Work Text:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
- W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming
All things considered, the end of the world wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be. The plague was awful. That’s true. By now, she can admit that much without the thought crumbling her, but give it any more weight and she knows it’ll kill her more surely than any sickness.
The plague was awful.
It swept over the world with all the inescapable force of a tsunami. The water retreating from the shoreline as news came in from the other side of the world that something had happened, something was happening. Rumours travelling faster than science. Stories pouring in through phone calls and fax machines. Then pictures. A great wave of them were splashed out in bleeding ink across the pages of every paper months before any committee could be assembled to explain what people were even looking at. Journalists flocked to document the outbreak in living colour, and soon TVs were bottle-necked with footage that did nothing except make it all more real, more terrifying. Eyes rolling. Mouths frothing. Vomiting. Hydrophobia. Ataxia. Dyspnea. Bodies collapsing, writhing in the neural electric throes of agony. Then falling still. Then, miraculously — horrifically — rising again.
Like something out of the movies, the dead became living again, hungry for flesh, thirsting for blood. They staggered about in slow moving mobs as rigor mortis gradually gave way to putrefaction. Decay was inevitable, but in the meantime, these bodies, these vacant husks kept on going. Scientists said it was akin to a fungal infection most commonly seen in ants, their rotting limbs propelled not by sentience but a molecular drive to propagate. They clawed, they bit, and they passed the infection on. Climate change helped the fungus grow, population density helped it thrive, and globalisation helped it spread around the world.
But flesh is just flesh, and no matter how strong the instinct driving it the mind will always be subject to the strength of the body bearing it. One good, hot Chicago summer left a field of stinking bones and bloated corpses, too ragged and rotten to stand again. A wicked winter made worse by the sudden failure of infrastructure meant that the few still wandering the empty streets froze in place, and when the spring melt came, the muscles and tendons turned to sludge and ran down the storm drains with the rest of the muddy snow. The next year was bad, too, as those who rode out the first wave stepped out into the world again, initially with caution but all too soon the elation of survival drowned out the pragmatism of vigilance and the second wave came with a brutal swiftness that cut them down, too.
Another summer. Another winter. Another spring.
And now, finally, Anna can hear the frail call of birdsong once again.
She steps through narrow gap in the wrought iron fence, pried open at some point, probably early on when the looting was at its worst. But since then, the grass has grown up tall around it, obscuring it from any casual glance. She knew it was here though. She’s been looking. Scouting.
On the other side of the fence is thick forest, old growth trees that have been granted the distinct privilege of deep roots and broad limbs in the city by virtue of the fact that they stand on land that once belonged to those who could afford such indulgence. Beyond the treeline is what Anna imagines was once a beautifully manicured lawn. Even now, there are tender patches of green, soft new-shoots of grass only barely speckled with dandelions and fleabane, weeds growing bold in the absence of a a critical eye. A stone fountain sits in the centre of an open round, and she makes for it just to double check. The basin is cracked and dry, but she sees a copper spout still green with recent oxidization, and when she reaches out to touch the open mouth of the pipe, her fingers come away wet. Water is a precious commodity these days. They’re lucky to have such easy access to the lake, but even still it’s a challenge to clean it, to store it. If there was a private source here — a water tank or well — Anspaugh would want to know that.
There’s no obvious piping leading up to the fountain. She supposes whoever lived here before would have been wealthy enough to have that buried. But that’s something they could investigate later. Leaving it, she marches on, kicking back the grasping buds of overgrown brush, and shaking off spiderwebs as the grass whispers beneath her feet.
Ahead, the grand house looms.
It’s bigger than she expected. More secure, too. Some of the rich folk closer to the city were stupid enough to think that their gatehouses and fences and security guards would be enough to save them. It wasn’t.
Strange though, she notes, as she circles round from the back to climb the marble steps to the front door. Most of the reinforcements she can see seem to have been mounted from the outside, as opposed to the inside of the house. Maybe these people had learned from their less lucky friends, the ones closer to the core. Maybe they’d been better at seeing the signs, reading which way the wind was blowing. Maybe they were ready earlier, and they’d made sure that when the time came nothing was going to get in.
Or maybe it was the opposite. Maybe they were unlucky, and someone had done whatever they could to ensure that when the time came nothing was going to get out.
With that thought in mind, Anna adjusts her grip on the fire axe she carries, equally useful for hacking back overgrowth as bodies. The front door is locked. More than that, it’s been chained shut and the lock has been welded into place. Her instincts are up, now, prickling at the base of her neck, tickling along her spine in shivers so insistent she rolls her shoulders trying to shake them off. Even if she threw all caution to the wind and hacked at the door with her axe she doesn’t think it would make any dent. All she’d achieve is alerting whatever’s there to her presence. If anything’s inside. Bodies aren’t likely unless they’re recent and by the state of the grounds she tells herself that logically they'd be long rotted away. But then again, those victims left to decay inside their own homes, safe from the outrage of the elements, often lasted much longer, sometimes mummifying in the driest weather. And even healthy humans left to their own devices, to pursue their worst impulses, well…they become another sort of monster altogether.
She checks her shoulder and sees nothing but the gentle embrace of Nature reclaiming what was Hers, hearing nothing but the siren song of the birds and the wind both insisting and insisting in dulcet tones that all is well, that there’s nothing here for her to worry about. Nothing, nothing at all.
