“Okay,” she said, finally. “You’re right. But we can’t leave him here in the woods.”
“No, there’s a place,” Mark said. “When we get back to the road. I’ll show you. It’s our only option at this point. Sorry, that’s just the way it is.”
He resumed pushing the cart, and Elna fell in beside him.
Raymond’s deteriorating condition made Elna think of her father, though she’d tried very hard not to. Worry did no good, but now she wondered and worried herself sick. Selene would have no way to get word to her if his condition worsened.
Put it out of your mind, she scolded herself. Focus on the road ahead.
The first light of morning had just begun to touch the dark sky when they reached the end of the hiking trail and came out onto the highway somewhere south of the barricade.
“All of that walking just to avoid climbing over a pile of logs and trash,” Malin grumbled.
“And to avoid a possible ambush by thieves,” Mark said.
“Well, we got ambushed anyway.”
Just to the south, Elna saw a small gas station and motel by the side of the road. Dead cars were strewn across the parking lots like debris from a storm.
“There,” Mark said, pointing in the direction of the motel. “We can leave Raymond in one of the motel rooms while we rush to the clinic.”
“Did I miss this conversation?” Malin said, perking up suddenly. “Who said anything about leaving people behind? Raymond needs someone to keep an eye on him.”
“In his present condition, he’s dead weight,” Mark said, pushing the cart across both lanes and into the southbound shoulder. “We’re moving a lot slower than we otherwise would be.”
Malin looked at Elna, his eyebrows climbing his forehead. “Did you agree to this?”
“Reluctantly,” she said. “We could run the rest of the way if we didn’t have to push him.”
Malin shook his head and said nothing more. Elna knew how he felt. There were so many unfortunate choices to make. Mark pushed the cart into the parking lot of the gas station, then cut across into the driveway of the motel. It was a quaint old building, not bad for an economy motel, but the sign was shattered, little pieces of it on the ground around the support post.
“It probably used electronic keycards,” Mark said, “but let’s see if there are physical keys in the office. Otherwise, we might just have to kick down a door.”
Elna moved past him and opened the lobby door. As soon as the interior air whooshed out, she caught a strong smell of people. It was an eye-watering mix of ripe bodies, dirty clothes, and possibly urine. She suppressed her gag reflex as she poked her head inside.
Instantly, she saw a dozen pairs of harrowed eyes gazing back at her from filthy faces. The lobby had been turned into a makeshift camp, with blankets and couch cushions laid down across the floor, cardboard boxes stacked up along the walls, and trash and debris piled in the corners. The people were huddled together in the middle of the room. It seemed to be a large Latino family, all bone-thin, with listless children playing in the debris. One man lay on a mattress near the back wall, a bandage wrapped around his head just above his eyes.
Elna backed away from the door, but one of the squatters rose and came toward her. He was an older gentleman with gray hair and a patchy beard. Ancient acne scars had turned his cheeks into a lunar landscape.
“Wait, wait, please,” he said.
As Mark backed the cart away from the door, Malin stepped to one side and reached for the bow. The stranger peeked around the edge of the open door.
“You have injured people, as well,” he said, looking down at Raymond. The poor guy looked rough. Bloodshot eyes and a big scab across his lower lip, he’d clearly been through hard times. “I don’t suppose you have medicine. My brother is hurt.”
“We have a first aid kit,” Elna said. “Bandages, antiseptic, stuff like that.”
“I was hoping for something medicine,” the stranger said, hanging his head. “Maybe painkillers.”
Elna glanced at Mark, but he was still backing away from the door, working the cart down the sidewalk toward the wheelchair ramp. Clearly, he didn’t intend to offer his services.
“That man is a doctor, actually,” she said, irritated. Was he really going to walk away without at least offering some medical advice?
Mark gave her a brief, hateful look, then fixed an unfriendly smile on his face. “It’s true, but we’re in a hurry, sir, and we really don’t have anything to offer but basic medical care.”
