by T M Edwards
As quickly as I dared, I pushed down on the accelerator and put the truck into motion. Buildings moved past with increasing speed until I had to slow down for the turn. Sam had made me repeat the directions to our meeting spot until I could recite them in my sleep.
First left. I braked the truck just enough to keep it from rolling as it took the turn. I should have been frantic with anxiety, but the ability to be moving rather than sitting still had allowed all emotion to fade away. For once, my mind was crystal clear. I had a mission, I knew exactly what I had to do, and how to get it done.
Second right. We passed into a more open road, and I could see the highway in the distance.
Left, then right.
Before I knew it, I was there. I stopped the truck and put it in park.
It didn’t take long before my anxiety came roaring back in full force. I fidgeted in my seat, tried to ignore the pain in my ankle, did inventory of what had been left in the truck. Like I’d feared, they took all our extra fuel and food. All that was left was some random clothing and blankets, and even those were tossed all over the place and some were ripped. Honey Badger stared at me from the passenger seat with its broken window, reproach in her eyes. Whether she was pissed about the cold or our ungraceful flight down the streets, I’d never know.
Come on, Sam. I checked the clock on the dashboard religiously. Five minutes passed, then ten, with no sign of him. Come on, Deidre, you’re like a mile away from where you started. Give him a minute. The buildings around me had changed from warehouses to storefronts that looked like they’d been abandoned long before the apocalypse began.
Every tiny noise made me jump. Every trickle of breeze through the broken window had me convinced it was the sound of an approaching vehicle. When Honey Badger shifted, I thought it was someone coming for me. The bruises on my right arm throbbed along with my heartbeat in memory of the strong fingers that had grasped me. Blood still stained the jagged bits of glass around the hole in the window, as well as the inside of the door.
Twenty minutes into my wait, something large crashed through the door of the storefront to my right, sending Honey Badger into a frenzy of barking and me wishing Sam left me the gun.
“Sam!”
He yanked the door open, and shoved the dog until she hopped into the back seat. “Go! Drive!”
I had the truck in gear and moving before he’d slammed his door shut. As we pulled away with the squeal of tires on asphalt, three men came stumbling through the hole Sam left in the glass. They pelted after us down the street, but we were faster. I let out a cry as one threw his spear at us, and it bounced off the back of the cab to land in the truck bed.
“You should be driving. I don’t know where I’m going.” Still, I sped through the deserted roads, bringing us ever closer to the highway visible in the distance.
“Not yet. Let’s get on the interstate. Turn here!” I yanked the wheel at Sam’s shout, and as we turned onto the service road, the merge lane was visible up ahead. “Keep going ‘til we’ve got some distance. Then we’ll swap.”
I nodded, and pushed my food even further down on the accelerator. “Are they following?”
Sam twisted to look out the back window as I got on the ramp and sped toward the highway. “I don’t see anything.” He gasped as he turned back, and fell against his seat.
“Sam? What’s wrong?”
His eyes closed in pain, he waved a hand. “I’m fine. Keep driving.” In my peripheral vision I watched as he reached in the back seat and pulled a blanket out from beneath Honey Badger. He wadded a corner into a ball and pressed it to his shoulder beneath his coat.
“Are you hurt?”
“Deidre, I said I’m fine.” He spoke through gritted teeth, and his face was pale, neither of which led me to want to believe him. “Just keep driving.”
So I kept driving. I tried to breathe deep enough to calm my racing heart, even as I kept my eyes glued to the rearview mirrors in case of pursuit.
Maybe twenty miles down the road, when all but the sparsest remnants of the city had faded behind us, I turned the truck onto a driveway that wound between two steep hills. Once we were hidden from the road, I put the truck in park and turned to face Sam. It spoke to how out of it he was that his eyes didn’t pop open until we stopped, even though we’d spent the last several minutes rumbling over gravel.
“Why did you stop?”
“Show me,” was my demand in response.
When Sam pinched his lips together and let his eyes fall closed again with a groan, I decided I was done waiting. I turned the truck off and reached over to pull the edge of his coat back.
A gasp escaped me when I saw the amount of blood soaked into the corner of the blanket, which he had pressed to his left shoulder between his collarbone and his heard. “Sam!”
“It’s fine. It didn’t hit anything important.”
“That’s a lot of blood. We need to find a drugstore...you need medical attention.”
My hands were shaking as I reached out to turn the truck back on. Sam grabbed my arm. “No. We need to keep going.”
“Sam, unless you want us to end up lost in Montana somewhere, you’ve got to be our driver. I can’t find the map, and you’re the one who had the route memorized.” My voice came out harsher than I meant it, but if I suppressed the anger, I knew it would turn to tears. Sam, the man I loved, was bleeding heavily right in front of me. If we didn’t find a way to stop the bleeding...well, the alternative wasn’t something I was ready to think about.
He waved one hand in front of us. “Keep going this way. There’s bound to be a ranch house up ahead somewhere. Unless you wanna turn around, we’re a long way from the nearest drugstore.”
