“Why don’t you get something to snack on? You look kinda crappy. You still aren’t doing all that well taking it easy. If you don’t listen to Lou you are going to have to be readmitted to the clinic here until you really are better.”
“Well, whatever they say I need to do so that I can get better is fine but let me tell you this… I’m going to be in whatever group there is that goes to where they live. From what Shaun told me it is just a bunch of townhomes that cost a lot of money with a gate running the length around the entire thing.” Ellie said.
“Yeah, but just because a bunch of rich people lived there doesn’t mean that they do now. There’s a good chance that those people are probably dead or got kicked out of the place when those guys went there. I’d find it hard to believe, unless they had some kind of militia running out of there, that they lived there before. Rich and gun trained like what those guys were trying to pull off doesn’t quite make sense to me,” Kya said.
****
Aslin walked up looking at Lou working quickly. He had cut off Joey’s white jersey. He actually felt bad about it because he knew that anytime he hadn’t had the thing in the wash that it was what he was wearing. It was one of the only things that he had from his days before the dead had started. It was lying on the bed so that the sun struck it at the perfect angle sending a gleam of light through the bullet hole. He said, “Hey, Lou, how does it look? Is he going to be okay?”
Lou was sitting on a chair and looking with a flashlight at the wound and doing his best not to open it up any further. The last thing he wanted to do was make it larger than it was. He really hoped that the kid would be okay. He had removed the staples as carefully as possible so that he could clean it out. He examined the wound and found no bullet fragments. He sat up taking a deep breath and said, “He’s one lucky kid. I know getting shot sucks but he didn’t get hit fatally. If that bullet would have gone a few inches higher it would have struck his liver probably passed out one of his lungs. To the right another few inches it would have fucked up his intestines something serious.”
“I can’t say I could have handled losing this kid. He must have an angel looking out for him. Hell, with the size of his heart it’s probably God himself.”
Lou was wiping at the wound cleaning it out and disinfecting it before starting to staple it and said, “Are you kidding me? You think God is watching out for him. You think that God cares about any of us right now? People used to cram that down my throat at the hospital, they would say, oh let's pray for God to save our son, our grandfather. You know what saved him, luck and the skilled hands of people knowing what to do in shit circumstances. You ever thank God when you got hurt in the field, or did you thank the guy on your team?”
“I know it is soon, Lou, but just because bad things happen, it doesn’t mean that a higher being isn’t looking out for us. He might have been doing something bigger, maybe he was keeping a nuclear reactor from going off, or whatever it is that God does while it looks like he is ignoring us.”
“You believe in who and what you want, Aslin, but six staples and fluids saved this kids life. He shouldn’t try to move for the next few days if he doesn’t have a need to. If he tries to disobey these rules I'm going to have to secure him to the bed. The last thing we want him doing is freaking out and ripping his staples out. He does anything bad then it is just going to make things so much worse for him. If he does any serious damage, then he really will have to rely on your God to save him because I won’t be able to do anything about it. You got any questions about that?”
“No, Lou, I think he at the very least owes you. I'm sure you are going to get a few serious hugs, ones that might do you good. Clary made it sound like you might hit the road. I can’t for one minute pretend I know what it feels like. Just hear me out though and let me say that we need you. Now, if that isn’t reason enough and you don’t care about survival, then just remember there are a lot of people gone now. Those that are left are going to need someone who can do something about the times they’re sick, or hurt. Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone but you.”
Lou nodded slowly as he started the staples on the front and rear side of Joey. He said, “Yeah I know, I got pretty much the same speech from Clary. It isn’t anything personal, Aslin. I just don’t know if it is something I can handle continuing to do. I’ve always been able to help sick people, most of those people were sick and they were old, treating kids and teens was always the hardest thing in my job. When that is all of whom we have left for the most part it makes it even harder. I thought as long as I had my daughters I would be able to survive this, unfortunately that isn’t the case anymore and they’re gone. Now I don’t know if I want to do it on my own or at all.”
