Jake's Law: A Zombie Novel (27 page)

“Okay, here we go.”

He hesitated on his first pass with the scalpel and realized he had cut too shallowly through Reed’s excessive layer of fat, and made a second deeper pass. He wiped the blood spilling from the wound with a towel, wishing he had some suction to clear away the blood to see more clearly. The flow of blood didn’t increase dramatically, a sign that no major veins had been severed by the bullet’s passing or by his inexperience as a surgeon. Once the opening was large enough, he grasped the probe firmly with his blood-slick fingers, and gently pushed it into the wound and moved it around. Reed wriggled on the table. Jake hoped it was more from nervousness than from pain. The end of the probe encountered a hard object about three inches in. He hoped it was the bullet. He wished he had a retractor, as he held the wound open with one hand. He reminded himself of
Jake’s Law #8 - Use the tools you’ve got
. He slipped the forceps inside the open wound. He was working blindly. It took three attempts to locate the bullet with the forceps. Glancing at the clock, he cursed at the time. Almost twenty minutes had passed. Finally, he grasped the bullet with the forceps and tugged. Nothing happened. The bullet was lodged deep in the abdominal muscle.

Reed’s squirming became worse.
“I can feel that,” he said. He had an edge of panic in his voice.

The anesthetic was wearing off.
Jake snapped at him. “Stay still. This is hard enough without you crawling all over the table.”  

“I, I can’t breathe,” Reed gasped.

At first, Jake dismissed Reed’s complaint as panic, but Reed’s breathing was becoming ragged. His body heaved as he fought for air. He had quickly read through the contraindications written on the xylocaine box and remembered that one allergic reaction was bronchial tightening. Since Reed already suffered from allergies his breathing could become worse. Jake couldn’t break away from his surgery to find Reed’s inhaler. He increased his pace.

There was no time for finesse or
carefully cutting away the muscle to free the bullet. He resorted to brute force. He tugged and twisted the bullet, as Reed moaned and squirmed on the table. Jake worried that if he lost his grip on the bullet, he would never find it again or worse, push it deeper into the wound. Reed convulsed on the table, trying to sit up to ease his restricted breathing. Jake shoved him back down on the table, leaned his weight onto Reed’s stomach, and yanked as if he were pulling a rotten tooth. The bullet popped free. He quickly pushed a wad of gauze into the open wound to temporarily staunch the bleeding, hoping the bullet hadn’t splintered, and rushed to Reed’s discarded clothing. He found the inhaler in Reed’s pocket, and handed it to him. After three quick puffs, Reed settled down. His breathing was still ragged, but the inhaler acted as much as a placebo as a breathing aid, calming him.

Jake removed the gauze
, pleased to see only a trickle of blood oozing out of the wound. He began suturing the wound, layer by layer, with dissolvable stitches. His handiwork with a needle would never earn him an embroidery prize, but he managed to stop the bleeding and close the wound. He set aside his instruments, removed and discarded his bloody gloves, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. Only then did he allow himself to take a deep breath to calm his own nerves.

“I wrote my name with the stitches,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Did you get it?” Reed’s voice was weak, but the panic in it was gone.

“Yeah.” He held out the bullet for Reed to inspect. “It looks like a
.38 round. Another two inches and you would have been singing with the angels.”

“Thanks,” he said, as he lay back on the table; then winced. “I think the
xylocaine is beginning to wear off.”

Jake suppressed a grin.
“I’ve got some sedatives for the pain.”

Reed shook his head. “No. I’ll manage.”

Jake washed the area with soap and water, and then alcohol to disinfect it. He placed a gauze pad over the wound and wrapped a bandage tightly around Reed’s waist to hold it in place.

“If it doesn’t become infected, you’ll live.”

He helped Reed down from the table and to the bedroom. After Reed was tucked away beneath the covers, Jake said, “I’ll make some chicken soup.”

“You don’t have any chickens,” Reed reminded him.

“I’ve got Campbell’s. It’ll do.”

After placing the soup in a pot and
setting it to simmer, he decided to take a shower to wash away Reed’s blood. It would have to be a quick one. He doubted anyone had bothered refilling the water tank during his absence. With the well being washed away or buried beneath tons of mud, what water they had would have to last. The hot water revived him. He longed to linger beneath the hot needle jets, let them massage away his problems and the soreness of his muscles, but the need for water to drink or cook with overcame the urge to drown his sorrows in the shower.

After drying off and dressing in clean clothes, h
e carried a bowl of soup to Reed, but found him sleeping. He set the soup and a glass of water beside the bed and closed the door behind him as he left. He looked at his face in the bathroom mirror. He looked thinner and older than he remembered. He hadn’t shaved in a week and several bruises glowed purple beneath the stubble. He made a fist with his hand. His fingers were swollen. He downed one of his Actos pills and a diuretic for the bloating. The window was still open from Jessica’s escape. The floor and towels were wet from rain water. He closed the window gently to avoid waking Reed. Grabbing the bottle of whiskey from the living room, he strode out onto the balcony to bear witness to the destruction of his domain.

Darkness had hidden the true measure of destruction from him. By dawn’s light, he could see that i
t was all gone. The flood had scoured the canyon clean like a bulldozer through a rain forest. Everything he had built, everything his grandfather had built, was gone as if it had never existed. Seventy-three years of history vanished, like the numerous native tribes who had inhabited the area centuries before, leaving only bits and pieces of their existence and numerous unanswered questions. Nature’s fury had passed, but the echoes of the storm of gunfire still thundered in his ears. He took a swig from the bottle to silence them.

