Humanity Gone: After the Plague (13 page)

             
“Listen buddy, I don't wanna hurt you!” I yell. He lunges at me with a fist, but it's sloppy.  He probably hasn't been in too many fights in his life. I lean to the right, and he stumbles as he misses.  I’m not going to draw this out; my left foot kicks out in front of his ankles and he trips to the ground.  I pin him immediately.  I place my knee over his throat and restrain his hands.  His legs kick fruitlessly.  Now maybe we can talk.

             
“Get off him now!” a voice screams. I look up to see a rifle a few feet from my head.  Well maybe we can't talk.

             
“Woah, I was just trying to get him to calm down,” I plea while standing up holding up both hands.  My gun is in my bag and useless to me at this moment.  The boy gets to his feet and is coughing.  The young girls I saw earlier in the window open the front door and light showers the three of us. I can see everyone clearly now.

             
“Who the hell are you?” the boy asks. He may be around eighteen.  His shaggy brown hair falls partly over his brown eyes that manage to convey a burning fire.  He has a slim frame, but as my probably bruised face just learned, he can manage a punch or two.  I turn to the girl.  She’s around the same age.  Her hair is somewhere between blonde and red and... she’s beautiful.  Despite the fact that she is probably about to shoot me, she is a sight I have not seen in a long, long time.  I raise my hands higher and begin my plea:

             
“The name's Carter. I'm from the city.  I used to come here when I was a kid and I thought this would be a safe place to hold out until this flies by.”  They exchanges looks, and I sense that they don’t believe me. “I swear. I mean you no harm.  I saw the lights and thought maybe you could help me out for a few days.”

             
The girl begins to lower her gun.  The boy still looks ready to get that rock and try hitting me again.

             
“I'm as freaked out about how people have changed as you seem to be,” I say, slowly lowering my hands. “Please.  I'm an EMT and know a lot about this stuff.  I can pay you back even for a few days of relief while I get everything worked out.”

             
They both don't know what to do with me.  I can't blame them.

             
“You’re an EMT?” the armed girl asks. “The one girl inside is sick.  Do you think you could help?”  With my year of med-school under my belt, I hope I can.

             
“I will do what I can,” I say.  Never make false promises.

             
“Jocelyn.” The armed girl says, extending an open hand to me.  I take it.

             
“Jon.” He says, but doesn't hold out his hand.  I grab my pack and start to follow them into the cabin.

             
Jon shuts the door behind me and locks it.  Both of the young girls look at me carefully.  They are clearly twins.

             
“Ladies,” Jocelyn says, “this is Carter.  We had a little bit of a misunderstanding but he can help us.  He is a paramedic.  Carter this is Sara and Caitlyn.” I consider correcting her- I am only an EMT, but I hold it in.

             
“Delighted.  Aren't you both lovely?”  The one that Jocelyn said is Caitlyn definitely looks jaundiced.  She has already made her way back to the bed before we all take a seat.

             
I begin to explain my story to them.  Then they tell me their own.  Jon's demeanor lightens up as an hour passes, and that helps me to feel a little more at ease, as I don’t have to stay focused on him.  Jocelyn, however, continues to distract me throughout the night.  As I searched through the campground I imagined many different sorts of people I may have stumbled upon.  She never crossed my mind once.   They make me a small meal and feed me as we continue to talk about their plans, and they want to know about mine.

             
Jon really becomes more amiable when he learns that I know about survival: guns, animals, gardening, and especially medicine.  Most of it is a combination of the Boy Scouts in my early days and my love of the Discovery Channel.

             
After finishing a small meal, Jocelyn and Jon go to the corner and talk quietly.  The twins are both sleep at this point.  The sick one seems to look even worse.  They come back.

             
“Well,” Jon begins, “this may seem sudden, but we would like you to stay with us. You kinda need us now, and we are going to need you soon.  None of us have any clue how long this is going to last- but if everything you tell us is true, we have much more to gain with you being around.”  He reaches out his hand.  When I grab it, he pulls me close and lowers his voice. “And I'll be watching you, because if you do one thing to put any of those three in jeopardy – so help me.”

             
“I understand.  Thanks Jon.” I look to Jocelyn, into her green eyes. She blushes a little. “Thanks to both of you.”

             
It seems I’ve found a home.

Chapter 21: Sara

             
I think I like Carter after this past month.  Jon says that Carter almost killed Caitlyn when he gave her the wrong medicine at first, but she looks a lot better now.  Before Carter came, she’d been getting worse and worse for more than a week.

             
Besides, Carter’s been spending a lot of time with Caitlyn making sure she is getting better as fast as she can.  I like sitting with them and talking; he has a lot of good stories from when he was an EMT.  He said he’d often get called to this house owned by an old man who had frequent health problems, and no matter how bad the man was when he got there, he’d have a candy bar on the shelf for each member of the attending team.

             
“The first two times, we didn’t accept anything,” he said.  “Then, about the third or fourth time, he had these caramel peanut bars, and was really insistent.  How can you say no to an old man that’s on your gurney still wearing an ear-to-ear smile under an oxygen mask?  After that, it became habit for us.”

             
He has lots of stories like that.  I think the only person that likes them more than Caitlyn and me is Jo, but she won’t admit it.  I see her looking over her shoulder and smiling as she pretends to read her books while Carter talks.  Once she even giggled at a funny part about a story when he stayed at this campground.