On the second floor, a balcony juts out over the grand portico arcing above the front door. Anna spies a board that has slipped from its place, revealing the gleam of unbroken glass beneath it. If the board above that it is also weak, she may be able to tug it free and in the space revealed, shimmy through to the inside of the house. It’s quieter than breaking down the door or beating metal into surrender, and less likely to be anticipated besides. It’s worth a try.
She sheaths the axe in a looped strap on her backpack, knotted in place for that purpose, and looks for the nearest route up. As one of the youngest in her group, one of the fittest and most agile, and one who’s seen her fair share of scouting missions in the past few months, Anna’s gotten good at scaling pretty much anything. She thinks a childhood of climbing trees with seven brothers also helped, but when she considers that for too long it makes her sad. All of them are probably gone by now. Or maybe, climbing trees helped save them, too.
It doesn’t really matter in the present. All that matters now is the next second, and then the next. Surviving for as long as possible. Another thing Anna's gotten good at.
She finds a foothold in the corner where a column stands perpendicular to a wall and wedges her toes in the narrow gap. The rough stone of the pillar gives her enough friction to press her body weight against, and hold herself in place. With her arms braced and legs braced, she creeps up the wall like a spider, moving quickly lest her strength fail faster than the crumbling bits of stone.
Using the rail of the balcony as leverage, she pulls herself over the top to land crouched on the other side. The window is right in front of her. She grasps at the board above, and with a few tugs it groans free suddenly. She tumbles backward, the board sailing over the rail and clattering to the step below. For a moment, she waits. The wind keeps humming. The birds keep singing. Nothing else seems to move.
As reassured as she can be, she creeps forward and presses her face against the exposed area. It’s too dark inside to see anything. She’ll be going in blind.
But she is going in.
The glass is thick and doesn’t give way, even with throwing her shoulder against it, so she takes the head of the axe, wraps her coat around it to limit the noise and any stray shards, and smashes it open. Then, spreading her coat out on the sill to protect her belly, she slithers through the gap and into the house.
It’s dark. Darker than she’d expected. That makes sense — all the windows would have been sealed shut and the only light is coming from behind her, cramming itself after her through the hole as she extricates herself. Once she’s free, a small beam of light follows, illuminating a fraction of the scene before her. A large room, frozen in time. All the furniture has been covered with sheets and loom like ghosts around the perimeter, while a fine layer of dust coats the exposed floor. It both muffles the sound of her entrance and highlights the way that she’s come, conspirator and traitor all at once.
On the far side of the room is another door that she assumes must lead to a hallway or some kind of central area that will give her access to the rest of the house. Strangely though, when she gets closer to it, there are two things that make the whole situation start to feel…odd. Dangerous.
First, she sees that the light behind her is not the only light in the room. There is more. Though the door is custom to its frame and hugs the setting closely there is a narrow gap just at the bottom, and that gap is filled with molten gold. More light. Coming from the other side of it.
And stranger still, when she puts her ear to the wood to listen for the sound of limping footsteps or the agonised groans of the dead, instead she hears…music.
Mozart. Is that Mozart? She’s never been good with music, and definitely not with classical works but it sounds familiar to her, and something at the back of her mind from ages ago, before The End, is scratching there, telling her that she knows this.
Slowly, she turns the knob, half convinced that the security applied to the exterior of the building must continue on the inside, but no. The latch clicks. The hinges roll. The door swings open with hardly any resistance, but there is a complaint of rust that is loud enough to freeze her in place. This time, she listens for footsteps to come running, and angry shouts of alarm. Human voices. But there are none of those either. Only the uninterrupted strains of piano and strings. She crosses the threshold and enters a dream.
On either side of her, the hallway extends in a marble tiled mezzanine that meets at the center of a grand staircase. The music rises up, faint and joyful from below. Above, a glass dome roof stands open and unshuttered to the sky letting golden light come streaming in. It catches in the glittering strands of a crystal chandelier so massive that it seems a sort of private sun. A star domesticated for the express pleasure of the wealthy elite. A few strings of pendalogues hang down like a spider’s web strung with dew — the only hint of the horrible years which have passed is this symptom of neglect. Otherwise, Anna might have thought she’d stepped back in time completely.
She draws the axe from her pack again, holding it across her body, both hands grasping the handle in readiness. Perhaps this is a world caught in time, but Anna…Anna is not. She is not the same as she used to be.
She creeps across the floor, more intent now on speed than secrecy. The space is so wide and brightly lit that she struggles to see any point in trying to hide. Better to be quick. To get the jump on whoever it is that may be here, either living or dead, and make sure this all ends her way.
Down the stairs, and into the lobby. There are living things growing here. Trees stand in pots too small for them, their branches outstretched to the sun, a few blossoms close to bursting. Vines travel along the course of the floor tracing the tubing of a simple irrigation system that links trees and shrubs together. Most shocking to Anna are the rose bushes. There aren’t many, but there are some, their flowers blooming in twisted folds of lush ombres and velveteen petals. Such wild indulgence in the face of such incomprehensible brutality is shocking. Roses, and Mozart, and fruit trees. What the fuck?
She pushes forward, angrier now than she is scared. Maybe that’s dangerous, but she has also learned to be dangerous, and this place, this place…it doesn’t scare her. It makes her feel resentful. Vengeful. Sad. And yet room after room is revealed to her empty. A pantry, mostly of discarded tins. A dining room of fine china and heirloom silver left to gather dust. A kitchen. She turns the faucet of a sink, but it runs dry. A billiards room, the felt of the game table scuffed but clean and soft. A laundry room with clothing hand washed and hand wrung. Cotton button downs and old varsity t-shirts hang from the ceiling, but none of them are damp. A library sits at the end of a long hall, doors thrown wide, books strewn about, and throw blankets lying askew atop a sagging divan. Mozart plays for an audience of none from the deck of what must have been a brand new stereo system two years ago, and when the song ends, the disc resets and the concert begins again.
