In a little planning session we figured that the best way to deal with this was to let time work for us. The odds were that Burt would drink himself to sleep and sober up. Then he would be easier to deal with. There was no reason to go in and get him nor was there any reason to talk him out. At this point everyone was safe and there was no need to put anyone at risk. We decided to just sit and wait.
There was one small fault in the plan. Burt was a smoker and either by intention or accident he managed to get a fire going in the locker room. We had all pretty much left him alone, he was ranting, and raving, but there was not much we could do for him. After a while he did quiet down and we figured that he probably had passed out.
While all this drama had seemed to have calmed itself there was a great deal of interest in Henry’s new puppy. The pup was all over everyone and seemed to be enjoying people, living people for a change. He ran from person to person licking, and sniffing. He would roll on his back to have his tummy rubbed.
Nick was the first to notice, his only comment was that he must have forgotten about something in the oven. He headed off to the kitchen area, but returned shaking his head. He said everything was fine in the kitchen. We all started to smell the smoke now. It was not the same smell as the wood stove that was in the corner. So we started to look around to see what was going on.
Suddenly there were shouts from the locker room, it was Burt, he was screaming, “FIRE, I’m burning up”.
Matt raced over and unlashed the door to let him out. But the inside lock was still on. We could not open the door. He yelled to Burt, “Unlock the door!”
Burt was not listening or responding, between the vodka and the fear he was in panic mode.
Mark grabbed a heavy hammer while Frank grabbed a water hose. It took Mark three swings to break down the door and we were in. There was a lot of thick smoke. It made it hard to see. And when we opened the door it caused the flames to really change from smoldering to a roaring fire. At first we could not find Burt. Frank began to put water on a pile of burning blankets on the floor.
Fortunately there were not a lot of combustible materials in the locker room, it was cinder block walls and metal lockers. But there were some clothes and sleeping materials because he and Mary-Lou made part of the room their sleeping quarters.
We found Burt in the shower area of the locker room. He was semi-conscious, and burned. He had been, or at least his clothes had been on fire. He had gone into the shower room and was lying under a stream from one of the showers. We dragged him out into the main room and Charlene went to work on him.
Mary-Lou was screaming, and crying, and had to be restrained to prevent her from getting in the way. He was in a bad way. He had a lot of nasty burns on his arms, legs and face. Charlene was muttering under her breath the whole time. She said that she needed oxygen for him, but we had none. It was not something that any of us thought to take from the police cruiser or even look for in our scavenging runs.
Matt ran and grabbed the acetylene torch and rolled it over. He undid the green line from the torch portion and handed it to her. She looked at him bewildered for a moment and then nodded her head. She told him to set the regulator at about 10 PSI and turn it on. She improvised a mask out of some rags that were close by. It helped; he seemed to get a little color back although with the burns it was hard to tell.
Charlene told someone get a sheet and had Nick mix up about 10 gallons of salt water, not wicked strong, like a pound of salt to the ten gallons. But he needed to boil it, and quickly cool it so she would apply it to the burned areas. That took about 30 minutes.
While the salt water was cooking Charlene took Teckla, Henry and I aside. “He is most likely not going to make it.”
Burt had about 40 percent of his body with third degree burns and a very good likelihood that his lungs were badly burned. This means that he was very susceptible to infection and an almost certain candidate for pneumonia. Even in a special burn center there would be a fifty/fifty chance, but here in these primitive conditions it was maybe a five percent chance of survival.”
Henry asked, “What can we do?”
“We can try to make him as comfortable as we can but there may come a time when for mercy sake we should help him cross over.”
Teckla concurred with Charlene. Although my vote did not count, I knew that it was the reality and the right thing to do.
“We need to keep an eye on him because we don’t know if just dying of natural causes would result in the change.” I added.
Nick finished the salt water and Charlene put a clean sheet on top of Burt. She poured the salt water on him. He twitched a little and mumbled. Fortunately he was drifting in and out of consciousness. It had to hurt like hell but we really had nothing for the pain that he was going through.
I recalled something I had learned while investigating a homicide. The victim had been shooting vodka into his arm with a hypodermic needle. I had always thought that if you injected straight alcohol into your veins it would kill you. But Doctor Thomas from the Medical Examiner’s Office told me that it was not fatal, although it would be painful at the point of injection. But in fact, with coma patients they would run an alcohol drip for feeding purposes.
Perhaps if we kept him drunk it would help with the pain a little. I ran this by Charlene, and she thought about it for a couple of minutes. Finally she decided that lacking any other options it was worth the try and that it might help. The only down side was that if we made the drip too rapid it could cause him to suffer alcohol poisoning.
