Outcasts (36 page)

PuckDaddy swung by during Lee’s stay. We visited with him in his brand new roving computer lab. Puck and Lee regarded each other with a friendly yet suspicious rivalry, curious and cautious at the same time.

“Had to update,” Puck explained his new ride, which could have been a spaceship. “This baby runs on electrical power primarily. Oil is getting harder to come by. But it has less range.”

Lee asked, “Who is your driver?”

“Same guys. Why? You looking for a job?”

Lee recoiled as if slapped. “Dude! What? No! No, I’m…I’m so busy saving the world, that…dude, no. Gotta catch a flight out of Fresno later today. I’m a globe trotter, baby.”

“You played Tetris for an hour on your phone last night, dummy. Not too busy.”

“BRO! No! You…no!” Lee dropped his phone on the ground and jumped on it. “You do not get to spy on me, you glorified computer nerd. Chase! Tell him! How about I pop your tires with the bad-ass classified weapons in my car?!”

Some parts of the world hadn’t changed after all.

I didn’t notice the reduction in hospital staff until mid-April. After watching nurses change Katie’s bandages, shift her to avoid bed sores, swap out catheter bags, feed her through a gastrostomy tub, and change her IV solutions, I managed most of it myself now. That was illegal, but they no longer objected. On April 17th, sixty-six days after her release, I realized I hadn’t seen a nurse in twelve hours. I stretched and went into the hall to investigate.

Empty. The adjoining rooms were vacant. The nurses’ desk was a wasteland. I didn’t find anyone until I left our wing and ventured into the hospital’s main patient care department.

“Consolidation,” a harried nurse explained. “I haven’t slept in days. We’re operating on a skeleton crew. Over half our staff is gone and we’re shipping out patients as fast as possible. We left Katie where she is for the moment because you’re giving such good care. Dr. Whitmer should come by soon.”

I returned to the room. Looked in the mirror for the first time in days. Maybe weeks. I was thinner. Hair longer. Badly in need of a shave. I’d been in such a routine, so caught up with Katie and her treatment, that I hadn’t noticed…anything. I read to her eight hours a day and we watched reruns and east coast baseball another eight, and then I slept. Ms. Lopez came and stayed several hours every few days. Dad visited once a week. That was the extent of our company. The media had long since realized how boring our situation was.

I plugged my new phone in to charge. Hadn’t glanced at it since…what day was it? Turned the television to CNN.

Los Angeles was being abandoned. And not just downtown. Huntington Park, Inglewood, Montebello, Glendale, and other surrounding areas were emptying. The circle of abandonment enlarged daily. Chosen and gangs of gunmen ran amok. No wonder all the nurses and physicians were leaving. Beverly Hills had begun evacuation and that was only four miles away.

Millions moved. A never-ending flow of humanity. Vehicles loaded with belongings got in line and slowly disappeared east. Highways backed for miles. Thousands of families walking, abandoning cars with no gas. It was one of the great migrations in human history, a massive undertaking lasting months.

Katie’s mother arrived later that day. I dashed to UCLA’s campus library for a fresh set of books. No librarian. No patrons. I browsed shelves entirely by myself.

Dr. Whitmer never returned. A nurse brought me a long email printout from him with instructions for care over the next thirty days. He had returned to Chicago to be with his extended family. I couldn’t blame him.

Katie’s body had begun a significant transformation. At night I heard her bones grinding. She sweated and cried out and I whispered to her and bathed her face and neck with a cold cloth. Her muscles flexed and twitched incessantly. She’d clearly grown an inch taller. Maybe two. She was no longer bald, now sporting a cute brown dome of thick fuzz. Her nails became harder to trim. The IV needle sometimes bent instead of penetrating her skin.

Five days later, at two in the afternoon, a man I’d never met staggered into the room. He adjusted his spectacles and his tie and said, “Okay, Mr…Mr. Outlaw. Katie Lopez is our final patient. We’re ready for transport to Las Vegas.”

“Who’re you?”

“I’m the hospital administrator.
Was
the hospital administrator, I suppose. We’re locking the doors permanently at five.”

“Katie and I are staying,” I said simply.

“They told me you’d say that. But I have an ambulance prepared.”

