The Survivalist (Freedom Lost)

by Arthur T. Bradley

  Tanner crept up the stairs. The stench was so pungent that he had to force himself to breathe only through his mouth. When he reached the top step, he spun to the left with his shotgun raised.

  Two dozen men, women, and children huddled together on green vinyl seats, each of them with the classic symptoms of having been infected—black glossy eyes, swollen joints, skin marred by blisters. A small group of people stood near the back of the bus, tending to a teenage girl lying on the floor. One man in particular seemed utterly heartbroken, sobbing uncontrollably as he held the young woman’s hand.

  When Tanner appeared, parents pulled their children close, draping arms protectively around them. Several men scrambled into the aisle and stood defensively, their hands raised in tight fists. One of the women who had been tending to the injured teen quickly pushed her way forward.

  “Please!” she begged. “We don’t mean anyone harm. There’s no need for more bloodshed.”

  Tanner lowered his shotgun.

  As the woman came closer, he saw that she was probably around his age, full-bodied in a hearty sort of way, with a head of short gray hair that looked like it had been cut with garden shears.

  “We’re travelers,” she explained. “If we’ve inadvertently stopped on your property, we’ll gladly move.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t own this stretch of road any more than you do.” He looked past her to the fallen girl. “What happened to her?”

  “Shot in the stomach by men less understanding than you.”

  “She going to make it?”

  The woman’s face grew long. “She’s lost a lot of blood. I don’t suppose you happen to be a doctor.”

  “No,” he said, rubbing his chin. “But I might just know one. Have a couple of your people bring her out the back.” Tanner turned and clomped back down the steps.

  Samantha looked at him expectantly.

  “Well?”

  “Go get the car. Hurry!”

  Without hesitation, she wheeled around and raced for the car. Sixty seconds later, the Country Squire screeched to a stop as the back doors of the big orange bus swung open.

  Sister Margaret climbed from the car.

  “What’s the big emergency?”

  Her answer was quick in coming, as two men handed down the teenage girl. The woman Tanner had spoken with climbed out behind them.

  “Where should we put her?”

  “On the back of the wagon,” Tanner said, hurrying around and folding down the car’s tailgate. Several blankets lay wadded up in the back, and he quickly spread them over the door. He turned to Sister Margaret. “You said you were a combat medic. This girl could use your expertise.”

  “Are you kidding? That was nearly forty years ago! And besides,” she said, looking around, “there’s nothing here. No sterile compresses, no saline solution, nothing!”

  Tanner leaned into the station wagon and dragged forward his pack. Flopping it open, he pulled out a small first-aid kit and pressed it against Sister Margaret’s chest.

  “This is what you have to save that girl’s life.”

  She glanced down at the kit and then over to the unconscious girl being laid atop the tailgate. The entire front of the young woman’s shirt was soaked with blood.

  “What you’re asking is impossible. Anything I do will probably only kill her that much faster.”

  “She’s dead inside of ten minutes anyway. If you screw up and she dies in five, I don’t think anyone’s going to hold it against you.”

  Sister Margaret’s eyes filled with tears.

  “I’m sorry,” she choked, handing him back the first-aid kit. “I gave up that life a long time ago.”

  Tanner’s face turned red, and he seemed ready to give her the old “Time to cowboy up” speech when Samantha stepped forward.

  “Sister Margaret,” she said softly.

  The nun looked at her, eyes still clouded with tears.

  “I’m just a kid, so I don’t know much. But have you ever thought that maybe God doesn’t only allow suffering so that we can learn compassion?” She shrugged. “Maybe He lets it be here so we could feel the joy in relieving it.”

  Sister Margaret stared at Samantha for a long moment, blinking back tears. Finally, she took a deep breath and exhaled hard. Without a word, she moved to the young woman’s side and placed her fingers on the radial side of her wrist. The pulse was surprisingly strong for someone who had lost so much blood.

  “We need to get this shirt off so I can see the wound.”

  Samantha drew her knife and began carefully cutting away the cloth. As she peeled it back, a dark bloody hole became visible near the girl’s navel. Samantha did her best to ignore it, focusing instead on the blade of her knife as she continued cutting through the sleeves and collar.

  Once it was clear, she slid the shirt free and said, “What next?”

  Sister Margaret turned to the two men who had carried the teenager out.

  “Roll her onto her side. I need to see if there’s an exit wound.”

  One man grabbed the girl by the shoulders, and the other took her by the hips as they rolled her toward the nun. Sister Margaret bent over and studied the girl’s back. It was smeared with blood, but there were no signs of trauma.

  “Okay. Roll her back over, nice and gentle.”

  They did as she instructed.

  “Get me a bottle of clean water.”

  Samantha raced over to her pack and returned with a bottle of water in hand.

  “The cap’s not even broken on this one,” she said with a note of pride.

  Sister Margaret began pouring it over the wound, and a hole about the diameter of a pencil began to take shape. Blood continued to ooze out.

  She turned to Tanner. “I need a sterilized wipe.”

  Tanner opened the first-aid kit and pulled out several small alcohol wipes.

  “These are all I have.”

