FACING UNFAMILIAR GROUND _an EMP survival story

by Connor Mccoy

  The stoplights had stopped functioning, so those cars that could be driven, such as the old Volkswagen Bug that was overturned next to a major intersection, were in danger of being hit by cross-traffic. In this case, an ancient International pickup looked to be the cause of the Bug’s demise.

  So, why were all these people living in the street? They smelled of body odor and disease, and he could see that Sally was trying not to wretch. No one came toward them, no one begged or asked for anything. The car dwellers stared silently, moving when necessary to get out of the foursome’s way. They passed what Glen was sure were corpses in the gutter, and twice he saw bodies being dragged into the street.

  Detroit had been a vibrant city, and he was sure people who had owned brightly colored clothing must still own it. However, everything was gray and brown, due to dirt and wear or on purpose he could not know. Away from the open spaces, the shadows between the buildings turned the afternoon to twilight and that further dulled the people. They watched with haunted eyes and Glen thought they were afraid. For some reason, Glen and his companions were different enough from the people of the streets to cause them to draw away.

  They turned onto another street. This one once had been quietly residential, but now there were stalls on the sidewalk, an impromptu market. One pushcart was selling nothing but tortillas, plain tortillas, freshly made. A sign pinned to the cart made it clear that medical supplies, small metal items, and nonperishable foodstuffs were acceptable currency, but money was worse than useless. Try to pay a merchant with it, and you would be driven from the market.

  Point taken, Glen thought. Had he any paper money he’d be tossing it in the trash about now. He was surprised that such a sign was needed. Surely anyone who’d been anywhere in the last three years knew better than to try to pass bills. They had no value except in extreme cases where a vendor had their head in the sand and was counting on the United States to step up and back its currency.

  Mia stopped and parted with some of the small packets of medical supplies Eric had given her before they had departed New Town. Currency had no value anywhere, and he’d known they would need those supplies where they were going. Glen hoped she was spending wisely because those supplies were limited, and he was going to need them himself. At least until they discovered if the small amount of precious metals they carried could be converted, and that could take a while in a town where there was no one they trusted. Silver and gold had value as raw materials, but only if you knew someone who actually was producing items with it. But Mia came away with apples and bottled water, and he had to admit they needed to eat. He noticed she stayed away from the sandwich and bakery stalls, places he’d gravitate to. He’d have to ask her about that later.

  He saw a woman holding a crying child going from stall to stall, asking a question. Time after time the stall operator would shake his or her head, and she would move on. He reached out and caught Mia by the shoulder. “Wait a moment,” he said.

  He went to stand near the woman as she asked yet another vendor for help. Her daughter’s arm hurt, was there a doctor who could help? She could not afford to go to the hospital, and she was pregnant, so she could not pay the other way.

  He did not pretend he didn’t know what she meant. He was appalled there was no medical clinic for the public to access. He stepped closer and put his hand on her arm.

  “I’ll help you,” he said. “For free.”

  She looked at him warily. “No one helps a stranger for free,” she said, and turned away.

  Sally appeared at her other side. “It’s okay,” she said. “He’s a doctor, come here to help. Let him help your daughter.” She reached out for the child, but the mother held on tightly. “She can sit in your lap. Look, we’ll go over there and sit on the steps.” She pointed to high steps leading up to what looked to be a library.

  They moved to the building. Christian and Mia were holding back so not to startle the mother, but Sally sat next to her, talking quietly, soothing the woman with her voice. Glen sat on her other side, and the child looked at him with frightened brown eyes, the lashes coated with tears.

  “Where does it hurt?” he asked the child.

  She pointed to the arm she hugged tightly to her body.

  “May I touch it?” he asked. “I want to feel the bone. Okay?”

  She shook her head no with such vigor that her dark curls whipped around her head.

  “Can you show me where it hurts?” Glen smiled gently. He wanted to draw the child out, but if he were too forceful or too cheerful, or too anything for that matter, he would scare her back into her shell. If she stopped communicating, they were sunk.

