Resonance, J. B. Everett [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

her, and popped open a sterile needle and tubing. It had been months since she had run a line, she’d been so busy taking notes and trying to figure out botulism cases. But she had a motor memory, and once she got started her hands remembered even if her brain didn’t.

 

The pattern worked its whole way through. So Jordan’s IV bag was hung before she realized that he deserved the same dose of Raglan she’d been fed. And she carefully drew up the dose, injected it into the bag, and quickly slapped on a piece of tape jotted with the medication, time, and her initials.

 

Jillian shook her head even as she did it. Who the hell was she writing it for? It wasn’t like there was another soul around here. And she wouldn’t forget when she gave Jordan the dose.

 

But it was procedure, and hopefully someone would turn up.

 

She was halfway out the door before realizing there was another problem in the tent. Leon.

 

With a grim set to her mouth, and knowing full well that she didn’t have the strength required to do it, she did it anyway. Slowly and surely. Grabbing at his ankles, she pulled him through the opening. Leaving a smear of his blood behind, his hands trailing, she wished that she had the means and supplies to treat his body in accordance with the laws of God and civilized man. But she had to clear the tent. She and Jordan had already been in there for several days with a rotting corpse.

 

She wondered why he didn’t smell more, before coming to the conclusion that he must not have died right away. But he didn’t have an IV either, so that would mean that Jordan couldn’t get to him before he fell.

 

When she cleared the tent, she stopped. Breathing too heavily, Jillian leaned over, her hands pressed to her bent knees. She couldn’t walk, didn’t have the energy to start IVs for those who needed them. But she could survey.

 

There were two techs nearby who appeared to have run IVs on each other. They got just inside a tent but didn’t get the flap closed. They were losing heat, but they were easy to fix.

 

Plastic cups adorned the ground, looking like there had been a party. Some crumpled, some just tossed - the GI cocktails. It would seem Jordan had been handing them out like Halloween candy. The fallen men and women were scattered like the cups. They looked tossed and forgotten. The only pattern was that they seemed to have collapsed on the west side of the campus, indicating that perhaps they had deluded themselves into thinking they could outrun the symptoms.

 

A few deep breaths tugged at the muscles in her ribs, stopping her and forcing her to do nothing more than look around for a few more moments. This time she saw brown dots beyond the tent lines and turned to look more closely. Chipmunks. Unlike the people, they had flies. She blinked as she realized one of the slashes of white was much smaller than the others. Her brain was caught in the question, and her feet moved slowly until she stood over what was clearly a fluffy white housecat. Its mouth hung open and all four legs stretched straight out in front of him. Her breath caught, jerking at her ribs again. Unused for quite a while, the extended movement hurt them. But Jillian tamped down the thought and the vision of the cat. She couldn’t help it. She had to get these people into the tents. And although Leon was by far the biggest of any of them, she didn’t possess the strength to drag them all, even just the few feet required in most cases.

 

She glanced up at the clear sky for the first time. It was morning. So she had a good portion of the day to work. And the people she left out would be getting warmer, at least for a while.

 

She needed a rolling gurney system.

 

There was a dolly and some rope in the supply tent.

 

A wheelchair would be nice but was too high – she’d spend too much time lifting people, if she even could.

 

She picked her way around, making promises to do something as quickly as possible as she stepped over the fallen. In the tent entry, she contemplated the scene in front of her. Then began loading the pieces she needed. Rope, several roll boards, Velcro straps, IVs, needles, tape … a box to haul the little pieces in.

 

She wound her way to the next patient tent, stealing the first empty gurney she could find and leaving the mattress propped against the support pole. She wheeled the frame back to the supply tent and went after her first … victim, she thought to herself.

 

She encountered him not twelve feet beyond the opening, lying on the ground, head back. She systematically checked his pulse, felt for broken bones, and shined her penlight in his eyes. She wasn’t moving him if he wasn’t worth moving, she thought grimly. And more time had passed gathering stuff than she had planned. But she would save as many as she could, and that meant staying upright, not wasting effort.

 

After a few moments she decided he was worth it. She rolled him, before realizing she’d never been taught how to do this procedure by herself. And with good cause, Who could havepredicted this? She stared at the bodies all around her.

 

This time she put the board in place first, then rocked her patient, quickly shoving the it behind him. She propped the two spare roll boards like ramps up the eight inches to the collapsed, mattressless gurney. With rope, she leaned back and dragged him up the slope, by far the most exerting of the activities.

 

But he was there, unaware of the abuse she had caused him and herself in the process. She popped him up and wheeled him to the nearest free patient space. Trying so hard to be careful, but having neither the time nor the strength to do much more than plop him onto the bed, she got her breath while she ran a line on him.