  “They’ll do.” Sister Margaret tore open two wipes and carefully scrubbed her hands. She used two more to wipe off the area around the wound.

  Samantha held out her knife. “Here you go.”

  “What’s that for?”

  “To get the bullet out.”

  “Put that thing away. We’re not cutting this girl open.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Finding a bullet without imaging is nearly impossible. Besides, it might be the only thing preventing additional bleeding.”

  “But won’t it kill her?”

  “If she dies, it won’t be because of a piece of lead sitting inside her. It’ll be because of what the bullet destroyed on its way in.” Sister Margaret turned back to one of the men. “Tilt her head back and monitor her breathing. We don’t want her airway to become blocked by her tongue.” She turned to the woman. “Go find something to put over her—coats, blankets, anything. We need to keep her as warm as possible to prevent shock.”

  The woman turned and hobbled back toward the bus, her swollen joints reminding everyone of her affliction. In less than a minute, she returned with two thick blankets, placing one over the girl’s legs, and folding the other to cover her exposed breasts.

  Sister Margaret wiped the wound again, studying it carefully.

  “The blood’s dark, and it’s not pulsing.”

  “Is that good or bad?” said Samantha.

  “It’s good, because it means it’s probably not coming from an artery. Of course, that doesn’t mean she’s not bleeding internally.”

  “And if she is?”

  “If she is, she’s going to die. There’s nothing I can do to stop that.” She turned to Tanner. “I need several clean compresses to stop the bleeding.”

  Tanner dug through the first-aid kit, coming up with a handful of thin white gauze bandages and a roll of surgical tape. Neither looked up to the task at hand.

  Sister Margaret tore them open and placed them over the wound. Almost immediately, blood began to seep through.

  “These aren’t going
to be enough.”

  Tanner looked through the bag for a trauma bandage. There wasn’t one. He searched his pack and pulled out a white t-shirt that could have been mistaken for a small tent.

  “What about this? It hasn’t been worn since it was washed.”

  “It’s not sterile, but it’ll have to do.”

  Using the windshield as a cutting board, Tanner quickly sliced the shirt into pieces with his knife. Once the stack of cloth was thick enough, Sister Margaret laid it over the blood-soaked gauze and applied pressure with both hands. She stood there for ten long minutes, never once letting up. Once she was certain that the bleeding had stopped, she used the surgical tape to hold it in place.

  When she was finished, she stepped back and used the last of the remaining water to clean the blood from her hands.

  “Is she going to live?” asked the woman.

  “If she doesn’t die in the next thirty minutes, there’s a good chance the injury itself isn’t going to kill her. But if she doesn’t get antibiotics in the next couple of days, the wound will likely become septic.”

  She nodded. “They may have medicine where we’re going.”

  “Where exactly is that?” said Tanner. A bus load of infected people taking a roadside sabbatical was not something he encountered every day.

  “We’re going to Mount Weather. We were told that our kind is gathering there to rebuild.”

  Samantha turned to Tanner, her eyes wide.

  “Who told you that?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Word has been spreading for the last few months. There’s a community forming there, a community in which we can be safe from violence like this.”

  “Do you know who’s heading it up?”

  She shook her head. “I have only heard her referred to as ‘Mother’.” The woman turned to Sister Margaret. “Thank you for what you did.”

  “She might still die.”

  “She might, but at least you gave her a fighting chance.” She turned to the two men. “Be gentle loading her back onto the bus.”

  Together, they lifted the girl through the rear door, careful not to disturb the bandage. As they pulled the door closed, the woman turned to face Tanner.

  “Why would anyone do something like that?”

  “People are always looking for a reason to kill.”

  She nodded and then reached out and placed her hand on his arm.

  “Thank you.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You did the most of all. You showed us that there are still some out there who can look past our marred skin and black eyes. There are those who can see us for what we used to be. We won’t forget what you did for us.”

  With that, she offered one last nod and hurried back onto the bus.

  Chapter 8

  The drive from Gretna to Luray took nearly four hours. Issa led the way in her Prius, and Lulu followed, driving the slavers’ flatbed truck. Dolly and Jen rode with Issa, while Marcy and Theresa rode with Lulu. They came in from the west, along Highway 211, passing the Schewel Furniture Company, a BB&T bank, and a Taco Bell, all of them dark and lifeless.

  As was often the case around towns and cities, the closer they got to Luray, the more congested the road became. Tractor-trailers, cars, panel vans, and even a fully loaded logging truck were encased in the perpetual traffic jam. Many of the vehicles’ doors remained open, a hint at the desperation people had faced when the outbreak first manifested. As nearly all of them had learned, however, the virus was not something that could be escaped.

  Jen pointed to a long lazy curve up ahead.

  “The caverns are just around that bend.”

  Issa steered the Prius into a McDonald’s parking lot. The building was dark and the windows shattered. Two distinctive clumps of dried human remains lay beside the door. Bloodstained skulls sat atop yellow and black uniforms, embroidered golden arches still visible on their shirts. Unlike the adjacent roadway, the parking lot was relatively deserted. Apparently, a Big Mac was the last thing escapees had on their minds.

