The Apocalyptic Nurse (Book 1): Plagued Road Home

by Bell, A. E.

  Jeremy saw the exchange as he rounded the corner to go into the shed, “I’m so sorry. I wish she wasn’t such a horrible person.”

  Evie glanced back up towards the window, “You have nothing to be sorry for. A matter of fact, I’m the one that’s sorry because in a few hours I will be far away from that bitch and you will be stuck here living with her psychotic ass.”

  He walked into the shed and returned with two shovels, “Evie, I get that you want to bury Ollie, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you let me and Creed do the shoveling. I know that you are more than capable of doing it yourself, but please let me do this for you and Ollie.” She waved her hand towards the ground giving her blessing for them to continue.

  Digging their son’s grave took a few hours of nonstop work. When they had finally dug the grave, Creed and Jeremy eased Ollie’s body into the hole. Evie asked Jeremy, “Can you go get Sylvie and Cassie for me? I can’t go back in there with your wife and maintain my temper.” He didn’t answer just double-timed it into the house. A few minutes later, Sylvie emerged with Cassie. Both girls had tears in their eyes. Sylvie ran to her mother and hugged her. Cassie stood back a few feet with Cinnamon. They all paid their respects, and then Evie insisted, “I need you all to give me a few minutes with my son.”

  Creed took the girls back inside and waited for his wife. He didn’t know how to help her through all of this, but what he did know was that she was never going to be the same.

  Evie walked over to the hole that her son laid in and sat down. She began speaking to Ollie as if he was alive, “Baby boy. You are such a special boy. I could never have asked for a better son than you. I had begged God to send me a son and then one day, he did. I was afraid I would never get the opportunity to have a ‘momma’s boy,’ but the day you were born, I had one. You are so strong and smart and the most loving child in the world. I know that when you went after Cassie, you were just doing what you knew your daddy would’ve done. Please know that I love you to the moon and back. I will forever be your momma and will be proud until my dying day to be able to call you my son. My only regret is that I can’t get you back home to Kentucky with us. You deserve for your final resting place to be in Kentucky. I hope one day when all this is over that I will be able to come back and get you. Rest easy, baby, rest easy.”

  She walked up to the door and when she entered the house, she could tell that everybody was trying to look busy to avoid the obvious, “Creed, you and Jeremy can go finish now.” He walked by his wife and kissed her on the forehead. Evie didn’t stay inside she went around to the side of the house. She didn’t want this moment to become her and Molly fighting. She needed to remember this moment by knowing she did as good as she could by her son. Molly wasn’t going to goad her into taking this special moment away.

  Cassie and Sylvie waited close to Evie. They didn’t feel right being in that house after all they had heard from the fight Molly and Evie had. Evie was having trouble seeing beyond her grief, but eventually took notice of the girls. She held out one hand and patted the ground next to her with the other hand. Sylvie sat on one side, and Cassie sat down on the other. Cinnamon laid down in front of all three of them. Evie put her hand around the side of each girl’s heads and pulled the girls both into her chest. She sat there rubbing her fingers down their hair. She whispered, “I’m so sorry. I know that you both are sad and confused and I wasn’t there for either of you when I should have been. I know I can’t make it better, but I am here for you both now.”

  Evie could feel Molly staring down at her and the girls. It took every fiber of her being to ignore that woman. Creed walked up to Evie and the girls with tears in his eyes, “It’s done. We can go as soon as you are ready Evie.”

  Evie jumped up off the driveway, “I’m ready now. I need to get away from that woman because I’m about to lose my religion on her. I can’t stand her staring down at me like that. I need to go so I can grieve my son with the people that I love.”

  Jeremy walked over and hugged Evie, “I’m sorry about this, all of this. I hate that we met under these circumstances, but you are an amazing woman with an amazing family.”

  Evie smiled a half-assed smile, “None of this is your fault. If you are ever in Kentucky, you have a place to go. Of course, you do realize that my invitation is only to you and your sons.” Evie turned and walked over to the SUV and sat down in the passenger seat. The girls both loaded up into the backseat. Creed put Cinnamon in the back.

