My feet touched the lobby floor and I ran for the street, just reaching the door when another gunshot split the air, completely different from the sound of the first weapon. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified as my feet crunched into the snow outside. I turned just in time to see Eric lying on top of the cop, both men armed, and both bodies jerk as three more shots were fired.
“No!” I cried out, as Eric slumped against the cop. I forced myself to press on, slowing a few feet from the scene to prepare myself. Neither man moved as I approached, but, looking closely, I saw Eric’s back rise and fall slightly as he breathed. “Thank God,” I exhaled, collapsing into the snow.
Flipping Eric over gently, I could only guess how he was still alive. With what skin was visible being covered in either blood, dust, bruises, or a combination of the three, I had to wonder if the man had nine lives. The sheer luck of his survival was an eighth wonder of the world, assuming the seven previous ones were still intact at this point. Pulling his arms over my shoulder, I hoped he would wake up long enough to at least help me get him to a safer location, but he didn’t even twitch as I pulled his pack off and slid it over my coat.
“Come on,” I grunted out of frustration, not realizing how heavy he was. I guess all of the cardio of the apocalypse was keeping him in great shape, which I didn’t exactly have a problem with until now. Still, knowing I had no other option, I pulled him up in a fireman’s carry and started trudging through the snow, calling out to Sampson as I went.
It wasn’t long before the German Shephard came running out into the snow, a sad look in those brown eyes that made my heart sink. Calvin was his partner, and Sampson knew he had perished in that building. Thinking of Calvin made me think about losing my own partner, which made me even more determined to bring Eric back from the dead for the quadrillionth time. Honestly, Gabriel was right, the man basically lived on the brink of death.
I had only been walking for five minutes when my legs gave out, sending me to the ground and slapping Eric down unceremoniously into the snow. Hoping we were far enough from the collapsed building that anyone or thing investigating the sound wouldn’t be able to find us, I hooked my hands under Eric’s shoulders and dragged him toward a convenience store behind me.
The door was missing, which meant the main room was out of the question, but there was an office and a storage room. I didn’t hesitate at either door, quickly breaking in and checking them for threats. Eric didn’t have time for caution. Luckily, neither room contained a zombie, feral, or human threat, so I hurried to pull Eric into the larger of the two back rooms, the storage area, and shut the door behind us. Pushing aside a metal rack to clear the floor, I set Eric down and went to work rolling up his jeans and cutting away his t-shirt.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, seeing the extent of his injuries as well as the serious muscles of his torso. His right side was a deep purple and his right calf had some skin missing from a graze, but the real danger was the bullet hole in his left thigh that was bleeding profusely. Reaching underneath his leg, I felt around to check for an exit wound, which there was. At least that was something in our favor.
I dug through Eric’s pack until I found a medical kit, pulling out the needle and thread to stitch up the holes. Smiling at the jokes I know he would tell if he were awake, I undid his pants and pulled them down until I could see the wound in his thigh. Hooking the thread through the eye of the needle, I went to work sealing the hole on both sides of his leg before rolling a bandage around his ribs and right calf. Noticing the twisted angle of his left arm, I took an extra shirt from his pack and fashioned a sling, hooking his arm through the bottom to keep it steady.
The various injuries, especially the massive damage to his legs that threatened infection or tetanus, worried me, so I needed antibiotics. Unfortunately, I knew I wouldn’t find any in his pack or the store we were hiding in, which meant leaving him alone and unconscious. Looking at Sampson, who sat on the floor quietly, I made a gut decision.
“Let’s go,” I spoke, heading outside after shutting the storage door and pulling a shelf down in front to block it. Creating a mental map as I went, I kept the Beretta in my hand in case we ran into trouble. Reaching inside my coat, I rubbed my chest with my off-hand to keep myself warm as my adrenaline began to wear off.
