Lucky

by Sage du Toit

  They all jumped out and Sophia unlocked the door and they started unloading. Just throwing stuff anywhere. The rest of the people came out of the prayer room and were surprised they were back so soon. They saw their rush and started helping them unload. The back window on the van had a bullet hole in it and the bullet had gone into a can of beans.

  Tom grabbed Jose and asked him where they could stash the van. Jose thought and said, “The house across the street has a garage and those people leave early for work, you might be able to break into the garage and put it there.”

  Sam grabbed the tire iron and ran across the street as he put his night vision goggles on. They had finished unloading the van and the church people were putting the stuff away by the time he got back. He just jumped in the van and drove it off. A few minutes later he came back in the door and locked it. He told Jose the van was in the garage and he was able to re-lock the door.

  Sam had already told them what happened on the drive back, of course her version was a lot less scary than the version Sophia and Jani told. Everyone was excited by all of the food and they immediately opened the can of beans with the bullet hole. They were calling them bullet beans and after heating them up, they told everyone to watch out and don’t ‘bite the bullet’. They were all in good cheer.

  But Sam and Tom were nervous...someone had seen them and may come looking for them. They talked to Jose and advised that they pack up as soon as possible and get everything organized to leave for Fort Jackson. Jose agreed that they would do that and leave tomorrow.

  Chapter 25

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  28 November 2020 N-day +141

  Atlanta, GA

  They had spent the previous day teaching everyone how to wear their gas masks and the basics of using the guns. Tom told Sam that he hoped they didn’t end up shooting each other. They also helped them sort the gear and each person packed a kit bag for themselves and Tom explained the basics of what they should have in their bag. They couldn't put much food in their kit bags because the majority of the food they had was in large cans and bags, but they did each get some dried food or an MRE.

  They gave Tom and Sam their 4 MREs back and gave them their small cans of food that were left. Tom assured them that they could find more food and tried to get them to keep it but they just argued until Sam told him to take them.

  Jose had an atlas that he got out of his truck that was sitting outside. He tried cranking the truck but it wouldn’t even click when he tried turning the key. They went over the route to Fort Jackson with him and told him to make a wide berth around Augusta, they suggested he stick to the back roads and go through Athens and Greenwood but try to avoid entering those cities. Joey ended up being a pro at reading the maps and was showing his dad the roads that went around the cities.

  Tom had gone over to the van first thing in the morning and sealed the bullet hole in the window. He then pulled the van over and backed it up to the door so they could load everything in the back. They had just enough room for all eight people in the van and they told them to keep their kit bags with them so they each put them under their feet.

  Once they were packed up they all hugged and said good-bye. Jose said, “You are both a God send, Thank you so much for rescuing us!”

  Sam humbly said, “You should thank Maria when you get to Fort Jackson, she is the one that sent us. And please…. give her out love.” The van pulled out and Sam and Tom ducked into the trees between two houses. They had decided to head in a westerly direction out of Atlanta toward a town called Douglasville and then go south.

  Skirting around buildings and sticking to the trees when possible, they made it two blocks before someone started shooting at them. They ducked behind a building and Tom identified where the shooter was, on top of an apartment complex. He took a knee and aimed from the corner of the building and took a single shot and the shooting stopped. The grabbed her hand and pulled her into a run. They ran between buildings and through parking lots, they couldn’t find any cover other than running between cars. They saw some trees behind a Home Furnishings store and headed for them.

  Once in the woods they caught their breath. They eased around the trees, looking all directions and came out by some rail road tracks. There were three sets of tracks and tanker cars and box cars were lined up on two of them. They ran to the first set and checked the area, then ran to the second. They were under an overpass and heard at least two vehicles drive over head. They entered the tree line under the overpass and then crossed over six train tracks while staying under the overpass to the next tree line.

  Following the tree line, they stayed undercover as far as possible. Then they ran out of trees. They could see some in the distance on the other side of the road. But this side just had tall grass and vines with just two or three trees. They really didn’t have much choice. They would need to run and cross the road to the other trees. Just as they crossed the road and got into the trees they hear a motor. Peeking out of the trees they could see it was an old pickup and there were at least five rough looking colored men in it, two in the cab and three in the back. They weren’t going very fast, they were obviously looking for them. Sam and Tom both eased to the ground before they came up on their position and they passed by.

  They eased through the trees and found a steep drop off going to a railroad track that was coming out of a small tunnel. They quickly discussed hiding in the tunnel until night fall but decided it would be a dangerous place to be caught, there would be no place for them to run or hide. They followed the tree line along the edge of the tracks until they came to a shallower place to cross.

