Final Chaos

22

Jessica was still reeling from the near-death experience minutes ago. She’d almost been in a shootout with the three brothers who’d come into the house.

But there wasn’t any time to deal with the experience.

Aly lay on the driveway, blood flowing out of her and staining the gravel around her.

Jim, remarkably, was keeping it together. He wasn’t having a breakdown or becoming useless, the way most romantic partners probably would in a similar situation.

They’d all been trained, as a society, to call 911 in emergencies. They’d been trained to look to the authorities for help. All you had to do was contact the right person, and then the situation was out of your hands.

Sure, there were those few who knew something of CPR, of first-responder situations. But that wasn’t the norm.

Now there was no 911. No telephone. No one to call.

Jessica didn’t know the first thing about first aid.

The only thing she knew, merely by instinct, was to stop the bleeding.

Jessica had grabbed as many of their medical supplies she could and brought them back out to the driveway.

“Keep a good lookout, Rob,” said Jim. “Head down to the end of the driveway. See if they’re coming back. Take the rifle.”

Rob was off, his heavy tread crunching on the gravel.

“You find the wound?” said Jessica, kneeling down next to Jim, and unpacking some of the supplies she thought might help stop the bleeding.

She’d never done anything more to a wound than apply a bandage. The closest experience she had was patching up puncture bicycle tubes. And she knew that wasn’t really even in the same ballpark.

“Yeah. Right here.”

He lifted Aly’s shirt and showed her what looked like a small wound in her abdomen.

“It looks small.”

“It wasn’t a large bullet, but these smaller wounds can be just as deadly.”

“Did the bullet exit?”

“Yeah. It’s there on the ground. That’s good.”

“That’s good?”

“Yeah,” said Jim. “The worst injuries come from when the bullet stays inside the body, rattling around in there and causing damage to the internal organs. She’s bleeding a lot. I want to get this done out here before moving her.”

Jim was working rapidly, unrolling a large roll of bandage material and grabbing a bottle of alcohol.

“What can I do?”

“Hold her down.”

Aly wasn’t moving. Her eyes were completely closed.

But she was still breathing.

Rob stood watch, Jessica held onto Aly, and Jim worked rapidly, getting a rudimentary bandage onto the wound.

When he was done, the three of them carried Aly gently into the house and laid her down on the large bed in the master bedroom.

Jim sat next to her on the bed, and used his hand to apply pressure.

“Don’t blame yourself, Jim,” said Jessica, standing nearby in the small, cramped room.

“I’m the one who made the decision,” said Jim. “And now Aly has to live with the consequences.”

The minutes passed slowly, and they gradually became hours.

Jim didn’t leave her side. But he couldn’t keep up the pressure himself, so with Jessica’s help, he devised a way to wrap one of the long cloth strips completely around her, tightly enough that pressure would stay constant on both the wounds.

Aly opened her eyes once or twice, but only for brief moments in which she looked confused. She closed them again rapidly.

Her breathing remained faint and ragged.

“What do we do now?” said Jessica.

“Sew up the wound,” said Jim. “But you’re going to have to do it. My hands are shaking too much. I can’t believe I did this to her.”

“I’ve never done anything like that, though,” said Jessica.

“What did you do for work?”

“Bike mechanic.”

“That’s perfect. You’ve already got the delicate touch.”

“It’s not the same.”

Rob was outside, keeping guard.

Neither Jim nor Jessica spoke a word, and the house was deadly silent, except for Aly’s breathing.

Jim had all the supplies, a delicate yet strong thread for stitching the wound, antiseptic ointment to apply, and even gloves to work with.

“We’ve got to do everything we can do avoid an infection,” said Jim, disappearing from the room for a moment and repairing with a bottle of Aly’s uncle’s vodka. “This’ll work better than water.”

Looking back on it later, Jessica didn’t know how she did it. She worked diligently, with Jim, whose hands shook almost violently, handing her the supplies.

They sterilized everything and worked carefully to keep the surrounding environment as clean as they possibly could.

Aly opened her eyes the first time the needle pierced her flesh, and she screamed out.

Jim found a wooden spoon in the kitchen for her to bite down on, and gave her a couple drinks of the vodka for the pain. He offered her one of the bottles of her mother’s prescription opiates, but she shook her head wordlessly, and he nodded in agreement. It was her decision, after all.

Jessica sewed Aly’s wound up as if she was working on sewing up a torn pillow that had stuffing coming out of it. She tried to keep the stitches close together, since she figured the thread she was using wasn’t going to be as strong what was used in typical hospital sutures. They had no other options, so she had to just do the best she could.

