Trail of Misery

by N A Broadley

  Jim, dropped his backpack on the porch, hurried through the door and into the house and Beth followed quickly. Down a long dark hallway that smelled of mold, and something rancid. He stopped at a door she assumed to be the bedroom.

  When he opened it, she took a step back from the stench that hit her face. Gagging, she swallowed hard as tears stung her eyes. On the bed lay a tiny woman with dark hair and sunken eyes. One hand, skeletal and twisted, clenching into a fist, hung over the edge of the bed. She was wrapped and tangled in a pile of blankets. Beth watched as Jim knelt beside the bed and stroked his wife’s fevered brow and murmured to her.

  “Mia honey, Mia I’m here.”

  He turned to his daughter.

  “Ellie, go get me a glass of water.” But the young girl stood frozen, staring at her mother. “Ellie, water… okay?”

  Ellie nodded and swept past Beth.

  Stench cloyed Beth's nose as she gazed around the room: shadows and darkness. No light showed through the boarded-up window above the bed nor from the other window across the room. It was dank, cold, and smelled thick with sickness.

  She walked over to the bed and bending down; she laid a hand on Mia’s brow. It was hot with fever. Turning to Jim, she nudged his shoulder lightly to get his attention.

  “Jim, listen to me. I need you to go and boil some water. I also need you to take a board off of one of these windows and get some fresh air into this room.”

  He nodded and stood up. She saw a mixture of pain and helplessness on his face, and she smiled slightly.

  “Don’t worry.”

  A weak smile touched his lips.

  “What else do you need?”

  Thinking quickly, she counted out the items she would need.

  “Water. Boiled water. I can smell the infection. The first thing I need to do is wash the wound and get a good look at what I’m up against. Has she been taking in any fluids? Has she been eating? How long has she been like this? Are you giving her aspirin or Tylenol for the fever?”

  Jim thought for a moment before answering.

  “She’s been sick for about a week now. At first, she just complained she felt weak and tired, then later a bad headache. It was two days ago the fever came on and then yesterday she became delirious. We ran out of Tylenol a while back. I couldn’t get any water into her yesterday at all and none yet today.”

  Beth thought for a moment, chewing on her fingernail as worry wrinkled her brow. Dehydration, lack of electrolytes and minerals… Broth, that’s what she needed.

  “Okay, do you have any meat with the bone in it?” Beth asked.

  Jim nodded. They had just butchered one of their roosters yesterday; he knew there was a bit left of it.

  “We need to make some bone broth. It has minerals in it that she,” motioning to Mia, “needs. It also has proteins and fats, which will help boost her energy to fight off this infection. Can you have one of the others start boiling the leftover bird down in a big pot of water?”

  All the while she talked, she straightened the blankets on the bed and pulled them down on one side to expose Mia’s swollen and pasty leg. The wound was mid shin, angry red. An abscess the size of a golf ball had formed around the wound. Another wave of noxious odor hit her as she bent to get a closer look and bile rose in her throat. Stifling a gag, she swallowed hard. She would have to lance the abscess, clean it out, and insert a wick into the wound so it could continue to drain.

  “I’m also going to need you to wet down several towels with cool water. We need to get this fever down.”

  Jim nodded and set off to do what Beth had instructed. Sarah stood in the doorway, watching her with Jessie by her side.

  “Sarah honey, do you remember which herbs I pulled out of my bag for your feet this morning?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Okay, I’m gonna need you to get those little baggies. Out of each one I want you to take a spoonful and put into the water that Jim is setting on to boil. Can you do that for me?”

  Sarah nodded again, then turned and made her way back out of the room with Jessie padding quietly behind her. Beth took a deep, calming breath to settle her racing heart and stop the shaking of her hands. She could do this. She’d done similar procedures many times before.

  She needed a good antibacterial and antimicrobial wound wash, the same combination she’d used earlier that morning on Sarah’s feet.

  While they were gone, she opened the dresser drawers and was rummaging through them looking for a clean nighty for Mia. She jumped when she heard an angry voice behind her.

  “What are you doing in my mom’s dresser?”

