“I think . . .” Joe snatched the flashlight from Henry’s hand and picked up the broom. “I think you’re a goddamn loon, that’s what I think. Let’s go.” Grabbing Henry by the arm, Joe handed him the broom and tugged him along.
The brush against his shoulder by Henry and Joe nearly knocked the flashlight from his hand. Taking a step closer, George, turned on his flashlight and shined it on the power lines.
“George!” Joe called out in the distance. “You coming.”
“Yeah.” George turned off the light. “Right behind you.” Almost in a daze, George side-stepped his way toward Joe and Henry. After looking at the arguing pair, he checked out the lines one more time. Hooking the flashlight back on his belt, George knew, from that moment on, he had a new mission. No matter what it took, he had to do everything in his power to keep Henry from going beyond just looking at that wall.
Beyond the Wall
Book 3
CHAPTER ONE
October 8
Beginnings, Montana
FIVE YEARS POST-PLAGUE
The shill cry of pain echoed through the quiet halls of the clinic, an indication that something had gone awry. In a very pregnant state, Sarah’s tall body went numb and her knees buckled upon her entrance through the double glass doors. A split second before her unconscious body careened face forward to the floor, her arms were grabbed.
It took everything Dr. Dean Hayes and Ellen Slagel had to lift Sarah to the awaiting cart. Both small, they struggled with the heavy woman who still was three weeks from term. Barely laid upon the gurney, Dean and Ellen wheeled her with speed down the corridor.
Hand on Sarah’s neck, Dean peered across the cart to Ellen. His words were breathy through his rushed movement. “Pulse is really weak. Skin’s clammy. Respiration shallow. Everything ready?”
“O.R. Two,” Ellen replied. “Prepped and waiting.”
“When did she radio?”
“Not long before she walked in.”
Dean looked down to Sarah. “Did she say anything else?”
“Just that she was in labor.”
Without losing speed, they turned the bend swinging out the gurney wide and nearly knocking over Dr. Andrea Winters who moved in a quickened pace.
Spinning, Andrea walked backwards as she called out. “Where are you taking her?”
“O.R. Two,” Dean answered.
“Can’t.” Andrea said. “That’s our burn room. Take her to Three.”
“We have two ready.” Dean stated. “She’s in distress.”
“And I have twenty men battling a blaze out at Cole’s house. I need room two.” Andrea turned again and charged off calling as she did. “Take her to three.”
“Shit.” Dean shook his head. “This sucks.” They moved the gurney near the operating rooms. “Sarah can’t spare our prep time.”
Ellen felt Dean slowing the cart down. “What are you going to do?”
“Screw it.” Dean turned the gurney in a rush. And even though they weren’t supposed to, feet-end first, they barreled the gurney through the double doors of operating room two.
“Bring it in closer!” Joe Slagel ordered out in his rough style. He moved with authority through the men who manned the hoses. Attached to a water tanker driven to the living section, and the valves that emerged from the ground, everyone who could, worked to battle the blaze on the corner home. “Keep it going. Keep it steady. They aren’t out yet!” He pivoted to the right tapping his hand on the shoulders of Scott and Dan who held tight a heavy hose. “Take it to Bill’s. Keep watering him down.” Joe indicated to the first house in the next row. “We can’t save this place, let’s protect the others.” He moved back to where the larger grouping of men concentrated on fighting the flames that lit up Beginnings’ evening sky as if it were day. He peered to the team preparing to go in. “Henry!” Joe sought out his cohort in council. “Henry!”
“Here, Joe.” Lanky and tall, Henry sped Joe’s way.
“Shut down all valves. Sectors two through nine.” Joe instructed in a fast manner. “Down them. I want everything diverted here. All water pressure here. Got that?”
“Clinic’s sector four.”
“Shit. Can you bypass?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good boy.” Joe gave a swat to Henry’s arm in his move back to the fire fighters. “I need that team in there! Now! Christ.” Joe slid his hand down his smoke covered and sweaty face. “Where the hell is Frank?”