Alright. This is getting…weird.
“Hello?” There is no response but the sound of her own voice echoing, calling back to her. Hello, hello, hello. “Hello!”
Hello, hello, hello…
Well, there must be someone here, she reasons. Or there was. Recently. But…there’s no one here now. And this place could be perfect. She drops her pack to the divan, rooting around inside it for the collapsible bags they all keep on them in case they ever stumble across bounty such as this. Usually, it goes back to the hospital just as it left — folded small and shoved to the bottom of the bag — but this time, this time, is different.
Leaving her stuff but keeping hold of the axe, she darts back to the pantry and starts rooting through cupboards, scouring shelves, grabbing anything she thinks she’ll be able to carry the nine miles back to the city. Tins of fish, beans, and fruit — fruit! A bag of rice. Flour. Corn. There’s so much. She hasn’t seen this much food almost since everything ended and this all began. It’s enough to keep them going. It’s enough to keep them alive. It’s enough for someone to live on for years.
And it’s far too much for her to carry back alone.
No, she thinks. She has to be patient. Rational. She empties more than half of what she’s shoved in her bag, keeping only enough to serve as proof. Proof that this place exists, and that it might just be exactly what Anspaugh’s been looking for. Enough proof that they’ll let her come back. That maybe, next time, they’ll all come with her.
The smaller amount means a lighter load. It means that she can leave now, while the sun is still high, and make it back before dark. That’s when it’s the most dangerous. Not because of the Bodies. But because of the people. The survivors. Everyone else.
She shuffles back to the library, shouldering her pack and the tote bag sagging with the few items of food she’s judged necessary. She loops the axe back in place, and, just as she’s about to leave the library behind her eyes catch on the familiar title of a book lying open on the desk.
Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, 12th Edition.
Huh.
Beneath it, there’s a slimmer volume. A book of poetry. Yeats.
She slips the poetry free, and takes it with her. Proof. Not of life, this time, but civility. Something that might tempt those who still cling to the memories of home, and the comfort of Before.
Crossing the open lobby, she takes the stairs two at a time, eager to get out and get going before the sun sinks any lower and excited to show her friends her spoils. Mark, especially, might like the book. Maybe he can read it to Rachel. The poor kid’s gotta be sick of ragged medical texts, no matter how many voices her dad comes up with to read them in.
Her hand is on the doorknob, following her own footsteps back to the window she entered from. She’s about to step through and leave the gilded hall behind when she hears that echoing voice speak once more.
Hello? Hello, hello, hello.
Only this time, she isn't the one to have spoken.
“Hello?” It comes again, thin and small and masculine.
“Fuck,” she mutters to herself. The axe is looped behind her. She reaches for it, but she’s not fast enough. The door to the next room opens before she’s got anything in her hands. Her heartbeat ratchets up, her blood rushing in her ears so loud she almost misses when he speaks again.
“Hello,” he says.
Anna looks up and freezes. Caught.
A boy stands in the doorway — a man, really. About her age, she’d guess, only sleep-tousled and bleary-eyed like a five year old. He leans against the door, draped in a downy comforter that hangs from his shoulders like a cape. Bare-foot. Face-flushed. Wide, dark eyes blinking at her.
“Hello,” she replies, through gritted teeth. Her fingers itch for her axe, but there’s no way she can get it now without him seeing.
“What’re you doing in my house?” he asks. His voice is rough. Anna supposes that he’s not had much occasion to speak to anyone in a while, and that explains it, only…only as her initial terror at being caught out begins to fade, she takes a closer look at him. Beneath the ruddiness of his cheeks, his skin is pale, his eyes hollow. The thick fall of his hair is heavy and darkened with sweat even though it’s cool in the boarded up shadows of the house.
“I didn’t know anyone was here,” she replies.
“Oh,” he says. He sways. He’s sick, she realizes, and she reaches once more for her axe. “Are you…Gamma didn’t send you? To get me?”
“No?”
“Oh.” He clears his throat. He licks his lips. His focus drifts, and Anna can’t quite tell what he’s thinking. The smooth handle is almost in her hand when he straightens suddenly, stepping fully outside his room and into the hall, making for the top of the stairs. His blanket trails behind him. “Can I get you something to eat?” he offers, throwing the words back over his shoulder.
“No, I —” What? No, I already raided your store?
He seems harmless. She doesn’t want to change that. Sometimes the Bodies — before they became Bodies — the people, when they were sick in the early stages, sometimes even the most stricken could become violent out of nowhere. And now he knows she’s here. Even sick, she’s not sure she could get the jump on him. Not certain she should risk it. If he gets his teeth on her then it doesn’t matter who comes out on top of a quick squabble. Both of them would be fucked.
So she pulls her hand back from her axe, flexing the fingers to release the insistent tension they hold which urges her to arm herself and swing. She will be patient. She will make her escape when he’s asleep. Or maybe, when he’s dead.
“Thank you,” she says instead. “I’d love to eat.”
