Dead Highways (Book 3): Discord (20 page)

A few days after Ted departed in the night, a terrible series of events began to play itself out.

Let me explain.

The day started no different than any other. I woke up around eight in the morning, used the porta-potty outside, and then headed off to the cafeteria for breakfast. The usual Tuesday specials were on the menu. Corned beef hash in a can. Apple juice from concentrate.

After breakfast, I headed out to the gym with Craig following along beside me. I had left all the targets out the previous day, and Craig agreed to help me move everything back into the storage room. Without Ted around anymore, I was in need of a replacement to work alongside me at the range. Paul trusted me to pick the right person, most likely someone enthusiastic about shooting but with a good head on their shoulders. I had a few people in mind, but there was no rush. Safety first when it came to firearms.

“No shooting today?” Craig asked.

I shook my head. “There’s a basketball game today. Did you forget?”

“Oh, that’s right.”

“Aren’t you gonna play?”

“I doubt it. I have to go on a supply run.”

“Didn’t you just go on one yesterday?”

“Yeah, but this trip was unplanned.”

“What time do you leave?”

“Around lunchtime.”

“Yeah, you might not make it back in time. The game is supposed to be around one.”

“I’m sure you’ll do fine without me.”

“Right,” I said, unlocking the gym doors. “Just like I always do. One of these days you’ll have to take me on a run.”

“You actually want to go?”

“Sure. Be nice to go outside the fence every now and then. I like it here, but I haven’t left in over a month.”

“Today we’re hitting some stores a town over. It’s unexplored territory, so who knows what we’ll find.”

“Just watch out for infected.”

“Always do. I’m actually going with Paul, Zoe, and Jenson today. Normally I only do runs with the two T’s—Tucker and Thomas. But I guess Ray spotted some people on a flyover yesterday, so Paul asked me to go with them to check it out. We’re gonna raid some stores at the same time. Kill two birds with one stone and whatnot.”

“Maybe you’ll help sell some survivors on this place.”

Craig shrugged. “That’s really Paul’s gig. I’ll just be there to keep lookout while they do their thing.”

It took us thirty minutes or so to carry all the gear back into the storage room. Some of the larger bookcases were heavy, and the two of us weren’t exactly ripping with muscles. When finished, I relocked the gym doors and we headed back toward the school.

“So…today is the day,” Craig said.

“Tuesday?”

“No, I was thinking about telling Emily how I feel about her later this afternoon. After I get back from my run.”

“Took you long enough.”

Over the past few weeks, since he first revealed to me his feelings about Emily in the library, Craig had come to me—the school ladies man—with questions almost daily.

What does it mean when she twirls her hair?

When she playfully touches my chest?

When she laughs at all my jokes?

When she always wants to be around me?

No idea, Craig. Maybe she hates you.

“I’m pretty nervous about it,” he said. “You think she’ll say yes?”

“Are you asking her to marry you?”

“No, just to be my girlfriend.”

“Oh, then you should be fine,” I said with a rotten smile on my face. “Unless she’s into girls, of course, in which case you should probably be talking to Bowser instead of me.”

Hours later, I was playing basketball in the gym when Peaches ran in with some dire news. She yelled at me from the sideline, saying that she needed to talk with me. I subbed out of the game at the next whistle. My team was losing anyway and my presence on the floor wasn’t exactly helping much. Up to that point, I’d made three of twelve field goal attempts. My jump shot was only slightly better than Shaquille O’Neil’s.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, wiping the sweat off my face with a towel.

“It’s Craig,” she said in a frightened tone. “Something happened to him.”

Peaches and I ran into the school, down the halls and up to the front office. Along the way, I tried to get more information out of her, but she couldn’t answer any of my questions. The minute she heard he’d been injured she came to get me.

Robinson, Jenson, and three other people I didn’t know were standing outside the office talking when we ran up. Droplets of blood made a trail on the floor leading from the front doors to the office.

