- - End of All Things, The (28 page)

“Sure you wouldn’t rather be first lady?”

Carly stole a quick glance at his face.
What did he mean by that? Did he mean—?

“Think about it. You could cut ribbons and make inspiring speeches to schoolchildren. And everyone would copy your outfits.”

“Ugh.” Carly wrinkled her nose. “I’m no good at speeches.”

“You’re great at talking.”

Carly laughed. “That’s different.”

“Only because you think it is. Giving a speech is just talking to more than one person.”

“Well, anyway, I’d rather not waste time doing it. I’d rather work on stuff that matters.”

They rode along in silence for a few moments. The only sounds were the whirr of their bike wheels, the clomp of Shadowfax’s hooves as she ambled along behind them, and the sigh of the wind through the trees.
Such a beautiful day.

They crested a hill and saw a car accident at the bottom—one car on its side that blocked most of the road and another with its nose crumpled against the bottom of the flipped car. Both were blackened by fire.

“Something’s not right,” Justin murmured. He scanned the area, searching for the source of the uneasy feeling he had. Sam seemed to feel the same way. He tossed his head back and sniffed the air, then gave a soft whine, but the wind was at their backs, driving away any scents from what might be ahead.

 They climbed off their bikes to wheel them along the road’s shoulder, and Carly heard Justin gasp. She turned around to spot an arrow sticking out of his chest. 

Carly let out a startled scream and dropped her bike with a clatter to the pavement. “Justin! Oh, my God!”

Justin fell to his knees, his face still blank with shock. He fell over onto his side, and blood saturated his shirt. Sam snarled, and Carly followed his gaze to find a man and a woman emerging from their hiding place behind the vehicles. Sam crouched to leap at them.

“Call off your dog, or I’ll shoot him, too,” the woman spat. She wore a long brown peasant-style skirt with a man’s suit jacket. The man she was with was tall and thin to the point of emaciation. His face was oddly narrow, as though his head had been pressed between two boards. He grinned at Carly and licked his lips lewdly. Carly’s stomach turned.

“Sam, stay.” Sam tilted his head and gave a bewildered whine as he shifted on his paws.

“Go unhook the wagon from the bike,” the woman ordered, and the man hastened to obey. She held her crossbow pointed at Carly’s chest.

“Holy shit, Jeanie. We hit the fuckin’ mother lode.” The man had peeled back the tarp covering the wagon and was admiring the things inside. “
Booze!
They got a shitload of booze in here! And drugs! All kinds of drugs! Oh-ho,
baby!
”

Jeanie grinned back at him. “Grab it and let’s get out of here.”

Carly saw her chance and took it. She whipped the gun out of the pouch on her belt and shot Jeanie in the chest before she whirled around and fired at the scrawny man. The impact of the bullet spun him around and off his feet, and he collapsed onto the gravel on the shoulder of the road.

Sam, sensing the command of inaction had been lifted, flung himself with a vicious snarl at the woman. She, too, had fallen, but she was trying to sit up and lift the crossbow with one hand while the other clutched at her wound. Sam sank his teeth into that arm, and the bite was probably what caused Jeanie to miss, but it was so close the arrow tugged at the sleeve of Carly’s T-shirt. Carly fired at Jeanie again when Sam darted back, and the top of the woman’s head disappeared in an explosion of blood. She fell back, twitching.

Carly trembled from head to toe as she walked over to the man.
Always make sure,
Justin had told her.
Double tap. Remember that.

She stood over the blond man. He was trying to crawl under the wagon, babbling incoherently, and she turned her face away as she pulled the trigger twice. His body jumped and then fell still.

She spun away from him and ran to Justin. She knelt beside him, uncaring that his blood soaked through the knees of her pants. “Justin?” 

He didn’t respond. His face was white and waxy.

With a trembling hand, Carly pressed her fingers to the side of his neck. She felt a pulse and nearly collapsed with relief. He was alive.
Thank God
. He was alive.

“Justin?” she whispered. “What do I do?” 

Sam sniffed at Justin and whined. He looked up at Carly imploringly.

Carly looked up and around, as if the answer would suggest itself. She could feel panic clawing at the edges of her mind, but she couldn’t give into it. Not if she wanted to save Justin. She took two deep breaths and forced herself to think.

