Assumed Dead, page 20
“I think they’re going to want to say hello,” Matt said.
“Difficult to talk from in here,” Henry said. “Guess a couple of us oughta go out there.”
“Yeah,” R.J. said. “We go out and talk, but the door stays closed behind us.”
“You need more than the two of you,” Matt said. “You need a show of strength. Outnumber them. I’ll come.”
“Me too,” Peter said at once.
“Oh hell no, Doc,” R.J. said. “You’re too valuable.”
“And Matt isn’t?” Peter demanded, a hand on Matt’s shoulder, bristling with anger.
“We need you more than we need almost anyone else,” R.J. said. “I won’t take any of the women either. I don’t want to show our hand about what…assets we have aboard.” Louise gave him a glare that should have burned his skin away, but he ignored it.
“Matt, Edvin, Stav, with me. Henry, choose three of your people. The best shots among the men.”
Henry’s people were a lot older, but the three tough old guys he chose looked like they could shoot a bear’s eye out at a hundred yards, then butcher it for dinner and make its pelt into a coat with a bone needle..
Peter was still simmering, but Matt saw fear in him too. “I’ll be careful,” Matt promised. He forced a smile. “We’ll be fine.”
Those staying aboard took up positions to cover the door in case anyone hostile tried to come through it. The welcome party stepped out onto the tarmac as the trucks drew up. Kasper and a Moosonee man hastily hauled the hatch closed after them.
“Stick by me,” R.J. said to Matt and to one of Henry’s guys. “The rest of you spread out a bit. Watch for anyone trying to sneak up on us.”
The trucks stopped. The two in the flatbeds had rifles ready but not trained on the group. Matt followed the example. Ready, but not threatening. After a moment a man got out of one of the trucks. He had a rifle slung on his back and a pistol in his belt. Must have been a biker, Matt thought, before the world ended. His leathers and heavy boots probably stood him in good stead in this new world. It was hard to tell his age, between his weather-beaten skin and a beard he could lose a sheep in. Going by the smell, even at this distance, he might well have. The ones in the trucks looked kind of dirty too, their hair matted into dreads. The men had beards. Clearly they didn’t have access to hot water and soap often. Matt kept an eye on the people in the trucks, watching for any trouble.
The biker raised his hands, palms out. “We didn’t come to fight. We’re…careful, but we aren’t looking to kill you guys.”
Which might change if they knew there were some young women in the plane. And a doctor. Matt gripped his rifle tighter. Nobody got to Peter without coming through him.
“I’m Barrett,” the biker said. “This here’s a few of my people.”
“R.J. Russell.”
“This is the first big plane we’ve seen flying in three years,” Barrett said. “See a few single engines or helicopters now and again. But this…man, this is like Christmas.”
“Do I look like Santa Claus to you?” R.J. asked. He nodded at the tall mountain man from Moosonee at his side. “Does he?”
“Guess not. Where’d you come in from?”
“Northern Canada.”
“Right. Hey, they even heard of the zombie plague up there?”
He and his people laughed. None of R.J. and Henry’s people did.
“We heard of it,” Henry said, voice low and dangerous enough to sober the laughter and ramp up the tension.
“So, ah, you folks flying on?” Barrett asked. Matt saw no threat in him suddenly. He saw only desperation. The plane and its people were not something to be attacked; they were hope.
“Have you heard about the vaccine?” Matt said. R.J. frowned at him, but he went on. Everyone had to hear about this. Everyone.
“What vaccine?”
Matt told him, spoke it loud so the others in the trucks could hear. The ones inside the cabs hung out of the windows to listen, transfixed, as Matt talked.
“So that’s where we’re going,” Matt finished with. “To find these vaccine guys. You should come with us.”
“Cool it, Matt,” R.J. snapped.
Matt shut up. He should probably have waited to talk to the others before asking that. But this grubby lot were survivors. The Shriver group had no idea of what they’d face out here. The Moosonee group knew a little better, but not as much as these people who’d been in the middle of it for years.
“Is it true?” Barrett said to R.J. “What the kid says?”
“We’ve got good sources telling us it’s true. If we didn’t believe it, we wouldn’t be here.”
