Knowing this, Neil attempted to find donors first, which was easier said than done. The donors were either locked in combat with the zombies, recovering from what felt like endless and soul-draining shifts, or were tapped out having given all the blood that was safe to give.
Ten minutes later, after having his tiny staff radio everyone they could to find a donor, Neil walked into Marybeth’s room as if he had walked into a memory of the day before or the day before that or the day before that. He had visited her every day since coming to the valley and the scene was always the same: Marybeth lying in bed sleeping or staring listlessly out the window, while her husband Michael sat in a steel folding chair that was slowly coming apart beneath his bulk, and in the next chair, a much more comfortable piece of office furniture, was their daughter Ann, who was also O negative and who was so pale from the amount of blood she had given that she was almost translucent.
“How’s the battle going?” Michael asked. There was a shadow of remorse about him. Neil could tell he felt guilty about not taking up a position on the walls.
“Stable,” Neil answered passing him a slight smile as his eyes shifted to the IV dripping into his wife’s arm. It was almost out. “Here, let me slow this down a bit. I’m afraid Margaret’s going to be busy for the next couple of hours. We’ve had some casualties. You understand, I’m sure.” Neil slid the runner down, slowing the blood coming from the drip chamber to the slowest possible dribble.
Michael reached out and slid it back. “That’s ok. I know where they keep the extras. I’m getting to be something of an expert.” He laughed a little chuckle that neither Marybeth or his daughter heard; they were both deep asleep as their bodies fought to heal and return to homeostasis.
Neil’s smile remained locked, it felt rigged in place by chicken wire as if it was little more than a child’s school project. He slid the runner back down. “I’m sorry, but I guess it’s not that easy. We’re having an issue with the blood supply. Some of the guys are busy with the battle, so it makes the most sense to slow this down. I’ll get some normal saline when this runs…”
A hard look passed across Michael’s normally pleasant features. “What’s wrong? It’s not the donors, I have their schedules. I know who’s ready in the rotation and I know that it’ll only take an hour, so what’s wrong?”
From the doorway, Deanna said: “It’s Captain Grey. He’s hurt, badly. He needs this.” In her hand was the last bag of O negative blood.
“What the hell are you doing with that?” Michael cried, jumping up. “That’s Marybeth’s!”
As Deanna hid the blood bag behind her back, Neil threw his slight form between them, holding his hand out to Michael as though he was trying to stop traffic at the crosswalk of a school. “Stop it, Michael! It’s not hers. It belongs to the people of the valley and will be distributed as needed by the supervising physician of this facility.”
“Who just happens to be under your command,” Michael said, coldly. “I know what this is all about. Grey’s your friend and you’re putting him over Marybeth.”
“Wrong,” Neil snapped. “Grey may be my friend, but so is Marybeth and so are you. I’m just trying…” He lowered the volume of his voice, “I’m trying to do what’s right. We don’t know what sort of shape Grey is in and Marybeth…”
A silence drew out in the room, one that was long and painful. Neil couldn’t finish the sentence he had started. He couldn’t say: Marybeth has had her chance and now it’s gone, so let her go. That would be too cruel.
The sentence went unfinished perhaps because Michael couldn’t stomach its obvious completion either. Neil cleared his throat. “We can ask the donors for more blood. But right now I need this blood, just in case. We’ll give Marybeth normal saline until we know what’s going on. She’ll be fine.” This was a lie and a sadly obvious one.
“I’ll give her more of my blood,” Ann said. Sometime during the brief argument, she had woken but hadn’t moved a muscle. Neil wondered if she had the energy to. Whenever he saw her, he was reminded of the character Lucy from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, who wasted away while having her blood drained night after night. The bones of Ann’s face were beginning to appear as hard lines beneath her once soft skin.
Michael was pained at the idea and actually moaned aloud. He was just opening his mouth, probably to tell her that she couldn’t, when the sound of racing Humvees came to them. Deanna was out the door in a blink with Neil close behind. She ran with the bag of blood cradled to her chest as though it was a baby and even turned to hit the door with her back to protect it.
In the parking lot were three Humvees, each still rocking from a sudden stop. From two of them, wounded soldiers, with the help of their friends eased gingerly out. The third Hummer had an open back hatch where a stretcher stuck about a third of the way out. Neil could see a set of lower legs on the stretcher. The pants the soldier wore were no longer the soft swirl of greens of normal camouflage. One leg was dark with old blood and the other was blackened like a log pulled from a fire.
Keeping out of the soldier’s way, Deanna moved sideways, crablike, until she could see into the back of the Humvee. She squinted, trying to peer into the dark space and then her face broke. Neil started to head in her direction when a fast moving black blur crashed into him.
It was Sadie. She was tear-streaked and covered in mud and crusted blood. “Are you alriii...” Her hug crushed his ribs and sent the air right out of him in a formless rush. She sobbed against him. When he could find breath he asked, “Are you hurt?”
“No,” she said, pulling back, her tears ending so abruptly that it was a little frightening. “I never get hurt. It’s everyone else who gets hurt and dies.” Her big dark eyes were glassy as she stared at nothing.