No more than a second after Joe asked, a jeep screeched to halt and Frank jumped his towering body from the just stopped vehicle.
“Sorry, it took so long, I was ten miles out. What started it?” Frank began to take off his shoulder harness. “Bet me it was David.”
“He’s twelve, Frank. No.” Joe said.
“He’s a pyro, Dad, he started the fire at the field house last Tuesday.” Frank looked to the burning home. “They didn’t come out?”
“David did.”
“See, what I tell ya.” Shaking his head, Frank carried his shoulder harness to the jeep, set it on the seat and reached in the back for a tarp.
“What are doing?” Joe asked.
“Going in.” Frank carried the tarp and dropped it on the street into a large puddle that formed.
“The hell you are. We have a team for that.”
Frank rolled his eyes and stomped on the tarp saturating it.
“Frank. No. That’s an order.”
In the distance a voice called out. “He’s out. He’s out.”
“Thank God.” Joe stated and turned to see. His eyes closed briefly when he spotted only Cole, coughing and grabbing his chest, emerge from the house. “No. Kimmy must still be in there.”
“Shit.” Frank raced ahead, forgoing the tarp. “Hose me down! Hose me down!” He cried out.
Joe seeing his son walking into the water’s stream, charged to him, grabbing his arm. “No Frank, it’s too bad in there.”
“She’s six years old, Dad. Six.” Wet from head to toe, Frank pulled from his father’s hand and stormed to the house. Holding his arms over his head, shoulder first, he blasted through the front door of the fire enraged house.
“Son of a bitch.” Joe grabbed on to a hose and moved closer to the house. “Keep it on the second floor!”
The beeps of the heart monitor were steady and nearly the only noise in operating room two.
Ellen secured the final patch to Sarah’s chest. “Hooked up. Vitals are stable. Talk about unable to handle labor.”
A crooked grin graced Dean’s face as he looked to Ellen from the caesarean section tray. “Be nice.” He grabbed the anti-bacterial solution and painted it on Sarah’s stomach.
“She passed out. If I were the first person to give birth in, I don’t know, say . . . four years. I’d make a big deal out of it.”
“She did make an entrance.” Dean lifted the scalpel.
“That she . . .” Ellen’s words were cut short by the immediate, rapid, out of control beeping of Sarah’s heart monitor. “Dean?”
The scalpel clanked onto the tray when Dean dropped it. Wide his eyes grew and he stepped a foot back from Sarah. “Oh, my God.” His hands lifted in a hover over the protruding stomach.
“What’s happening?” From the monitor to Dean, Ellen finally looked. “Shit.”
Not only did Sarah’s body shift, but her stomach moved violently as well. Fetal limbs were clearly seen moving about under the skin’s surface as if some sort of monster trying to poke through. “Dean.”
“Tell me this baby is not convulsing in utero.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I’m not chancing it.” Swiping up the scalpel to continue where he left off, he brought the sharp instrument close to the flesh of Sarah’s stomach. Just as he was about to slice, the one long beep of the monitor caused him to stop. He looked up . . . Flat line.
How long? Too long. Joe watched the inferno before him and witnessed no sign of his s
on’s emergence. He didn’t know whether time had just passed quickly or if it was his father’s worry that made it seem like Frank was in that house forever.
A thunderous crack emanated and he looked to see flames sear through the second floor windows. Joe closed his eyes. His heart raced watching the fire rage, and seeing what was happening, sent a fear through him. A fear he could only convey though a prayer in his mind. “God help you, Frank.”
With another burst of flames that caught everyone’s attention, came a loud crash of glass. Out of the front window of the first floor, Frank burst through. His back arched as he rolled out and on to the grass, cradling in his arms, the body of the little girl. Stumbling to his feet he held Kimmy’s limp body, her lifeless arms and legs dangled over the sides of his huge arms. He dropped to his knees safely from the house.
“Back up.” Joe called out as he barged through those who gathered around. “Back up.” He broke through. “Frank.”
