‘Bring her into the living room then. I’ll start setting up.’ Harry disappeared back inside without another word.
Mark ran across to the dark cavern where Penny had thrown open the container doors to the outside. Within moments he was at the ute. Penny was speaking to the adults, trying to get a story. A teenage boy was crouched at the girl’s side, and the kid looked up as Mark approached.
‘She needs a doctor. Can we get inside now, please?’ he asked urgently.
Mark climbed up onto the tray and squatted over the girl who was crying with distress. ‘Where’s the wound?’ asked Mark. The boy pointed at her outer thigh where a dark patch of denim lay. ‘Is that the only injury?’
As the boy nodded, Mark breathed a sigh of relief. At least there should be only soft tissue in the area of concern. He’d seen a US marine bleed out within minutes from a femoral artery bullet wound to the inner thigh in Afghanistan.
‘Let’s get you inside. I’m going to carry you in, do you think you can hold on to my shoulders if I lift you up?’ he said to the girl, keeping his voice calm.
She nodded, biting her lip to try and remain quiet. He slid the girl forward to the edge of the tray and helped her to sit up. She placed an arm around his shoulder as Mark picked her up. He walked back quickly through the container to the house.
Harry was back out at the front, waiting. He jumped to the ground to help Mark lift her up to the verandah where Georgie and Steph pulled her onto the deck. Harry and Mark carried her to the living room, to where the girls had pulled the dining table as a treatment surface. A clean white sheet had been thrown over the top, giving an appearance of cleanliness.
The light in the living room seemed blinding in comparison to the night, causing the girl to squint and shield her eyes from the globe above. Georgie placed a pillow under the girl’s head, trying to make her more comfortable. ‘My name’s Harry, I’m an emergency doctor. Is it all right if I check out your leg and see what needs to be done to fix it?’
The girl nodded in response. Harry started to cut up the seam of the jeans with a pair of trauma scissors. As he worked to expose the wound, he got the girl talking, finding out that she was a twelve year old named Erin. The boy accompanying her was her brother, Jai, sixteen, who remained at her side, a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
The thigh now exposed, Harry was able to examine the trauma. An entry wound was visible on the outer aspect of the mid-thigh. Approximately ten centimetres to the side was a small, hard lump – likely the bullet. On face value, it appeared that she had been extremely lucky, with the bullet tunnelling through the subcutaneous tissue before stopping. The blood and nerve supply to the leg appeared intact, as was her femur bone.
Harry decided to trial a simple operation to remove the bullet under local anaesthetic. He drew up a dose of midazolam, a sedative that he injected into her left thigh to make the girl more relaxed. Erin’s features softened as her muscles released their stored tension and her eyelids drifted shut. Harry held her wrist, finger over her radial pulse as her breathing slowed to a comfortable rhythm in response to the drug’s action as she slept.
The living room door opened a crack as Penny slipped inside, closing it quietly behind herself. She padded up to the table for a closer look at their newest charge.
‘Is she ok?’ Penny asked, concern evident in her voice.
‘She’s been pretty lucky. The bullet hasn’t touched any important structures from what I can see so far,’ Harry replied over his shoulder as he began to assemble the equipment needed for the procedure, opening packets of suture material, scalpel and saline water onto a sterile field. ‘Wasn’t that the couple we met yesterday? How did it happen?’
Penny nodded. ‘Turns out he did have a rifle after all. Reckons it was an accident, that he shot the girl thinking she was a Carrier that had broken into his house. They’ve already left, didn’t want to be out at night.’
‘That’s complete bullshit!’ Jai said from the head of the table, where he remained next to his sister. ‘He should have known we weren’t infected.’
Harry looked at the teenager, who held his gaze defiantly. After meeting the man on the previous day, he was interested in hearing another side to the story. ‘What happened then?’ he asked.
‘We were looking for food and thought the house was deserted like most places at the moment. I knocked on the back door and when there was no response, I smashed out a section of glass next to the lock and released the catch. We were in the kitchen going through the cupboards when the crazy bastard started screaming at us from the kitchen doorway to get out, waving a rifle at us. Before we could say anything, he pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the oven first, sparking against the metal before ricocheting into Erin’s leg.’
