The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel

by Joanne Macgregor

  “What happened?” I ask, running up to them.

  “Oh, Jinxy,” Nicky says in a high, tight voice. “I got bitten. By a rat.”

  Oh my God.

  There are groans and exclamations and curses from the rebels behind me as the news spreads.

  I run ahead and grab the bedding from my tent, fold the thin blue mattress into a makeshift seat against a log and ease Nicky down, covering her with my sleeping bag.

  Candace is at my side with the first aid kit, handing me disinfectant. Kate hugs Nicky tightly, and Quinn braces her leg to keep it still while I pour disinfectant over the wound. Nicky whimpers in pain when I dab at it with alcohol pads. The bite looks horrible — two ragged lines of perforations — and it’s bleeding more heavily than I would have expected. I take the tube of salve Candace hands me. The print on the side says it’s antibiotic, antiviral, and anesthetic. I smear a glob onto a large gauze pad, apply it to the wound and wrap a stretch bandage tightly around it to hold it in place.

  “Do you think we should make a tourniquet?” Candace asks me, as if I know anything about treating rat bites.

  I look around, but nobody else seems to know either, so I shrug and unfasten my belt, loop it around Nicky’s calf, and pull it tight.

  “It can’t hurt,” I say.

  “Will it help?” Nicky asks, staring down at her leg where the flesh below the tourniquet is growing pale.

  Zonia says, in her usual no-nonsense way, “Of course it will. It stops the spread of venom in snakebites, doesn’t it?”

  Does it? Or is that an urban legend?

  “So I don’t see why it shouldn’t stop the spread of an infection.”

  If I’m honest, I don’t think it will help. Disinfecting and dressing the wound, putting on a tourniquet — these give us something to do, but I don’t recall ever hearing any advice on any PSA or medical program which suggested that treating a bite could prevent infection from taking hold. Last I heard, even immediate intravenous antivirals have not been effective. Still, I rummage in the kit, find a pack of antiviral capsules and get Nicky to swallow a double dose.

  “Besides, we don’t even know whether that rat was a carrier,” chips in Neil.

  “Was it a mutant rat?” I ask.

  Nicky nods, eyes brimming with tears, and pinches her lips tight shut.

  I exchange a glance with Quinn. I can tell he’s thinking the same as me.

  “They aren’t all necessarily carriers, you know,” Neil continues. “The alternate breeds weren’t engineered to be sterile, and the born-frees might not have it.”

  “The what?” I have no patience for Neil right now.

  “The born-frees, the ones who weren’t bred in a lab but who reproduced naturally out here in Mother Nature. They’ll be healthy.”

  “It’s a virus, you idiot! It spreads,” Quinn snaps, his accent stronger in his anger. “Even if it isn’t airborne, d’ya think the mutants haven’t been out here swapping spit over their food, biting each other and reproducing? If you can’t say or do anything useful, then just bugger off. Go stand guard — and beg your bleeding rats to kindly stay away!”

  Neil stalks off in a huff, and Candace and Kate fuss about Nicky, tucking her in, bringing her a cold drink, and reassuring her that things are going to be okay, that she must remember the virus isn’t as infectious as the government says, that we probably got to it in time.

  Zonia moves to a spot beyond the logs, summoning Darius and Quinn over for a confab. I clean the traces of blood off my hands with a disinfectant wipe and pack away the medical supplies, freezing as I see what lies next to the tube of ointment I have just replaced — a sealed pack of “Second Skin protective hand wear”. Shit. I was in such a rush to help Nicky that I didn’t stop to think. Too late, I realize that I definitely should have worn latex gloves while I treated the wound. I try to remember if I may have touched my eyes or mouth in the last few minutes. I turn my hands in the air in front of me and examine the scabbed line on my thumb from where I cut it packing the van yesterday. Could the virus have gotten into me, too?

  Anger builds inside me as I stare from my thumb to Nicky’s panicked face. This is a disaster, and what makes me even madder is that it needn’t have happened. None of us should ever have been out in the woods without being super-vigilant and prepared to defend ourselves against rats.

