“I can do it,” Raymond said, his words slurring. “I know I can.”
But Malin felt the man’s knees wobbling, barely able to hold his weight. Because the gap between the trees and the truck was so narrow, Malin had to move behind Raymond, while Elna moved in front. Working together, they helped him shuffle through the gap.
“I can do it, guys,” Raymond said, gasping for air with each step. “I’m okay. I can do it.”
Holding Raymond was like hugging a furnace, but they slowly got him through the gap and carefully set him down on the other side. Then Malin went back and got the wheelchair, folding it and carrying it over the bed of the truck.
As he did that, Mark unloaded their supplies from the cart and lugged them over the bed of the other truck box by box. Malin helped him carry the cart over, then restack the supplies, while Elna helped Raymond into the wheelchair.
“Remember what you said about barricades and ambushes?” Malin said.
“Yes, and my point still stands,” Mark said, as he resumed pushing the cart. “Let’s go.”
At the next bend in the road, they came upon a small parking lot on the north side of the road. An SUV had died in the process of backing out, blocking most of the lanes. Once again, they found themselves hauling Raymond through a narrow gap. They didn’t bother trying to make Raymond walk this time. Instead, Malin lugged him through like the sack of bones he was, as Elna folded the wheelchair and followed.
Through all of this, the crawling unease never left Malin. It had become an unbearable itchiness running down the back of his neck. As they walked past the parking lot, he moved in close beside Elna.
“Are you feeling a weird vibe?” he asked.
“Kind of like we’re being watched?” she replied.
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been feeling it since we approached the town,” she said. “Be ready, Malin. We don’t know what we’re walking into.”
“Are we absolutely sure we should walk into this?” he asked. “It’s not too late to consider alternatives.”
Raymond groaned then and sat up in his wheelchair. “There are no alternatives,” he said. “It’s my son’s only hope.”
Malin sighed. “I hear you, Raymond.”
What if a sniper somewhere has a rifle trained on us? he thought. What if that’s what I’m feeling?
It was such a horrible thought, he regretted allowing it into his mind. The itchiness got twice as bad. He looked over his shoulder and saw Mark lumbering along with the squeaky cart. Mark seemed fairly calm, considering their circumstances. Definitely in a much better mood than when he’d first caught up with them. When he noticed Malin looking at him, he nodded.
“We’ll be fine,” he said. “Don’t lose it now. We’ve come all this way. It’s not like we don’t have something to barter with, right?”
“Okay, Doc,” he said. “If you say so.”
“I say so.”
A final bend in the road brought them out of the trees and onto the top of the hill. As they were at the south end of the fence, they had a beautiful view of the hillside down to the ocean. The waves were a deep silver-blue, and the sound of the surf reached the top of the high hill like a series of sighs. Strangely, Malin found himself wishing desperately that he was back on that damned boat, running that ridiculous zigzag pattern as they fought a headwind.
They soon lost the view as they moved behind the fence. Malin grabbed the compound bow from the cart and pulled an arrow from the quiver.
“Just want to be ready for anything,” he said, when Mark gave him a questioning look.
Holding the bow in his left hand, he marched on. As they approached the gate, he moved ahead of Elna. With his right hand, he reached through the bars and knocked on one of the aluminum sheets that had been welded over the gaps.
“Greetings,” he said. “We come in peace.” No one answered, so he added, “Is anyone home? We’re friendly.”
Still, no one spoke. Elna and Mark caught up to him then.
“We’ve been so concerned about armed guards at the clinic,” Elna said, “that it never occurred to us that we might find nobody.”
“We have to get in there,” Raymond said, his voice creaking.
Malin pointed at the small cut-out square in the center of one of the aluminum sheets. “I could swear I saw someone moving on the other side.”
Mark stepped up to the gate and grabbed the big iron latch. “There’s no lock on the gate, as far as I can see,” he said. “Maybe it’s barred on the other side. Let’s find out.”