“What happened?” I asked, short of breath. My heart was thumping loud and fast in my chest.

“Craig was shot,” Robinson said.

I went for the door to the office but Jenson stood in my way. “Can’t go in there right now. They’re taking care of him.”

“You’ll just be in the way,” Robinson added.

I backed off, tried to catch my breath. I used the towel in my hands to wipe more sweat away from my face and neck. “How did he get shot?”

“Jenson was just telling me what happened,” Robinson replied. “Continue.”

Jenson started the story over from the beginning. The four of them, Paul, Jenson, Zoe, and Craig, had finished rummaging through a few stores for supplies and made their way over to the area where Ray had spotted a couple of survivors the previous day. After driving around for almost an hour, they finally saw someone going inside a corner gas station. So they pulled into the lot and parked the truck in one of the open spaces out front.

“We figured whoever went inside would have seen us pull up,” Jenson said. “So we kept the engine running and waited outside. After a minute, Paul honked the horn a few times. Waited another minute. But still no one came out. At this point, I suggested we leave, but Paul doesn’t like to give up so easily. He cut the engine and we went inside. The gas station was dark. Dark and quiet. The only noise was from the little bell attached to the door. We checked down each aisle, guns raised, while Paul began his usual spiel. If anyone was there they should come out. We didn’t mean them harm. Not a second after the words left his mouth, an old homeless-looking guy ran out of the back screaming at the top of his lungs, firing wild shots our way from over the counter. He was short with long hair and a long beard. He had on a big brown jacket, if you can believe it—in this heat. I swear he looked like a fucking caveman with a hand cannon. The gun was bigger than him. He must have fired off seven or eight shots before Zoe plugged him in his hairy face. But not before one of the shots hit Craig.”

“Where was he shot?” I asked, scared to hear the answer.

“Back of the leg,” Jenson said. “He’d been trying to run for cover down one of the aisles.”

I immediately felt relieved. Bullet wounds were always serious business, but being hit in the leg at least meant no vital organs were in play. His odds of survival were better.

“Anyway,” Jenson went on. “We checked around back to make sure there wasn’t anyone else waiting to jump out. But caveman was the only one. From the look of the place, I bet he’d been living there for some time. He probably just went insane—thought we were infected or something. I don’t know. Of course, since he was dead we had no way of knowing for sure. After that, we tended to Craig in the center aisle. He was bleeding out on the floor, though not as much as you’d probably expect. We think maybe the bullet ricocheted off something else before hitting him. The wound was ragged but manageable. Paul grabbed the emergency kit from the truck and we stuffed and wrapped the hole to stop the bleeding. Then we carried him to the truck and drove back here as fast as possible.”

“Now we’re just waiting on a status update from Dr. Bailey,” Robinson said.

As we waited outside the office for news on Craig’s condition, a crowd began gathering in the hall. Rumors had spread. Everyone was curious. Jenson told the story to numerous other people who wanted to know what happened, Craig’s crush, Emily, among them. Peaches and I kept her company, tried to ease her mind by telling her everything would be all right, not knowing if that was really true or not.

It was well over an hour after I’d arrived at the scene, when Paul came out to address the crowd.

“Craig is in stable condition,” he said. “Dr. Bailey says he’s lost a good deal of blood but should be fine. He’s resting now, so there’s no need for everyone to hang around here.” He paused to check his watch. “It’s almost time for dinner. Please everyone, move away. I’ll be sure to let you all know if his condition changes.”

Emily and I went back to the front office just before lights out. After some begging, we were able to talk Susan into letting us see Craig. We tiptoed into the nurse’s office, unsure as to whether or not he would be sleeping.

“Hey guys,” Craig said softly, as we turned the corner. He lay flat on the bed, dressed in only a T-shirt and plaid boxer shorts. His right foot was set atop a pair of thick pillows to keep his calf, wrapped in many tight layers of white gauze, properly elevated.