  “Zonia!” I yell as I stride over to her. “I need the keys for the van and the weapons locker.”

  “What for?” asks Darius, belligerent as ever.

  “I am going to get the damned rifle, go hunting and kill any rat I find. Do you have a problem with that?” I demand, then spin around to face the others. “Does anyone have a problem with that? Now?”

  Apparently not. Zonia hands over the keys, after first removing the ignition key, and only Quinn volunteers to accompany me.

  “Thank you, but no. I’ll be safer on my own, if I don’t have to watch out for someone else as well.”

  As I stride out of the camp, I hear Mark tell Evyan, “One hundred dollars says that’s the last we ever see of her,” and Evyan’s reply, “One hundred dollars would be cheap at the price.”

  Three hours later, I’ve found and killed two mutant rats. I can’t be sure that either of them is the one that bit Nicky — there could be entire colonies living and breeding out here — but it makes me feel better. For the first time ever, I actually enjoy the act of killing. I take real pleasure in locking my sights on the twitching targets and blowing their heads off. Bruce, I think wryly, would be so proud of me.

  There’s a new rule around camp. Whoever stands guard now does so armed with a weapon, though I don’t think any of them except me could hit a reindeer, let alone a rat.

  For the first two days, Nicky seems fine. She stays in camp, doesn’t eat much and stays away from food preparation, but otherwise, she acts as though nothing major has happened, except that she now sleeps alone — Evyan has moved in with Zonia — and wears a half-face respirator. I watch amazed as, one by one, the others also start wearing masks. So much for the rebels’ firm belief that the virus isn’t transmitted via the air or contaminated surfaces.

  When Quinn hands me a mask and insists I put it on, I can’t resist saying, “What — we’ll say there ain’t no heaven but we’ll pray there ain’t no hell?”

  “It’s just to be safe,” he says, shrugging and giving me a quick mask-to-mask kiss, like he did in our early days at ASTA.

  Nicky smiles and winks at me, delighted that Quinn and I are together. I smile back at her, hoping with every fiber of my being that she has indeed dodged the plague bullet.

  Chapter 35

  Entreaty

  But when Nicky wakes up on the morning of the third day after being bitten, it’s clear that she is very sick.

  “My head is splitting,” she says, pressing her palms hard against her temples, and cueing a memory of the M&M in the one red shoe who did the same. “And I ache all over.”

  My heart plummets, a lead weight sinking through dark waters.

  She looks reluctantly at the glass of water and Tylenol tablets that Candace hands her. “My throat is so sore, I can hardly swallow. And I don’t want the water.”

  I pass a pair of gloves to Candace and nod when she raises her eyebrows at me, then pull a pair onto my own hands.

  “C’mon,” urges Candace, “you’ll feel better once the pain meds kick in.” She tucks a thick blanket around Nicky who, despite the heat of the day, is shivering with the chills. “You’ve probably just got a bad dose of flu.”

  Yeah, rat flu. I’m certain of it. Nicky’s symptoms are an absolute match for the progression of Mononegavirales Zoonotic Viral Hemorrhagic fever, the terrorist-engineered, genetically blended strains of Ebola, Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, rabies and God knows what else.

  After I discovered the horrific truth of how my father died, I read up all about the plague, so I know that if Nicky has contracted the plague, she’ll be dead in under two weeks.
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br />   Nicky forces the tablets down, but then chokes and starts coughing into a fistful of Kleenex. Candace pats her back gently until the fit subsides and Nicky slumps back against her pillows, gasping for breath. I hold out a plastic bag, and when she drops the tissues into it, flecks of red are clearly visible against the white.

  I take it to show Zonia. “Nicky has the plague.”

  “You can’t be sure.”

  “I am. Within days she’ll start hemorrhaging blood out of her nose, eyes, mouth — everywhere. She’ll be a lethal viral bomb. We need to decide what must be done.”

  “If you’re right, there is nothing to be done,” says Darius.

  “At the very least, we need to move her away from the main camp. I thought maybe in that little reception office? And we need to get strong meds to make her more comfortable. Do you have anything serious, or can you get any?”