“How many in your group?” Barrett asked.
“How many in yours?” R.J. countered.
Barrett looked back at a woman in the flatbed of his the truck. She nodded to him.
“Nine,” Barrett said, turning back to R.J. “Us and three more back in our safe house. How many of you?”
“Thirty-six,” R.J. said. “All armed.” That was an exaggeration, but Matt wasn’t going to point that out.
Barrett gaped for a second. Then he laughed again, but with a hint of nervousness in it. He was a big tough guy, but he knew when he was overmatched. “I guess we’d be dumbasses to fight you, then.”
“You really would.”
“Baz,” the woman called from the flatbed. “Ask them.”
“I’m getting to it, Shan,” he snapped back.
“Ask us what?” R.J. said.
“Thirty-six of them, Baz. They might—”
“I said I’m getting to it.” He turned back to R.J. “You got a lot of folk there. Are any of them medics?”
Ah. That was where the desperation in his eyes came from, Matt realized. But he gripped his rifle tighter. Nobody got at Peter without coming through him.
“We might have,” R.J. said. “Why?”
“Got a wounded man back at the safe house,” Barrett said.
“Wounded how? Was he bitten?”
“Nothing like that, I swear. He took a fall from his bike a couple of days ago. Busted ribs. But he’s not getting better.”
“Give me a second,” R.J. said. He went and tapped on the hatch of the plane. Henry and Matt moved closer together to stand between Barrett’s group and the hatch when it opened and R.J. climbed aboard. Matt knew Peter would want to go help an injured man. So Matt would have to go with him. He could argue for that—he was a nurse. He suspected R.J. would sooner have him go than Louise or one of the two nurses from Moosonee, both women, both in their sixties.
A few minutes later R.J. came back out of the plane. “Here’s the deal,” he said to Barrett. “You need a doctor. We need some vehicles. Our doctor, and several guards, will accompany you back to your safe house. The rest of your group stays with my people and helps them secure vehicles.”
A brief confab between Barrett and his people, and then he nodded.
“Deal.”
* * * *
Barrett drove the pickup. R.J. and five other men from their group rode in the flatbed. In the cab Matt sat in the middle seat between Barrett and Peter. Peter had politely not said anything about the smell when he got in the truck’s cabin, though Matt had seen a look of dismay cross his face. The guy smelled like a dead badger this close. If he hadn’t been walking and talking, Matt would have suspected him of being a zombie. Maybe the smell put the creatures off.
He looked around for zombies as they drove. Now and again he saw a moving figure in the distance that might be one. But hardly the hordes of them he’d feared. That would be different in more densely populated areas. Or rather, previously densely populated.
The safe house proved to be nothing more than a general store at a rest stop. There was a gas station, a motel, a diner, and a parking lot with a few cars. Matt would have assumed people would stay in the motel rooms, but those were at ground level. The store had a more easily defended upper story. Barrett led the way, moving aside a barrier of knocked-over shelving units and on up the stairs. R.J. placed guards at the bottom of the staircase and went up with Peter and Matt.
Two people defending the top of the stairs goggled at the sight of R.J., Peter, and Matt coming up the stairs after Barrett.
“Where are the others?” one, a woman, demanded.
“They’re fine. Be cool. We’ve got a doctor,” Barrett said, jerking a thumb at Peter. “He’s gonna help Smithy.”
“Oh thank fuck!”
Matt followed close behind Peter into a dim room while R.J. stayed at the top of the stairs. They found “Smithy” lying on a makeshift bed made of a mattress and some musty-smelling blankets. He was a tall, thin guy, also in denim but not sporting the “not washed my hair in two years” caveman dreads. His hair and beard were roughly chopped short.
“I need more light,” Peter said. Smithy opened his eyes as flashlights came on, illuminating the corner. He stared up at Peter.
“Who the fuck is this?” he asked in a pained voice.
“I’m a doctor, Mr. Smith. Mr. Barrett tells me you had a fall from a motorcycle and he thinks you have broken ribs.”
“Yeah. But…can’t breathe right neither.” He stopped talking, panting for breath, and groaned with pain. Peter grabbed a stethoscope from his bag.
