H10N1 (30 page)

It was John.

He stared at Rick’s lifeless body on the gurney. “How is he?”

Taeya shook her head. “No change.”

His shoulders slumped. “Power has been restored, but I can’t guarantee for how long.”

The power was back. So what? After giving John a wan smile, Taeya laid her head back on her arms. She wanted him to go away and leave her alone.

But he remained in front of her desk, shifting from one foot to the other. Did he have more bad news? What could possibly be worse?

“Judith was shot.”

With those three words, Taeya’s anguish and self-pity evaporated. One of the best qualities a doctor possessed was the ability to shut out extraneous thoughts and concentrate on the task at hand. She prided herself on having those qualities.

“Where is she?”

“In the kitchen. Devin’s been trying to stop the bleeding.”

“Bring her in.” Taeya was on her feet.

She’d already re-sterilized her instruments by the time John and Devin wrestled Judith into the room. She kept insisting the wound wasn’t that bad.

It was. There was no exit wound, which meant the bullet was still inside. The deltoid muscle in her upper arm was torn, and Taeya suspected the bullet was lodged in the ulna. Was the bone shattered? Normally, a person would be in greater pain with an injury like that. But with Judith, what was normal?

Taeya nodded for Judith to sit on the examining table. The bloody sheets had been removed. All evidence of her surgical catastrophe now lay crumpled in a corner.

“What happened?” Taeya asked.

If there was going to be any conversation, she wanted it to be about something other than her failure with Rick’s surgery. Evidently, no one else wanted to talk about that either.

“When we got to the basement, it was dark,” Devin said. “Those morons had shot out the lights.” He shook his head. “I guess when they couldn’t find John, they decided to lie in wait.”

Taeya paused to let the local anesthetic to take hold.

“Hell,” Judith hissed. “I’ll bet they knew exactly what was happening upstairs. They were hiding, pure and simple.”

“The assholes didn’t expect us to have lights on our scopes,” Devin continued. “My guess is when they saw our light beams searching, they panicked. I heard footsteps heading for the south wall and the windows. I took off that way for the hyacinth troughs. Judith circled around by the tool shop.”

“I couldn’t see beyond my light.” Judith turned to John. “You know how dark it is down there, with all that equipment blocking the south light.”

John nodded.

“Anyway,” Judith said, “my man was hiding under the hammer mill. I was in the shop when I heard him take off for the stairs.”

“I was busy tracking my man,” Devin butted in.

“I know,” Judith snapped. “I didn’t expect you to drop your pursuit.”

“I caught my guy trying to climb up on the condenser,” Devin said. “I got one clean shot to the leg before he disappeared.” Devin slapped a palm against the crown of his head and rubbed in frustration. “The guy knew he was doomed, so he decided to just start blasting. That’s when he hit one of the power lines.”

As he listened, John weaved slowly from side to side. Taeya stopped probing into Judith’s arm and told him to sit down. When he wouldn’t, Devin got him a chair and pushed him into it.

John bent forward, with his elbows on his knees. “The system automatically switched to auxiliary power. Under normal conditions, the back-up generator would have sufficed. But with all that heat pouring into the game room, the cooling units were working overtime.”

Her heart went out to John. He’d suffered so much, and now he was taking the blame for something totally out of his control.

Taeya located the bullet. Thankfully, it hadn’t penetrated the bone, and she twisted it out with hemostats.

“You’re lucky he was so far away when he shot you,” she told Judith. “I can’t believe the bone isn’t in pieces.”

“He didn’t shoot me.” Judith sounded defensive. Her eyes rolled to Devin to make sure he understood, too. “He was spraying ammo down that stairwell like a girl. One of the shots ricocheted off the wall.”

That explained the minimal damage. As Taeya stitched, Judith continued defending her actions. “The jerk took off across the garden. If he got inside the habitat, you guys would be in serious trouble. I had to take him out there.”

Devin touched her uninjured arm lightly. “Look, no one’s blaming you…”

“Bullshit! I’m the reason we have a gaping hole in the ceiling of the greenhouse.”

Taeya must have made some kind of involuntary jerk because Judith glanced up at her.

