The Reanimates (Book 3): The Escape (16 page)

Momma had the look on her face that said that she was in absolute heaven. She seemed to love the attention that was being showered on her. Everyone she met she loved, and that included the little kids. I worried that Tomisha and Dalynn would make her nervous because they were loud and bouncy, but she took it all in stride. Even JJ was accepted by her.

When all the visitors had left and it was just our house, Momma came into the living room and sat next to the fire. She rested her head on her paws and watched us as we did our everyday stuff. She was calm and happy, and she acted like she had always been there. When I got up, she followed me around,
and I liked her company. She hated the cold outside, but still let us know when she needed to go out. While we were home, she abandoned her mud room bed, preferring to stay near us. I was more than alright with her sleeping on the floor next to our bed. When Trent would stay out late in the post office, she climbed into the bed with me.

I wasn't sure if we had a dog or if the dog had us, but it was like we were always meant to be together. She wasn't as active as I thought she would be from what I knew about pits, but I was relatively certain that she was in energy conservation mode given her pregnancy. Three days after she wandered into our lives, she gave birth to her puppies. She had seven little squirming perfect little babies. They were adorable little things, blind and stumbly, and Momma was already proving to be an excellent mother. A couple of days after she gave birth, we started to let the other kids meet the babies.

Each house was going to be able to adopt one of the babies after all. Louise missed having a dog and was more than a little excited about having a new puppy, as was everyone else. It was still going to take a couple of months before the babies were ready to go without their mom, so everyone was getting their place ready for a new dog. Matt and Lucas made a run to an abandoned pet store, a place we hadn't gone for supplies since we had no animals, and came back with stacks of dog food and chew toys. This group of dogs was going to be the most spoiled little group that ever was, and it made me feel warm inside knowing that we were taking yet another step towards having a normal life.

Preventable Losses

Shayla's pregnancy was going well. She recovered from her morning sickness after the first couple of months, and after that, she didn't have many complaints. Her blood pressure was good, as was her blood sugar, and her growing belly was cute, especially with her tiny frame. I hoped that the baby wouldn't be too large given how much bigger her husband was. I reminded myself that this wasn't totally unusual to have a kid born to different sized parents, and they were fine.

The puppies were more of a hit than I thought they would be. They were healthy, and once they were old enough, the families picked out their favorites. One of the puppies, a male with beautiful amber eyes and colors that were much like his mom but with larger white patches, was definitely a leader in his small pack. If the puppies were found getting into trouble, this boy was behind it. Lacey's group of kids fell in love with him, and their connection seemed like he was meant to be their dog. With such an active pup, he needed the most active house and that group would definitely give him a run for his money. The runt of the litter was a blue eyed girl that was almost all black with the exception of a diamond shaped white patch on her head. She was a snuggler, almost like she was a lap dog in a previous life. Louise fell in love with her instantly and I think the puppy bonded with her immediately as well. One after another found their homes, and I think Momma was a little sad to see her babies off. They were still socialized with each other every day and I think that helped each of the dogs make the transition.

Trent had been trying to get in contact with the group of boat people that we learned about from Dr. Hiller, but hadn't made much progress. He worked on the antenna often, trying to figure out a way to boost the signal as much as possible. I think he just enjoyed having something to fiddle with in the middle of the very cold February. Sometimes, Drew and I would hang out with him in the radio room, listening for the variations in the way the static hissed. Sometimes we would connect with someone in Georgia or California and it was neat listening to other people talk about how they were surviving in this world. The people that we spoke with often sounded a lot like us, a group here and there that were making it through the days together. They too noticed that the colder weather slowed down the zombies considerably, but didn't get the kind of cold we did, so they didn't have the frozen respite. There were less reports of marauders as time went on, although every group had been touched by a gang of bullies at least once.