With a hand bigger than her face, Frank felt for a pulse on the still little girl. His dark eyes rose to Joe. He shook his head, and then Frank, laid Kimmy on the ground, hovered over her, pinched her nose and covered her mouth with his.
Joe, like everyone else who wasn’t working on that fire, watched Frank and prayed.
“Nothing.” Ellen kneeled upon the cart, her hands cupped and compressing to Sarah’s chest.
“Stop it.” Dean ordered out. “Stop.”
“But, Dean . . .”
“Don’t. Her body’s moving enough.” Dean tried to hold steady the jolting stomach. “Prep the P.C.R.S. instead.”
“Dean, I . . .”
“Get it ready! I have to go in.” After a deep breath, Dean inserted the scalpel and made a quick clean incision across the distended flesh.
Ellen raced across the operating room. She grabbed the syringe and the vial marked ‘P.C.R.S.’, She plunged the needle into the vial and filled it accordingly as she made her way back to Sarah. “Ready.”
“One minute.”
“Dean.” Ellen looked to the clock on the wall.
“I’m almost there. Find your spot.”
Ellen’s trembling fingers felt about the breastbone, and to the left of it, she stopped. Steady she held her index finger there and the ready syringe above it. “Tell me.”
“One more minute. Not before. On my call.” Dean’s words were strained. “Come on, kid, stop moving. I can’t grab him.”
“Dean, hurry.” Ellen watched the secondhand of the clock go around again.
“I almost . . . now, El.” Dean ordered out.
In a swinging ax motion, Ellen brought down the syringe with all of her strength, rammed it into Sarah’s chest and injected the serum. “It’s in.”
“He’s out.” Dean’s small hands lifted the frail and violently shaking infant who struggled and gurgled in his breaths. He stared at the heart monitor still holding the child. His head nodded slowly as his mind beckoned for the noise of Sarah’s life, and then his eyes closed in relief when he heard the beeping. “Close her up, El.” Dean moved from the operating table. “I have to take care of him.” Not two steps from the table, Dean’s stomach instantly gnawed. The infant in his hands, the small baby boy that shook and gasped for each ounce of air, stopped moving. His tiny arms and legs just dropped over Dean’s fingers. His short life . . . was over.
“Come on.” Frank begged, tilted his head with a intake of air then brought his mouth back down to Kimmy. He shook her gently and breathed into her again.
Andrea slid into the grass in front of him setting down a small oxygen tank and mask. Her trembling hand reached for Kimmy’s neck as Frank continued to try to revive her. She lifted her stethoscope from her bag and brought it to Kimmy’s chest.
Frank noticed no one except for Kimmy. He tried to give her the life that she seemed to so much be resisting. Breathing into her over and over again.
“Wait.” Andrea held her hand up to Frank as she listened. Her smiling eyes lifted to him. “I have a pulse.” She quickly placed the oxygen mask on Kimmy.
Frank’s head went far back in relief and he gasped out the adrenaline that still pumped through his veins. He closed his eyes in gratefulness. Kimmy shook in his arms and coughed uncontrollably. But one thing was for sure, she was alive.
CHAPTER TWO
October 9
Perhaps they were an addiction from his years in the CIA, but Joe loved wearing his short sleeved, white button down shirts. To him they spelled comfort, not to mention the front pocket was a great place to put his cigarettes. He did however, become increasingly annoyed at the fact that they kept getting stained. It wasn’t like he could run out into the apocalyptic world and pick one up at will, and Beginnings’ clothing division just hadn’t grasped the hang of making dress shirts.
Joe thought he walked alone. He didn’t. He should have known the second he walked into his office not to take a sip of his coffee, because it never failed. The passing of the hot beverage through his lips was disrupted when Joe jolted from the sudden intrusion into his office.
“Hey, Joe.” George Hadly called out chipper.
“Goddamn it.” Joe wiped the splashed coffee from his shirt. He walked around to his desk and sat down. “You’re early.”
“I finished my inventory.” George took a seat before Joe’s desk. Though the same age as Joe, George looked older. His hair was gray as opposed to Joe’s barely receding, non-silvered crop. And he had a lot more lines on his face. Perhaps aged scars of the worry he gathered in his years of presidency. “Short meeting with or without our third council?” He asked.
