Ground Zero (11 page)

“You’re already doing it, Neil. There’s nothing else to be done. Her pupils are reactive, so if she has cerebral edema it hasn’t reached a critical stage yet. Hopefully it’s only the frontal lobe that sustained the injury, and her brain didn’t hit the back of the cranium as well. And hopefully there’s no internal shearing of the vessels. That’s all I can give you at the moment. Hope. It may be a severe concussion, and it may be a subdural hematoma. Without doing an MRI, I have no way of knowing, much less diagnosing an injury I haven’t actually seen.

“I would tell you to come straight back, but she shouldn’t be moved. And there isn’t much I could do for her anyway. Not without resorting to semi-medieval surgical procedures, because I don’t have the equipment I’d need to do things right. I don’t have any of the drugs that might help. There are a lot of differences between species, and the drugs that work for a goat aren’t necessarily compatible with human anatomy.”

“Just tell me she’s going to be okay, Annette. Give me
something
,” he pleaded.

“Mac is a fighter, and that’s about all I can really say. If I said anything else you wouldn’t believe me anyway. Keep checking for pupillary response with your flashlight. So long as her pupils continue to contract in the light, her odds are good. I’ll stay here at the house in case anything changes.”

“Okay, thanks. Can you put Cam back on? If anything will bring her back, it’ll be her daughter’s voice.”

“Mom?” At the sound of the new voice, she smiled. She
did
know her. She could picture her face even, though she didn’t remember any details.

“That’s it, Cam. Keep talking. She just smiled,” he said, and she could hear happiness in his voice, but by then she was too tired again. She just needed to rest for a bit.

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A bright light was shining in her eye. Just one eye, and it was really pissing her off. She raised her hand to bat at it.

“Would you
stop
that? Christ! I’m trying to sleep here,” she snarled.

“Mac? Honey? Is that you?”

“Who the fuck do you think it is?”

“I wasn’t sure for a while there. Then again, you didn’t seem to know either. I couldn’t even get you to tell me your name,” he said. “You didn’t know mine either, but I figured not knowing your own was a little worse, so I tried not to be too insulted.”

“Look, cowboy, my head is pounding, and I feel like I’m going to throw up. At the same time I feel like my stomach is gnawing a hole in my backbone. I’m not in the mood for lame jokes.” She cracked open her eyelid again to take in the bright light shining through the curtains over the small windows.

“What time is it? It looks like it’s afternoon out there. Why the hell isn’t the boat moving?” Her demanding, bossy tone had him chuckling.

“Honey, this boat hasn’t moved in three days, aside from being thrown around by that storm for a few hours. I figured I should make sure you were going to live before we got back on our way. I’m glad to see you’re back to your usual self, though.”

“Very funny. If you’re not planning on doing anything useful, like getting this boat moving, could you get out of my way so I can get some fucking coffee? I’m in desperate need of caffeine right now.”

“I’m not sure if you should be having coffee, honey,” he began, but she interrupted him.

“Caffeine works on migraines for scientific reasons I’m not inclined to explain at the moment, so I’m going to have some coffee, even if I have to go through you in the most violent manner possible in order to get it!
Capisce
?”

“Stay there,” Neil said with a sigh. “I’ll get it. You’re definitely not supposed to be walking around a rocking boat, chancing another head injury.”

Mac pondered his words. She didn’t like the sound of that, and began to wonder how many brain cells she might have killed. After just a few seconds, though, thinking became an exercise in agony, so she allowed herself to drift for a while. It wasn’t long before she began to smell the brewing coffee, and a sudden flood of gratitude welled up in her. Along with a helping of shame for being so mean. Granted, he was well aware she hated being woken up, and he didn’t seem to be taking offence, so she wasn’t going to worry about it too much.

The additional smell of toast had her mouth watering. She smiled wryly. It didn’t smell like it was burning, so she assumed there was no seizure coming on. Not that she had ever had one, but she’d known people who were epileptic. Of course, her one friend from years ago, who had grand mal seizures, never remember smelling a damn thing, so apparently it wasn’t an exact science.

“Drink this first, honey,” he ordered, as he walked through the curtain that gave the bedroom area some privacy.

“Wait a minute. What happened to the toast? I know you made some,” she whined.