There was a group in Kansas that warned us that their area in the Midwest was governed by a group of people that went from survivor pocket to survivor pocket like they were making rounds. That militia was created by a group of people that were left from a National Guard outfit, and under the guise of security, they collected their "taxes" for patrolling the area for zombies. They "recruited" the young men from these survivors to help make their army stronger and they demanded goods like food and medicine. This was not a kind militia; they were known to be violent when they were denied. The old man that spoke to us about the group suggested that we stayed as clear from their area as humanly possible, the militia wasn't exactly kind to strangers coming into their territory. I wasn't surprised to hear that these people had such a grip on the middle of the country. People wanted to feel safe. I imagined that in the beginning, having people that looked like they were in charge helped ease that fear that the world just ended and that they could be infected. They surrendered to this authority, praying that they could take away the chaos instead of taking control of the situation themselves, and now they were under the thumbs of some very serious bullies.

There was a turn in the weather, and that February had become a colder month than the one before. A winter storm dumped half a foot of snow over us, and that forced us to scramble to make sure things would survive the climate. The barn that we kept our two dairy cows in, now also housed our goats, who weren't particularly pleased to be so confined; as well as our chickens. We set up one of the solar panels from the school next to the barn so there would be power to run a space heater to keep our livestock alive, which seemed to be working. Sometimes, the kids went to that barn to play in the loft since it was a warm place to go.

While the snow level was higher than usual, we suspended the trade routes, which also meant the traveling clinic wasn't there either. The radio came in handy when people had questions about how to treat sick people. It was funny how everyone knew that the cold wasn't why people got sick; but it still seemed to have that effect. Everyone knew the reason they were all sick was because they didn't go outside, and the more people that grouped together for game night in front of the fire, the more transferable the viruses were. I offered what little advice I could based on what symptoms the people reported. Most people just reported flu symptoms and heard the standard advice to take Tylenol if the fever is over 101.1 degrees, and drink as much fluid as possible. I often listened to the question of whether they should take an antibiotic, and as long as the people weren't coughing up multicolored phlegm, I told them to save the pills. I repeated the ‘antibiotics are not any help against a virus’ speech more often than I ever thought I should.

I had taken to carrying a short range walkie-talkie all of the time instead of just when I felt the twinges of cabin fever. Its pair lived in the clinic, so if someone showed up and I wasn't there, they could find me. Trent had one in the Ham room for long distance calls, and Jack's group had one as well. I stayed on channel five and left instructions with the radio in the clinic to make sure that the radio was tuned in properly before they tried to radio for me.

Whenever someone turned on their end of the radio, it made a weird noise on mine. I liked that I had a warning that someone was trying to connect, almost like a phone ringing, but at the same time, people generally didn't try to connect unless there was something going on, so I had a swirl of anxiety every time it squawked. Calls from Trent at the radio room could be anything from a teething baby to a case of pneumonia. Calls from the clinic tended to be a little more urgent, usually if it was something basic like a minor rash, the person would just wait until they saw me again. Calls from Jack's group were a total flip of the coin on urgency, so when a call came through from Jack, I had no idea what to expect. As soon as he started to speak, the tone in his voice gave me an indication of the urgency. Today, his tome was filled with red alarms. When I asked him what the problem was, he said that there was someone with a really nasty infection and he needed me to head out. I loaded up my medical bag and went over to see what was going on.

I expected a respiratory infection, maybe a cut that should have had some ointment in it. What I saw was much worse.

Doug had been working in his barn a couple weeks ago when he slipped on some ice that formed from a leaky roof. He had ripped open his thigh on a pitchfork that was parked in a pile of hay. He treated the wound himself and when it stopped bleeding, he put a bandage on it, just like how anyone else would. He kept an eye on it more or less. He knew that it wasn't looking so good a week after the cut, so he used some of the triple antibiotic ointment that he had. He ran out of the stuff a couple of days later, and meant to come see me for more, but then the snowstorm hit and he never made it out. He knew it was a little infected, and it did hurt some, but he chalked it up to just being part of life now. He never mentioned to anyone that the cut wasn't doing so well, and even though he walked with a limp, he never showed anyone how bad the infection was. During a game of cards, he started sweating heavily and passed out. Jack was with him at the time and checked him over, and that was when the discovery of the wound's severity was made.

