Stranded Box Set

by Theresa Shaver

  “Let’s go out and take a look.”

  Cooper scanned the area and the gauged the distance one more time before nodding. He followed Quinn out of the parkade towards where most of the bodies lay. The first body they came to made Cooper flinch and quickly look away. It was a woman and the expression she died with was ugly. Her face was skeletal and covered in open sores that gleamed wetly in the daylight. They both backed away from her and continued on to the other bodies. Each one they came to had similar infections covering their exposed skin. They kept a healthy distance from the bodies after that and neither one made any attempt to touch them or the discarded weapons they had fought with. Whatever had been wrong with these people the boys didn’t want to take a chance on catching it. When they confirmed that all the attackers were dead they turned and backed away to the barricade.

  Cooper called out, “It’s clear out here!” but received no reply. He shot a concerned glance to Quinn before trying again. “Josh? Girl’s?”

  The only reply he heard was the sound of distant crying. Quinn rushed over and they were about to run for the parkade when they heard sounds of furniture being shifted. The shelving unit started to slide back so they helped move it from their side until there was enough room to squeeze between it and the door frame. Josh’s pale, drawn face greeted them. He looked past them at the bodies in the parking lot and shook his head with a grim expression before moving out of the way to let the two boys in. The first thing Cooper and Quinn saw was a fresh pool of blood on the tile floor. It was on the opposite side of where Alex had gone down so they knew that another one of their friends had to be shot.

  When the three of them shifted the shelves back into place, Quinn reached out and touched a bullet hole at waist height that had light shining through it. He turned his head towards Josh and whispered, “Who?”

  Josh looked away and slammed a booted foot into one of the shelves shoving the whole unit flush with the frame before letting loose with a string of curses. He finally wound down and scrubbed at his face before turning back to his friends.

  “Lisa was hit in the side. The lady nurse is working on her and Alex. The old guy is dead.”

  They all turned and looked towards the back of the lobby as a pained cry rang out and then slowly walked towards their injured friends.

  Chapter Twenty

  Alex’s eyes fluttered open and the light shining on her face caused a spike of pain to fill her head. She squeezed her eyes shut again until she could get a handle on the ache and then cautiously opened them a crack. The first thing to come into focus was a pair of big owlish grey eyes that were framed by lush black lashes. She stared at the eyes until they blinked and a giggle erupted. The eyes belonged to the small thin face of a little girl who reached towards Alex’s face and gently touched one of her golden red curls. The small monkey face whispered, “Pretty” before it dropped under the level of the bed and disappeared.

  Alex was confused and wracked her throbbing brain for the last thing she could remember. All she could think of was being in the Children’s hospital lobby and being kicked in the back, then…nothing. Without moving her head, she let her eyes scan the area of the room she was facing and saw another bed beside hers. There was a person lying on it and after squinting, she could make out that it was Lisa. Seeing her friend was either sleeping or unconscious, she tried to reach for her, causing a new explosion of pain to blossom on her back shoulder. Alex couldn’t help the groan of pain that poured out when she thrashed her head to the opposite side and squeezed her eyes closed against it. The scrape of wood on tile had her eyes flying back open in search of a threat. Instead, she found Quinn’s grief-ravaged face looking back at her.

  His eyes were filled with so much pain and anguish that she feared the worst. Her voice was barely a croak when she forced out, “What happened?”

  His face crumpled even more but a few deep breaths had him partially composed. He stood and stepped towards her bed before taking her hand.

  “You were accidently shot by the security guard when he was shot at the barricade. His weapon discharged when it hit the floor and you caught some of the bird shot pellets in the shoulder. Leslie, the nurse, says that it’s ugly but not life threatening. She was more concerned with your head. You hit it pretty hard when you went down. There was nothing she could do but hope that you woke up. Without diagnostic scans, there was no way to tell how bad it was.”

  Alex scrunched her face up in annoyance at being taken out of the fight so quickly but was more concerned for the rest of her friends. She swallowed painfully against the dryness of her throat and mouth and asked,

  “Lisa? Everyone else?”

