Love in an Undead Age, A.M. Geever [best contemporary novels txt] 📗

A bright sunlit room and a damp piney smell—definitely not home. Mario opened his eyes a little more and looked at the roughly hewn timbers of the ceiling. Right, tree house people. He pushed aside the woven wool blanket and sheet that covered him and sat up. His ribs screamed.

In the corner, a fire crackled inside the wood-burning stove, the radiating heat making the room almost comfortable. Two more cots were lined up perpendicular to the wall before a screen blocked Mario’s view. Above every cot hung a flat wooden figure with arms held high, outlined in white, a crucifix of some sort. Mario looked around but did not see Miranda anywhere.

He cradled his injured arm, now in a sling, against his body. His arm and shoulder hurt even more than before, which he had not thought possible. He shuffled to the other side of the screen where he found three more cots. A young girl lay asleep in the cot farthest away from the screen. The middle cot had the blankets tucked, but not neatly. Maybe Seffie had slept there, but she was not around now. Miranda slept in the cot next to the screen.

Her leg was propped high to help the swelling. He remembered something about no ice, and he’d bathed after being examined, then changed into the pajama-like clothes he now wore. He must have conked out almost immediately after being steered into bed because he did not remember anything after finishing a cup of bitter-tasting tea that the doctor had given him. He’d drunk it only after being assured that the others would at least stop by the infirmary again after meeting this Prophet.

Miranda’s foot stuck out beyond the edge of the blanket, but a thick wooly sock had been put over it. Even with the sock, he could tell the swelling in her ankle was bad. Delilah opened a curious eye from where she lay under Miranda’s cot before her tail began thumping against the floor. She rose and nuzzled Mario’s hands and knees in greeting. Mario fussed over her quietly, scratching her ears and getting a few kisses in return, before she went back to guard her mistress.

You always were a faithful one, Liley, he thought, a faint smile touching his lips as he sat in the cot opposite Miranda.

Mario studied Miranda’s face as she slept. Dark smudges ringed her eyes, her cheeks flushed bright pink. Her brow furrowed slightly and her lip pursed in a pout, like she was figuring something out as she dreamed. The buzz cut cast her head in a red-gold glow. Mario resisted the urge to rub his hand over it. He’d only wake her up, and with how things were between them, she’d likely break his hand.

“You’d never think she’s such a pain in the ass to look at her now,” he sighed.

“Really?”

Mario startled, then looked up to see the doctor standing beside him. “I didn’t think anyone was here,” he said, rising to his feet. The doctor motioned for him to follow her to the examination area.

“How is she?” he asked.

“A severely sprained knee and ankle, maybe some ligament involvement. I’m pretty certain she has a hairline fracture of the tibia given the severity of swelling, and since she can’t tolerate any weight, but without an x-ray that’s just an educated guess.” The doctor shrugged. “Either way, she’ll be off her feet for at least a week to ten days.”

“A whole week?”

“At least. I didn’t design the human body. I just give the bad news.”

She directed him to an exam table and helped pull his shirt over his head. “How are you feeling?”

“Better, but still exhausted,” Mario answered. “How long was I asleep?”

“Almost twenty hours.” She grinned at his surprised expression. It made her look almost pretty.

Mario submitted to pokes and prods, requests for deep breaths, and to follow her finger with his eyes without moving his head. Bethany (she had to remind him of her name) seemed to be in her forties and told him she was a pediatrician. Her blond hair was shot through with gray, but the silvery, pretty kind, pulled back in a bun. She was friendly and even displayed touches of humor, but the smiles never quite reached her faded denim-blue eyes.

She found more tender spots than the night before as she palpated the shoulder and elbow of his injured arm, pointing out how swollen they were. Mario had not noticed, but it seemed like every part of his body hurt.

“Your elbow and shoulder are some of the worst sprains I’ve seen. Is this the arm you used to catch the girl who fell off the roof?” Bethany asked as she inspected his gunshot wound.

Mario nodded rather than try to talk around the mercury thermometer Bethany had stuck in his mouth.

“Any longer and I think your shoulder would have dislocated. You’re going to have to wear this arm in a sling for a week or so. I’ll irrigate this wound again in a few hours.”

She took the thermometer from his mouth, then frowned. “Hundred point two. Your temperature hasn’t gone down.” Her voice quieted to almost a whisper. “If I had antibiotics, I’d give you some.”

“I have some in my pack.”

“Shh!” Bethany’s face clouded over. She shot a furtive look at the far side of the room, where Miranda and the girl slept. “Keep your voice down. Pills or injectable?”

“Both,” Mario answered, beginning to feel wary.

“Don’t tell anyone you have them,” she said, her voice just shy of a whisper. “You have syringes? Are they glass?”

Her voice brimmed with tempered hope. At his nod, her face lit up just for a moment before she shot another furtive look at the girl in the cot, then at the door. “Where are they in your pack?”

“I’ll get them,” Mario said, now fully on guard. He began to climb down from the exam table.

“No. Stay there in case someone comes in.”

It was the look on her face that made him agree. She looked scared. Mario told her the color of the antibiotic vials, since they were different than the serum vials. Bethany pulled two mugs from a cupboard and put a spoonful of what looked like dried herbs in both. She filled a small camping-style enameled kettle from a pitcher on the windowsill.

She spoke softly as she walked by. “To sterilize,” she said, leaving what needed sterilizing unsaid. At a regular volume, she said, “Let’s have tea.”

Mario’s mind raced as he watched her cross to the wood-burning stove and set the kettle on it before continuing over to his cot. Bethany was making tea as cover? She had been excited that the syringes were glass. You can sterilize glass and use it again, he thought. Plastic syringes were impossible to sterilize but had been cheaper in the old world, the disposable world of single-use everything. Bethany spoke softly but never whispered. She must know that whispers carry more than a lowered voice.

First Doug’s warning about not leaving Miranda or Seffie alone, and now a doctor who acted as if she was being spied on and didn’t want anyone to know about antibiotics and syringes.

What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?

Mario heard Bethany rifling through his things before she reappeared from behind the screen a moment later with her hands tucked in the slightly bulging pockets of her smock. She crossed back to the counter where the cups were, gave the sleeping girl a quick glance, using her body to block the drawer she opened. Mario craned his neck and saw her remove a false back. She stuffed everything inside, including a flash of red.

She had taken the serum vials.

Bethany looked over to him, as if she sensed the angry protest he didn’t dare let pass his lips.

“I took everything,” she said when she was beside him again. “I’m surprised they haven’t searched your packs already.”

Mario glanced at the sleeping girl. Bethany’s paranoia was infectious.

“Where’s Miranda’s pack?”

“She didn’t have one.”

“Yes, she did,” he insisted.

Bethany shook her head, adamant. “She only had the dog.”

She’s right, Mario realized, his heart sinking. Doug had her pack.

Bethany slid the false back into place and pushed the drawer shut, then rejoined him at the exam table.

“You have more than antibiotics there.”

Mario didn’t reply.

She let it go, willing to let him keep his secret. She picked up the wraparound smock he had been wearing and said, as if the last two minutes had never happened, “Let’s get you back into this.”

Mario grabbed the smock. “What the hell is going