Unknown - The_Growing_589064

Dakota responds with a small smile. “Can you tell me your name, little one?”

“He’kase,” the girl whispers, voice cracked and dry. Allen murmurs in surprise. It’s the first time the girl has spoken since they found her two days ago. Dakota shoots the colonel a look, then gazes back down at her tiny patient.

“I’m happy to meet you, He’kase,” she intones softly.

The young girl’s eyes widen as Dakota bends slightly forward, causing her medicine pouch to slip past the buttons of her shirt. A small, pudgy arm reaches up to brush trembling fingers reverently against the deerhide pouch, causing it to swing slightly.

Dakota smiles. “Can you do me a favor, He’kase?”

The little girl nods somberly.

Reaching up, Koda slips the pouch over her head and presses it into the girl’s hand. “Can you keep this safe for me? I don’t want it to get in the way when I look at your leg, okay?”

He’kase nods again, eyes shining with a light that goes beyond the fever eating at her bones. She holds the pouch tight against her chest, covering it with both hands.

“Thank you.”

Stepping down to the foot of the cot, Dakota gently lifts the sheet away from He’kase’s legs. The high, powerful smell of raging infection wafts out from beneath the sheet, causing Maggie to cough softly and turn away for a long moment. She turns back to see Dakota eyeing her, and tries out a weak smile. “I’m okay.”

Dakota looks at her for a moment longer before finally returning her attention to her patient.

He’kase’s left thigh is swollen, taut and shiny. Dakota tenderly unwraps the blood encrusted bandage and pulls it away, exposing the wound. The young girl moans in pain, but keeps remarkably still, her trust in Dakota plainly evident.

There is a grotesque starburst of black, purple, red and green surrounding what can only be a bullet hole, black and charred against her tender flesh. The wound seeps blood and a thick green pus that eats into the flesh beyond.

Dakota feels the rage flash through her again, a raging see of red, but she tamps it down with savage intent, her fingers gentle against He’kase’s skin. She can feel a weak, thready pulse both behind the knee and in the foot, the thinks that there’s a fair chance to save the leg if the wound can be properly drained and cleansed.

After another moment, she replaces the sheet, and smiles up at the somber child. Reaching down, she hefts her kit, unbuckles the straps, and looks inside for what she needs. A vial of clear liquid sits close by a number of syringes. She removes both vial and syringe and sets them on the table next to the cot.

“Sweetheart, I’m going to give you some medicine. It will help take the pain away, and it might make you sleepy, but that’s okay.”

He’kase’s eyes move from the syringe to Dakota and back again. She swallows once, then nods her quiet acceptance. She doesn’t even flinch when the needle pierces her skin and the stinging fluid burns its way into her muscle.

Disposing of the syringe, Dakota walks again to the head of the cot and, smiling slightly, she tenderly brushes the thick, sweaty bangs from He’kase’s forehead. After a moment, the girl’s eyes close and she falls into a deep, troubled sleep, the medicine pouch cradled safely between her hands.

Maggie quietly approaches, laying a hand on Dakota’s shoulder. She can feel the anger coursing through the tall vet, an anger she knows all too well. Straightening to her full height, Dakota looks down at the Air Force Colonel, her face a stony mask.

“We found her inside a ranch house about five miles south of here,” Allen begins. “Her family, what was left of it, were butchered, like cattle.” She takes in a deep breath, then lets it out slowly, trying to cool her own rage. “We found her halfway underneath what we assumed to be her father. He was obviously trying to protect her, and I can only guess that those bastards thought they’d done their job. By the time we got there….” She sighs again. “She was already like this. We did the best we could, but….” Her hands lift, as if in supplication to an uncaring god.

“I’ll need some help.”

“I can….”

“No, you’ve got a camp to run. If you could get Manny? He used to help me in the clinic when he was younger. I don’t think he’s forgotten what to do.”

Maggie nods. “I’ll get him for you right away.”

“Thanks.”

“No,” Allen replies. “Thank you.”

6

The road is clear for the rest of the morning. Toward midday, the sky begin to clear, showing streaks of bright blue through the flat grey of the clouds. The glint of the sun off ice is almost a shock, and Kirsten fumbles one-handed in her pack for her dark glasses. Asimov has stretched out across the bench seat with his hind feet in her lap and is snoring and twitching by turns as he chases rabbits or Frisbees or the neighbors’ female golden retriever in his doggy dreams.

The breaking clouds mean increasing cold come nightfall. She will have to find some better shelter than the van for the night or expend precious fuel to run the heater. She does not particularly care for the idea of sipping Shamrock through a straw again if she can help it. “Damn,” Kirsten mutters to the oblivious Asimov. “I never thought I’d miss Motel 6.”

Or maybe she need not miss it. An empty, deserted motel just might offer possibilities. Better, yet, an abandoned house. She is passing through Ohio farm country, small towns slipping past along the Interstate like beads on a string. Many of these homes, built in the previous century, will have working fireplaces, complete with a couple cords of wood piled outside.

Many of them will be tenanted by the dead, murdered and left where they fell. Kirsten’s hands flex against the steering wheel , tighten. She can deal with death. She has dealt with it. At least here, after several days and nights of snow and ice with the utilities out, the dead will be decently frozen. Grotesque, perhaps; an offense to the eyes but not to the nose and stomach.

For the first time, she spares a thought for her future self. What will she be when the world is set to rights, assuming it can be?

But that one’s easy. Dead, probably.

Dead long before.

At Zaneville, Kirsten turns off the freeway onto state roads. They will be snowed over and more dangerous, will slow her down even more than the sheen of ice on the Interstate. But they will lead her around Columbus and its suburbs in a wide arc to the south. Even more important, they will lead her around Wright Patterson AFB, where droids are likely to be concentrated. Pulling off into the shelter of a derelict Whataburger beside the exit ramp, Kirsten maps out the route she will take, west and south. There are, she notes, a number of state parks associated with early Native American ruins scattered throughout the Hopewell valley. They might be an even better prospect for overnight than deserted farmhouses. Most had cabins, and most of those cabins would have fireplaces or wood stoves. Because they would have been sparsely populated at best at this season, they would have drawn minimal attention from raiders. Certainly there would be no reason for the droids to stake them out or occupy them. The danger, if any, would come from other refugees like herself.

Highway 22 winds through vacant farmland, the fields blanketed with knee-high drifts of snow. The trees stand bare to the winds, skeletal shapes against the western sky as the sun stands down toward evening. Here and there a dark shape perches in the branches, head hunched down into its shoulders; sometimes there are two huddled together. Owls or ravens—she cannot be sure at the distance. Except for the growl of the truck’s engine and Asimov’s occasional whine as a foraging hare makes its way laboriously through the snow, the landscape is utterly silent.