Apocalypse Atlanta (44 page)

“He gonna make it?”

Vivian twisted her hands a little, looking unhappy.  “Shit, I don’t know.  I ain’t no doctor and I ain’t even no nurse.”

“You work in a doctor’s office don’t you?” Shooter asked.

“Yeah, but I mostly do paperwork and stuff on the computer.  Sometimes I take vitals and histories, maybe help wrap a bandage or something, but nothing more than that.  I ain’t no nurse.” she repeated.

“You’re the closest thing we’ve got.” Bobo said in a surprisingly gentle voice.  “I know a bit of first aid, but just basic stuff, and it been a long time since I done anything with it.”

Vivian twisted her hands again.  “Well, near as I can tell, the bullet still in his arm.  There a lump, next to the bone, right where the wound is.  He says it hurts something fierce when you poke at it, and that’s through the pain killers I gave him.”

“Its gotta come out.” Bobo said quietly.

“Yeah, but I don’t know how to get it out.”  Vivian looked around.  Her face made it clear she really wanted someone else to volunteer to handle the problem of Little Chief’s wound.

“Hang on, how he get shot?” Darryl asked, still trying to puzzle that one out.  He hadn’t seen it, but when he’d gotten up to the front of the convoy . . . he couldn’t remember anyone being anywhere that seemed likely for them to have been able to accidentally shoot a Dog.

“I don’t know.” Vivian said.

“Who was up there with him?” EZ asked.

Darryl’s eyes flicked to Bobo, but the man seemed to be thinking.  It was Mad who spoke up.  “Chief was in the truck.  Bobo was outside, next to the door, shooting at the zombies.  I was back near the bumper.  I saw Bobo move forward as the last zombie went down.  That when Chief yelled.”

“So what you saying?”

Mad shrugged.  “I ain’t saying nothing.  That what I saw, that it.”

“Did one of us shoot him by accident?” Darryl asked slowly.  He looked around, trying cover the fact that he was mostly watching Bobo and Big Chief, but neither of them seemed to mind when his eyes met theirs.  Better, he hoped, neither looked nervous or shifty.  But if they weren’t the shooters, then who?

Bobo sighed.  “Look there was other people in that parking lot, and not all of them was all that happy with us.  I didn’t see no one take a shot, but that don’t mean they didn’t take one anyway.”

“If that what happened, then it make at least a little more sense.” Big Chief said a little sourly.  “Maybe they was shooting for you.”

Mad shrugged.  “Maybe.  If someone was trying for Bobo, they maybe could’ve hit Little Chief when he moved.”

“It don’t matter.” Bobo said with a note of finality in his voice.  “Anyone feel like volunteering to pull that bullet out of Little Chief?”

People glanced around, eyes flickering nervously.  It was clear no one wanted to volunteer.  Darryl swallowed, suddenly embarrassed.  Little Chief was one of his brothers, a fellow Dog, and needed help.  He was starting to try and marshal his nerve to speak when another voice broke the silence.

“Fuck, I’ll do it.”

Eyes went to Jody, who was standing near the door.  She looked defiantly back at the faces studying her.  “He need our help or he gonna get sicker.”

“Maybe we can find a doctor?” Burnout suggested, but he sounded reluctant to even suggest it.

Bobo shrugged.  “News say all the hospitals and stuff are either overrun or evacuated or something.  Unless you know where some medic live out here, and can convince them to come back with you, I think we on our own.”

“Fuck.” Low said, scowling.

“Yeah, fuck.” Bobo shrugged again.  “Big Chief, go look in your toolbox and bring Jody some pliers.  Needle nose be the best.”  Big Chief nodded and got up to leave.

Bobo looked at Jody.  “Scrub them pliers off real good, then boil them in a pot of water for ten minutes, then do it again to be sure.”

“Yeah, I know that much.” Jody nodded.  “I can’t sew him up though.”

Bobo hesitated, glancing around briefly, then shrugged a third time.  “It just a hole, right?  Not a big cut or anything?”

“Just a hole.” Vivian confirmed.  “But it deep.”