‘What happened then? Did he stop and try to help?’ probed Harry.
‘When Erin hit the deck screaming, he stopped and just stood there dumbly. Then his wife turned on the kitchen light. Blood was oozing out of Erin’s thigh, she gave me a tea towel that I bunched up and pressed onto the wound to stop the bleeding. Eventually they decided to take us to you guys,’ said Jai, his hands trembling slightly from a repeat surge of adrenaline as he relived the scene.
‘It still sounds like it may have been a mistake, Jai. If he wanted to kill your sister, he could have shot again,’ Penny said.
‘If we were infected,’ countered Jai, ‘we wouldn’t have been carefully searching the cupboards. He shot Erin because we were taking his food. The guy’s a fucking idiot, if he’d answered the door when we knocked, it wouldn’t have got to this,’ said Jai.
‘All right kid, I met the bloke yesterday and I agree with you that he’s an idiot. But that doesn’t change the fact I’ve still got to get the bullet out before your sister wakes up. Shall we crack on?’
The teenager nodded and sat back in the chair next to his sister.
Harry injected local anaesthetic at the bullet entry wound and into the skin over the top of the bullet. He sliced the skin with the scalpel, then cut down through the fat tissue until the bullet was exposed. Harry grasped the bullet, a small 0.22 round, with a pair of forceps and pulled it free. Steph shined a torch from above as he worked, helping him to view the wound. The bullet appeared to be intact, meaning there shouldn’t be any other fragments left in the leg. One surface was flattened from hitting the stove, accounting for the shallow nature of the wound. Even a low calibre weapon such as a 0.22 rifle would usually inflict much greater damage at close range.
Harry pushed a small tweezer like pair of surgical forceps through the length of the bullet tract, searching for any piece of material that may have been pushed into the wound from her jeans. With a small snort of satisfaction, Harry found a tiny piece of crimson stained cotton deep within the wound. He flushed the bullet tract with a bag of saline in an attempt to wash away bacteria before loosely suturing the two wounds closed and wrapping the thigh in an absorbent dressing. If he had missed any foreign matter in the wound tract, there was still a chance it could become infected. Harry mixed up a prophylactic antibiotic dose, injecting the solution directly into a large vein in her arm as a bolus.
Once the operation and treatment were complete, the four adults each took a corner of the sheet, and carefully carried Erin into one of the bedrooms to sleep off the sedative. Jai stood at her side as she slept, now more comfortably rolled onto her good side.
Harry placed a hand reassuringly on his shoulder. ‘She’s going to be fine, mate. The wound wasn’t too bad, all things considered. Why don’t you come and get a cup of tea and something to eat, then you can crash as well. One of us will sit up with her in case she wakes during the night.’
Jai looked up at Harry, seemingly weighing his words and deciding whether Harry could be trusted. The kid glanced at Georgie in an armchair in the room’s corner, then nodded and followed Harry toward the kitchen.
Jai slumped back on the kitchen chair, a soft sigh of satisfaction escaping his lips as he folded hands ov
er a swollen stomach. The teenager had virtually inhaled two cans of chunky meat casserole that Penny had heated on the stove for him. Seeing that his bowl was empty, she placed a large mug of steaming milo within his reach, then joined Mark and Harry at the table.
Harry took a sip from his own mug of black tea, watching Penny from the corner of his eye. His interactions with the police officer had to this date been humourless discussions regarding needed tasks. Aside from work duties, Penny had kept her thoughts to herself. The two kids, however, had brought a different side to light. A mothering streak had emerged, as she sought to feed and console the boy at their table. He knew of her loss, and if she gained some comfort from caring for another’s child, then who was he to argue?
While Jai had eaten, Mark had given the teenager a rundown of their groups’ collective background, what they had done about the farm to improve safety, and how chores and responsibilities were shared. Now that the boy had finished eating, he asked about his background.
