The Pulse: Book 1 in the Pulse Trilogy

by Shoshanna Evers

  “Now,” he said, grinning, “we can sleep.”

  The sun had set at some point during their lovemaking, and Mason was grateful for the moonlight, the only light out there on the abandoned highway. Hopefully the men who were interested in fucking Emily weren’t interested enough to come hunt them down.

  He slept holding his pistol in his hand.

  THE FOLLOWING morning, Emily and Mason got up early, dined on leftover plants and nuts, and started walking again up I-87 North.

  Emily had a blister forming on her right foot, so she padded her sock with a piece of cotton from the SUV’s seat cushion, which helped quite a bit. They had been walking for hours when Mason gestured up ahead.

  Two armed men.

  They weren’t soldiers, it looked like. From what she could see at this distance, they were wearing street clothes but carrying old-fashioned shotguns. Definitely no match for Mason’s M16, but frightening nonetheless.

  “There must be another town here,” she said quietly, even though the men were probably still half a mile away. “Why don’t they have a barricade of cars, like the other place did?” she wondered out loud.

  Mason shrugged. “Let’s try to convince them to let us spend the night at the town, get a meal, maybe, in exchange for work.”

  “You think they might need a nurse?”

  “Maybe. If not, I can do manual labor stuff, no problem.”

  “God, I hope so.”

  They put their hands in the air again as they approached the two men guarding the road. “Hi there,” Emily said brightly. “I’m Emily… Harris. This is my husband, Mason.”

  “Call me Luke,” the guard said. Emily guessed they must not see a lot of travelers to speak to them in such a friendly way. Or maybe because a woman approached them instead of a man. “You can put your hands down, Mrs. Harris. Long as your hubby don’t plan on shooting us.”

  “ ’Course not,” Mason said, lowering his hands slowly.

  “You can go on through, but don’t stop in the town,” Luke said. “We don’t have anything extra to spare, we’re just making do with our own townsfolk.”

  “What town is it, anyway?” Mason asked.

  “Potterskill.”

  “Anybody sick, or hurt?” Emily asked. She’d never heard of Potterskill, not that she would have, living in Manhattan.

  The two men looked at each other. “My wife, actually. She just had a baby.” Luke said. “Why?”

  “I’m an RN. And congratulations on your new baby. I can assess your wife, see if I can help. In exchange, my husband and I get a meal and a place to sleep tonight. And then we’ll go.”

  “Done.” The other guard nodded to Luke and said, “Why don’t you escort them into town, introduce them to Melissa.”

  Emily assumed Melissa was Luke’s wife.

  They followed Luke down the off-ramp of the highway, turning left at the bottom of a short hill into a small town. They walked down what appeared to be the town’s main street. All of the stores were closed for business, and appeared to have been for a long time.

  “We lost a lot of people within the first two months,” Luke said. “We had a nursing home with over a hundred fifty residents on the edge of town, and they all died very quickly without medications, electricity, clean running water, and people to help them. A lot of them just lay in bed, and when there wasn’t enough help to turn them and change their diapers and whatnot, they got horrible bedsores.”

  “And then the bedsores got infected, and they died,” Emily finished.

  “Yeah.” Luke got quiet, and she wondered if one of the patients who died was a family member.

  “Do you mind if we see my wife Melissa first, before you eat?” Luke asked. “She’s been in terrible pain for the past few days. She looks awful. She can’t even hold the baby to nurse. I have to hold him to her breast so he can eat.”

  “Of course—” Emily said, but Mason cut her off.

  “Emily is hungry,” Mason said. “If she doesn’t eat she won’t have the strength to do her job.”

  Luke nodded. “I understand.”

  Emily sighed. She was hungry, but then again, she was always hungry. She was getting used to it.

  Luke said, “I have food at my house. Beef and corn stew. And Melissa is at my house too.”

  Emily salivated at the mention of beef and corn stew. She hadn’t eaten beef in months and months. Mason, she could see, had picked up his pace too, eager to get to Luke’s house.

