Garfield carried the injured man over to one of the diner’s large square tables and dumped him down on it. Anna took her jacket off and told him to leave, along with anybody else not named ‘Rene’. The less people crowding me the better. Poppy would probably pop a blood vessel, anyway, if Garfield didn’t go and catch up with her right this instant. Glad I don’t have the responsibility of looking after that girl. She’s a handful at the best of times.
Anna went and got her kit bag from underneath the cashier desk. It contained a needle and thread (actually a reel of 6lb thin-diameter fishing line), as well as some glue and bandages. So far the kitbag had been needed only for scrapes and bruises, but it had been prepared in case of something worse. Most serious injuries were from being bitten, and there was no point wasting time or supplies on someone with a bite.
But this man was shot.
By whom?
Since being carried along the pier and into the diner, the injured man had stirred only slightly. He mostly just moaned and muttered with his eyes closed. Whether from the fever of infection or the delirium of blood loss was unclear. Probably both.
Anna handed a long sewing needle to Rene and told him to boil it in the saltwater he had on the go. There was no gas or electricity anymore, but the diner had a small stockpile of disposable lighters, cooking oils, and petrol that the group used exclusively for starting fires and cooking. Anna knew that she could also use some of those chemicals to disinfect the injured man’s wounds, but they were all very caustic. She had better methods.
Anna pulled out some sharpened scissors from her kit bag and cut away a strip from the patient’s t-shirt. Blood was everywhere, mostly crusted and caked. That was a bad sign; it suggested the man had been bleeding out for some time. He may have already lost too much.
The bullet wound peered up at Anna like a malevolent black eye. She rolled the man onto his side and saw that the round had not exited through his back. Most likely it was still inside him. “Rene, she shouted. I need you to sterilize some tongs and a tea spoon.”
Rene did not reply, but she knew he would have heard her and that he would comply. Rene heard very well, but he spoke very little. His words were precious to him.
She had met the Nigerian with another group of survivors back when the infection first hit. At the time, she’d been a vet at an amusement park zoo. Rene’s group eventually joined up with the survivors already living at the park, and for a while they had co-existed. Suspicions were high, however, and egos prevailed. The fact that Rene had been part of a group of prison inmates did not help the tension. Eventually the group dissolved and the safety of the amusement park had been ruined. Rene was one of the good guys, one of the people who’d stood by Anna when things had turned ugly. He was also the only one left alive from that original group which Anna had left the park with. She often missed the people who hadn’t made it. Especially Mike.
When Anna and Rene fled the amusement park in a beat-up truck, there had been two others with them: Mike, a man she had almost loved; and Eve, a feisty young girl who’d fallen apart after her friend, Nick, died. The first few months on the road had been tough on them all, and by the time they made it to the south coast where they hoped to find a boat, only Rene and Anna remained. They would probably have died, too, if they hadn’t eventually fallen across the Great Southern Pier. That mutual journey of survival had bonded them as family. She trusted him completely.
Several minutes later, Rene approached with the items Anna had requested. He handed her a latex glove full of saline and various kitchen implements, which had been sterilized, as well as her sewing needle. The patient moaned again, louder. He was either becoming more lucid, or the pain was increasing. Either was a good sign. Pain meant a person was alive. Lucidity meant a person was alive. Every moan was the man fighting to hold onto his life.
“Hello, my name is Anna. I’m going to try and help you. Can you tell me how long ago you were shot?”
The man mumbled but made no sense.
Anna sighed. She took the latex glove and pierced the bottom with a sharp knife that Rene had brought her. A trickle of saline leaked out of the slit and Anna angled it above the man’s injury. She squeezed the glove and began to irrigate the wound with the thin jet of liquid coming through the slit, clearing away the old blood and stemming any fresh. Once the wound was clear, she grabbed a bottle of hand sanitizer. “This might burn,” she told the patient, who just moaned at her weakly.
