Lifeless (Lawless Saga Book 2)

by Tarah Benner

  Portia looked just as banged-up as Bernie felt. The gash along her scalp looked especially gruesome, and she had an angry red indentation along the side of her neck.

  “You okay?” asked Bernie as they limped along.

  “I think so.”

  Bernie hesitated, glancing down at the torn alien shirt stretching over the bump. “The baby?”

  Portia dragged in a shaky breath. “Fine, I think . . . I don’t know.”

  Bernie glanced over her shoulder. The black sedan was nowhere to be found. Bernie wanted to feel relief, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the driver was staying out of sight to lure them into a false sense of security.

  As they limped along the side of the road, Bernie kept glancing over her shoulder. She expected to see the flash of a siren, but behind them was only unfriendly black asphalt.

  Perhaps the driver had seen the explosion and thought that they’d died. Maybe he’d watched them veer off the road and doubled back to get help. Or maybe he was just biding his time, waiting to ambush them when they least expected it.

  Not that it mattered. Bernie didn’t have any fight left in her. She couldn’t run. She could hardly walk. But they couldn’t afford to stop. They were stranded in the middle of nowhere, and they were rapidly losing the light. She was a cripple, and Portia still had her sensor embedded in her arm. They had to get it out.

  “You see that?” asked Portia after what felt like hours.

  Bernie didn’t answer. She’d been drifting in and out of the present, allowing her mind to wander back to a vacation she’d taken with her mom to a hot-springs resort in Colorado.

  They’d gone in the dead of winter. The trees on the mountain had looked soft and hazy, and snow had been falling steadily all afternoon. She remembered lying there watching snowflakes disappear as they hit the steamy surface of the water.

  “What?” she asked after a minute, returning to the present with a jarring burst of agony.

  “We made it.”

  Bernie looked up. The pain in her leg was almost unbearable. Her underarms were throbbing from the crutches, and she had a splitting headache. “Where?”

  “Brownfield, I guess,” said Portia.

  “Oh, joy.” Bernie couldn’t quite picture Brownfield on the map, but it had to be one of those towns whose name was printed in a smaller font than all the others.

  As they limped along, they passed a rundown old gas station and a plain white building with a hodgepodge of old farm equipment rusting outside. There was a seedy motel with a tractor parked out front and an old grain elevator looming off to their right.

  TV shows always seemed to romanticize small towns, but she couldn’t help feeling that Gilmore Girls and The Vampire Diaries had gotten it all wrong. Brownfield was kind of a shit hole. She couldn’t imagine the town hosting a Firelight Festival, a teenage beauty pageant, or a masquerade ball where vampires came out to wreak havoc on innocent townspeople. Then again, she couldn’t imagine a bunch of sexy supernaturals taking up residence in Brownfield to begin with.

  The landscape grew more and more bleak as they approached the town center: brick buildings collapsing under their own weight, an abandoned farmers’ co-op with its windows boarded up, and a row of sun-faded shops that looked as though they were decaying right where they stood.

  “You think we can find another car?” asked Portia, her voice the only sound for miles.

  “So long as you — don’t mind driving — a combine,” gasped Bernie.

  She’d meant for it to be a joke, but it really wasn’t. Her arms were killing her, and their situation was growing more desperate by the minute. They had no car. They had no water. She suspected she had a concussion, and she wanted nothing more than to lie down and die.

  Portia stopped so suddenly that Bernie nearly rammed right into her. She was standing in the middle of the street, staring at a squat brick building that looked like a cross between an elementary school and a Social Security office.

  “Should we go inside?” asked Portia tentatively.

  At first, Bernie wasn’t sure why Portia would want to, but then she realized that the building was a clinic.

  Of course. Portia still had her stupid sensor embedded in her arm, she needed prenatal vitamins, and Bernie needed a host of medications that she was never going to find.

  “Let’s go,” said Bernie.

  Fueled by pain and a blind, half-delirious rage, Bernie picked a large brick paver out of the landscaping and chucked it into the front window. It bounced off the glass on her first try, but on her second, the window shattered.