Jai wrapped his hands around the mug and took a tentative sip as he thought where to start. He and his sister had grown up on a farm not five kilometres distant. His mum had died of breast cancer when he was little, leaving his father as the sole carer, a challenge he completed while running a mid-sized cattle farm. When the infection had hit New South Wales, his father had elected to stay put and wait out the disaster in isolation. Nestled at the end of a lengthy dirt road, his father had hypothesised that they would be insulated from the worst. For a number of weeks, the plan had worked. They had closed their gates and withdrawn from interaction with their neighbours and wider community.
The farm held reasonable stocks of food, as a sizeable vegetable garden alongside a small orchard that his dad had cultivated for additional income, ensured fresh vegetables and fruit were available. They’d only been troubled by a handful of the Infected, stumbling corpses that had crossed their property, mostly coming from the direction of Milton.
All this had changed four days earlier. Jai had been outside, preparing food for a pair of ferrets that he kept for rabbiting, when he’d seen two men walking up the dirt road towards their farm. Both men were tall, wearing jeans with dirty Hi-Vis jackets; probably workers from construction of a new section of highway further north. The shorter of the two had grey, unkempt stubble covering his jaw. The other wore a large beard stretching from high on his cheeks to finish over a stained t-shirt at mid-chest, a trucker cap perched on the top of his head. Jai had dropped what he was doing and ran to find his dad who was working in a maintenance shed behind the house.
His dad was underneath the hood of their ute, a single cab Toyota Hi-lux with a flat tray. Jai caught his attention as he dropped the hood of the engine. On hearing his son’s news, he had calmly wiped oil off his hands onto his work overalls, and told Jai to find his sister and stay out of sight in the house.
Jai had run to do his father’s bidding and found his sister on her bed reading a book. After passing on his father’s instructions he’d found a window from which he could observe the interaction between the unknown men and his father. A soft movement behind his shoulder informed him of his sister’s arrival. Jai gently opened the window slightly so he could hear the men speak. His father was waiting calmly in front of the maintenance shed, a heavy wrench hanging from his right hand as the two men walked up to meet him.
‘Can I help you?’ said his father, his face remaining blank.
The stubble-faced man’s face broke into a wide grin, a shark’s smile that didn’t involve his eyes. ‘How you going, mate?’ he said hold out his hand to shake. Jai’s father let him hang, ignoring the offered hand that eventually fell back to the man’s side. A flicker of irritation caused the man’s eyes to briefly narrow while the smile remained fixed. ‘My name’s Davo, this hulk is Tony,’ he said pointing to his silent mate. ‘We’re on our way south to get away from that crazy shit in Sydney, and was wondering if you could help us out with a few things... like that ute behind you.’ The man’s fake smile dropped as his father remained impassive to the demand.
‘The ute’s not for sale. I need it for the farm,’ answered Jai’s dad.
‘Oh, I’m not offering to buy it, we’re taking it. Tony, check the ignition for the keys, will you?’
The big man nodded, and moved around Jai’s father to the driver’s door. For the first time, Jai’s dad started to look angry.
‘I said you can’t have the car,’ he repeated, his voice starting to escalate. ‘You need to leave this property, now!’
‘Or what?’ replied Davo with a sneer in his voice. ‘Are you going to call the cops on me?’ He looked across at his accomplice, ‘Well, are the keys there or not?’ The bearded man just smiled, holding up a small bunch of keys that he’d retrieved from the ignition. Jai’s father started to move around the ute to get his key’s back, growling in fury at the theft.
Davo spoke up once more. ‘Looks like our meeting has come to an end,’ he said, the shark’s smile returning as a hammer dropped down his sleeve into view. He swung the heavy tool in a vicious arc, connecting with the back of the farmer’s skull in a sickening, wet thud.
His father fell to the gravel; joints unhinged with loss of consciousness. Jai covered his sister’s mouth to stifle her scream, forcing her into a tight hug. His own eyes welled with silent tears at the horror of seeing his dad felled.