First, she needed to get him to safety. Away from that place, anyway. She dashed over to the wagon and shifted things around until she had a space large enough for him to lie down, though his legs would dangle over the end a bit. Carly hauled Justin upright and saw that the arrow went all the way through him. Heaving, groaning, and straining, she managed to get him up into the wagon, lying on his side. It reminded her, horribly, of putting her father in the bed after she’d killed him.

Carly left her own bike where it lay on the pavement, climbed onto Justin’s, and pushed hard against the pedals to get the bike going. She hadn’t realized what a load Justin had been hauling. 

“You’re strong,” she told him. “That’s why you’re going to make it.”

Carly pedaled hard and fast. She turned down the first side road she came to and pedaled even harder. She didn’t know what she was looking for until she found the house. It was burned-out, with a long driveway leading to it. A perfect hiding place since no one would come to loot it. Carly turned down the gravel path, wincing with every bump and hole she hit. She was glad Justin was unconscious. She pulled around the back of the house and climbed off the bike. Justin hadn’t moved from where she’d laid him.

“Okay,” she said. She took another couple deep breaths and tried to force herself to think calmly, clearly. It was tempting to give into tears, to slip into panic, but she knew she couldn’t do that. “You can panic later,” she told herself. 

Carly knew she needed to pull the arrow out. If there’d been a hospital anywhere nearby, she would have left it in place for the professionals to remove, but there was no one to help them. She hesitated on the edge of indecision for a moment, concerned it might be holding a blood vessel closed and pulling it out would cause him to bleed internally. It had happened to a boy she’d gone to school with who’d been in an accident at his summer construction job. When his panicked coworkers pulled out the jagged piece of wood that had been stabbed through his leg, he’d bled out before they could get him to a hospital. But Carly had no choice.

She set up a quick campsite, laying out their sleeping bags and covering them with a thick canvas tarp. She gathered firewood from the wood pile behind the house and lit it using his Zippo and one of the emergency fuel-soaked tinder blocks. She put a pot of water on to boil, though she couldn’t have said why she thought she needed it.

Carefully, Carly lifted Justin from the wagon, and dragged him toward the bed she’d made, her arms clasped around his upper chest under his arms.
God, he’s so heavy
 . . . 

Seeing how she struggled and strained, Sam took the cuff of Justin’s jeans between his teeth and carried one of Justin’s legs. “Thanks!” Carly said with a grunt. Sam gave a small wag of his tail in acknowledgement, though his eyes were troubled.

Carly laid Justin on his side as gently as she could and brought a tool kit and a first aid kit over to her makeshift hospital area. She set up the medical supplies she thought she’d need. In the tool kit, she found a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters and splashed rubbing alcohol over the blades. She took a deep breath and cut off the head of the arrow. Then, before she could change her mind, she yanked out the shaft.

Justin cried out in pain and thrashed for a moment before slipping, mercifully, back into unconsciousness. Blood gushed from both sides of the wound and Carly pressed thick wads of sterile gauze padding over them.
Push hard
.
Push hard to stop the bleeding.

It was a difficult task. Justin’s body was wide enough to prevent Carly from being able to lock her elbows. She had to use the strength in her arms to push, and after hauling him into and out of the wagon, that strength was almost spent. But she pushed. She pushed hard, drawing energy from a determination she didn’t know she had. She wasn’t going to give up. She wasn’t going to lose him. She didn’t know how much time she spent pushing, changing out soaked gauze for fresh, but it was dark when the bleeding finally slowed to a trickle and she became aware enough of her surroundings to notice.

Carly poured peroxide over both sides of the wound, slathered it with antibacterial cream, and taped a fresh gauze pad over both sides. She left him lying on his side so she could monitor the entry and the exit of the wound to make sure he didn’t start bleeding again.

She wondered if it was a dangerous sign that he was still unconscious. She wished she knew if she should try to wake him up, or if sleep was what his body needed to heal.

Carly tried to think of what the arrow might have hit, but anatomy had never been her strong suit; pictures of the human innards had always disturbed her, even if they were just drawings. It wasn’t the heart; she knew that, at least.
A lung, perhaps?
He seemed to be breathing all right, and there was no blood coming out of his mouth or nose.