He lifted the latch and pushed the gate. It swung open with the soft sigh of well-oiled hinges. Malin couldn’t help himself; he raised the bow and strung the arrow. The clinic was a large, white edifice resting on the far side of an overgrown lawn. Three stories tall, a row of narrow windows ran along the first floor.
The road beyond the gate passed over a moat full of stagnant water. A tall pole rose from a concrete plinth beside the bridge, the ragged remains of a tattered California state flag whipping in the wind. At the end of the bridge, two cars had been parked, like the trucks, bumper to bumper to block the final stretch of road leading to another small parking lot before the front doors.
“Well,” Malin said, drinking in the strangeness before them. “This is odd.”
“It seems to me that the barricades are meant to block vehicles,” Elna said, “or large groups of people. Not individuals. Maybe they’re afraid of being raided.”
“That’s assuming anyone is still here,” Malin said. Then again, he’d seen movement through the hole in the gate, hadn’t he?
Maybe it was the tattered flag, Malin thought. Maybe that’s what I saw.
“It’s possible the guards fled along with the other refugees,” Mark said. “This place looks abandoned to me.”
Malin set the bow down again and retrieved the binoculars. He peered into the dark windows, but he discovered that they were all covered from the inside, as if to block any glimpse of what was happening in the clinic. Indeed, they seemed to be covered with metal sheets like the front gate.
“We have to go,” Raymond said. “We have to get inside. Please! We’re here. We’re finally here!”
Malin lowered the binoculars, then set them back in the supply box. He looked at Elna, who shrugged at him. He looked at Mark, who had a strange little smile on his face.
“No point in standing here doing nothing,” Malin said, picking up the compound bow. “Let’s get this over with.”
22
The moat that cut across the property beyond the gate was surprisingly deep, with sheer sides and plenty of brackish, filthy water in the bottom. The bridge seemed to be the only way to get the wheelchair and cart across. Nevertheless, Elna found the cars blocking the far side disconcerting. Something about this whole situation felt off. Dangerous, yes, but also off. Too strange, and she couldn’t quite put the pieces together.
What the hell is going on at the clinic? What the hell is going on in this whole town?
Since answers were not forthcoming, she started forward, pushing the wheelchair toward the bridge. The bridge had a bit of an arch, so it wasn’t until she’d started across that she realized the cars left no gaps on either end. The only way past them would be to climb over.
“Raymond, we’ve got one more little challenge for you,” she said. “You’ll have to leave the wheelchair again.”
“Just point me in the right direction,” he said, shifting on his seat. “I’ll do it. I can see the doors from here. No guards?”
“Not that we can see,” she replied.
When she reached the cars, she parked the wheelchair and set the brakes. Malin hunkered down behind the left car and nocked an arrow.
“In case of snipers,” he explained.
Mark stopped the flatbed cart. “There aren’t any snipers. All the windows are covered, and there’s no one on the roof. Come on. Let’s get everything over the cars.”
But Elna gestured for Mal
in to stay and moved to help Mark. First, they unloaded the cart, setting everything on the hood of the right car. Then Elna climbed over and moved their supplies onto the road on the far side. The whole time, she felt that same crawling unease.
Someone somewhere is watching us, she thought. They’ve been watching us since we approached the town.
Moving Raymond was next, and it took all three of them. Mark lifted him from the wheelchair. Malin carried him over the cars and passed him to Elna. Elna then carefully lowered him onto the grass on the other side.
“I can walk a little bit,” he mumbled. “Just a little give. Hang on.”
“It’s fine,” Elna said. “Just relax. We’ve got it.”
She turned back to the cars as Malin was lifting the wheelchair. Movement beyond the open gate caught her eye. Just as she grabbed the folded wheelchair to lower it onto the other side of the blockade, figures stepped around a bend in the road, heading up the last stretch toward the open gate. Even from a distance, she recognized the wild-haired, skinny guy. He seemed to be leading the pack, as the rest of the group moved a step or two behind. She counted eight or nine people.
“Guys, they’re here,” she said, turning to unfold the wheelchair. “We have to go now. Right now!”