Fighting back the sobs threatening to break free, I drove forward. A moment later, we moved out from between the two hills and up onto a plateau. Maybe half a mile ahead, surrounded by endless dry grass and sagebrush, stood a little white-walled house.
Once in the spindly carport that looked way too rickety to resist the crazy Wyoming wind, I hopped down and limped around the truck to see if the house was locked.
Thank goodness people out here aren’t paranoid. The deep red door opened easily. I pushed it open and slid the lock to hold the glass storm door ajar, then returned to the truck. Sam seemed barely conscious, and blood had spread to soak his shirt. His breathing was harsh and shallow.
“Come on. Inside.” Sam roused himself just enough to let me help him down from the truck. He leaned heavily on me as we traversed the short distance to the door, enough that it was a struggle for me to stay upright.
As soon as we made it up the two little steps to get inside, Sam collapsed onto the faded, dark-green couch just inside the door. For a moment I slumped on the arm of the couch, panting, before I called Honey Badger in with us and closed the door to keep out the worst of the cold.
“Oh, thank goodness.” My exclamation was prompted by the sight of the wood-burning stove on the other side of the shabby living room. Two couches, both worn and threadbare, sat in an L shape with one on the wall by the door, and the other beyond it on the wall at the front of the house. I leaned over this longer sofa and pulled the curtains open to allow sunlight in, coughing at the weeks’ worth of dust it stirred up. Then I limped to the stove and crouched in front of it, staring at it with no small amount of intimidation.
“They don’t have these things in Alabama,” I remarked to Honey Badger as she came over to sniff my head and shove her head under my arm. For a second I stroked my opposite hand along her notched ear, listening to Sam’s labored breathing. “Okay, honey. Gotta try and get a fire going.” I lowered myself to sit on the floor in a rather ungrateful fashion, and turned the long handle on the heavy iron door.
A good five minutes and two singed fingertips later, I had the start of a decent fire in the enclosure. I closed the door to let it heat up, and stole a glance at Sam before heading into the rest of the house to look for medical supplies.
The rest of the house was as dated and lived-in as the living room. The emerald shag carpet coated every floor but the kitchen and bathrooms, all of which had white-on-orange linoleum that looked like it could have come straight out of my grandma’s house.
Jackpot. In a linen closet, I found a large plastic bin with a red cross on it. Upon pulling it out, I thanked whatever gods existed that Wyoming ranchers apparently liked to be prepared. Guess it just makes sense, this far from a hospital. I carried the bin back to the living room, then put it at my feet as I sat on the couch next to Sam.
“Oh, Sam.” He was barely conscious. His eyes, stark blue in his pale face, met mine for a second before he swallowed and closed them. “I’m gonna fix it. Just hold on.”
The problem was, I really had no idea what I was doing. I hunted through the bin through the mounds of bandages and creams, desperately wishing I had the internet to tell me what to do.
I jumped when Sam’s hand closed over my wrist. “I need you to look at the wound and tell me what it looks like.” His words were barely more than a whisper. “I’ll guide you.”
“Okay.” I reached over him, grimacing at the scent of blood as it reached my nose. I pushed the edge of his coat aside and eased the wadded-up blanket away from Sam’s shoulder. As soon as I saw what lay underneath, my stomach turned and I had to turn away for a moment to stop the sick feeling. “It’s bad.”
One side of Sam’s mouth twitched. “I know. How wide is it?”
I swallowed and dared another peek. “I dunno. Couple inches, maybe?”
“Look in the bin. Is there any bigger bottles? You’ve gotta wash the wound out.”
Bending down, I hunted through the kit until I found what looked like a giant bottle of eyewash. I held it up for Sam to see.
“Perfect. Now, squirt that in there until all that’s left is fresh blood.”
“Are you sure? Won’t that hurt?”
Sam opened his eyes and fixed me with a wry expression. “A lot less than raging infection will.”
I shuddered as I opened the bottle and pulled the blanket away. “I’m sorry.” As I upended the bottle and squirted the water over it, Sam’s whole body tensed. He groaned, his back arching and his face screwed up in pain. “I’m so sorry!”
“Just do it, Deidre. Get it over with.” He spoke through gritted teeth, his tone harsh. Tears pricking my eyes, I obeyed. When the bottle was finally empty and the wound was clean, I caught my breath in a sob and chucked the container across the room, not bothering to correct Honey Badger when she dashed after it.
“Okay, what now?”
“Now, disinfecting.”
“Isn’t that what I just did?”
“Nope. You need alcohol, hydrogen peroxide...something.”
I grimaced at the thought of pouring any of those substances. With every action, my heart was breaking a little bit more. As much as I knew it wasn’t true, it felt like I was the one hurting him, the one responsible for his pain. “Okay, found it.”
“Pour that on it.”
Whimpering, I opened the lid and poured the rubbing alcohol over the gash. For a second Sam didn’t react, then his entire body spasmed and a muffled scream issued from his clenched jaw.
“Keep going!”
