FACING UNFAMILIAR GROUND _an EMP survival story

by Connor Mccoy

  “Let’s go find out.” Sally was already on her feet, her blisters forgotten with the prospect of clean hands and face.

  They were back in fifteen minutes with damp faces, wiping their hands on their pants.

  “We didn’t want to pay for a towel,” Mia said. “But it’s great in there. There’s a river out back and a waterwheel. The waterwheel pumps water up onto a big tank on the roof, and gravity feeds it back down again.”

  “I wanted to ask where the wastewater went,” Sally said, “but then I decided that I probably didn’t want to know. I’m glad we’re not traveling downriver.”

  “I was thinking,” Christian said, “if the shuttle doesn’t come before nightfall, do you want to rent a tent? I’ve got a necklace I could trade.”

  “That’s not a necklace from my mom’s jewelry box, is it?” Sally asked.

  “No, of course not,” Christian said. “I didn’t steal from your parents.”

  Glen cut in before a full-fledged argument broke out. “No. Save your stuff. It’s a mild enough night, and we can keep watch in shifts. If we rent a tent, then we’ll become a target. People with no way to pay can’t rent tents. Christian, why don’t you come with me to see the waterwheel.”

  Christian followed him into the rest stop-come-trading post, and they looked out the back window at the water-powered system. It really was ingenious.

  “I’m going to clean up some,” Glen said. “But before I do that, I think the girls are a little touchy about things that link them to the past, and I don’t blame them for it. I would think twice about speaking openly about items you may have stolen after you joined up with the girls. I’m not saying they’re fragile, in some ways they are more resilient than you or I, but certain topics set them off. I’d rather avoid internal conflicts. Okay?”

  “Sure,” Christian said. “You think there is going to be conflict in the city, don’t you? Gangs and street people?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Glen said. “In fact, it would surprise me if there weren’t gangs and street people. I think you’ll find that humans can be worse than zombies when they revert to pack mentality. Back in New Town, there were plenty of resources, but in the city, there will be pockets of people who have food and shelter and even bigger pockets of people who don’t. We will have to stay alert all the time.”

  Christian nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, boss. Will we tell the girls?”

  “Yes,” Glen nodded. “But not until we are almost at the city.”

  Chapter Four

  Melvin Foles squatted next to a corpse on the sidewalk and shook his head. He’d seen the old woman into the next life, but had he been able to obtain the medicine she needed. She could have lived many more years. The infection she died from was easily treated with antibiotics. Even out here on the street, she would have survived.

  He pulled the body to the edge of the sidewalk and rolled her into the gutter. The night men would come soon and take her away. Where the corpses went, he did not want to know. He just knew that if you put them in the gutter, they’d be gone by morning. And he thanked the night men for that. If not for them, the city would be teaming with rotting corpses.

  “Melvin!”

  He looked up to see a tall black man striding down the street. “Joe,” Melvin held out his hand to the man and then shook, touched shoulders, and broke apart.

  “Melvin, you’ve got to get out of here, man. This ain’t no place for you. You looking to get killed?” He looked down on Melvin, but just slightly. It was the bulk of the man that intimidated Melvin. Joe was all bulk, but fit, not soft. He reminded Melvin a little of The Rock, Dwayne Johnson from back in the day. The kind of man who feared nothing and no one.

  Melvin was tall, although not as tall as Joe, and rangy. Thin and wiry, with long, greasy black hair. He wore it short when he was in medical school. Back then, short back and sides were the sign of a serious student. A man headed for big things. Now he was too lazy to cut it. Not that he could, there wasn’t anyone cutting hair anymore, and if he did it himself, he’d look even shaggier than he did already. There really was no point.

  Joe was bald, and at the moment he was thoughtfully rubbing one palm over his head. “Man,” he said, “you will get yourself killed. This here is black territory.”

  “I’ll leave just as soon as you show me a black doctor out here trying to heal the sick.” Melvin crossed his arms. “I’m waiting.” He looked at his nonexistent watch. “No?” he said. “Well then, I’ll just get back to it, shall I?”