“Dr. Whitmer instructed me not to move her. We’re staying. Besides, I’ve provided one hundred percent of her care for six days now.”

“The evacuation is mandatory by police order.”

“The police have no authority here, Mr. Hospital Administrator. I appreciate your help. Really, I do. But we’re staying.”

He made me sign release forms. He took me to Katie’s secure medication cabinet. Then the large medical supply rooms. We examined the pharmacy and the cafeteria kitchen. Katie and I had a surplus of supplies; we could live here for years if necessary. But it wasn’t. I just needed thirty days.

He placed a set of keys in my hands. Wished me luck. The nurses hugged me. And then they were gone. A fortune of medical gear abandoned in dark rooms and dusty hallways.

“You and me, baby,” I told Katie. “Thirty more days. And you’ll wake as a goddess. Not that you weren’t one already.”

I stocked the adjacent rooms with cans of food from the kitchen. I raided all the drink machines and refrigerators for water bottles. Katie groaned and twisted and stared with vacant eyes.

Dad offered to come get us. Ms. Lopez insisted on it. Isaac arranged a helicopter. Samantha sent me texts in all caps. Lee informed me I was stupid. So did Puck. No, I told them. We’re safe. And happy. And Katie will wake up soon. We’ll find you.

The power shut off one morning in early May. I’d anticipated this. From local hardware stores I’d brought back three gas powered generators and stored them at the nurses station along with fifty gallons of gasoline siphoned from ambulances and the hospital’s emergency reserves. Our wing of the third floor had become a survivalist paradise.

I only needed to run one generator to power our small fridge, an electric stove, two fans, the television, and Katie’s IV machine. We didn’t need air conditioning; we had the southern Californian climate, a pleasant breeze, and open windows. I kept another generator running down the hall for a large freezer full of emergency supplies and the solution I used for mixing Katie’s liquid diet.

I read her Emily Dickinson’s entire collection. And then, because I was exhausted from all her emotions, Edgar Allen Poe’s. Our life was peaceful. Quiet. It would have been romantic if my date wasn’t asleep. I got lost in the routine of food prep, waste disposal, administering medicine, physical therapy, checking on supplies, and reading.

The news no longer interested me. I would help as soon as Katie woke and became mobile. America wasn’t lost, despite mounting casualties. In fact, our country was handling the turmoil with impressive resilience. The infrastructures held. The food supply never stopped. The electrical grid kept humming. The gas shortages were problematic but we’d been preparing against it for six months. Communities condensed and held ground against the terrors of the night. Volunteer militias provided additional security. The military skirmishes escalated in severity but took place away from civilian populaces.

That all changed when the White House ordered the first nuclear missile launched at the resistance in Arizona. The warhead was small; only fifty tons. But it signified a change for the worse.

I quit watching the news then. The incoming cable signal would probably give out soon anyway.

In mid-May, Samantha brought me a care package from Lee and Puck. Two new Outlaw costumes, vest and pants. Two satellite smart phones. And a powerful laptop.

“How’s she doing?” Samantha asked, placing her hand on Katie’s forehead. “Wow, she’s burning up.”

“Dr. Whitmer said the fever is typical. Not to worry unless it gets above a hundred and three.”

“She’s taller. Stronger.”

I grinned. “She’s going to be a handful.”

“Are you worried? What she’ll be like?”

“Because the Chemist’s other creations are often crazy?”

“Yeah. I mean, Hannah Walker vacillates between adoration and insanity. And Andy is…who knows. Maybe dead now. And all the Chosen hate you. Right? Want to rip your throat out. Because of his DNA, they perceive you as a threat.”

I shook my head and squeezed Katie’s hand. “Not Katie. I’ve been here the whole time. She’s heard my voice every day. I know she’ll be different. It’s going to be hard. But we’ll get through it.”

“Glad to hear it. She should be waking up soon?”

“Any day. Hopefully.”

“Good,” Samantha said with a sigh of relief. “Good. It’ll be nice to have you back.”

She left soon after.

We weren’t alone. I’d been hearing noises from the bottom floor for two days. Chosen or homeless drifters or whoever, I didn’t care as long as they left us in peace. Soon there was more activity in the surrounding neighborhood. Scavengers. Chosen. Former occupants. A fire two miles distant sent smoke coiling into the blue.

