by James Hunt
“I messed up on the wings a little bit,” Holly said, frowning, and then turned to her dad, a tiny smirk creeping through the frown. “I think I need to try it again.”
“Well, I think you need to go inside and warm up.” Mark directed her toward the cabin door, and she gave a little humph as he patted her bottom and ushered her forward. “We’ll see how your brother is doing. I need to check his bandages anyway.”
Holly reluctantly sat by the fire, defiantly crossing her arms as Mark made his way toward the kitchen. “Are you hungry?”
“No.” Holly kept her face toward the fire, away from her father.
Mark reached for a can of chicken soup, which was her favorite food. When she was little, she’d pretended to be sick on several occasions just to have it. And it wasn’t until Mark and Kate explained to her that she didn’t have to be sick to eat chicken soup that she finally ended the charade.
“No?” Mark asked, his voice curiously high. “Not even for a little, oh, I don’t know.” He quickly slammed the can onto the counter in a dramatic fashion, and the commotion made Holly turn around. “Chicken soup?”
Holly smiled, the anger melting away. “Okay.”
“Come here and get it ready. I need to check on your brother.” Mark kissed the top of Holly’s head and moved past her toward the bedrooms.
The cabin was a good size, having four bedrooms. Three were clustered on one side, the kitchen and living room in the middle, and on the other end was the master bedroom where Rodney slept. The three bedrooms behind the kitchen were smaller, more closet than bedroom, and the beds were uncomfortable, but the fireplace kept everything warm.
Mark gently tapped on Luke’s door, his mouth a breath away from the old wood. “Luke?” He grabbed the cold bronze of the doorknob and slowly pushed it open. The hinges groaned, and the sliver of space between the door and the frame widened as Mark squeezed his way into the gap. “Luke?”
His son was asleep on the bed, with the sheets up to his chin. His head lolled lazily to the left, revealing the growing scruff on his cheeks. Mark involuntarily reached for his own cheek, finding the start of a beard. It was dark brown and thicker than Luke’s, coarse from age and the cold. He could break off a hair like an icicle if he wanted to.
Mark pressed his hand against the boy’s forehead. Luke’s head was like a stovetop, and Mark immediately ripped the covers off him and tried to stir him awake. “Luke? Can you hear me?”
Luke groaned. “I don’t want to go. You can’t leave her. I won’t— Can’t go. Don’t go. Claire.” The words faded like a whisper, and Luke’s eyelids fluttered.
Mark hurried into the kitchen and opened the pantry, where his fingers tore open the nearest plastic case of water. He ripped the bottle out and grabbed Holly’s arm. “Go outside and scream for your mom to come back.”
“What’s wrong?” Holly asked, her voice trembling with fear.
And before Mark could explain, he saw figures dart past the widows, Kate leading a crying woman in boots and pajamas that carried a bloodied boy inside, followed by three others dressed in similar garb. Rodney followed suit, shutting the door.
Kate cleared off the round kitchen table, and the woman gently laid the injured boy down, and Mark noted how still the boy looked.
Rodney hurried past Mark in the galley, forcing him flush against the counter and cabinets, and then he snatched a bag from the pantry and brought it to the table, where an old man hovered over the boy.
“I’ll need to sterilize the wound,” the old man said, rolling up his sleeves, exposing frost, dirt, and blood. Rodney handed him a bottle of peroxide, and he doused his arms with it, the excess spilling onto the table and floor.
“Scissors.” The old man held out his hand, and Rodney handed him the silver-plated tool. He cut the boy’s shirt from the collar straight down the middle and flung the tattered remnants aside.
What small patches of the boy’s stomach and chest weren’t covered in blood were pale shapes of white flesh. A gruesome wound rested to the left-hand side of the boy’s navel, oozing fresh blood. The old man snatched a handful of gauze and pressed it hard against the exposed wound.