“Let me know your decision, Lou. Are you going to take a look at Clary once you get Joey bandaged up?”
“Yep, I’ll be down there in a minute. I think he’ll be okay with one eye but that left one is fucked. There is no way I will be able to do anything about it. He better keep his fingers crossed that nothing happens to his right eye. All those skills are useless if he doesn’t have his damn vision.”
Aslin pushed up stretching out his back and looking at the rifle sitting next to Clary. He said “I don’t know what we will do for him if he can’t see. He’ll forget more about demolition and guns than these kids will ever have the chance to learn. I just hope we can get at least the one eye good to go. I'm not going to lie; the idea of trying to keep a guy like that’s hopes up is going to be difficult if he doesn’t see again. You do the best for him that you can. I know that you will but I feel like I have to say that aloud.”
Lou pulled off the gloves that were soaked in Joey’s blood and threw them in the medical waste basket and like he was riding a bike put on a new pair. He said, “Don’t worry about it, Aslin, I always do my best.”
He walked past seeing Kya thinking of her loss wondering how bad it felt and questioning how serious two kids could be. The thought of what he felt like during that first year after losing his wife on day one had made him almost lose his mind. He knew a ring was only in the eyes of the church and the government, and that the two of them had no parents or family to care for them so their bond might have been more than he was giving them credit for.
When he got up to Clary he coughed bringing Clary back out of whatever thing he was thinking of. Clary said, “Don’t shoot my puppy, Lou. You get at least one of them working and you and I are good to go. Otherwise, it is probably a good idea if I have my own room. I’m confident these kids don’t need to see a grown man losing his shit.”
Lou patted Clary’s leg, laughing. He said, “Yeah, God forbid they see the adults are having just as hard of a time as they are. It might make you look a bit less like the symbol of who can’t get hurt. I think most of them walk around every day just trying to keep it together. Now that there are a few handfuls of us left, it might be more helpful to their psyches than ever. But hey, don’t put the cart before the horse, Clary.”
He pulled up the bandages on Clary’s eyes starting with the left and started using an eye wash solution to clean it out. Clary was blinking helping with the process with his tears. Lou was staring, seeing his pupil had been massacred there would be an eye patch for sure for his left eye with little question as to if it would ever heal and be useable. When he was done cleaning the first eye out Clary said, “Well, kinda looks like we’re down to a one eye possibility there, Lou.”
Lou said, “Can you see any light at all, Clary?”
“Yeah, I can see some light but it’s just a blur of colors right now.”
“Okay, then you know if a car is going to hit you and to run out of the way, that’s better than being pitch black, right?”
“No, not really. Lou, get going on the right eye, please.”
Lou pulled out the bandage on his right eye taking a good look at it before he began to wash it out. “You want to know the good news or the bad news.”
“How can there be both?”
“Well, the good news is your eye looks fine. Most the rock in it hit the sides of your eyes and the blood that was blinding it looks like it was from a wound on your nose, and where the sleep forms in the corner of your eye has a decent cut as well.”
“Wait, wait, wait, so what’s the bad news? Are you saying that my right eye is okay? I mean you don’t see anything in it?”
“Oh, I just wanted to say that the bad news is you don’t get to lose your shit in front of all the kids. So, it would seem you will have to keep your God-like status that the kids seem to hold you to for a little while longer. I have this bandage I’m going to keep over that left eye. The last thing we want is for it to get infected. I’m going to fill it full of antibiotic ointment and then we will check it every couple days. You never know you might end up with twenty percent vision out of it, or blurred or you’ll be able to take in colors, who knows. Anything is better than nothing, right?”
“So, when it is all done, can you make sure I have a badass eye patch? Chicks dig guys with scars, right? I’d have to think that this thing is a guaranteed chick magnet, right?”
“Well, we will have to run into some women who aren’t dead and trying to eat you or teenage girls before we will be able to find out, won’t we?”
“Unfortunately, that seems to be the case doesn’t it.”