Joe smiled. “Henry can’t make it. Seems he’s a bit preoccupied with situating the wireless radio system.”
“Yes!” George exclaimed, drawing in his clenched fist in a youthful excitement to his chest.
“It worked.” Joe leaned back. “You’re brilliant. I wasn’t sure when you brought the notion up. But you knew Henry.”
“Once he puts his mind to something, he doesn’t finish until he figures it out.”
“Like the wall.” Joe whistled. “Thank God the wireless is taking his mind off of that.”
“I thought we were losing him.” George twirled his index finger around his own temple.
“Thanks for not letting that get out.”
George closed his eyes and shook his head in a ‘not a problem’ manner.
“All right. Agenda.” Snapping forward, Joe pulled a stack of papers before him. “Top priority. A guard at containment. Winter’s coming. Straggling survivors will be nil. We can put some of Frank’s men on shifts in there, instead of the greenhouse.”
“Sounds good. And speaking of Frank.” George watched Joe roll his eyes slightly. “How is he? I thought, and I’m sorry, but I thought his stunt last night was a hidden suicide. You know, go out literally in a blaze of glory.”
“You and me both.” Joe shook his head. “I don’t know where his head is anymore. Frank’s always been mean, but lately.” He whistled. “And he doesn’t care about anything.”
“Ever since the Robbie incident and we became more lenient with the survivors, he’s been tougher on his men and the survivors who screw up.” George stated.
“It’s not that.” Joe said assured. “Not the survivors at all. It’s Frank. And you said it all in the beginning of you statement. Ever since the Robbie incident. Period.” Seemingly so lost, Joe leaned back in his chair. “It been months. He’s not getting better. And I’m afraid if something doesn’t snap him out of it, Frank . . . is going to snap.”
^^^^
“I’m not here.” Ellen announced as she stepped in the clinic lab and shut the door.
“That’s a switch.” Dean said sarcastically. He sat on a stool before the center counter separating papers.
“I mean if Frank comes by.” Ellen walked to him “Maybe I can disguise myself. Change my hair.” She lifted up her dark blonde hair. “What do you think?”
“I think hiding from your spouse is n
ot a sure sign of a lasting marriage. And, you just missed him he was here ten minutes ago looking for you.” Dean finally peered up at her. “Why are you hiding from your . . . husband anyhow?”
“He’s in one of those ‘find anything to yell at El about’ moods.” She shrugged. “And why do you do that? Get all bitter sounding when you say ‘husband’?”
Dean chuckled. “You’re kidding right? You’re not.” He shook his head. “You have the nerve to ask that, when you’re hiding from him. Besides El, I lived with you for five years. I get kidnapped; you two seize the opportunity and get married. When was that? Months ago. I have every right to be bitter, I just found out last week. And . . .” Dean reached out and grabbed her hand, despite the fact she looked away. “You’re still wearing my ring.”
“It’s still stuck.” She pulled her hand away. “You really have to get over this. Really. Especially with us working together. So . . .” She grabbed a stool and pulled it across the counter from Dean. “Results.”
Dean would have rather of been discussing Frank. His head dropped.
“Dean?”
“You don’t want to hear it.” He took a moment, “Sarah’s baby died of . . . of our virus.”
A gasp of defeat came from Ellen. “Dean. The plague was years ago.”
“And I told you it became the air. The baby wasn’t immune. As soon as he was exposed to our air, it was like a time bomb to him.”
So desperate Ellen looked and sounded. “You said two immune parents would produce . . .”
“An immune child. Yes. But there was always a slim chance. This was the slim chance. And I’m so frustrated, El.” Dean stood up with a slam of his hand on the counter. He ran his hand through his blonde hair. “We stopped working on a cure. We stopped. At twenty-five percent effectiveness we stopped and said, ‘why bother’. Sarah’s baby was why you and I should have bothered.”
The Big Ten: The First Ten Books of the Beginnings Series Page 81
