“Ladies and gentlemen,” Catie said as she bid farewell to her escorts as they quickly pulled the manhole cover shut with a clang, “one way or another, this all ends here within the next few days.”
12
After I watched the fire burn for a few minutes and made my peace with what I had done, I continued up the hill. There was only one big lazy bend that I needed to round before the bus would be in view. It was quiet, so I moved to the side of the road where I could walk along the edge near the drop-off just in case I needed to disappear in a hurry.
Quiet can be as much a friend as it can be an enemy. Not knowing how things went had me at a serious disadvantage. The closer I got to the apex of the corner, the more nervous I became. I started thinking that if my guys had won, then I should be hearing something. They would have made their way up to let the second line know it was okay. That would mean people would be celebrating.
Once I was right at the corner where the next few steps would reveal the bus, I ducked into the tall grass and scrub brush that was encroaching ever closer to the old highway that would probably be entirely broken up and washed away by the time I was Billy’s age. Getting down on my stomach to minimize the chance of being seen, I crawled the last bit and had to move some low hanging branches out of the way in order to see.
There was the old bus, right where it always was for as long as I could remember. What I didn’t see was Timmy. I thought maybe he might be hiding behind the sand bags, but if the fight was over, then that would not be necessary. He certainly would not have just run home or retreated with the front line people without telling them about me and where I’d gone…would he?
I still tried to stay close to cover as I approached the bus. At last, I reached a point where I would have to go out into the open. I moved in a crouch and did not cross in a straight line just in case there was a sniper hiding someplace. I reached the bus and my heart was now pounding in my temples so hard that a full blown headache was unavoidable.
About ten feet away, I stopped. There were dark splatters on the ground. I knew what they were, but I knelt anyways and touched one to confirm that it was blood.
“Crap,” I breathed as I wiped my fingers off on my pants.
I took a look around and climbed up onto the bus. All the gear was gone except for one half burnt torch that had been extinguished. I stood and did a full circle as I tried to find anything that would help me figure out what had happened.
Nothing.
Climbing down, I did the only thing that I could think of…I headed for Platypus Creek. Winding through the woods, I was staying alert; that is probably why I discovered a few more spots where blood had dripped or smeared on some of the foliage along the trail. That told me that I was at least heading in the right direction.
I was probably still a few hundred yards out when I could hear the sounds of yelling and shouting. It sounded angry. Now I was confused as well as a bit more nervous. When I got to where I could see the walls, I ducked behind a tree and used my binoculars to scan the wall and the towers.
I went from confused to perplexed with just a shade of annoyed. The guards that I could see were all people that I recognized and they were facing in to the compound, not out here where the trouble would be coming from. Emerging from the tree that I used for cover, I shouldered my crossbow, but I kept my machete in hand just in case.
I reached the gate and pounded on it with my gloved fist. The slat about four feet above my head opened and a face peered out. Recognition sparked in the woman’s eyes and the slat shut with a clack, and the sound of the bar being raised quickly followed.
“What the hell is going on?” I snapped as I pushed past the handful of people supposedly standing guard at the gate.
“We won!” a voice chirped.
I shot the person a look that I imagine was pretty nasty. Heading to the main community square, I arrived to see what looked like pretty much everybody gathered around; they were all yelling, cheering, and shouting a variety of threats. I craned my neck to see that a man and two women had been brought up to the same stage that Billy had used just a day ago to address the community. They were shackled and looked like they’d taken a nasty beating. A rock hurled from the crowd and caught the man on the side of the head causing him to stagger and fall to his knees. This elicited a cheer from the mob.
Billy was with several others on stage that I knew had been part of the front line. He raised his hands and started shouting. It took a few minutes for the crowd to quiet down enough so that I could hear him. As he spoke, I started elbowing and weaving my way up to the stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Billy said with his ever-present calm voice of authority, “I am pleased to announce to you that our forces have not only met the enemy, but with the help of the ever-impressive Mr. James Sagar, we have eliminated them entirely.” He paused and glanced over at the trio huddled together. “Well, except for these three who will be questioned shortly.”
This brought an eruption of ecstatic cheering from the crowd. I managed to make it almost to the stage when I spied somebody and changed course. In one quick move I reached up and grabbed a handful of shaggy brown hair. The person at the other end of my grip made a loud yelp that went largely unnoticed by the frenzied crowd who were far too interested in what was happening on stage to worry about two kids supposedly horse-playing.
“Oww, lemme go!” Timmy howled as I jerked his head down and brought him around to face me. The moment his eyes met mine, realization hit him and he flushed a bright red. “Thalia, I-I-I just—”
“Forgot!” I barked, cutting him off with a nasty sneer. “You left me out there knowing that I was dealing with a herd of fucking zombie children!” I gave another yank and twist, bringing the tall, skinny boy to his knees. “I could be dead now, and nobody would even have a clue.”
“But you made it back,” he whined.
“No thanks to you.”
With that I gave him a shove away from me and stomped off as best I could in a crowd, pushing people out of the way now that my anger had finally bubbled over. I eventually reached the stage and waved at Jim who was standing off to the side with Dr. Zahn. As soon as he spotted me, he hurried over and pulled me up onto the stage and ushered me off to the side where the doctor was standing with three of what I assumed to be her students by the way she was pointing to a clipboard and obviously giving instructions. By the time I got there, the students were rushing off, heads down as they studied whatever was on the clipboard.
“Thalia,” the doctor actually gasped. Of course she just as quickly composed herself. “There was a report that your post was empty. We were about to send a team to search the area. Billy will be very relieved.”