By the time he was done talking Lou, who had not stopped working the entire time trying to keep him preoccupied with conversation, was finished. He wiped at the tears coming on their own now from the eye wash and stepped back letting Clary see out of his right eye without having his bulking frame covering his vision. When Lou moved Clary blinked wiping the last of the tears away and looked around the room. Everything became clear as the tears slowly began to stop. He blinked out what was left of them and when he saw Joey, and Patrick covered with the blanket and the two girls consoling each other he almost wished he was blind for a moment. He said, “Thanks, Lou, I really do appreciate it. Any doctor's orders I need to know? You have to stick around regardless until this other eye is out of the danger zone.”
Lou thought for a second and said, “You have any glasses like you wear at the range back in the armory for target shooting?”
“Yeah, I have shooting glasses, I would have had them on today if I hadn’t have had a welding mask on right before the shit hit the fan, why?”
“Because I want you to wear them pretty much forever. Don’t forget to at some point and I don’t know what we would do about it but if you keep heavy strain on that eye which is kind of something that you can’t avoid if you don’t have a second eye working. I assume we’re on the same page with you wanting some longevity in that one continuing to work right?”
Clary nodded and Lou patted his shoulder and turned to walk away. “I want you to rest here for an hour or two, and I know it’s going to drive you crazy but luckily for you…I don’t give a shit. The rest is going to do you some good. You’ve just gone through more stress on your mind and body than you could possibly imagine. We don’t need you getting worse because you were being stupid and it is pretty easy to avoid usually if you just take a break. Try not to sit here thinking for the entire time either because that doesn’t really do anything to make it better either.”
“You got it, mom, you come back when it’s okay for me to get up, I'm going to close my eyes…my eye for a bit and try not to overthink things.”
“Good luck, Clary.”
Chapter 18
Shaun, Greg, and McQuaig were walking through the armory. Shaun was selecting and Greg and McQuaig were following him through the building and with the way the boxes were stacked it looked like it would never end. Greg said, “So does anyone have any ideas?”
“Yeah, we load up as many of these weapons as we have and then we go to their home and blow the shit out of it.” Shaun said.
“Yeah, and you are saying you’re the smart one,” Greg said. “Do you really not have any better idea or did you just want me to have the opportunity to come up with the good plan? They might be stupid, but I think they might see us rolling up.”
McQuaig said, “I got an idea, believe it or not.”
Greg motioned with his hands for her to keep going. “We aren’t trying to fish, McQuaig, if you got an idea don’t hang it out there in front of us, would you? We need to figure out what it is we’re going to do. I would hate to think this is just round one and those assholes are coming back again in the not too far future.”
Shaun stopped walking and the two looked expectantly at her. She said, “Like I said…I have an idea, and I don’t know if…
”
“Would you just get to the point, McQuaig. Seriously, we’ve been together a year. It’s fine if you want to throw out some ideas. I do all the time, of course they get shot down most of the time,” Greg said.
She pointed out one of the windows to the motorcade through the protective bars. The boys both nodded, unsure what she was referencing. Shaun said, “Your idea is a bunch of cars that we already have? What do you want to do drive them there because I was already thinking about that?”
“No, smartass that isn’t what I want to do. All of us can load up, separate a mile out, and move in but we need to get their attention and at the same time, we need them to be super nervous and preoccupied. How do we do that, you have any ideas?”
Shaun said “I thought that you had an idea, why are you asking us what we think?”
“You guys are dense sometimes. You know it amazes me watching how you would sit for hours figuring out advanced math to shoot that rifle, but when it comes to simple guessing games you guys are stupidly useless. I sound like Aslin when he’s pissed. Fine, okay so the deal here is blood. We probably need more than we got right now.”
“What do you mean blood, like you want to go out and take out some Turned?” Shaun asked.