Anna removed the pump handle from the sanitizer and upended it, allowing a thick tide of alcohol to pour onto the open wound. The patient hissed. His eyes fluttered.
“Stay with me,” Anna said firmly. “The pain is good. The pain is me helping you.”
“Y…yes.”
“Good, good. I’m glad that you understand me. I am just cleaning your wound. You don’t want to get an infection.”
“N…no.”
Anna made sure she covered the entire wound with the sanitizer. The liquid quickly effervesced but enough coated the wound to burn away any bacteria. At least she hoped so. A shitload of iodine would have been better. Without being asked, Rene handed Anna the tongs and teaspoon. She swallowed a lump in her throat. Once, she’d been a vet, but there was very little cause to trust her abilities after them being so long dormant. Plus, I’ve never had to remove a bullet from a man’s stomach before.
Anna shoved the sterilized tongs into the wound and pried the edges open. The patient screamed. Rene immediately held the man by the shoulders. Anna made sure the tongs were steady and then took a firm grip of the teaspoon. Holding her breath she dug the spoon deep into the wound. She knew she was causing agony and likely doing even more damage, but if she didn’t get the bullet fragment out, the patient would have no chance at all. Infection would take him within the night if the bleeding didn’t kill him first.
As she dug about in the wound, the black shard of blood-caked metal exposed itself. It was buried deep within the tissue, like a stone trodden into wet mud a hundred times over. Anna worked the edge of the spoon around its edges, trying to get a purchase on it. The patient struggled against Rene’s restraining hands, but Rene leant close to him and began to hum. Anna didn’t recognise the tune, but it was delicate and soothing. After a few moments the patient began to struggle less. Rene had learned First Aid in prison, she knew, but his soothing way with people was not down to any training.
Anna dug the spoon beneath one side of the bullet fragment and felt it shift within its fleshy womb. The patient gritted his teeth as she began to scrape the fragment upwards, away from the wound. Luckily the bullet had not buried itself in bone or passed through any organs. Likely, the man had been shot at a distance, the velocity of the bullet all but spent. Someone still wanted him dead, though.
Anna released a pent-up breath as she slid the bullet fragment clear. A small shard still remained in the wound, but fortunately it came away much easier than the larger fragment had. From what Anna could see, the wound was clear and no arteries had been nicked. It was time to close the patient up. She took her sterilized needle and tried to thread it with shaking hands. Jesus, Anna. You’ve done this a thousand times. Calm down.
She took some deep breaths and counted to ten. When she tried to thread the needle again, her hands were steady as stone. She got the fishing line attached to the needle and used her sharpened scissors to cut away the excess. Then she got to work, plunging the needle into the swollen red flesh surrounding the wound. The patient let out a pained squeal, but Rene’s humming soon calmed him down again.
She dragged the fishing line through the edge of the wound and sutured it to the other side, then dove back the other way. Back and forth with the needle she went, poking through flesh and threading, then poking through flesh again on the opposite side: zig-zag, zig-zag.
Slowly the wound drew closed, puckering up like a cod’s mouth. With the final stitch Anna pulled tightly and closed the wound up as neatly as she could. She tied off the end of the thread a
nd cut above the knot. She doused the wound with more sanitizer. It’s done. I did it.
The last thing she did was to squeeze a thin line of superglue along the split ridge of the wound, adding a seal against invading bacteria. Hopefully its application wouldn’t do more harm than good.
She stepped away from the patient and stumbled over to one of the diner’s chairs. Her feet were unsteady and her stomach was roiling. She could hardly believe how nervous she’d been doing something that had once been her profession. Never had to stitch up a man before, though. “Can you bandage him up for me, please, Rene?” she asked.
Rene nodded and unfurled a bandage from the kitbag.
Garfield entered the diner with Alistair right behind him. Both men often caused Anna stress and she wasn’t particularly pleased to see either of them in the state she was in. Garfield was a constant worrier, with little to no humour, and Alistair had too much humour, but it was only he who found himself funny.