The intruders probably belonged to the Priest and his band of followers, now two hundred thousand strong. The Outlawyers. Somehow they’d established a working relationship with the Chosen and lived in symbiotic peace within Los Angeles.

I prepared an ambulance for departure, just in case.

One hundred and four days after Katie’s surgery, I woke earlier than usual. 8:30 in the morning. I’d fallen asleep in her hospital bed, as I often did. The sun sat low over the San Gabriel Mountains in the east. I extracted myself, stretched, yawned, and brushed my teeth in her sink.

Something was different today. After a hundred routine and mundane mornings, I noticed any change. Something
woke
me. I cast around the room and hallway. No intruders. Whatever it was, I detected no immediate danger.

Katie’s breathing had altered. Shallow. Rapid. She stirred restlessly. That began two days ago. I took it as a good sign. But something else…

I walked to the open window.

Three stories below, in the parking lot, over a hundred Chosen watched me. Some sat criss-cross on the blacktop. Some rested on haunches. Some stood. Black, White, Asian, Latino, skinny, strong, well-fed, emaciated, men and women, all of them staring directly at our window. Wide eyes. Curious. Rapt. Like expectant pilgrims at the foot of their paragon. Subjects before their king.

No weapons. Simply waiting. I examined them for five minutes, predicting trouble. Looking for a leader. For a cause. For a clue. They inspected me in return. Patiently. Peacefully.

I waved. No response. No sounds of any kind. Complete silence. No cars, no airplanes, no birds, no barking dogs. Just kids my age staring as if spellbound. “Kinda creepy,” I yawned and turned from the view.

And nearly fell. Katie!

Katie was sitting up in bed, blinking against sunlight with big brown eyes. No, they were hazel in this light. She shifted her shoulders awkwardly, stiffly. She glanced at the needle in her arm. At the bed. At the room.

At me.

The butterfly had awoken from her chrysalis.

My beautiful Katie had come back.

Dear reader,

Thus ends the Outlaw series. I hope you enjoyed it.

The story of Chase and Katie, however, is not concluded.

If you’d like to stop reading about them, now is a perfect time. The Chemist has been defeated. Katie is saved. Good will prevail. All is perfect. Close the book and be at peace. They can live happily ever after within the hallowed halls of your memory.

But if you’d like to know what happens next, read the following few pages.

You’ve been warned.

My skull had fractured upon impact; fortunately I’d landed on top of the Father. But that didn’t prevent me from rupturing my spleen, puncturing a lung, breaking all my ribs, both femurs and my left humerus. (Plus my fingers were already broken) Despite the cushion of the Father’s body, I’d have splattered all over Figueroa if I hadn’t been Chosen, or Infected as the Outlaw referred to us.

Nuts found me and brought me home that night. The surgeons set my bones, patched me up, and replaced all the lost blood. They used what they had. The Father’s blood. I have NO idea what that means for me long term.

The Father was dead. But I didn’t experience the relief I’d anticipated. No one did. No one danced in the streets. No celebrations. No new rapturous freedom. The Twice Chosen freaks lost all ability to function when the news broke. Nuts and I sat in my room (me in a wheel chair) and watched them rampage. The building across from us burnt on three different levels. Why do we destroy stuff when we’re angry or scared?

“Idiots be wrecking the plumbing next,” Nuts sniffed, arms crossed, brows furrowed. “Took me weeks to set up.”

I winced against my constant headache. “I read somewhere that adolescent elephants become destructive and break everything they see until a mature elephant appears and sets them straight.”

Nuts said, “That’s why I saved you.”

“It’s not me, Nuts,” I sighed and grunted at the stitch in my lung. “It’s never been.”

“God help us all if it’s Walter.” He stood and rolled me away from our view. “Come on, Kid. You’ve been putting this off too long.”

“Nuts,” I groaned. “I don’t know what to do about the women. I can’t help.”

“You’re their
only
help.”

He wheeled me to the elevator. The hallway appeared spooky in lantern light. We boarded, he spoke into his radio, and we descended. Descended past the lobby level into restricted areas.