Mary-Lou was still in shock, but we had let her back into the area where we were working on him. She was given the run down on his condition and his likely chances of survival. She actually held up pretty well considering. But under the outside display there was a storm, a big storm of emotions, all she kept saying was, “It’s my fault, I caused this.”
Charlene explained to her the idea that we had to try to help him with the pain. There are times when even in the worse situations that things are said that are just bizarre and even funny. With a straight face she looked at Charlene and simply said that she would go along with the idea but there was one caveat; we had to give him the “good” stuff. What can you say at that point?
Charlene was able to improvise an IV using plastic fuel line, some duct tape and a hypodermic needle that had come from an insulin pen. It was not perfect or fancy, but it seemed to work. I think it was about here that someone had dubbed her Nurse MacGyver. She had cut the oxygen regulator back to about two PSI and that did not seem to have a negative impact. It was now just a case of watch, and wait.
Frank and Mark had put out the fire. Teckla, Henry and I examined the scene. Our best guess was that he was lying on the bed, still drinking. The melted vodka bottle was still on the bed. You could see an outline of a body on the mattress. We figured that he passed out with a cigarette going, spilled the vodka which ignited. It was burning pretty well when he woke up on fire. He was probably badly burned before he woke up. It was a miracle that he had not asphyxiated right on the spot in the middle of the fire.
We cleaned the place up the best we could, but the smell of burnt flesh would not go away.
March 12th
I do not feel much like writing today. Most of the day was spent doing our standard chores but not much more. There was a somber mood over the group, it was pretty much accepted that we were about to lose our first member and it made many of us contemplate where things could go from here. We had been lucky till now.
March 13th
Burt is doing worse. His breathing is becoming more and more ragged. At night you can hear him. He is slipping in and out of consciousness. The vodka drip is helping a little with the pain but he is really in a bad way. Some of the burns have begun to fester and infection is setting in. It is a matter of time. Some of the women had been trying to keep Mary-Lou’s spirits up, but she knows, we all know.
March 14th
It was about four in the morning
when we were awakened by Burt, screaming in pain. The vodka no longer helped, or helped enough. The infection had set in and he was delirious. There was nothing we could do for him. The Three (Teckla, Charlene and Henry) talked quietly in a corner and I guessed that they were determining that it was time to help him over the pain, for good.
They took Mary-Lou aside and told her what they thought. She did not take it well. She asked if she could spend some time with him before the deed, in essence his euthanasia was done. She went into the room with him. Anne was going to go with her but Mary-Lou asked that they be alone.
I felt like a monster but I had to ask, “Who feels they can do this? Those who do, put your name in the hat.”
I really can only speak for myself, but when I put my name in it was not a thing I was happy, or proud in doing. But I saw the intense suffering that Burt was experiencing and to free him of the agony and torment was the motivator, the only motivator.
As we were about to pull the name, a shot rang out from the locker room. We rushed toward the door. About half way across the room there was a second shot. I was first through the door. Mary-Lou was lying on top of Burt. Blood was oozing from her nose and the back of her head. Burt also had a wound to the head.
“Shit, I should have known.” I shouted.
Neither of them was breathing. In the end she had chosen to take care of him. And they are together now, in a better place.
We burned them just after lunch. The bodies were not even cold. Most of us really did not know them all that well so there was no fancy wake, or eulogy. Matt was an ordained minister, from the back of a magazine or the internet or something, and that was all we had. He spoke a few words and offered a couple of prayers.
I talked with Henry later in the day; I needed to let some of this out. I was angry that it turned out as it did. I had no reason to be in the sense that these were not my people, or friends, or family, but it just did not sit right with me that things ended as they did.
He told me that he had known them over the years. They had had a tumultuous relationship in part due to Burt’s drinking and both their depression issues. Mary-Lou had often said that without Burt she would probably kill herself. Henry had thought over the years that it was more talk than a plan on her part. But then considering everything that had gone on over the last month or so, suicide could seem a very inviting relief.
That night as Anne and I bedded down for the night, we talked about what Henry had told me and the events of the last couple of days.
Anne said “I can understand where Mary-Lou had come from. If Margo and you were not around, I would probably chose it too.”
I thought about there being my anchor and wondered if I would continue on without them until I was bitten or killed. I want to see where this story would end and if I had any influence in the ending I wanted to exert it. Keeping Margo, Cody or any of the other young people alive is what I would strive to do.
March 15th
Just another quiet day here in the Land of Milk and Honey. I noticed that I have been on a roll in keeping this journal up. I sometimes wonder why I keep writing it. The best answer that I can come up with is that sometime, or somewhere this journal may be our only legacy. But it is also to keep my mind sharp and reflect on the events as they unfold. A year from now it may be useful to the group. It may give us something to look back at and realize what we had done well, or badly. I don’t know.
