Most of the over-the-counter products were gone.
Rob moved behind the counter, only to find that the carefully arranged shelves of pills had met the same fate as the rest of the store.
Pills littered the ground, crunching under his boots as he walked.
His heart sunk.
He realized he’d been unrealistic. He’d been hoping to find a neatly labeled pill bottle of antibiotics.
But instead the shelves were empty and what was left of the pills was literally under his feet.
But maybe it wasn’t all lost.
He bent down and scooped some of the remaining pills into his hands. Maybe he could make out a marking. Some lettering. Something that would tell him what the pills were.
Many of the pills were crushed and their markings were unreadable. He spent some time gathering pills that were intact, and began examining their markings with his flashlight.
He glanced at his watch. Five minutes had already past.
He didn’t want to spend too much time here. Who knew who might come along, or what might happen to the Subaru.
There were pills of all shapes and sizes and colors. Most of the markings meant nothing to him.
Five more minutes went by.
Was that a noise?
It sounded like something had moved. A soft thud.
No, probably nothing. Just something off in the distance.
Jim bent his head down again, putting the pills close up to his eye to get a good look at them.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Jim found a pill that looked familiar.
It was a white tablet. Oblong and fairly large. The markings, on one side only, read PVK. There was an indent that bifurcated the tablet, making it easier to snap in half.
PVK… PVK…
Jim had seen it before.
He held the tablet up to his nostril and inhaled sharply. Not the safest thing to do normally, but it given the circumstances, it made sense.
It was a unique smell.
One that he’d smelled before.
It was penicillin.
He remembered the smell and the taste. And the memory, then, came flooding back.
PVK stood for penicillin-VK. He’d taken it before, years ago, for some problem that he’d now forgotten about.
He didn’t know if they were 500mg or 250mg. There were no numbers on the pill. But that didn’t matter. He’d give them to Aly anyway, and if she wasn’t getting better, he’d double the dose.
Or maybe it’d be better to start off with a higher dose. After all, the risk of taking too much penicillin wasn’t great. As far as he knew.
No time for that now, though.
He placed the one pill carefully in his pocket, bent down further on the floor, and began searching for more.
Now that he knew what he was looking for, it wasn’t as hard.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t just scoop up all the pills there and bolt out of the pharmacy. If he did that, he’d have no idea if he had enough penicillin or not.
One penicillin tablet became two, then three, and pretty soon he had a handful of penicillin.
He didn’t stop there. Not while he had the chance to gather up medicine that might save the life of someone else down the line.
He knew time was passing quickly. He knew he shouldn’t spend too long there in that pharmacy.
But who knew when he’d have another chance like that.
Glancing at his watch, Jim saw that half an hour had passed. He’d been absorbed in the whole process, the collecting.
Finally, he had enough tablets.
Jim stood up.
Suddenly, he realized that he’d been so absorbed in gathering the pills that he’d neglected to keep checking his surroundings.
He shouldn’t have done that.
But he’d be OK. After all, he would have heard if someone had been approaching.
Jim moved cautiously back around the counter and towards the back of the store.
Trash crunched under his boots and he shone his flashlight as a guide.
He was almost to the door that he’d come in through.
“Hands in the air,” came a gravely deep voice.
Jim turned his head to the right where the voice had come from. His Ruger followed the path. And his flashlight.
“Drop it and hands in the air.”
Jim’s flashlight illuminated the man. A regular looking guy. Except that he had a gun in his hand.
An image of Aly flashed through Jim’s mind.
He wasn’t going to leave without those pills.
He had to get back to her.
The guy would rob him. There was no question. Jim saw it in his eyes.
The guy was good. Waiting for him like that. Jim should have noticed.
But the guy had made one crucial mistake. He hadn’t shot Jim dead when he’d had the chance.
Jim saw the guy’s gun moving, tracking towards Jim’s chest.
Jim pulled the Ruger’s trigger. A good fast pull.
The Ruger kicked.
It was a good shot. Right in the stomach.
A whooshing in the air. Jim heard it. But it was too late.
Something hard hit him in the back of the head.
Someone else was there.
Pressure in his eardrums. Blackness overcoming his vision. But just for a moment.
Jim staggered forward, almost falling. But he caught himself at the last moment with his leg.
The heavy thing crashed again, this time into the small of his back.
Pain flashed through him, roaring out in all directions, up and down and across his back. And down his leg.
Jim lurched forward again, but he didn’t fall.
Jim’s face was only a foot away from the man in front of him, who he’d just shot.
There was blood on the man’s shirt, around the stomach. His face was contorted into rage and pain. His hand still clutched his gun.
And he was slowly raising that gun. It cost him a huge effort to do so. But inch by inch it was rising.
In another couple seconds, he’d shoot Jim.
Jim ignored the pain in his back, the black spots that remained in his vision.
He acted more out of instinct than anything.
Jim pulled the trigger again.
The Ruger kicked.
The shot rang out throughout the store.
The bullet struck the man in the face, leaving a grizzly mess where his features had been.
Jim swung around, trying to meet his still unseen attacker.
But he wasn’t fast enough.
Another blow to his back knocked him over. He lost his balance and he tumbled into the corpse of the man he’d just shot.
26
Aly hadn’t been doing well. Jessica had stopped by her room when she’d gone inside to make the instant coffee, and Aly had been awake and moaning in pain.
There was much to do for her, other than dole out a few more tablets of aspirin. She was already taking a lot, and they didn’t want to overdo it. A couple tablets every few hours already was approaching a few grams of aspirin a day.
Too much, and Aly’s blood would get too thin, increasing the possibility that she’d bleed out.
Jessica stood there in the kitchen, waiting for the water to boil on the stove. Aly’s moans of pain were perfectly audible from where she stood.
There just wasn’t anything she could do about it.
She hoped Jim would get back soon. With antibiotics.
If she knew Jim at all, though, she knew he wouldn’t come back without something that would cure his wife. He wasn’t the type of guy to come back empty handed.
Jessica was staring out the window to the trees as the water boiled.
All of a sudden, she saw something.
It was a flash of something. Some color that wasn’t natural. It had been so fast, she didn’t get a good look at it.
Maybe it was yellow. Maybe orange.
Aly’s mind went to the Carpenters.
Her hand went to her Glock. She seized it from its holster.