The China Pandemic (10 page)

Campos was glad to have the girl here this morning. It meant he would have someone to share the workload and the day to day with. He worried though, that the others wouldn’t like her and would try to scare her off. He had to find his meds. If he didn’t, his companions might harm the girl.

He opened the fence barrier and noticed her coming out with her backpack and shoes on ready for the day. She looked a little worried, but he supposed that was to be expected. He would just do his best to make her feel welcomed and maybe she’d want to stay.

Greeting her, he showed her the fences that he’d made to keep the wild animals at bay during the night. “It’s not foolproof but at least it deters them from coming right into town,” he explained. “Let’s walk down this way and I’ll show you the market where I’ve been clearing things out of there. We have about two more days of work there before we need to move onto the other stores down the way,” he said, pointing farther down.

“I’ve been cleaning up so when nice folks come into town, they’d have a place to stay. I’m hoping we can have enough people to start a big garden come spring. We really need to plan for seed starting this winter. Things are pretty picked over. We have enough to get through the winter, but spring is going to be a problem,” he said.

As they got closer to the garbage bin attached to the four wheeler, Campos explained how he pulled the incinerator on wheels wherever he went to make the cleanup job easier. “Be careful, because it’s hot. Don’t touch the sides. Give me that gas can over there,” he said.

Marcy did as he asked by handing the heavy can to him. He poured the gasoline into the bin and walked from side to side, spreading the fuel. He put the can down by the building door and walked back to remove matches from his back pocket. He tore several out at once and struck them before tossing them in. The flames went up in a big whoosh and Marcy jumped back with a scream.

“Oh, man, that scared me,” she said, trying to hold back her quickened breath. She noticed Campos’s head twitch as if he had an involuntary tick. She didn’t think anything of it until he turned to face her with a twisted smile that didn’t seem like his own.

“Oh, yeah, little darling. You want to get in?” he asked, smiling sadistically.

Marcy started walking backwards from his suddenly evil-looking profile, highlighted by the roaring flames behind him. This wasn’t him. This was the man from last night. She knew it now. It happened right before her eyes. He changed. There was something really wrong with this guy and she knew for sure she was in danger. He started laughing at her retreating form.

“Where do you think you’re going, sweetheart?” he asked her.

She continued trying to put distance between her and this crazed man as she stepped backward. “I think I should g-go to my- my dad’s now,” she stuttered, panicked. She turned and ran.

Campos’s new persona yelled, “No you don’t, you little bitch.” He reached behind him to retrieve the hatchet he kept there, hidden from Campos. He aimed for the girl and threw it, swirling overhanded through the air.

Seeing the girl run, Graham knew he would not make it. It’d take him too much time to get there, considering the distance between them. Then he yelled “No!” as Campos reached behind him and threw the hatchet toward the girl with deadly skill. The girl whirled to look in his direction. He ran towards her, but she’d already fallen. Campos reached for his rifle. Graham stopped in his tracks. He aimed and fired before Campos even wrapped his hand around the barrel of his own weapon.

Campos fell as the shot struck home. Graham rushed to the fallen girl. She lay on the asphalt, blood running from her leg. “Marcy?” he asked, hoping she’d respond. Her blonde locks were now tinged pink with blood. A quick glance back at Campos showed him down, and still. Graham disregarded him for now.

He pulled Marcy’s hair back and saw she bled from a head wound, a result of hitting the rough pavement, but the worst damage was from the hatchet still embedded squarely in the back of her upper thigh. Blood spread in a radius around the gash.

“Oh, Jesus,” Graham said. “I have to stop the bleeding.” He pulled out the hatchet and pushed on the wound with the palm of his bare hand, trying to stem the flow. “This is really bad,” he looked around for something he could use as a compress. Not seeing anything he took off his jacket and removed his t-shirt, balling it up and pressing it into the red flowing wound. “She’s going to bleed to death right here, dammit. I’ve got to do something!”

Looking over at the grocery store in front of him, he snatched her up and carried her inside, searching for towels or anything he could use to help the girl.

He carefully positioned her on one of the register counters, trying to be careful of her head, and rolled her onto her side so he could see her wound. Grabbing the edges of the blood-soaked denim; he ripped the jeans open to get a better look. Blood seeped out of the wound but not as much as before.

Through the darkened store, a medium sized market by any real standard, Graham peered inside looking for aisle signs for supplies to help treat the girl. He could not really see much, but he did notice a display rack of paper towels, ran over, and grabbed several. He ripped off their plastic covers and wound a thick bundle around his arm. Back at her side, he jammed the wad of towels onto the wound and applied pressure. With one hand holding that, he averted his attention to her head. Obviously, she was knocked out cold from the impact. The previous day’s injuries didn’t look too good, either, but this new bump swelled up quickly.

