Savage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel (3 page)

The bullet wound peered up at Anna like a malevolent
black eye.  She rolled the man onto his side and saw that the round had
not exited through his back.  Most likely it was still inside him. 
“Rene, she shouted.  I need you to sterilize some tongs and a tea spoon.”

Rene did not reply, but she knew he would have heard
her and that he would comply.  Rene heard very well, but he spoke very
little.  His words were precious to him.

She had met the Nigerian with another group of
survivors back when the infection first hit.  At the time, she’d been a
vet at an amusement park zoo.  Rene’s group eventually joined up with the
survivors already living at the park, and for a while they had co-existed. 
Suspicions were high, however, and egos prevailed.  The fact that Rene had
been part of a group of prison inmates did not help the tension.
 Eventually the group dissolved and the safety of the amusement park had
been ruined.  Rene was one of the good guys, one of the people who’d stood
by Anna when things had turned ugly.  He was also the only one left alive
from that original group which Anna had left the park with.  She often
missed the people who hadn’t made it. 
Especially Mike.

When Anna and Rene fled the amusement park in a
beat-up truck, there had been two others with them: Mike, a man she had almost
loved; and Eve, a feisty young girl who’d fallen apart after her friend, Nick,
died.  The first few months on the road had been tough on them all, and by
the time they made it to the south coast where they hoped to find a boat, only
Rene and Anna remained.  They would probably have died, too, if they
hadn’t eventually fallen across the Great Southern Pier.  That mutual
journey of survival had bonded them as family.  She trusted him
completely. 

Several minutes later, Rene approached with the items
Anna had requested.  He handed her a latex glove full of saline and
various kitchen implements, which had been sterilized, as well as her sewing
needle.  The patient moaned again, louder.  He was either becoming
more lucid, or the pain was increasing.  Either was a good sign. 
Pain meant a person was alive.  Lucidity meant a person was alive. 
Every moan was the man fighting to hold onto his life.

“Hello, my name is Anna.  I’m going to try and
help you.  Can you tell me how long ago you were shot?”

The man mumbled but made no sense.

Anna sighed.  She took the latex glove and
pierced the bottom with a sharp knife that Rene had brought her.  A
trickle of saline leaked out of the slit and Anna angled it above the man’s
injury.  She squeezed the glove and began to irrigate the wound with the
thin jet of liquid coming through the slit, clearing away the old blood and
stemming any fresh.  Once the wound was clear, she grabbed a bottle of
hand sanitizer.  “This might burn,” she told the patient, who just moaned
at her weakly. 

Anna removed the pump handle from the sanitizer and
upended it, allowing a thick tide of alcohol to pour onto the open wound. 
The patient hissed.  His eyes fluttered.

 “Stay with me,” Anna said firmly.  “The
pain is good.  The pain is
me
helping you.”

“Y…yes.”

“Good, good.  I’m glad that you understand
me.  I am just cleaning your wound.  You don’t want to get an
infection.”

“N…no.”

Anna made sure she covered the entire wound with the
sanitizer.  The liquid quickly effervesced but enough coated the wound to
burn away any bacteria.  At least she hoped so. 
A shitload of
iodine would have been better. 
Without being asked, Rene handed Anna
the tongs and teaspoon.  She swallowed a lump in her throat.  Once,
she’d been a vet, but there was very little cause to trust her abilities after
them being so long dormant. 
Plus, I’ve never had to remove a bullet
from a man’s stomach before. 

Anna shoved the sterilized tongs into the wound and
pried the edges open.  The patient screamed.  Rene immediately held
the man by the shoulders.  Anna made sure the tongs were steady and then
took a firm grip of the teaspoon.  Holding her breath she dug the spoon
deep into the wound.  She knew she was causing agony and likely doing even
more damage, but if she didn’t get the bullet fragment out, the patient would
have no chance at all.  Infection would take him within the night if the
bleeding didn’t kill him first.