  They followed him down a street lined with trees and small ranch-style houses. All of the front yards had been turned into vegetable gardens. Emily wondered how the crops the military worked on in Central Park were doing. She’d never seen anything growing since they guarded the Park so heavily. If only people in the city had access to their own land to grow food like these people do, she thought wistfully.

  Luke led them into a small house. Emily could smell the food and her stomach grumbled. He brought them into the kitchen, gesturing toward a small Formica table. Mason sat down. Emily wanted to find Melissa, to see what was wrong, but the smell of the stew proved too much.

  She sat, her mouth watering in earnest now. In a back room somewhere a baby cried, and a woman’s voice shushed him halfheartedly.

  “Hang on,” Luke said. “Let me make more.” He reached into the pot of stew on the counter and pulled out some small chunks of meat, and taking a knife off the cutting block, sliced the meat into tinier pieces before throwing them back in. “If I add a few more cups of water to the broth it’ll extend what I have to share,” he said. “I just need to boil it in the fireplace.”

  Mason nodded, although Emily could tell it took all of his willpower to sit there calmly with food so close in sight.

  She stood up. “Well, while you’re boiling the water, I’ll go check on Melissa and the baby. Mason, why don’t you come with me?”

  Mason stood slowly, his eyes still on the stew. “You’ll let us know when it’s ready?” he asked.

  Luke nodded. Then, to Emily, “She’s in the back room.”

  Emily walked to the back of the house, with Mason close behind. She knocked and opened the door. It was dark inside, and stuffy.

  “Hi, Melissa,” Emily said softly.

  Walking to the window, she pulled open the drapes and let sunlight stream into the tiny bedroom. Melissa, a woman of about thirty, lay on the bed, curled in a ball, groaning. The baby lay next to her on the bed, crying again.

  Mason stood by the doorway, clearly uncomfortable.

  Emily stepped to the side of the bed. “Melissa?” she said. “I’m Emily, a friend of Luke’s. I’m a nurse. Do you have any pain?” Emily could tell she had pain, of course, but she wanted to see Melissa’s ability to respond. She was grateful Luke gave them some privacy, because often helpful family members impeded her assessment.

  The woman looked up at her. “It’s awful. I can’t pee. For days, I think. It started soon after Percy was born. Terrible, terrible pain.”

  Emily looked at the woman’s grossly distended abdomen. “Mason, give us a minute,” she said. He turned and stepped outside quickly, seemingly grateful to be dismissed.

  Pressing her hand lightly on the woman’s bladder, she could feel it was overly full. “Has this ever happened to you before?” Emily asked.

  “No. Never.” She gasped as Emily pressed on her bladder to see if she could help her pass urine. No luck.

  “I need to catheterize you, and then you’ll be good as new,” she said. “I’m going to talk to Luke and see what I can get in terms of medical supplies.”

  “The nursing home,” the woman said weakly. “Tell him to let you into the supply room at the nursing home.”

  Just then, Luke called from the kitchen, “Stew’s ready!”

  “Do you want some food?” Emily asked Melissa. The woman shook her head. “I can’t eat now. Haven’t eaten in two days.”

  Picking up the baby, Emily quickly looked him over. He seemed fine, thank goodness. Sh
e swaddled him tightly, calming him, and set him back next to his mother.

  Emily went out to the kitchen and said to Luke, “Can you put mine in a mug? We need to walk to the nursing home and pick up some urinary catheters.”

  “So you can help her?” Luke asked, pouring generous helpings of the stew into two mugs. He looked visibly relieved when Emily nodded, all of her attention now on the mug filled with steaming beef stew.

  “You have to come with us,” he said to Mason. “No offense. I don’t know you, and I can’t have you alone in my house with my wife and baby.”

  Mason nodded. “I understand your concern. That’s fine.” He took the mug and sipped carefully. “Thank you. We’re—very grateful.”

  Emily took a long gulp, relishing the taste of real beef. Not rat. Not rotten who-the-hell-knew-what. “Let’s walk and talk.”

