Voodoo Plague - 01 (17 page)

Rachel staggered
under the sudden weight as John collapsed into her arms.  Letting him slip to
the porch she quickly examined him in the light spilling out from the kitchen. 
Two holes that looked like bullet wounds in his left arm bled freely, but
fortunately neither of them was pulsing blood like an arterial shot would do. 
Ignoring them for the moment she checked the wound in his chest.  A couple of
inches below his left nipple it was seeping blood and when she leaned close
Rachel could hear the whistle of air in and out of the wound.  Rachel had done
a rotation in the ER at Atlanta’s Grady Hospital and knew what a punctured lung
sounded like.  He needed a modern hospital and a trained surgeon, right now,
but all he had was her.  A fourth year med student that supported herself by
showing her tits and ass to men.

Never one to
panic in a crisis, Rachel jumped to her feet and dashed into the house in
search of first aid supplies.  Starting in the kitchen, Rachel ransacked every
cabinet and drawer without finding anything more substantial than a box of
bandages not suitable for anything more severe than a paper cut.  She set aside
a stack of clean, white kitchen towels and raced to the closest bathroom where
she found a plastic handled X-acto knife and a small sewing kit. In the next
she found more of what she needed.  Rubbing alcohol, gauze pads, medical tape,
antibiotic ointment, scissors, and a large vinyl bag with a heavy zipper. 
Inside she found syringes with unopened needles, a plastic baggie with a ball
of black tar heroin, and a spoon and butane lighter.  The spoon was stained
from cooking the heroin.  Zipping up the bag Rachel grabbed a towel off a rack,
folded everything up in it and ran back to the kitchen.

Grabbing the
white towels on her way by she stopped long enough to check on John.  He was
still bleeding and unconscious, his color not good.  Dog sat by his head, furry
hip pressed against him as he kept watch. 

“Stay with him,”
Rachel said to Dog and then sprinted down the lawn to the dock.  Dog let out a
low whine as if in answer then went back to scanning the area.

Rushing onto the
cabin cruiser Rachel dumped her supplies in the main salon.  A few minutes and
a pinched finger later she had converted the dining table set up into a large
bed.  She was still naked as she worked, but had more pressing priorities than
covering herself.  Besides, there was no one to see her other than Dog, and so
far he hadn’t seemed impressed with what she had on display.

She ran back up
the dock and lawn, pounding onto the porch and kneeling next to John.  His eyes
were open when she looked down at him and he tried to smile but it came over as
a grimace.  Working her arms under his shoulders Rachel pulled him to her and
sat him up, her bare breasts pressed tightly against his face.

“Come on, lazy. 
I don’t stick my tits in men’s faces for free.  You’ve got to help me out
here.  I can’t lift you on my own.”

John lifted his
arms and wrapped them around Rachel’s neck, worked his legs under his hips and
with her help stood up.  He would have crashed back to the porch without her
support.  Rachel slipped around his body to his right side.  Keeping her arms
wrapped tightly around him she looked up at him.

“Can you make it
to the boat?  It’s not far.”

“I can make
it.”  John’s voice was whispery and his chest rattled alarmingly when he spoke.

True to his
claim he stepped forward and Rachel moved with him providing as much support as
she could to a man that outweighed her by a good hundred pounds.  The going was
slow and had to be painful and exhausting for John, but he didn’t complain. 
They came to a stop when they reached the cabin cruiser, Rachel unsure how to
get him across the eighteen inches of open space between the dock and the
boat’s deck. 

John solved the
problem by pushing her arms away and stepping across.  He staggered when he
stepped on the boat, Rachel leaping across to wrap him up again and steady him
with her arms.  Dog followed a moment later and led the way into the salon
where John collapsed onto the bed as soon as he and Rachel reached it.

“I’ve got some
medical supplies,” Rachel started digging through the bundle she’d taken from
the house.

“No.  Get the
boat out in the lake.  I made a lot of noise and there may be infected on the
way here.”  John’s voice was getting weaker, the chest rattle worse.  His belly
looked to be slightly distended and Rachel was fairly certain he was bleeding
internally.

