“Because I have a bet going with my buddy. If I turn into a zombie, he gets the last of my stash. If I don’t, I get the last of his.”
I started stitching up the deeper portion of it, half-wondering if his buddy was Pete. One, two, three, four… “So your weed habit is hinging on this.”
“Pretty much. I don’t have much left and I doubt anyone’s gonna be growing it anytime soon.” He peered up at me again, those big eyes pleading. “Am I gonna be cured?”
“Haven’t lost one yet,” I said, though that was a lie. Sometimes you just got to patients too late.
Not this one.
“But does this—” he gestured to the bandage, “—actually work?”
I shrugged. “At Elderwood, my supervising physician had us cut out the majority of the infection and use antibiotics to kill the rest. It usually worked.”
He latched onto that word. “Usually?”
“Usually.” I made the final stitch and decided I’d done a pretty decent job. Mom would be proud that I’d finally gotten the hang of sewing, even if I was stitching up skin and not throw pillows. “All right, I’m going to bandage this thing up and give you an oral dose of antibiotics. How many people are in Hastings?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Are you going to feed this to Gloria Fey? I’ll get in trouble.”
“Gloria Fey is in solitary confinement somewhere. I’m just curious.”
“Solitary…man, Keller wasn’t shitting us, was he?” Logan flinched when I began wrapping his arm, but he plowed on ahead, his tone almost determinedly cheerful. “There were a hundred thousand people living here when shit went down. Figure on thirty thousand dead from reactions, shit in the air, attacks, and everything else, and another ten thousand just missing…”
“Missing?”
“You know. Went to find relatives, thought they’d be heroes, or just went nuts and ran out of town. It happens.” He shrugged. “Still a shitload of people to protect.”
And I’d thought we had it tough in Elderwood. Hastings was the big city in the area, the cosmopolitan center of the Midlands Cluster. Hammond’s forces had been spread too thin just looking after a few thousand. Keller’s boys must have been going crazy trying to keep tabs on everyone.
“That still leaves a lot of people here,” I mused. “I traveled up through Elderwood and Muldoon to get here. It was empty, except for…”
“Zombies?”
I nodded. “I guess I thought Hastings might be like that. Or the rest of the world. I didn’t realize so many people were still alive. After everything, you get used to thinking maybe everyone’s gone. I have a bedroom for the first time in what seems like forever and it’s just…weird.”
He didn’t seem to know quite what to say to that. Hell, I didn’t know why I’d said it. I had learned early on as an EMT that you’re supposed to display good cheer with patients—or at least not let on how bad a particular situation is. That work requirement had carried on after the endtimes, when people came in fearing not just for their lives, but the fate of the entire world. I had been pretty good at maintaining that discipline with those I worked on—or had been, up to this point.
“Rough day, huh?” Logan asked.
“Shittastic,” I said. “And you’re only my first patient.”
He blinked. “Damn, girl. I’d have brought you a vodka or something if I’d known that.”
At this point in time, drinking on the job didn’t seem like an entirely bad idea.
He started pulling his jacket back on. “I haven’t been outside the city. Is it bad?”
I nodded. “It’s all warlords on motorcycles now. Or dead people. Soon enough it’ll be dead warlords.”
“Dead Warlords sounds like a metal band.”
I actually laughed. “Yeah, it does.” I almost told him I used to write for Rock Weekly and probably would have covered the infamous Dead Warlords, but something stopped me. Some desire not to play too much of my hand—not to reveal myself too much to someone I had just met, someone who might be dead by the end of the day through one misfortune or another. “Were you here when it all went down?” I asked.
His shook his head. “No. The Army didn’t move in on the Cluster until after the fact. As far as I know a few small rocks hit around the edges, everything came through pretty much unscathed.”
“I was stuck in an office building in Astra.”
This is what we call post-apocalyptic bonding.
He let out a low whistle. “I heard shit got downright crazy there.”
Crazy was one word for it. “I mean, it kinda burned down.”
Lattimore thrust her hand into the triage area, interrupting the conversation as well as any warm thoughts I had about the man I was patching up. “Vibeke, how are you with sick people?”
“Sick?” I asked. “Like…puking?”
“I give her two thumbs up,” Logan said. “Or I would. Can I use my arm?”
“Try not to strain yourself too much.”
He flashed me a grin that I’m sure broke plenty of hearts in his day. “I gotta get my sister in to see you,” he said. “She’s not feeling great.”