She follows him dutifully down to the kitchen where his eyes sweep over the detritus of her exploration, then find her again behind him, and understanding comes to him in an instant. She can see it, even in the foggy-glass of his fever-bright gaze. “Ah,” he says. Then, with a bit of sardonic humour that might once have been funny, he waves one hand over the mess. “Or why not help yourself?”
“Sorry,” she says, unsure how this petty little prince has somehow made her feel embarrassed at the ruthless necessity of survival. “I thought this place was empty.”
He sits, collapsing in the nearest chair to pull his blanket closer round his shivering form.
“It will be soon,” he says.
And since he’s acknowledged it first, Anna feels no shame in being blunt. “You’re sick.”
He nods.
“Is it the plague?”
“No,” he replies, shaking his head hard enough to dislodge a miserable sounding cough. “No. I’m…It’s…Just look.”
From beneath the folds of the blanket he withdraws one arm, and thrusts it towards her. She flinches at the sudden motion, holding her own hands up in a ready defense, but when she sees the state of the sorry limb she knows there’s no danger here. Instead, there’s something of a mystery. His arm has been wrapped in clean bandages, neatly taped in a style that looks intentional and practiced. She creeps closer, taking him by the wrist for a better look. The skin beneath her palm is on fire.
“May I?” she asks, gesturing to the bandage.
He nods weakly, eyes falling closed as he does his best to stay upright and conscious. As gently as possible, she picks at the medical tape, and peels back the tidily placed gauze. Underneath, a line of uneven stitches pull together the edges of a deep cut. The skin is red and puckered with pockets of pus and plasma oozing from it, catching on the gauze and pulling up fresh blood with every motion.
“This is infected,” she states, unable to keep the alarm from her tone.
“I tried my best,” he tells her, his voice only a murmur now, exhaustion sweeping in to erase all trace of whatever enthusiasm he’d had upon finding someone else living in this world, at last.
“Did you do these stitches yourself?”
“Yes.”
“One-handed?”
“I tried.”
“You did…” She looks at it again, squinting and palpating to see how deep it is, how dangerous. It’s not beautiful work by any means. Benton would be appalled. But even so. “Yourself?” she questions again, and when he nods, she asks, “Are you a doctor?”
“Med student,” he mutters. “Or was. That was…that was a long time ago. I think.”
“Hey, hey!” She taps him on the face as he begins to sag, desperate now, to keep him awake. His eyes flutter as she hauls him upright again, propping him against the lip of the counter behind him. “What year were you?”
“First,” he says.
“Oh, yeah? I was fourth.”
That gets him looking at her again. “Really?”
“Yep.”
“What were…what were you gonna…Had you matched?”
“CHOP,” she affirms. “For pediatrics. But I always wanted to double board in Emergency Med, too.”
“Mus’ be smar’,” he says, awe infused even in the few vowels he can manage.
“I could have been your resident,” she counters, and he’s still with it enough to hear the threat in it.
The best effort at a smile curls just a little at the corner of his mouth. “Scary,” he replies.
“What’s your name?” she asks.
He sighs a little, closing his eyes and pulling the blanket as close as he can, sitting sick and defenseless with his arm still held fast in her hands. “John Carter.”
Well, that explains it, she thinks. Two years isn’t long enough to erase the name she’s seen carved into a dozen buildings spread across the length and breadth of the city. Carter. Before the world ended, they practically owned this town.
Despite his generous offer of food, it’s her who winds up feeding him. After pulling apart a few more shelves she uncovers a hidden wealth of canned soups. One of the ranges is gas, and she ignites the hob, pulling free a clean pot by virtue of his vaguely coherent directions. On her own, she finds a drawer containing multiple can openers, and marvels for a moment at this wealth when she can still distinctly recall the many days she and Doug spent scouring old hardware stores and supermarket shells for one. But there’s no use holding a grudge now. Not when the object of her ire is hardly aware enough to appreciate it. Instead she cracks the can, pours it into the pot, and goes back to wrestle the snow-drift shape of him to a more comfortable rest.
The library is closest, and it seems where his feet are most inclined to go anyway. Together, with his uninjured arm slung over her shoulder and one of her arms thrown about his waist, they stagger into the room accompanied by the same old strains of Mozart.
“Do you mind if I put on something else?” she asks. “I’m getting sick of this one.”
“It’s a classic,” he protests, but he chucks his chin towards a stack of CDs piled high in a tower by a darkened window.
In here, the light of the sun pouring in from the domed lobby is scattered, only a diffuse glow alleviating the gloom with a few rainbow fractals sparkling off a shimmering pendant at it sways from the chandelier. Anna has to get close before she can make out any of the artists. Linda Rondstat. Milli Vanilli. Butch Morris. The Complete Classical Collection.
Eclectic. She doesn’t really recognise any of them.
“Maybe just some quiet for now,” she suggests. “That way we can talk.”
“‘Kay.” He’s rolled so his face is pressed against the back of the couch, the only thing showing above the duvet is a wild tuft of dark hair. It begs the question how much talking she really thinks he’s capable of doing at this point.
But still, she goes back to the kitchen and watches the soup until it boils.
When she returns, she props him up as best she can, then sits beside him with the bowl in her lap, blowing on each spoonful of soup before she brings it to his lips. He does his best to eat, but as he fights to swallow everything she gives him, she knows that whatever infection is burning through him, he doesn’t have long left before all that remains is ash.
“Are you leaving now?” he asks. The sun hangs low on the horizon, and the room has gone from feeling honeyed and golden to dark and full of threatening shadows. Within in an hour, the world outside will be the same, only those shadows will be filled with more than books and old music. Already she knows that she’s left it too late.