  The child pointed to her wrist and Glen could see it was bruised and swollen. He thought about medical history and how doctors assessed a break before x-rays. Best to treat it both as sprained and broken. The young mother was going to have her work cut out for her once this child was feeling better. He reached into his backpack and pulled out an elastic bandage and a small piece of casting plaster to mold into a splint.

  “Can you hold your arm out like this?” he asked the child, demonstrating with his own arm. “I want to splint it, so it feels better.”

  The girl nodded and held out her arm, although her lower lip trembled.

  “That’s right,” said Glen, “hold it just like that. If you can hold it still, I’ll give you a piece of candy.” He motioned for Mia to bring him one of the bottles of water she’d purchased and he dampened the plaster. Then he molded it to the lower edge of the girl's arm and pulled it away to let it harden. Plaster sometimes generated heat and he didn’t want to burn her arm.

  “Okay, Momma, watch me put this on,” he said, holding the now-hardened plaster in place and rolling the bandage around the child’s arm. The trick was to make it tight enough to support the limb without making it so restrictive that it cut off circulation. It likely was going to swell more, and as he wanted to see her again in a day or two, he wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to be in pain. Reluctant patients had a way of not showing up for follow-up appointments.

  “If you have to take it off, or if it becomes too loose and needs to be rewrapped, the important thing is don’t wrap it too tightly. You don’t want to cut off the circulation in your daughter’s arm. Watch her fingers, if they become swollen or start turning purple, then loosen the bandage. Meet me back here in two days at this same time. Okay?” He observed the woman’s face to see that she understood. He slid his hand into the front pocket of his backpack and pulled out a peppermint, handing it to the girl.

  Her face brightened, and she snatched it from his hand, unwrapping it and popping it in her mouth before her mother could tell her no. She walked away under her own power, her uninjured hand clutching her mother’s.

  Glen went to get up, but before he could a man appeared and sat on the steps where the mother and child had been a moment before. The man pulled a none too clean rag from his hand, displaying a nasty wound on the fleshy part of his palm underneath his pinky finger. It was inflamed and oozing and, frankly, smelled disgusting.

  “How did you do this?” Glen asked.

  “Got cut on a piece of glass,” the man said. He looked to be in his mid-30s, tattooed and rough-looking, as if he hadn’t slept in a very long time and hadn’t bathed for even longer. The smell of the wound competed with the smell of his unwashed body.

  Glen had encountered worse in medical school, so he breathed through his mouth and got on with it. He rinsed the hand thoroughly and then washed it with antibacterial soap. It occurred to him that the supplies he had brought with him wouldn’t last a week if he had to deal with many wounds like this one. He used the remainder of the water, rinsing the soap from the laceration.

  “I can’t stitch this,” he said squeezing a line of antibacterial ointment into the gash, “it’s too infected. Throw that disgusting rag away,” he said, gesturing to the filthy piece of fabric on the stairs next to them. “Keep your wound clean. Come see me tomorrow.” />
  A crowd had begun gathering around them, and he searched for Mia. He caught her eye and lifted the empty water bottle, then held up three fingers. He needed something to drink as well as water to treat the wounded. He hoped there wasn’t some nasty microorganism in the bottled water, but for now it was all he had, so he would use it.

  By the time Mia returned Glen was dealing with a teenager who’d stepped on a nail. As he worked, he mentally created a fee structure consisting of bottled water and clean dressings. It was evident personal hygiene was a problem for people living on the street. He knew that was a no-brainer, but until you encounter such situations many of the details escape you, or at least they had escaped him. If he had thought about it, he might’ve realized his patients would have had limited access to water and soap and toothpaste, but he hadn’t thought about it.

  He cleaned and dressed the teen’s foot, which wasn’t infected as of yet, thank goodness, and looked to see who the next patient would be. He was tired, but it was somehow exhilarating to be doing something worthwhile. Seeing patients again wasn’t the effort that he thought it might be. He’d forgotten that he enjoyed healing people.