His shout frightened me into squeezing the bottle tighter. After a few seconds I couldn’t take it anymore, and stopped. I watched for long, agonizing seconds until his rigid limbs began to relax. “I’m so sorry, Sam. I’m so sorry.”
“Is there a suture kit in there?” He didn’t respond to my apologies.
My stomach twisted again. “Sam, I can’t…”
“Please, Deidre.” His voice was weak, his tone pleading. “I can’t do this myself. Help me.”
Tears blurred my vision as I pulled the bin onto my lap and looked through it again. “There’s nothing.”
“Butterfly bandages?”
“What are those?”
With another groan, Sam used his good arm to pull the bin onto his own lap. Most of his shirt was now soaked with blood-tinged water. If the growing fire hadn’t started warming the room, he would have been freezing by now. “This.” He pressed a package into my hands. “Use it to help hold the wound together. Do it tight. Don’t worry about me. ”
Like that’s possible. But I knew it wasn’t the time to try arguing with him. I set the bin on the ground and used the odd-shaped bandages, one by one, to fix up the hole a Cannibal weapon had left in him. Even when he groaned with renewed pain, he wouldn’t let me make them any looser.
Once the gash was held together by a bunch of glorified tape, he had me cover the whole thing with gauze and more bandages.
When it was all over, he looked up at me with glazed eyes. “Thank you, Deidre.”
I didn’t trust myself to speak. I just nodded, and gathered up the bin to take it back to the closet.
As soon as the tub sat in its spot, the nausea overwhelmed me and I ran into the bathroom to watch what little was in my stomach reappear into the bowl.
***
Despite my best efforts, the wound was inflamed by the next morning. Sam said, pitiful in his attempts to make light of the situation, that people who ate other people probably weren’t the best about socially acceptable hygiene. By afternoon, it was infected. I resorted to forcing some nearly-expired antibiotics in the medicine cabinet into him, even though I had no idea if I was giving him the right dose.
That afternoon I woke from a nap to find him barely breathing, his lips blue. Thrown into instant panic, I tossed the blankets off of him. He was burning up.
“Sam!” I shook his shoulder, but his head just rolled from side to side, limp. “Sam!” My shriek brought Honey Badger running into the room and leaping onto the bed. I shoved her off and straddled Sam’s waist. “Sam, wake up. Please, wake up!” In frustration, I pounded his chest with my fist. He twitched, but didn’t wake up.
Wracking my brain for instructions from my teenage years, I knelt on the bed next to him and placed my interlocked hands on his sternum. No, no, check pulse first. I put my fingers to his neck. His pulse fluttered against my skin, rapid and weak, but there.
“Okay, no chest compressions. Breathing. Airway open.” I yanked the pillows out from under his head and tossed them to the floor. I tipped his head back. As soon as I did this, Sam gave a huge gasp, and I cried out in relief. “Oh, Sam!” His eyelids fluttered weakly and he murmured something. I watched with my hands clasped over my mouth to keep from yelling at him to wake up. Heart in my throat, I watched, ready to jump forward if needed to help him breathe. As his lips slowly turned from blue back to pink, I slumped against the headboard. Honey Badger jumped up on the bed again and whined, licking my face. I was too weak to resist her. I kept my hand on Sam’s chest and watched him breathe for hours, too scared to leave for food or anything else. I stayed there until the fire went out and the cold crept in, when I was forced to go light another one lest we freeze to death.
For a solid two days he left me to wonder, and worry myself sick over whether I was about to lose him. He never stopped breathing again but at one point he spiked a high fever, and I spent hours sitting next to him on the bed in the master bedroom, holding his burning hand as he talked nonsense in between moans of pain. I forgot about food, about drinking, about all of it except for Sam. All that existed in the world was this one little room where I sat by Sam’s side and watched his chest and his lips to make sure he didn’t try to leave me again.
We had little food left, but as long as Sam battled the infection in his shoulder, neither of us ate. It was all I could do to make myself leave that room long enough to find something for Honey Badger to eat or to stoke the fire.
As it turned out, the home’s previous occupant had owned a dog. That dog’s remains now lay decomposing in a dog house behind the main building, where the poor animal had been left chained. Whether he’d been forgotten when the spores took hold, or his master never made it home to release him, I’d never know.
The only bright side to the heart-wrenching situation was that a massive bag of dog food sat in the garage with only a few scoops missing. It was high quality food, unlike the crappy gas station stuff I’d found previously. Whoever these people were, the care they’d felt for their animals was evident in everything they’d done. The spores though...when the spores hit, that uncontrollable fear had conquered all the love they’d ever felt, and led them to leave their animals to die.
Well, some of the animals. A few thin cattle still roamed the wide pastures beyond the house. A fat little pony had managed to undo the locks on his stall and the feed room doors, and somehow not gorged himself to death. Chickens, too, had taken shelter in the exspansive barn and fed well on the barrels of pellets and grain. If the man I loved hadn’t been fighting for his life inside the house, I would have found the whole ranch a sort of oasis from the apocalypse. Instead, every time I left the bedroom where Sam lay, I found myself aching to return to him and convinced he would have died by the time I got back.