“If he ain’t die yet, and if he don’t catch no infection or something, I guess he won’t need no stitches.  He can live with a scar, it better than dying pretty.”

Darryl nodded along with a lot of others, but he was secretly hoping it was actually true rather than just a case of collective hope.  All he knew about first aid was you were supposed to try to stop the bleeding.

“I bet it gonna hurt like hell when I try to find that bullet.” Jody said.

“Probably.” Bobo nodded.  “DJ.”

“Yo?” Darryl asked, straightening a little.

“You and Tank go with Jody and hold Little Chief down while she pulling that bullet out of him.  He start to moving and thrashing around while she in there with them pliers and it could fuck him up worse.”

“I–sure.” Darryl said, changing his mind just as he started to speak.  He could do that much, at least.  It was a way to help.

“Okay.  Now, before you go get busy on that, how we fixed for food?”

Jody’s expression turned thoughtful.  “I ain’t got no written inventory or calculations or anything, but we ought to be okay for a few weeks at least.  Probably longer if people ain’t gonna bitch about a lack of variety.  Tomorrow we’ll get it sorted and stacked up properly so we can see what we got, around all the cooking and stuff.  There room in the basement for more though, and it help a lot if someone go and get some more coolers and ice packs.”

Bobo looked around the room, then brought his eyes back to her and nodded.  “Okay.  Here what I want to do.  Tomorrow we gonna be busy working around here, so we ought to grab anything we can before then.  So I gonna take the two flatbeds and twenty Dogz back over to that Home Depot for another load.”

“Shit, ain’t we got enough building stuff?” Fish asked, looking a little annoyed.

Bobo frowned.  “Maybe, but like I said, now’s the time to make sure.  One more load.  While that happening, Big Chief gonna go back out with another twenty people.  There a bunch of gas stations out along 78 they can hit.”

“That just junk food.” Jody pointed out.

“Some of it.” Bobo said.  “Some of it a little more substantial, but it better than nothing, and they ought not need no big ass group of people to handle it.  Plus it ought to be quick as hell for them to clean them stations out.”

“What about the rest of us?” Darryl asked.  He’d noted Bobo had allocated less than half the available hands, even if the kids were excluded.

“They gonna guard the fort here.” Bobo said grimly.  “Two shifts.  One from now until about five, and the other from five until about eight.  I want to start working then, and there’ll be a lot of folks outside keeping an eye on how things are.”

“How many?” Darryl asked, glancing back in the corner where Needles and Joker were still smoking the joint.  It occurred to him it would probably be a good idea to have enough people on each guard shift to prevent any fucking off.  Or, more likely, to cover for when some fucking off happened.

“Four or five.” Bobo said after a moment.  “That ought to be enough, and if it ain’t when they start shooting up a storm that’ll get the rest of us up.”

“Yeah.” Darryl nodded in agreement.  He looked up as Big Chief came back in with three pairs of pliers in his hands.

“Good.” Jody said, taking all of them from him and walking out of the room.

“So what we doing?” Big Chief asked as she left.  Bobo grinned, and Big Chief grimaced.  “Oh fuck.”

* * * * *

Peter blinked several times as Dorne’s team, on point, led the way north.  The tired survivors were moving north on Courtland, with an emphasis on tired.  Peter’s eyes were burning with fatigue, almost as badly as his body was.  He’d been up over twenty hours now, most of them on his feet and the last six literally running for his life.  Well, there was a good bit of power walking for his life mixed in there, zombies were slow, but the principle held.

He was fucking tired.  They all were.

“What about the bus?” Dorne asked, stopping and turning to call back as quietly as he could.  Peter blinked again, then forced his eyes to focus properly as he looked where the soldier was pointing.  They were just north of Baker Street, about a block back from where they’d left the latest concentration of zombies behind.  Peter figured without even turning to look the hungry fuckers had probably merged at the intersection to the south and were starting to come after them.

