John let go of Burnett’s hand and ran over to her. Reverend Black was by her side, and after a brief struggle, the minister relieved Makala of the burden she was holding, John kneeling down to embrace her as she sobbed uncontrollably, pulling her in tightly into a soothing embrace.
Black, holding the child, looked about at the gathering. “I beg each of you to pray. Pray for these people, and pray that this type of madness ends.” He slowly walked into the hospital carrying the dead child. John held Makala tightly.
“Oh, God, John, I thought of our Jennifer. That boy had the same look in his eyes that you did when she died. Why did they do this to these people?”
He looked up. The stretcher cases were lining up, waiting, wounded crying, while across the street, many were openly crying, as well, many on their knees in prayer. It was as if a vast wave of empathy had enveloped the town, and the pain of those viewed just hours earlier as foes had become their pain and source of anguish, as well.
“Makala, you have to get back to it,” he whispered soothingly, rocking her back and forth as if comforting a child. “You are trained for this. I’m not.”
She drew in a deep breath. “Help me get back to my feet, John,” she whispered. She stood up, took a deep, shuddering breath, nodded, and then pushed him away. The assistant who had helped the boy into the hospital was back out, sobbing.
“Focus, Gina. You got to focus on the moment,” Makala implored her. “Now help me.”
John stepped back as Makala picked up the lipstick tube she had dropped and walked up to the next stretcher, leaning over. “Two. Try to get blood type.” The next one was walking wounded, an elderly man, his skull cracked so wide open that John could actually see his brains. Makala wrote a three on his forehead and motioned for someone to guide him inside. The next case was a near-skeletal man in his twenties, gut shot and unconscious, obviously a three. The next case was another two; someone had roughly stitched up the carotid artery, but it was leaking blood and appeared ready to burst. The next one … then the next one … and the next one.
John stood by the truck, Burnett’s hand in his. Burnett’s voice was weak, telling him what had happened, denying they had anything to do with the raid on the convey. A couple of his people coming back from a trading mission with the cultlike reivers over in Madison County had witnessed it from afar and then ran for their base.
“Why didn’t you move as you told me you would?” John asked.
Burnett laughed weakly. “You know how much gas it takes to move half a hundred vehicles and four hundred people fifty miles? Looks like a scene from one of those damn disaster movies. I was bluffing you, John, to see what you’d do. Then we heard those helicopters coming in, and I knew the shit was in the fan.”
John could only nod.
“Thought you were in on it at first when I saw that plane. Yeah, we seen you fly it for the first time last weekend. Craggy Gap used to be a damn good perch to spy on you folks. So, yeah, I thought you were in on it. Your plane take a shot or two?”
“A couple. One damn near blew my head off, hit just behind me.”
Burnett chuckled weakly. “One-armed but still good with a carbine.”
“That was you?”
“Damn straight. But glad now I missed. Glad you dropped that note. Took a chance on believing you. Saw the way those Apaches bird-dogged you, as well.”
He slipped off for a moment, John squeezing Burnett’s hand with his right and reaching out with his left to check his pulse. It was weak and fluttery; he was definitely slipping deeper into shock. Throughout all this, the driver was silent, and John suddenly realized that he was wounded as well and had just quietly passed out.
Christ, these people are tough,
John thought. Ragged and malnourished, they had struggled to survive. Black Mountain had managed to pull together in fair part because tactically it was a superb location, with only one pass in and one out, surrounded by mountains. But these people had somehow managed to survive while actually living in the mountains, narrow valleys, and hollows in the same way their ancestors had etched out a living 150 years earlier.
“Medic over here!” John shouted.
Burnett stirred. “Officers last, Matherson.”
“To hell with that!”
A stretcher crew came up to John, and he pulled the door open and went around to the other side and opened the driver door and then recoiled. The driver’s left side under his armpit was drenched red, blood actually trickling out from the open door and splashing on to John’s boots. The young man had silently bled to death while waiting his turn in the old tradition of women and children first, and John wanted to scream with frustrated rage. How he managed to drive with that kind of injury was beyond comprehension. A stretcher team came up, and John shook his head.