“I did, yes. That was for me. This is some broth I found in the cupboard. You haven’t eaten in a few days, and at the very least you have a severe concussion. You’re not getting anything but clear liquids for a little bit. I have to make sure you can keep it down before you try solids.”

“I baked that bread myself, damn it. I should at least be allowed to eat it,” she grumped at him. Still, she took the broth and drank it. By the time she was finished, she felt full enough that she no longer cared about toast. Coffee was a different story. As she handed back the empty mug from the broth, she opened her mouth to ask for her coffee, but he held up a hand.

“Don’t worry, I’m getting it. It’ll be finished brewing by now. I’ll get us both a cup.”

She felt well enough by then that she started to think about what she remembered from the last few days. When she realized Cam knew about her injury, it got her dander back up.

“Did I hear Cam on that radio over the last few days?” Raising her voice so he could hear her turned out to be a pretty stupid move on her part. She groaned at the instant punishment she received for her actions, and pressed both her hands into the sides of her head to try and relieve the pain. It pulled on her scalp at the back of her head, though, and her breath hissed through her teeth. Mac dropped her hands back on the bed.

“Yes, you did,” he replied, though he’d waited to answer her until he was handing her a fresh mug. Probably thought she’d be less pissed off at him if she had her coffee, she decided cynically, but then he’d be right.

“Why did you have to worry her like that?”

“Are you
kidding
me? I needed to talk to Annette. I thought you were dying. I couldn’t ask for Annette without explaining the situation. You raised her. You tell me what she’s like for that.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. Fuck. But I’m going to radio her now so she knows you’re okay. Alright? It wouldn’t surprise me if this eases her mind about the rest of the trip, though. Once something bad happens, people tend to think the worst is over and they relax a bit. It’s not logical, but it’s human nature.”

“I sure hope so, because she’s already going to be pissed at me for this.”

“Oh yeah,” he said with a smirk.

“Gee, thanks for the reassurance. Before you get Cam on the radio, though, I need to go to the bathroom. I’m not even going to ask what happened with respect to that sort of thing for the last few days. I don’t want to know the gory details,” she said, with an embarrassed hunch of her shoulders. Neil just laughed.

“You might want to avoid looking in the mirror for a couple of days, honey. I set your nose to the best of my ability while you were out, but there’s a lot of bruising and still some swelling just from that. Never mind the giant knot on your forehead, or the tear in your scalp at the back of your head.”

“If my looks were the least bit important to me, cowboy, I’d have spent my life in total misery,” she replied in a snarky tone. “Guess I’ll just have to muddle along without what little I normally have for the time being. Seeing as it’s so vital out here in the middle of nowhere with most of the world already dead.”

“I’m just trying to prepare you for the stranger you’re going to see looking back at you,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “Sheesh.”

“I guess it’s a good thing I lopped off most of my hair,” she said with a groan, as she dragged herself out of the bed.

“Why’s that?”

“Because my head already feels like it weighs a hundred pounds without it. God. We really should have gone with a motorboat instead. I could have done without an intimate acquaintance with the mast. ‘Nobody wins with a head butt,’” she quoted.

“Is that what cracked your hard head? I was wondering. Figured it would take a large chunk of diamond to do that to you.”

“Nice to see
your
sense of humour hasn’t suffered from my head injury,” Mac said grouchily. “Course, it’s hard to take away something from nothing.” Then she stuck her tongue out at him.

“You’ve aged a bit, I see,” he teased.

“At least a whole year. I might actually act like a twelve-year-old at some point. Miracles do happen,” she returned as she stepped through the bathroom door.

Her bladder was speaking rather urgently to her, so she decided to satisfy her curiosity about her wounds after she was done. The shock that dropped her jaw when she finally looked, however, in no way lessened the horror of her face.

“Well, fuck me sideways with a tuna fish!” A muffled chuckle told her Neil had been listening for her reaction. She washed her hands, but didn’t even attempt to set her hair and face to rights. She needed a proper shower for the blood in her hair, and she wasn’t up for that just yet. A quick sniff at her armpits suggested it was certainly time for one otherwise, but she was already exhausted just from the quick trip to the bathroom.

“I heard Annette saying you used Superglue on my head,” she said as she sidled past him in the very short hallway.