             
“And just then, while we were sitting around the fire arguing over who would take the last strips of bacon from the cooling rack, a raccoon runs up, grabs the two pieces, stands up on its hind legs and gives us a look like this:” Carter held out two clenched fists as if he was holding bacon, tipped his head, shook it, and rolled his eyes.  His impersonation of a raccoon was ridiculous.

             
Jo couldn’t help herself.  I knew she had been listening, and she giggled with Caitlyn and me.  But when Carter turned around, she pointed, “I'm laughing at you, not with you.”

             
She’s out hunting again right now.  She still hasn’t brought anything back, but that won’t slow her down.  She’s said the same thing all week, “I’ll get one tomorrow.”  Then the next day, each time she left, Jon would remind her to be careful, and Carter would glance up at her a few times as she walked into the woods.  He has spent some time helping her handle the guns properly.  Carter has a little experience.

             
Jon has been working on basically two things: radishes and archery.  He’s set up a really make-shift target behind the house just next to his fields.  His “target” is more of a tall pile of dirt, and he aims for empty cans that he’s jammed into the side after taking out both the bottom and top parts of the cans.  He doesn’t get the arrows in them very often, but even from far away he hits the mound.

             
Today, Caitlyn and I are out back with Jon, pretending to write cursive in the dirt with sticks.   Really, I want to bother him and Caitlyn wants to watch the bow and arrow.  He keeps firing at the piles of dirt in the distance.

             
“Just another week and we should start to see the plants!” says Jon, pulling the string back for another shot.  We hear a muffled “thft” as the arrow embeds itself in the mound, just a few inches from the can most of the way up the side. I continue to bother Jon with all the things that I will try to make with the few things he planted.  I have really become good at making stuff up in the kitchen.

             
THFT.  We hear it again.  This time, the arrow misses by much more, and on the other side of the can.  Jon sighs, and I think I hear him say something under his breath, but I can’t make it out.  He drops the bow, not seeming to care where it will land, and unstraps the quiver from his back.  Without a word, he walks over to his bucket, picks it up, and heads for the lake. I don't think he is improving like he thinks he should.

             
“Sara, help me!” says Caitlyn, scrambling up and running over to the bow on the ground.

             
“What are you doing?”

             
“Help me put this on!  I want to try.”

             
“Jon’s not gonna like this.  He’ll be back soon!”

             
“I just wanna try a few.  Let me take some shots, and we’ll put everything back just where we found it.”

             
I look toward the trees where Jon went.  I can still see him.  He doesn’t seem to be moving all that fast, so we might have time.  “Okay,” I finally say, rushing to her side and helping her shoulder the quiver that is only a little too big for her body.

             
“Ok, go grab the two arrows out of the target for me.”

             
As I bring them back to her, she has already picked up the bow and is finding a way to hold it so that the tip doesn’t hit the ground.  She’s just barely too short for it to be straight up and down.

             
“Oh well.  I’ll just tip it a little bit until I… wait!  A chair!” She puts the bow down and runs into the cabin.  I follow close.

             
“Caitlyn!  Shhh!  Carter’s sleeping!” I say as we approach the front door.  She slows down, and we creep in together to grab the chair.

             
In no time, we have it out back, and she’s standing straight up on the chair with a big smile on her face as she pulls back her first arrow.  She struggles to pull it back all the way.

             
THFT!  I’m getting really familiar with the sound.  I tried to follow it as it left her hand, but it was too fast.

             
“Woah!” I can’t hold in my amazement.  She put the arrow right beside the can!  I look up at her, at the mound, and back up at her again.  “I’ll bet you can’t do it again!”

             
She giggles.  “Okay, you’re on!”  She reaches over her shoulder awkwardly, finally getting her fingers around another arrow.  She strings it, pulls it back, and fires again.

             
THFT!  I can’t believe it.  She put that one right next to the first arrow, except above the can.

             
She giggles again, just like last time, like she knows something I don’t.  Reaching back again, she finds an arrow more easily.  This time, she strings it much faster, and the draw is much smoother.

             
“Caitlyn!” we hear, just as she releases the string.  I turn to look, and I see Jon, standing with a big surprised mouth as he watches Caitlyn’s third arrow stick into the mound, just on the outside of the can.

             
“Caitlyn, did you shoot all three of those?” asks Jon, putting the pail down next to the rows of planted radishes.

             
She hesitates.  “Uh, I dunno,” she says, laying the bow down gently on the ground and fumbling to undo the quiver.

             
“No no, Caitlyn, I’m not upset,” says Jon, picking the bow back up.  “Do it again.”

             
“Huh?” she asks.

             
“Do it again.  Put another one in the can.”

             
Caitlyn looks at the target, then Jon, and the target again.  She holds out her hand and accepts the bow back from him.  He spins her around, pulls an arrow out of the quiver, still on her back, and gives it to her.

             
“Hold on one second,” he commands, hurrying over to the target to pull the three arrows out of the target.  “Ok, pull back, but don’t release.”

             
Caitlyn does as he asks and holds the arrow by her cheek.

             
“Ok, that’s just how you want your hand, arms, and shoulders to be.  Relax the string without shooting.”  He continues just after she’s let the bow come down.  “Bring your back foot out to your right just a little bit, and go ahead and shoot again.”