But she has to get back to County tonight.
“Just go to sleep,” she says. The words come out low and rasping. It’s been a long time since she’s had occasion to be so tender. She sets aside her backpack once more to kneel beside him, running her fingers through his sweat-damp hair to soothe him. “Shh,” she whispers. “Shhh. Just sleep. Just sleep.”
And he knows. Eyes that, even in the borrowed reflection of daylight appeared glassy and distant appear clear now, the only bright glimmer in the dark. She wishes he would look away. She wants to trace her hand downward, over his brow, his eyes, and draw them shut like all the windows have been shuttered here. But she doesn’t. She only strokes his hair, his brow, his cheek, the corner of his mouth.
“Sleep,” she says.
“Don’t go,” he begs. “Don’t go. Just wait. Wait until it’s over. Just wait until I, until I fall asleep. Please. Please. Just wait.”
“John —”
“It won’t be long,” he insists, his hand trembling as it closes over hers. And she knows it’s true. Even now, scared as he is, he can barely keep his eyes open. Already, the lids are falling, the lashes fluttering against his cheek.
“Okay,” she agrees. “I’ll wait.”
And she does. She waits.
Until his eyes fall shut, and when she pulls away, he doesn’t stir. But still he shivers. And Anna knows she has to leave.
She abandons her bag by the couch in the library, taking nothing with her but her axe. She’s more agile that way, lighter on her feet, and less of a target worth attacking if it’s obvious she’s carrying a weapon and nothing else of any worth. That will deter most. There are others, she knows, who think being a woman is temptation enough. Thankfully, her natural build and a few years on a privation diet provide some disguise. The rest of it is furnished by the woollen hat she wears. She tucks her hair up under it, and drops her stance hoping that a quick glance in the shadows reveals her to be nothing more than a young boy — a teenager, maybe. No one worth the time. Someone, in fact, to avoid.
It’s easier to clamber out the window without her gear, as well. She props the rotted board she’d initially noticed as being askew over the hole to hide her progress, then shimmies down the column going back, like Gretel, the same way she came. Around the house, over the green, through the thicket of weeds and wood, up to the iron-wrought fence and the gap she’d found only a week or so ago. A week ago. If she’d known then that John Carter was sitting in there, listening to Mozart, and growing roses, she might have…
Anyway.
Time is ticking.
She moves quickly enough through the mummified remains of Oak Park. Most of the houses loom beyond her sight and relatively few survivors roam out this way. Here, the old homes are generally more difficult to access, and so spread apart that whatever looting there is to be had is not worth it unless you’re looking for something else. Something specific. Besides that, the days are only just growing long enough again to make the trek from the Loop worthwhile. The Loop is where everyone congregated when everything collapsed. The Loop is where it’s most dangerous. The Loop is exactly where she’s heading.
Clinging to the lengthening shadows of the overgrown hedgerows, Anna keeps a steady pace along the private drives until she comes to the shady streets where the hobby elitists once lived. These houses are big, but their lawns are small, and most of them have been gutted more than once. Despite the violence inflicted on the buildings, it’s unlikely any of these residents faced the worst of the rioting that happened after the first wave. Not here, at least. Most would have fled for the country, or to join family. They could have afforded the same rapid rise in price of airline tickets that saw her stranded here, in an unfamiliar city. Whether they were lucky enough to live beyond that is less certain. And the squatters who took their place afterwards mostly fell to the second wave. There’s very little here worth seeing.
She makes her way along the streets trying to go as quickly as possible while the sky is still red, but once the sun has set and the world turned blue like the first blush of injury settling into a hematoma, she slows. She stops. This gloaming is the hardest to see in, so she checks and double checks her twelve and her six to be sure she knows where she’s going and what might be coming after her. Now, it’s a matter of identifying cover and racing between one secret hollow and the next. A journey that took her four hours in the daylight could take twice as long now, and she doesn’t have that luxury. John doesn’t have that luxury.
She makes it back to County General Hospital — or whatever remains of it — in five. Whether it was the audacity of her approach, or sheer dumb luck she doesn’t know, and will never know, but she saw no one and no one saw her.
At the barricaded entrance to the ER, she turns left and taps out a coded rhythm against a window reinforced with wire and scrap metal bent to a defensive purpose. The pane flips open, and Jerry’s head appears.
“You’re supposed to ask for the verbal code,” she scolds, but she takes his proffered hand and uses it to help pull herself up the wall and in through the window. There are other entrances, more closely watched and better protected, but none half as quick as this one.
“Who else was it gonna be?” Jerry grunts, depositing her on her feet on the other side.
She shakes herself free of whatever debris may have come through with her, reorienting herself to the space and to gravity, allowing the terrified tension of last five hours settle with the dust at her feet. It’s habit by now to take that first glance around, to note if anything’s out of place, or if danger’s lurking. She finds herself doing it even here, with Jerry standing whole and irreverent in front of her. It’s clear from the smug look on his face he’s caught her doing it, but instead of dignifying his amusement with a response, she lifts her chin and demands, “Where’s Greene?”
“Up on the wards doing a circuit with Benton.”
“How long for the genny?”
“Another ten minutes, then she’s off for the night.”
“Right.”
Which means she’s got about ten minutes to find Mark and for them both to get down here, or she’ll be stumbling blindly in the dark. Making noise. Drawing attention. The general rule is eyes on before dark, and she’s already broken protocol by coming back after sunset.