“I need ice,” he said, again out loud, looking towards the front of the store where it was usually kept. He wished Bang were here to help him. He noticed the blood seeping through the top of the bundle already. He took hold of the entire remaining roll and pressed it down on top of the first compress. By this time, he had slid her frame onto her belly with her head facing away from him so that he could see the side of her face where most of the recent wounds were.

Looking around, he saw nothing that would help hold the pressure on her leg so he would be free to get ice for her head. Graham struggled with the dilemma, looking below him and around the cash register space. Giving up, he quickly took off pressure and ran over to the ice cooler and took out a bag, then raced back to her. He applied pressure again on the injury, causing some of the blood to cascade down her leg in streams. It slicked the floor. He nearly slipped in it.

With the ice in his left hand, he punched his finger into the plastic, ripped it open and then grabbed a plastic grocery sack off the dispenser at the end of the table. By that time, the table was a bloody smeared mess and Graham tried not to notice how much of it was covering his arms and bare torso. His stomach balked at its iron smell. He’d never seen so much blood before. The girl was soaked in it now.

After reapplying pressure with his right hand, he used his left to open the bag enough to transfer handfuls of blood-covered ice into the grocery sack. He grabbed the loose ends and swirled the bag around to twist its opening closed. Then he laid the bag, dripping with bloody ice water, gently onto the girl’s head wound.

He was not certain how long it had been since he left the others in the woods now. Was it ten minutes? An hour? Everything happened so fast. Surely, by now, they were getting concerned that he’d been gone so long.

He glanced again at the madman’s body where he dropped earlier on the ground by the doorway. Though he could not see if he still breathed, he certainly did not feel the need to help the man and hoped he was dead; really dead.

Next, he thought he needed to consider how to close the girl’s hatchet wound. She was unconscious now and he could take advantage of that to sew up the wound. Of course, he knew next to nothing about first aid.

Really, other than watching a very competent ER doctor sew up his sliced open finger last year, he’d rarely visited hospitals. He watched as the nurse irrigated his cut with saline solution. The young doc sewed it up, leaving the nurse to apply antibiotic ointment and a bandage, followed by a tetanus shot in the ass on his way out, along with a prescription for oral antibiotics.

He thought there was probably saline solution in the contact lens aisle. Maybe not exactly the same thing but it should work. He would also need gauze and maybe a sewing kit could be found somewhere. God, he was not looking forward to that.

He tried to remember the process as he watched the doctor stitch up his finger. He’d nearly fainted and he was ashamed to admit it. Thinking of the details, he’d also need a lighter to sterilize a needle too. The whole idea made his stomach roll, but he had to do it. He’d failed this girl twice now and the weight of it was hard to bear.

The store being bigger than a corner market but smaller than your neighborhood Albertson’s, Graham had liked coming in here back when things were normal. There were not usually many people in line and the butcher always smiled a greeting and asked what you were in the mood for that day. Too bad he was not here now. Graham knew the guy could probably stitch this girl right up without a second thought.

He had remembered filling a prescription here once and recalled the pharmacy towards the back of the store. Hopefully, the child would not wake up while he gathered the supplies in the dark. Making a mental list of the things he would need and where they were likely found, he checked the wound by lifting his hand. Seeing no increase in flow, Graham carefully left the paper towel roll in place and removed the ice, setting it to the side. He watched the rise and fall of her back as she breathed for a minute. Then he ran toward the pharmacy aisle.

Immediately, he grabbed several boxes of gauze pads regardless of their sizes and adhesive tape as well as several very large Band-Aids. There was Bactine, but he knew he needed something to irrigate the cut as well. He turned around in frustration and finally spied the contact saline solution below the pharmacy window and grabbed a few bottles of those. He always complained, “That stuff was never where you thought it should be.” He went a little further down, found the painkillers for her and had a stupid thought. How old was she? He tried to see the age requirements on the box in the dark. There was a little ambient light coming from the back door exit sign, but it made little difference.

Graham had heard a snap and buzz of electricity right before the lights flickered on, blinding him for a second and making him drop everything he’d gathered. He reached for his rifle only to remember now, he left it beside the girl. By the time he got to the end of the aisle, he had stared right at the man. The one he knew as Campos. The one Bang’s mother warned him about. The madman, face to face.

“Get away from her!” Graham yelled and rushed at him before Campos had a chance to move. “You did this to her,” he added in a rage and grabbed the man by his blood-stained shirt and pushed him towards the open doorway. Campos did not put up much of a fight. He struggled with what Graham said.