  Chapter 13

  No one spoke a word while they were driving. Evie and the girls all gazed out their windows as they drove down the road. Occasionally, Creed would pat Evie’s leg to let her know he was there for her. She never gave him any signals that she knew he was there. They had many tribulations in their marriage, but none that compared to this. He had to figure out a way to bring her back out of this. The family needed her on her A-game in order to survive.

  They occasionally stopped to go to the bathroom but made sure to stay close to the vehicle and never stay too long. The road through Missouri seemed never-ending, but it was amazing to Evie how much Missouri reminded her of Kentucky. She had remembered years before when her son had called the trees close to their hometown, “Lebanon trees.” She couldn’t help thinking that these trees looked like Kentucky trees. She was off in her own little world with her memories of her son when she heard the little sound of a girl coughing and wheezing in the backseat. She looked back and noticed that Cassie was using her inhaler. Evie called to Sylvie, “Get her a drink of water.” Then she asked Cassie, “Are you okay? What’s got you needing your inhaler all the sudden?”

  Cassie replied, “I don’t know. I started needing it at Pat’s house, but I didn’t want to bother you.”

  Evie sighed, “Honey, it’s okay, but you always need to let me or Creed know when you are having trouble breathing. How many puffs are left in your inhaler?”

  The girl reported, “I only have two puffs left.”

  Evie instructed her, “Lean up here a minute, let me feel your head.” She gently pressed her wrist against Cassie’s forehead. She told Creed, “We need to be on the lookout for a pharmacy, she needs an inhaler and some steroids, and I need to replace the supplies that we lost when we left the RV.

  Before they knew it, they saw signs for Ft. Leonard Wood. Evie exploded in laughter. Creed didn’t know what to think, he just kept looking at her wondering if she had finally gone insane. She exclaimed, “Well, I’ll be damned I never thought I would be here again.”

  Creed became curious, “When were you here?”

  She looked over at him with humor in her eye, “Honey, this glorious shithole is Fort lost in the woods. It’s where I went for basic training. I seem to remember there were a couple of small towns nearby. We will be able to find a pharmacy in one of them.”

  Creed asked, “I wonder how the post is holding up against all this craziness.”

  She muttered, “Unless something has changed I wouldn’t want to be there. Back in my day, it was strictly a training post. They are so busy tearing you down that they don’t have enough time to teach you the really important stuff. We were a bunch of dumbasses that needed our asses kicked on a daily basis.”

  They droved passed the actual post and saw nothing but ruins. It looked like pictures they had seen many times of places in the middle east torn apart by war. There were several soldiers trapped inside vehicles that had already turned. They were clawing, trying to get out to eat whoever they could get their teeth on. There didn’t appear to be any living souls left. Evie felt sick looking at the destruction one virus could cause. There had to be an answer or a cure somewhere that someone could find. Can this really be the end of civilization? Turned into monsters that kill their own kind? What she knew for sure is that she would have to take one step at a time until her family was safe. But would they ever truly be safe?

  She looked towards Creed, “Just keep driving, don’t stop for anything or anyone until we find
a pharmacy. God knows where all the infected from this post went. They could be anywhere.”

  Creed replied, “I was already thinking the same thing.”

  He drove another 15 minutes and came upon a town called Waynesville. They drove until they found a CVS pharmacy. The windows had been broken in, and it looked as though many of the shelves were pushed over. Evie said, “I’ll go inside, you stay out here with the kids.”

  Creed objected, “Are you insane? I’m not letting you go inside there. Who knows if there are infected inside or maybe even looters?”

  Evie proclaimed, “Honey, since when do you let me do anything? It will be fine. If I need you, you will know. You don’t know what kind of medicine or supplies to look for. It has to be me.”