Courtland had an exit down to the Connector that merged in just ahead of the Baker/Courtland intersection.  Dorne was pointing to the west, down where the exit peeled off from the Interstate and started curving up to the Downtown streets.  About fifty, maybe sixty, yards after the exit diverged from the Connector he saw a Marta bus skewed across the two lanes.

“What about it?” Peter asked.

“Maybe it’s running.”

Peter shook his head, and took several moments to make sure his voice was calm when he spoke.  Tired, definitely, but calm.  Yelling and snapping and throwing anger at people was not needed right now.  “If it’s not, we’re risking getting boxed in.”

“What?”

Peter hooked a thumb over his shoulder.  “The ones behind us would follow down there, unless you want to try and detour off several blocks, try to lose them, pray for no others to pick up on us, then circle back here just to go down and check on one bus.”
“Maybe the Connector isn’t as full of zombies as it was earlier.” Dorne said, but Peter heard the wish in the response.

“You willing to bet your life on that?”

“Fuck.”

“Right.” Peter nodded.  Dorne turned his back and started north again.  Peter rolled his head around once in each direction, then worked his shoulders in sequence.  Left, then right.  Squeeze the muscles, then relax.  Then he worked each arm, up, around, down, around again; then forward, and finally back.  The stretching boosted his circulation a little, and the rush of blood flow helped drive away just a touch of the fatigue.  It wasn’t enough.

Peter finally did look behind himself.  Sure enough, the horde from Baker street had merged and was trailing after them.  The unit was moving just fast enough to add to its lead, but hours of walking and running had sapped away any chance of the brisk walking that had enabled them to reliably pull away from previous zombie packs.

They were down to only seventeen now, and one of those, Jenkins, was able to walk only with someone supporting him.  His left leg had caught a bullet back at the hotel next to Spring and Linden.  He had gamely hobbled along with them as they tacked back and forth through Downtown, never uttering a single word of complaint.  Peter admired the soldier’s fortitude, but even, or perhaps especially, Jenkins’ ability to keep moving was finally flagging.

No one’s adrenaline was unlimited, and willpower and determination only went so far.  Peter had always prided himself on his levels of the last two qualities, but he was also in his fifties.  If the ‘kids’ among the Guardsmen who were in their twenties were beginning to stagger from fatigue, then he had to take it as a warning sign.  Even if he was able to deny his body’s need for rest right up until the moment he fell over, the others might not be as gung ho.

Peter hated it.  The thought of stopping somewhere terrified him.  He’d seen far too many hordes and packs this night.  The streets of Downtown were covered in zombies.  The numbers had to be in the tens of thousands.  Time and time again they’d been chased by groups that filled the space between buildings shoulder to shoulder, rank after rank deep, all hungry and eager to seize the living.

But unless a way out presented itself sometime in the next few minutes, which didn’t seem likely, it was time to circle the wagons somewhere and hole up.  Rest, recuperate, and try to figure out a plan.  He had no idea what that plan would be, beyond what had basically been the strategy so far.  And that wasn’t working.  Logic and reason dictated he should go with something else, but he couldn’t think of what.  Maybe some time off his feet, off the streets, would shake something clever loose out of his addled mind.

He was just scared as hell that once they stopped, a couple thousand of the wandering zombies would collapse around wherever they went to ground at, and they’d be trapped with no way to get out.  But if they didn’t stop soon, they’d collapse and be caught in the streets too tired to run any more.

As they crossed over the Connector for about the tenth or twelfth time Peter did take the opportunity to look in each direction with his binoculars.  There was a rather large tangled mess of a wreck visible to the southeast, just past the Baker and Piedmont overpass, but northwest looked mostly clear.  Except for the zombies he saw in each direction, probably an easy couple hundred both ways.  All it would take would be a single scent, or whatever they used, of the living and the zombies would coalesce into a pursuit horde.

They were blocked off from going east as they crossed the Ralph McGill/Courtland overpass by mass of zombies.  West was deeper into Atlanta, and they’d been through several streets off in that direction recently anyway.  But a block further north on Courtland he spotted something that looked pretty good.  Not as good as an escape route, but almost as good.  He hoped.