All That I See - 02 (25 page)

“Here,” he said, “I’ll put it by the mattress.”

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Just keep the door locked and be quiet,” he said. “
Ellen
and I have been in and out all day, and we haven’t seen a soul.”

“What about the soulless?” I said.

He gave me a patronizing smile. “Get some rest.”

The sun was low in the sky when he joined
Ellen
outside. He shut and locked the front door. I could see the two of them standing by the window until she finished her smoke. Then they walked away. I heard them enter the apartment next door and the door close. Their voices were muffled. I fell asleep again.

When next I woke, it was completely dark. I could hear a thumping sound. I was immediately concerned, and I rolled over on my side to put my hand on the umbrella. I listened. It was coming from the other side of the room or maybe from Somerville’s room.

I pushed myself up on my elbow. I was a little dizzy, but I thought I could get up. I didn’t think I had the strength to fight, so I would have to call in Travis and
Ellen
. I couldn’t see a thing, and not wanting to risk tripping, I decided to crawl toward the wall we shared with the other apartment.

The noise got louder as I got nearer. There was thumping, but also the occasional scraping sound on the wall. I ran into a piece of furniture. I felt it, and figured it to be the coffee table. I went around it to the couch then crawled up on it. I was making out moaning noises, too. It sounded like they were in trouble, but there was no way….

Then I realized what I was hearing. Those were not the moans of the undead. Those were moans of pleasure.

“Figures,” I said, collapsing back on the couch. I was too tired to crawl back into bed, so I just lay there listening to them
have sex
until I fell asleep again.

Dr. Barr woke me up and was shining a flashlight on my face.

“What are you doing over here on the couch?” he said, as he checked the bandage on my ear.

“I was going to knock on the wall, but you were…occupied,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. He put the bandage back in place then went around lighting candles. “Do you need to pee yet?”

“I think I could,” I said.

He helped me into the bathroom and set a candle on the sink. He went into the bedroom to check on Mr. Somerville. I hadn’t felt the need to go since that morning. It hurt like hell, but I was glad to see everything functioning again.

When I was finished, I left the candle and moved to the doorway of the bedroom. Dr. Barr didn’t look up.

“I’ll be in there in a moment,” he said. “Don’t go back to sleep yet; you need to drink some more.”

I carefully made my way back to the couch and sat.
Ellen
came inside and shut the door.

“Is he in here?” she said.

“Bedroom,” I replied.

In the candlelight, she didn’t look quite so rough. She looked younger, softer.

“What are you looking at?” she said.

“Just sitting here,” I said.

There was an uncomfortable silence as we both looked around the room at nothing in particular.

“So you and Travis are a couple?”

She gave me a harsh look. “Did he tell you that?”

“No,” I said. “I heard…I could hear…you know.”

“So now you want some too. Is that it?”

“No,” I said. “Sorry I shouldn’t have said anything.”

She glared at me, and the roughness of her appearance returned.

“You asked me why I didn’t stay with the group,” she said moving closer to me, and speaking in a low voice so Dr. Barr couldn’t hear. “I’ll tell you why. Men are pigs. That’s why. I got tired of being treated like
a
damn whore. I’m not like that. I’m a businesswoman. I had employees. People respected me. Now all I am is a piece of tail.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t you?” she said. “That’s all that blond girl is to you, isn’t she?”

“Actually, we’ve never—“

“I left with Travis, because I got tired of being forced to service those redneck pigs. At least there was only one of Travis and least he was nice looking.”

“You don’t like him?” I asked.

“He treats me like a whore same as the others,” she said, pulling out a cigarette. “He might be good at being a doctor, but that’s about it. He doesn’t know shit about living in this new world, and he doesn’t know shit in bed either.”

She stood and started toward the door then turned. “And if you tell him any of this or if you try something with me, I’ll shoot you. Do you believe me?”

I nodded.

“Good,” she said, lighting her cigarette as she opened the door.

The facility in which we were staying was about a mile off the main highway and about ten miles north of the Clayfield city limits. After a couple of days of rest and regular meals, I was almost back to my old self. I still had plenty of aches and pains, but I could get around on my own and take care of myself. I was eag
er to leave and look for Sara.
Unfortunately, Mr. Somerville had not improved at all. By the second day
,
he had an infection in his shoulder. He continued to get worse.

“I don’t have the meds to treat this,” Dr. Barr said, inspecting the wound. I stood in the doorway of the bedroom, watching him.
Ellen
stood behind me beside the bathroom. Somerville was sleeping.

“What about something else?”
Ellen
said. “What did people do in the old days before all this medication? I know you can break a cigarette open on a bee sting, and the tobacco helps it.”

“There is a reason why we use modern pharmaceuticals,” he said. “They work better. That being said, I read somewhere that during the world wars, field medics would treat wounds with garlic…salt, too, if they had it….”

“Well, you need to try something,” I said.

“I saw some garlic salt in
the spice rack in
the cupboard,”
Ellen
said.

“I don’t think that is quite the same,” he said. “I think it needs to be fresh garlic.”

“What about wild garlic?” I asked.

He shrugged, “I wouldn’t know how to find it.”

“I do,” I said. “It’s the same thing people call wild onions. You can smell it when people mow their lawns.”