  He was upset, but he knew she was right. He had no way of knowing what they needed. He couldn’t leave Sylvie and Cassie alone. He knew his wife was strong enough and smart enough. He had to let her go, but he wasn’t happy about it. He sat inside the SUV while he watched the love of his life walking into a building that he was scared she might not return from.

  Evie walked inside with her headlamp turned on and her pistol in hand. Every step she stepped was done with precision to avoid knocking over any of the many things in her way. She could hear a clicking noise but couldn’t figure out what the source was. She made her way down the first aisle and started to turn left. When she peeked around the corner, she saw something move quickly but couldn’t see what it was. She took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. She told herself under her breath, “You can do this, Evie. You can do this.” She walked to the edge of the end cap and looked around the corner. There was nothing in that aisle. She repeated this aisle by aisle until she came to the one before the pharmacy door entrance. She was so busy looking up each aisle that she needed to go past that she forgot to look behind her. She felt someone or something tugging on her jacket. Then she felt someone cover her mouth. He was keeping her from screaming for help. She did the only thing she could do and shot her pistol in the air to let Creed know she needed help.

  Creed jumped out of the front seat and told Sylvie, “I hate to leave you, but I have to go get your mother. She needs me. Lock the doors and if anybody tries to get inside besides us. Shoot to kill.” Then he yelled, “Cinnamon, watch the girls.” He ran down the same aisles that his wife had gone down. As he got closer, he could hear her whimpering.

  He rounded the corner of the last aisle and there stood a man with a knife to his wife’s throat. He told the man, “Buddy, you need to let go of her. She just came in here to get medicine.”

  The man replied, “This is my store now. I’m not gonna let some woman trespass and get away with it.”

  The man removed his hand from Evie’s mouth, and she said, “Listen, I want medicine for a little girl that is in serious trouble. Just let me go, we’ll get the medicine and be on our way.”

  The man did not release his grip on her at all. She squirmed a bit, and he pulled her closer to his body. Creed felt helpless. He wasn’t sure how to get his wife free from this lunatic. Then he saw a look of despair on the man’s face. He could not speak or act, he just stood there. Evie raised her left hand and carefully removed the knife from his hand. The man had blood dripping out of his mouth. Creed couldn’t understand what he saw until he looked down and saw Evie’s right hand. In her right hand was her buck knife covered in dark red blood. The man fell to his knees and then onto his side. Evie walked passed him as if he was trash. Creed couldn’t believe his eyes, “Evie, what just happened to him?”

  She looked blankly at the man, “I stabbed him in his liver. By the looks of it, I might have nicked his lung too.” The man laid on the floor struggling to speak, but no words came out only frothy blood. The floor around him was covered in dark red blood.

  She acted as though she hadn’t just taken a life, “You should probably go back with the girls. I’m fine.”

  He sighed, “Well that’s obvious.”

  She grabbed a reusable grocery bag and headed toward the swinging door that leads into the pharmacy. She pushed the door open and rummaged through the remaining medications. Luckily for her, it appeared like most of the looters took opioids, benzos, and amphetamines. She took all the albuterol she could find. She kept looking for steroids, but the medicine was all over the floor. She fumbled through all the medications on the floor until she found a huge bottle of prednisone. She tossed it in her bag and then concentrated on taking as many antibiotics as would fit in the bag. She was on her way out when something caught her eye, it was an epi-pen. She knew that one day it might come in handy to have one in case one of them had an allergic reaction.

  Evie decided to look and see if there was any food they could take with them. The choices are limited. She took some protein bars, sports drinks, and canned ham and exited the building as quickly as she could. When she was standing in front of the building with all that stuff in her hands, she realized that she too had become a looter. She got in the SUV and scrambled through the bag to get an inhaler and the prednisone out. She told Creed, “We need to find someplace to spend the night. I need to get her well before we can carry on.”

  Creed questioned her, “Are you sure that is the right thing to do? It seems like every time we stop something bad happens to us.”

  She demanded, “We have no fuckin’ choice. She will end up with pneumonia if she doesn’t already have it.”