  They were now in thick trees and they followed along the side of a dirt road. Sam said it was strange to have a dirt road in the middle of a city and Tom told her it probably went to some type of construction site or something. The tree line they were following thinned out and they saw the dirt road was heading toward a giant quarry. They walked out to the edge of the quarry and looked down. It was awe inspiring. It was so deep and the water at the bottom was so blue. They were trying to see it through a high chain link fence. As they walked further on they came to what looked like a viewing platform and they both climbed up. Already forgetting about the hoodlums that were looking for them.

  They pulled out the map to see where they were. There were no roads around them at all. Which was a good thing. They crossed through the woods almost due south and then took a small road that crossed over a creek. They were walking through a neighborhood of scattered houses. They were still trying to head east but would go wherever the trees took them. They always stopped, looked and listened before crossing a street.

  A four-lane parkway crossed their path and turned north, they would have to cross it. Just as they reached the other side they heard the motor of the truck again. They were shooting at them before they could get ducked into the bushes. Tom dove for a bush and Sam followed him in as the truck got close. She was up on her knees ready to run when she looked over at Tom. He had a strange pained look on his face. He said, “I’m shot, just run and leave me here.”

  She vehemently shook her head no and grabbed his arm pulling him up. “Come on Tom! You are not going to give up that easy! You can’t leave me alone!”

  He got up but he was holding his side and limping badly. There were trees on their left and a building marked Library on the right. She decided to opt for the building this time, it should provide a little more protection from the bullets. Tom was in shock and she knew she had to get him somewhere safe so she could treat his wounds. The men were out of the truck and looking for them, she didn’t have time to stop now. She pulled him around the other side of the building and across the street she could see a big school. It would be hard for them to search every room..as long as she didn’t leave a blood trail. She grabbed the bleed stop out of the side of her pack where it was put for easy reach and moved his hand away and sprinkled it through the hole in his shirt and then had him roll
so she could sprinkle it on his back where the bullet entered. At least it was a through and through. He gritted his teeth and said, “My leg too...I got shot in the leg.” She looked down and saw there was blood seeping into his pants around his knee.

  She cussed and poured the rest of the bleed stop into the hole on his pants leg, hoping she was getting it on the wound. She grabbed his arm and put it over her shoulder and hauled him across the street to the school. There was a tall black fence going all the way around the school and the gate to the main entrance was closed, but she could see a walk thru gate on the side and she prayed it would be unlocked.

  She checked behind her but thankfully the idiots had searched the other direction, probably thinking they would stick to the woods like they had been. She reached the gate and yanked on it and it opened. She shut it behind her and they stumbled across the parking lot toward the front doors she was praying that was open too! It was!

  They entered the school and she headed for the stairs and Tom groaned as she practically dragged him up. She was thinking about putting him in a fireman’s carry but she was concerned it would hurt his side wound worse. They walked down the long hall of the second floor and she saw more stairs going up. They went up two more flights of stairs and Sam kept looking behind them, making sure they weren’t leaving a blood trail. Finally, she saw a room marked Chemistry lab and pushed it open and brought Tom inside, closing it behind her and turning the lock on the door.

  The front of the room looked like a typical class room with desks and a white board. She could see another area in the back and headed toward that. It was the lab for experiments and had four different stations. There were a lot of beakers, tubes and microscopes on the shelves. She took Tom to the last station and helped him take off his pack and then she had him lay down on the lab table. She took out her First-aid kit and then got his out too. His had some things hers didn’t. She opened his First-aid kit and took out a pair of rubber gloves. Wouldn’t do to give him an infection from her dirty hands.

  She opened his shirt up and pulled his t-shirt up and out of his pants. He had a hole the size of her pinkie coming out of his right side about an inch in. She rolled him over and checked the entry wound, which was just a small hole and about two inches from his side, so the bullet went through at a slight angle. She tried to think over her anatomy lessons. The bullet may have gone through his intestines. She wasn’t sure what to do. The wound was only seeping a little blood from the back, the bleed stop had covered half of it on the front and not very well so more blood was coming from there. She cleaned the wound with alcohol on both sides and Tom moaned loudly, she couldn’t blame him, she remembered how it felt on her forehead. She then rinsed it with saline from his medical kit and dabbed it with gauze, working the bleed stop off the wound and making sure there wasn’t anything else inside of the wound and then more alcohol. She applied thick bundles of gauze to both sides. She had never done stitches before and wasn’t even sure if she should now.

  She then gently rolled him over on his back. She found the pain pills they had found and picked the one he said was strong and stuck the pill in his mouth and dribbled some water in. She wasn’t sure it went down. She then found the scissors and carefully cut his right pants leg to reveal the gunshot in his leg. The bullet had cut a big bloody opening on the inside of his right knee. She wasn’t sure if the bullet was in the knee or not…but she knew she needed to check to be sure it wasn’t.

  She was hoping the pill would knock him out, because she needed to get that bullet out if it was in there. She gently opened his mouth to see if the pill was still on his tongue. She read the directions on the bottle and she wondered if it would hurt to give him two. She decided to wait, he said they were the strongest drugs available. He was breathing easy and she pulled up his eyelids and his eyes were rolled back in his head.