She sets off in the direction of the stairs, ignoring Jerry calling after her. “You know you need a physical before you can sign back in.”
“I know!”
Mark can do it. When she finds him.
She takes the stairs as fast as she can, pausing at the first floor to stick her head through the door and holding her breath to listen for the sound of distant footsteps of familiar voices. All is silent there, though, so she shuts it and pushes on to the next. Halfway between one floor and the next, she hears an upper door slam, and the exchange of competing treatment plans coming rapid-fire from Mark Greene and Peter Benton. Both parties stop as the come face-to-face.
The world is a strange place, and it’s made Peter Benton even stranger. Whatever limited capacity he had for social etiquette before The End has completely eroded away with time and isolation. He makes no secret that he’s looking her over, she supposes for a bloody wound, some obvious indication of infection, and when he finds none he only grunts as he brushes by her.
“You’re late,” he says.
Mark is a little softer. Kinder. He’s trying to hold onto things for the sake of his daughter, one of the few children to make it as long as she has, and one of the only children to live inside this hospital.
“Welcome back,” he says. “Need me to do a check?”
But Anna isn’t planning on staying long. “No,” she says. “I need a medpack. I need sterile solution. I need packing gauze. I need some scissors, and a suture kit, and broad spectrum antibiotics. I’d like to set up an IV line, but if we’ve only got oral I’ll take that.”
“What?”
“Do we have that?”
“We have that,” he says, trotting down the stairs in Benton’s wake, forcing Anna to follow. In her head she’s counting down the minutes — another skill she’s mastered since time stopped. Seven minutes. Six. She needs this stuff before the lights go out.
“Can I have it?”
“Anna —”
“I know it’s a big ask.”
“It’s an impossible ask,” Mark corrects. “All antibiotics are under strict control, you know that. It’s not something we can just hand out without review. Things are stretched thin enough as it is, and these —”
“I know,” she says, leaning on the word. “That’s why I asked you, instead of just taking it.”
At the base of the steps, he turns to her. The lights flicker as the generator sputters, nearing the end of its carefully allocated fuel.
“May I ask what you need this for?”
“I found a…”
How to explain what she found, how to express that she really needs to do this?
“I went out to Oak Park today, to look at that old house Doug and I scoped last week.”
“Yes,” Mark says, nodding, following along. “And you were six hours later coming back than expected.”
“Right,” she says. “I may have hit a little snag.”
Instantly, the mood turns, and Mark is looking at her, his brow furrowed with concern. “Are you hurt?” he demands. “Did you meet anyone?”
“Nothing like that,” she says. She pushes past his concern, driving to the necessity of her request. “But I got in the house, and Mark, I think it could work. It could be exactly what we’re looking for.”
“What do you mean?”
“An independent source of electricity, a functional irrigation system, greenhouses and gardens ready to grow food, a gas line that’s still connected, and months worth of shelf-stable provisions. None of it touched. Nothing spoiled. It’s been safe all this time, locked behind doors.”
The cant of his jaw changes, his concern transforming into skepticism. “Are you sure?” he asks.
“I’m sure. Big enough for us. Far away enough to be safe. Close enough to be practical. Easy to secure. Easy enough to adapt. Anspaugh’s been looking for a diamond in the rough, hasn’t he? A place to turn into a real hospital away from the worst of the plague and the danger of the mobs. I promise you, this place isn’t a diamond. It’s a whole damn mine.”
“And the catch?”
“The catch?”
He smirks, not as stupid as he looks. Not as easily distracted as she wishes he would be. “What are the antibiotics for?”
“The catch.”
“Yeah.”
“Right. Well, the catch is, the house itself isn’t empty. It’s the Carters’ old place, and they kind of left something behind.”
“Something.”
“Someone. John.”
“Alright,” Mark says, exhaling with the practiced patience of a father who has followed the rationalisations of his wayward child as far as he’s willing to take them. “Let me see if I have this right. You went to Oak Park for nothing in particular except the faint possibility of hope, and instead you’ve stumbled upon a cursed prince locked up in an enchanted castle? That about it?”
“I wouldn’t probably phrase it like that, but —”
“And your prince is sick.”
Urgency wars with pedantry as she grits her teeth. “Yeah, Mark,” she says at last. “He’s sick. Says he cut his arm about a week ago trying to expand one of the irrigation lines he’s got set up in the foyer, and now it’s infected.”
“Bad?”
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
Anna shuffles her feet and clicks her tongue, impatient. They’re wasting time just standing here. The generator flickers once more.
“Bad,” she finally admits. “I don’t think…he needs antibiotics.”
“Anna, you know we only use our resources on the people we know we can save. We don’t have the luxury —”
“What if he’s the one who’s going to save all of us?” she demands, stepping in front of Mark as he turns to walk away. “It’s his house, after all. He could just tell us no.”
Mark sighs, sympathetic, but resigned. “From the sounds of it, we won’t be needing his permission.” He steps around her, heading back to the main admit where everyone gathers at lights out.
“Mark!” She calls him back, then hesitates before she hits on one more thing that might sell him. “He’s a doctor,” she says.
Mark hesitates, then slowly turns to come back to her. “What specialty?” he asks.
The generator lights go out. It’s now or it’s never.
Anna lies through her teeth. It’s easy when Mark can’t see her face. “Surgery,” she says. “Benton’s always complaining he could use a second set of hands.”
A surgeon.