The two men grabbed a leg each and dragged the farmer away from the ute. A slow ooze of blood seeped into the gravel from behind his head where he came to lie. Without another thought for their victim, they climbed into the ute and drove back out of the property.
Jai ran outside to his father. His dad’s eyes stared blankly at the sky, irregular rasping breaths escaping his mouth. Jai placed two fingers under the jaw line, feeling for a pulse like he’d seen on television, only to feel a faint one diminish to nothing beneath his touch. He had tried CPR for a few minutes but gave up, not really knowing what to do. He knew his dad was dead. Jai had clubbed enough rabbits himself while ferreting to know the head injury had been lethal.
Jai was unsure how long he and his sister sat next to his father in the cold, his mind empty of anything but numbing pain at their loss. Eventually he had risen and set to work in burying his dad. Erin and Jai had dug a grave in the farmstead’s small garden before dragging their father’s body into the hole. A bedspread they’d wrapped around his body saved them from witnessing his face as Jai started to shovel soil.
The siblings had left the next morning, unable to countenance remaining on the farm where their father had been murdered. Each had only taken what they could carry. Jai had brought the family’s 0.22 rifle for defence and hunting, alongside a set of outlawed rabbit traps. They had mostly camped in abandoned houses so far, still undecided as to which direction to head, with the presence of infection reported in Sydney as well as Melbourne. And now here they were.
The adults sat silent in their chairs, rendered speechless by the lad’s tale. Jai’s eyes were dry, his voice low as he relayed the story. He may have been sixteen, but his demeanour was that of someone far older. Harry eventually found his voice.
‘I’m sorry to hear what happened to your dad. That would have been bloody awful to see.’
Jai clenched his jaw. Avoiding eye contact, he looked down at his cup and traced a crack in the ceramic with a fingertip. ‘Yeah, it’s fucked. But that’s life now – other people have been through the same or worse,’ he said with a rough voice. ‘But I’m done crying about it. I just have to keep my sister safe and survive. Whatever needs to be done to achieve that, I’ll do it. There is no other option.’
Harry glanced at the others briefly. ‘I think I speak for the rest, Jai; you and your sister are welcome here for as long as you want, mate.’ Penny and Mark nodded their agreement.
Jai accepted the offer with a brief smile, then excused himself to go and sleep, claiming exhaustion. Before leaving, he shook Harry’s hand, thanking him once more for treating his sister.
/> Harry leant back in his chair and sighed as he watched Jai walk away, knowing his experience wasn’t unique. Youth all over Australia had lost any chance of a normal childhood.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The next day Erin was up and out of bed, gingerly taking weight on her injured leg as she made her way to the kitchen. In the daylight she still appeared exhausted, the trauma of the experience clearly taking a toll. Steph had helped her dress in a pair of loose track pants with a black hoodie on top. Erin was whip thin but healthy, with wiry muscle evident on each limb. Work on the farm and a more recent restriction of diet, had burnt away any softness of youth. She had a short bob of mouse-brown hair that she intermittently tucked behind her ears as strands of hair broke free and fell over her forehead. A speckling of freckles covered each cheek and the bridge of her nose.
There was a clear familial resemblance between Erin and Jai. Both siblings had sharply-defined noses and prominent cheekbones, and a minimalist approach to communication. Neither were given to rambling conversation, keeping their words succinct and to the point. Jai’s hair was a darker brown, a buzz cut clipping the hair within millimetres of his scalp. Jai had already completed most of his growing, standing at roughly five-foot-ten, however was yet to bulk out his frame.
Prior to coming into the kitchen, brother and sister had talked quietly in the bedroom, Jai relayed the happenings of her operation, his discussion with the adults and their offer to stay. To the relief of Harry and Penny, the pair elected to remain, but were keen to earn their keep.
A stubborn streak within Jai was quickly evident, desiring to be given the same responsibilities as any of the adults present in relation to encounters with the Infected. The boy had managed to keep his sister safe to this stage, so Mark found no reason to refuse his request, and besides, boys his age had been fighting as men for millennia past. In the destruction of society, any norms of the last century were clearly removed.
Plague War: Outbreak Page 21
