The hallway led me to a kitchen, where a respectable triage unit had been set up. A pair of tables draped in white made up the beds. They both appeared to be padded. There were a couple of kitchen chairs in a corner, and a whole counter full of tools and medications. There were syringes and a box of sutures, piles of gauze and bandages. This place was ready for war.
Katherine sighed as the nurse slid a needle out of her arm. She smiled in a goofy way at me, and I wondered what kind of painkillers they had given her.
“You know something, Erik? My life was a lot simpler before you walked into it.”
“If you’re getting romantic, then I’m all ears.”
I went to her side and took her hand. She was still cold, but the woman attending piled a sheet and a quilted blanket on her. Katherine’s shoulder was exposed, and the paper towels had been pushed aside. The woman took the same syringe, wiped it and Katherine’s skin with alcohol, and then administered a couple of shots to the area. Katherine didn’t even seem to notice.
“She’s floating on a sea of morphine right now. She may get sort of loopy.”
“I’m Erik. Thanks for the hard work, Doc.”
“Oh I’m no doctor, but I’m the next best thing. I’m a nurse, used to work in a facial reconstruction office, but I have all the chops.”
She was dressed in the familiar jumpsuit, but she had a white strip tied around one arm, which reminded me of the corpsmen I used to see in old World War II movies. She was tall and thin with strong Asian features.
“I’m Maddy,” she said and gave me a short wave in lieu of a handshake.
“Hi, Maddy.”
“I’m numbing the area. I don’t have a lot of morphine, so I have to use it sparingly, but I do have a few bottles of Lidocaine. Same stuff they use at the dentist.”
I was familiar with the drug. I once had a small procedure to remove a cyst, and they shot the area up while I tried to relax and play it cool.
I looked away when she got out the blades, but she seemed confident with them in hand. I found a chair and sat down so I could see Katherine from the right side but not view the work. The smell of alcohol filled the room.
“You’re not exactly a romantic guy, but you’ll do, I suppose.”
“I have my moments.”
“You do. But you usually have a big knife or gun when they happen.” Katherine smiled.
“Who shot you? Did you see anything?” I asked for the second time that night, wanting answers. I refused to believe that one of those ghouls was capable of picking up a gun, aiming it and firing. In my mind, the ghouls may have been smarter than the zombies, but they barely had motor skills. There was so much I didn’t understand about them.
“I think it was one of those guys with green eyes. I don’t think a regular human would be hanging out with them.”
“Are you sure? Did you or the others ever see one holding a gun or weapon of any sort?”
“Nah, but they always stayed pretty far away from us. They seemed intent on just corralling or directing the dead bastards.”
It didn’t make sense, but who could make sense of any of this? The dead were back, and they ruled the world. We were now the minority, and our existence was a big question mark.
She started to say something else, but drifted off into lala land. I stayed by her side, and, sometime during the night, my mind drifted far enough away for me to fall into a deep slumber.
I was rocketed out of sleep like a sled down a mountain, or such was the impression my dream left on my mind. In it, I was at the cabin, and it was covered in snow. We were surrounded on every side by the dead. After running out of ammo, Katherine had an idea. She dragged me to the rooftop, where we had a sled like the one Santa used. He was one of them now, a jolly fat man in red. Red the color of blood. He waited for us and he was hungry.
We got into the sled and left the top of the mountain at high speed. We flew over a freeway, skidded onto it, and kept on going until we ran into a swarm of ghouls.
Something loud banged outside, and even in my half-sleep state, I recognized the AK-47 again. I came out of the seat and whipped my head around in search of my shotgun. A shooting pain rocketed down one shoulder. Somehow I had fallen asleep in the wooden chair, and no one woke me. I had been left exhausted as soon as my body stopped running on high-octane adrenaline. The night had been a blur. The escape, the fight, the flight, and then meeting up with Lisa and her crew of holdouts.
I rubbed my eyes, but they were so dry they felt like they were coated in sand as if I was rubbing tiny grains into my pupils. After a minute, I stood up and went to check on Katherine.
Drugged or not, she was used to living on edge, and her eyes popped open, hand moving toward a nonexistent gun, the moment I entered the area . She saw me, and a flash of confusion was washed away by a genuine smile. It touched me, I won’t lie. I had spent a lot of time with her, and I was attached, but she was still very reserved around me. The concern she had brought up about not being able to bear children meant little to me. She could take her common sense and piss on it, because I wanted to be with her no matter what.
“Morning, sunshine,” I said and kissed her lips. She was warm to my touch, as I pushed some hair out of her face then took her hand in mine.
“Hi.”
Her shoulder was bare where the wound was covered in fresh, clean gauze. I had to wonder how long their supply of bandages would last. It couldn’t be easy to have a tiny village like this without renewable supplies. I should feel grateful to them, but I felt anything but. They were in my way. I wanted to get to Portland, join the fight and make a difference. I didn’t want to sit around, bored out of my skull, after already experiencing four months of that.
They didn’t even care to move. They were happy to wait for something to happen or stay until they were overrun. The mob we saw when we left the Walmart had been huge. If a similar army of shambling dead came at this position, they wouldn’t be able to hold them off forever, unless they had a massive supply of ammunition. Were the ghouls willing to sacrifice enough of their army for a few live bodies to feast on?
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I’m on morphine. I feel a bit lost, and my body is warm, but I’m glad you’re with me.”
“I don’t see you as the romantic type. You’re more of an action girl.”
“I wasn’t always like this. I used to be a mom and a wife, and I was happy. I don’t like what I’ve become. I want to go back to the old way, but I guess that isn’t ever going to happen.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I leaned in to kiss her warm lips. I liked her candor and her toughness. I liked how she could turn into a sexy woman when she wanted to, and how she could tell me what she wanted and how she wanted it.
I was on safe ground with her, which made me content.
Another shot rang out. A hunting rifle, this time, was my guess. Then another, and I was itching to get outside.
“I’ll be back.”
“Okay. Don’t forget me.” She squeezed my hand. “Thank you, Erik, for everything. I don’t think I ever told you that, and I meant to.”
I had the urge to hug her, but her recovering body probably would not take too kindly to it. After planting another kiss on her forehead, I left the room.
In the living room, I saw a pair of people I didn’t know leaning over a map. They looked up as I entered. The man nodded, and the woman, an older gal who had a matronly look, eyed me up and down.
“Bathroom?”
The man pointed toward the other end of the hall.
“In there. If it’s too full, use the bucket on the side to pour just enough water in until it flushes, then stop.”
It stood to reason that simple things like water were hard to come by, and there would be the constant need to get more. In the cabin, we had an outhouse in the back that was a simple hole in the ground. I wondered if anyone had thought to make one here. Probably easier to just dig a big hole and piss off the side.