Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller (28 page)

     In the church bus, as Armani turned off the video device, Kirby stared in outright amazement at the two car procession driving toward the highway. He was floored to see other people, other living,
normal
people. He thought they’d have to be normal, wouldn’t they? They were driving. That alone indicated something beyond what those fully given into the blight were capable of.

     He wasn’t overly perturbed by the fact that they drove on without stopping to see if they were normal, too. Maybe in their position he wouldn’t have, either. He knew he would’ve liked to see other new people; others who were only partially corrupted or, even better, uncorrupted by the taint. But his main focus right now was Eric.

     The massively muscular man had collapsed upon getting safely into the church bus. He’d lost blood from the horrific neck wound the corrupted man had inflicted on him, and no matter how much pressure Kirby applied, he hadn’t yet been able to get the bleeding to stop.

     Eric was a great guy. They’d clicked immediately. Maybe if they’d met in the gym or somewhere else, a friendship between them would have been laughable, but in the present situation, they’d practically become like brothers overnight. Kirby had lost everyone else already. He was caught up with a fine trembling to think he might lose Eric, as well.

     “Armani’s waving us out,” Molly told Kirby in a gentle voice. “There aren’t any corrupted around that we can see. Some may have been drawn to the noise of the cars, though, so we have to try to get into the med center quick or risk having them on us again. Dave will help you carry him, all right?”

     Kirby nodded too quickly. There was blood on his hands. He didn’t want to think about it, but they felt terribly unclean.

     “Good,” he said, and his voice had a breathy, panicky quality he disliked even more than the blood on his hands. He forced himself to calm.

     “I can do it if you need me to,” Molly offered. She didn’t like the way he looked, the way he sounded. She trusted that he wanted to help, but he was verging on a breakdown that would render him useless. Carrying his mauled, unconscious friend might be the tipping point that would push him over.

     “I’ve got him, Molly,” Kirby said, and his voice sounded stronger and surer. “Get Dave in here and let’s do this.” At that, David used a hand on her shoulder to get Molly to sit down out of his way so he could get through to where Eric and Kirby were.

     Eric groaned as David and Kirby lifted him between them, and his head lolled forward. Blood continued to ooze from the wound and Kirby wondered if it actually was slowing and he was just panicking at the fact that there was still blood at all.

     “We’ve got you, buddy,” Kirby assured Eric, hoping he could hear him.

     “No problems,” Dave agreed. Kirby didn’t know who he was talking to, but he hoped David was right.

     The bus aisle was narrow, and getting three grown men through it was a difficult chore. They moved slowly and with painstaking care, not wanting to jostle Eric any more than they had to. It was a process, but they eventually got the wounded man out of the vehicle without injuring him further.

     “Quickly, please. Quickly.”
     The man who urged them inside from the barely-cracked doorway was short and willowy with the darkest hair a man can have and eyes nearly the same shade. He was of Asian descent and wore thin-framed glasses and a white lab coat. His black slacks were neat and pressed, his shoes were polished. The only sign of disarray existed in his too-large eyes, mussed hair, and the long diagonal gash that swept across his left cheek. The wound oozed blood steadily and Kirby decided there was a good chance the injury was fairly fresh.

     “Thank you,” Armani told them man in a soft, deeply grateful voice as they clasped hands companionable.

     Kirby had noticed Armani initiated physical contact with all humans upon first meeting and he wondered why. Then, he realized the thing inside of him had less of a hold when he was touching other people. Armani was uncorrupted, maybe he hoped that the lack of corruption in him would push back the blight in others. Or maybe he was just a very touchy-feely kind of guy. Either way, Kirby was thankful to follow him inside the clinic.

     Once the entire group had entered the clinic’s first door, the doctor re-locked it and quickly re-attached the sheet he’d hastily hung using hammer and nails. Stepping down from the chair he needed in order to reach the wall above the glass doors, the doctor picked up the tool box he had. When Kirby looked at it questioningly, the man flushed and said, “I always have it in my car.” Though he didn’t look the type to carry a well-stocked tool kit, Kirby figured the man was probably glad he did.

     “Smart man,” Armani declared appreciatively. The doctor gave him a wan, tired smile as he pushed several chairs taken from the waiting room–two of which were large, cushioned and obviously heavy–against the first set of doors. They went through the second and the doctor locked those, as well.

     “Room two, in the back to the left,” the doctor directed Kirby and Dave.

     Gwen, Molly, the twins, Kim, and her baby sat in the chairs still in the waiting room.

     They’d brought in two bags of their food goods and left the rest in their vehicles. As Dave and Kirby hauled the still-unconscious Eric toward the room they were directed toward, Gwen and Molly brought out foodstuffs and Kim began mixing a bottle of formula for Alec. The babe had been quiet and sleepy ever since the incident at the gas station, as though he finally realized the safety of the group at times depended upon his silence.

     Kim’s hands shook. She spilled some of the formula onto the table and brushed it off onto the floor before anyone noticed. Something shrill and panicky bubbled up in her throat, some sound that would do no good to anyone, least of all her son, so she bit it back by biting into her tongue. She bit hard and pain warred with panic; the sick feeling was accompanied by the metallic precursor to blood, a taste in the back of her throat that finally pushed the noise trying to worm its way out back down where it would be confined.

     “Honey, do you want some help?”

    A female voice. It was Gwen; Gwen of the soft eyes and ever-patient demeanor. Kim knew Gwen was childless, but she had the presence of a caregiver. She always wanted to help, and even though Kim couldn’t accept her help without admitting everything that was wrong, she wanted to. Desperately, she wanted to.

     “I’ve got it,” Kim said, and her voice cracked and wavered.