She’d never unfolded a wheelchair so fast in her life. As she did that, Malin leapt past her, scooped up Raymond, and set him on the wheelchair. Mark came a second later, pushing the cart toward the front doors of the clinic.
As soon as Raymond was in the wheelchair, Malin raised the bow and turned, aiming it at the distant group. Tomek and his people were marching up the road as if they were in no particular hurry.
They know they’ve got us cornered, Elna thought.
“Let’s get inside the building,” Elna said. “Maybe we can lock them out. Don’t waste your last arrows.”
“These guys are relentless,” Malin said. “We killed one, wounded another, and they just keep coming. Do they have no fear at all?”
Elna beckoned him with a swing of her head as she rushed for the clinic doors. During her last push to the doors, she felt darkness creeping into the edges of her vision, and she had to regulate her breathing to keep from passing out. It seemed the days of bad diet, poor sleep, little water, and endless walking had caught up to her.
As they approached the building, Malin turned and faced backward, doing a strange side-shuffle so he could aim the bow at the gate. When they reached the small porch at the front of the building, he hit it with his heel and went down. Elna tried to catch him, but she was moving sluggishly. He landed hard on his rump and dropped his arrow.
Please be unlocked, she thought, or this is going to get a whole lot worse.
23
Even before she grabbed the door handle, she realized there was a problem. She’d been so preoccupied with their pursuers that she hadn’t studied the building up close. There was a small sensor beside the door. At least, she assumed it was a sensor. It was little more than a metal square mounted on the wall, but it had been covered by what appeared to be a small, hastily constructed metal cage, as if to prevent contact.
There was also a single narrow window beside the left door, but the window glass was missing. In its place, someone had mounted a large steel shutter. She wasn’t surprised when she turned the door handle and found it locked.
“Why would the windows be covered like that?” Malin asked, coming up beside her. “They’ve mounted sheets of metal on the inside of every window. Is it just a weird security measure?”
“I don’t know,” Elna replied. “It might be security, or it might be more than that. Actually…”
She trailed off as she became aware of a sound. A faint hum. When she moved close to the window, she realized it was coming from inside the building.
“Amazing,” she said, a thrill running through her. “They’ve got power in there. Somehow, they’ve either restored the power or they survived the EMP. I wonder if the metal shutters and this metal cage over the sensor have anything to do with it. What is going on here? What is this place?”
She looked over her shoulder and saw the open gate in the distance. Tomek and his group were gone. Somehow, they had disappeared. Had they fled? Were they hiding? Maybe they knew something about this facility that Elna did not, something that made them unwilling to get any closer.
Mark was standing behind the cart at the edge of the porch. When Elna looked at him, he gestured upward with his head, as if trying to draw her attention to something. She turned back to the doors and lifted her gaze. High above the doors, mounted beside an old light fixture, a small security camera stared down at them from behind a plastic bubble. She was shocked to see a tiny red LED light shining inside. A metal cage had been mounted over the camera’s bubble as well.
“The camera is on,” she said. “Someone might be watching us right now.”
“Good,” Mark said. “Here’s your chance to talk your way through the door.”
Mark grabbed the armrest of Raymond’s wheelchair and turned it slightly, positioning Raymond directly under the camera. Then he carefully extracted Raymond from his rain coat. When that was done, he parted Raymond’s torn sleeve to reveal the bloody bandage wrapped around his upper arm.
“I assume they can hear us,” Mark said, waving a hand at the camera. Then, louder, speaking to the camera, he said, “We have an injured man! His wound is infected! We need to barter for antibiotics! I am a doctor. We are peaceful.”
Elna went to the cart and grabbed the crate of wine bottles. She hoisted it up, the bottles clanking inside, and turned. Raising the crate as best she could, she positioned it under the camera.
“We will trade antibiotics for this,” she said, shouting into the camera, though it made her voice carry out across the yard. “Unopened bottles of wine, pre-EMP. Pasqualee Gold Label. The last of their kind!”
