III
Andrew’s head was spinning. Veronica lay on the floor to his left, sobbing in Ben’s arms. Ben and Andrew locked eyes for a moment and both their faces told the other man the same thing: “I wasn’t ready for that.”
The eaters had ceased pounding on the barricade of shopping carts outside and the vestibule remained empty, momentarily filling Andrew with relief. Gary remained mute, rubbing his temples with both hands, simply gazing in awe through the grime of the interior doors. The dead feasted upon what was left of their fallen companion. Gary barely knew Samson. Ben and Andrew barely knew Samson. Veronica barely knew Samson. But in the world’s state of disarray, the two seemed to have found in each other what they had lost. No one in that room had been so lucky as to find such a treasure. No one in that room could even begin to describe the new meaning of the phrase “getting to know someone”.
“We should move away from the doors.” Gary spoke, eyes still fixated on the gore feast outside.
Andrew nodded in agreement. He slowly walked over to Ben and Veronica, crouching down beside them. He reached his hand out to take a look at the wound on her chin but she slapped his hand away. Andrew recoiled and locked eyes with Ben again. Ben cradled her, shaking his head at Andrew. “Hey man,” he put his hand on Ben’s shoulder, “we need to get away from the doors. She hurt herself somethin’ nasty, we need to do somethin’ about it.”
Ben’s eyes were red from crying and every time he blinked they burned. He ran a hand through Veronica’s long hair, kissing her gently on the forehead. For the first time since he’d met her, this light of hope disguised as a teenage girl, he actually felt sorry for her. He didn’t know whether it was because he wasn’t there to experience the loss of her father with her, or because she wouldn’t talk about Isaac, but all he knew is that she didn’t deserve this loss anymore. She didn’t deserve the abrupt end of her adolescence in the way that it had happened. None of them should be going through this, but it hurt him the most that this young woman, the girl whose fearlessness had once given him a reason to leave the death trap he was holed up in, was falling apart in his arms. Ben scooped Veronica up and stood. She seemed to be devoured by his hulking frame, appearing childlike and lost in his embrace. He understood the father she so desperately sought in Samson, and the daughter that he needed her to be. He would make sure Samson didn’t die in vain.
Gary pulled a flashlight from his bag and reloaded his handgun. Andrew followed suit. The group began to make their way back toward the pharmacy. Cautiously passing empty aisles, Andrew felt like a cop again. He ran his light up and down the pitch black rows of already looted goods, making every silent footstep count. He imagined that he was simply searching for an armed robbery suspect and not eluding the dead.
He abruptly stopped and held up a hand. “Wait a minute.” He craned his neck and listened, there was movement somewhere off behind them. “We ain’t alone.” He spun on his heels and scanned the area with his flashlight, reality of the apocalypse seeping back in. Gary was down on one knee, ready to fire into whatever enemy came at him from the darkness. Andrew heard movement again, this time closer. He could make out the sound of light footsteps, almost delicate in their approach. He quietly crept forward, motioning for Gary to do the same.
Andrew suddenly saw a flash of movement off to his left. “Over there!” Andrew pointed the flashlight toward an aisle filled with greeting cards. Gary panicked and shot blindly in the direction of Andrew’s light. “Goddamnit Gary! Hold your fire!” He hadn’t expected the Brit to be so overzealous. He put a hand up and motioned for Gary to stay put as he made his way over to the path that their visitor had run down. He stood with his back against a stack of shelves lined with party favors. “If you have a weapon, throw it out to me.” He called out into the darkness of the store and got no answer. “Now.”
A duct taped set of knives and a broken broom handle that were cleverly crafted into a homemade weapon made its way toward Andrew. “Thank you.” He paused and kicked the weapon back toward Gary. “Now I want you to make your way very slowly out to me. You understand what slow means? Do it now.” Andrew heard the stranger begin to move and backed away from the aisle, weapon pointed and ready to go.