“I need a hand, quickly.” The doctor’s orders were frantic but mechanically efficient. Rodney offered his hand for assistance but was knocked away. “No, I need you to keep handing me the tools. You.” He pointed at Kate, who stepped up. The old man grabbed her hand and placed it over the wound. “Press hard.”
“O-Okay, I got it,” Kate said.
Mark watched as the old man frantically gathered the tools from Rodney’s bag, smearing blood over the clean silver of the instruments. And though his arms and hands trembled from the cold, they moved with skill.
The woman who carried the boy inside kept hold of his hand, pressing it tight against her lips, and then whispered prayers and pleaded to God the way only a mother could.
“Move the gauze.” The old man waved Kate out of the way and then plunged small metal tweezers into the boy’s gut, which triggered the first signs of life.
“Ahhhh!” The boy bucked wildly on the table, and the tweezers were thrown to the floor at Mark’s feet.
“Hold him down! Keep him still!” the old man said.
Kate, Rodney, and the mother placed their hands on the boy’s shoulders, arms, and legs. The screams curdled the blood in Mark’s veins, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the boy’s kicking legs, the blood, the—
“Mark!” Kate said, whipping her head back at him, then gestured to the floor. “The tweezers!”
Mark stared at the bloodied piece of silver circled by scattered blood droplets at his toes. He picked it up and then put it in the doctor’s extended hand.
“Give me the peroxide.” The old man poured more of the liquid over the tweezers, and Mark lingered close by and watched him plunge the tweezers back into the wound, which produced another eardrum-shattering scream. But after a few seconds, the scream died as the boy passed out, his head lolling limply to the side.
“Chris!” The boy’s mother reached for his face, pulling it toward her.
“Got it.” The old man removed the tweezers and dropped the nine-millimeter bullet on the table, where it rolled off and clanked against the floor. He then stuck his fingers in the hole, examining the rest of the wound. “I can’t tell if any organs were struck.” He removed his finger and pressed around the abdomen. “Needle and thread. I need to sew this up quickly.”
Rodney handed the old man the requested supplies, but the mother stepped in the old man’s way, her eyes frantic and wide. She was a frightened animal, a creature unsure of any future. She reminded Mark of Kate when she first arrived at their apartment in New York after the EMP.
“Is he going to live?” the mother asked.
The words hung in the air, and when the doctor remained silent, she gasped, stepping backward until she hit the wall and collapsed.
The old man ran the needle and thread through the boy’s skin, pulling the wound closed, until there was nothing there but blood and lines of thread. “We need to get him to a bed, and we need fluids in him.”
“I have an IV bag,” Rodney said, getting his arms beneath the boy. “Kate, you know where they are.” He lifted the boy off the table and carried him to Holly’s room, the mother trailing behind.
Mark stood motionless in the kitchen amid the flurry of action. He stared at the fresh blood on the table and the floor. Crimson droplets hit the floor in slow, methodical drops at the table’s edge. He saw the bullet near one of the table’s legs, and he picked it up. He rolled the metal between his fingers. It was still warm from the boy’s gut.
Kate stepped out of the room and staggered a little bit, unsure of her footing. She clamped her hand around Mark’s arm and snapped his attention away from the bullet. “Are you all right?”
Mark peered into her concerned eyes and then looked back at the bullet. “Luke is sick. I think he has an infection.”
“What? He was fine last ni
ght.” Kate walked toward Luke’s room and disappeared inside. Mark was still staring down at the bullet when she rushed past Mark and retrieved the old man, dragging him to Luke’s room. There was silence for a minute, and then Kate was screaming.
“Help him!”
His wife’s hysteria triggered Mark back into action, and he joined Rodney in the room. Kate stood at the head of Luke’s bed, the veins in her neck throbbing and her jaw square. The old man was at the foot of the bed, his back toward the door. Kate was fuming.
“We helped you!” Kate shoved the old man hard in the chest, and he stumbled backward to the floor. She hovered over him, fist raised, and it took both Mark and Rodney to keep her still.
“Whoa, hey, what is going on?” Mark asked.