The man stepped fully into the open door and dropped to his knees, holding his hands up in a gesture of pleading. “Please, Doctor, I beg you. We have nothing to trade. We were robbed two weeks ago. They took everything. We can’t offer any payment, but if you would just look at him. I fear my brother is dying, and we don’t know what do. Any word of advice would help. Please!”
Mark stopped his retreat. Elna could see the smile faltering at its edges. He looked at Elna again and seemed like he was on the verge of saying something else, but she deliberately looked away.
“We’re dealing with our own medical emergency,” Mark said, finally, “but I suppose I can take a quick look.”
“We would appreciate it very much, sir,” the stranger said, picking himself up.
Mark dramatically picked up his medic kit—a bit like a petulant child—and stepped around the cart. As he moved past the cart, he hit the corner with his leg, jostling Raymond, who moaned. The stranger led Mark inside. Elna went to the door and leaned inside, watching as Mark knelt beside the patient and began to examine him.
The man who had spoken to them lingered nearby.
“I’m Ignacio,” he said, extending a hand to Elna.
She shook his hand. It was like shaking dirt.
“Elna,” she replied. “Sorry you were robbed. We’ve had a bit of trouble on the road ourselves.”
“So many wild, crazy people,” Ignacio said. “They just swarm over you, attack, and take what they want. We didn’t have time to defend ourselves.”
“I know what you mean.”
He shook his head, as if dislodging bad memories. “Where are you guys headed?”
Elna hesitated a moment. Was there a reason to keep their destination a secret? “To a clinic in Manchester,” she said. “I believe it’s called Pacific Specialty Clinic. Have you heard of it?”
But the question was answered before the man said anything as his face scrunched up. “Oh, that place. Yes, I know it. It has been heavily fortified.”
Elna’s heart sank. “Fortified?”
“Yes, they are trying to keep the thieves out, I guess,” Ignacio said. “It is hard to get close to the building. If you’re lucky and reach the door, you’ll probably have to barter with the guards for whatever you need. That’s assuming they don’t just attack you instead of help you.”
“Who’s running the place?” Elna asked.
Ignacio shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe the people who ran the clinic before the missiles, or maybe some criminal gang. Who can tell? But that place is bad news. Heavily guarded. I wouldn’t go there if I were you.”
Elna turned and looked at Malin, who gave her a world-weary shrug.
“Well, thanks for the information, Ignacio,” she said. “Unfortunately, there’s nowhere else for us to go. We need that clinic. They have a unique medicine that our sick friend here needs.”
Ignacio frowned. “I’m sorry to say, you might be out of luck. If I were you, I would accept fate and turn back. That’s just the way I feel.”
Malin grabbed her arm then and gently drew her to him. Elna let herself be pulled away from the door. Only when they were out of earshot of Mark did he lean in and say, “Let’s not tell this guy too much.”
“I think it’s fine,” she replied. Accept fate and turn back. Ignacio’s words echoed in her mind. She felt a terrible sense of doom settling over her. “If what Ignacio says is true, we should rest up before we head to the clinic. I’
m so sleep-addled, Malin, I can’t think straight, and we’ll need our wits about us.”
“The doc is wanting to leave Raymond behind and rush to the clinic,” Malin said.
“Well, I think we all need…”
She let her words trail off as Mark stepped outside, flinging his medic kit onto the cart.
“Infected wound on his head,” Mark said to Elna, working his medic bag deep into the stacks of supplies. “I cleaned it, sealed it with glue, and that’s it. Not much more I can do. There are no room keys, but the people in there said we can leave Raymond here in the lobby. He should be safe”
When Elna didn’t reply to this after a second, he looked at her. “Doc, here’s the thing. Ignacio there says the clinic is heavily fortified. We might have to talk our way past guards.”
He shrugged. “Okay, so? You can handle the talking.”