 

She injected a dose of Raglan for him, too. Then took a moment to gather her thoughts and her energy. Trying to be useful while she waited for her oxygen to catch up to her, she wrote the dosing repeatedly across the tape and stuck the tabs methodically up her jacket sleeve. Ready to grab when she needed them.

 

The only question was, would her strength find her or would she just get weaker?

 

Only one way to find out.

 

David woke from a solid sleep to the cadence of army boots on a wooden bridge. Or a woodpecker in slow motion, each peck echoing forever.

 

“Ehhhh.” It was a sound carried on a breath that rang in the hollowness around him. And he remembered.

 

Climbing up here. Going to sleep. Being certain that it had found him.

 

He blinked by force of will, the light blinding as he pried open his eyeballs. At last they focused on the floor near him, on the thing least painful to his vision. Wouldn’t you know it? The things he saw first were the army blankets made into the love nest where Jillian had curled into Abellard that morning.

 

Or maybe it had been longer.

 

He had been hungry when he came, but now it seemed his stomach had turned almost inside out. He knew he needed to eat, but it didn’t hurt, wasn’t even a bother. He imagined this was the way that people starved to death, knowing they needed food, but knowing there wasn’t much they could do about it.

 

He flexed his toes, his knees, his ankles, worked his stiff fingers, and elbows - all of it painful, but necessary.

 

Last, he remembered not a soul had been awake. And from the sound of it, or lack thereof, it remained the same.

 

He slowly pitched himself to sitting. The pounding lessened now, he pushed to his feet, swaying like the tall trees, a state he despised. Only then did he realize how much of his pride was embedded in his nature - that he was solid, unchanging, predictable - readable if you knew the signs. A David Carter the Second who wavered on his feet was none of those things and he fought for balance.

 

But he didn’t really find all of it. He lurched toward the door, throwing it open, not admitting to himself how much weight the doorknob bore while he turned it and swung it back.

 

He walked the few steps forward, unaided, until his shoulder banged into a locker he hadn’t realized he was so close to. With a grunt, he massaged his muscles, and walked again, this time trailing his fingers along the cool paint, the texture changing as lockers passed by under his fingerpads. The wall told him which way was up, and he stayed vertical this time.

 

His brain didn’t know what to do about it. Balance came naturally, it was like farting, you just did it. Conscious thought about walking was virtually impossible to a man who had left that up to his brainstem for decades.

 

The hallway down to the field was in front of him. There were windows lining each side, and from this height he would be able to see the white tops of the tents looking like Arlington Cemetery as they made neat rows across the soccer field. If he could get to the other side of the damn hall.

 

A deep breath.

 

Another.

 

And he started putting one foot in front of the other, stunned by knowledge that this was what it felt like to be an astronaut in space - no bearings, just sightlines. How did it work so well most of the time? David knew then that he had caught a glimpse into Jillian’s brain, her fascination with the human form and function.

 

At last his fingers caught the smooth surface of the windows. Cold to the touch, he realized that the school had kept functioning even without its people, the heater making a huge difference.

 

Under the guise of making a visual sweep of the tent town, he rested his forehead against the window, enjoying the temperature difference that felt almost like wetness. While he breathed, he scanned.

Nothing.

 

He sighed, realizing he wasn’t quite ready to move yet. And told himself that he should look a little longer. But the people where down there, and the food was down there. He would only get weaker while he waited.

Why the hell had he come back up here in the first place?

 

The cot didn’t seem like such a bargain now.

 

His feet followed a line, one arm stayed out from his side, at ninety degrees, trailing fingertips across the cool windows as he walked, leaving fingerprints he didn’t care about. The stairs got closer and closer, and David admitted to himself that he needed the railing. Son of a bitch. He wished this on his old man as he aged - this feeling of helplessness. And he wasn’t sure if it was worse that there was no one around to help, or better.

 

With slow even steps he took on the first flight. It seemed, as he looked down, that it had gotten steeper.

 

Every time his foot hit flat against the concrete step, the impact rang through his leg bones. His going was slow and he had to stop at the landing, his hand pressed flat against the cool window, supporting his weight.

 

And for the first time he began to wonder what it would be like when he hit the bottom.

 

Would anyone be alive?

 

Clearly no one was awake yet.

 

His stomach pinched, the tiny reminder that he should be on a mission for food. It wasn’t like the people were going to go anywhere while he ate.

 

He walked the level part between flights, one hand pressing against the small stitch in his side, a dogged reminder of his weakness. Then he faced the next set of stairs.

 

Again, he slapped his way down,