I tried to stay on a straight path, navigating around destroyed vehicles and rubble to keep the route back as simple as possible. Passing through an intersection, I spotted a CVS a few blocks down to my left and headed for it in a jog. Conserving energy would come later, after I was back in the safe room with Eric. The snow was murdering my calves, the suction of each step becoming a workout, but time was not on my side.
Stopping long enough to examine the interior through the windows, I saw lines of empty shelves and hoped someone had locked up the good stuff before the store was vandalized. I was at the door when Sampson sank to the ground with his ears peeled back, growling. I heard a low whistle from behind and turned to see three men approaching. None of them had firearms, but they all had some form of melee weapon.
“Now what is a beautiful woman like you doing all alone in a place like this?”
“Look,” I squared up, staying on the offensive while hiding my sidearm behind my hip, “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Who says we wanted to cause any?” another one said, winking at me with a smirk. The first one to speak was in the center, larger than the other two with an unkempt beard and an undeniable native accent. Winkie was taller and thin, but something about him was unsettling. To the left, the third man remained silent.
“Oh, Carlos is mute,” the middle one said, watching my eyes. He licked his lips as his eyes travelled slowly up and down my body. “He won’t say anything if you don’t.”
“It probably wouldn’t do me any good if I did, seeing as I’m all alone out here,” I mocked him, feeling disgusted by the hungry looks in their eyes. “I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t need anyone, then.” I watched his eyes flare with excitement at the challenge, and the two men with him were clearly not expecting the sudden shift. “Now, I’m going into this store. If any of you come in after me, I’m going to take it as a threat, so I strongly advise you to walk away.”
Without another word, I pried the sliding doors open and stepped inside, keeping my eyes on them until I shut the doors. They didn’t move toward me, but something told me they were waiting until I was inside. Taking a deep breath, I located a glass vase near the door and smashed it on the floor, using it as an alarm if they didn’t take the hint. With that taken care of, I started to walk through the store, heading toward the “Pharmacy” sign in the back. I wasn’t too far in when glass crunched near the front.
Spinning around, I ducked behind the nearest shelf and turned the corner, pressing my back against the end as I heard footsteps coming closer. Drawing the knife from a sheath inside my boot, I waited until a boot came down beside me. I pivoted my body and stabbed the knife diagonally into the man’s foot, looking up to see the veins in Carlos’ neck straining in a soundless yell. While his voice was silent, though, his hands slapping the metal shelf weren’t, attracting the attention of the two others.
Winkie came into view first, sprinting around the end of the aisle with his aluminum bat at the ready. He didn’t have a chance to use it, though, as I raised my Beretta and fired a round through his forehead. I almost gave the larger member of their group the same treatment, but the brief distraction with Winkie gave Carlos time to regain his composure before he brought a fist down on the back of my neck.
“Shit!” I yelled, falling forward and slamming into the ground. With his foot pinned in place, Carlos picked me up by my coat and threw me into the shelf, my head banging against the corner, before he picked me up and held my arms.
“Would you look at that…?” the middle man called out, picking up Winkie’s bat and swapping it for the pipe he held. “It seems like trouble was exactly what we were looking for.” He tappe
d the bat against his free hand thoughtfully. “You do look healthy, though.” His eyes scanned my body once again, but this time his look was more clinical.
“What?”
“A thought occurred to me. Healthy people don’t need medicine, which means you’re here with someone. That gives me an idea.” He took a step closer, holding the bat out toward me. “When we’re done here, you’re gonna take us to them, we’re gonna take what you have, and then, if you play nice, we’ll consider leaving you alone like you asked.”
“I’ve got a counter-offer, asshole,” I spat. “Sampson, attack.” The German Shephard that had been steadily creeping closer suddenly leaped into the air with a growl, biting at the man’s hands as he flailed. I stomped on the knife, shoving it deeper into Carlos’ foot, and his knee buckled to support the shift in weight. As he fell, though, he managed to slam the steel bar he carried into my hand, sending the Beretta flying.
