Dark Grace (14 page)

“Boggs, you’re not going outside?” I asked in disbelief.

“Shut up, Zoe,” he spat the words at me. “Just shut up.”

“C’mon, Boggs.
Just stop for a sec. You know going out there alone is suicide,” urged Nathan.

“Just back off,” yelled Boggs.
I hadn’t seen him this angry since the day I chose to face a zombie alone, risking my life and that of our baby.

“Adam, stop it,” said Susan.

“Fuck you, Susan. You’re just another bitch who’s screwed me over before.”

“Hey, uncalled for, Bro,” said Nathan, who was getting just as worked up as Boggs.

My best friend and the father of my unborn child hit the wall beside him hard with a fist, leaving a hole in the drywall.

“Boggs!” I yelled.

“What the hell’s going on in here?” I turned around and saw Gus walking slowly toward me. His voice was strained with pain. He must have disconnected his own IV line.

“What the hell’s going on in here?” repeated Boggs in a mocking tone.
“What the hell do you think is going on in here? You fucked my girl is ‘what the fuck is going on in here!’”

The room fell eerily silent, aside from the sound of little Jane crying in the back room.

Agnes worked her way past me and Gus, I assumed to sit with the girls. Susan followed her.

“I don’t think this is the best place to discuss this,” said Gus in his deep voice.
“You’re upsetting the little ones.”

“Fuck you, Gus,” spat Boggs.
“If you weren’t hurt I swear to God I’d beat your ass senseless right now.”

I heard Gus sigh and could feel his presence close behind me.
Boggs slammed his fist against the wall once more, not hard but as a show of some sort. He shook his head slowly side to side. “You fucked my pregnant girlfriend,” he whispered. “Christ, classy.” He turned and walked down the hall.

“I’m going with him,” said Nate.
“I’ll come back once I get him safe and settled down.”

Gus took a deep breath.
“Thanks, brother.”

“Let me come with,” said Linus.

Nathan looked at the younger man and nodded. “Bring your gun.”

I felt Gus rest his hands on my shoulders as Nathan and Linus followed Boggs down the hall.

“Someone has to lock the door,” I said, unable to find any emotion to add to my voice.

“Zoe,” whispered Gus.
“What happened, darlin’?”

“He asked if I slept with you.”

“And you told him?” he asked, his tone disbelieving and slightly scolding.

I turned around to face the cowboy who had only been in my life for a few months.
I looked up into his eyes. “I had to.”

I jumped slightly when the back door slammed shut.
I turned and walked down the hall. I opened the door and looked outside. The three men were walking down the alley. I could sense the dead nearby. I watched until they disappeared around the corner, and then shut the door gently and engaged the deadbolt. I leaned against the door and closed my eyes.

Eventually I forced myself to stand upright and walk back to the lobby.
Gus was sitting in one of the padded chairs and I walked toward him.

“Mind if I sit?”

“Please do. We should talk, Zoe.”

I sat beside him and leaned back in my chair.
“Pretty big mess, huh?”

“Ayup.
I’m mostly worried about you, though.”

“You should worry about yourself, Gus.
How are you feeling?”

“I think I’ll live.
It hurts like a son of a bitch, but I think Nathan got antibiotics into me in time.”

“I never meant to hurt him,” I said, changing the subject back to Boggs.

“You weren’t alone in what we did.” He reached a hand out to me, and I took it into my own. “We’ll all get through this.”

I nodded, but had my doubts.

Susan was far from happy with me and Gus, understandably. Still, her cold shoulder toward me was starting to grow old. It had been hours since Boggs had left, followed by Linus and Nathan. I knew she was angry that Nathan and Boggs were both in danger because of what Gus and I had done. I had tried to apologize to the girls, but Susan was adamant that I not talk to them until she figured out how to explain to them what was going on. She was their primary caregiver now and I had to respect that.

Eventually Gus grew tired, so I helped him walk to the storage room.

“I remade Gus’ bed,” said Agnes.

“Thank you kindly,” he replied.

“Gus, this is Agnes. We found her and her brother, Linus, in the sporting goods store across the alley.”

“Nice to meet you, Agnes.
Sorry it’s under these circumstances.”

She shrugged.
“I just hope my brother’s ok out there helping your friends.”

“Ok, girls, let’s go out to the front lobby and let Gus rest,” said Susan.

She and Agnes left the room, led by Jane and Abbey.

“I need to lay down, Zoe.”

“Can I get you anything?”

“Just sleep.
Unless you know what Nathan’s been giving me? I’m probably due for more antibiotics.”