  They clambered through the window frame — Portia much more gracefully than Bernie — and found themselves standing in a cramped waiting room that smelled like sweat and ammonia.

  Portia didn’t waste any time. She lumbered down the hallway toward the exam rooms, throwing open doors in search of anything they could use.

  Bernie knew she should help Portia scavenge, but instead she let out a heavy breath and collapsed into one of the cracked plastic chairs. Her leg was throbbing worse than it had back at the prison. She desperately needed some pain pills, but she was worried about the effect it would have on her already addled brain.

  The last trickle of sunlight fell across the ringed wooden table in the corner, where someone had left a mess of pamphlets promising to help with all kinds of conditions: HIV, Hepatitis C, asthma, tuberculosis, pregnancy . . .

  Bernie’s eyes zeroed in on the little purple pamphlet. It had the words “Pregnant? We can help!” typed in cheerful white letters across the top. On the cover was a picture of a beautiful Hispanic teenager with a bulging baby bump superimposed over the subheading “Get to know your options: parenting, abortion, or adoption.”

  Bernie snatched up the pamphlet and cracked it open, scanning the list of clinics and services in the area. She doubted very much that any of them were still operational, but if the buildings were intact, there was a chance they could find some of the things Portia needed.

  By the looks of the simplified pink-and-purple map on the back, the closest women’s health clinic was in Pleasanton — a six-hour drive from Brownfield — and they still needed to steal a car.

  “I need your help,” said Portia suddenly, materializing like a ghost beside the receptionist’s desk.

  Bernie gave a start. Portia was dangerously pale, holding a shiny silver scalpel in one hand and a pair of rubber gloves in the other.

  “Any luck?” Bernie asked, glancing nervously at the scalpel.

  “No meds,” said Portia. “This place is a fucking dump. Let’s do what we came here to do and get the hell out of here.”

  “Oh. Well . . .”

  Of course she knew she would have to remove Portia’s sensor, but she felt as though someone should respond with an appropriate amount of hesitation. She wasn’t in any position to play doctor in a dark dumpy clinic in the middle of nowhere.

  Sure, Lark had removed her sensor with nothing but a shard of glass and her fingers, but after the wreck, Bernie didn’t think she could walk in a straight line, much less perform surgery.

  Portia wasn’t having it. “What are you waiting for?” she snapped with a shadow of her old, bossy self. “Get your ass up and come cut this thing out of me!”

  twenty-two

  Soren

  Simjay’s surgery was a gruesome blur. Soren felt brutally unprepared to help Sybil in any capacity, but if that was her condition for operating on Simjay, Soren wasn’t going to object.

  As soon as they moved him into the makeshift surgical theater and Sybil donned her blue scrubs, she became alert and methodical. She spent what seemed like an extraordinary amount of time examining Simjay under the blinding white lights. She listened to his abdomen and explored the wound with her fingers. Soren was alarmed by the amount of blood still flowing from the cut, but Sybil seemed more attentive than concerned.

  When she finished with her exam, her jaw tightened, and she glanced at Soren to make sure he
was ready to proceed.

  Everything after that happened surprisingly fast. The doctor hooked Simjay up to the monitors and administered the anesthetic. Then she placed a clear plastic mask over his airways and instructed Soren on how to pump air into Simjay’s lungs with the stiff plastic balloon.

  As the procedure unfolded, Soren had no real idea of how it was going. He was too busy breathing for Simjay to watch the doctor’s face, and Sybil didn’t make a sound. The only noises Soren heard were the steady beep of the heart monitor, the balloon expelling air into Simjay’s lungs, and the click of instruments on the steel tray as Sybil worked.

  At one point he looked over and saw her threading Simjay’s stitches, but the blue surgical paper was drenched with so much blood that it was impossible to tell whether or not she’d been successful.

  “All done,” said Sybil after a long sigh. “Let me clean this up, and we’ll move him into recovery.”