It seemed to take forever. Aly’s groans of pain, through her spoon clenching teeth, didn’t make it seem any shorter. Jessica was painfully aware of how much pain she was causing her.

But it had to be done.

When it was all over, Jessica nodded at Jim, and they both retreated into the living room to discuss in hushed voices the prognosis.

“You think she’s going to be OK?” said Jim.

Jessica nodded. “She lost a lot of blood. But the bleeding seems to have stopped for the most part.”

Jim put his hands to his face and covered his eyes, letting out a painful groan. “It’s my fault,” he said.

Since they’d met a week ago, he’d always seemed like a strong willed person, like a guy who knew what had to be done and didn’t hesitate to do it.

But in her pre-EMP life, Jessica had seen other strong men fall prey to self doubt and guilt. She knew that something like that could rip him apart and leave him doubting everything he did.

And this new post-EMP world wasn’t a place for people like that.

So she didn’t offer words of comfort. She didn’t put her hand on his back and tell him that everything was going to be OK.

“Jim,” she said, in a strong, clear voice, not carrying if Aly heard her from the next room. “You’ve got to pull yourself together. What happened happened. I don’t care if it was your fault or not. But if you start going down this rabbit hole, you’re never going to come out. And we need you. If you get absorbed in this, you’re not going to be effective here. And that means you’ll be putting the life of me, your wife, and your friend all in danger.”

Jim stared at her with an unreadable expression.

“You’re the one who convinced me this was a serious situation,” said Jessica. “And if you hadn’t hit me with your car and then taken me in, who knows what would have happened to me. So you don’t owe me anything, the way I see it. But you do owe your friend and your wife something…”

Finally, Jim spoke, cutting her off mid-sentence. Which was good because she was running out of the right words to say.

“Got it,” he said, leaving his words simple. “You’re right. I’ll go check on Aly, and then we’ll meet in the living room to discuss a new strategy.”

And that was that.

With Aly’s groans of pain coming sporadically from the bedroom, Rob, Jessica, and Jim sat in the living room while Jim laid out the new watch shift.

It was a rough schedule. Two people on duty at all times. Fully armed. Not just firearms, but knives as well. One of the two would have the rifle as well.

The new schedule meant less rest for all of them. Four hour shifts of sleep, rotating around the clock.

But it was necessary.

Who knew what the Carpenters were planning. But for now, at least, it seemed not a question of when they would return, but when.

After all, the way Jim and the rest of them saw it, Jim had given the Carpenters a chance for an honorable truce. And they’d turned around and shot his wife. A cowardly move. And one that signaled their ongoing intentions as clear as day.

There wasn’t any time to waste.

Rob and Jessica insisted that Jim take the first rest shift. He eventually agreed, but instead of sleeping he spent the entire time with waiting by his wife’s side.

With the rifle, Rob patrolled the outskirts of the lake house, while Jessica stayed close by, keeping a watchful eye and cautious ear out for the Carpenter’s return.

Four hours later, it was Jessica’s turn to rest. But there wasn’t any rest to be had, since there were chores to be done. She had to feed Aly, for one thing, not to mention make sure they were consuming their food at the right rate. They had a little ration chart that Jim had drawn up, and it needed to be diligently kept up to date, or else they might burn through more of their food then they realized.

They were hoping to start fishing soon enough, to stretch out their supplies of packaged food, especially now that they’d already finished the perishables. But with the Carpenters as a very near and very real threat, spending hours at the lake dangling a fishing line didn’t seem like a good idea.

But life had to go on, despite the heightened security. Water had to be fetched and boiled, with the hopes that the gas tank wouldn’t run out on them any time soon.

The shifts of rest and watches began to blur together, and before Jessica knew it, a few days had gone by.

She was more exhausted than ever. Running on little sleep and few calories.

It was three days after the Carpenters had shot Aly that Jim came up to Jessica with a worried look on his face.

She was standing outside the house, her eyes scanning the surrounding trees, looking for anything suspicious. For any movement.

When Jessica glanced at Jim’s face, she saw his sunken and blurred, bloodshot eyes. But that was normal. She knew she looked the same. But there was something else in his face. His mouth was twitching at the corners.

“She’s worse,” said Jim. His voice was low and level. But crystal clear. There was no mistaking his meaning. “The wound isn’t healing.”

That wasn’t news. Jessica had seen it herself over the last few days. It hadn’t healed as it was supposed to.

But what Jim said next was news. “It’s infected,” he said.

