by J. B. Craig
It was Pete who delivered the bad news to Maria and Ban - though the school had plenty of the fairly weak Ampicillin, it didn’t seem to be doing the job. When Bannon asked if there was anything he and Maria could do for her, Doc the NP gave them a list of a few stronger drugs that were widely available if they were willing to go on a salvage mission. Maria was on board, of course. The exhausted but determined Pete came along to supervise their choice of medicines, and surprisingly, Private Perry Appleton, who had checked up on Kelly a few times, also volunteered to go.
As the sun began to set on the third day after the battle, Perry, Pete, Maria and Bannon left the campus, headed for medical supplies. They were told the locations of a pharmacy in Lexington Park, which they didn’t have much hope for, and two veterinarians in the countryside who might have what they needed. Their last resort was a cruise ship training facility at Piney Point, which they heard was a fully-stocked training center for ship’s personnel, including doctors.
Before they left, Maria suggested that they should consider hitting the cruise ship facility first. Lexington Park was still a dangerous area, according to their intel, and she found it unlikely that the vet offices hadn’t already been raided. Maria was also fortunate enough to know a little bit about it - her grandmother used to teach classes there, and she vaguely remembered a building set up like a cruise ship, with docks for actual ships to pull up to train potential deckhands.
The question then became how to get to it. The fastest way would be to sail - but the sailboat she and Bannon had taken out only a few days ago was full of holes. Still, Maria thought that was their best chance to get back to Kelly quickly and with the right equipment, so she figured she would see if anyone around campus had any ideas for a quick patch job.
It was Sergeant Spencer who offered to rig up ‘field-expedient’ patches for the sailboat - in other words, it was a quick solution, but it might not be pretty or permanent. “I’ve got some 100 MPH tape,” he said. “It’s kind of like duct tape, but it’ll be more likely to still stick at high speeds. Let’s get a few folks to tip your boat on both sides of the keel at low tide, find the holes, wipe it off, and tape it up. I’ll give you a warranty of one day or ten miles, whichever comes first.”
With that, Maria’s third ship embarked, carrying its worried crew. Bannon sat and directed Pete through most of the line work, while Perry headed up to the bow, watching the water for obstacles. They were lucky not to pass over any coastline rocks in some of the trickier areas, but they did sail past several bodies floating in the water on the incoming tide. It wasn’t clear whether they’d been perpetrators or unlucky bystanders - in some senses, it no longer mattered either way.
They sailed down the St. Mary’s river, and then back up a branch of it to the inland side of the Piney Point peninsula. As they traveled, Maria called to Bannon, “You know, we’ve already sunken this boat! I fired at least twenty rounds at it and only hit a few guys.”
“Yeah, but I was the one to beach it,” Bannon said. It was the first words he’d said since leaving Kelly’s side. “So technically I spared you that indignity.”
“I guess I owe you one, then,” Maria said, hoping to take his mind off of the situation. “You can come up with a way for me to pay you back.”
“Help me get Kelly her medicine and I’ll call us even,” Bannon said. Maria frowned - she’d been hoping to do a little better than that - but it seemed her starting the conversation had given him the chance to open up. “I can’t believe how fast I fell for her,” he added. “She’s everything I’ve been missing in my life.”
“We’ll find it even if we have to grow our own bread mold and make Penicillin out of it,” Maria promised. “As long as we stay positive, and watch each other’s backs, Pete will help us find the right medicine. Right, Pete?!” she called over the wind. By now, she had him trained in the way of ‘happy girlfriend, happy life’ - he could probably barely hear her, but he heard just enough to give her a big smile and a thumbs-up.
“He’s a crap sailor,” Bannon said, watching Pete duck out of the way. “But you know, he’s a pretty amazing doctor. That man has hands of steel.”