“I hit the guy in the leg,” she said. “He swung around, and I got him again in the chest. But when the son-of-a-bitch fell backwards, he just started blasting at the overhead glass. And he was intentionally aiming for the same pane. He knew at that distance he’d have to hit it a few times to cause any damage.”

That explained the shattering glass Taeya heard when she was working on Rick.

“Why did you wait so long to bring Judith to me?”

John leaped to his feet. “We didn’t even know she was shot until a few minutes ago!”

Squinting his eyes in anger, Devin glared at Judith. “We were busy in the basement trying to get the power situation under control. We found her in the kitchen with a dishtowel tied to her arm.”

Taeya wrapped a gauze bandage around the wound. “You’ll be stiff for a couple days, but I don’t think there will be any nerve damage.”

Pushing Taeya’s hand away, Judith hopped off the table. “Stop fussing over me. What’s the bottom line with Rick?” She drifted over to the gurney.

“He’s still not showing any signs of regaining consciousness,” Taeya said as she joined Judith. After checking Rick’s pulse, she lifted his eyelid in another useless gesture.

Devin rushed to the bedside. “But you said he could snap out of this at any time, right?”

He was so hopeful. They all were. They’d seen too many movies where the comatose patient suddenly woke up and lived happily ever after.

“And he might never,” she warned. Sometimes comas were simply the brain shutting down faster than the rest of the organs. Just because Rick’s heart still beat, and his lungs still drew air, didn’t mean that he would ever regain consciousness.

“Well, the bottom line is,” Judith said, “we need to abandon ship.”

“Hey!” Devin pulled her roughly away from Taeya. “What did we just talk about?”

Instead of a heated retort, Judith grimaced. “Sorry.”

John opened the sickbay door. “Why don’t you two help Kat in the kitchen,” he said. “Let me have a moment with Taeya.”

Once they were gone, he took Taeya’s hand. “You understand that we cannot possibly remain here for long. Our power is sporadic at best. We know those raiders came from Tucson, so there are probably more. They may be waiting for some signal that all is clear to move in.”

He gave Taeya a moment before continuing. “But we must abide by your decision as to when we leave. If you think Rick cannot be moved, then we shall stay here.”

Taeya remembered the moment she and Rick decided to head for California. He’d been excited about the move, but not because of the destination. It was because he and Taeya would be living their lives together. Late last night, as they lay in bed, he’d even hinted at children. Turning away from John, she stared unseeing out the window.

“We should have a memorial service,” she whispered. “ For Mai …Carol…”

“Of course,” John said. “I agree.”

John moved slowly to the door, then stopped and turned. “You did the best you could. Now we must think about our future.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Taeya opened the door to find Kat slumped on the floor of the hallway, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. What a sorrowful child she had become. The makeup was gone, her hair hung in matted strands. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying.

“I can’t go to the funeral,” Kat whispered.

Kneeling down, Taeya took her hands. They felt clammy despite the heat.

“If you don’t want to come down, you don’t have to,” Taeya said.

Kat wiped her sweaty chin on her shoulder. Instead of her usual revealing top, she wore an old Bama tee shirt. And from the size of it, it must have been one of John’s.

She stifled a whimper. “If I don’t go, they’ll all think I’m terrible.”

Taeya understood the dilemma. Kat could hardly skip her mother’s burial. But she was still shell-shocked from the blood bath she’d witnessed.

“This is going to be very hard for me, too,” Taeya told her. “Maybe we can lean on each other.”

Tears welled in Kat’s eyes, and her voice cracked when she finally said, “Okay.”

Together, they stepped out onto the catwalk. But Taeya was unprepared for the suffocating heat pouring in through the broken panes in the dome. What little strength she had was consumed by the scorching air. Kat grasped the railing and sagged to her knees.

Below, Taeya viewed the freshly packed mounds of dirt where vegetables had grown yesterday. Now they were burial plots. Judith and Devin stood at the end of one of the aisles.

Taeya pressed her fingers to her lips and slowly shook her head. She could not go down.

Devin nodded that he understood. He walked to the basement stairway and called John.