“Cyanotic,” he said, half to himself, half to Matt. “Note the blue tinge to the lips, and see how his nostrils flare when he breathes? Those are signs of respiratory distress. He has obvious pain on taking a breath. Does it hurt more when you take a deep breath or cough, Mr. Smith?”
“Yeah. Don’t dare cough,” Smith said.
“Get his shirt off,” Peter ordered Matt, which Matt almost rebelled about, but he set his jaw and got on with it. The broken ribs meant Smithy couldn’t raise his arms to get the T-shirt off, so Matt grabbed a pair of scissors from the medical kit and started cutting it off. Smithy protested weakly when Matt began to cut.
“You can have one of mine,” Matt said. The man was as skinny as a pencil. He wouldn’t exactly fill out one of Matt’s shirts.
“Sit him up,” Peter said. “Carefully. Mr. Barrett, help him.”
Between the two of them, they raised Smithy with extreme care. Matt got his denim jacket and cut-open shirt off him. Under them he sported many tattoos. Biker stuff, Matt supposed. Smithy groaned and panted, and Matt winced at the sound. Peter had a cooler professional demeanor, though. He felt around the ribs and nodded.
“Yes, fractured.” He put the stethoscope earpieces in and placed the stethoscope on Smithy’s tattooed back, listened for a while, frowning in concentration. “Elevated heart rate,” he said. He moved the stethoscope, listened again, then moved it to the other side. After another moment he pulled out the earpieces and spoke to Matt. “No breath sounds left side. He’s got a pneumothorax.”
“What’s that?” Barrett demanded, frowning.
“His lung has collapsed. It’s a common complication of rib fracture. Air is going into the cavity between the collapsed lung and the chest wall, preventing the lung from inflating.”
“Shit, that sounds bad. Can you do anything for him?”
“Oh yes,” Peter said, then went on briskly. “Lie him down. I’ll need access to his left side. Pull the mattress away from the wall, please.”
They jumped to it, obeying the tone of command in Peter’s voice, pulling the mattress carefully, trying not to jostle the patient. While they did that, Peter took items from his bag, went around, and knelt by Smithy.
“Hold his left arm across his chest,” Peter instructed Matt. He swabbed the skin with an alcohol wipe and injected a local anesthetic. Then he picked up another syringe. Not like the little one he’d used to inject the anesthetic. A huge fuck-off syringe with a horrifyingly long needle.
“Holy shit,” Barrett said. Smithy’s eyes went wide.
“Don’t be alarmed, Mr. Smith,” Peter said. “I know this syringe looks rather frightening, but I promise you’ll soon be feeling much better.”
“Can’t be more painful than all those tattoos were,” Matt pointed out. Smithy looked oddly embarrassed then.
“Fuck the tattoos,” he muttered. “Get it done, Doc.”
“Mr. Barrett, point your flashlight over here, please. Please stay very still, Mr. Smith.”
Peter bent down real close, apparently oblivious to the smell—though to be honest, Smithy wasn’t nearly as pungent as the others. Matt watched closely. He’d gotten over the fear of needles a while back. Smithy held one of his hands and squeezed it when the needle went in. Peter scowled in concentration in that way of his Matt happened to find sexy.
Peter drew back the plunger of the syringe. Some blood and fluid pulled into it, but mostly it was air. “Breathe in and out slowly,” Peter said to Smithy. He put the stethoscope back in his ears and listened to the man’s chest as he did so. A look of amazement, then relief, appeared on Smithy’s face when he did as instructed. Even as Matt watched, the blue tinge to his lips faded. The nostril flaring stopped.
“The lung has reinflated,” Peter said. He shifted the stethoscope, listened some more. “Heart rate slowing to normal. How do you feel, Mr. Smith?”
“Like hell, but I can breathe. Holy fuck, Doc. I thought I was a goner. Thank you.”
“That was incredible,” Barrett said, sounding awed.
“Draining the air does produce a rapid and dramatic improvement.” Peter turned back to Smithy. “There’s always a risk of the lung collapsing again. If it does, then I’ll put a chest tube in, until you recover from the rib fractures. But let’s hope that won’t be needed. I’ll monitor you closely for recurrence, or for pneumonia.”