  Zonia nods. “I can source some. We can isolate her in that office, but I’m not sure you should be the one nursing her. Let someone else do it. You’re too val —”

  I interrupt her, not wanting to hear more of my faults. “Candace and I have been taking care of her so far. I think we should continue. There’s no need for anyone else to come into contact with her.”

  Quinn looks ready to protest, but Zonia says, “Alright, then. Do what you need to do.”

  Within an hour, Candace and I have struck my tent and re-erected it near the small log cabin which once served as camp reception. We sweep the abandoned office with a leafy branch torn off a nearby tree, and dust it as best we can. We move Nicky’s bedding there, hang the plastic groundsheet from my tent over the doorway, then half-support, half-carry Nicky to her new bed and try to make her as comfortable as we can.

  In the afternoon, Quinn calls from outside, and we find he has left supplies for us against the base of a tree a little way from the office — soft food, water, protective wear, a package of medication vials together with a dozen disposable syringes and, surprisingly, one of the Glocks with two full magazines of ammunition.

  “Let’s make this the drop-off spot. Let me know if you need anything else,” he says. “And wear your respirator.”

  “Okay, okay. Just you stay well back,” I reply.

  “I don’t like this, Jinxy. It’s too dangerous for you.”

  “I’ll be as careful as I can,” I reassure him.

  “I’ll stay with you.”

  “No! There’s nothing you can do. Now go.”

  He hesitates, backs up a few steps, and then walks reluctantly off, his shoulders tense and his hands thrust deep into his jeans pockets.

  Candace reads the medication insert and gives Nicky a shot of the pain killer. When Nicky sighs and slips into a restless, twitchy sleep, I pull back the blanket and lift her T-shirt to inspect her chest. For a long moment, Candace and I stare at the sprinkle of fine red spots that extends across her torso, then we tuck her in again and go outside to sit up against the outside wall of the office.

  “Will we get it?” Candace asks.

  “I don’t think so.” I pick at a loose thread on the knee of my jeans. “But I guess we’ll know soon enough.”

  For the next few days, Candace and I take turns nursing Nicky and resting in the tent. We do our best to maintain the quarantine and infection-control practices — pulling disposable PPE suits on over our shorts and T’s, switching to full-face respirators, wearing double pairs of gloves whenever we’re with Nicky, setting up our own biohazard disposal bin and practically bathing in disinfectant. We use the male restroom, and everyone else now uses the females’. We keep our own dishes and collect food from where Quinn leaves it at the drop-off spot.

  When I again refuse to allow Quinn to join us, he sources a hammock from somewhere and hangs it between two trees just behind the drop-off spot. He spends his days there, watching us, throwing knives, talking to me when I come to collect supplies. It’s a comfort to have him nearby — it’s like he’s keeping vigil with us.

  “I think you should fix the door of the office,” he says when we collect the next set of supplies, which includes a screwdriver, a hammer and some screws.

  I nod. It’s probably a good idea, because Nicky is growing increasingly agitated — seeing things that aren’t there, and sometimes resisting our attempts to help her, especially when we try to get her to drink water. Twice she’s wandered out of the office. Soon we’ll need to start locking her inside. Like a prisoner. Or an animal.

  “No more pain meds?” I ask Quinn when next I see him. “We’re running low.”

  “Sorry, we’ll keep trying.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hey Jinxy,” he calls, when I turn to head back to the office.

  “Yeah?”

  “I miss you.”

  “Yeah, I miss you, too.”

  Nicky gets worse by the hour. She has regular nosebleeds and fits of violent shaking. Pinpricks of red speckle her eyes, her fever spikes despite the medication, and she has crippling bouts of diarrhea on the toilet off the small office. She coughs up black blood, and cries from the pain when the meds wear off. The rash spreads from her chest and back to her arms and legs, and darkens to purple blotches.

  “I feel like I’m suffocating,” she says, drawing a deep breath which bubbles wetly in her throat.

  I don’t know what to say, so I wipe her burning forehead with a cool cloth.

  “I don’t have the flu, do I?” she asks me, poking at one of the bruise-like marks from which a pink fluid seeps.