“Yeah. I wasn’t into sports in a big way or anything, though I did a short football stint in high school just for the hell of it. We used Superglue for injuries a fair bit, just to keep ourselves in the game. It was either that or do the stitching myself, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“No, that’s fine. I was just surprised you’d think of it. Not saying you’re dumb. Most people wouldn’t. Well, if I had to tear my scalp, at least it’s in a place where the scar won’t be visible to scare small children. I have better ways of doing that,” she said.

“Scaring small children?”

“Yeah. Much more fun ways. Sadly there are so few children left to terrorize anymore, and Chuck won’t let me at his,” she said, pretending disappointment.

“Well, you can always hope Lisa will be more cooperative,” he said with a bit of a laugh.

“Doubt it. For some reason parents are protective of their young. And speaking of parents and their young, I guess I’d better get this conversation over with. Besides, I’d like to know what’s been going on at the farm.”

“I would, too,” Neil replied.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’ve been a little panicked about other things for the last three days, so as long as Billy and Cam were talking to me, and nobody had died, I wasn’t going to worry about it. Now we can find out together.”

“Oh, okay. I thought maybe you thought something was wrong, and that they weren’t telling you about it.”

“Not that I’m aware of, but now we can grill them like a couple of fish and see what they have to say for themselves. Will that make you happy? I mean, they’re not actual children anymore, so terrorizing them might not be as fun for you as, say, a four-year-old, but it should still give you a bit of a lift,” he said, patting her on the shoulder.

“You know me so well.”

10 ~ Blasting the Past

“Mom, is that really you?” Cam knew it was a ridiculous question to be asking, but she’d been terrified over the last couple of days.

“Why is everyone asking me that? Yes, it’s really me. There are no pods in the bottom of the boat, and I haven’t suddenly developed a super-nice personality or anything. Sheesh!”

“Honey, two people have asked you that question. Two. That’s hardly ‘everyone,’” Cam heard Neil chastise. Her mother hadn’t released the button on the mic.

“Fine, yes, it’s me. I’m okay, alright? What all is going on there? And why are you forgetting how to use a damn radio? You’re supposed to say, ‘Over,’ when you’re finished talking, remember? Over.”

“I’d think there are more important issues to worry about right now,” Cam said with a giant eye-roll. When her mother refused to say anything in response, Cam swore and then sighed.

“Fine. Over,” she said, exasperated. She couldn’t resist asking, “Happy now? Over.”

“You’re still doing it wrong, and I’m still a cranky bitch, so no. Anyway, what’s going on at the farm? Over.”

“We’re fine here. We’re not the ones getting tossed around on a boat, cracking our heads open, are we? Over.” Cam figured her best defense at the moment was a good offense. She had no intention of telling her mother or Neil about the sensors going off every night. They had more than enough to worry about, and there wasn’t anything they could do from that distance anyway, other than rush back.

“How are Pickle and Squeaker? They getting lonely? I hope you’re spending some time with them. Over.”

“I think they miss you, but I’ve got them in my room with me now. The idea of sleeping in your bed kind of creeped me out. I didn’t want to have weird images of the freaky things you get up to with Neil bouncing around in my head while I was trying to sleep. They’ve been a little bit crazy in my room, though. Really excited with all the new stuff to explore and climb. Over.”

“No doubt. Hopefully they’re not getting stressed by that. Even happy things will stress them out, so be careful. Bring them back to our room when you’re not in your own, so they have some familiarity while we’re gone. There have been so many changes for them over the last seven or eight months. Over.”

Cam subjected her ocular muscles to another workout, as her eyes rolled around in their respective sockets, but she told her mother that she would do as she asked. It was just easier to agree, and in truth she was almost as protective of the boys as her mother was. In the meantime, she had another topic she wanted to cover with her mother.

“I thought you said you were going to be careful, mom. This whole head injury thing doesn’t qualify. Over.”

“I was tied to the boat and my hair might have saved my life, so I think I did okay under the circumstances. Besides, Neil’s the one who broke my nose. Over.” The grouchy note in her mother’s voice made her smile. It sounded like she was completely back to normal. But the information about her mother’s nose made her frown again.

“Wait a minute. What do mean he broke your nose? Do I have to shoot him or something? Because I will. Over.”