“You know that normally I'm all for that and Greg probably is also, McQuaig, but right now…
”
“Oh, just shut up you guys! Look outside, do you see the machine for moving snow, well it has an empty sprayer on the back of it. We know Des Moines is filled with the dead. What would happen if we fill that thing up with blood and then hang some of those douchebags off the back of it to have them snack on and drive it right through their fence. You think maybe they would be a little bit preoccupied with the dead coming into their home base especially if they don’t have a gate out front. While they’re doing that we can launch hell on them and leave nothing alive. If we miss any of those guys, then let the dead take them out. I have no qualms about who does what job as long as every one of them dies. We’ve had too many narrow escapes when we go out, we don’t need to worry about shit like this when we come home. They’re a threat we don’t need in our lives. So what do you think about that?”
Greg didn’t say anything and ran up picking her up, and spinning her. “That is genius, did you seriously just think of that? Wow, I love that. Really, that is great. Shaun, do you think it will work?”
Shaun was nodding slowly looking at the truck. “We’d just have to make sure the blood isn’t too thick, but we could probably water it down a little bit. I doubt the dead need full on blood. They can catch that scent with no issues at all usually. The only other thing would be to figure out a way to reinforce the cab. I don’t want anyone getting killed just because they’re dealing with an idea they didn’t come up with.”
McQuaig said, “I figured that I could drive that thing in there.”
“You must be kidding; you are too good behind a rifle to do anything like that. We need you to stick close and have a perch spot that you can pick them off as quickly as you are able to.”
She was nodding slowly, “Who’s going to drive it in?”
Greg said, “I could always do it, maybe someone could grab me last minute before I drive in there. I don’t think anyone that goes in there is going to be coming back out if they have anything to do about it.”
Shaun said, “It’ll be okay, we stop that thing fifty yards away and floor the truck, that gated community is so long it won’t matter where it hits that gate as long as it gets there. It’s the impossible to miss target. Even if they end up taking out its tires, we can keep shooting on those that come up trying to take it out. How does that sound?”
“We have a lot of blood but I don’t know if you have enough to keep the Turned following that thing. I mean eventually we run out and then they just try to destroy the truck and the poor bastard that is inside. It’s going to be scary enough having some poor shit ride up to pick up the person. You think that Clary and Aslin are going to go for it?” Greg said.
“Well, considering the amount of manpower that we have left I think that it is a hell of an idea. If they don’t like it then I’d love to see what they come up with. We get enough gear that we won’t run out of ammo and I say we go over to the clinic. Whenever Clary is able to roll is the perfect time to move.”
The teens went through the rest of the gear that they would need and got enough for the rest of the survivors. When Greg saw Shaun packing away a few extra items he couldn’t help but ask. “What are you getting there?”
Shaun smiled and said, “I was just thinking that if they were stupid enough to come after us that we can take one of Clary’s grenade launchers. The second that they’re trying to make their move we unleash a second wave on them. They won’t know what the hell is going on. They obviously wanted some of this stuff, well we can show them in style just how damn capable our little group is, even after their assault.”
Greg said, “You know, Shaun, how I hate to shoot your puppy because we all know you are the super genius stud but uh you know what I just realized after a few weeks’ worth of the donations that have been going on?”
“If it's going to help Greg then go ahead and pull the trigger, I can get a new one.”
Greg said, “We’ve been spending all this time donating blood and we never thought about going to one of the blood centers in Des Moines, or even to the hospitals. Instead of letting blood drip we could have gotten everything in one hit.”
McQuaig said, “That is definitely something that we probably could have known. Hell, maybe today wouldn’t have happened.”
“I wasn’t trying to place blame for today,” Greg said. “It is just that I thought we could get a shit ton of blood and save what we have. Why waste resources if we don’t need to. Shaun’s idea is still damn smart but can you imagine how many different blood banks there are across the United States.”
Shaun started to smile thinking of this. “If we spread the word through the internet we have a chance to make a difference if others can do what we’re going to do then maybe we will take back America before it is too late. They won’t have to waste time collecting blood donations we can all just steal it. Greg, you might be a genius.”
“What do you mean I might be a genius? It doesn’t get any better than this.”