The soldiers pulled Grey from the back of the Humvee just then. He was a mess, covered in blood from head to toe, his head lolling from side to side as he was rushed inside. Neil, Deanna and Sadie tried to go in as well, however Margaret Yuan stopped them.
She took the liter of blood from Deanna’s hands, saying: “Find us more or he won’t make it.”
Chapter 23
Neil Martin
Because she was so haggard and drawn, Neil sent Sadie away to sleep. Deanna went to hunt down the O negative donors. There were many tasks that were far more important to the community as a whole, however Neil knew she had become singularly focused and nothing short of all the walls coming down simultaneously would have kept her from getting the blood needed to keep Grey alive.
Neil wished he could be so laser focused on one thing; it would have made his life a lot easier. Instead, after a complaint from one of the officers, he had to make sure the team who was pulling water from the lake for forty two hundred people was staying on task and running at optimum efficiency.
Next, again because of complaints from hungry soldiers, he had to check on the food situation. The man in charge said he couldn’t move the food from the storage facility because of a lack of fuel—and the fuel team said they were maxed out, working at full capacity because of the importance given to constructing the endless series of walls that marched down out of the mountains towards the valley.
Then there were the teams hauling firewood who warned Neil that they were undermanned and that the coming night would get extra dangerous if the fires weren’t kept lit.
“Wouldn’t it be easier if we just hauled a few generators to each site?” Neil asked. There are spotlights at the depot the Department of Transportation out on Mule Trail Road.”
Instead of being grateful at the idea, the man in charge of the wood hauling teams threw his hands in the air. “Why didn’t you tell us that last night? Look at all this fucking wood.” There were huge stacks of it, enough to keep dozens of camp fires burning.
“No reason to be a jerk about it,” Neil snapped. “If I had thought of it earlier, I would have said something then. Now, pick thirty people and go get the generators and the lights. The rest need to be released to me.�
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Neil divided the three hundred men and women and sent a few to the water, fuel and food hauling teams; most of the rest he sent to the wall building team. He kept twenty behind and set them on a new and unsavory task—the areas around the walls were becoming frightfully unsanitary. The hundreds of soldiers fighting at each section had to relieve themselves somewhere and the smell was becoming unbearable.
The Crap Team as they called themselves were sent to find enough port-a-potties, again housed in the Department of Transportation depot, to keep eighteen hundred fighting men from despoiling the environment any more than it was. The Crap Team grumbled, of course but Neil shut them up. “Anyone who doesn’t want this assignment can grab a baseball bat and go man one of the walls. Those are your choices.”
No one changed jobs.
It was after three in the afternoon when Neil felt the situation was well enough under control for him to go back and check on Captain Grey and the other injured soldiers, and, of course, Marybeth. He paused outside the clinic, afraid to go in, afraid that death awaited him on the other side of the doors.
As he stood there, Michael Gates came stomping out, his eyes red and bulging, his large hands opening and closing. He saw Neil and his anger looked to double. “This is your fault!” He strode up to tower over Neil in a rage and grabbed him by his sweater vest in his two meaty hands.
Neil made no move to defend himself. He was the first to admit he wasn’t a fighter and he would readily agree to the fact that Michael owed him more than a beating. If anyone had tried to stop Sadie from getting proper care, Neil’s claws, small and dull as they were, would have come out.
Assuming that the worst had occurred, Neil said: “I’m sorry for your loss, Michael. Marybeth was the finest of women I’ve ever known. I wish I could have said goodbye.”
Michael’s anger lost some of its fire and instead of punching the smaller man, he threw Neil to the ground. “She’s not dead, no thanks to you. She’s still fighting. I’m going to get more blood even if I have to beat it out of someone.” As angry as he was, this sounded like an idle threat and Neil guessed he was going out to beg the donors in person.
“Can I stop in to see her?” Neil asked, squinting up.
The fire came back into Michael’s face and he stood, threateningly over Neil. “You stay away from her. If I catch you in her room, I’ll take your head off.” Michael then jumped in Neil’s Humvee, hit the starter button and sped out of the clinic parking lot.
“You sure showed him,” a voice said from the side of the clinic. It was a soldier with a bloody shirt and a poorly bandaged arm. He stood leaning against the building smoking a cigarette and smirking as Neil picked himself up.
Another voice, this time speaking from just inside the clinic door said: “He did the right thing. There was no honor in this fight. No purpose could have been served by more bloodshed.” It was General Johnston and, despite his words which were true enough, Neil felt a ripple of humiliation go through him.
“Michael is my friend,” Neil told them. “I wouldn’t fight him, no matter what the reason. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He started towards the door but the general didn’t relinquish his position and stood, barring the way.
“You didn’t ask me how the battle is going,” the general stated. “Aren’t you curious?”
Neil shrugged. “I’ve been to the front lines. I’ve seen the situations involved with each and I’m doing everything in my power to support the military. I figured if there was an issue with containment you would have told me. Am I to assume by your presence that you are losing containment on one of the walls?”
“No...I guess I should say yes. We are withdrawing from the Blue Gate in half an hour, once the demolition charges are in place.”
“You’re going to blow up the wall?”