  Turning, she glanced over at a young boy who was standing in the doorway. His face darkened with a scowl, and his eyes flashed anger and worry.

  “Your mom needs to have a change of clothes. Hers are dirty, and they smell.”

  The boy walked quickly to the dresser, pulled open the third drawer, and pulled out a nightgown, and handed it to her. He then looked up at her with tears in his eyes.

  “Can you help my mom?”

  Sighing, she nodded. She didn’t want to lie to the kid, but she also didn’t want to give him false hope. The woman was sick, probably dying. She’d do what she could, but she wasn’t a doctor, and this was no sterilized hospital room.

  “I’m sure gonna try kiddo.”

  She turned back to the bed and began undressing Mia while the boy stood off to the side and averted his eyes.

  “What’s your name, kiddo?”

  “Bobby.”

  “Well, Bobby, I’m gonna need your help. Can you find me some clean sheets for your mom’s bed?”

  He nodded and grinned. Happy to be helping he ran from the room hollering to Ellie to help him get the sheets from the top shelf in the hall closet and zipping past his father who was carrying a pan full of hot, herbed laced water, and wet towels into the bedroom.

  “Woah slugger! Slow down,” Jim said as he sidestepped the boy. Beth heard what sounded like splintering wood as the boards came off of the window above the head of the bed and she looked up to see Carvers face staring in at her as light flooded the room. Beside him stood a woman, Beth guessed to be in her thirties, smiling in at her.

  “Hi, I’m Jill.” The woman said softly. “I’ll be in to help you in a minute.”

  Beth smiled and nodded. The helping hand would be great.

  “I hope you don’t have a weak stomach.” The stench in the room was almost suffocating. Sweet and thick and cloying. She could almost taste the odor in the back of her throat, and it made her want to gag.

  Now that she had more light, she could see the wound on Mia’s leg and what she saw took her breath away. Greenish, thick puss mixed with the red tinge of blood oozed from an inch-long gash that ran longwise to her shin bone. This area was swollen and bright red where an abscess had formed. Above and below the wound and surrounding the abscess, the leg was bright red and dappled, which indicated that cellulitis had set in.

  It was quite an angry infection. She also suspected that Mia was experiencing sepsis, a condition where the infection had spread to her bloodstream and was now traveling through her body. All this from a simple scratch on her leg.

  She watched as Jim laid the pan of boiling herbed water on the bedside table and looked down at his wife’s leg and cringed. Sarah and Jessie stood in the doorway, neither daring to come further into the room and the nauseating stench of sickness.

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  She nodded and looked at him bleakly.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you help her?”

  “I’ll do my best, but I think this infection has traveled. Have you ever heard of Septicemia?”

  He nodded. He had. He’d seen it first-hand with his father. But when his dad had gotten sick with it, there had been hospitals, medicine, doctors to treat him. And even then, they’d almost lost the old man.

  “Her infection has gone too far, Jim. I don’t know if the antibiotics I have will
kick it out of her,” she murmured sadly.

  He looked at her desperately. His voice hoarse with emotion that made Beth want to cry.

  “You’ve got to try. I can’t lose her.”

  She nodded. She would do everything she knew to help Mia, but she wasn’t a doctor.

  She set to work now that she could see what she was doing and began to wash the wound, continuously draping wet towels over Mia’s fevered body.

  Sarah stood at the doorway and watched her intently. The medicinal tea had cooled enough where she could dip the washcloth into it without burning her fingers or Mia’s skin. The crusted puss and blood sloughed away easily exposing the nasty gash which had begun to close up on its own. Hearing a whisper, she looked up to see Jill talking to Jim.

  “What can I do to help?” she asked as she moved over beside Beth. “I don’t have any medical experience I’m sorry to say. But I can follow orders well.”

  Beth smiled and pointed to her backpack on the floor.

  “I need the scalpel from my backpack,” Beth replied. Explaining that she was going to have to reopen the wound to debride it. Jill quickly moved to where Jim had set Beth’s pack down and began to dig through the pocket containing her medical kit.

  “Okay got it.”

  “I need you to sterilize it,” she said.