  “Come on, Melvin,” Joe said. “If you aren’t out of here before dark, someone going to come out here and pop you one. Then who’s going to cure us?”

  “I’ll be off the street before daylight fades,” Melvin said, sighing. He used to say dark. He’d be in before dark, but it was dark all the time now. Even the sunniest days failed to illuminate the streets, and it was rarely sunny. Cloud cover had descended, and who knew when it would lift again? He looked up. The sky was lighter than the city around him, so it still was daytime.

  “Listen, man,” Joe said, “my brother got himself cut up. Can you come over and take a look at him on your way out of the hood?”

  “Knife fight?” Melvin asked. “He’s going to get himself killed. One of those knife wounds gets infected, and we’ll lose him. There’ve been no shipments of meds in more than three weeks. I get notice that they’ve left the warehouse, but they never get here.”

  “It’s that damn Cut Court,” Joe said, lowering his voice. “They’re waylaying the shipments on the way into the city and keeping all the medicine for themselves. Someone should take them out.”

  Melvin let his voice drop too. “The Koupe Tribinal? I wouldn’t be surprised. Don’t you be thinking about taking that group on, Joe. That’s a guaranteed end to life.”

  He made his way north along the avenue, checking in doorways for signs of habitation. Tomorrow, when it was lighter, if it was lighter, he corrected himself, he’d brave the interior of some of the buildings. There would be more sickness in there than out here, and he may not have antibiotics, but there were ways of alleviating suffering and promoting healing that didn’t require medicines.

  Joe fell into step beside him, and Melvin smiled. He had his own bodyguard. Joe often followed him through the darker places in the city, keeping the worst of humanity at bay. Melvin appreciated the assistance almost as much as he appreciated the company.

  “The man who cut my brother?” Joe said.

  “Yeah, what about him?” Melvin asked.

  “He disappeared. The word on the street is that the Cut Court got him.” Joe dropped his voice when he said the word ‘court.’

  “That’s a good thing then, yes? He won’t be cutting your brother again.” Melvin had little patience with the posturing and blade waving that went on. There was so much the people could be doing to rebuild the city. So they didn’t have electricity, so what? That was no reason to slide into barbarianism.

  Melvin knelt to talk to an older man in a doorway, offering him clean water and a package of crackers. The man took them gratefully.

  “Are you well, brah?” Melvin asked, using the language of the street. Or, more specifically, the slang of this community.

  “I’m worried about my brother,” Joe said.

  “We are on the way there now, Joe,” Melvin said. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  “You misunderstand,” Joe said. “I’m worried the Court will come looking for him. They took one man, why not the other?”

  “I see your point.” Melvin thought a moment. “Well then, tell everyone he died. There’s no point in coming after a dead man.”

  “But then the other man will be tried for killing Daniel. My lie would get him killed,” Joe said.

  “Let’s get him healed first,” Melvin said, “then we’ll worry about keeping him from the Koupe. Okay?”

  “First things first. Okay, Melvin, but don’t you let them kill our Daniel.” Joe gave Melvin the side ey
e, which Melvin could only just see in the dark.

  “Don’t you go cursing me with the evil eye, or I’ll leave Daniel to rot.” Melvin raised an eyebrow at Joe.

  Joe had the grace to blush. “Yeah, okay. No curse.”

  Joe let Melvin through the lobby of an office building and up many, many flights of stairs.

  “Why couldn’t you live closer to the first floor?” Melvin asked. “And why an office building? Wouldn’t an apartment be more comfortable?”

  “The higher the floor, the less likely someone will come looking,” Joe said. “Although it almost killed Daniel getting up here after he had been cut. And the night people are less likely to look for people living in work areas. These buildings have everything you need. We have a rainwater collection system on the roof that gravity feeds water to our apartment. The toilets work better the higher you go up. Stuff like that. And we got these huge windows. We can see what’s happening down on the street.”