Well, a surgeon is worth quite a lot of trouble it turns out. A surgeon is worth the antibiotics. A surgeon is worth breaking curfew, forming a small crew, and setting off to retrieve only a hour or so after Anna’s previous return. They’re laden with the generous burden of those most precious resources they have jealously guarded for so long. To protect themselves and their treasure, their arms are further laden with a variety of weapons. Most of them are things repurposed. Anna’s axe. Doug’s crowbar. Malik carries a machete. He got it off a Body ages ago and has carried it, cleaned it, and sharpened it devotedly ever since.
Mark carries a gun. This is a last resort. Bullets are relatively easy to find, even in the wasteland of this city, but it is loud and it is rarely effective. Still, it frightens those who yet have the sense to recognise a threat. Even if a bullet doesn’t kill them, it can still hurt, and as John as found out the hard way, the smallest wound can become a huge problem without proper treatment. And in the restless remains of Chicago, only County stands as a place for treatment. Anyone seeking help there will find a cold reception if it's revealed they're responsible for the death of one of County’s own. So Mark carries it. Just in case.
Without the haze of twilight, it’s easier to see the path forward. Starlight reflects off the lake and the buildings. Anna’s grateful the night is clear for this, but a little bit of cloud cover would go a long way in assuaging her fear. Still, she thinks of John, of his eyes falling shut, of his hand clinging to hers, of him all alone, and she sets her jaw in determination. Though she couldn’t save any of her brothers, she knows, she knows, she can save him. She can give him a chance. And maybe it’s all meant to be. The house called to her with the promise of a salvation, and now she can bring salvation to he who’s been left there.
The four of them move silently. Caution and precision was their trade before The End, and they continue to practice it with diligence now. Doug mutters out some wry misgiving at her back, and she knows he’s itching to take a swing at something. Mark breathes out reassurances, urging calm, and control. Malik makes no secret of the fact that he hates this. As the biggest in the group, he knows he’s almost always going to be a target.
It takes them hours — more hours than it took her on her own — but they finally reach the outskirts of the downtown core. The roads widen. The sidewalks are lined with trees and grass on either side. The houses fatten and flatten as they seem to exhale with the same kind of relief her own little crew feels. By the time they come upon the private lane leading to the Carter house, Anna is practically jogging.
“Shit,” hisses Doug. “Slow down. Stay quiet!”
But her feet skip over the gravel path, kicking stones and scattering grit like sticks on a snare drum in the hollow of the night. She doesn’t listen. She pushes harder. Faster.
“Come on,” she urges as they come up to the fence.
She slides through with ease, but Mark struggles. Doug chucks his crowbar between the spindles and demands Mark gives him a boost from the other side, so that he can launch himself to the top and crawl over that way. He manages this with his typical athletic grace, and Mark turns next to Malik who gives him a look as skeptical as Anna feels.
“Don’t be stupid,” Doug huffs, grabbing the crowbar at his feet. Bracing his back against one spindle, he levers the bar against the next and leans on it until the metal groans wide enough for Malik to squeeze through.
With a few pained grunts, he manages it, and Doug steps back to evaluate his work with satisfaction. “Well, that does make me feel like we’re less likely to be ambushed by anyone bigger than a featherweight.”
“Come on,” Anna says, voice low and taut with impatience. “This way.”
She leads them over the grounds and round to the front of the house where she tries to point out the broken window she’d climbed through earlier, but it’s too dark for any of them too see. It’s pointless, anyway, she concludes, because she’s the only one of them who’ll be able to fit through it.
“Stay here,” she tells them. “And wait. I’ll try to let you in from the front door.”
She shrugs off the medpack she carries, and for a moment, she hesitates. It’d be faster to take it with her, to get to John on her own inside, and start a drip, start the antibiotics immediately. The front door is still choked by the welded lock, and even with her axe it would take precious minutes to hack away at it. And even then, the noise…the noise would be deafening in the middle of the night.
But she needs their help. And her loyalty to them comes first. And if John’s still alive, then he’ll need Mark more than he’ll need her. Don’t be stupid, she tells herself. Don’t be hasty. Be patient. Be cautious. It’s kept you alive, and it’s what will keep John alive, too. She remembers the foolish and hopeful victims of the second wave, too happy to be alive to be worried about danger, and she hands the bag over to Mark.
“Give me five minutes.”
She scales the pillar like she’s done it a thousand times, pushes back the rotting board, and squeezes through the shattered pane. This time, there is no light to follow her. But under the door at the far side of the room, there’s that welcome line of gold.
The chandelier remains dark, but there is a row of dim floodlights fitted at intervals along the crown moulding that show her the way from her escape route to the stairs and then the foyer below. She slips across the floor, down the steps, her footsteps silenced by the dust and the solemn hush of the house that seems reconciled to inevitable mourning.
The front doors loom large and solid before her. She turns the knob of one, shaking it, but it doesn’t even shift on its hinges. There’s no use wasting her time there when John —
Every instinct is screaming at her to check on him, to go look, to make sure, but she’s frightened that if she does, and if he is, then she’ll lose all sense of urgency or of purpose. No, it’s his need that is driving her now, his desperation which sharpens her and allows all possible solutions to take shape in her mind. Through the glass dome above, the moon shines bright. Pale shadows fall across the floor, moving like the ghosts of people who once lived here, waiting for John to join them.
She could break through the roof. Or, no, she thinks, wait — the irrigation. The tubing. It lines the hall. He’s diverting water, but not from the kitchen, not from the laundry. The sink, she recalls, ran dry. So it must be from outside. He’s bringing the water in from outside.