“I would never hurt the girl,” Campos meekly pleaded. “She’s just a girl. I was going to let her stay here,” he said, and began to cry.

Graham began to doubt himself but held the man in place. He watched as Campos swung his head back and forth, either out of confusion or pain or both. Graham did not know or care. One thing was certain. He’d seen the same man hurt her the night before and had seen him throw the hatchet this morning. Now, faced with him, he was convinced the guy was crazy but the look in his pleading eyes showed he cared for the girl. The sentiment appeared genuine.

Then, before he knew it, Campos looked at Graham’s blood-covered chest and smiled the most chilling smile Graham had ever seen. The hairs on his arms and neck immediately stood on end and he pushed the other man out through the doorway.

Campos surprised him by failing to resist, instead jerking him toward the blue firebox, and at once Graham knew his intent. Campos released his arm briefly and slugged him across the jaw, stunning him, but not quite enough, he could not see the nut job reach down and grab his rifle. Graham had just enough time to grab the barrel in an attempt to wrench it from him, but Campos was much stronger, though shorter. Campos, with his long sinewy muscles developed through hard labor, would overwhelm him.

Graham knew fear. He wanted to run away from this crazed man, but he tightened his hold on the rifle now in a tug of war. He knew if he lost his grip, not only would he die, so certainly would all the children. In a rush of adrenaline, he found what he had always believed he lacked, a capacity he had seen deep within his own father. This nameless thing, more than words could convey, enveloped him.

This madman must not win. He could not be permitted to take the lives of the few who remained living, as he surely would if Graham failed them. He would not let him. He was not their father but their safety, their preservation was a burden he’d accepted. He would see it through to the end.

Campos actually laughed as he pulled Graham sharply toward him. It was as if he relished this fight, exulted in the chance to prove himself superior. He wrapped his left leg behind Graham’s right, so when Graham pulled back with all his might, Campos began to fall and released his grip on the rifle. Graham grabbed him by the shirt collar instead, twisted to the left and took the bastard down with him.

Having landed on his side, Graham rolled over quickly on top of Campos and struggled once again with the rifle between them as Campos wrestled the business end up toward him. Graham knew the danger, but because this man
must
not win, he pulled strength from an unknown source and pushed the rifle upwards, sliding it along Campos’s ribcage as he shifted his position high on the man’s chest so Campos could not buck him off.

He pushed the rifle upwards, shaking now against the opposing force. Campos struggled, kicked and writhed. He tried all his tricks and then finally; fear appeared in his insane eyes—or perhaps it was resignation.

Graham had not planned it this way. In fact, he had not planned it at all. Now the realization of what must happen fought within him. He knew there was no other way. He could not take up the rifle or risk giving ground. Graham pushed on, past Campos’s arm strength, past even his own strength and instead of pushing the weapon, Campos pulled it downwards desperately knowing, too, where it was headed.

Once Graham had the rifle into the recess between Campos’s chin and collar bone, he pushed onward trying to make quick work of it, but still the insane man struggled, his face going from beet red to purple as he fought for oxygen and then the madness seemed to go, leaving only the bewildered eyes of a man who knew he was about to die. Though he saw the madness fade, Graham knew he could not stop and maintained the force, all the while fighting the guilt that wanted to overtake him. He pushed even harder when his victim stilled his movements, staring at him with purple glossy resignation. With the choking mostly over now, Graham heard movement beyond the door.

Quickly, he chanced a look up to see the girl stagger towards him. “Stay back!” he yelled but she continued.

She held her head with one hand and Graham saw her steady herself against the metallic door jam. With her right hand, Marcy pulled around, dragging Graham’s rifle towards him. Graham knew the effort she made, but he wanted her to stay away. If not for her own safety, he wanted to kill the man without the guilt of a witness.

It was almost done and he did not want her to see the deed. Barely able, she dragged the weapon even closer and put her hand on Graham’s shoulder. She collapsed by his side, not knowing this man, but recognizing his labor.

Graham felt Campos’s life lift away. The madness within him would no longer menace and torture other beings, and death had surely come as a mercy for the kindly portion of him.

Graham pulled the weapon away and checked Campos’s pulse to make sure this time. He wrapped his spent arms around the sobbing girl and lifted her slight weight up into his arms and staggered backward, carrying her several steps, and stood still, not willing to take his eyes off the dead man. Her shudders interrupted him. She needed caring for now.

“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely, “It’s okay now. You’re safe.” He tried to convince himself to some degree.

She just sobbed in response.

Trying to distract her, he said, “I know your sister, Macy. She’s back there in the woods.” He pointed in that direction but only turned away for a second, still not trusting what was before them. It was enough of a glance to see the two children, and their dog companion, coming down the hill towards them from their forest haven.