Kate’s eyes bored into the old man, and while her snarl remained, the tension in her body released. “He won’t help Luke.”
Rodney and Mark both turned to the old man. Mark stepped first, picking the old man up to his feet and then slamming him against the wall.
“Help. Him.” Mark spoke through gritted teeth, the old man’s shivering throat in his hand.
“My niece,” he said, limply groping at Mark’s arm. “She’s back at the town. With those people who attacked us.” He leaned into Mark’s hand. “Help me get her back.”
“If you don’t help him, I will throw you out into the cold,” Rodney said.
“And then he’ll die!” the old man fired back. “The wound’s infected. And the only way to treat him now is with antibiotics and removing the infected tissue. You might have the supplies to perform the task, but that bullet is close to the arteries that run into his heart. You try and pull it out yourself, and he could bleed to death.”
Mark gave a slow turn of his head toward Rodney. The stare that passed between them told Mark that the old man was right. With gritted teeth, he let the old man go.
Four red finger marks lingered on the old man’s skin, and he gently rubbed them as he stepped from the room and rejoined his group.
“Where’s the town?” Mark asked.
The doctor, whose name was Harold, sat at the kitchen table, where he removed the bullet from the boy just moments before. The older woman he brought was his wife, Marie, and the younger girl was his daughter, Lisa. The mother with the wounded son, Chris, was Gwen.
“Who are they?” Rodney asked.
“We don’t know.” Harold clasped his hands tightly between his knees and rocked back and forth in the chair.
“They were armed?” Kate asked.
The doctor nodded, and then his wife touched his shoulder.
“They shot anyone that tried to fight back,” she said, tears glistening in her eyes.
“I watched them kill my brother from our living room window,” Harold said. “After I saw that, I took my family and ran out the back.” He gestured back to the room where they put Chris and Gwen. “I found them on the way, and we all ran. They followed, but they gave up quickly. The snow was thick. There were a lot of trees—”
“Did you see your niece?” Rodney asked. “Did you see that she was alive?”
“I-I don’t know,” Harold answered.
“I’m not going over there to bring back a dead body.” Rodney pushed himself from the wall of the living room. “And I’m not letting any of my people die, so you can—”
“We’re wasting time!” Kate stepped between Rodney and the doctor, looking at Rodney. “Can you help Luke? Can you get the bullet out without killing him?”
Rodney ground his teeth, the muscles along his jaw twitching. He shook his head.
Kate walked toward him, her eyes pleading. “Then I need his help.” She stopped just short of reaching for his hand. “Luke will die if we don’t go.” She turned to the doctor. “But if she is dead, our deal still stands. You will operate on Luke.”
“If I see the body,” the doctor said. “Yes.”
Kate turned back to Rodney, those eyes still pleading. If there was one thing Rodney couldn’t stand, it was blackmail. But the choices were shit either way. If the bullet had just gone into Luke’s arm, the shoulder—hell the stomach—he could have risked fishing it out himself. But he knew the old doctor was right, and he hated it.
Kate leaned closer, her voice a whisper. “The same people that attacked their town could be the same ones that hit the hospital. We need to find out what we’re dealing with.”
Without a word, Rodney disappeared into his room. A desk sat in the far corner, and he opened the top drawer. He removed a rolled-up piece of paper and then returned to the kitchen and slapped the paper on the table.
“Open it,” Rodney said, looking at the old man.
Harold hesitated but then reached for the paper and slowly unrolled the parchment. As he did, he unveiled a map of upstate New York.
“Show me where the town is,” Rodney said.
Kate sidled up next to him, gently holding his arm. “Thank you.”
Rodney nodded and then looked at Mark while the old doctor examined the map. “Do you know how to shoot?”
“It’s been a while,” Mark answered.
“I’ll give you some pointers.”
4
The town was easier to find than Kate thought, but it was closer to the cabin than she would have liked. And from the expression on Rodney’s face, he thought so too, and she wondered if that was the motivation for him to come. Despite the noble quest to help her son, Kate knew Rodney was pragmatic. He wouldn’t have gotten them this far if he weren’t. But in the end, it didn’t matter. They were here, and they needed to find the girl.