Johnston grinned. “Oh, yeah. It’s going to be a big show. We can’t use our artillery except for one damaged piece so I figure we would use up some of our horded munitions. We’ll wait until the wall has finally been topped and once enough of the stiffs drop off the other side that the fall is no longer hurting them, we’ll light it up...but that’s not why I’m here.”
“Here to visit the wounded?”
He nodded. “Same as you. It’s one of the worst parts of the job, but at least, for the most part there aren’t any grieving widows to console. That is a horror beyond the telling.” Neil glanced into the building but before he could ask, Johnston said: “Captain Grey just got out of surgery, or what passes for surgery around here. He’s alive, but still unconscious. I’m more than a little nervous about that, but I suppose that’s what happens when you have so many holes where they don’t belong. I have to get going but do come by and watch us knock down the wall. It’ll be a blast.”
With a chuckle, General Johnston skipped down the stairs and quick-marched to his Humvee in the parking lot. Neil watched him go and then hesitated turning back to the door; he was dreading going up into the clinic. He didn’t want to see his friend bandaged and deathly pale, and he didn’t want to have to say nice consoling words to Deanna, such as: He’ll be fine. He’s a trooper, and Nothing will keep him down for long. The words would be lies at worst or just hopeful platitudes at best.
And, despite his asking, he really didn’t want to see Marybeth. It had been hard to visit her when she had simply been mortally wounded during an escape he had led; now he was her killer, the man who ‘pulled her plug’ so to speak. He was sure General Johnston had never had to do that.
Steeling himself, mostly by holding his breath and contorting his already maimed face, Neil strode into the clinic heading for Marybeth’s room. He wanted to get the worst over with and it was better to see her without Michael threatening to break his neck. As noiselessly as possible, he slipped into her room.
Ann was there, fast asleep, curled up in a chair with her woody brown hair loose and thrown over face like a cowl blocking the overhead fluorescents. The chair was parked next to the hospital bed upon which Marybeth lay.
Marybeth’s eyes, a dull blue, were open and staring at Neil. He froze, half in the doorway and half out; he’d been hoping to sneak in, murmur a quick apology to her comatose body and then slip away with his conscience at least partially soothed. They stared at each other for a long moment; she regarded him passively, not moving a muscle, while he looked at her with his insides coiling and a tic working at his right eye. Only when he opened his mouth to speak did she move: her head eased from side to side, moving only about an inch in either direction away from center.
He was to be quiet. Perhaps she didn’t want to hear his lame and feeble sounding apology. Perhaps she didn’t want him to wake Ann. Marybeth lifted a finger and tapped her bed, beckoning him.
Neil tip-toed to her bedside and saw that her IV bag was filled with normal saline; a donor, other than Ann hadn’t been found, either that or all the blood had gone to Captain Grey. Neil couldn’t help himself. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “We don’t have enough blood...”
She began shaking her head, telling him again to be quiet. “Are we going to win?” she asked in a brittle voice that had all the strength of an infant’s.
Neil’s answer was entirely reflex: “Yes, of course.” She shook her head again in that tiny way. What did she want? Neil wondered. The truth? Or a lie that would make her feel good about the family she was leaving behind as she slipped into death?
“It doesn’t matter if we win or not,” Neil told her, hoping to strike a middle ground. “You don’t need to worry about that. We are doing everything possible to keep you and your family safe.”
“Tell me the truth.” Her eye color might have been a dull blue, but there was still a spark of life in them. Answering her question wasn’t so easy since Neil didn’t know what the truth was. He had come to assume that the military would either fight off the zombies or contain them in some way. But were either of those happening?
The realistic answer was no. When the big wall fell at the Blu
e Gate, they would find themselves working on borrowed time. Each of the smaller walls would be stop gap measures only, holding the beasts back until new mounds of corpses would grow so large in width, depth, and length that when one of the beasts was struck down, there would be nowhere for it to go but on the valley side of the wall.
When that happened it was only a matter of time before the fighting conditions became too difficult and too dangerous and the men would have to abandon the wall and retreat to the next wall and these were only twelve feet in height in parts. They wouldn’t last nearly so long and then the men would have to retreat again and again.
How many walls could they realistically make? There were at least a thousand cars in the valley. That would make seven walls, maybe eight. That would mean three or four days of constant fighting and dying on the part of the soldiers, and four days of constant drudgery on the part of civilians before they would be forced to give up the valley and retreat to who knew where. That is unless someone could think of some other way to stop the beasts.
“No,” he told her. “We aren’t going to win.” Saying it aloud, actually admitting it to himself had a disconcerting effect. He suddenly felt bone tired as if he could lean back and sleep right there, right that second. It seemed as though his body had taken the admission as an excuse to shut down. His eyes suddenly felt heavy and he fought to stifle a yawn that threatened to overtake him. It would have been rude as Marybeth had opened her mouth to speak.
She took a few seconds to say: “Stop…stop the IV.”
Neil’s eyes were drawn to the bag, hanging above her bed. It was half full and dripping steadily. Stopping it would kill her, perhaps not right away but if no one noticed that the fluids were no longer running into her body, it wouldn’t take long.
The Apocalypse War: The Undead World Novel 7 Page 23