“He said he wanted to be a doctor, but couldn’t afford the schooling without help from his parents - then decided to do it anyway, even after they didn’t support him,” Maria said, having heard his story late at night during one of Bannon’s ‘recovery’ evenings. “I think he’s becoming one the old-fashioned way – through hands-on experience.”
“I know. Just look at the scars on my body, and you know I’m a believer. For Pete’s sake!” Bannon said, grinning as he dodged the swipe he knew was coming from Maria. “Pun intended, Cuz!”
Pete came up out of the cabin with his Scorpion and medical bag. “Okay, that hotel-looking building is our target. I heard from one of the students that used to work here part time that the infirmary is in the basement. We’ll need this.” Pete pulled out a Halligan tool, something used by firefighters to open locked doors or tear through roofs. It was part crowbar, part axe, part spike. “One of the guys on campus loaned this to me. Perry is the biggest of us, maybe we should trust him with it. Thoughts?”
“Do you think he’s strong enough after giving half his blood to Kelly?” asked Maria.
“He’s here, and it wasn’t half his blood. He did save her life, though, Bannon. I made sure he had plenty of liquids, and as many vitamins as I could get in him safely. I wouldn’t have let him be on the trip if I didn’t think he was strong enough,” said Pete.
“He still feeling awkward?” Bannon reached out for the Halligan tool. “Hey, Appleton, come on back here and join the party!”
Appleton walked back to the cockpit and found a seat. “Alright, Appleton,” Bannon said, standing up. “It’s time for me to bury the hatchet.”
Appleton turned pale - the Halligan tool looked enough like a hatchet to scare him. Bannon smiled. “Not in your head, man! Calm down,” Bannon said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I wanted to thank you for saving Kelly’s life. I also want you to know I don’t have any problem with your blowing me up. You were following orders, and I knew there were IEDs out there. That was on me.”
Perry [2]smiled and said, “That’s very big of you, Bannon. Thank you for the generosity of spirit.”
Perry offered his hand, and Bannon shook it. “Look, if you’re recovered enough, we think you’d be the best guy to carry this Halligan tool. It should open any door we come to,” Bannon offered, holding it out to him. “Pete knows about where we’ll be looking, so you’ll just need to watch our backs, and be ready to breach any door that he tells you to. Get used to the tool and keep it handy. Cool?”
“Yeah, I got it. I’ve done a lot of demo in my dad’s construction business. I’ve used similar tools,” Perry explained. “I’ll get the door open, trust that.”
“Okay, brother,” Bannon said. “Guys, we’re coming up to the pier. I’ll take care of the lines; you and Pete cover the shore, since we aren’t sure what we’re getting into. Captain Maria, take us in slow.”
“You got it, Ban. Drop the main sail in about ten seconds, okay?”
“I’m on it, Cap’n.”
Bannon counted off and dropped the sail. The Bad Attitude - the name of their stolen sailboat - coasted towards the Saint George harbor piers. Bannon grabbed a spring-line, jumped onto the pier to slow the boat down, and then tied it off on a stanchion.
Pete and Perry followed him onto the dock and crouched, scanning for the threats. Maria tied off the stern line as the tide was running in, pushing the boat forward. No threats appeared, so the four made their way past the pool - now full of algae, without the filtration systems running - and into the training center.
The training center had clearly been set up to simulate a cruise ship. There were cabins for those in training as maids to clean and service, a full kitchen for the cooks, and several stocked bars for the bartenders. The crew didn’t find the infirmary on the first floor - Maria suspecte
d it would be further down, so they went searching for a staircase.
As the team headed downstairs, they cautiously cleared each turn, not wanting anyone to catch them off-guard. Pete led, as he would need to spot the correct medicines, and Perry stayed in the rear, watching their six. As they cleared the basement landing, they saw the first ‘Infirmary’ sign pointing down the hall by the light of Perry’s foil-wrapped flashlight.
After a brief jog down the hall, they could tell that the Halligan tool wasn’t necessary - the pharmacy’s infirmary had already been broken into. Bottles of drugs littered the hallway and the infirmary floor. “Shit,” Maria muttered, and Bannon gave her a worried glance, his face grim in the flashlight’s shadow.