I flung myself onto Carlos, grabbing for the knife in his foot, but he caught my head and threw me to the side. Banging off of the shelf again, the gash in my head reopened, I pinned his hand against me with my left forearm and jerked his elbow inside, snapping the bone out of place. Once again, he made to cry out, but he grabbed a fistful of my hair and smashed my face into the floor.
The impact left me seeing black, but I held onto the pain like a crutch. He kept his grip on my hair, pulling me up, and my vision came back into focus in time to see a wall of glass rushing at me. I crashed through the window and landed in the snow outside, rolling to my stomach and coughing blood.
A boot crunched in snow as Carlos stepped over the wall, but my anger brought with it a surge of adrenaline. Reaching out with my left hand, I took hold of his calf and pulled, rolling the rest of my weight forward onto his shin. Off-balance, Carlos’ back leg was trapped on the other side of the wall and his groin came down on the broken glass still embedded in the frame.
I grabbed the side of his face and smashed it sideways into the wall, leaving pieces of shattered glass in his skin. Leaning over the low wall, pressing Carlos further onto the glass horizontally, I ripped the knife out of his back foot and brutally stabbed it into the side of his skull with a roar of frustration. Releasing my grip on the blade after a minute, I sat against the wall before remembering something.
“Sampson!” I ran back inside the store, locating the canine quickly as he sat on the outskirts of a pool of blood. The large man’s throat was torn out, air bubbles still coming up as he bled to death from the gaping hole in his trachea. Life bleeding out of him, the man glared at me with hatred, but I smirked. My eyes shifted to Sampson, who awaited my response.
“Good dog,” I said, crouching and patting his side. Not forgetting what I came here for, I ran to the pharmacy area and sifted through several bottles before I came across a bottle of cephalexin and, somehow, one of penicillin. On the way out, I made sure to grab what I could find for my own wounds, having earned a few lacerations for my efforts.
Passing by Carlos’ body, I pulled my knife out of his skull, wiped it off on his jacket, and sheathed it, letting his body fall to the snow. The ten-minute trek back to the convenience store was uneventful, thankfully, and the rack in front of the storage door hadn’t been moved. Picking up a handful of newspapers and magazines still on the rack by the counter, I slid into the storage room with Sampson and barricaded the door behind us.
Eric was right where I had left him, though he had rolled onto his side, and I couldn’t help but smile at how peaceful he looked. It was strange to see him like that, considering how much violence the man could accomplish, but it was also nice, because he deserved some sense of relaxation.
Clearing the side of the room away from the door, I built a small enclosure of non-flammable material and started a fire using newspaper and one of Eric’s lighters. Having four of them in his pack seemed excessive, but I wasn’t about to judge. I’m sure it was habit after being on his own for so long. Instead, I opened the penicillin and eased his mouth open, placing a tablet on his tongue before pouring a small amount of water inside. He coughed and jerked, but I closed his mouth until he swallowed the pill.
His eyes cracked open slightly, and I felt relief wash over me as his jaw started to move.
“Eric? Are you back with me?”
“Jessica…” he mumbled, trailing off as his eyes watered from the exertion. “…love you,” he ended, passing out once more as my heart reeled in shock. I had so many questions that demanded answers. Was he even conscious? Did he mean it? Should I tell him about the moment if he didn’t remember when he woke up? The big one, of course, was did I share the feeling?
Leaving those questions to the future, I slid his backpack underneath his head and set him down gently, moving to the fire. Sampson moved behind Eric and sat down, whimpering his own concern for the man, but there was nothing either of us could do now but wait. I shifted my attention to patching myself up, getting creative with the reflection of a steel rack to stitch up my forehead. It was a slow, painful process, but I did a good job considering the circumstance.
Once I was done with myself, I held the rack over the flames for a while before leveraging off two lengths of pole and taping them against Eric’s injured legs, since both would need a splint for the near future. Content with my handiwork, I leaned against the door to the storage room and pulled out Eric’s journal. He had been busy keeping up with the times, but I went ahead and filled in this blank for him, and for you.