  She removed his boot and cut the pants leg all the way up to the top of his thigh and draped it off the side of the table. His sock was soaked in blood, she removed it and threw it in a sink. She saw some white towels on a shelf and grabbed a few. She placed one under his head and the other one she eased under the knee. She then poured alcohol over the wound. He twitched but didn’t move or make a sound otherwise. She looked through the First-aid kit and found a pair of angled needle nose forceps and a pair of tweezers. She sat those on a piece of gauze and poured a little alcohol over them for good measure. She then took a piece of gauze and dabbed at the wound. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to find the bullet other than digging around with the instruments. Her stomach felt a little queasy and she realized she needed to do this before her adrenaline wore out.

  She took her pen light and shined it into the wound, she could see the light glint off something. She hoped it was the bullet and not something important. She grabbed the needle nose forceps and opened them spreading the skin open just a bit. She then opened them a little more until she could see inside the gap. Blood was oozing but not gushing so she blotted it to clear the view. She moved the forceps around and searched the wound. She saw something that looked metal, but it was in the wrong spot to be the bullet. She remembered that he had talked about having ACL surgery on his leg and realized it was a screw head that was sunk into the bone. The bullet had gouged a line down the side of the bone, revealing the head of the screw that was sunk into the bone. She moved the forceps to the front of the wound and saw something lodged against the edge of a bone that she thought might be his patella. She put her pin light in her mouth and opened the wound a little more, using the tweezers she clamped down on the bullet and pulled straight out. The tweezers slipped and came out empty. She did the same thing again, this time squeezing tighter and pulling slower. Finally, she saw a bullet coming out of the hole.

  She placed the bullet down on a piece of gauze and poured more alcohol in the bullet hole. Alcohol fixes everything, right? She doubled up some gauze and put more gauze on top of that and pressed down hard on the wound. She stood there for a few minutes just breathing while she applied pressure. She removed the gauze and looked at the long-jagged wound. She took some butterfly strips and pulled the edges of the wound together and carefully placed them along the widest part. She then wrapped a bandage around his knee with doubled up gauze over the wound, making sure it wasn’t too tight.

  She knew he would be heavy but she wanted to get him off the table. She didn’t want him waking up and rolling off. She took out his sleeping bag and pad and made a single pallet on the floor. She slid his legs off the edge of the table and pulled him up into a semi-standing position as she let him drape over her shoulder. She then pulled him around and over her shoulders into a fireman’s carry. He was dead weight and she could barely walk with him. She got him to the pallet and bending over so his feet were touching the ground, she eased him down and on his back.

  She checked his bandages and saw she would have to change them soon, they were already bleeding through. She went back and checked the First-aid kit and found some antibiotics and put two in his mouth and poured water in while lightly massaging his throat, hoping she wasn’t going to drown him. She looked at the watch on his arm and then removed it and put it on hers. She needed to keep track of the time so she could give him medicine.

  There were small narrow windows in the room and she noticed that a poster covered one. Maybe they wouldn’t notice if she covered the other one. She stood to the side of the window and looked out. She didn’t see any movement. The gangsters must have moved on or gone another direction looking for them. They sure were trying hard to find two nobodies in a town they had all to themselves.

  She went to the teacher’s desk in the other room and found some tape. She pulled one of the posters off the wall and taped it over the window. She then took the garbage bags out of two cans, there were multiple all around the lab, and taped those over the windows too. She looked around the darkened room and saw there was still a little light coming from the other room. The classroom door had a long narrow window running
down it. She knew it would be suspicious if she covered it up. Looking around the room to see what she could do she noticed a wooden bookshelf that stood next to the open entry way going into the lab.

  If she could slide that over in front of the door...you wouldn’t even know there was another room behind it. She got on the other side and pushed. It didn’t budge. She turned around and pushed with her back up against it and it moved. She kept pushing until it was halfway over the door. She was trying to think of a way to move it in front of the door with her on the inside. She remembered a trick her mom used when moving furniture and went into the lab and got one of the thin towels. She laid it out flat on the floor next to the bookcase and pushed the top of the bookcase, titling it to the side, then using her foot she pushed the towel under the edge. She then pushed it the rest of the way and is slid easy. She then pulled it out on the side with the towel far enough so she could squeeze through and then holding the towel on the backside she pulled the bookcase shut against the door frame. She didn’t pull the towel all of the way out, she wanted it to be easy if she needed to push it to get out.

  The room was now completely dark. She carefully walked, touching everything as she went so she knew where she was, until she found the back-side wall where she had left the bags. She felt for her bag and pulled out the lantern they had found at the small shed. She turned it on and sat it down next to Tom. She checked his bandages and worried about how much blood he as losing. His breathing was even and he didn’t have a fever.