“He didn’t punch me, for fuck’s sake. He just forgot to secure the door at the top of the built-in ladder thingy, so when the boat lurched the door came back and hit me in the face. I still have all my teeth, but I don’t think they’re going to help much with my looks at this point. My face is a mess, and I’m not sure it’ll ever look normal again. Over.”

“Serves you right. Over.”

“Look, miss bossy-pants, I’ve had enough of being lectured for one day. I’m going back to bed once I browbeat Neil into getting this boat moving. We should have been in Cleveland by now. Unless there’s something specific at the farm you need to talk to me about, I need to get going. Over.”

“No, mom. We’re doing okay here. Go get some rest. Over.”

After they said their goodbyes, Cam released the button on the mic with a sigh of relief. She’d gotten away with it. At least for now. The hardest part had been not snapping at her mother too much. Bitching about her safety was one thing, but if she’d shown just how tired she was, her mother would have known something was going on.

Only slightly less difficult had been convincing Gilles not to say anything, though in some ways she knew he agreed with what she was trying to do. If Neil and her mother came back to the farm to deal with the current situation, assuming it wasn’t already dealt with by the time they got there, it would mean them turning around and attempting another trip to Cleveland. It would involve more risk, and it wasn’t necessary. There wasn’t a damn thing they could do that Cam, Billy, and everyone else on the farm weren’t already doing, other than provide two more bodies for security detail.

She hadn’t slept much, and Cam knew it showed in her temper, but at least no one was questioning her on the farm. She was careful to discuss things with Billy, because they needed to present a united front if they wanted to keep things under control, but for the most part she was the one looking after everything and making all the plans. Billy seemed content to let her run the show, and Cameron had a feeling Lisa had a lot to do with that.

Cam closed her eyes and took what her mother called cleansing breaths. In through the nose, and out through the mouth. After five of those, she felt more settled, and the possibility of getting some sleep didn’t seem like such an unattainable dream now. Her mother appeared to have most of her brain back in gear, so that was one less thing to worry about. Billy was fully capable of keeping an eye on things if she crashed for a while.

Thankfully Billy was carrying a two-way, because she was too exhausted to hunt him down physically. It was bad enough the upper floor on this side of the house didn’t connect to her bedroom on the other side. There was a sort of catwalk, but in her present state there was no way she was up to doing any sort of balancing act.

No. Two sets of stairs were in her immediate future. The circular ones that would take her down to the bedroom her mother shared with Neil, and the wide, straight set that led to her own room. She could sleep in the bedroom below, but Pickle and Squeaker were in her room, and she felt guilty about them being left alone so much lately.

Billy readily agreed to take over at the radio, and his relief at her mother’s recovery made her smile. He was really a decent guy, she knew, and if he was content to be her friend or something like a little brother, they’d get along fine.

The fact that it was full daylight made it easier for her to relax anyway. The sensors only went off at night, so she didn’t really think anything would happen while she was asleep. Eventually she managed both sets of stairs, and after snuggling both ferrets, she crawled into the cool softness of her sheets. Her last thought before dropping off had to do with how glad she was her mother had insisted on buying really good sheets.
Definitely worth it
, she agreed in her head.


   
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

“Cam, are you there? Come in Cam!” The crackled, staticky sound jolted her from her sleep. She pushed up on an elbow, and peered blearily around the room. The sound had grown fainter while she’d been struggling to pull herself from her dreams. Suddenly she understood why. Squeaker had grabbed the two-way’s antenna in his teeth, and was making off with the radio to hide it in his newly created stash behind her dresser.

She wanted to smack her own forehead for not keeping it out of his reach. The rubber coating on the device had undoubtedly been a siren’s song of temptation for the little guy. He was the reason every one of the drain plugs in the house were the mechanical kind that operated with a little plunger-type valve. He’d declared war on all things rubber at the moment of his birth, as far as Cam could tell.

“Squeaker! Now I have to move the damn dresser you little bugger. You can’t have the radio.” So saying, she angled the dresser away from the wall, and then had to engage in a brief tug-o’-war with the ferret.

“Mine, Squeaker. Not yours. Mine,” she stated, and then shook her head at herself. She was trying to bargain with an animal that could not be bargained with, though she was pretty damn sure he understood everything she was saying. Ferrets were far from stupid, and her mother had always told her they were supposed to be smarter than cats or dogs. Considering their behaviour, that wouldn’t surprise her in the least.