“Infected? Are you sure?”

Jim nodded. “It’s red and inflamed. Parts of it are purple and swollen.”

Jessica thought for a moment before responding. “What are we going to do?”

“We don’t have any antibiotics,” said Jim.

Jessica nodded. It was one of the most useful medicines missing from their otherwise very complete stockpile.

“Couldn’t we give her something else? Some of the corticosteroid creams?”

“Those will just make the infection worse,” said Jim. “They’re not used for treating something like that.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“I thought we could wait it out,” said Jim. “I noticed it yesterday, but it’s worse today. The only thing to do is to get some antibiotics.”

“But how?”

“I’m going into town,” said Jim.

“It’s too dangerous,” said Jessica. “We have no idea what’s going on out there.”

That wasn’t entirely true. While there’d been no news from the outside world, they had seen more plumes of smoke rising over the trees.

Whatever was going on in the outside world, it wasn’t good.

“I’ve got to do it,” said Jim. “She’s not going to survive without antibiotics.”

Jessica knew Jim well enough at this point to know that he meant what he said. And there wasn’t any changing his mind.

“I’m going with you, then,” said Jessica. “Who knows what you’re going to find out there. You’ll need backup.”

Jim shook his head. “I can’t ask you to do that. Plus, I need you here. You and Rob need to protect Aly. The Carpenters are coming back. It’s just a question of when.”

“Probably when they get more desperate from starvation.”

“Exactly,” said Jim. “And desperation will make them all the more ruthless. Rob’s not going to be able to defend the place by himself.”

“When are you leaving?”

“In an hour. I’m already packed.”

“You’re taking the Subaru?”

“It’s going to be faster. But I need your help with something before I leave.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know if I have enough gas to get there and back. Especially if something happens and there’s a delay. So I need you to get that bike of yours ready for me to ride. I’ll bring it with me and ride it back with the antibiotics if something happens. Aly can’t wait long and I’ll need to get back as fast as I can.”

“Sure,” said Jessica. “You keep watch while I work. It shouldn’t take me long.”

Jessica went inside to grab some tools. The door to Aly’s bedroom was open, and Aly lay there on the bed. She didn’t look good at all. Her face had lost all its color, and she breathing slowly and shallowly.

“You doing OK, Aly?” said Jessica.

Aly didn’t answer. She just shook her head ever so slightly, and stared at Jessica with barely opened eyes full of pain.

Jim was right. If Aly didn’t get the antibiotics she needed, she wouldn’t make it. And even if she did get the medicine, there was still a chance she’d die.

Jessica tried to put all that out of her mind. And she set to work. It was the only sensible course of action, after all. The thing to do was just to keep going. To push on through it all.

Jessica didn’t have all her bike tools with her, but she did have a small multi-tool designed specifically for bike maintenance. It had the hex wrenches on it, as well as a couple other odds and ends.

She’d done enough roadside maintenance in her time to know how to improvise when the right tools weren’t available.

The bike wasn’t in terrible shape, but it wasn’t rideable right now.

One of the tubes was punctured. That was an easy enough fix, and it only took her a couple minutes. After all, she was a pro.

The chain had been knocked off the gears. This was normally an easy fix, but some of the links had been bent beyond repair. There was no way to get the chain back onto the gears.

The only solution, in the absence of a replacement chain, was to remove some of the links. Shortening the chain meant that Jim wouldn’t be able to change gears. He’d essentially have a single speed bike. Using sewing pins and a lot of swearing, Jessica got the links removed and got the chain reattached around the middle gears.

The bike’s frame was cracked near the bottom bracket. Normally that meant it wasn’t safe to ride. But there wasn’t any way to fix it. Jim would have to hope that the crack didn’t get worse.

Jessica raised the seat since Jim was taller than her, and took the bike outside to him.

“How long you think it’ll take you?”

“Dewittville is only two hours away by car. But who knows what the roads are like. And if I have to bike back, it’ll be even longer.”

From the end of the driveway, Rob came walking quickly. He’d been patrolling the wider area.

“We’ll take good care of her, Jim,” said Rob. “Just try to stay safe yourself.”

Jim nodded. His had an expression of grim determination on it as he lowered himself into the Subaru.

No more words were spoken as Jim cranked the engine and backed slowly down the gravel driveway.

“You think he’ll make it?” said Rob, as they watched the Subaru disappear behind the trees.

“Yeah,” said Jessica. “He’s got to. Now let’s talk about what we’re going to do if the Carpenters return while Jim’s gone.”