  “Like looking at ants,” Melvin muttered. “What floor are we on now?”

  “Fifteen, only seven more to go.”

  Melvin refrained from commenting. Although he thought a good number of things, he had to save his breath for the climb.

  Daniel, when they finally found him on the couch in an office abandoned by a CEO, was in bad shape. He was sliced on the face, forearm and across his back. The cut on his face penetrated through to the inside of his mouth, which gaped when he talked. Not that he spoke much. He appeared to be high on some kind of narcotic.

  “What did you give him?” Melvin asked Joe, once he got his breath back.

  “Found some oxycontin in one of the offices,” Joe said. “Gave him a few.”

  More than a few, if Melvin was any judge, but at least Daniel wasn’t feeling any pain.

  “Is there a first aid kit here somewhere?” Melvin asked.

  Joe left, and Melvin assumed he was fetching the first aid kit. He fished in his coat pocket for his suture kit. At one time it would have held actual medical supplies, but he’d been reduced to using a sewing needle and dental floss to stitch up people. He tried not to think about it too much because that was a hole he may never get out of.

  He cleaned Daniel’s face and began stitching the gash, being extra careful in the area where the knife had penetrated into his mouth. Daniel groaned, but didn’t thrash or try to bat his hands away, so Melvin just kept stitching. He didn’t feel any satisfaction when he was finished. The man would have a horrific scar on his face, and that was if the healing went well. God only knew how he’d look if it got infected.

  Melvin moved on to the other gashes, cleaning them up and sewing the edges together. He was tempted to use a blanket stitch so the scars would be more interesting, but Daniel was too far gone to give him permission. He wasn’t going to further deface the man without his consent.

  Joe had not returned, and it was time for Melvin to get out of this neighborhood. He jotted some instructions on a pad of notepaper. That was one advantage to an office, there always would be plenty of paper and pens. He tried impressing upon Joe the importance of finding him if infection set in, but some things didn’t necessarily come across on paper. A sense of urgency was one of them.

  Before he left he boiled some water over the camp stove Joe had set up in the staff room. He pulled two thermoses from his pack and filled them, saving half the pan for Joe and Daniel. He looked in at Daniel, who was sleeping fitfully. What Melvin wouldn’t give for some penicillin or even moldy bread.

  Back out on the street, Melvin walked quickly out of the business district and toward the East Side. He hadn’t walked more than three blocks when he saw a woman sitting on a stoop in the dark. She was ragged and shivering.

  “Do you have a cup?” he asked.

  She nodded and pulled a chipped ceramic mug out of her bag. It had a picture of a dog on it, and Melvin wondered if it had been her dog. He didn’t ask her. He’d learned the hard way that asking personal question could get you punched, or cried on, sworn at, the reactions were as varied as the number of people. He was curious and he wanted to connect, but not enough to get a mug cracked over his head.

  He took the mug, opened a packet of dried soup into it and added hot water from his thermos. He stirred it with the eraser end of a pencil he’d lifted from Joe’s dwelling and handed it to her.

  “Be careful, it’s hot.”

  She nodded and took the mug from him without speaking. This wasn’t unusual. Many of the street people had stopped talking after time, but there was another contingent as well. Those whose voice boxes had been removed by the council, The Koupe Tribinal, so they couldn’t tell what, and who, they’d seen there.

  Melvin supposed he should be happy that the Court wasn’t killing everyone who was hauled there against their will, but having your voice box cut out, well, that was brutal. He wasn’t sure why they took the voice box rather than the tongue, but either way, it was barbaric.

  He moved on, walking in the direction of home but, taking detours where needed. He handed out more soup, and cleaned cuts and scrapes. He dragged bodies to the curb. It was work that needed to be done, and he was able to do it, so he did. Cleaning up Detroit and feeding her citizens.

  He made sure to pass the hospital on his way. It was tragic, but most of the people who went there were turned away. And Melvin would find them on the street outside, crying and wailing over their injured children or spouses. You had to have something of value to be admitted by an actual institute of healing, and most people had nothing to offer. He would help them in whatever way he could.