  Turning to Jim, she asked, “Is there any alcohol in the house?”

  “Yeah, there’s a bottle in the bathroom. I’ll get it.”

  Looking at Sarah, Beth grimaced.

  “Honey, you may not want to watch this.”

  Sarah shook her head. She didn’t want to watch, but she was too terrified to leave Beth.

  “Why don’t you go and help with the chicken broth?” Beth suggested. She knew Jim had asked Ellie to get it started and Carver was out tending to the fire it was cooking over. She saw a worried expression cross Sarah’s face.

  “Don’t worry honey. These people won’t hurt you,” she assured her.

  Jill turned and smiled warmly at the young girl.

  “You betcha they won’t, or they’ll have to answer to me,” she quipped, trying to set the girl’s mind at ease. She had noticed Sarah appeared very timid, fearful, and shy. She couldn’t say she blamed her. Every day she was fearful. Since the event, it seemed that they all had taken fear as their daily companion.

  Jim brought back the sterilized scalpel and stood wringing his hands as Jill assisted by holding Mia’s leg still. Beth grit her teeth sucked in a deep breath and steadily sunk the scalpel into the wound. Making an incision the full length of the wound, opening it back up. She watched as an explosion of putrid, green puss, and blood poured from the area. Gagging, Jill turned her head and Jim, unable to watch, hastily exited the room. Mia moaned and began writhing with pain.

  “Hold her tight,” Beth growled as she began to scrape away the deadened infected flesh. The wound ran deep and bled freely. She packed a strip of gauze into the incision and left a tail of it sticking out. A wick of sorts for the infection to flow out through. Washing away the blood, she then placed a light bandage over the area, and Mia settled back down.

  Sighing tiredly Beth sat back on the balls of her feet.

  “Okay, the worst of it’s done. Now we need to give her some antibiotics and hope the hell it will be enough.”

  Digging through her pack, she pulled out seven large brown bottles of antibiotics. Each bottle contained five hundred doses. Jill looked at her questioningly.

  “I used to work part-time at a hospital. When the shit started to go south, I broke into the medical supply closet and just grabbed whatever I could get my hands on.”

  She sorted through the bottles looking for the best one to treat Mia. She would start her on Rocephin, a powerful broad-spectrum antibiotic that she knew would give Mia the best chance of kicking out the infection. If that didn’t work, she still had six more in her arsenal to try. She had Ampicillin, Amoxicillin, Doxycycline, Penicillin, Ciprofloxacin, and Azithromycin. One of them would surely have to help.

  She had Jill hold Mia in an upright position while she spooned a couple of crushed pills into her mouth then gave her a spoon of water to wash it down. She rubbed the front of Mia’s throat gently as the woman coughed weakly trying to swallow. After they laid her back down, she stood, placed her hands on her lower back and stretched tiredly.

  What she’d done, the procedure to clean out Mia’s infection, left her with doubts that it would help. This type of infection needed a doctor, a sterile environment, and this room was far from sterile or even clean. Is this what it had all come too? Medicine and medical procedures that were set back hundreds of years? Because of what? The event. Everything she lived and did today was because of the stupid event! She longed for the life she had before. Having clean hospitals, running water, the abundance of food in the grocery stores, and the comfort and safety of her home and family.

  “There’s nothing more I can do now.”

  Jill nodded.

  “Okay then, how about I fix you a cup of coffee? We ain’t got much here, but the coffee supply is still holding up.”

  Chapter Five

  Jim stood, warming his hands in front of the campfire. He watched as the soup bubbled and boiled in a pot hung suspended on a tripod over the fire. Elroy and Stacy with their little two-year-old Jake, sat on chairs watching Ellie and Bobby as they played boisterously on the tire swing hanging from the old Maple in the front yard.

  Jim shook his head sadly as he watched the girl, Sarah, standing silently off to the side with her dog, Jessie. He wondered about her. She hadn’t spoken a word, not one word. Did she not talk? Was she unable to talk? And those shoes she wore? Nothing but canvas rags held together with shoestrings.