  He was clearly irritated but did as she said. He drove around until he found a suitable place for them to stay. He found a small house with a large propane tank in the backyard. This house would be perfect. They needed a way to have heat since every day it seemed to get colder. He stopped the car and was headed into the house to make sure it was safe.

  Evie got out of the SUV because she needed to pee. She squatted behind the vehicle. While she was squatting, she kept hearing an odd noise. It was coming from behind the trash cans. She walked stood up and pulled her pants back up. She walked over towards the trash cans and then she saw the cause of the strange noise. It was an infected eating a dog. She could hear it chewing through the intestines, muscles, and fat. The infected never even noticed that she was there. She walked back to the vehicle and got the tomahawk. She raised it into the air and slammed it down onto the infected’s neck. She kept hitting it over and over again.

  Creed walked out and saw her pummeling this infected long after she had disabled it. He walked over to her and grabbed her arm before she could strike another hit, “Honey he’s done for. You can stop now.”

  She turned and looked at him, her face covered in the greenish-black slime that was the monster’s brain matter, “Don’t tell me when I can stop.”

  He wiped away the muck from her face, “I'm telling you to stop because I love you. You will not bring Ollie back this way. Our boy deserves more than to have this be his legacy. He deserves all that is light and good. Please snap out of this. You know better than any that no life is promised. I will miss my son every day of my life, but I won’t let you do this to his memory.”

  Evie fell to the ground screaming and wailing, “I don’t know how to live without him. I don’t know if I want to live without him. My heart is beyond breaking, it’s beyond hurting. Every part of me hurts for him. I would give anything to hold him in my arms one more time or to feel his sweet lips give momma a kiss on my cheek.”

  Creed sat down on the ground and held his wife in his arms, “We will get through it together. We will hold our son in our memories every second of every day. Let me in. Let me help you. Please, Evie. I need you to let me in. My heart is broken too, and with you doing whatever it is that you are doing, you are leaving me to deal with it all alone. Not to mention what Sylvie must be going through.”

  She glimpsed up to see Sylvie looking out the car window at her mother with teardrops streaming down her face. She jumped up off the ground and wiped the tears from her eyes. She pulled the car door open and held her hand out to Sylvie, “I know I’m letti
ng you down and I’m sorry, so sorry. I love you. I love you so much. I promise I will get my act together. Momma’s gonna put her big girl panties on and be the momma you need.”

  Sylvie just placed her arms around her momma’s neck, and the two of them shared a good cry. For several minutes, they just held each other and cried. Creed finally came over, “It’s time to go in. It’s getting too cold out for you two to be out here, not to mention how dangerous it is.”

  They found it strange that the house seemed to be well protected, but no one was living there. The windows were all boarded up, and you could see stacks of boxes by the back door so that you could barricade the door from the inside.

  Sylvie opened the pantry door, “Look, mom, there’s lots of canned foods.”

  Evie came over to her, “Looks good, they have a gas stove so we can eat hot food tonight.” She went to the stove and put a few cans of vegetable beef soup on for a late supper.

  Creed was busy looking for candles for some light. He found an antique oil lamp and took it to Evie, “This should work. I love these old things.”

  They all sat around the kitchen table like a real family. Cassie looked sickly, it was all she could do to sit up. Evie looked over at her, “As soon as you finished eating, I’ll give you some medicine. Then, you and Cinnamon can lay on the couch together. Sylvie, Creed, and I will take the floor tonight.”

  After supper, Creed went into the living room and started moving furniture, so they would all have a place to sleep. He moved the coffee table and went to move the rug that was underneath it. He noticed a trapdoor under the rug. He walked over to Evie and didn’t say a word, he just put his finger over his mouth as if to tell her to be quiet. She followed him into the living room and saw the door. She whispered to Sylvie, “Stay here with Cassie. Keep an eye on her and that damned dog. There is a trapdoor in that floor, and we are going to investigate it.” Sylvie nodded.