“This one’s dead.” He sighed.
He went around to where Burnett was being eased out of the pickup truck and onto the stretcher, protesting weakly for the rest of the kids and women to be tended to ahead of him.
Makala came over to his side, looked down at him, drew a pair of scissors out of her pocket, and cut the bandage off, revealing a jagged hole in his left side just below his ribs. She sighed and raised the lipstick tube.
“He’s a two,” John snapped, and she hesitated. “It’s Forrest Burnett, and he’s a two.”
Forrest, eyes going out of focus, looked up at him. “Officers last,” he whispered.
“Yeah, Forrest, you’re the last case, now relax.” He turned his gaze back to Makala. “A two, and do it now.”
She nodded. “You ex-military?” she asked, leaning down and shouting the question.
He stirred and smiled.
“What’s your blood type?”
He looked confused.
“Trooper, what’s your blood type?” John shouted.
“A positive.” Then he slipped out of consciousness.
“Get him into surgery now!” Makala shouted. “Prep him. I’ll go into him if need be if no one is working on him once I’m done out here.”
John looked at her and nodded his thanks.
“Spleen’s most likely blown apart,” she whispered. “He’s lost a lot of blood, John. We should just let him go.”
“Would you have three years ago? Before everything fell apart?”
She did not reply. Outwardly, she was doing her job, but he could see she was in shock and struggling to barely maintain control.
John turned to face the silent crowd, many of whom were still praying. “People, listen up. We need blood donors now. Most of you know your types. O positives over here. A, B, and AB form separate lines off to the right. Tell the medic what type you are, and that will be marked on your forehead. We need blood now!”
Half a hundred onlookers stepped forward, and again, a lump was in John’s throat. It took him back to the terrible days after the Posse fight, when those near death from malnourishment volunteered blood as a final gesture before dying.
Makala cleared the last casualty, an elderly woman who simply smiled at the lie that three meant they’d see to her soon.
“You’re a good soul, nurse,” the old woman whispered, “but I know I’m seeing my Maker today.”
John looked at her and sighed. It was Nurse Maggie, who had checked his concussion. He went up to take her hand, and she smiled wanly.
“So it’s you. Thank you for what you’re doing for us,” she said.
He could not reply.
“John?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The trucks have to go back. There’s fifty or more wounded waiting back at our camp. We sent the women, children, and badly hurt ahead first.”
“I’ll see to it.”
“Don’t trouble about me,” she whispered, and then the stretcher-bearers took her off to that place that all knew and whispered about with dread—the dying room.
He looked at Makala, who came up and leaned against his shoulder as he put his arm around her.
“Fifty-three packed into those trucks. Nearly half were threes, after that trip. If I could have gotten to them in that first golden hour, we could have most likely saved all but three or four of them.” A shuddering sob ran through her. “Oh, God, I could have saved that little girl if I had gotten to her quick enough.”
He started to break, as well. And his Jennifer could have been saved if only they had some more vials of insulin. He knew hundreds were watching, and again he was forced to act his role, drawing in a deep breath. “We got to get to work,” he whispered to her, and she nodded.
“Sorry we argued, John.”
He kissed her on the forehead. “My fault, and I love you.”
She looked up and smiled. “Same here,” she managed to whisper, and then she drew in a deep breath and backed away from his embrace. “I got to scrub up.” She again sounded all business. “You really want that Forrest character saved, don’t you?”
“Hell yes I do.”
“Why? He damn near had you killed.”
“Because I respect him, that’s why. He did what he had to do, same as I did. And besides, if for nothing else, he gave an arm and half his sight for this country long ago.”
She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I want to save him too. I’ll try my best.”
He started to step back.
“John, you have to call Memorial Mission. They have enough anesthesia and antibiotics and painkillers on hand now, and we need all of it. We got enough hoarded up to help with the primary surgeries, but to ease the suffering of the rest, there just isn’t enough to go around. We’re giving aspirins out as a primary painkiller, at least to those who aren’t bleeding heavily. We have those batches of antibiotics made up from silver, but I’d prefer some stronger stuff, especially for the gut shots.”