  Soren felt as if he might collapse in relief, but when the mask came off and he saw Simjay’s slack expression, it was like staring into the face of a corpse.

  “How — How did it go?” he stammered, too afraid to look Sybil in the eye.

  “Let’s get him moved, and I’ll tell you all together.”

  Soren didn’t know how to interpret that. Her overall tone and expression were maddeningly opaque — the same grim voice that all doctors used — and he had the sudden urge to grab her by the shoulders and demand a real answer.

  Instead, he helped her gather up all the bloody surgical pads and stuff them into a biohazard bag. Given everything that was going on, it seemed silly to separate the hazardous materials, but he had a feeling that Sybil Scargoza was the type of person who didn’t stop doing things by the book just because the world had ended.

  They wheeled Simjay into a cramped, windowless room and covered him with a blanket. He looked very skinny and pale lying under the harsh florescent lights, and Soren only hoped that Sybil was one hell of a horse doctor.

  The doctor changed out of her scrubs, and Soren peeled off his paper gown and tossed it into the trash. He followed Sybil back to the waiting area, where Axel was pacing tight circles in front of the receptionist’s desk and Lark was sitting by the window. Denali kept jumping on and off the chairs, alternately whining and pawing at Lark’s leg.

  “How’d it go?” Axel asked breathlessly.

  At that moment, Soren felt an unexpected surge of solidarity. Axel may have been a bad-tempered hillbilly who always said the wrong thing, but he cared about Simjay. They’d all been through hell together back at San Judas, and that created an unbreakable bond.

  “He’s stable,” said Sybil, her mouth still drawn into a tight, serious line. “The good news is the knife didn’t penetrate his small bowel, liver, or colon. It seems that your friend was very lucky.”

  Lark raised her head. “It seems that he was lucky?”

  Sybil gave a reluctant nod. “I don’t think I missed anything, but it’s tough to know for sure. If I had a laparoscope here, I could be a little more confident, but he doesn’t have any of the symptoms —”

  “So what you’re sayin’ is that you don’ know,” said Axel roughly.

  “This isn’t my specialty,” said Sybil. “Humans aren’t my specialty. But I’ve stopped the bleeding, and there’s nothing to do but wait.”

  “How long?” asked Soren.

  “As long as it takes. Normally I’d want to keep him under observation, but considering the circumstances . . .”

  She let out a long sigh, and Lark and Soren exchanged a concerned look.

  “I don’t have any antibiotics here. My supply was looted months ago, and pharmaceuticals are very hard to come by these days.” Sybil’s face grew serious. “Simjay has a very good chance of making a full recovery, but his biggest danger is infection. If you don’t get him some antibiotics and soon . . .”

  Axel’s face fell into a dark scowl. The doctor didn’t need to finish her thought. They all understood her meaning.

  “Is he awake?” asked Lark.

  “He should be soon.”

  Lark got up and took a step toward the doctor. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” said Sybil. “He’s not out of the woods. I meant what I said about the antibiotics. The sooner you can find some, the better.”

  By the time they all crowded into the recovery room, Simjay was opening his eyes and scanning the room in a haze of confusion.

  “How are you feeling?” Soren asked as the doctor took Simjay’s vitals.

  “Shitty.” Simjay’s voice was dry and very hoarse. “You leave some car keys in there when you stitched me up?” he asked, tossing Sybil a flirty smile.

  “I think he’s going to be just fine,” she said.

  “I dunno . . .” Simjay slurred. “Did you check me out everywhere?” he asked with a sleepy grin. “I think I could use a sponge bath.”

  “Well, maybe your friend can take care of that,” said the doctor reprovingly. “He assisted with your surgery, so please direct any complaints to him.”

  Simjay’s eyebrows went up. “You helped?”

  “Not really,” said Soren.

  “Always the modest one,” said Simjay, closing his eyes and lying back with a smile.

  Soren glanced at Sybil, who didn’t seem concerned by Simjay’s sudden burst of sleepiness.

  “He’ll be drowsy for a while,” she said. “I had to use an anesthetic meant for large animals. I gave him a smaller dose, but . . .”