She held the crate there until her arms cried out, then she lowered it and set it back on the cart.
“Well, either that worked or it didn’t,” Malin said. “What do we do if they don’t let us in?”
“Nothing,” Elna replied. “This has to work.”
Not quite true, of course, but she didn’t want to think about more desperate ways of getting into the building.
A sudden loud click from the door spared her from going down dark rabbit holes in her mind. The door swung outward, forcing her and Mark to step back. A dark lobby was revealed, gray tiles and gray walls, a row of plastic chairs against the far wall and not much else. A man in black clothing stepped into view, a beast of a man with mirrored sunglasses and a gun at his hip. He filled the door. Though he wasn’t as tall as Mark, he was enormous, his muscled shoulders and broad jaw practically devouring any semblance of a neck.
“We’re sorry to bother you, sir,” Elna said, “but we’re in need of immediate medical care, and we are prepared to…”
He turned and stepped to one side, as if he hadn’t even heard her. A second figure appeared from behind him, moving out of his shadow. An older woman with graying hair pulled into a severe bun, she had a shiny forehead, a pinched face, and rather unfriendly brown eyes, but she was wearing blue nurse’s scrubs. Elna took that as a good sign.
“Let me see his injury,” she said.
Elna gestured at Raymond, and the nurse stepped forward. As she did that, the guard drew his gun and held it at his side.
“Everyone just stand real still,” he said, in a voice so dangerous Elna felt it in the air. “We get a lot of crackpots these days, so don’t do nothing to startle me.”
“We’re not here to cause trouble,” Mark said. “We’re just looking for help.”
“I hear you,” the guard replied, “but that’s what they all say.”
The nurse began to unwind the bandage. Elna leaned over the top of the wheelchair to get a good look. Once revealed, the wound appeared red and inflamed. Red lines ran up Raymond’s arm, disappearing beneath his sleeve.
The nurse made a soft sound
and rose. She looked hard at Mark, as if studying his face, then looked at Elna and Malin in turn.
“Okay, bring him inside,” she said, finally. “Bring all of your stuff. Hurry.”
And with that, she nodded at the guard and stepped back into the lobby. Elna went first, pushing the wheelchair through the door to enter a room that smelled medicinal. Everything was spotless, utterly clean. She hadn’t seen any place this well-maintained since the EMP, and the hum of electricity in the walls produced a strange sense of vertigo. She felt a bit like she’d entered a time machine.
Mark came next, pushing the cart into the lobby. Malin brought up the rear, still clutching the compound bow in one hand. As soon as everyone was inside, the guard pulled the door shut, and Elna heard the lock engage with a loud click.
“Leave your weapons and other possessions here in the lobby,” the nurse said. “They will be safe. Come with me.”
She crossed the lobby to a second door. With another loud click, it opened, revealing a long, sterile hallway of gray tile stretching off into the distance. Elna glanced at Malin, who seemed reluctant to give up the bow. She nodded at him, and he set it in the corner beside the cart.
“Come with me,” the nurse said again, striding through the second door.
Elna following, pushing the wheelchair into what looked like a hospital corridor. Open doors lined either side of the hall, and when they passed the first one, she saw a man lying in a hospital bed. A white-haired gentleman, he was quietly staring at the ceiling as an old woman sat in a chair beside his bed and knitted.
Through the next door, she saw a young child sleeping, a blanket pulled up to his chin. A man and woman—she assumed they were the child’s parents—sat in chairs in the corner, looking glum and anxious. As Elna passed by, both parents looked up suddenly, anxiety giving way to narrow-eyed suspicion.
Finally, the nurse led them into an empty room. A hospital bed sat in the middle of the sparse chamber, two chairs against the wall. Elna pushed the wheelchair to the foot of the bed and set the brakes. When she turned, she saw Malin and the nurse standing behind her. She waited a moment for Mark. When he didn’t appear, she went to the door and glanced down the hall. Mark and the security guard were both gone.
Island Refuge EMP Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 45