“I know we’re in a hurry, but I really think we should rest first,” she said. “We’re in no condition to deal with dangerous people.”
“You want to waste more time?” he said.
“We might have one shot at getting into that clinic,” Elna said. “I can’t think clearly. If we’re cranky and half-asleep, the situation could turn against us really fast.”
Mark grabbed the handles of the cart, as if he intended to press on alone, but he stood there a second, head bowed. Finally, he let go, stepped back, and held up his hands.
“Whatever you say,” he said. “There’s plenty of room in the lobby with our new friends. If sleep is what you want, go and sleep.”
He waved her toward the lobby door, then turned and sat down on the curb, his back to her.
19
“We should have left him behind,” Mark said, for the thousandth time.
They were roughly six miles from their destination. Elna couldn’t believe it. The journey felt like it had taken half her life, and now they were in sight of the town. She saw the buildings on the north side of Manchester rising dully from the woods in the distance. Still, their pace was as bad as ever, though Elna didn’t know if the good doctor was pushing a little too slowly on purpose just to make his point. A few hours of rest definitely hadn’t improved his mood.
“We won’t get there tonight if we don’t find a way to go faster,” he said, turning the cart to avoid an upside-down van.
“I told you I would take a turn pushing the cart,” Malin said.
“You won’t make better time than me,” Mark said. “I’m going as fast as we can go.”
“Do we know where the clinic is located?” Elna asked.
“We could ask our friend here,” Mark said, gesturing down at the curled form of Raymond, “but he’s a bit delirious. I wouldn’t want to wake him from his fever dream.”
Mark sounded a bit flippant under the circumstances, but Elna bit her tongue. No sense arguing with the man, not when they were finally closing in on their destination. She fixed her eyes on the road ahead and tried to tune him out.
A vehicle parked on the shoulder at a bend in the road caught her eye. An oversized van with a big flower logo on the side, it appeared to be a paratransit van from a nursing home. As they drew near, she diverted toward it, peeking through the tinted window in back.
“Looking for bodies?” Mark asked.
Elna ignored his comment and tried the back door. It was unlocked, but a raised wheelchair lift was in the way. She went to the side door, however, and gained access. An empty wheelchair was still strapped in place behind the driver’s seat. She undid the straps, worked the wheelchair out of the van, and pushed it toward the others.
“Let’s put Raymond in this,” she said. “It’ll remove some of the weight from the cart. We should be able to travel a little faster.”
Mark gave her a skeptical look, one eyebrow going up, but he stopped the cart. Malin and Elna picked up a moaning Raymond and carried him to the wheelchair. They sat him down, wrapped him in a sleeping bag, and tried to make him comfortable. He looked up at Elna with glassy eyes and gave her a faint, fleeting smile.
“Hang in there,” she said. “We’re very close now.”
She let Malin push the wheelchair, and, indeed, when Mark resumed pushing the flatbed cart, he moved a little faster. About a half mile down the road, they came in sight of the actual nursing home to which the van belonged.
“Manchester Manor,” she said, reading the sign. “Do you suppose they have a pharmacy?”
“Most nursing homes contract with long-term care pharmacies,” Mark said. “But they should have at least a week’s worth of medication on site for their residents, if not more.”
“We should check,” Elna said.
As they guided the cart and wheelchair into the parking lot, Elna dug into the toolbox and retrieved the small crowbar.
“Any idea where we should look for the meds?” she asked Mark.
“Various locations,” he said. “Most likely the ones we’d need—antibiotics or painkillers—would be in med carts located in each unit.”
As Elna stepped into the nursing home, such a vile smell swept over her that she immediately gagged. She pulled the collar of her shirt up over her nose.
“Rotten food, dead bodies, trash,” Malin noted, stepping through the door behind her. “All of the above?”
“All of the above,” Elna replied.