By moonlight, she begins tracing the tubing from one of the ridiculous rosebushes back to its inevitable source. When the light grows too dim, she uses her hands to see, holding on to the plastic like a thread laid down in a maze, not Gretel now, but Theseus. The myths come back to her, old stories made new. Life coming again, rising up like the dead, yes, but also like the living, always hopeful of finding a way out of the dark.
At last she comes upon a door that is latched only with a narrow stick jammed through a metal eye. She pulls the stick, and pushes the door open. A cool blast of night air throws itself at her as though in relieved welcome. She grins, then whistles out into the night.
A moment or two later, and the three men come darting around the corner.
“Here,” she whispers, ushering them toward her. “Come in, come in, come in.”
They pass into the house, one by one, and when they’re all accounted for she shuts the door and locks it behind them.
“This way,” she says.
John is worse than when she left, but he’s not dead. He’s not dead.
Anna holds a flashlight aloft as he shivers on the couch. He doesn’t stir even as Doug takes him by his good arm and starts palpating for a vein, not waiting for Mark’s evaluation to determine whether or not it’s worth the potential waste of the drugs. Anna’s grateful for that. She and Doug may not see eye-to-eye on many things but when it comes to aggressive risk-taking she can count on the fact that Doug will always try. Especially now. With a patient lying in front of him suffering, there is no doubt for one second that Doug won’t give it a try, waste and worth be damned.
Mark peels back the bandage, looking up to make sure Doug sees what he sees. Both expressions are grim, but Doug only doubles down on his task, tossing the saline bag to Malik, tubing flailing after it like a comet’s tail.
“Malik, you mind finding something to hang that from?”
“Sure.” Malik passes the bag to Anna as he shuffles off to find anything upright that might work.
A moment later, the CD tower gets dumped as he brings the rack back over to act as a stand. Anna watches as Doug slips in the needle, gets a flash, and starts the line. “That’s, what, 35mgs over every hour for twelve?”
“That’s a bit high,” cautions Mark.
Doug shrugs. “Let’s knock it out quick on the first go,” he says. “Wouldn’t want to waste it.”
If there’s criticism in that, Doug doesn’t pursue it and Mark lets it go, bent close to John’s arm as he cuts the threads loose from their stitches and prepares the wound for debridement.
“How old did you say this guy was again?” asks Doug. The beam of Anna’s flashlight has caught on John’s head and Doug turns his face into the light. “He looks like a kid.”
Mark takes one glance, then edges his voice with warning. “Anna?”
“I told you,” she insists. “He’s a surgeon.”
“What, is he Doogie Fucking Howser?” snaps Doug.
“Is that true?” Mark demands. His fingers are already covered with fresh blood. The gloves they use and then sterilise to use them again until the latex falls apart are stained red, and shine in the glare of the light.
She should lie. Stick to her story until John has been saved, and bear the consequences then. But she can’t lie to Mark. Not when he’s looking right at her, and she knows she owes him her life. She owes him everything. But John…
She’s spared having to answer by the patient himself, shrinking away from the light with a faint whimper. His eyes flutter against the glare, then blink open. “…’Na?” he whispers through cracked and broken lips.
Malik sighs. Mark sighs. Doug grins and catches her eye. “So he’s cute,” he says. “It’s all making sense. You know, Anna, you could have just lead with that, and I’d have still been on board with your plan.”
“That’s not —”
“I wouldn’t have. We should pack up —”
“No, don’t,” she exclaims. “You can’t. He’s a med student. He’s a med student. I promise.”
“Yeah? In what, his first year?”
“Yes.”
“Unbelievable.” Mark shakes his head, cursing between his teeth, but he holds John’s arm so tenderly that Anna knows — she hopes — he’s listening.
In the pause of indecision, Doug shuffles toward Mark, his voice pitched persuasive and low. “Come on, Mark,” he says. “We’re here now. Let’s give the kid a chance. Let’s save one just because we can, huh? For old time’s sake.”
With a sigh, Mark slouches in resignation, and Anna knows how he feels. He’s tired. They’re all so tired, so beaten by loss, and by scarcity, and by that persistent, insistent, irritation of hope that even a victory feels as overwhelming as defeat. And yet…hope rises up again.
“Besides,” Doug adds, his humour the only thing Anna’s yet found that is as annoying and resilient as hope itself. “Think about how happy Benton will be. He can train him up from scratch. Make this one exactly in his image. Just how he wants.”
“Yeah,” Mark drawls, openly unconvinced. “If he doesn’t kill him for incompetency first.”
By dawn, John’s eyes are open, and his fever’s down. He looks around the room with confusion, startled by the pull of the IV in his arm, by the noise of other people rummaging around down the hall, by the sweep of sunlight across the library, creeping up the end of the sofa and over his toes, warming him up as it goes. The terrible chills of the previous night have abated, and though he’s sore and tired, he feels better. Impossibly so. Like a miracle.
Beside him, the sun catches in strands of her hair, falling golden like ropes of crystals on the old chandelier. She’s holding something in her hands. A book. She’s reading. Yeats, he notes. One of his favourites.
At the rustle of feathers, she looks up from the page, setting the slim volume aside so she can better examine her patient. He blinks, owlish and young in the nest of his blanket, and she reaches out to lay her hand along his brow. A smile rises up on her face.
“There you are,” she says, as she runs her hand back through his hair. “What did I tell you, huh? I’ve been waiting.”