Wavering in the heat, John took a moment to steady his legs. Then he spoke.

“I won’t profess to understand why things like this happen. If there is any design or predestination to our lives, it is beyond my grasp. We have seen so much death. How can our hearts still be filled with such pain?”

His voice caught, and he paused.

“But perhaps that is the one clue we have been given,” he said. “If we can feel anguish after others have hardened against it. If our compassion cannot be dimmed by others’ senseless brutality. If we can still draw the strength and determination to persevere over such adversities, then perhaps
we
are the defining members of this human species. Not the barbarians.”

Kat was the only one who cried. Judith and Devin stood together in stoic silence. John offered a small prayer that Taeya didn’t hear. As soon as he finished, she went back to the seclusion of sickbay.

Taeya must have dozed off from the heat and lack of sleep. Earlier, Devin had nailed sheets over the windows to deflect the sun, but she still felt like she was suffocating.

The door opened, and John tiptoed to her desk with a bowl of fruit.

“You must eat.” He set the bowl in front of her, and when she made no move, he stabbed a bite of banana and held it to her mouth. She took the fork from him and ate.

“That’s better.” He sat in the chair across from her. “Judith and Kat are packing the truck. Devin’s very nervous about more raiders. The generator is losing ground, even though I’ve diverted all power to the lasers. I fear it is only a matter of time before we expose ourselves—”

The banana hit Taeya’s stomach, and threatened to come back up.

“I took the liberty of packing your belongings,” he said. “Is there anything else you’d like to take?”

She shook her head. All she had was that conch shell. The pictures of her family were gone, and now her friend Mai was, too. How soon before Rick slipped away?

“Are we still set to leave tonight?” he asked.

Everyone had agreed to travel at night for John’s sake. With fuel such a precious commodity, they didn’t dare run the air conditioning in the truck.

She flashed on Eric and his handy septic truck filled with gasoline. Hopefully, John and Devin had worked out the logistics for obtaining fuel along the way. They had a twelve-hour drive ahead of them.

“I’ll be ready,” she said.

The daylight in sickbay had dimmed considerably when John and Devin came back later.

“Are we good to go?” Devin asked.

Taeya nodded. “I guess.”

“You sure? If we need to hang around another day, we will.”

“No,” she said. What difference would one more day make anyway?

“You got what you need?” Devin glanced at the garden buckets stuffed with bandages, medications, and wrapped instruments. Taeya nodded.

Then she watched Devin trudge over to the gurney and take Rick’s lifeless hand in his.

“You’re sure he can be moved?” John asked.

“I don’t think it will matter if he’s lying here,” Taeya said, “or in the back of the truck.”

Devin clapped his hands. “Okay, let’s do it.”

He and John grabbed the sides of the sheet and lifted Rick back onto the examining table. Images of the surgery rushed through Taeya’s mind: Rick’s gaping abdominal cavity, the blood flushing out with the water, pouring down the sides of the table and onto the floor, the urgency to repair the damage—and Rick’s heart cupped between her hands. The way it pulsed that first time before gaining a rhythm again.

She should she have let his heart remain still, instead of putting everyone through this. As a doctor, she was compelled to do everything in her power to save his life. But as a lover, she’d felt Rick slip away the moment his heart stopped. Even as she’d waited through the long afternoon for the anesthesia to wear off, she knew he was gone.

Devin and John pulled the mattress from the hospital bed and carried it out.

Using the sheet as a sling, Devin and John carried Rick’s body through the hatch. Then Taeya and Kat helped lift him up onto the mattress in the bed of the truck as Judith stood guard. Taeya hung the last pouch of glucose solution from the IV stand that John had lashed to the side of the truck. Once the premix was gone, she knew Rick’s survival was tenuous. He’d have maybe twenty-four hours before his body started to dehydrate.

With her one good arm, Judith helped the others pack their duffles and supplies around the mattress, leaving space for Taeya to ride beside Rick.

Unlike Judith, Taeya had to take one last look at what she had thought would be her safe haven in the storm.

John gently corrected her. “It isn’t the
place
you choose,” he said, “it’s the people you choose to trust.”