The single wash had become three separate channels, each bearing its load of silt-laden water down the canyon.
As he watched, a fifteen-foot saguaro whose roots had been eaten away by the flood toppled into the stream and rushed away like a paper sailboat in a gutter. The wreckage of the RV was strewn about outside the tumbled wall, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs – a bumper here, a wheel there, a windshield glinting in the early morning sun. What appeared to be the front wheel and fork of a twisted Harley motorcycle projected from the mud, a mad artist’s sculpture draped with limbs from the cottonwood tree and coils of razor wire. Shattered tree trunks, piles of rock, and heaps of metal rose from the mud and puddles of water like small islands. He saw no sign of the jeep that Jessica and Levi had been in and sighed a breath of relief. Levi still had her, but she was alive.

To his astonishment, three figures trudged through the mud and
water, the three women he had freed. They had survived the flood. He felt a moment of joy. At least he had saved someone. He yelled down to them.

“Come up here and dry off. You’re safe now.”

He went back inside to check on Reed. He was awake and eating the soup.

“You’re alive.”

“So far,” Reed replied.

“How’s the pain?”

He hesitated before replying, “Manageable.”

Jake was impressed at Reed’s composure. He wasn’t sure he could have put on such a brave face
with such an injury. “Good. I have some questions for you.”

He
sat down in a chair beside the bed. Seeing the stern look on Jake’s face, Reed set the bowl aside. “Shoot.”

“H
ow did you manage to build an IED with a timer, and before you say from books, you don’t learn that kind of skill from books. I saw a few IEDs in Afghanistan, and that was an expert job.”

Reed shook his head. “It’s not important.”

Jake pointed his index finger at Reed and cocked his head. “I think it is. You build bombs, you reload cartridges, you hotwire motorcycles – that seems strange for a high school science teacher. Just who the hell are you?”

“I’m
Alton Reed, science teacher.”

Jake shook his head. “No, y
ou’re more than that. No more secrets between us.”

Reed sighed.
“I taught science in San Manuel like I said. When things fell apart, I went to one of the FEMA camps in Phoenix. It was … less than I had hoped. Food was rationed, gangs ran wild, but the worst were the summary executions. If someone got sick, for any reason, the soldiers simply shot them and dragged away the body. Anyone caught stealing, hoarding, or trying to escape were shot as well. We were prisoners and they were the wardens. I heard about the military recruiting people for a special project and figured anything was better than languishing in the camp. I volunteered. The idea was to infiltrate uncontrolled areas, report on any activity, and if possible, recruit suitable people to help establish safe zones. They sent me back here because I knew the area.”

Jake was floored.
His anger coiled inside ready to explode. “A spy? You’re a damned spy.”

Reed shrugged.
“Of sorts. An A-10 spotted your canyon on a flyover, and they asked me to investigate. I saw how well you had prepared and thought you might prove useful. I started the fire in the school hoping you would come.”

“So you weren’t just killing zombies.”

“Oh, I wanted to kill zombies all right. That part was no lie, but I also needed to see how you would react.”

“If I hadn’t
helped you?”

Reed shrugged
again. “Then you probably weren’t the man we wanted.”

Jake
released his anger, laughed, and took a swig of whiskey. “I’m still not.”

“I think you are. You have the skills, and even if you pretend you don’t,
I know you care about people. You’ve proven that. You were willing to risk everything to rescue Jessica and me.”

Had he?
Had he come back for them or just for his ranch? Whatever his reasons, he wasn’t going to give Reed the satisfaction of thinking he was right. “I was after Levi. He needed to die.”

“If you insist. Still, you could have killed him without rescuing us. It would have been quicker and safer
for you.”

He decided to change the subject.
“Did the military teach you to build bombs?”

“They taught me a lot of things. One of them was how to read people. I taught kids, so I was pretty good at reading people already. They taught me what to look for in the particular kind of person we needed to help rebuild.”

Jake shook his head. “I’m not him.”

“
Jake, there are thousands of people in camp all over the country with no place to go. They’re restless, half starving, and they’re giving up hope. Suicides are up twenty percent. The cities are too dangerous for anyone to live in. Pacification, as the army calls their zombie killing expeditions, is going slow. They’re too spread out. Splitting the survivors up into smaller groups, maybe fifty or sixty people each, is our only hope. They can become self sufficient until the military can complete its zombie operations.”

Jake
raised the bottle of whiskey and shook it at Reed. The liquor sloshed around. Some of it splashed out of the bottle onto his hand. “And you think I want to babysit a bunch of survivors.” He licked the spilled whiskey from his hand.

“Yes, I do.
For years, you showed people how to survive with your website. You’re ex-law enforcement and ex-military. You’ve got a lot you can teach them – how to shoot, how to farm, how to survive. Why not put it into practice?”

The idea had a certain attraction to him, not babysitting a herd of people, but teaching them what he had learned over the years. Except for his house, everything was gone. He would have to start over. Could he do it alone?
Could he trust the military to fulfill any promises Reed might make in their behalf?

“If I did, what help would I get?”

Reed smiled. “Food, weapons, equipment – anything, well, almost anything you need. Most of all, you would provide authority, enforce the law. You were a deputy.”

He wondered how they would react to Jake’s Laws, but decided they might find them a little harsh. “A bulldozer for the roads?” he asked.

“I’m sure they will help you locate one. They intend to clear the rails between here and Phoenix and Tucson to Yuma. Eventually, they will run trains throughout the entire southwest linking new settlements. We can build new cities on the bones of the old.”

“I like Tucson.
I like my home.”

“It’s a strategic location. They won’t abandon it.”

“I’ll think it over. If I decide, how do we contact them?”

Reed frowned. “That might
present a problem. I had a satphone in the RV. I contacted them once a week. It’s gone now. I guess we wait until they contact us. Now what?”