“How are you feeling?” Emily asked, squeezing up beside him. I went to the other side of the bed.

“Better,” Craig replied, smiling up at her. “The doc gave me some pain meds.”

Emily reached for his hand. “That’s good.”

“You weren’t supposed to get shot today,” I said. “I told you to watch out for crazy homeless guys, didn’t I?”

Craig turned and looked over at me. Whatever Bailey gave him for the pain was definitely working. He looked spaced-out, barely able to keep his eyes open. “I think you said…to watch out for infected.”

“Same thing.”

We stayed with Craig for another few minutes until he started to fade off, and then we left him to rest. Susan promised to let us see him again the following morning.

“He’ll be fine,” I said, walking Emily to her room.

“I sure hope so. I don’t want to cry anymore.”

“You really like him, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do.”

We stopped outside her room and I turned to face her. “Maybe I shouldn’t be saying anything…but Craig likes you too. He was going to tell you today…before he got injured. He was so nervous about it.”

“He was? Aw, that’s so sweet,” she said. “I’ve been waiting.”

“Don’t tell him I said anything.”

“I won’t. But thanks for letting me know.”

The next morning I stopped in to check on Craig. With a full night’s sleep behind him, he looked less drowsy and was in great spirits. The bright smile on his face caught me totally off guard. His positive mood was welcomed but unexpected.

He told me that Emily had come to see him earlier and that they were now officially dating. The best part, he said, was that he didn’t even have to ask her. She had asked him. Naturally, I said nothing about the conversation I had with her the previous night. I played along with the surprise, pretending I had no idea. I even made a joke about how he’d dodged a bullet. His face glowed with satisfied relief.

Two days later, Craig had a fever.

“Go ahead. Tell them,” Paul said.

I stood among a small group gathered together in the principal’s office—a place I wasn’t too familiar with. Robinson, now helping to handle the day-to-day affairs of the school, had been summoned to the front office for an important update on Craig’s condition. Being the nosy person I was, I had tagged along. Paul reluctantly let me inside for the meeting.

Paul, sitting comfortably behind his desk, glanced over at Dr. Bailey leaning against the far wall. Susan stood off to the side, fidgeting with her hands.

“Unfortunately, Craig has developed a bacterial infection,” Dr. Bailey said.

“How do you know?” Robinson asked.

“Without a tissue sample or blood test, it’s hard to know for sure. But all signs point to infection. The wound isn’t healing like it should. Over the past twenty-four hours, it’s become very red and tender. Swelling has increased, not decreased. And, most notably, during the night Craig woke up with a high fever that we so far have been unable to get under control.”

I bowed my head, thinking back to how happy Craig had been only two days earlier, and how upset Emily would be once she heard the news that his condition had worsened. I raised my head back up and asked the question that seemed most pertinent at that moment. “Is he going to die?”

Dr. Bailey took a long second to answer, which did nothing to improve the uneasy atmosphere in the room. “Infections aren’t uncommon after trauma, and they are treatable, but we don’t have the right medications here at the school to fight it. We need to get to a pharmacy as soon as possible and hope they have what we need. The sooner he gets the proper medication, the better chance he has to beat it. If the infection goes untreated for too long, and continues to get worse, it’s possible we may have to amputate the leg.”

A cold silence fell over the room.

Despite all that I had been through over the last month and a half, I felt very fortunate to be standing there in that office in good health and not lying in the nurse’s room sick and weak down the hall. Of all the people I’d met at the school, maybe in my entire life, Craig reminded me the most of myself. Knowing that this infection could possibly leave him without a leg, or even dead, left a hard pit in my stomach.

“So…” Paul finally said. “We need to set up a run immediately. The closest pharmacy to the school is about three miles southwest of here. Problem is…we’ve been there before, and it’s unlikely to have what we need as it’s been thoroughly cleaned out. I suspect that’s true of most of the pharmacies in the city as well. If it wasn’t the addicts or other looters out to make a quick buck, it was the government.” Paul removed his glasses and began wiping the lenses clean with the bottom of his shirt. “But the doctor has an idea.”