He shrugged again, “Okay. I wouldn’t know.”

“I’ll get you the garlic,” I said. “There should be some right outside. That stuff grows everywhere. While I’m out, write down what medicine he needs, and I’ll go out and get it. Write legibly, if you can.”

“A doctor handwriting joke,” he said with a straight face. “Good one. Never heard that before.”

“I’m going out, so I need a weapon,” I said.

“We don’t have extra guns,” he said. “All we have are the two.”

“Give me one.”

“No,” he said. “Sorry, I can’t do that. I don’t completely trust you.”

“I’ll go out with him,”
Ellen
said.

Dr. Barr looked up. His eyes bounced from her to me then back to her. There was a look on his face…something like suspicion or jealousy.

“Stay close,” he said.

I went to the kitchenette and got a fork from the silverware drawer to use for digging.
Ellen
led the way outside with the shotgun. It was another beautiful day and the sun was high in the sky.

“Let’s go over there to that grassy area,” I said, pointing to a spot past the parking lot.

We were into early April, and the grass had had plenty of warm enough weather and rain to green out. Even in all the green, the wild garlic was easy to spot. It was a little taller and darker th
an the rest of the lawn, and it
s leaves looked more tubular. I knelt by one clump. I broke off some of the green and smelled it to be sure.

“This is the stuff,” I said. I stuck the f
ork in the ground and pried up
while pulling on the greens. The cluster of tiny, white bulbs pulled free. I wiped away the mud and handed them to
Ellen
.

“They’re not very big, so I’m going to dig
a
few more.”

After digging up five clumps, we went back inside. I washed
the
bulbs in a pan of water then rinsed them in a second pan. After cutting away the chives, I presented Dr. Barr with the handful of pea-sized bulbs. He picked one out of my palm, scraped it with his thumbnail and smelled it.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “It does smell like garlic. I’ll need to crush these and try to pack them in the wound somehow.”

He extended his hand to take the rest of them and handed me a small piece of paper with his other hand.

“Antibiotics,” he said. “I’ve listed a few here that will work, and I have them listed in order of preference, but really just get what you can and get back here as quickly as possible. One of the pharmacies in the hospital might have this. Connie and I cleaned out the one on the
third
floor, but you would need a key card and probably electricity to get into them. You could try floor by floor there if you want to see if any of them are open, but chances are you won’t be able to get in. There were six pharmacies around town. You can look in them first, but it might be quicker and safer if you just went north to check the hospital and pharmacies in Singletree. Jack said the there was a lot of zombie activity in Clayfield.”

“Will you trust me with
a
gun or should I take
Ellen
with me?”

“
Ellen
stays with me,” he said. “There is a golf club behind the seat in the truck that we put there as a backup weapon.”

“Golf club?” I said. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Do I get to drive, or are you going to make me walk?”

“The keys are in the truck,” he said. “You can take it. We parked another truck out back while you were recovering, so we have an additional vehicle. I don’t put much faith in this herbal stuff, so hurry.”

Chapter 30

I drove the truck out to the main highway and stopped. I looked south in the direction of Clayfield then north toward Singletree. I knew it might take longer, but I needed to see Clayfield for myself. I turned south.

It’s funny how I still followed most of the highway laws (except for speeding, of course). I pulled across the two northbound lanes, over the median, and then to the southbound lanes, settling in on the far right lane.

Other than the infected people that Travis and
Ellen
had killed in the assisted living facility, we hadn’t had contact with any of the infected since leaving Clayfield. I wondered where they all were. Even at this time, I did
n’t see any on or off the road.
I also pondered the story about the nukes and mass exodus. Even if something like that happened, it’s not like t
hey were
all going to funnel into Clayfield. I can understand that the healthy people would stick to the highways. They would probably travel north on the interstate, and perhaps some would connect with the parkway, but not all of them would. They would take different routes. I can imagine that we’d get some into Clayfield, but not enough to be overrun. Perhaps all Jack had witnessed was the continued gathering around Sara. Perhaps it would be easy to find her—maybe not get to her, but find her location. Her menstruation seemed to be the cause, and that should be winding down. Would the zombies stick around, or wander off?

I drove by the warehouses where we’d been held by Willy Rupe. A short distance ahead, the parkway passed over the highway. I could see figures walking on it—lots of them. Was it true? Were these all healthy people heading north?

The parkway is the main corridor through the area, connecting the two interstate highways—one in Tennessee, the other in Kentucky. Howeve
r, it
s course meanders in a diagonal through this portion of Kentucky in a northwesterly route. It doesn’t go directly to the Ohio River. To reach the banks of the Ohio, one must get off the parkway in Clayfield then travel north another
forty
miles. The spot where they needed to get off was right here, yet they weren’t
getting off
; they were continuing past the off ramp and proceeding northwest.

I slowed then stopped when I got close. Some of them stopped and looked down at me from the overpass. I got out of the truck and walked as far as the front bumper. I took a chance and waved.

One of the people came close to the bridge’s guardrail. I thought they were about to return my wave, but they just kept coming. They got to the rail, flipped over and fell down to the highway. There was
a
sickening sound when they smacked the pavement. Then another came. The first one moved and tried to get up. A third fell. Then it was like in those wildlife shows where the migrating wildebeests spill over into the river.