“Is he going to die?” asked Garfield.
“Probably.”
Alistair shook his head. His flabby jowls wobbled as he did so. “Don’t understand why Garfield even brought him back. Food would have been better. Better a box full of Kit Kats than another mouth to feed.”
“I almost didn’t bring him back,” said Garfield, “but what kind of a man would I have been then?”
“A smart one.”
Anna sighed and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, both men stood looking at her. “Garfield was right to bring the man back,” she told them both. “There’s not enough of us left to start leaving each other to die. We have an obligation to help each other. More heads the better.”
“More tummies to feed more like,” said Alistair.
“We have the sea,” said Anna. “At the very least we have that. We won’t go hungry.” You least of all, she thought as she eyed Alistair’s ample gut.
Garfield cleared his throat. “Did you find anything out about the man? He had these with him.”
Anna looked down at what Garfield was carrying. “Are those…crutches?”
“They were lying next to where I found him. I don’t know if they’re his or not.”
“I don’t know either,” said Anna. “He hasn’t spoken.”
“Hopefully he’ll get a chance to soon. I’d like to know who shot him and whether or not they’re heading our way.”
Alistair bristled. “I’d like to know that, too. There’s a lot we could get done with some guns.”
Rene chose this as one of the rare occasions he spoke up. His Nigerian accent was thick, despite having left his homeland a decade-and-a-half ago. “There is nothing to be achieved by guns,” he said, “except fear and suffering to those still living. Guns are ineffective against the dead. Guns are loud and bring attention. Their very nature is to threaten and kill other men and women. Of all the things lost to us, guns are not something for which I mourn.”
Alistair grinned, wide and jowly. “I’ll be damned; it speaks. Haven’t heard you spout your nonsense for a long while, Rene. This time you’re quite right, though. Guns are indeed for threatening and killing people – they would give us the power to intimidate, the power to protect ourselves, the power to-”
“Take from others,” said Anna. “Civilisation didn’t do too well with that approach first time around, so let’s try something a little more original than killing people for their cereal.”
Alistair huffed. The way the man looked at her sometimes, made her mad. It was if he was always thinking, silly woman. “I think civilisation did pretty damn well last time,” he said. “Every advance in human history came off the back of war. We all know that there are other groups out there, scattered about – we’ve seen some of them, traded with others. I would rather us have the guns than them.”
It was true that on occasion Garfield came across a wasteland survivor or two. Sometimes he brought them back, such as in Kirk’s case, but other times the strangers were dangerous and had to be frightened away. Guns could potentially have a use, but she wasn’t sure it was a path worth taking. One group having guns just led to another group getting bigger guns. It was a race nobody won in the end. “We’re fine,” said Anna. “I trust that we can get by on our charm and wits alone. I’ve seen enough bloodshed without making our own contribution.”
Garfield stared down at the floor as he spoke. The man rarely held eye contact. “I’m sorry, Anna, but I agree with Alistair.”
Anna raised an eyebrow. “That surprises me. It’s not often that you two see eye to eye.”
“On this we do. Whether we like guns or not…they matter. He who has them has power over those who don’t. I just don’t want to be in a position where we have a gun to our heads and aren’t able to respond.”
Anna chewed at one of her nails before saying, “Well, regardless of whatever each of us thinks, we have no guns and no inclination of where to find them, so why are we even discussing this?”
“Actually,” said Garfield. “I think I might know where we can find some. Will you hear me out?”
Anna sighed. Garfield would do whatever he wanted to – he was bull-headed that way – so why he felt the need to seek her council, she didn’t know. It seemed to be more out of manners than anything else.
“I need to take the foraging group further,” he explained. “There’s nothing left around here anymore. We’ve scavenged it all.”
Anna laced her fingers together across her lap. I knew it would come to this eventually. We’ve had it too easy for too long.