  “No, Nicky, you don’t.” I won’t lie to her. “I am so, so sorry.”

  She sighs. “How long do I have?” Her voice is weak and thready. Resigned.

  “Maybe a week.” Maybe less. Grief chokes my voice, tightens my chest and burns at the back of my eyes.

  “Okay.” Suddenly she grabs my gloved hand and squeezes hard. “Promise me, Jinxy,” she says, her eyes burning with fever and fear, “promise me that when it gets too bad, when I … you know, lose it, that you’ll take care of me.”

  “I’ll take care of you right to the end,” I reassure her, pushing sweat-soaked strands of hair back off her face with my free hand.

  “You know what I mean!” she says fiercely, and I understand what she’s trying to say.

  “No, Nicky.” No-no-no-no-no. “You can’t ask me to do that.”

  It’s unthinkable.

  “It has to be you — you’re the only one who knows how to use a gun.” Her tight smile is a grimace of bleeding gums and red teeth. “Any of the others would probably shoot me in the foot.”

  “No! I won’t kill you.” I’ve damned my soul enough.

  “You’ve done it before. For others. For strangers,” she wheezes.

  “That was different.”

  “How?”

  “I didn’t know what I was doing!”

  “Don’t you think it’s even more important now you do? Please, Jinx, do it for me. You know what’s coming. Spare me that.”

  I do know what’s coming. I watched video footage of my father disintegrating into a demented, pulpy, suffering mass. I’ve seen M&Ms with their skin bubbling over their dissolving tissue, pulling out their hair and tearing at their flesh. And I have killed them. But never have I taken the responsibility of making the decision to end someone’s life, even if only to put them out of their suffering.

  I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore. Nothing’s right, nothing’s clear. So what is less wrong? What is more kind?

  “Please, Jinxy,” Nicky begs, her grip slackening as if she has exhausted her strength. “Promise me.”

  And, God help me, I do.

  Chapter 36

  Tears of blood

  That night, Nicky has her first convulsion. Her eyes roll back into her head, and her body goes rigid. When the thrashing of her arms and legs eventually subsides, her fingers continue to twitch, and spasms ripple across her face. She comes around several minutes later, asking, “Is he here? Is he here?�
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  “Who, Nicky?”

  “I don’t want him here. But he’ll come, if he knows,” she whimpers. “Please, keep him away, don’t let him come. Don’t let him!”

  “We won’t,” I reassure her. “We’ll keep him away.”

  Nicky coughs, and Candace and I move her onto her side just in time. A gout of black vomit streams out of her. It smells putrid, and contains thick, dark chunks of what might be blood clots. It takes an hour to clean it up and dispose of the cleaning materials.

  “It’s only going to get worse,” Candace whispers. “What are we going to do?”

  That question again.

  “I don’t like the green. It’s wet. And it’s so big!” Nicky yells suddenly, her crimson eyes bulging. “Get it off me, get it off!”

  She scratches at her pulpy face, drawing blood, and yanks out hair from the disintegrating skin of her scalp. She growls and snaps her teeth at Candace and me when we bind her arms to her sides with a stretch bandage to stop her doing more damage. That night, for the first time, we lock her in the room.

  The next morning, when I open the door to check on Nicky, she springs out of a coiled crouch in the far corner, slams her shoulder into me and sends me stumbling backwards. In an instant, she’s on me, her hands locked around my throat and squeezing hard. Before I can think, my arms have swung up and out and broken her hold, then knocked her down onto her stomach. Thank God for Charlie’s lessons in how to interrupt an attack, and disable an opponent.

  “Help!” I yell, sitting on Nicky’s back to hold her down while she thrashes and scrabbles on the ground.

  Candace comes running.

  “She must have chewed through the bandage,” says Candace, pointing to a small pile of bloodstained dressings lying in the corner.

  “Let go let go let go let go let go!” Nicky screams beneath me.

  Candace and I restrain her as best we can with the supplies we have and lock her in the room. Nicky howls wordlessly and ceaselessly from inside. The wails echo off the trees like the cries of a trapped wolf, raising goosebumps on the skin of my arms.