Carly hugged her knees to her chest. What was she supposed to do now? The gauze pad had a spot of blood on it, but it didn’t seem to be getting larger. She stared at that spot for so long she lost track of time until Sam nudged her. She came back to reality with a startled blink. The fire had burned down to orange embers, and the pot of water she’d put on had boiled dry. She wrapped her hand in a cloth and lifted the pot aside before tossing on a few pieces of wood.

Shadowfax stood behind them at the corner of the house, watching the driveway like a sentinel. She made soft rumbling noises and shuffled her feet occasionally, but stood there, alert and watching, and her head swiveled toward every noise. 

Carly sat down beside Justin again. She picked up one of his limp hands and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Justin? Justin, if you can hear me, please wake up soon. I—I’m scared. I’m scared, and I don’t know what else to do for you.”

Sam crawled up beside Carly and laid his head on her thigh. He gave a soft whine and looked in Justin’s direction, then back at Carly questioningly. 

“I don’t know. I guess we just have to wait.”

Sam got to his feet and went over to bump Justin’s head with his nose. When that wasn’t successful, he settled down beside him and placed his head on Justin’s stomach.

All night she waited. Justin never moved. Only the rise and fall of his chest reassured her he was still alive. Dawn came, and the birds began to sing in the trees—an incongruously cheerful sound. Carly put more wood on the fire. 

Justin twitched. She held her breath. He twitched again.

“Justin?”

He went still.

She closed her eyes.

Throughout the day, the scene repeated frequently. Justin would twitch or mutter, and Carly would think he was waking, but then he’d sink back into silence. He moaned once, and her excitement rose, but he never opened his eyes, never responded to her. Carly saw beads of sweat on his temples and laid a hand on his forehead.
Oh, no . . . 

He was burning up.

She pressed her hands over her mouth, her mind momentarily blanked with panic. He had a fever.
The Infection! He has the Infection!
Had his wound compromised his immune system?

Don’t be an idiot
, she chided herself.
He doesn’t have the Infection. It’s his injury.

Were his wounds infected? Carly pulled away the gauze pads and peered at the holes. They were red.
But aren’t all wounds red?
She poured peroxide over them again and reapplied the antibacterial cream before covering them with clean pads.

What if the infection was down inside, where the peroxide didn’t reach?

Oh, God, what do I do?

Carly forced herself to think. They had antibiotics in the wagon. She knew that. She went over and pulled the tarp aside and began to shuffle through the boxes. She didn’t recognize many of the names, but one stood out to her. Amoxicillin. She’d had a friend who took it for her frequent ear infections. Carly opened the box and took out one of the bottles inside. She turned the bottle in her hand and almost wept with relief when she saw it had instructions for the usual dosage on the side.
One tablet every twelve hours
. 

But what if Justin was allergic? Some people had deadly reactions to antibiotics, but Carly couldn’t remember which ones, or what symptoms indicated an allergy. Still, she had to try. He was burning up. She could only hope he would have thought to tell her if he was allergic to anything.

Carly opened the bottle and pulled out the cotton wadding inside. She shook one of the red and yellow capsules into her hand before she realized she had a new problem. How was she going to an unconscious man to take a pill?

She opened Justin’s mouth and dropped it inside then pushed his jaw closed. After a moment, she opened it back up and saw the pill stuck to his tongue in the same place she’d put it. There was a bottle of water sitting on the end of the wagon. She opened it and poured some into his mouth, hoping he’d swallow automatically. Justin started coughing and Carly turned his head so the water would run out of his mouth.

Carly lifted his head onto her thigh and stuffed the soggy pill as far back into his throat as she could, then tilted his head back to dribble in a little water, a tiny bit at a time. She saw Justin swallow once, and considered it a victory. The pill was inside him.

Twelve hours. Carly had to wait twelve hours. It seemed like an eternity. She decided to keep herself busy. She erected the tent and then dragged the tarp he lay upon off the sleeping bags, which she put in their proper places inside the tent. She then dragged him inside the tent to rest in comfort. She arranged him on his side before she went back out to the fire, where she burned the bloody tarp and the blood-soaked bandages. She didn’t know if there were bears or other dangerous predators in North Dakota, but it was better to be on the safe side.