A small, thin woman with short red hair appeared in their line of sight. She squinted at the beam of the flashlight, arms raised, and fully emerged into the open space of the main walkway. “My name is Catherine. I’m here to help.” The woman appeared stunningly calm.
“Alright Catherine, my name is Officer Andrew Hansen. You got any other weapons on you?” Catherine shook her head no. “Are you alone?”
“Right now, yes. I have a group I’m with in another building.” She put her hands out toward Andrew, “Please, I’m a doctor. I mean you no harm. What can I do to help?” Andrew hesitated but dropped his weapon. He put an arm up and nodded at Gary who very slowly lowered his gun.
“We have someone who’s injured.” Ben spoke up from the back.
“Has she been bitten?” A concerned look played across Catherine’s face.
“No. She fell, split open her face.” Ben shifted Veronica’s weight in his arms and lowered her.
Veronica looked up at Catherine. Catherine recognized the girl’s age immediately, saw the blood soaked shirt that she held against her face and lowered her arms. “Like I said, I’m a doctor. Please.” She motioned for Veronica to move toward her. Andrew looked at Ben and Ben looked at Veronica. Veronica slowly began walking to Catherine.
Catherine lowered her bag to the floor and held her arms out. She took Veronica by the shoulder and had her sit on the cool tile floor. “What’s your name sweetheart?”
“Veronica.”
Catherine unzipped her pack and began pulling supplies out, ignoring the rest of Veronica’s group and completely elated to have the opportunity to help. “Veronica, I’m Dr. Booker, but please call me Catherine.” She went to pull the shirt from Veronica’s face but Veronica grabbed her wrist. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”
“Don’t touch the shirt.” Veronica removed it herself and exposed the gaping wound to Catherine. A chunk of skin fell loosely from the bottom of her face, most of the bleeding had already subsided but the trauma still remained evident.
“I’m going to touch your face okay?” Catherine began to examine the wound, Veronica didn’t make a sound. “Does it feel alright?”
“Hurts like a bitch.”
Catherine smirked. “Strong girl. That’s good.” She cleaned Veronica’s injury thoroughly and placed a gauze pad and bandage over it. Gary, Andrew and Ben looked on cautiously. “She’s going to need stitches. I have everything we need in the building across the street. Come with me, please.”
“How many of you are over there?” Gary asked her.
“There are five of us total, three are out on a run.”
“How do we know you’re friendly?”
“You’ll have to trust me.” She smiled softly at him.
Gary had a soft spot in his heart for red heads. His heart ached for his wife, Claire. “What do you say then?” He turned to the other two men.
“I’m not a doctor and even I know I need stitches.” Veronica picked herself up from the floor. “Ya’ll do what you want. We came here looking for people anyway, isn’t that right, Gary?” Gary said nothing in response.
They made their way back toward the exit, Veronica following closely behind Catherine, Ben following closely behind Veronica. Gary and Andrew took up the back, keeping an eye on things. They all followed Catherine back through the fire corridor that connected Target with a teenage clothing store. She told them to wait where they were, away from the windows as she fished something out of her bag. The store was thick with dust but was a breath of fresh air from the previous darkness they had been wandering around in. Sunlight poured in from every possible direction; the brightly colored autumn collection of clothing suddenly adding life to the abandoned building. Catherine began to snap photos of nothing, the flash reflecti
ng off of every metallic object in her vicinity.
“What in the hell are you doing?!” Andrew asked, concerned she’d give their position away to the roaming dead just outside the windows.
She hushed him with a finger. “Just wait.”
Faint music could be heard and in a matter of minutes, the eaters began to move away to an unknown location. Everyone’s eyes lit up. No one had heard music in over a month. “How in the hell…” Andrew’s sentence trailed off as he approached Catherine and joined her at the enormous storefront.
She grinned at him, “We’ve got it down to an art.”