  She brought the car to a stop at the far side of the lot and climbed out. Lulu pulled the flatbed truck in next to her, taking up several empty parking slots. A few seconds later everyone stood huddled together, staring at Issa as if they expected her to roll out charts and maps outlining some foolproof blitzkrieg.

  She didn’t. Instead, Issa bent down and checked the laces on her boots.

  “We got a plan or what?” Lulu said, puffing on a cigarette she had scavenged from one of the dead slavers.

  Issa pointed to a dense plot of trees to the east.

  “Jen says the caverns are that way. The first thing we’re going to do is see if we’re even in the right place.” She turned and started for the trees. “Spread out a little, and try to stay quiet.”

  Dolly followed a few steps behind Issa, and Jen a few behind her. The other three women ignored Issa’s advice and clustered together, twenty or thirty yards back. When the trees finally broke, they did so into a sprawling parking lot, roughly the size of something found outside of a Wal Mart. A crowd of perhaps eighty people huddled in front of a wooden platform. A handful of men could be seen working on the structure, and the intermittent thwacking of hammers reverberated through the air.

  Before Issa could really get a good look at things, a pickup truck turned onto the road leading into the parking lot. She quickly ducked back into the trees to avoid being seen, and motioned for Dolly and Jen to take a knee.

  Once it had passed, they darted over to her.

  “The entrance to the caverns is over there,” Jen said, pointing to the left side of the lot.

  Issa brought her hand up to her brow as she tried to cut the glare of the sun. The brightness of midday was causing her eyes to leak a thin mascara-like substance that slowly trickled down her cheeks.

  The other three women approached from the rear, and Issa let everyone gather together before discussing what to do next.

  “It looks like they’re building something,” said Marcy.

  “A stage,” offered Theresa.

  “That ain’t no stage,” said Dolly. “It’s an auction block.”

  “If that’s true, where are the slaves?”

  No one had an answer. Unfortunately, from their vantage point, much of the lot remained blocked from view.

  “Let’s move further around to get a better look,” said Issa.

  She turned and began walking northeast, careful to stay twenty or thirty feet inside the tree line. Dolly and the other women resumed their respective posts behind her. As they approached the north end of the field, the parking lot came into full view.

  The stage was just that, a stage, likely from a local high school band department. Wooden stairs had been erected on either end to facilitate easier foot traffic. A pot-bellied man stood at the edge of the stage, smoking a pipe and giving directions to a handful of workers as they completed the final preparations.

  Having cleared the trees, they could now see five flatbed trucks parked along the southern edge of the parking lot. Several dozen prisoners had already been unloaded and stood in a jagged line beside the trucks, armed men watching over them.

  Lulu turned to Jen. “Looks like you were right. This is where it’s happening.”

  She nodded. “How are we going to free them with all those guards watching?”

  “It’s not only them watching,” added Marcy. “There’s probably a hundred and fifty people out there now, with more arriving every minute. It’s going to be hard to get close enough without being seen.” She held up the Colt Gold Cup and looked down its sights. “I don’t think I could hit any of them from here.”

  Issa gently pushed the gun down.

  “The only thing we have is surprise. If we give that away, we’re all dead.”

  “If you ask me, this whole thing’s doomed from the start,” said Lulu. “The guards have us outnumbered ten to one.”

  “Not if you count the prisone
rs,” countered Issa.

  Dolly said, “You’re thinkin’ if we set them free, they can help do some of the fightin’.”

  “No. I’m thinking that if fifty or sixty prisoners are running in different directions, it’ll create enough confusion for quite a few of them to get away. Throw in a few well-placed gunshots, and we might just start a full stampede.”

  “That’s a good idea, but it ain’t gonna work unless they know they s’posed to run.”

  Issa nodded. “They also need to know that we have a truck ready to carry them away from here.”

  “But how are we possibly going to get word to them?” said Jen.

  Issa pressed her lips together. “Simple. One of us is going out there to tell them.”

  She cringed. “Who?”

  “The one who has the best chance of not being noticed.”

  Issa looked around the group. Each of the women had their own disfigurements from the pox. Marcy’s joints were swollen, and she tended to hobble from side to side when she walked. Jen’s face and hands were covered with scars from the blisters. Theresa hadn’t been afflicted too badly, although patches of her red hair had fallen out, leaving her scalp bare in some spots. Lulu and Dolly were probably the two least affected, although like all the infected, their eyes were as black as obsidian.

  “I’ll go,” said Dolly.

  Everyone turned to her, surprised.

  “But you’re…” Jen searched for the right word.

  “Old, I believe, is the word you’re lookin’ for? And that part’s true enough. But the way I see it, ain’t nobody gonna pay an old woman no mind.” She lifted her flabby breasts. “What used to be in the attic is now hangin’ in the cellar.” She grinned. “I’ll go, and I’ll find my Jerome. Once I do, I’ll tell him to pass the word on to the others. I can’t shoot for nothin’ anyhow, so this’ll be my part in all this.”

  Issa nodded. Dolly was not only the first to volunteer, she was also the most logical choice.

  “Assumin’ I make it to Jerome, what exactly should I tell him?”

  “Tell him everyone has to try to escape all at once,” said Issa.

  “But how they gonna know when’s the right time?”