  A woman standing on the sidewalk outside the hospital was holding a child, looking in through the big revolving door. The child really was too big to be carried, but she held him unwaveringly. They both were crying, the boy sobbing, and the woman with tears silently sliding down her cheeks.

  Melvin stopped a few feet from her, far enough away that she wouldn’t be spooked, but close enough that they could speak.

  “Can I help?” he asked quietly.

  “He’s hurt,” she said. Her voice was rough from crying.

  “And what’s wrong with him?” He gave her a small reassuring smile. At least he hoped it was reassuring, he’d feel awful if someone told him it was actually creepy.

  “He fell, and his arm isn’t working properly,” she said. She nodded at the hospital doors, “They won’t see him.”

  “No, hospitals don’t help common people anymore,” Melvin said. “They are all about helping themselves.”

  She nodded, her face looking sad. “What can I do? Will he heal right if no one will see him? Or will he end up all bent and crippled?”

  “I can’t say, but if you let me help you, I may be able to set his arm.” It looked pretty bad just hanging there, but who knew? It may not be as bad as it looked.

  “Do we have to go far?” she asked. She seemed unwilling to move from the hospital doors.

  “We’ll go in there,” he said, pointing at the doors in front of him. The generator must have come on because the waiting area had started to glow with warmth. “They aren’t using the reception area for anything.”

  He led them in through the doors, past the resentful-looking receptionist and over to the couch across from a coffee table. He had her lay the boy on the table and folded his own coat to slide under his head. Melvin sat on the couch next to the boy.

  “What’s your name?” he asked the boy while he carefully straightened the boy's arm. The fracture was apparent. Although the bone hadn’t broken through the muscle and skin, the forearm was a misshapen lump, visible at the site of the break.

  “Grady,” the boy said, the waver of fear in his voice.

  “Well, Grady,” Melvin said, “this is going to hurt. We want your arm to grow straight so you’ll be able to toss a ball with your buddies, so I need to set it. Okay?”

  The boy nodded, his eyes wide with fear.

  Melvin turned to his mother. “Go sit by Grady’s head and hold his good hand
steady. If you have something he can bite down on, that’s even better.”

  The woman reached down and tore some material from the hem of her tattered dress. She wadded it into a ball and offered it to the boy.

  “Go ahead,” Melvin said. “Bite down on that, it will make it better.”

  He examined the boy’s arm, calculating exactly how much force he would have to use to set the bone, and then he turned to the mother again.

  “Talk to him. Tell him a story that will distract him or ask him questions he has to think about the answers to. Grady, are you ready?”

  The boy nodded, and the mother started talking. Melvin grabbed the arm with both hands, pulled the break apart and carefully set the bones together again. Grady called out in pain once, and then it was over.

  “Good job, Grady. Good job, Mom.” Melvin felt relief wash over him. That could have gone very wrong but didn’t. He fished a disposable coffee cup from his bag and made the boy some soup. He wasn’t done yet, but he wanted to administer some pain pills, and that wasn’t wise on an empty stomach.

  “I still need to splint this,” Melvin said. “But I want you to drink this first. Okay?”

  Grady nodded and took the cup, sipping the warm liquid. The mom turned away.

  “Are you hungry?” Melvin asked. “I’ve only got one cup, but I’ll make you some when Grady’s finished.”

  She nodded. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I didn’t know what to do. Or what I would have to do.”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything. He knew what she meant, what service she might have to offer to get her boy treated by anyone but Melvin himself, but he wouldn’t embarrass her by saying so.

  “I still need to splint Grady’s arm,” Melvin told her. “And I want to give him something for the pain, but he needs to finish his soup first.”

  “All done,” Grady said lifting the cup in the air. “Your turn, Mom.”

  Melvin took the cup and made soup for the woman. Then he poured some hot water into the lid of the thermos so it could cool. He got up. “You two stay here,” he said, “I need to find some things.”