“
Yeah, something called Cephalexin. I know he set it all up on the counter.”

He motioned toward the operating room doors with a tip of his head.
“What’s back there?”

“A surgical room.
It might still stink, though. Nate and Boggs and I cleared out a dead dog before we brought you over from the smoke shop. It was horrible, Gus.” I felt goose bumps rising on my arms as I thought about large dog. “It was dead, but it snapped at Nathan when we went to move it.”

“You mean it was alive?”

“It was one of them…the living dead.”

“Shit.”
He shuffled toward the double doors. “I want to take a look, ok?”

“Sure.”

I walked with him. Once inside the room, it smelled more like bleach than death. Gus looked around intently. I stayed near the doors and just watched him. He stopped near the center of the floor that housed the drain, and before I realized what he was doing I heard the sound of his urine stream, followed by a sigh of relief.

“You did not just do that,” I said.

He tucked himself into his pants before turning toward me. He smiled and winked at me. “Much better. When I’m a little steadier on my feet I’ll look for supplies.”

“What for?”

“Birthing that baby of yours. Let’s get back to the other room. It’s cold in here.”

He wrapped an arm around me and we went back to the counter where Nathan had set out supplies.
Gus looked at a few different syringes that had been labeled, as well as a small IV bag that had an empty syringe and two small vials sitting beside it.

“I’m going to mix up the antibiotics and get them going.
Do me a favor?”

“Anything.”

“If I fall asleep, wake me up when the bag is almost empty. Maybe half an hour.”

“You need to sleep.”

“Ok. I’ll teach you what to do, but if you need help wake me up.”

“Do you know where Nate got the IV supplies?”

“In one of those drawers by your knees.”

“I need to restart the line.
Can you bring a chair or stool over?”

I walked to the other side of the room where I recalled seeing a rolling stool.
I brought it back with a few squeaks of its wheels and placed it near Gus. He had set several items out on the counter.

“Ok, darlin’, I need you to tie this rubber strip around my left arm, above my elbow.
Make it tight.”

I took hold of a wide rubber strip and eventually produced a slip knot as he instructed.
He rubbed his skin down with what smelled like rubbing alcohol, and then used his free hand and his mouth to uncap a very large looking needle. I flinched when he punctured his own skin and threaded it into his vein.

“Ok, go ahead and untie the tourniquet?”

I did as asked while he held the IV in place. Before long he had it taped up and secured. He walked me through the steps of attaching the tubing that would feed the antibiotic solution in, explaining that connecting the tubes would be difficult one-handed. Before long he was lying on the air mattress.

“Ok, last step for now.
There’s a syringe of morphine on the counter. It’s labeled. I want you to push half into the IV now, and the other half just before you disconnect the antibiotics. Follow it with the syringe labeled ‘flush.’”

“What if I mess it up?”

“You won’t. Just do like I showed you, ok? I’ll get pretty sleepy for a while.”

I gathered the syringes from the counter and sat cross-legged on the air mattress beside Gus.

“Try not to look so sad, Zoe. Things will work out.”

“He’s so mad,” I whispered.

“I’m sorry.” He reached up and cupped the side of my face in his palm.

I tried to smile at him, but failed miserably.
“You ready?” I held the syringe of morphine up.

He nodded.
“Remember, just half for now. I don’t want it to hit me too hard.”

I wiped off a port of the IV tubing with an alcohol wipe, and then screwed the syringe on and slowly pushed in half of the liquid medication.
As I was following it with the flush solution, I saw Gus’ face begin to relax.

“You ok?”

“Much better. Hey, how did Nathan know how to do all this stuff?”

“He said when he was younger his brother had leukemia and he learned about IVs.
The rest, well, I guess he was a drug addict when he was a teen living on the streets.”

“We’re lucky to have him with us.”

“Yeah.”

“These dressings need to get changed soon.”

“I’ll get Susan. She did it last time so knows where the supplies are.”

“Looks like what we need is on that shelf over there.
Mind grabbing a few things? I’d rather just keep it you and me for now.”

I carefully stood up and walked to the metal supply shelf.
“Tell me what to grab?”

“See those bottles of saline?
Grab one of those. On the other end there’s some ‘a-b-d’ pads; grab three. And a roll of wide tape.”

I gathered the items and returned back to the bed.
“Anything else?”

“
Yeah, a pair of gloves. There’s boxes of them on the counter. Also a towel or something.”

“There’s towels in the cabinet by the operating room.
Hang on a sec.”

Within a couple of minutes I was back with the towels and gloves.
Gus had worked at peeling his bandage off, but left it covering the wounds.