  Quinn’s eyes flashed over to the other bed before coming back to rest on hers. “Lisa was shot too, but by one of the attackers. Leslie says she was very lucky that it was a through and through and didn’t hit anything critical.” He tried a wobbly smile. “Lisa disagrees on the lucky part!” The smile faded. “The guard, Albert, died instantly. All the rest of our friends are fine, just worried about you and Lisa.”

  Alex closed her eyes. They had been through so much and faced so many dangers that they were incredibly lucky that they hadn’t lost anyone in their core group. Mason had died after being shot on the road by the gang that had taken over their town, but he hadn’t been a close friend. She knew they took risks that most people wouldn’t these days, but she also knew that none of them regretted anything. Sitting back and letting people die just wasn’t in any of their natures.

  “Alex?”

  The sorrow in Quinn’s voice had her opening her eyes again.

  “Alex, I don’t even know how to ask for your forgiveness. I’ve been such an ass these last few months.” She kept her expression blank as he struggled to find the words to express himself. He finally turned away and pulled the chair he had been sitting in towards her bed and settled heavily into it before he spoke again. “When Grandpa died, I just shut down. Losing one of the most important people to me after everything we had gone through to get back to him, well, it enraged me. I was so furious at the world and him. If he had just told me he was out of medication…Anyways, I just lost all reason. First, my parents were taken from me and then him. The only thing I could do was push everyone away so I wouldn’t hurt like that again.” He took a shaky breath and lifted his head to meet her gaze. His eyes were welled up with tears and his voice broke. “When I thought I had lost you this morning, I realized how stupid I’ve been. Instead of pushing the ones I love away, I should have been holding them close and cherishing every moment I could have with them.”

  Alex tried her best to keep her expression neutral but she had longed for him to say these very things for so long. Her heart was pounding to reach for him but her head was cataloguing all the damage he had done with his actions over the past months. She quite wasn’t ready to let go of the hurt. The only thing she could do at that moment was to turn her face away from him so he wouldn’t see the conflict in her eyes. She heard him sigh sadly.

  “I don’t know if you can forgive me or if we can ever get back what I threw away but I hope you’ll give me the chance to make it up to you.”

  The silence was thick as Alex blinked away the tears that were trickling out of the corner of her eyes across her temple and into her hair. Her eyes focused on Lisa who was watching her from the bed across from hers. When the silence dragged on, Lisa rolled her eyes, nodded towards Quinn and made kissy motions. A small smile tugged at Alex’s lips until she finally gave a small nod and turned her head back towards him. He had his face buried in the palms of both hands. She opened her mouth to speak when the door to the room swung open and a woman Alex had only met briefly walked in. She stood at the end of Alex’s bed with her hands on her hips, her head swinging back and forth between Alex and Lisa.

  Alex thought the woman looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Her pallor was almost grey with exhaustion and her eyes looked hopeless. The strong, no-nonsense tone that came from her countered ho
w she looked.

  “Good, you’re both awake!” She drilled Alex with a look. “Your head must be awfully hard to come through that hit!”

  Her expression softened slightly to a smirk when Lisa snorted and mumbled, “You have no idea!”

  Leslie turned to Lisa and asked, “What number from one to ten would you give your pain level?”

  Lisa lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe a five? I mean, it definitely hurts, but it’s nothing compared to when you were cleaning and stitching it up!”

  The woman nodded. “Good, let me know when it creeps up to eight or nine. That’ll mean you’re ready for another pain med dose.” Her head swung back to Alex and she raised an eyebrow.

  Alex shook her head but winced at the spike of pain it brought. “Sixty-three!” She uttered through gritted teeth. “But I don’t want any medication. My head’s fuzzy enough without it!”

  The woman came up beside the bed and reached under it. The whole upper portion of the bed tilted upwards until Alex was in a sitting position. The movement caused nausea and she was forced to take quick deep breaths to stop herself from puking into her lap.