Finally she managed to extricate the radio from the firm grip of Squeaker’s teeth, and pressed the button to radio back to Gilles.

“I’m here. Sorry. Squeaker stole the radio so I had to get it back from him.” Silence greeted her response, but then she heard a squelch and a bunch of laughter.

“Is that anything like, “The dog ate my homework,’ Cam?”

“That would probably be easier to believe. You’d have to know ferrets to understand why this is true. Anyway, what’s the problem?”

“We found someone near the driveway. He showed up on the cameras while Billy was keeping watch on the monitors, though he didn’t set off any of the sensors. He says he knows you,” Gilles finished.

“You’re kidding me. What’s his name?”

“He says his name is Mitch, and that he was married to your mom. I never met her second husband, and can’t remember what his name was supposed to be, so you’ll have to come out here to verify.”

“Holy shit! Let me get dressed. I’ll be down in a minute. If it’s him, my mother is going to be so relieved. Be right down.”

If she hadn’t been forewarned that it was Mitch, she never would have recognized him. He had wasted away to almost nothing, and he’d been a pretty big guy. Muscular, with a bit of heft, too. Now his clothes were hanging off of him, and he looked near death.

“It’s him,” she said to Gilles. “It’s okay.” Then she turned to Mitch.

“First, food and something to drink. Then we can send you off for a shower and fresh clothes,” she said to him. The relief on his face was immense.

“Thanks, Cam. I didn’t think I was gonna make it here.”

She led the way into the kitchen through the greenhouse at the back, and had him sit down at the counter’s serving area that separated the kitchen from the area with the partially-assembled pool table.

“From things mom has said, if you’ve been starving I should probably give you something light to eat at first. Otherwise you might just throw it up. We’ve got some veggie soup that will do for now. It’s got vegetables that are high in protein, so even though there’s no meat in it, it should help.”

She ladled out a small bowl and heated it up in the microwave. Serving him made her feel a bit funny, since Cam would normally have told him to get it himself, but even she wasn’t that heartless. She didn’t like him, and he’d been a dick to her mother as far as she was concerned, but now he needed help. Of course, it pissed her off that he was in this state in the first place, because her mother had made a couple of attempts to get him to the farm when things started to hit the fan. It was his own damn fault he’d ended up in this condition.

“How come that guy called you instead of your mom? Isn’t she around?” Mitch’s question raised her hackles, and she was leery of answering it, but there was no point in not doing so. He would hear the details later anyway.

“Mom will be back soon. They went to get Ian in Cleveland,” she said shortly. The microwave beeped, so she pulled out his soup and put it on the counter in front of him.

“Oh, thank God,” he said, and started spooning it up. He finally resorted to drinking it directly from the bowl, apparently unable to get it in his mouth fast enough. Not that she blamed him, but she was still a little disgusted. She knew it was because they didn’t get along, though, rather than a disgust with his actual manners. Generally Cam just wasn’t that picky.

“Too bad I couldn’t get in touch with her. I could have used the lift. I didn’t think anyone would still have a working vehicle,” he finally said, once the bowl was empty.

“They didn’t go that way. They took a boat. If they’d gone by truck, they could have been there and back in a day, but it was too risky to go through so many cities, not knowing what was happening in them,” she said, and went back to the fridge for a loaf of bread and some butter.

“I can’t give you a lot of bread, because grain is something we’ll be short on for a while. We just brought in the winter wheat, but we need to make sure the chickens and all that are fed from it first. We’ve got other stuff we can eat, but you’re still hungry and you need something a little bland right now. The butter is from goat’s milk, but I don’t think you’ll taste much of a difference.” She pushed the plate with the four slices of homemade bread toward him, along with the container of butter.

“You mean all this stuff is homemade?” His surprise made her laugh.

“Yeah, I know. Mom was never Suzy Homemaker, but if we weren’t making the stuff ourselves, we’d have starved to death. We’ve got chickens for eggs, goats for milk and cheese, and then vegetables, mushrooms, that kind of thing. Our first garden wasn’t that big. Just enough for a few of us, but we’ve got more than twenty people on the farm now, so we’re stretched until we start harvesting from the bigger garden.