When I checked him out, Doug was running a high fever and there was a foul smell coming from the thick, yellow pus that was draining from the wound. He was falling in and out of consciousness, and when he was awake, he was in a great deal of pain. I was surprised with how dramatic the swelling and heat that radiated from the area was. Dark lines streaked up from the wound and traced the blood vessels like a dye packet had been placed to show the way the vessels twisted along in the body, and even touching the area around the wound caused him to cry out in pain. I felt badly for him, but there was little I could do. I gave him two Vicodin pills to try to reduce his pain and lower his fever a bit, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference in either.

I needed to pack the wound with gauze, and I knew that this was going to make him miserable. I would have given my right eye for some prescription strength lidocaine, but all I had was sunburn spray. I knew that he wouldn't be able to sit still for this so I had a few men from Jack's group hold him down. He screamed in pain before he passed out, and I took his lapse in consciousness as a blessing. I tried to drain as much of the infected pus out as I could, and I irrigated the wound with some saline before I packed the gash with damp gauze, hoping that if I got the wound totally cleaned out, maybe he would heal. He started to filter in and out of consciousness as I finished. I needed him to come back to Wilsall so I could keep a closer eye on him. One of the exam rooms in the clinic had been set up as a hospital room and that was where I wanted him to be. He was protesting the transfer when he was awake, complaining that there was too much that needed to be done. Jack let him know that under no possible circumstances was there a way that Doug was going to convince anyone to keep him in Clyde's. Part of me felt bad that he had to leave his home, but if I was going to have a chance at saving his life, it would be with me.

The infection was deep. As I continued to clean out the wound, I realized how bad it was. The bacteria ate away at a bunch of healthy tissue and it tunneled deep into his leg and settled deep in his bone. There was nothing I could do. He needed an amputation, but I didn't have any way to pull off something like that without killing him. Had he been healthy, maybe his body could have handled the shock of an amputation, but with his weakened immune system, I knew better than to even try. If we had access to anesthesia then things would have been different, but in this world, the reality was that most likely, he would die no matter what I did. A simple cut that would have been so easy to take care of had I found it earlier, or if we had a surgeon, was going to be his downfall. I found myself in a position once more where the loss of the modern world was going to claim yet another life.

Again, we found that zombies were the easy part of a zombie apocalypse. Part of me knew that continuing to treat him with our antibiotics was just a waste of our medication supply, but that logical part of my brain was silenced by the hope that maybe a miracle would happen. If I could stabilize him, maybe I could figure out a way to get that wound to heal better or amputate his leg.

The next day, Doug lost consciousness again while I was changing his dressing. He didn't wake back up. The infection raged on, and the blood poisoning grew so much worse. He seized a couple times from the fever. Trisha and I rotated our shifts so someone was always with him, making sure that he was getting all of his antibiotics and fever reducers on time. We made sure that we kept at the cooling measures to keep the fever down, but despite our best efforts, the next day, Doug died. Doug died of a simple cut that got infected. A simple cut turned him septic and killed him on my watch. Doug was someone I barely knew before he was sick. I had no idea what kind of person he was or what he liked. Before, I probably would have a hard time remembering his name. Even though he was virtually a stranger, I felt huge waves of sadness over his passing.

In the wake of his death, I couldn't help but to wonder if this kind of thing was a problem in Ireland. I wondered if they really did have a good thing going on, or if they were just a larger survivors’ colony. Dr. Hiller said that they had things going still, but did they have means to make medicine or were they just going through a much larger stash of discovered meds?

I wondered how much more we could take like this. How many more people were going to die because our resources were so few? I wondered who would be next to slip away because I didn't know enough or I didn't have enough supplies to make it worth anything.

Now, more than ever, I prayed that Trent would be able to reach people in Ireland, if for no other reason than I wanted to be able to talk to a doctor and have some sort of support in treating people that were beyond what I knew how to care for.

I wanted to figure out a way out of this situation. I felt like we had peaked already in what a hippie commune could manage with no outside support.