“I’m not sure how bad it’s gonna look.
You think you’ll be ok seeing this?”

“Are you kidding?
After all the crap we’ve seen and done? Piece of cake.”

“Good girl.”

He peeled the old dressing off, wincing as he did so. “Son of a bitch,” he groaned.

“Gus, open your eyes,” I said.
“Look.”

He lifted his head, obviously in pain.

“They’re healing. They were twice this big two days ago.”

“Fuck me,” he said.
“I remember.”

“They’re green.”

“So they are. Same shade as your hip and Boggs’ neck.” He sighed heavily.

“What do you make of it?”

“Either the pathogen is still in the environment, or I caught it from you.”

“Boggs told me he’s had episodes of really bad anger, but can’t sense the dead like I can.”

“The rate of healing is incredible,” he muttered.

“Maybe it has something to do with how fast the baby’s growing?”

“Could be. Ok, darlin’, I just need you to pour some of the saline on the wounds then cover them with the a-b-d pads, and then tape it down.”

I put the thin towel from the cabinet on Gus’s side to collect spilled saline, and he turned toward me a bit to let gravity help.
I poured the liquid onto both wounds and wiped away what I could without touching the injuries. The actual bandaging only took a couple of minutes. I looked up at the bag of antibiotics that was dripping into Gus’ bloodstream. It was empty.

“Looks like it’s time for sleep.”
I covered Gus with the sleeping bag that had been unzipped to use as a blanket. I pushed in the rest of the syringe of morphine, used the flush syringe, and then disconnected the main IV line. Gus was already falling asleep, his eyes heavy. I leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. “Sleep,” I whispered.

***

Once I knew Gus had drifted off, I made my way to the lobby. Agnes and Susan were drawing with the girls, trying to pass time.

“Gus is asleep,” I said.

“Is he ok?” asked Abbey.

“I think so, Abs.
His wounds are healing faster than normal. I just changed his dressing, and gave him antibiotics and pain medication. He’s asleep now.”

“Susan said you and Gus made Boggs mad,” chirped Jane.

“Jane, shhh,” whispered Susan.

“It’s ok.
Gus and I did something and hurt Boggs’ feelings, Jane. Susan was right. We know it was wrong and we’re sorry.”

“Can’t you just say sorry to Boggs?” asked the little red head.

“I wish it was that easy, sweetie.”

We all turned suddenly, hearing knocking on the back door.
Susan was the first one up, followed by Agnes. They rushed to the end of the hall. The knocking came again, and I heard the door open.

“Nate!” cried out Susan, her voice full of relief.

“Agnes can you lock the door?” I heard Nathan ask.

The three of them made their way back to the lobby, and I stood.

“Is Boggs ok?” I asked.

“He’s pissed, Zoe.
But he’s safe. We found a furniture store about two blocks away. I think we should relocate. It’s a lot more comfortable there.”

“What about Gus and all the medications and things he needs?” I asked.

“Honestly, Zoe, I hate to say it but I think we better leave Gus here since Boggs is so pissed. We can check on him every six hours.”

“Absolutely not,” I said firmly.
“I will not leave him alone here.”

“I can’t leave you here alone,” said Nathan.

“Gus is here. We’ll be fine.” My cheeks felt like they were on fire. How could our ‘family’ be so ready to abandon us? “His wounds are healing fast. He showed me how to manage his IV and his bandage. We’ll be fine.”

“I don’t like it, Zoe.
Not at all,” said Nathan. “We need to all regroup, get some energy back, and move on. And as pissed as Boggs is, he’ll raise hell if I leave you here.”

“I don’t care.
He’s the one who walked out on me.”

Nathan put his hands on his hips.
“Susan, get the girls ready. I want to get them to the furniture store. It’s a lot more secure there. Zoe, I wish you’d change your mind.”

“Not a chance.”
I was livid.

“I’ll come back and check on you as soon as I can; hopefully tonight,” promised Nathan.

“We’ll be fine.”

“Agnes, can you help pack the food?
Leave enough for Gus and Zoe.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, above my swollen belly.
Agnes got to work without a word. I’m sure the situation was beyond awkward for her. Within ten minutes, I watched as they all walked down the hall, toting full backpacks. Little Jane took up the rear. As she followed the others to the exit, she stopped suddenly. She turned and ran to me, wrapping her arms around me.

“Zoe, please come with,” she whispered.
She clung to me, and I hugged her back fiercely.

“I’ll come find you guys in a couple days, sweetheart.”
I kissed her on the cheek and turned her around and nudged her toward Susan. “Stay safe,” I whispered, probably not loud enough for anyone else to hear.