  He made a mental note to check Mia’s closet to see if she might have a pair of good warm boots for the girl. This thought made him grin. Mia and her shoes. The woman must own hundreds of pairs. It was her quirk, one he often teased her about bringing her to laughter. Shoes and boots of every fashion piled high in her closet and then when she ran out of room in her closet, she took over his closet. Yes, she’d have a pair that he could give to the girl, Sarah.

  Carver was stirring the chicken soup with a wooden spoon and turned, nodding his head at Jim.

  “How’s Mia?”

  “I dunno. Man, I just dunno,” Jim replied, his voice heavy with anguish. The woman, Beth, was doing the best she could, that he knew, but his heavy heart whispered that it might not be enough.

  “She’s pretty sick. Beth was cleaning out her wound and treating it, but I don’t know if it’ll be enough.”

  Carver shook his head.

  “Have faith, brother. The Lord will see her through this.”

  Jim nodded and hoped his friend was right. Carver, he knew, had more faith in God than he did. His faith, weak at best, left him wondering about a lot lately. It left him questioning. If God was so great, then why the hell did he allow this rampant disease to spread as quickly as it did? Why did HE sit back and not do anything for the people he supposedly so loved? No, he didn’t have much faith. He was pretty pissed off at this so-called Father for all that had happened.

  He looked at the pot of soup and thought about their need to hunt again. They were down to twelve chickens left in the coop and the pig they had slaughtered two weeks ago was about gone. Their food supply was dwindling fast. Mia, thank God, had been quite skilled in the kitchen, canning and laying up quite the supply of meats, vegetables, and fruits. This skill had gotten them through the worst of the winter. They would plant the garden in a few short weeks, but they wouldn’t have anything from that until fall.

  From here on out it would be foraging for berries and hunting to keep them all fed. The store-bought foods they had set by at the beginning of the event was now down to a few meager supplies. Not enough for them all. God, he wished he had been smarter and more prepared. But he, like many others, had not expected this. He had not thought it possible for everything to turn to shit in the ma
tter of a few months.

  Beth followed Jill from the room and into a small, dark kitchen where there was a pot of coffee brewing on a small camp stove. While Jill poured them both a cup, Beth sat at the table and wearily closed her eyes. Hunger gnawed at her stomach like a frenzied rat. She hadn’t had breakfast, and she guessed it was getting pretty close to noon time. She was sure that Sarah was just as hungry as well.

  “I’ve got to fix Sarah and me something to eat.” She said. “Would you mind if I used the stove to cook us up some food?”

  Jill smiled as she set a cup of hot coffee in front of Beth.

  “Of course not. But I’m betting the guys have that soup about ready and wouldn’t mind sharing. We can pour off some of the broth for Mia and then split the rest among everyone.”

  Beth nodded gratefully. She would welcome a warm bowl of chicken soup, and she knew Sarah would as well. They had been living for the past two days off of oatmeal and herbal tea. Grabbing her coffee, she followed Jill out into the spring sunshine.

  She sat by the fire, the sun warm on her bare arms as she sipped her coffee and listened to the conversation. The chicken soup bubbled, and the fragrant aroma surrounded her, making her mouth water and her stomach growl. It seemed; lately, she was always hungry. Even after she ate, the hunger was still there, like a shadow in a dark alley, waiting and chewing at her.

  “I saw some deer sign back by Lalor Ridge when we came across it this morning. We need to start there,” Carver said as he threw another log into the fire pit, sending up sparks of embers to float in the air. Jim nodded.

  “Yeah but remember, that’s close to the Epperson’s. You know they ain’t gonna take a liking to us hunting in their territory.”

  Carver grimaced.

  “Too bad. It’s public property. Those boys don’t own that damn mountain.” They’d had some trouble with the Epperson boys in the past few months. Just angry words and threats but times were getting more desperate by the day, and Carver had no doubts that the worse things got, the more violent the threats would become until one day it would escalate out of control, and someone would end up hurt or worse, dead. They’d managed throughout this winter to keep peace with all their neighbors, but now this peace was tentative at best. They were all getting desperate. Hunting had ravaged the wildlife in the area, and they all were having to go further and further away from home to find even the smallest of game.