As she dug about in the wound, the black shard of
blood-caked metal exposed itself.  It was buried deep within the tissue,
like a stone trodden into wet mud a hundred times over.  Anna worked the
edge of the spoon around its edges, trying to get a purchase on it.  The
patient struggled against Rene’s restraining hands, but Rene leant close to him
and began to hum.  Anna didn’t recognise the tune, but it was delicate and
soothing.  After a few moments the patient began to struggle less. 
Rene had learned
First Aid
in prison, she knew, but his soothing way
with people was not down to any training.

Anna dug the spoon beneath one side of the bullet
fragment and felt it shift within its fleshy womb.  The patient gritted
his teeth as she began to scrape the fragment upwards, away from the
wound.  Luckily the bullet had not buried itself in bone or passed through
any organs.  Likely, the man had been shot at a distance, the velocity of
the bullet all but spent. 
Someone still wanted him dead, though.

Anna released a pent-up breath as she slid the bullet
fragment clear.  A small shard still remained in the wound, but
fortunately it came away much easier than the larger fragment had.  From
what Anna could see, the wound was clear and no arteries had been nicked. 
It was time to close the patient up.  She took her sterilized needle and
tried to thread it with shaking hands. 
Jesus, Anna.  You’ve done
this a thousand times.  Calm down.

She took some deep breaths and counted to ten.
 When she tried to thread the needle again, her hands were steady as
stone.  She got the fishing line attached to the needle and used her
sharpened scissors to cut away the excess.  Then she got to work, plunging
the needle into the swollen red flesh surrounding the wound.  The patient
let out a pained squeal, but Rene’s humming soon calmed him down again.

She dragged the fishing line through a layer of muscle
and sutured it to the other side, then dove back the other way.  Back and
forth with the needle she went, poking through flesh and threading, then poking
through flesh again on the opposite side:
zig-zag
,
zig-zag
.

Slowly the wound drew closed, puckering up like a
cod’s mouth.  With the final stitch Anna pulled tightly and closed the
wound up as neatly as she could.  She tied off the end of the thread and
cut above the knot.  She doused the wound with more sanitizer. 
It’s
done.  I did it.

The last thing she did was to squeeze a thin line of
superglue along the split ridge of the wound, adding a seal against invading
bacteria.  Hopefully its application wouldn’t do more harm than good.

She stepped away from the patient and stumbled over to
one of the diner’s chairs.   Her feet were unsteady and her stomach
was roiling.  She could hardly believe how nervous she’d been doing
something that had once been her profession. 
Never had to stitch up a
man before, though. 
“Can you bandage him up for me, please, Rene?”
she asked.

Rene nodded and unfurled a bandage from the kitbag.

Garfield entered the diner with Alistair right behind
him.  Both men often caused Anna stress and she wasn’t particularly
pleased to see either of them in the state she was in.  Garfield was a
constant worrier, with little to no humour, and Alistair had too much humour,
but it was only he who found himself funny.

“Is he going to die?” asked Garfield.

“Probably.”

Alistair shook his head.  His flabby jowls
wobbled as he did so.  “Don’t understand why Garfield even brought him
back.  Food would have been better.  Better a box full of
Kit Kats
than another mouth to feed.”

“I almost didn’t bring him back,” said Garfield, “but
what kind of a man would I have been then?”

“A smart one.”

Anna sighed and closed her eyes.  When she opened
them again, both men stood looking at her.  “Garfield was right to bring
the man back,” she told them both.  “
There’s
not
enough of us left to start leaving each other to die.  We have an
obligation to help each other.  More heads the better.”

“More tummies to feed more like,” said Alistair.

“We have the sea,” said Anna.  “At the very least
we have that.  We won’t go hungry.” 
You least of all,
she
thought as she eyed Alistair’s ample gut.

Garfield cleared his throat.  “Did you find
anything out about the man?  He had
these
with him.”

