Grants Pass (9 page)

A gun hammer was cocked behind me. A
very small sound, but one that had come to hold a great deal of importance in
my life over the past year. It was the sound of someone who might decide that
my surviving the pandemic was just a fluke that needed to be corrected.

I stopped in my tracks, raising my
hands to shoulder-height. Brewster hunched his massive head down, a growl
rumbling from the bottom of his throat. I could hear the other two dogs moving
up ahead, still uncertain and unwilling to approach the stranger. “I’m sorry,”
I said, voice calm and level. Never be the first to show panic. Never let them
think that you might be an easy target. “I didn’t know this store was yours. If
you’ll just let me gather up my animals, I’ll be on my way.”
Please
, I
prayed silently,
please let me gather up my animals
. I lost two goats to
a man who saw them as fresh meat on the hoof; I lost my second riding horse to
a man who fancied himself the Lone Ranger and decided that an old gray mare
would do just fine as Silver. I’m sure one of her legs was broken before I’d
even made it out of the valley that he took her from me in. The old gray mare,
she ain’t what she used to be.

“
Turn around,
miss. Real slow, no sudden movements.”

Male; middle-aged, probably one of
the white-collar workers who’d packed this sort of business park before the
pandemic; artificially polite, which was a natural development under the
circumstances. Even when you were the one holding the gun, it paid to be
polite. Next time, the gun might belong to someone else. I turned as I’d been
instructed, not dropping my hands or making any effort to avoid meeting his
eyes. Confident without being challenging, that was the goal. Once you’ve
stared down a bull that smells cows in estrus, you can handle anything humanity
has left to throw at you.

The man behind me looked almost
exactly like I would have expected, even down to the stained, slightly tattered
white dress shirt. Even a year after the disaster, people still dressed like
they expected the old world to be called back to order any second. The poor
bastards. They’d been domesticated, and they didn’t even know it.

“
Those your
dogs?” he demanded. The skin of his left cheek jumped and fluttered in a
nervous tic, making it look like he might jitter apart at any moment.

“
Yes,” I
said, not lowering my hands. “They’re also my horses, my goats, and, if you’ve
been inside the wagon already, my birds. They’re well-fed and not a threat to
you.”

The pistol he had angled towards my
chest wavered, almost perfectly in time with the tic on his cheek. “Are you
some sort of farmer?”

“
No. I’m a
veterinarian.”

Shock and relief chased each other
across his face for a moment before he lowered his gun, saying, “Miss, I’m
going to need you to come with me.” He hesitated, finally adding, more quietly,
“Please.”

“
Sir, I
don’t want to get your hopes up here. I’m not a people doctor. I’m—”

“
It’s my
daughter. She’s nine.”

Linda will be nine this year. If the
world can make it that long. I sighed.

“
Come back
to my wagon with me. I’ll need some things from my bag.”

****

His name was Nathan Anderson;
he’d been a tech writer, churning out endless pages of instructions for
machines he’d never use. Like almost every other survivor I’ve encountered, he
never got sick at all. No pandemic for Nathan. No wife, friends, or job,
either. Nothing but scrounging from the stores of San Ramon and taking care of
Miranda. Until Miranda started getting sick; until he was lucky enough to catch
a traveling veterinarian who’d been to some form of medical school, even if it
wasn’t the human kind.

He was quiet as we walked the three
blocks back to the office building they called home, only the gun in his hand
serving as a reminder of his status as my captor. Brewster, Mike, and Little
Bobby trailed along behind me, an anxious canine escort. I wasn’t willing to
leave them behind. Too much of a chance that Nathan had friends who’d learned
the hard way that dogs needed to be shot on sight.

Nathan paused at the office door.
“She was awake when I went out scouting for supplies. She gets a little
disoriented sometimes, but she’s a good girl. She’ll probably even like your
dogs.”

I could smell the sickness from
here, that horrible combination of sweat and vomit and a dozen other bodily
fluids that says ‘something’s dying nearby.’ I kept my face as neutral as I
could. “Let’s see if she’s up now.”

Nathan looked relieved — like he’d
been afraid right up until that moment that I was going to disarm him and run —
and opened the door.

Miranda’s room had been a corner
office before the pandemic, probably much-prized for the floor-to-ceiling
windows that comprised two of the four walls. Now it was a little girl’s
paradise. The once-white walls had been inexpertly painted pink, and
flower-shaped plastic decals studded the window glass. Toys and books were
heaped haphazardly around the floor. At the center of it all was a glorious
fairy tale of a four-poster bed — God knows where they found that — and in the
center of the bed was Miranda.

Any hopes this little jaunt would
prove my theory about immunity being hereditary died when I saw her. Adopted
daughter, maybe. Adopted after the pandemic, almost certainly. But biological
daughter? No. Not unless he’d had a Korean wife whose genes had been able to
beat his nine falls out of ten.

Miranda raised her head at the sound
of the door, summoning a smile from somewhere deep inside herself. “Daddy.” She
paused, brow knotting. “We have company?” The question was uncertain, like she
thought I might be a hallucination.

I swallowed the lump in my throat
before it could turn to full-fledged tears. “I’m Mercy Neely, honey. I’m a
veterinarian.”

Sudden interest brightened her eyes.
“Is that why you have dogs? I like dogs. I used to have a dog. Before—” She
stopped, the brightness fading. “Before.”

“
A lot of
people did.” Nathan was standing frozen next to me. He’d ceased to be a factor
as soon as I saw the little girl. Ignoring the possibility that he’d decide to
shoot me, I started for the bed, setting my traveling medicine kit down on the
mattress. “Now, your Dad says you don’t feel so good.”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
You want to
tell me about it?”