  When he’d poured the last of his drinking water over a scraped knee, he looked into the crowd and made a pronouncement. “You’ll have to bring your own water,” he said, “and a bottle for payment. I’ll die of dehydration if I keep this up.”

  That was all it took, the next person who approached him handed him two bottles of water as she sat down. She had severe acne and a sizeable infected pustule on her cheek, which was close enough to her eye to alarm him. He cleaned her face, drained the pustule, and treated it with antibiotic ointment. He was going to need a truckload more of that. He used one of his small adhesive bandages to cover the spot. Who knew that a little square of sterile dressing would end up being a precious commodity.

  “You have to keep your face clean,” he said. “See if you can find soap and use it twice a day. I want to keep an eye on this,” he touched a spot on her face where the infection had been, “so come back and see me tomorrow. Okay?”

  “I live in the street,” she said. “So how do I keep my face clean? Where do I find soap? I’m not selling my body for soap. Food, maybe, soap, no.” She looked at Glen with defiance. The group of people watching murmured in agreement.

  “Listen, if you want to keep the sight in that eye, you’ll keep your face clean and see me tomorrow. How you do that is up to you.” He handed her back one of the bottles of water, took an empty one and squirted a small amount of liquid soap into it and handed her that as well. “That should help. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He mentally added water and soap to his list of precious commodities. He had a feeling that list would be a lot longer by the end of the day.

  A spot of bright color caught his attention as a young child wearing a rainbow leotard and a neon pink tutu broke through the circle of adults. She looked about five or six years old, about the age where little girls pull their skirts over their heads during holiday concerts. An agitated woman wearing a nondescript gray coat and carrying a smaller version of the same burst through the crowd.

  She caught the child’s arm, saying, “You mustn’t draw attention to yourself, put this on.” She wrangled the child into the coat, covering the tutu, and buttoned it closed. “It’s not safe. You don’t want the bad men to get you.”

  She’d been speaking quietly, for the child’s ears only, but they were close enough that Glen heard the exchange. How awful it must be to grow up in a society that requires drab conformity to ensure safety. He smiled at the girl as her mother dragged her away, and she smiled back and waved. It was heartbreaking.

  Glen treated cuts, breaks, bruises, and minor ailments for another couple of hours and when he thought he couldn’t cope with one more human interaction, Sally stepped in and told the others to come back tomorrow. There was some whining, groaning, and cries of “I just need…” with various items attached, but she shut them down and sent them away. She had more strength of character than Glen gave her credit for.

  He gathered his supplies. His backpack was so much lighter than it had been when he began that he didn’t know how he was going to go on treating people with no supplies. It was dispiriting, but perhaps when he’d eaten, he’d feel better. It was easier to come up with solutions when you weren’t exhausted and hungry.

  The group fell in line behind Mia, with Sally ahead of him, and Christian behind. Glen thought they must be protecting him, making it easier to wind through the street people. There were cries of ‘Doctor!” as he went by. News must travel fast here. He was too tired to respond, and Sally waved them away, telling them to come to the library steps tomorrow afternoon.

  They followed Mia down an alleyway, and through a parking garage to a locked door. She pulled a keyring from her pocket and unlocked the door, which opened into a stairwell.

  “It’s only three flights,” she said, and started up.

  Glen counted the stairs as they climbed, eleven steps and a landing, eleven more steps and a door. Eleven steps, landing, eleven steps, door. Christian put a hand on his back and pushed him up the last flight of stairs. Glen was grateful.

  They came out of the stairwell and headed down a long hallway, stopping three-quarters of the way down in front of a door with the number 42 in bronze. Mia unlocked the deadbolt and then the handle, stowing her keys back in her pocket. Glen saw her cross her fingers as she pushed open the door.

  Chapter Nine

  Mia knew the chances of her family’s townhouse apartment being untouched were slim. She desperately hoped it would be, if perhaps not looted, at least not trashed. She crossed her fingers behind her back, a habit from her childhood, and pushed the door open.