Dr. Bailey nodded. “I used to work at a hospital in the city. They have a pharmacy that should have everything we need.” He turned to address Robinson. “That narcotic I gave you when you first got here, after I cleaned up your wound…I got those the day everyone went into a coma. I took them from the hospital pharmacy before I left, along with a bunch of other supplies. They were well stocked.”

“And you’re sure no one could have got in there and cleaned it out since then?” Robinson asked.

“Anything is possible, but it’s highly unlikely. Even if the backup power eventually went down, most of the entrances should still be locked. You see, I was working the day the virus rolled into town. It was a madhouse in there. We were overrun by people, couldn’t keep up with demand. Eventually the decision was made to lock all the main entrances to prevent the situation from getting any worse. But while that stopped people from rushing the building, things obviously didn’t get any better. By night, just about everyone inside had fallen into a coma. Only a handful of us were unaffected. We left through an emergency exit out back, and then went our separate ways, off to our homes to find our families.” The doctor paused to pull in a deep breath. “I found mine—my wife and two boys—in the living room later that day. All comatose.”

“How far away is this hospital?” Robinson asked.

“Twenty miles maybe.”

“And you said it’s in the city,” I remarked. “The city highways are packed with infected. Can you even get to it safely?”

My question was directed to the doctor, but it was Paul who answered. “We can. We’ll just take the helicopter.”

Now I was intrigued.

I loved it when a plan came together.

“The rooftop access to the stairs should be open,” Dr. Bailey said. “If not, we may still be able to break in.”

“Whatever it takes,” Paul said. “Let’s not waste another second. Susan, if you could be so kind to find Ray and bring him here so we can tell him the situation.”

“I’m on my way,” Susan said, and hurried out of the office.

Paul turned his attention back to the doctor. “Do you think you could draw up a map of the hospital?”

Dr. Bailey frowned. “I don’t need a map. I worked at the hospital for over ten years, and I know the floor plan well.”

“Then you’ll be able to draw a good map. But you’re not going.”

“What? I have to go, Paul. I’m the only one who knows what medication to get.”

“You can write that down too, along with any other meds you think we could use on hand.” Dr. Bailey sighed and looked out the window facing the parking lot. “I’m sorry, Tim. You’re just too valuable for us to lose.”

“Are you at least good with a weapon?” Robinson asked the doctor.

“Why does that matter?”

“Because the hospital could be crawling with infected. You said the main entrances were locked down on the day everyone went into a coma. Well, if the infected weren’t able to get out after they woke up, they’d still be there, wandering the halls.”

“Hmm, that’s a very good point I hadn’t considered,” Paul said. “That changes things.”

Robinson shrugged. “Just means if you’re going in there, you better bring plenty of firepower…and some good shooters.”

“I’m going to check on the boy,” Dr, Bailey said. “When I get back, I’ll draw up a map.”

“Thank you,” Paul said as the doctor sauntered off down the hall. “Your shoulder isn’t one hundred percent yet, is it?”

“No. And it probably won’t be for a while,” Robinson replied. He didn’t have the sling on that morning, but he would still wear it on days when the pain flared up.

“We’ll find someone else. The helicopter can seat four plus the pilot. Zoe and Jenson will—”

“I’ll go,” I suddenly blurted out.

Principal Paul leaned back in his chair, chewing on the eraser end of a pencil. “Are you sure?”

“I want to help,” I said. “You know I can handle a gun better than most people here. I helped train them. And Craig is my friend.”

Robinson placed a hand on my shoulder. “Jimmy…it could be really dangerous.”

“I want to help,” I said again.

Paul nodded and set down his pencil. “Then it’s settled. You can go. Plan on leaving in an hour.”