The doctor didn’t have a picture, but luckily his niece had very striking purple dye in her hair. So long as Dennis’s men hadn’t scalped her, finding her wouldn’t be a problem.
“We’ll stay toward the town’s north side,” Rodney said, pointing through the trees and toward a ridge. “With the town in a valley, we’ll have the high ground.”
Kate peeked around Mark at Lisa, the doctor’s daughter, who had come with them. Rodney wanted someone who had some knowledge of the town, and Kate wanted an insurance policy for her son. She didn’t think the doctor would go back on his word, but he’d be less tempted so long as Kate kept the girl close.
“There were a lot of them.” Lisa spoke warily, staring at the town as if a monster slept below. “More than we have.”
“That’s why we’re going to scout it first,” Rodney said. “Keep your eyes peeled.”
The foursome crawled along the top of the ridge, Rodney using the binoculars every twenty yards to check for the inmates below. They worked their way down the ridgeline until they reached the end, and their view was blocked by forest.
Rodney waved them close, and they formed a small, broken circle. “All right, unless all of the inmates have moved inside the buildings, it doesn’t look like they have the same numbers anymore. I saw two guards at the town’s entrance and two stationed outside a single building.” He turned to Lisa. “I’m assuming that’s the inn?”
“Yeah,” Lisa answered, glancing back into the town. “That’s where we saw them putting everyone.”
Rodney removed his binoculars and handed them to Kate, and just when he was about to descend the ridge, she snatched his arm.
“What are you doing?” Kate asked, her voice a harsh whisper.
“We need to confirm the people are still inside,” Rodney answered. “It’ll be easier for me to go down alone.”
“What if someone sees you? What if you get hurt? What if you—”
“I’ll be fine.” Rodney removed her hand from his arm. “Keep an eye on me with the binoculars. If things go bad, head back to the cabin.”
“If we can’t get the girl back, then Luke dies,” Mark said. “No cowboy stuff. Just go down there, peek through the windows, and then come right back.”
Rodney nodded and then slipped down the mountain, gliding through the snow on his backside until it leveled out to where he could walk.
The b
inoculars made Kate feel as if she’d been thrust into the valley, and she tightened her grip as Rodney crept toward the window on the back side of a building.
For a moment, Kate considered the possibility of failure. Her thoughts crossed the line of morality, into the dark company of the very inmates they were fighting. She peeled her eyes away from the binoculars and found Lisa. If they failed, and the doctor still wouldn’t help her, then she would force him to—by any means necessary.
“Kate.” Mark touched her shoulder, pointing toward Rodney on his return.
Rodney kept low on the climb up, crawling on all fours, and Mark offered his hand to help him over the ridge. “I didn’t see her inside.” He turned toward the town, still catching his breath. “But I could hear them talking. One of the guards has taken a few of the women to the building next door. She might be there.”
“How many guards?” Mark asked.
“I saw four inside plus the two I saw stationed at the town’s road entrance,” Rodney answered. “And two more in the building next door.”
“Shit,” Mark said breathlessly. He shifted toward Kate. “It won’t take anything but a scream to break our cover.”
Kate nodded. It was riskier than she would have preferred, but they were out of choices. She turned toward Lisa, who trembled under Kate’s hand. “How good of a shot are you?”
“I-I don’t know,” Lisa said, staring at the rifle in her hands as if it were a foreign object. “I had a boyfriend that took me hunting a few times. He showed me a few things.”
Without asking, Kate took the weapon away from her and checked their position through the scope. Both buildings had back doors, but from their vantage point, even with the trees, it was a clear shot. She handed the weapon back to Lisa. “If you hear screams or gunshots, we’re coming out of those doors. You shoot anything that’s not us, understand?”
Lisa nodded and tried to position herself comfortably as Kate turned to Mark.