“Hold on there, Captain. Let’s at least look around,” Pete suggested. “It’s possible it was people just looking for a fix.”
Not surprisingly, the people who raided the pharmacy for prescription narcotics didn’t know much about non-narcotic medicines. “We need anything with ‘cillin’, ‘max’, ‘myecin’, ‘Z-packs’ or ‘cipro’. I’ll weed out the weak stuff,” Pete said. “Bring me anything you find that looks promising.”
After a few minutes of hunting, the group came up with ibuprofen, as well as multiple varieties of meds to fight off an infection. “I filled up my medical bag with the good stuff. Grab the rest of the stuff in that pile,” Pete said to Bannon. Putting a hand on his shoulder, he added, “She’s going to be okay...as long as Captain Maria doesn’t sink us again.”
Maria shot him a deadly look - apparently, not as deadly as she’d intended, because Pete just grinned at her, giving her a quick kiss and a little smack to her behind. “Whoa,” Bannon joked - he seemed a little surprised, but pleased. “PDA. Keep it in your pants until we get home, kids.”
“Seriously,” Perry agreed. “Kelly’s a nice girl - and she’s full of my blood. I’ve got an interest in her living. Let’s get a move-on.”
Perry led the way, carrying the flashlight in front of him - and was stitched with rounds across his chest in the middle of the hall. He dropped the flashlight, and it went out. They were all in the dark.
Bannon darted out, dragged Perry back into the room. Perry was dragging his AK47 behind him, eyes wide open. “Take my rifle.” He gurgled out as blood appeared on his lips. Bannon took the AK and sprayed a full magazine into the hallway, then handed it to Pete, who slung it over his shoulder automatically while moving towards Perry by the light from Maria. She had fished a mini-mag flashlight out of her back pocket as Pete tried to isolate the worst of the bleeding. After fruitlessly trying to stop all the bleeding, he looked up at Maria, shaking his head - a sign that she’d learned the hard way meant he didn’t think someone was going to make it. “Heart, lung and liver. They got lucky. Hold his hand.”
Maria scooted up to Perry as Bannon emptied his pistol around the corner. He took back Perry’s AK from Pete, and took a magazine from Perry’s cargo pocket. “I need this, buddy. You hang in there.” He turned and fired multiple bursts into the dark hallway. Two men screamed - he reloaded, then slung Perry’s rifle over his shoulder. “Turn off that light, Pete,” Bannon said. “I’ll shout when we’re good.”
Maria saw her cousin draw his knife - and then Pete clicked off the light, and she could see no more. Pete and Maria sat with Perry, telling him how brave he was, and how he had saved Kelly. Maria kept telling him he’d be okay, but he was in shock. By the end, he was sobbing and calling for his mother - tears began to roll down Maria’s cheeks as she gripped his hand, holding it as he coughed out his last breaths. “I know it’s dark, Perry, but I’m right here, baby.” Maria stopped talking as her voice turned to racking sobs.
Shortly thereafter, the screaming stopped, and Bannon yelled “All clear, lights up!” He came back into the room as Pete turned the flashlight back on, going and grabbing the dropped flashlight and the batteries that had fallen out of it. When Bannon saw Perry’s glassy, wide-open eyes, he went absolutely still for a moment - and then he picked up the Halligan tool.
Pete closed Perry’s eyes, and he and Maria gathered up the rest of the supplies as Bannon beat the hell out of the infirmary door, and then threw the Halligan down the hallway at the men he’d silenced.
“We can’t even bury him,” Maria realized, wiping her eyes with her arm. “We can’t - I don’t think any of us can carry him and all of the medicine.”
“No, and there may still be hostiles,” Pete said, low and urgent. “I hate it too, but we need to go.”