     Gwen heard it; the break was impossible to ignore. Sympathy for Kim washed through her. She didn’t know how far she could go toward forcing her help, so she made the first attempt by putting her hand on the hand of Kim’s that held Alec’s bottle.

     “One feeding, I can do it for you,” she offered gently. Kim’s eyes filled with tears, and Gwen wanted to hug her. But Kim pulled away, not impolitely, but firmly, and said, “I prefer to feed him myself. Feeding is bonding, so they say.”

     Gwen nodded. “All right, hon,” she said kindly. “Just let me know if you need anything, okay? Don’t hesitate.”

     “I appreciate it,” Kim said as Gwen moved away.

     While Kim fed Alec and the twins ate with Molly, Gwen moved toward the hallway where David and Kirby had followed the doctor and Armani to tend to Eric. She wanted to see how it was going.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Armani’s Journal

     I almost lost one of my best men today. We have to figure out a way to be safer. We need a list of rules and contingencies. I cannot lose more people. How am I supposed to protect them against what we’re facing? I couldn’t protect my own…what can I do for these people? We’ll stay on the road until we’re presented with a better option. We need to stay moving. Stay safe.

     Eric had been laid out on the long, uncomfortable bed that was a staple of all emergency clinics. The paper he’d been settled on did not rustle and make noise as it would with most other patients because Eric did not move. He was far too still in the opinion of all of those gathered around him.

     “Room for one more?” Gwen asked as she knocked softly on the door. Armani waved her in.

     “This is Dr. Ken Larson,” Armani offered the introduction to Gwen. “He’s going to try to help Eric.”

     “Under the circumstances, I think simply Ken is appropriate,” the doctor stated, even though his tone suggested it pained him to do so.
     “What do you think can be done here?” Kirby asked, and his tone was full of anxiety. He wrung his hands without realizing it.

     “Treat the wound, start him on antibiotics,” Ken said as he swabbed Eric’s neck with iodine. “A human bite would result in problems if a patient didn’t seek medical attention immediately and allowed infection to set in. I assume this bite was recent?”

     “Right before we came here,” Armani acknowledged.

     “Why is he unconscious, then?” Kirby interjected.

     “Hard to say,” the doctor murmured as he pulled liquid from a vial with a syringe. “Stress, maybe? After all that’s happened, the exhaustion and then this attack…I’m optimistic about his recovery but I won’t disregard the uniqueness of this situation. Who’s to say the blight isn’t responsible for his state? Certainly not I.”

     “But he’ll be okay,” Armani said as he put a soothing hand on Kirby’s shoulder. He knew Kirby needed his reassurance as much as he needed the doctor’s.

     “His prognosis is fair,” Ken assured Kirby as he smoothly and professionally injected Eric in the neck with the syringe. “Tetanus,” Ken explained to Armani and Kirby as both of the other men winced. “The chances that he hasn’t had a tetanus shot recently or ever are high. I want to make sure I do for him what needs to be done to ensure his full recovery.”

     “Thank you very much,” Armani said as he clasped the doctor on his forearm.

     Ken turned from his patient after he covered him from chin to toes with two thin, white blankets. Gwen, who’d been a silent observer until that point, stepped forward and put a hand on the side of the narrow bed.

     “I’ll stay and watch over him,” she said softly. “Kim needs reassurance. She feels terrible about what happened to her brother. Can one of you go talk to her?”

     “I’ve got it,” Kirby said as the three men left the room.

     “If you’d come with me,” the doctor suggested to Armani. “I’d like to show you something.”

     Instead of returning to his shaken flock in the waiting room, Armani nodded and accompanied the doctor deeper into the building, striding after him in his quick and confident wake.

Armani felt curiosity bubbling, but he had no drive to ask the doctor what he wanted to show him. He’d find out soon enough, anyway.

     “When this began, I was here with five other people,” Ken started as they passed examination rooms two and three. “One got a call from a family member that panicked her and she left. The others followed quickly and soon I was the last official staff member left. The night was slow. There was only one patient inside when whatever happened occurred.”

     “We started calling it ‘The Onset,’” Armani interjected.

     Ken stopped in front of the door to the last of the examination rooms. He gave a nod of acceptance.

     “The name feels right,” he said, and Armani felt the doctor’s phrasing seemed strange. “During the Onset, I locked up, barricaded as you’ve seen. The patient who was here had the sickness come over him, same as I did. Same as most of us did.” He paused to give Armani a deeply probing look. “But not you. You are free of the virus.”

     “I think it’s a bad assumption, thinking of it as a virus,” Armani warned, and Ken waved the comment away.

     “Virus, blight, corruption. I use the terminology familiar to me, as we all do.”

     “Is he in there?” Armani questioned of the aforementioned patient as he tipped his head toward the closed door in inquiry.

     “I am reconsidering my decision to take you in there,” Ken admitted, though he was not comfortable with his vacillation. He was and always had been an incredibly decisive individual. His lack of surety since the Onset had been a constant burden on him.

     “You should trust that instinct,” Dave said in a warning tone as he approached. He held Kirby’s handgun, which he had taken from the church bus before they entered the clinic. He directed his next statement toward Armani. “Sorry, but we had an informal group meeting. You’re our ipso facto leader and one of only two uncorrupted we have. You need a group member with you at all times.”

     “I don’t know that this is necessary,” Armani said, and for once his smooth tone was colored by something: embarrassment.

     Dave shrugged.

     “All the same,” Dave said, and refused to relinquish his position. He carried the gun like he knew something about it; held loosely away from him and pointed at the floor with his finger off the trigger.

     “With one of your group with you, I don’t feel quite so nervous about taking you in,” Ken said as a way of encouraging Armani to accept the decision of the others. As he’d already decided his best option would be to join these people, he wanted to try to integrate himself with them through observation and measured agreements. Showing he could work well with others would as much of an asset to him as his medical background.