“I know; I was going to make the call. But you know what that means. Release of medications requires authorization, and Asheville then knows we’re taking care of the wounded.”
“Yes, and tell that son of a bitch to come down here and take a good look at his handiwork.”
She kissed him again on the cheek and then went into the hospital. John looked at those of his community, many of them in line to donate blood.
“I need volunteers. Drivers for these trucks. There’s more wounded back in their camp, and we got to get them in here. Two medics to go with each truck. I’ll drive one of them.”
Ed came up to his side, shaking his head. “John, you’re staying here.”
“The hell you say.”
“John, be a leader again. You put your ass on the line once too often for any of us to sit back now. The shit will most likely hit the fan with Asheville when they find out what we are doing. Besides, I hunted the woods since I was a kid and know every fire lane and back trail. I’ll lead them back.”
To his surprise, a couple of the Stepps came forward to stand with Ed.
“Sons of bitches,” one of them growled. “Someone tangles with someone we have fun squabbling with, it isn’t right with us. Okay to shoot at each other man to man, but kids and women like this? We know the trails better than anyone. We’ll get their wounded out.”
Before he could argue any further, Ed and the Stepps were getting into the trucks, and volunteer medics were piling into the backs, calling for additional supplies of bandages, clean bottled water, and gear.
John stood silent, filled with pride, and watched them head out.
DAY 744
“John, they’re coming.”
It was Maury, who was up at the Swannanoa roadblock just west of Exit 59.
“What do they have?”
“He’s in a Humvee, a deuce and a half with a lot of heavy weapons on board following, and that’s it.”
“Okay.”
“John. He’s got a helluva lot of backup just over the hill. I got a watcher down at Exit 55 who just reported in. A dozen trucks, half a dozen Humvees with Kevlar armor curtains, and get this, they got a Bradley.”
“A what?”
“You heard me straight. A Bradley, a big honking armored personnel carrier. My watcher says a kid came in on a moped by back roads reporting that all four helicopters are prepped, warmed up, and ready to lift off. He’s loaded for bear, John.”
“But just the Humvee and one truck for now?”
“That’s a rog, John.”
John could not help but smile. Fredericks was at least showing some nerve.
“Okay. No hassles. Let them through.”
“You sure, John?”
“Time to talk, Maury. It’s just time to talk and pray it stays that way.”
“It’s your call.”
John put the phone down and smiled at the town council gathered in his office. “We wait here,” John said. “But please, let me do the talking. Okay?”
He looked straight at Makala, who had not had a wink of sleep since the morning before. She had a lab coat on, and it was splattered with blood. He gently tried to suggest that she change but was met with silence and knew not to press the issue. Reverend Black was hollow eyed, obviously in shock. More wounded had come in just before dawn, brought back by Ed and his volunteers, most of them lightly injured, the trucks having been sent back, using town gas, to pick them up, parents of children who had been brought in with the first load making the trek, and Black had to perform the grim task of telling a number of them that their child was dead. The trucks also had four dead on board, and only five vehicles had returned. Slipping across the parkway at night, the last vehicle was ambushed, apparently by troops from Asheville, and it burst into flames, one of the Stepps dying in the ambush.
The way Reverend Black looked at John when he asked that all hold back from the conversation was chilling. Black had been a pillar of strength for the community ever since the Day. He had never fired a shot in anger, but he had presided over hundreds of funerals, he and his wonderful wife, Portia, taking the nursing and then physician assistant courses. They had bravely stood in with every emergency, included the dreaded epidemics that had swept the country in the year after the collapse, and were the moral strength of the community. The two of them were all so crucial to John and his family in the weeks after Jennifer died, stopping by every day to pray with him and offer comfort. And now John could see that long-suppressed anger was about to boil over.
He heard the vehicles pull up into the parking lot and now looked at Black. “Please, my friends, this might be our last chance to talk this thing out and prevent more killing, so let’s stay calm,” John whispered as he stood up to look out the window.