Setting the journal aside and leaning my head against the door, I closed my eyes to rest for a minute.
Chapter 43
I had no idea how long I’d been out, but I woke to a warmth against my back and the sound of a crackling fire. At first I had the comforting thought that Jessica was laying behind me, but I cracked my eyes open to see her leaning against a door, my journal sitting in her lap as she slept. I couldn’t be sure, but she looked like she had acquired more injuries than the building collapse had given her. Confused, I turned my head enough to see Sampson’s tail swishing by my leg, with flecks of blood in the fur, but the movement caused me to groan in pain.
“Welcome back to the world of the living,” Jessica croaked quietly, her tone a combination of humor, exhaustion, and relief. “I was beginning to think I had lost you there for a while.” She pushed herself up from the wall and brought a bottle of water over to me, returning my journal to the backpack. As she got closer, my suspicions of her being hurt more than I remembered were confirmed.
“Please, I’m fully capable-” The shift of reaching for the water brought a new wave of pain that made me shut up. “Thanks,” I said between clenched teeth. “I would say it feels good to be back, but I feel like I got hit by a train.” I reflexively moved my left hand to unscrew the cap of the bottle, wincing as my arm rejected the motion. “Was that all from the building?” I addressed the dried blood on her forehead as well as the numerous cuts around her shoulder.
“What?” She looked where I gestured and nodded. “Oh, yeah, but don’t worry about me. You’re in much worse shape.” Glancing down to take stock of my body, the five-story fall flashed through my mind.
My left arm rested in a makeshift sling, so it was either broken or fractured. I would say sprained, but I knew that wasn’t even a possibility with the impact from that height. A bandage was wrapped around my left thigh, where the shot caller had winged me, and another bandage around my calf, along with a metal splint taped to each of my legs. Apparently, the rebar had done a little more damage to my leg than I had thought. Setting down the water, I lifted up my shirt to find a third bandage tightly wound around my ribcage, purple skin poking around the edges of the wrap.
“We’ll definitely need to get you fixed up by an actual medic, but I did what I could for now. Luckily, the bullet missed anything vital and went straight through, but I’m pretty sure you’ve got some broken ribs. Your legs were really messed up, so I wasn’t taking any chances.” I looked into her eyes, smiling, and she l
ooked away, moving to stoke the fire as if shy. “There’s a bottle of antibiotics next to you that we’ll need to keep up with for at least a few days, just in case,” she said, keeping her back turned.
“Thank you.” Knowing this wasn’t the first time she’d saved me, figuratively and realistically, I meant that more than she realized. Jessica put down the metal rod she was using for the fire and turned to face me, not quite meeting my gaze.
“Eric…do you remember anything after the fall?” I thought about it for a moment, trying to recall anything before waking up, and shook my head as much as I could.
“I vaguely remember playing a game of ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ in the snow, but even that’s fuzzy. Why?”
“You woke up at one point and said something, which was a relief, but then you passed out again, so I was just curious.”
“Was it important?” Her eyes flashed before she glanced right, which, after three years, I had come to recognize as the tell that she was about to lie.
“No, not really. You were mumbling, so you might have just been dreaming.” She shook her head, as if she were struggling with the idea of telling the truth.
“Well, for what it’s worth,” I broke the awkward tension, reaching my arm up to prop my head on, “you’re one hell of a medic and, while I wish the circumstances were different, I liked waking up to you in the same room.” I thought I saw her blush in the light of the fire, but it could have just been the color of the flames dancing on her features.
“Thanks.” She smiled. “I liked that, too.” She returned to sitting against the door and closed her eyes again, exhaling a deep breath. I waited a few minutes to make sure she was out before reaching into my pack and flipping through the journal, noticing a much nicer handwriting in the latest entry.
A Broken World (Book 3): Fractured Memories Page 17