  “Yup, definite concussion there. Just give yourself a few moments for it to settle and no quick movements. I’m Leslie by the way. I patched up your shoulder. Had to pick eight pellets out from under your skin. You were very lucky you only caught the edge of the shot spread or you might have lost your entire arm or your life. I’m not quite set up to do major surgery anymore.” When Alex just kept deep breathing, Leslie patted her leg. “Don’t worry, you’ll have minimal scarring and should be able to use that arm for light duty in a week to ten days. You just have to give it time to heal. The head on the other hand…well, concussions are tricky. Based on the way you flew forward and then back to the floor, you probably have a case of whiplash as well. You’ll have pain, dizziness, light sensitivity and maybe nausea for at least a week to ten days. Symptoms can persist off and on for a few months. The good news is, you’re young and relatively healthy so you should bounce back faster.”

  She glanced around at Lisa and then Quinn before frowning. “Actually, all of you are the healthiest people I’ve seen since this all began. Where did you say you guys come from and what’s the price of admission?”

  A voice from the doorway had Alex’s eyes popping open.

  “The price is all the plague medicine you have.”

  Emily stood in the doorway with Cooper hovering behind her. Her expression was one of relief to see Alex sitting up and awake.

  Leslie cocked her head to the side in confusion before her expression morphed into fear and she took a step back from Alex’s bed. Emily stepped into the room shaking her head.

  “Not us! Our town. We all live on farms surrounding the town. With the extreme cold, none of us has been in there for months. The town quarantined itself and put up barricades over a week ago when the first cases showed up. They’ve been dying ever since. We left yesterday to find medicine.” She looked around the room at her friends before looking back at Leslie. “We brought food to trade. Beef, pork, eggs and some preserves. You can have it all if you have what we need to save our town.” She held out the piece of paper with the names of the medications Dr. Mack had said he needed.

  Leslie hesitated but then reached out and took it. She read the short list over before looking up at the teens.

  “I have all of these here in the hospital.” She frowned thoughtfully. “BUT - I don’t know if there’s enough for a whole town of people. Actually, I doubt there would be enough, and if they can’t treat everyone there, then most likely there would be more cases flare up.”

  Alex groaned and closed her eyes but not before she saw the grim look on Emily’s face. She heard her friend speak in a harsh tone.

  “Dammit! That means we have to go to another hospital!” When no one responded, she swore angrily. “We didn’t come all this way and have two of our people shot just to give up now!”

  Alex sighed and opened her eyes to reassure her friend that they wouldn’t give up when Leslie spoke again.

  “I might have a solution for you…but…I have a few questions for you first.” When she received nods from the teens she asked, “These farms you all live on, are they safe? Do they have a good supply of food and water?”

  Emily looked to her friends before cautiously nodding her head. “Yes, everyone is well armed and security is taken very seriously. We also all have fully functioning farms with livestock and crops. We are in very good shape to make it through the winter and planting season until the next harvest.”

  Leslie studied her for a moment and then seemed satisfied she was telling the truth.

  “Final question. Would your people or families be willing to take in strangers?”

  Emily’s shoulders dropped and her face went cold. “You want in? Getting tired of having to take care other people’s kids?”

  Leslie’s mouth dropped open in shock and she gasped. “What? NO! God, I would never abandon my kids! I want you to take some of them back with you. I…I can’t leave. I have to stay here.”

  An uncomfortable silence filled the room once again until Emily stepped forward and put a hand on a weeping Leslie’s arm.

  “I’m sorry. It’s such an ugly world we live in now. My first instinct is always the worst of people. Please, will you tell us what you’re thinking? How did you end up here with so many kids?”

  Leslie went and pulled a visitor’s chair from the corner of the room and wearily dropped down into it. She rubbed the tears from her tired face before looking at Cooper.

  “Your two friends downstairs will keep watch?” When he nodded his head yes, she seemed to deflate. “Then let me tell you what hell looks like.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “That day, that hellish day, I personally saw eight parents commit suicide. I’m positive there was more but I saw eight do it that day. Within an hour of the power going out, ninety percent of the kids on the critical care floor had died. By the third hour, the rest were gone. The neonatal unit…” She paused there and just shook her head in disbelief. “When I left that floor, I knew God had left us all.” Her face was haunted by the images she’d never be able to erase.

