Deadland's Harves(71)

The woman—Brenda—was pale and sweaty. She was clearly in pain, every movement stiff. With a small nod, she let her hand fall to the side, giving Clutch access. Her husband stood tensely to the side, his eyes darting from Clutch to Maggie and back to Clutch.

Clutch gingerly lifted her stained shirt and then quickly dropped it, covering his nose. He winced at me before turning back to the woman.

He pulled out a small syringe from the first aid kit. “This will help with the pain,” he said just before injecting it into her thigh. After a moment, her features relaxed and she lay there limply. She looked almost peaceful.

He closed up the kit and pushed himself to his feet, using his cane for support, and faced Don. “I gave her some morphine for the pain.”

“Thank you,” Don replied.

As Clutch stepped away from the woman, Don’s eyes widened. He shoved his girl behind him and he grabbed Clutch’s arm. “What are you doing? You have to help her! She needs antibiotics!”

Clutch looked down at the hand on his arm and then pulled away. “There’s nothing I can do for your wife. And back the f*ck off.”

The man glared for a moment before lowering his head. “But Brenda…she needs help.”

“I can’t help her,” Clutch said more softly this time. “It’s too late. She has gangrene, and it’s too far advanced for anything to help. The morphine will ease her pain for a bit, but there’s nothing else I can do. Any supplies we use would be wasted.”

“Wha-what?” Don asked, seemingly unable to process Clutch’s words.

Clutch said it more bluntly than I would’ve, but he’d never been one for beating around the bush. He gave me a hooded, tight look as he set the first aid kit back in the Humvee.

The man’s bottom lip quivered. The girl hugging him looked up and whimpered. “What’s he saying, Daddy?”

“There must be something that you can do,” Maggie said, wringing her hands. “It was only a cut.”

“Wait!” The man called out. “Maggie’s right. There’s got to be something you can do. You can’t leave her like this!”

His daughter started to cry. Big tears rolled down her cheeks as she clung to his leg.

Clutch grabbed his rifle and shook his head. “There isn’t.” He turned away. “I’m sorry.”

The second Humvee pulled up from the other side, and Griz jumped out.

“They’re with us,” I told Maggie, though it should’ve been obvious.

“You can’t leave us like this. You’ve got to help my wife, damn it!” Don cried out.

Clutch ignored Don’s pleas and curses, instead focusing on Maggie. “Tell me about what happened at the Dells.”

She frowned at the change in subject, watched Don and Brenda for another moment, and finally nodded and inhaled deeply. “I don’t understand where they’re coming from, but there’s so many of them, and they seem to be coming from everywhere. We were so well hidden, we were so far from any town, but they still found us. We lost so many.” Her gaze fell and she shook her head slowly from side to side. “Too many.”

Griz came walking over, holding his rifle.

Maggie lifted her head, looked at Griz funny, and then broke out into a wide smile. “My, I haven’t seen a black man in months, and such a fine-looking young man you are.”

Griz raised a brow in amusement.

Clutch spoke first. “How far behind you are the herds, Maggie?”

“Oh,” she stammered and fidgeted. “They’re not far. Not far at all.”

“Exactly how far is that?”

Maggie didn’t answer.

Griz motioned to Clutch. They walked around to my side of the Humvee.

“We don’t have time for this,” Griz said. “Did you find any diesel?”

Clutch shook his head. “Nothing we could get to. You?”

Griz scowled. “It’s going to get hard fast without any power on the boat.”

“You heard the lady,” Clutch said. “We can’t keep looking. The herds are nearly here.”

“I know,” Griz said. “We need to be below decks and silent by the time they show up. It’s getting risky staying out here.”

Clutch frowned. “What do we do about these folks? We have the room, but we don’t have the food. Not since the livestock was destroyed. We can’t leave them here. They’d get slaughtered.”