  “Good stuff,” mumbled Simjay. “Ketamine?”

  The doctor ignored him. “Can we talk for a minute?”

  Lark caught Soren’s eye, and they all followed Sybil out into the hallway. Soren got a whiff of hay and manure, and he realized that the entire place had a faint barnlike smell that he hadn’t noticed before.

  Sybil hesitated for a moment before producing a scrap of paper and handing it to Soren. On the back of a Safe-Guard dewormer pamphlet, she’d written out an address and sketched a crude map.

  “I don’t know if this place will still be stocked,” she said in a low voice. “But it’s a little off the beaten track, and they shut down almost a year ago. If they haven’t been looted, they should have what you need.”

  Below the map, Soren saw that she’d written the names of three drugs in a surprisingly tidy scrawl.

  “Any of these antibiotics will work,” she said. “I’d take whatever you can find, honestly. I don’t do this sort of thing much anymore; otherwise I would have cleaned them out ages ago.”

  “Thank you,” said Soren, wishing he could somehow convey how grateful he felt. “For everything.”

  “Seriously,” said Lark, glancing up at Soren and back to Sybil. “I don’t know what we would have done.”

  “Yeah,” Axel mumbled, taking Soren by surprise.

  Sybil shrugged and gave them a shy smile, but Soren could tell she understood how they felt.

  “Can I ask you something?” murmured Lark.

  Sybil nodded.

  “Why did you help us?”

  Soren knew Lark hadn’t meant for her question to sound harsh, but Sybil still seemed a little taken aback.

  She thought for a moment, nibbling on the inside of her lip. “I guess because . . . when the world went to hell, people stopped asking for help and just started taking,” she said. “First they stole two of our horses. One was an old gelding that I’d had since I was a kid. Then they broke into the clinic and took all our meds . . .”

  She flashed a sad smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes. “The funny thing is that if someone would have just asked me for those meds, I would have helped them. I just got so sick of it all . . .”

  She fell into thoughtful silence. “My dad . . . He was always helping people, you know? After all the flooding, the local economy took a nosedive. A lot of people we knew from the show circuit . . . they had all these champion purebreds that they could hardly afford to feed anymore. They’d call up my dad — s
ick over a horse that had gone lame or a yearling that had come down with EHV. They couldn’t afford to pay, but my dad told them to bring the horse in anyway.”

  Sybil let out a long, sad sigh. “I haven’t helped anyone like that in a long time . . . probably not since he died. I think I missed it.”

  A long, heavy silence followed her explanation, and then Lark did something that no one had expected: She hugged Sybil. At first the doctor looked alarmed, and then awkward, but after a moment she seemed to relax and hugged Lark back.

  “Thank you,” said Lark as she pulled away. “Seriously. I don’t know how we can ever repay you.”

  Sybil brushed this off, looking embarrassed but friendlier than Soren had seen her yet. “Thank you . . . for reminding me why I wanted to do this in the first place.”

  Sybil had to go back up to the house to check on her grandfather, but she told them they could stay as long as they needed to. Soren realized with a start that it was already past ten. None of them had eaten anything since lunchtime, and when Sybil reappeared half an hour later with a steaming casserole under her arm, they were all over the moon.

  The meal was an odd blend of lima beans, vegetables, and thick noodles in some kind of sauce, but to Soren, it was the most delicious thing in the world. As they ate, Sybil told them about how her father had installed a wind turbine and backup generators after the flooding in Texas three years before. It sounded as though they were fairly well prepared, but Soren caught the note of anxiety in Sybil’s voice when she told them about selling off medical equipment in exchange for food and supplies.

  After seconds and thirds, they loaded Simjay into the back of the truck, and Axel climbed into the driver’s seat. Lark and Soren thanked Sybil one last time before climbing in, too.

  Soren couldn’t help but feel a swift kick in his gut as they pulled away from the clinic. The lights were on up at the house, and he kept thinking of Sybil and her grandfather trying to eek out a living as the world spun into chaos.