The residents’ hallways were dark and foreboding. She almost seemed to sense a kind of mist or fog lingering around the rooms—maybe a cloud of stench. She tried not to think about it. They located what appeared to be a small, locked closet behind a nurses’ station. Malin forced the door open with the crowbar, and they found some shelves of basic medical supplies on the other side.
“Let’s look elsewhere,” Elna said, backing out of the closet.
Near the entrance to one of the residents’ units, they found what appeared to be a med cart, but it was tipped on its side. When Elna searched the drawers, she found them almost entirely empty, except for a couple bottles of ibuprofen.
“No luck?” Malin said.
“Antibiotics are probably more valuable than the Gold Label,” Elna said. “If they had any, I’m sure some smart staff member took them.”
She grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen anyway, worked it into the pocket of her rain coat, and headed back outside, trying her best not to breathe in the rancid, gut-churning air.
These poor people, she thought. Were they abandoned by the staff? Were they attacked by criminals?
So many awful possibilities.
The night was bitterly cold and damp. They’d found an abandoned cabin on a ledge overlooking the beach. It was small and dusty, but it was out of the wind. Raymond was curled up in sleeping bags in the corner, but Elna couldn’t sleep. She sat beside a window, staring at the road outside and shivering. They were all dirty, a moving mass of body odors and greasy hair. She’d rarely felt so uncomfortable.
I hate the world. I just want to be back on my island.
The thought came to her so strongly, the ache of it made her shudder. After a moment, she realized Malin had sat down beside her at some point. He handed her a strip of dried meat.
“It’s a shame about the deer meat,” he said. “I had to toss the rest of it out. It didn’t look safe to eat.” He shrugged.
“We’ll be there early tomorrow,” Elna said. She wanted very much to hold him, to be held. She needed it, but they were just so grungy. “Only a couple of miles left. Let’s just hope we can talk our way into the clinic, and let’s hope they have what we need. Otherwise, what was this all about?”
“It was about taking a risk we had to take,” Malin said. “For Daniel and Raymond, for your father.”
She nodded as she gazed out at the darkening sky, the empty road, a Chevy Nova parked across both lanes, the hood crumpled from an accident. She saw a lone hiker walking down the far shoulder, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He had an enormous pack on his back, the butt of a shotgun sticking out of the pocket. Elna eased back into the shadows unt
il he was out of sight. Something about the man, maybe the fact that he was by himself, made her feel terribly lonely. Finally, grungy or not, she slid closer to Malin and put her arm around him.
20
Waking up on a hardwood floor was one of the more unpleasant experiences of Malin’s life. Stiff and sore from his hips to the base of his skull, he rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself to his hands and knees. He’d fallen asleep pressed up against Elna, but at some point in the night, she had wriggled away from him.
Good old Raymond was sawing logs as usual, making enough noise to trumpet their presence to any and all passersby. Somehow, Malin had gotten used to the sound. It no longer kept him awake. He reached over and gently shook Elna awake.
“What happened?” she said, flopping onto her back. She’d pressed herself up against the wall, and the baseboard had left an impression across left cheek. He found it strangely cute.
“Morning happened,” he replied.
She sat up with a groan, rubbing her eyes. After a few hard nights, her hair had been pushed into all kinds of strange angles and even had a few twigs and stray leaves caught in it.
“Is everyone ready to go?” she asked. “We only have a couple miles left. We should get going.”
Malin glanced around. The flatbed cart with all of their supplies was parked against the far wall, the wheelchair set beside it with the brakes engaged. Raymond was sprawled in his sleeping bag. The rest of the room was empty.
“Wait,” Malin said. “Where’s Mark?”
He rose and walked to the door. The small cabin only had two rooms, but there was no sign of Mark in either of them. He went to the front door and gazed outside. The surrounding yard was all sand and rocks, nowhere to hide. He stepped outside, went to the corner, and looked toward the back of the house.
Finally, he went inside, where a bleary-eyed Elna was still trying to make sense of the situation.
Island Refuge EMP Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 43
