. I can probably prolong that with a little more lidocaine.”
“You have what you need?”
“I do.” Raj nodded.
“Then tomorrow morning. We’ll figure out who goes when the sun comes up.”
“Great. I’ll let his sister know, she’ll be pleased.” Raj said.
“Yeah, how is she doing?” Evelyn asked.
“Fine, weird but fine.” Tilly answered.
“Let’s get settled in.” Kate said. “Bridger and I will take all the watches tonight. Everyone else get some sleep.”
The night air was humid and a warm breeze blew. The sky was bright and the stars shone against the void of darkness. Bridger paused at the bridge and looked up at the cable. Kate stood just on the grass beside the road.
“It was probably a good idea.” Bridger said.
“What’s that?” Kate asked.
“The totems. The dead they had hanging.”
“Are you serious?” Kate asked.
“I’m talking about why they did it.”
“What do you mean?” Kate asked as she glanced up at the rope hanging from the cable.
“Vernon said it was a warning to the living. To keep away.”
“It didn’t work. We’re here.”
“I know, but we didn’t come this way. If we had, maybe we would have just stayed outside the barricade and gone back to the woods.” He said as he started walking on.
“You think we need to put them back up?”
“Nope, but we do need to think about something now.”
“What’s that?”
“We’ve been lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“Yeah, we’ve been isolated. We’ve had some encounters with the dead, not many. But we’ve had even fewer encounters with the living. That will change now.”
“Because we’re out of the woods?” Kate said. “But we needed to come out. We could have resupplied, like you were trying to do when you found this place, but it wouldn’t have mattered. We were all getting worn down to nothing out there, I saw that.”
“Is that why you agreed?”
“Partly, plus like you said, I trust you. I trust you now too.” Kate said. “What do we need to do?”
“Well it’s not so much what we need to do, although I have some ideas, it’s what we need to be ready to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Figure out a way to defend this place first and then be ready to defend it. Against the dead and the living.”
“The living?” Kate said.
“We have a good group of people, most of us would help anyone we could, hell Jahda and I breached this barricade trying to help. But there are people out there who don’t help others. They will just take what they want and leave destruction in their wake.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve seen it.”
“Bridger, no one has seen anything like this. Not ever.”
“I’ve seen societies that have collapsed. In far away places with funny sounding names and no matter where it was there were always people who took advantage of others weaknesses.”
“We’re not weak.” Kate said.
“We may need to be ready to prove that at some point.” Bridger said as they walked on under the smiling moon.
8
The End of Ever
Martin and Ham walked down the middle of the street. The sky was lit with stars as the moon crept over the trees. The asphalt mirrored the reflected light, casting a glow over the road. He reached down and ruffled Ham’s head.
“Stop it Opa.” She protested.
“Sorry. You used to like that.”
“I don’t anymore. I grew up.”
He laughed a little. He looked at her. She was right. She had grown up. He could still see the little girl she had been, but he knew she wasn’t that little girl anymore. His heart ached a little, but he also felt some relief. He had seen her have to do things that he would never have imagined. He worried shooting stringers had traumatized her, but she shrugged it off. So much so he worried she was becoming numb, but when she led that horse he still saw the magic in her eyes. He looked in her face and smiled.
“I’m proud of you.” He said.
“Why?”
“Because I am.” He said.
“Okay then.” She said. He chuckled as they crossed into the grass and onto the sidewalk.
“Alright. Have a seat.” Martin said.
Ham looked at the wrought-iron bench sitting in the grass. She looked up at him.
“Stay here.” Martin said as he knelt down in front of her and took the rifle from her shoulder. He worked the action and handed it back to her.
“Where are you going?”
“I told Kate I would check on Dottie. If you don’t want to wait” he pointed a couple of houses down, “Jahda is over there.”
“I’ll wait. Where’s the house we’re staying?” she asked. Martin stood and looked around.
“It’s the one next to Jahda.” He said pointing.
“Do we have to go back there?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“The pictures. I… they make me sad.”
“We’ll find a place for them.”
“We can’t throw them away.” Ham said.
“No, but we can put them all together in one room. That would be better anyway.”
“Like they’re at a party?” She asked.
“Sure, like they’re at a party.”
“I think I’ll go see Jahda. Love you Opa.”
“Love you too.” He reached down and hugged her. He smiled as she pulled away.
She jumped up and ran across the street. He watched until Jahda opened the door. He turned to go inside the hou
se to check on Dottie. All the windows were open and there was a comfortable breeze blowing through the house but it still seemed warm. He wiped a little sweat from his forehead as he closed the door and started down the hallway. The walls spun sideways in his vision and he clutched at his chest. The pain seized him like a vise and he dropped to his knees. His eyes bulged in their sockets and he felt his lungs convulse as they tried to process air. He sucked in but his chest felt thick and dense. He wasn’t even aware when he fell forward onto the floor. His face lay against the carpet; the only sound was the whoosh of a heartbeat in his ear. Thump thump, thump thump, thump thump, thump thu…
Dottie sat up in the bed. She reached over to the nightstand for the water bottle Raj left.
“Ahhcchh, ahhcchh,” She doubled over coughing as fluid rushed around her lungs. She leaned to the side of the bed and spat. The blankets felt suffocating. She threw them off. Breathing the cool air coming through the window felt better. The sound of crickets and frogs echoed from the darkness and she leaned towards the window again to smell the fresh air. She lay back down in the bed and finally drifted off to sleep.
The suddenness of the weight on top of her made her think she was dreaming but as the teeth sank into her shoulder, she jolted awake. When she tried to draw the breath to scream, she couldn’t. As she struggled with the thing on top of her, she tried to cough. Her eyes went wide as they traced the face. There was a little trickle of blood coming from the corner of his eyes and purple veins stood out on his neck. She felt pain as her lungs cried out for air she couldn’t get. On her back, she didn’t have the strength to clear the mucus in her throat. As she felt herself suffocating, a single tear escaped her eye. Her suffering was relieved when the thing bit through the artery in her neck. Dottie’s eyes gazed upward, fixed. The only sound left was the sound of the thing gorging.
Ham downed the last drop of juice and wiped her mouth. She let out a satisfied burp and looked over at Jahda.
“Is there more?”
“There are like tons of it. I found four big tins of powdered cherry and two more of lemonade.” Jahda smiled.
“Do you think we’ll be happier here?” Ham asked.
“Weren’t you happy where we were?” Jahda asked.