Bannon turned around, pulling out a claymore mine with a blasting cap. “We may not be able to take him, but he’s going to have one hell of funeral pyre, trust me on that. Any fucks we left alive will pay - but we need to move, now.”
The three mourning companions ran down the hall to the stairs, with all the medicine that they could cram into their packs. They had just reached the stairs to the ground level when shouts and sounds of gunfire rang out into the hall.
“Don’t return fire, go up!” Bannon ordered, using the stair handrails to vault himself up as quickly as he could. As they cleared the first turn of the stairwell to the ground level, a boom from the claymore lit up the hallway behind them. “Run!” Bannon bellowed. “Propane comes next!”
As they cleared the second half of the stairwell, the propane tanks that fed the gas grills in the kitchen blew. The blast wave pushed them up the last few steps, Bannon leading the way. His body hit the exit bar on the emergency exit door as they all flew through it. He hit his head on the door as he spun awkwardly, but he’d opened the way for Maria and Pete, who flew clean and far.
Maria felt the flames as they crawled up her legs, but they were left behind as she flew through the air. Time slowed down as she felt Peter grab her around her chest. As they flew, she felt him twist, covering her protectively. She heard a faint thump, and then her head hit some kind of wall - and everything went starry for a few minutes.
A splash of water on her face brought Maria’s world back into focus. “You need to wake up now, Cuz! Pete’s fucked up, and we need to get out of here. I didn’t get them all,” Bannon said. “Get up! Now!”
As Maria slowly stood up as fast as she could, Bannon threw a backpack at her, slinging another around to his chest. He bent his knees, hoisted Pete up in a fireman’s carry, and they made a tense run for the docks.
Maria arrived first, hurriedly untying everything but the stern line and raising her sails. Bannon was clearly struggling with his leg, sweating under Pete’s weight, and Maria took her stance on gun control, and set her feet at shoulder width. She rolled her shoulder forward, took a breath, let it out, and focused on one of the runners behind them. She dropped him with a shot low and left, taking out his liver. She had a glimpse of the bright red blood as he spun while she acquired her next target. There were a lot of them, so she went with plan B - Spraying a full magazine’s worth of rounds from her pistol.
Bannon ran up to the dock and dropped Pete down to her - she grunted under his weight, but brought him down as slowly as she could manage, barely staying on her own feet. Bannon leapt into the sailboat, and she took the knife from his belt and cut the line as he collapsed on top of Peter..
A fortunate wind pushed them away from the dock, and Maria set sails and rudder back towards campus. Eventually, Bannon caught his wind and rolled off of Pete. “He’s not bleeding, but his breathing is a little shallow,” Bannon announced as he returned fire on the people chasing them. Maria didn’t see any get back up, although she couldn’t be sure that they had all died. They were, at least, nothing like a threat any longer.
“Hey, cuz, I need to take a little nap now,” Bannon said, his voice sounding woozy. “When you get a chance, can you patch the little hole in my leg? Now I’ll have matching scars.”
“Bannon!” Maria shouted. She’d been so focused on making their escape that she hadn’t checked him over.
“No hurry, it’s not an artery, and it went through. I hope Kelly digs them,” Bannon m
umbled, and promptly passed out.
Maria looked at the blood pooling on the deck and set sail at an angle that the boat could hold for a while. She firmly tied the wheel, and then got down to check out Bannon’s leg.
She dug Pete’s med kit out from under him and found a pressure dressing. She wrapped Bannon up tight and checked for any other wounds. He seemed to be resting well, so she shifted her attention to Pete. She checked his first pupil, which was responsive, and he didn’t seem to be bleeding.
As she gently lifted his other eye, Pete groaned - she sat back, and he squinted and blinked at her. “Hey, beautiful,” he said. “We make it?”
“We made it,” Maria confirmed. She bent down and gave him a long, relieved kiss. “Are you okay?”
“I have a headache, but everything else feels okay,” Pete said. “Let me try to get up.”