Things had been safe and productive for the last several months at the pier. The village and surrounding countryside had been bountiful and easy to explore. They had raided supermarkets, petrol stations, even farms. Along with the plentiful fish they caught, they had more than enough supplies to keep them going for a while. Alistair even still had the luxury of being fat. But Anna knew they would eventually strip the carcass clean and have to search for pastures new. “Okay, that’s your call,” she told Garfield, “but I’m getting that there’s more you want to say.”
Garfield nodded. “There’s an Army base on Salisbury Plain. There might be troops there. If not then we might have access to a lot of abandoned weaponry.”
“I like the sound of that,” said Alistair.
Anna huffed. “We all know the Army fell to pieces. There are no troops left. As for weapons, well, I’d imagine they were looted a long time ago. But, as I said, it’s your call, Garfield. You’re our man in the field. I’m just the mother hen at home.” Which is another way of saying I’m middle-aged and useless.
Garfield looked over at the injured man on the table and sighed. “Guess I’m just making sure you’re okay for me to set off for a while. Salisbury Plains is a good distance and who knows what the journey will be like. It would take a three-hour drive even if the roads were clear. The way things are it’s more likely to take us three days there and the same amount back.”
Anna nodded. She knew what Garfield wanted, even if he was prodding limply around the vagina concerning it. “You want me to look after Poppy. Just come out and say it.”
Garfield stared at his boots. The man rarely made eye contact, but there was a flicker of expression across his face that showed his heart still beat with emotion. “I’m all she’s got,” he muttered. “If I don’t make it back, or even if I’m just gone a while, she’ll be hurting.”
“And when she’s hurting,” said Alistair, “that little pup gets wild.”
Garfield shot Alistair a chastising look, but ended up nodding and agreeing with the statement. “Yes, she does. She doesn’t like being confined. You know I found her trapped in a dirty house with her two dead parents locked in the bedroom. Imagine what it was like for her, having to remain quiet for weeks so that they wouldn’t crash through the door and get her. When I found her, she was starved and mute. It’s taken me a year to bring her back from that dark place, but I can’t do it on my own anymore. I need help – especially while I
’m away.” The man looked close to tears.
Jesus Christ. And here was me thinking soap operas were dead. “I know what the girl has been through,” said Anna. She rubbed at her forehead and cringed when she realised her hands were caked in her patient’s blood. She didn’t like what Garfield was asking of her. She wasn’t good with kids – having never had any of her own beyond an ill-fated miscarriage – and the last time she’d cared about another she’d lost him. It had been a point of hers ever since to keep her emotional distance. Looking after an unruly child was not part of her five-year plan. In fact the only words written on her five-year plan were: LOOK AFTER YOURSELF.
“Please, Anna. You’re the only person I trust.”
Alistair pulled a face. “Charming.”
The statement of trust surprised Anna. To her understanding, nobody really trusted anybody at the pier. They all worked together for mutual benefit and played at friendship, but really they were only together by circumstance. “Well,” she eventually said, “if you’re saying that you need to venture out for the good of the group, then I guess I have no choice. As for finding weapons, I’m not particularly interested. I would rather you find something more useful than a bloody tank. Like Doritos. Why do you never bring back Doritos?”
Garfield smiled, visibly relieved by her agreeing to look after his girl. “I’ll see what else I can find along the way,” he said. “Doritos will be first on my list.”
“Just get going sooner rather than later,” she said. “Sooner you’re back the sooner life can go back to normal.” What is normal anymore? I don’t even know.
“I’ll go first thing in the morning,” Garfield said. “I just need to eat and get some sleep first. I’ll take some of the fuel we have stored up and try to get a couple of vehicles working. There’s a Range Rover parked at the old church on the edge of the village that I think I can get started. I’ll be taking the full team to make the most of whatever we find. Cat and the other foragers should be back this evening, so I’ll brief them all then.”
The BIG Horror Pack 2 Page 34