  They set out, walking to the edge of town. The stew revived her, and her footsteps were lighter. “How do you have beef, Luke?” she asked.

  “Can’t tell you that.”

  Mason looked at her and she shrugged. “Okay.” Maybe they had a secret cattle farm somewhere nearby.

  “I will tell you, though, that the reason we have enough food to feed our residents now is because so many died over the winter,” Luke said quietly. “Fewer mouths to feed.”

  “You should start planning now for next winter. Start storing food. Stockpiling,” Mason said. “I could help.”

  “We have plenty of young, strong men,” Luke said. “Because that’s mainly who survived. Emily though—Emily is a rarity. A nurse, and a young woman.”

  “She’s my wife,” Mason said tightly, through gritted teeth.

  Emily fought the urge to laugh at his territoriality. Why did he keep up the act? She didn’t think of Luke as any sort of threat. He seemed just grateful that she was helping his wife.

  Luke nodded thoughtfully. “I know. Just saying.” He turned to the large brick building. “This is the—well, was the nursing home. We don’t use it now. Too many bad memories. Ghosts too, some people say.”

  Mason scoffed and Emily swatted his arm discreetly. “I see.”

  They went up the ramp to the front door. The place had a stale odor to it.

  “It used to be a million times worse. Finally we cleaned it out because some people were really worried we’d start, like, growing the plague in here. Or something. It was that bad.”

  Emily could only imagine. If it smelled anything like that psychiatric hospital… She shuddered. “Where’s the supply room?” she asked, getting back to the task at hand.

  Luke let them down the hall, and down a stairwell to the basement. “In here,” he said.

  Emily looked around in wonder. The place was packed with various supplies. There were plenty of trach and vent supplies, she supposed because those patients had died off so quickly they never had use for them again. Same thing with urinary supplies and Foley catheters. She went to the shelf with the catheters and grabbed a whole bunch. This should do.

  “These are sterile,” she said, “but I’ll teach you how you can clean them to be reused if it comes to that.”

  Luke looked at the thin rubber tubes in her hands skeptically. “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “You can watch me.”

  She looked around for anything else she might be able to use. All the dressings, wound gels, and saline were gone. Used up. The containers of liquid nutrition meant for patients with gastric tubes were, of course, gone.

  “We had to raid the supplies,” he said sadly. “We really did try to keep those folks going. We really did. But…” He trailed off. Emily nodded sympathetically.

  Mason looked ready to get out of there. “Anything you need me to carry?” he asked. Emily looked around, her gaze landing on a pink plastic bedpan.

  “Can you reach that bedpan for me? I don’t think I’ll be able to get Melissa to a toilet.” Then she stopped. “Not like we have working toilets.”

  Luke laughed and Mason grabbed the bedpan. “Maybe I should get another for us to use, like a chamber pot.”

  “Probably a good idea,” Luke said. “I doubt Emily here will want to walk outside to the outhouse by herself in the middle of the night.”

  Emily looked at Mason, she could see his jawline clench. She could tell he didn’t like how easily Luke talked to her. Or about her.

  “I’m ready, then,” she said, and they started walking back up the stairs.

  The sunlight hit them, making them squint after the dark of the nursing home interior. They walked back to Luke’s house silently. Emily was planning in her head how she’d take care of Melissa. She hoped it was a temporary problem which would get better. If not, Melissa would almost surely end up with a bladder infection, if she didn’t have one already. And then she’d be in a whole shitload of trouble, since without antibiotics the infection could travel to her kidneys and do major damage. She’d probably end up dead.

  They hurried the rest of the way back to Luke’s house as Emily picked up her pace, needing to see her patient.

  * * *

  “Melissa?” she called as they entered the house. Emily could hear her groaning in the back room. “Luke, come with me. You should learn how to do this.”

  They all went in to the back bedroom and Emily grabbed the plastic bedpan from Mason along with one of the long yellow urinary catheters, still wrapped in its sterile covering. “Can you take off your pants, hon?” she asked Melissa. Luke looked uncomfortable at her request.