“Can he be moved?” R.J. asked, coming over from the stairs. “Because we need to get on the road. If your group is coming with us, Barrett.”
“Yes, he can be moved; he’s stable. But find us a vehicle with better suspension than those trucks. If you can find an ambulance…”
“We’ll find one,” Barrett said. “Thanks, Doc. And you, kid.” He slapped Matt on the shoulder and hurried off to the stairs, taking one of his friends with him. “Let’s go. Doc wants an ambulance. Let’s get him an ambulance.” The woman who’d been here guarding Smithy stayed.
Peter worked over Smithy for another ten minutes, examining him further, checking the ribs and other injuries. Once he was done, he and Matt covered the man up to keep him warm.
“He’s rather dehydrated,” Peter said to the woman. “Can you bring him some water?”
“You got it.” She rummaged in some packs.
“Thanks, Doc,” Smithy said again. “Thought I was done. Then you dropped outta the sky. My lucky day today.”
“Just doing my job,” Peter said, packing away his gear. Matt gathered up the waste items and stuffed them in a plastic carrier he pulled from a batch of those that had been meant for the store downstairs. Smithy reached over and rested a hand on one of his tattoos, a cross inside a red circle.
“Sorry, about…you know…” he said to Peter. “Ignore that shit. I was a dumb fuck when I was younger.”
“I barely even noticed,” Peter said. “You get some rest.” The woman came back and helped Smithy to some water. She stroked his hair and talked quietly to him. Matt and Peter moved away to give them some privacy. They sat at the top of the stairs. Everyone else but R.J. had apparently left to find vehicles. R.J. glanced up at them and nodded, then went on watching the door. Matt took a couple of bottles of water from his backpack and handed one to Peter, who drank most of it before lowering the bottle again.
“I’d say we’ve definitely made friends here,” Matt said.
Peter nodded. “Treating a pneumothorax is always an icebreaker.”
Matt chuckled. He leaned closer. “What was that about the tattoo? Why did he apologize for it?”
“I suppose you wouldn’t know, you innocent little Kiwi. It’s a Ku Klux Klan symbol. You know who they are?”
“Yes, of course. Wow, so he was a member?”
“Probably not. He said it himself, he was a dumb fuck. We can all be dumb fucks when we’re young. He’s got a few Confederate flags too. No swastikas that I spotted. So there’s that, at least.” He shrugged and drank more water.
“You told him you barely even noticed. Is that true?”
“I was more concerned with examining him. But yeah, I noticed. It doesn’t matter. You treat the patient in front of you, no matter who he or she is. That’s the deal when you become a doctor.” He grinned. “I’ve had racists under my care before in the ER. It’s amazing how fast they at least temporarily stop being racists when the black guy is the one with control of the pain relief.”
“You’re terrible,” Matt said. “And amazing. That too, definitely. You were amazing here today.”
“It’s a pretty simple procedure. But it does produce such rapid relief people tend to look at you as if you’ve performed a miracle.”
“You may not have performed a miracle, but I think you’ve secured us some useful allies. I bet Barrett is going to come back here with an ambulance like you asked for.”
“He does seem like a man who gets things done.”
Matt laughed suddenly, making Peter look at him questioningly.
“What’s funny?”
“All of it. Everything. How fast everything changes. Yesterday I woke up in bed with you in Moosonee. Today I’m in a store in Minnesota, helping you treat a biker with a pneumothorax, while a guy who looked like Hagrid watches.”
“Who’s Hagrid?” Peter asked.
“Who’s…” Matt stared at him. “Okay, we can’t be friends anymore.” Belying his words, he interlaced his fingers with Peter’s, and they sat in silence, hands locked together.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Barrett got it done okay. Before noon a strange convoy took to the road. First came a couple of touring motorbikes, Barrett riding one and Shan the other. Then one of Barrett’s trucks, with R.J. driving and two shooters in the flatbed. After that came a school bus. After that, an ambulance. Another school bus followed the ambulance, and Barrett’s other truck brought up the rear, dragging a trailer with a couple more motorbikes in it. Smaller, nippier dirt bikes for short trips over tricky ground.
