“Sir, I don’t want to get your hopes up here. I’m not a people doctor. I’m—”
“It’s my daughter. She’s nine.”
Linda will be nine this year. If the world can make it that long. I sighed.
“Come back to my wagon with me. I’ll need some things from my bag.”
His name was Nathan Anderson; he’d been a tech writer, churning out endless pages of instructions for machines he’d never use. Like almost every other survivor I’ve encountered, he never got sick at all. No pandemic for Nathan. No wife, friends, or job, either. Nothing but scrounging from the stores of San Ramon and taking care of Miranda. Until Miranda started getting sick; until he was lucky enough to catch a traveling veterinarian who’d been to some form of medical school, even if it wasn’t the human kind.
He was quiet as we walked the three blocks back to the office building they called home, only the gun in his hand serving as a reminder of his status as my captor. Brewster, Mike, and Little Bobby trailed along behind me, an anxious canine escort. I wasn’t willing to leave them behind. Too much of a chance that Nathan had friends who’d learned the hard way that dogs needed to be shot on sight.
Nathan paused at the office door. “She was awake when I went out scouting for supplies. She gets a little disoriented sometimes, but she’s a good girl. She’ll probably even like your dogs.”
I could smell the sickness from here, that horrible combination of sweat and vomit and a dozen other bodily fluids that says “something’s dying nearby.” I kept my face as neutral as I could. “Let’s see if she’s up now.”
Nathan looked relieved—like he’d been afraid right up until that moment that I was going to disarm him and run—and opened the door.
Miranda’s room had been a corner office before the pandemic, probably much-prized for the floor-to-ceiling windows that comprised two of the four walls. Now it was a little girl’s paradise. The once-white walls had been inexpertly painted pink, and flower-shaped plastic decals studded the window glass. Toys and books were heaped haphazardly around the floor. At the center of it all was a glorious fairy tale of a four-poster bed—God knows where they found that—and in the center of the bed was Miranda.
Any hopes this little jaunt would prove my theory about immunity being hereditary died when I saw her. Adopted daughter, maybe. Adopted after the pandemic, almost certainly. But biological daughter? No. Not unless he’d had a Korean wife whose genes had been able to beat his nine falls out of ten.
Miranda raised her head at the sound of the door, summoning a smile from somewhere deep inside herself. “Daddy.” She paused, brow knotting. “We have company?” The question was uncertain, like she thought I might be a hallucination.
I swallowed the lump in my throat before it could turn to full-fledged tears. “I’m Mercy Neely, honey. I’m a veterinarian.”
Sudden interest brightened her eyes. “Is that why you have dogs? I like dogs. I used to have a dog. Before—” She stopped, the brightness fading. “Before.”
“A lot of people did.” Nathan was standing frozen next to me. He’d ceased to be a factor as soon as I saw the little girl. Ignoring the possibility that he’d decide to shoot me, I started for the bed, setting my traveling medicine kit down on the mattress. “Now, your dad says you don’t feel so good.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
“My head hurts. I can’t breathe sometimes. I keep choking when I try to sleep.” She sounded ashamed of her own symptoms. Poor kid. “I—” A cough cut off her words, and she sat up to catch it in her hands, bending almost double in the process. It had a rich, wet sound, like it was being dredged up through quicksand.
“Just breathe,” I said, and turned back towards Nathan. “It could be a lot of things. Without a lab, I can’t really tell you which one. It’s probably pneumonia, complicated by general malnutrition. I’m going to give you a list of medicines that I need you to go back to the store and find for me.”
His eyes widened, then narrowed. “I’m not leaving you alone with her.”
“My way out of here is back at that store. I’m unarmed. I’m not exactly going to take a sick little girl hostage, now, am I?” I shook my head, expression disgusted. “She shouldn’t be left alone. Either you trust me here, or you trust that I’ll come back.”
“I’ll lock the office door behind me.”
“You do that.”
Still he hesitated, eyes flicking from me to Miranda and back again.
I sighed, and played the ultimate trump card: “I don’t know how long she has.”
His expression hardened.
“I’ll be right back.”
Things I don’t need to explain: what it was like to step outside for the first time after I got better and the rest of the world didn’t. I’m pretty sure everyone that’s still alive has their own version of that story, and they don’t need to be repeated. I woke up, I felt better, I went outside, I threw up six times, I went a little crazy, and I got over it. There wasn’t time to have a nervous breakdown. Maybe if I’d been a doctor, but I wasn’t a doctor; I never wanted to be a doctor. I’m a veterinarian, and my patients still needed me.
Four days isn’t long enough for most animals to turn vicious; that made my job a lot easier. It took eighteen hours to canvas the town, letting cats out of houses, assessing dogs and livestock and making my decisions as impartially as I could. Domestic cattle aren’t made to live without somebody to take care of them. They need milking, or their udders will split open and they’ll die of infection. Sheep are worse. Goats are fine on their own; so are horses, most poultry, and pigs. Cats will go feral. Dogs will go mean. If it could be released, I either released it or fed it and promised to be back in a little while. If it couldn’t be released…
Ending future suffering is one luxury veterinarians have that human doctors don’t. I spent a lot of that first day crying, but I guarantee you that while the people of Pumpkin Junction died just as badly as the rest of the world, our animals died better than they did anywhere else.
I held back some of the stock. A few milking goats, some horses I knew were gentle and well-mannered, several of the larger, healthier, friendlier dogs. I was already planning, you see. Figuring out what I’d need, and what we’d need when I finished the trip. Can’t build a society without animals, and there’s no point in re-domesticating when we have the potential to save the work we’ve already done. Some of it, anyway.
God, I hope she’s there.
Miranda turned wide, dark eyes on me after her adoptive father was gone, and asked, “Am I going to get better?”
“That’s what medicine is for, isn’t it?” I opened my bag, pulling out a needle and a small, unlabeled bottle. I never labeled that particular bottle. They taught us that in veterinary school. Even when they were the ones who’d decided that dear old Kitty was ready for that great scratching post in the sky, people didn’t want to see the label.
They also taught us to be natural about it. To fill the syringe like it was any other vaccination. “Miranda’s a pretty name,” I said. “I like it.”
“So do I,” she said, watching me with gravity beyond her years. “Are you going to give me a shot?”
“Mm-hmm. Just a little one, to help you sleep.” I glanced up, offering her a warm smile. “I have a daughter just about your age. Her name is Linda.”
“You do?” Her expression turned carefully neutral, like she was about to walk into a minefield. “Is she… did she…”