“
My head
hurts. I can’t breathe sometimes. I keep choking when I try to sleep.” She sounded
ashamed of her own symptoms. Poor kid. “I—” A cough cut off her words, and she
sat up to catch it in her hands, bending almost double in the process. It had a
rich, wet sound, like it was being dredged up through quicksand.

“
Just
breathe,” I said, and turned back towards Nathan. “It could be a lot of things.
Without a lab, I can’t really tell you which one. It’s probably pneumonia,
complicated by general malnutrition. I’m going to give you a list of medicines
that I need you to go back to the store and find for me.”

His eyes widened, then narrowed.
“I’m not leaving you alone with her.”

“
My way out
of here is back at that store. I’m unarmed. I’m not exactly going to take a
sick little girl hostage, now, am I?” I shook my head, expression disgusted.
“She shouldn’t be left alone. Either you trust me here, or you trust that I’ll
come back.”

“
I’ll lock
the office door behind me.”

“
You do
that.”

Still he hesitated, eyes flicking
from me to Miranda and back again.

I sighed, and played the ultimate
trump card: “I don’t know how long she has.”

His expression hardened.

“
I’ll be
right back.”

****

Things I don’t need to explain:
what it was like to step outside for the first time after I got better and the
rest of the world didn’t. I’m pretty sure everyone that’s still alive has their
own version of
that
story, and they don’t need to be repeated. I woke
up, I felt better, I went outside, I threw up six times, I went a little crazy,
and I got over it. There wasn’t time to have a nervous breakdown. Maybe if I’d
been a doctor, but I wasn’t a doctor; I never wanted to be a doctor. I’m a
veterinarian, and my patients still needed me.

Four days isn’t long enough for most
animals to turn vicious; that made my job a lot easier. It took eighteen hours
to canvas the town, letting cats out of houses, assessing dogs and livestock
and making my decisions as impartially as I could. Domestic cattle aren’t made
to live without somebody to take care of them. They need milking, or their
udders will split open and they’ll die of infection. Sheep are worse. Goats are
fine on their own; so are horses, most poultry, and pigs. Cats will go feral.
Dogs will go mean. If it could be released, I either released it or fed it and
promised to be back in a little while. If it couldn’t be released…

Ending future suffering is one
luxury veterinarians have that human doctors don’t. I spent a lot of that first
day crying, but I guarantee you that while the people of Pumpkin Junction died
just as badly as the rest of the world, our animals died better than they did
anywhere else.

I held back some of the stock. A few
milking goats, some horses I knew were gentle and well-mannered, several of the
larger, healthier, friendlier dogs. I was already planning, you see. Figuring
out what I’d need, and what
we’d
need when I finished the trip. Can’t
build a society without animals, and there’s no point in re-domesticating when
we have the potential to save the work we’ve already done. Some of it, anyway.

God, I hope she’s there.

****

Miranda turned wide, dark eyes on
me after her adoptive father was gone, and asked, “Am I going to get better?”

“
That’s what
medicine is for, isn’t it?” I opened my bag, pulling out a needle and a small,
unlabeled bottle. I never labeled that particular bottle. They taught us that
in veterinary school. Even when they were the ones who’d decided that dear old
Kitty was ready for that great scratching post in the sky, people didn’t want
to see the label.

They also taught us to be natural
about it. To fill the syringe like it was any other vaccination. “Miranda’s a
pretty name,” I said. “I like it.”

“
So do I,”
she said, watching me with gravity beyond her years. “Are you going to give me
a shot?”

“
Mm-hmm.
Just a little one, to help you sleep.” I glanced up, offering her a warm smile.
“I have a daughter just about your age. Her name is Linda.”

“
You do?”
Her expression turned carefully neutral, like she was about to walk into a
minefield. “Is she…did she…”

“
She’s just
fine. She’s waiting for me in a place called Grants Pass. It’s up in Oregon. I’m
on my way there now.” Linda would be there. Linda had to be there. She was the
one who had told me to go there in the first place. Eight years old, smart as a
whip, and gullible enough to believe everything she ever read. Gullible enough
to believe the pandemic was coming, for one thing, and that it would probably
come in our lifetime. “When they go crazy, Mom, you have to promise to come to
Oregon,” she said, with those big blue eyes just as wide and serious as they
could go. Like my agreeing to come to Grants Pass was a matter of life or
death. So I agreed. What else can you do? I only got her every other weekend,
and if she wanted me to promise to take a post-apocalyptic road trip, I’d
promise.

Linda had to be there. What I’d seen
in Pumpkin Junction on the day I went a little crazy was just the shock
talking. I didn’t see it again. And if part of me insisted that I only didn’t
see it because I didn’t go back there, who cares? There were no animals in that
shitty little apartment. There was nothing there to save.

Miranda looked unsure. “How come she
isn’t traveling with you?”

“
Well, see,
Linda’s daddy and I didn’t think it was a good idea for us to live together
anymore. So Linda was with her daddy when everybody got sick, and she had to
start without me. I’ll catch up to her sooner or later.” I tapped the syringe,
easing out the bubbles. “She promised to meet me there, and she takes her
promises seriously.”

Linda takes everything seriously,
and has since she was born. So we sat down with the maps of the state, and we
worked out four routes that we could take to get to Oregon. The Route Where
They Closed the Roads. The Route Where Quarantine Kept the Roads Open. The
Route Where There’s Been An Earthquake and We Have To Go Around. The Route
Where Too Many People Survived and We Need to Avoid Them. Even after the
earthquake that took out most of the Los Angeles metro area, the bulk of
California was mostly somewhere between routes one and two. Linda wouldn’t have
had any problems if she avoided the coast roads and skirted the area around Red
Bluff.