  At first glance, the apartment looked untouched, although all the pictures had been removed. That seemed odd, but not as strange as the sound coming from the hallway. A man appeared, wearing only boxers and socks. He was rubbing his eyes as if he’d just woken up. He was startled when he saw them standing in the doorway.

  “I wondered what woke me up,” he said sleepily. “I didn’t know I had company.”

  He was unarmed and seemed surprisingly unafraid. He ran a hand through his untidied hair and stared at Mia. “Do I know you?” he asked. “You seem familiar to me.”

  At that moment Glen stepped between Mia and the man. His shoulders were rigid, and Mia could tell he had steeled himself for a confrontation. She stepped up next to him and put a hand on his arm.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “This is just how things are now. And anyway, he doesn’t look like much of a threat, does he?” She felt Glen relax beside her.

  The sleepy man clapped a hand to his forehead. “I know!” He went to a drawer and pulled out a picture of Mia’s family. “Look, it’s you!”

  He displayed a framed photo of a family in which Mia was front and center. “This is your apartment, isn’t it?” A look of profound disappointment crossed his face. “I’m going to have to leave, aren’t I?” He looked down at himself. “Well, not dressed like this, I hope. Give me a minute.”

  He disappeared back up the hallway. Mia and Sally looked at each other and broke into giggles. Mia didn’t know who this man was, but he’d made her laugh for the first time in what seemed like ages. She dropped her backpack on the floor and sank into the couch facing the sliding glass door onto the balcony. There was nothing but two bars holding the window closed. A balcony had become a liability, apparently.

  “Do we really have to turn him out?” Sally asked in a low voice. “He’s so funny, and he seems harmless.”

  “You can’t take for granted that he’s harmless,” Glen said. “Some people are excellent actors.”

  “He’s right,” the man said, coming back into the room. “These days you should just automatically assume that everyone is out to get you. Or at the very least out to stay alive at any cost.” He reached out his hand to Glen. “Melvin Foles,” he said. “I’m a medic of sorts. I’ve been trying t
o establish a regular supply line for medical goods, but it’s an uphill battle.”

  “Medical supplies?” Glen said, his interest showing on his face. “I’ve only been here a few hours, and mine already are severely depleted. Can you tell me how to go about replenishing them?”

  Melvin sat in a chair across from the couch. “I usually go out about now, to see if there’s anyone I can help. But it can wait. It’s not like it won’t all still be there.”

  “What do you do out there?” Mia asked. She liked this unassuming man. He was friendly in a hostile world, and yet he knew what was what. That was a good quality in an ally. She thought they should keep him as one.

  “Oh, you know, I roll corpses into the gutter for pick up, hand out chicken soup and water. Sew people up when I can. I was a medic in the Middle East, and this is mostly field medicine, so I’m right at home. But supplies are deadly difficult to come by. Just when I think I’ve got something set up, the Koupe keep interfering. They either disrupt the roads, or they take the supplies for themselves. It’s fucking frustrating.”

  “How do the hospitals operate?” Christian asked. “The one we passed had its lower floors burned out.”

  “They do that on purpose,” Melvin said, grimacing. “It’s easier to restrict access if you’ve only a couple of stairwells to guard. Trained doctors are pricey, only the very rich can afford them. Every procedure brings in profit. They live well, and therefore they have to protect themselves from the masses. I have practically nothing. I help everyone and, so far, knock on wood,” he knuckled his head, “I’ve been left alone.”

  “Left alone by whom?” Sally asked. “This Koupe thing you talked about? Is that like syndicated crime or something?”

  “The Koupe Tribinal, or Cut Court if you prefer the English version, is a tribunal set up by the very wealthy and powerful of the city. Needless to say, you don’t want to come to their attention. If you go before them, you pretty much can count on being executed. I’ve never heard of anyone coming out of there alive. Syndicated crime has far more sympathy and shows more mercy than the Koupe. Hell, regular criminals do too. They, at least, are just trying to stay alive. The Koupe is amassing power. Far more dangerous, in my opinion.”