IV
Veronica stared blankly ahead as Catherine sewed up her chin in the stock room of Vitamin World. Every once in a while she would wince in pain, but otherwise Catherine did a good job of making sure the area was nice and numb. Veronica marveled at the set up the doctor had here, it was as if the entire pharmaceuticals section had magically transported itself across the street. It was a Grade A stopgap walk-in clinic. She wondered where Gary was, she knew he’d be jealous that it far surpassed his medical area in the tower. But then again, Catherine was a doctor, Gary did what he could with what he had. She shrugged her shoulders and Catherine smiled.
“What are you shrugging about?”
“Did I?” Veronica’s voice was flat and congested, she barely recognized it as her own. She couldn’t tell what made her face swell more; the crying or the splitting wound Catherine was patching up.
Catherine nodded, “You’ve been deep in thought, pretty girl.” Veronica liked Catherine’s voice from the moment the woman spoke in the dark department store. It had a soothing effect to it. “Do you want to talk about how this happened? Your friends inside said you fell. Sometimes it helps to talk about it.” Catherine pulled her needle through flesh and stole a peek at Veronica’s bloodshot eyes. There was a stone cold woman inside there. She tried to imagine the madness of the new world that had broken this girl, forced her to become something far beyond her years.
“I made a stupid mistake.” She grimaced in pain again as she continued. “I made a lot of stupid mistakes.” She nervously looked down at Catherine, trying to gauge the doctor’s response, but she remained professional and courteous, eyes flicking back and forth between her work and Veronica’s eyes.
“We’ve all made stupid mistakes, it’s hard not to when you have to live like this.” She gave a soft smile, urging Veronica to continue.
“I’ve been running track since I could remember. One of the first things I was taught was to never run like you’re being chased, only run like you’ve got somewhere to go. That way, you don’t ever need to look back. But I looked back, and I fell flat on my face. And Samson…” Her voice trailed off as she said his name. Her friend, her other mistake. “I lost my father and my brother when this all started.”
“Me too, or, at least, I have to assume I did. They live in Texas. My brother doesn’t speak to my father and my father is in a wheelchair. I doubt he was lucky enough to get anywhere safe, so I just pray to God that neither one of them ended up like those things out there. I try not to think about it. That’s all I can do.” Catherine’s expression was solemn.
Veronica thought about how it would be nice to not know what happened to her father and Isaac. In fact, she was envious of not knowing. She was cursed with the memories of killing her undead father and putting a bullet in her brother’s skull. She kept that part to herself. “I met a man named Samson and I ended up pretending that he could be my new father. I know he saw me as a daughter. I didn’t mind. I liked it, it gave me hope. And that was my second mistake.”
Catherine finished up the stitching and began to clean up the excess blood. “What exactly was the second mistake?”
“Hope.”
Catherine placed some gauze over her handy work and taped it up. “27 stitches, my dear.” She pulled her gloves off and threw them into the trash along with the rest of the blood soaked items and used medical supplies. She pulled a chair up and sat down across from Veronica. “I want you to do something for me.” Veronica nodded at her. “I want you to take everything that you just said and I want you to pretend you never said it. We are living in hell. A real life nightmare. Something plucked from the sickest minds imaginable, except it is reality. There is nothing we can do to explain it. There is nothing we can do to change it. The only thing we do is stay alive.”
“Why don’t you listen to what you’re saying then?” Veronica felt her face grow hot. She didn’t mean to snap back at the doctor. “What’s the point of doing anything?”
“Because we hope. If you let hope die, then that’s when it’s over for you. You belong to this land of the dead. You succumb to this nightmare. I have hope that I will wake up tomorrow, and I will look into my husband’s eyes, I will hold his hand and I will be alive. Otherwise, all this death and all this catastrophe, it will have been all for nothing. When you have nothing else, you still have hope, and you can still give that to others.” Veronica didn’t realize that she had begun to cry again until Catherine gently wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “You are hope, Veronica. And I think your friend Samson saw that in you. Just don’t let that hope die with him. Okay? You with me?” She pulled back and held Veronica’s shoulders in her hands.