“Yeah,” I said, considering how much trouble I would get Timmy in if I let slip what had happened. Instead, I had a question of my own. “Where is Paula?” It had just dawned on me that she was the only member of the Billy-Jim-Paula triumvirate that I had yet to see.
“Yeah, she took a knife to the back as well as two arrows.” Jim glanced at Dr. Zahn before he continued. “I don’t think she is gonna make it, cupcake.”
“That is nonsense, Mr. Sagar,” Dr. Zahn scolded. “Sunshine has things well under control.”
“Can I see her?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” Dr. Zahn said. “Come with me and we will be there as soon as she comes out into recovery.
“But what about all this?” I gestured over my shoulder to where Billy was giving a recount of how things had gone down during the battle.
The post-battle report was something he had insisted on after the third or fourth time we went heads-up with a group of raiders. He said that it was better if he gave an actual account instead of letting the rumor mill generate some overblown bunch of half-truths and outright lies.
“Do you really want to stay here and listen to Billy blow up Mr. Sagar’s head bigger than it already is?” The doc shot a pointed look over her shoulder at Jim who grinned big and mouthed the word “boom” as he threw his hands out in his gesture for an explosion.
“I guess not,” I said, winking at Jim when he put on his over-exaggerated hurt face.
The doctor and I headed down the stairs and across an empty compound for the building that was the hospital. I saw a few people exiting with an assortment of wraps, slings, and bandages.
“How many people did we lose?” I asked when it was clear that Dr. Zahn wasn’t going to offer up anything in the way of a conversation.
“The current numbers are five missing, twenty-three injured and four dead.”
“Four?” I gasped. “That’s great!”
As soon as that came out of my mouth I wished I could take it back. It wasn’t exactly what I meant, and I am sure the doc knew it, but that didn’t change her reaction.
“Then perhaps you can be the one to tell the families. I will be most interested how the children take the news that their mother is dead.”
“But—” I gulped, only to have the doc shut me down.
“If I ever hear anything like that out of your mouth again Miss Hobart, I will slap it shut. Are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, please contain your inappropriate elation about how great things are once we go in the hospital. There are people in there that are fighting for their lives and I don’t believe their families will share your point-of-view as their loved one is in surgery doing his or her best to survive horrific injuries to their person.”
We walked inside and the world erupted in the sounds of sobbing from waiting family members, moans of pain from the wounded, and curt orders from the medical personnel as they rushed about in the maelstrom of chaos. I had to flatten myself against the wall twice as a gurney was pushed by in a hurry to one of the curtained bays.
“Where are Sunshine and Dr. Byrd?” Dr. Zahn asked as she snagged the arm of one of her student doctors that was rushing by, her scrubs dark with blood.
The woman threw a thumb over her shoulder and then was off once more on whatever life-and-death mission she’d been on before being pulled up by perhaps the only person in the entire community that could do such a thing anytime and anyplace without fear of a snotty reply or brush off. Dr. Zahn thanked the woman’s back as she rushed away and then led me to the curtained area that had been indicated.
Pulling the curtain aside I took one step forward and then stopped. Paula Yin was perhaps one of the toughest women I’d ever met. She was certainly the most dangerous. The woman on that gurney was not the Paula Yin that I knew. She was so tiny and frail looking. Her skin was washed out and whiter than even Dr. Zahn who avoided the sunlight like a vampire.
Hunched over Paula were Sunshine and Cynthia Byrd. They were a flurry of activity. Cynthia even had an IV in her own arm as blood was being drawn by an attendant that was doing an amazing job of staying out of the way. I did not dare step closer for fear of being an unnecessary obstacle.
“I think we got the worst of it,” Cynthia gasped as she looked up to see me and the doctor standing there.
“How are we doing on blood?” Dr. Zahn asked like it was no big deal.
“I think we are okay, she took two full liters of blood and part of a third, but I think we are out of the woods. That patch up job in the field probably saved her life. I think she is going to lose her leg below the knee, but I won’t know for sure for a while and I wouldn’t amputate it now anyways.” Cynthia extended her arm so the attendant could remove the needle and cap off the bag of blood she’d just given. “I would like everybody able to do so to be by today to donate blood. We still have a few people that are not out of the woods yet, and I would rather have too much rather than not enough.”
“I will make sure Billy puts the word out,” Dr. Zahn said. She stepped aside and actually ushered me in by my arm. “Thalia is here to check on Paula. I think she should sit with her for a little while, then she has a few calls to make.”
My head popped up. Surely she couldn’t mean—
“Thalia will be doing the house visits of the people we lost starting with Lacy Munson’s family.” Dr. Zahn glanced at me, an eyebrow cocked. “Sunshine will give you the list of names.”
Ten minutes later, I was alone with Paula. All the medical types were busy doing what they could to save the lives of those who had suffered injuries during the fight. I was holding a list of names that were all familiar and wondering what I was going to say to Henry Munson and his two little girls. Henry had lost his right arm a few years ago due to a nasty cut on the palm of his hand of all things. It became hideously infected because he had not taken care of it and ignored it all the way until he collapsed during a shift on the wall.
He had been confined to working within the walls and his wife had been inducted to the security force. The two daughters were six and eight years old. I have probably babysat the Munson girls twenty or thirty times over the past couple of years.
A sniffle to my left caused me to jump, and I looked up to see Stevie peek in the curtain. He glanced at Paula and his face was solemn, but as soon as he turned his attention my way, he smiled.
“You made it back,” Stevie gasped. “Somebody was saying that you were missing.”
He didn’t wait for an invitation and threw himself at me, wrapping his arms around me in a fierce hug. I had to shift around a bit so that I could hug him back. He finally pulled away and seemed to study my face.