  “It happened first thing in the morning so most of the staff was in house for the day shift. We worked like dogs to save them but with no electricity, no equipment? Anyways, we had no idea what was happening out in the city. We heard people talking about all the cars and trucks that had stopped working but it wasn’t until after the first die off that we stopped and really heard what everyone was saying. They said that planes had just dropped from the sky like paperweights. It wasn’t until I climbed the stairs to the roof and saw all the smoke trails that I truly understood that it was over. I saw people that looked like ants all over the major roadways walking while all motorized vehicles were at a standstill.

  There were other people up on the roof with me looking out at the dead city. When the first man and woman jumped while holding hands there were screams of horror. By the time I left the roof, three more people had followed them.” She leaned forward, put her face in her hands and scrubbed at her eyes like she was trying to scrub away the memories. Leaning back in the chair, she continued.

  “I found parents who had taken their dead child’s morphine drip and used it to overdose. Others found different ways to do it. It was like they all just gave up and wanted to be with their kids. As bad as that was, it was the kids that didn’t have any family in house that I found the hardest to bear. Some parents would have been at work or home and had no way to make it to the hospital. Some of the kids were from out of town and had no one near to come for them. Whatever the reason, they were here, scared, sick, in pain and alone.

  “Most of the staff stayed the whole day but when the next shift didn’t show up, they started to trickle away. Can you blame them? They all had family out there somewhere, kids of their own to find. But those of us left had to deal with floors fille
d with dead patients and scared alive ones. Parents were screaming for us to do something but there was nothing we could do! Nothing worked! All that lifesaving equipment was useless. The elevators wouldn’t work to take the bodies to the morgue. The refrigerators didn’t work anyways. No one could get the generators working and, and…NOTHING WORKED!”

  Leslie leaned back in her chair and tipped her head back to stare blankly at the ceiling, lost in the memories.

  “By the next sunrise, seven more patients had died and parents started to pull their kids out. They took every wheelchair and even a few stretchers. I have no idea if they ever made it to their homes. More staff had left in the night leaving only six of us. Two nurses, one doctor, one security guard, one woman from catering and one orderly. We went floor by floor and collected all the patients and family members and brought them all down to the cafeteria. It was just too hard to have everyone spread out and, well, the bodies…

  “There were thirty-six patients left and eighteen family members. We made a plan and just got on with it. What else were we going to do? Twenty-four adults can get a lot done when they have no choice. It took days, but we managed to get all the bodies out of the hospital. We didn’t have a way to dig a big enough hole so we were forced to burn them.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “All those little bodies with no one to stand for them. That… that day almost broke me.” Leslie cleared her throat, rolled her head on her neck and went on.

  “Albert was such a strong voice. He seemed to know what was coming and he guided us on so many things. He was a widower and lived nearby. He wasn’t even here that first day. He showed up first thing the day after the power went out with a hunting rifle and shotgun over his shoulder. He organized a group of the fathers and they set off to the nearest grocery store. They pushed empty laundry carts to the store and filled them to the brim with non-perishables. One of the fathers told me later that Albert shamed every person that tried to stop them by telling them that the food was for the sick kids at the hospital. He told anyone that would listen that the kids had been abandoned there to die. He said it was amazing to see angry mobs fighting over canned goods stop at Albert’s words and help fill the carts.” She laughed softly. “I’m sure it helped confirm his story that all those carts have ‘Property of Children’s Hospital’ stamped on the canvas. Anyways, that was Albert, he could talk his way around anyone. He probably saved us from being raided at least a dozen times with words instead of bullets. He would spin his story of abandoned children that should be allowed to die in peace and comfort and they would just turn away.” Tears sprang into her eyes and she dashed them away. “I’ll miss him so much. He made me believe in God again.”