Veronica hesitated, and she hated to admit that Catherine was right. She just wanted to wallow in her misery, let it swallow her up and consume her, but then where would that leave everyone else? She wasn’t alone. She had Ben, who fought his way out of a dead city to find her. She had Andrew and Clyde, who saved Ben’s life and were with him every step of the way. Juliette, who so desperately needed others to survive. And Gary, the cheerful man who lost everything, except for his hope. She finally answered Catherine. “Yes. Okay. I’m with you.” The two smiled at each other. Through the blood and gore soaked exterior of the upside down world, they were the smiling women in the stock room of a vitamin shop with renewed hope on their side.
“I’m going to give you something to sleep okay? You need rest, desperately.” Catherine gave Veronica a sedative cocktail and led her to the salon. Ben and Gary had waited outside the back door of Vitamin World and followed closely behind. “Michelle normally sleeps back here, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. It will give you some privacy and some much needed rest.” She opened the door of the private spa room Michelle had claimed as her own.
“When are the other’s coming back?” Gary asked.
“Soon. I’m sure of it. It’ll be getting dark soon, Desmond wouldn’t risk it.” Catherine watched as Ben gave Veronica water to swallow the pills with.
“I’ll be right outside this door. If you need anything, I will be right there.”
“I don’t need anything but sleep.” Veronica looked at Ben through drowsy eyes.
“Come on, Ben. She’s alright.” Catherine motioned for him to follow her. He exited the room and closed the door softly behind him. “We should get up to the roof. Andrew and Lu will want to know how Veronica is. Come on.”
“I told her I was stayin’ right outside this door.”
“With what I just gave her, she’s probably already asleep. You’ll be sitting her an awfully long time with nothing to do.” She grinned, “Come on, I take good care of my patients.” He couldn’t help but feel a little more at ease. He knew Veronica was safe and how they’d all lucked out today. Ben smiled back at Catherine. She was a modest looking woman, but there was a refined beauty about her that he admired.
“I heard what you said in there, to Veronica.” Gary casually mentioned to the redheaded doctor as they made their way to the roof. “Thank you, it was lovely.”
“It was just the truth.” She patted the Brit on the back.
The sun had begun to slide its way across the western sky, ready to end its workday. Twilight was fast approaching and the group of five waited patiently for the return of the others. Lulu had already shown Andrew how the music set up worked as their distraction lifeline. She explained it
to the others as they waited.
Gary heard the approach of a vehicle in the distance and Catherine spotted the black truck as it slowly made its way to the entrance of Emerald Park.
“Hey! Pigs!” Lulu called out to the eaters. “Suck on some Adult Contemporary!” She pressed play on one of the cell phones and Andrew did the same with another. They giggled and the rest of them on the roof began to yell, quickly gaining the desired attention of the roaming dead in the parking lot.
“Lu, you have the keys, get downstairs and get ready to let them in.” Catherine instructed.
“I’ll help.” Gary followed after her and they dropped down into the building below.
Francis’ truck stopped at a safe distance and sat for a moment. Catherine narrowed her eyes, she couldn’t see into the cab from this distance but she felt it in her gut that something was awry.
The driver’s side door slowly opened and Michelle hopped out. She snuck around to the bed of the truck and hoisted a large bag out and onto her shoulders. Catherine’s heart began to pound uncontrollably. “Where’s Des?” Ben furrowed his brow, picking up on the concern in Catherine’s voice.
Michelle strategically made her way toward the building, keeping herself hidden behind other vehicles. A few of the eaters began losing interest in the building and Michelle cursed under her breath, ducking behind a Ford Taurus. “Who the fuck is that on the roof?” She said to herself, spotting the two men standing with Catherine. She checked the safety on both guns she carried and repositioned the overstuffed bag of firearms around her backpack. She was going to have to make a run for it.
Haven (The Breadwinner Trilogy) Page 12