Anna looked down at what Garfield was carrying. 
“Are those…crutches?”

“They were lying next to where I found him.  I
don’t know if they’re his or not.”

“I don’t know either,” said Anna.  “He hasn’t
spoken.”

“Hopefully he’ll get a chance to soon.  I’d like
to know who shot him and whether or not they’re heading our way.”

Alistair bristled.  “I’d like to know that,
too.  There’s a lot we could get done with some guns.”

Rene chose this as one of the rare occasions he spoke
up.  His Nigerian accent was thick, despite having left his homeland a decade-and-a-half
ago.  “There is nothing to be achieved by guns,” he said, “except fear and
suffering to those still living.  Guns are ineffective against the
dead.  Guns are loud and bring attention.  Their very nature is to
threaten and kill other men and women.  Of all the things lost to us, guns
are not something for which I mourn.”

Alistair grinned, wide and jowly.  “I’ll be
damned; it speaks.  Haven’t heard you spout your nonsense for a long
while, Rene.  This time you’re quite right, though.  Guns are indeed
for threatening and killing people – they would give us the power to
intimidate, the power to protect ourselves, the power to-”

“Take from others,” said Anna.  “Civilisation
didn’t do too well with that approach first time around, so let’s try something
a little more original than killing people for their cereal.”

Alistair huffed.  The way the man looked at her
sometimes, made her mad.  It was if he was always thinking,
silly
woman.
  “I think civilisation did pretty damn well last time,” he said. 
“Every advance in human history came off the back of war.  We all know
that there are other groups out there, scattered about – we’ve seen some
of them, traded with others.  I would rather us have the guns than them.”

It was true that on occasion Garfield came across a
wasteland survivor or two.  Sometimes he brought them back, such as in
Kirk’s case, but other times the strangers were dangerous and had to be
frightened away.  Guns could potentially have a use, but she wasn’t sure
it was a path worth taking.  One group having guns just led to another
group getting bigger guns.  It was a race nobody won in the end. 
“We’re fine,” said Anna.  “I trust that we can get by on our charm and
wits alone.  I’ve seen enough bloodshed without making our own contribution.”

Garfield stared down at the floor as he spoke. 
The man rarely held eye contact.  “I’m sorry, Anna, but I agree with
Alistair.”

Anna raised an eyebrow.  “That surprises
me.  It’s not often that you two see eye to eye.”

“On this we do.  Whether we like guns or not…they
matter.  He who has them has power over those who don’t.  I just
don’t want to be in a position where we have a gun to our heads and aren’t able
to respond.”

Anna chewed at one of her nails before saying, “Well,
regardless of whatever each of us thinks, we have no guns and no inclination of
where to find them, so why are we even discussing this?”

“Actually,” said Garfield.  “I think I might know
where we can find some.  Will you hear me out?”

Anna sighed.  Garfield would do whatever he
wanted to – he was bull-headed that way – so why he felt the need
to seek her council, she didn’t know.  It seemed to be more out of manners
than anything else.

“I need to take the foraging group further,” he
explained.  “There’s nothing left around here anymore.  We’ve
scavenged it all.”

Anna laced her fingers together across her lap. 
I
knew it would come to this eventually.  We’ve had it too easy for too
long. 

Things had been safe and productive for the last
several months at the pier.  The village and surrounding countryside had
been bountiful and easy to explore.  They had raided supermarkets, petrol
stations, even farms.  Along with the plentiful fish they caught, they had
more than enough supplies to keep them going for a while.  Alistair even
still had the luxury of being fat.  But Anna knew they would eventually
strip the carcass clean and have to search for pastures new.  “Okay,
that’s your call,” she told Garfield, “but I’m getting that there’s more you
want to say.”

Garfield nodded.  “There’s an Army base on
Salisbury Plain.  There might be troops there.  If not then we might
have access to a lot of abandoned weaponry.”