  Luke turned to Mason. “Get out.” Mason left without a word, but Emily knew he’d stay close in case she needed him.

  “Um, it’s going to get much worse than that, just to give you a heads-up,” Emily whispered to him. “But you should still be here. She’s in too much pain to mind at this point.”

  Luke nodded. Melissa was on the bed, not being much help with removing her pants. Emily stepped in and helped her, lowering her pants and dirty underwear until they were completely off.

  “Have you ever been catheterized before, Melissa?” she asked.

  Luke answered for her. “Nope.”

  “Okay, then, open your legs wide.” Within moments a stream of urine flowed from the tube into the bedpan.

  “Oh my heavens,” Melissa said as her bladder emptied. “Finally!”

  When she finished, Emily carefully withdrew the catheter and handed it to Luke. “Wash this, and keep it very clean. If this happens again, use a sterile catheter, but again wash it and keep it. If it becomes something she needs all the time you’ll be glad you have a collection of them.”

  Luke nodded, looking queasy. “Thank you so much, Emily. For helping her.”

  “Don’t you guys have any nurses? Or doctors?”

  Melissa answered, sitting up in bed, the pain that had previously creased her face gone now. “They all died months ago from taking care of everyone who got sick.”

  Emily gasped. “What was going around?”

  “We’re not sure. Maybe a virus. It was… really bad. Really, really bad. We basically holed up here and wouldn’t leave the house for fear of catching it. But the nurses, they all stepped up.”

  Mason apparently had been listening from the doorway. “And now they’re dead.”

  Emily turned and frowned at him. “Mason,” she said quietly.

  “Emily, I need to talk with you,” Mason said, pulling her arm.

  She furrowed her brow and followed him into the hall. What was going on with him? “What, Mason?”

  “That could be you. If you take care of every sick person we come across, what’s to keep you from getting sick too?”

  Emily laughed. “You can’t catch urinary retention.”

  Mason shook his head. “You know what I mean. Come on, you did your part.”

  She sighed. “Okay, but I like helping people, you know. I like using my skills. It’s better than selling myself,” she said pointedly.

  “Don’t even go there.”

  “I worry a
bout the girls back at Grand Central,” she said softly. “I wish they all could get out of there.”

  “I told Jenna, and there’s not much else I can do,” Mason said.

  “Part of me wishes you had made her leave with you.”

  “I can’t take care of another person, Emily,” he said. Emily looked back through the doorway at Melissa, finally holding her baby again. The baby sucked her full breast hungrily, and Melissa looked so happy, even in these crazy times.

  What if Emily were to get pregnant? She wondered if Mason would be angry. He probably would be, since he always talked about how he couldn’t take care of anyone but himself, and now her. But she didn’t need him to take care of her—they could take care of each other.

  “Mason,” she said, suddenly needing to have him close, pulling him in to her for a hug. He wrapped his arms around her, a surprised look on his face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I hate the idea of you getting sick because you’re trying to help all these other people.”

  “I know.”

  Mason peered back into the bedroom. “Luke?”

  Luke looked up from his wife and child and raised an eyebrow.

  “Can you show us where we can sleep tonight? We’ve been walking all day and I think Emily needs to lie down,” Mason said.

  Luke nodded. “She can’t talk for herself?” he asked under his breath.

  Emily stiffened at his words. Of course she could talk for herself, but she didn’t usually think of her own needs first. Mason, it seemed, did.

  Maybe she needed to ask Mason to stop talking for her so she’d remember to speak up for herself. But she had to admit she loved having him watch out for her. It made her feel safe.

  Mason didn’t respond to Luke’s muttered comment. She could tell by Mason’s silence he was annoyed, but he wasn’t about to start a fight with someone who gave them beef stew and a place to sleep.

  Luke led them to a guest bedroom with a queen-sized bed. “You folks can fit on there, even though it’s a bit small for two.”