Right now I am not much in the writing mood, and some days I have to force myself to put something down. Once the habit or routine is broken I’m afraid it will stop and in the loss of the documentation there will be the loss of the memories.
March 16th
Really, nothing much happened today. It was a rainy day of humdrum. We all just kind of did not much of anything.
March 17th (Saint Patrick’s Day)
The weather cleared so Henry, Mark and I started on the fence, Fred and a couple of the others helped also. Most of the rest of the group has kept to small projects. Matt and Frank are continuing to work on the vehicles. Charlene and Anne are going through the e-mails from the CDC. The scavenger crews are out and searching the downtown area.
March 18th
The fence is about a third complete. It is not as easy as we first thought. The ground is pretty rocky so the posts are hard to put in but it is coming along. It is all pretty quiet. It is funny, all I can think of are those old movies…”Yes, it is quiet, too quiet”.
March 21st
I skipped a couple of days of entries because there was just nothing going on. There are no lessons or insights to be had but in thinking about it I have just realized I left something out that is very important.
In Peru, our water source is a well. We did not have a water treatment plant and none of us are capable of determining if there was any type of contamination to the water supply. We have two different types of water in the compound. The first is what we call “clear” water; I think it used to be called “potable” water. We keep a large pot of water that we boiled the purposes of cooking, food related cleaning and drinking. This water is stored in clean containers. Then we use the water right out of the tap as wash water which we use for showers, or other water needs. It is likely that the water right out of the tap is ok, but there seems no reason to push the issue.
March 23rd
We have finished the fence. It was a long task but one I think will add to the safety of the group. It will at least prevent the Zoms from sneaking up on us. I know it will do nothing against the living.
That makes me wonder, “How many other little communities are out there?”
In a way it is like the old notion of the earth being the only inhabited planet in the universe. With all the towns, and people out there before The Event I find it difficult to believe that only Otis and Peru had survivors. There must be more and over time what will happen when the groups expand, explore and come into contact. I just hope these other groups developed a similar ethical plan to live and let live rather than survival of the fittest.
March 27th
Sorry, I have been remiss in my writings, with the fence done it has resulted in a lack of motivation. But also there has not been a lot to report either. The snow is gone, it is getting warmer.
March 28th
Early this morning we had a little scare when the fence alarms went off. Lance did a scan of the fence line using the cameras the best he could but found nothing. Ron and Frank walked the line with flashlights but also found no indication of intrusion. We checked it again during the daylight and found a little deer fur on the barbed wire.
The puppy, who we decided to call Biter after the name used in an old Zombie film has really adjusted to the group. He is basically attached himself to Cyril, Anne’s dad. It is really a good thing for them both. Biter keeps Cyril busy and active and Cyril keeps Biter out of the trouble.
We have also started taking Biter with us more and more when we are walking the fence, or if there is a scavenger run to be made. He is very good at detecting the Zoms.
March 30th
Nick and Henry did a food inventory today. We are good for about a month at current consumption. We need to start making some farming plans to for the summer and hopefully be able to put some reserves away for the next winter. Fuel supplies of gasoline and diesel are good, but then we have not been driving much. Propane is still ok but we need to keep an eye on that. I missed an entry yesterday, nothing happened.
March 31st
It is Easter Sunday. I had almost forgotten about it. It was Anne’s Mom who made sure we remembered. She must have cornered Matt and Nick a few days back and talked with them about it. Matt put together a nice little service and sermon. He talked about suffering, and acceptance and most of all faith.
Nick was able to put together a ham dinner with some canned hams that we had recovered. It was not a huge spread, but enough. When we sat down to eat Matt asked Arcelia to say grace.
She hesitated at first but then
said, “Lord we thank you for what we have, and that we are together to enjoy the day, in your name, Amen.”
“Amen” from around the tables.
It was nice although there were no colored eggs or chocolate rabbits.
April 1st
April Fool’s Day but no one was thinking of a good one to play on the group. It was a quiet day mostly due to the rainy rawness of the weather.
April 2nd
The weather broke and it was an unusually warm day. We are in a comfortable place right now so it was a just an enjoy the kind of weather day. No scavenging was done today.
April 3rd
A scary incident occurred. Fred and Jan were out doing a scavenging run this morning. The areas that have been untouched are getting to be very few. There are probably about 35 houses and buildings left to check. While they checked a small diner on the north side of town they ran into a couple of active Zoms. They were quickly dispatched but it was the first time in a while we had any contact with the undead. The bad part was that the two of them had been complacent. They had gotten so used to kind of an Easy Street approach and they were caught off guard. On a separate note, I have noticed that the two of them spend an awful lot of time together.
The Event Series (Book 1): Life After the Meteor Page 11