“There’s no
time.  I have to get your bleeding under control or you won’t make it,” Rachel
started to reach for the bottle of alcohol but John reached out and grabbed her
arm to stop her.

“If the infected
show up none of us will make it.  I’m good for a few minutes.  Get us off
shore.”  His hand slipped off her arm and then his eyes closed as he slipped
back into unconsciousness.

Rachel let out a
deep breath she didn’t realize she had been holding.  A couple of seconds of
indecision then she leapt up and raced to the bridge to start the engines. 
When she got there she said a few decidedly unladylike words.  The keys were
not in the ignition.  The bastards that had captured her must have taken them
when they docked the boat.

Rachel ran back
to where John lay unconscious, took the pistol off his hip, told Dog to stay
and headed back to the house.  She didn’t know who had been driving the boat,
but she would check pockets until she found the keys.

The first body
she came to was the man John had shot as he came out of the kitchen when the
fight started.  Rachel ran her hands over his body, finding Ford keys, a can of
Skoal snuff, a pocket knife, a battered leather wallet but nothing else. 
Moving on she searched each of the other bodies with similar results.  No boat
keys.

Standing in the
middle of the rec room Rachel was covered in gore to her elbows, but she
ignored it and tried to think of where else the keys could be.  She dashed
around the room and checked all the tables, threw couch cushions aside, and got
down on her knees and looked under the sofas.  Nothing.

Returning to the
kitchen she searched the whole room, careful to check the corners and under
furniture.  Still nothing.  Then she remembered the twelfth man.  The one John
had shot on the porch that led to the all-out firefight.  Dashing outside she
found the body and repeated her search, finding the boat keys in his left hip
pocket.  Raising the key up to the light Rachel wanted to shout for joy, but
her blood froze when a female infected screamed from the tree line not more
than thirty yards away.

Rachel didn’t
wait to see if there was just the one, or five thousand of the damn things
coming.  She jumped up, hurdled the small planting bed at the edge of the porch
and ran across the lawn as fast as she had ever run.  Another scream behind her
pushed her faster and she almost stumbled as her legs had trouble keeping up
with her momentum down the sloping lawn, but she regained her balance and
sprinted the last few feet to the dock.

The cabin
cruiser was tied to the dock at both bow and stern with heavy nylon ropes wound
around iron cleats that were bolted to the dock.  Sliding to her knees at the
bow line Rachel quickly unwound it, risking a look over her shoulder while her
hands worked the rope.  Three infected females were charging down the lawn, one
of them well in the lead and no more than twenty or thirty feet away.  The line
came free and Rachel scrambled to the stern line, tearing her knees and feet on
the rough wood of the dock.  The second line came free as the first infected
reached the dock and charged Rachel.

Rachel raised
the pistol she’d taken off of John and pulled the trigger.  The big .45 roared
and bucked in her hands, but she missed and the infected kept coming.  Rachel
had time for one more shot and took it, missing a second time, then the infected
was on her with a flying tackle. 

The infected was
unbelievably strong.  She was a small woman, easily six inches shorter and
thirty pounds lighter than Rachel, but she had the strength of a much larger
man.  Rachel fought hard, struggling to keep the snapping teeth away from her
flesh, rolling down the dock with the infected locked onto her.  She could feel
her strength going and knew she was about to die when a nightmare of teeth
slammed into the infected and knocked it off of Rachel.

Dog rolled with the
infected, flipping back onto his feet and locking his jaws on the back of the
female’s neck.  Gaining his balance Dog spread his weight across all four feet
and wrenched his big head to the side in a lightning fast and incredibly
powerful motion as he bit down.  There was a sickening crunch of vertebrae and
the infected went still.  Dog dropped the corpse and moved to stand between
Rachel and the other two infected females who had just reached the dock.  He
was a fearsome sight, hackles raised, head lowered, lips peeled back from
bloody teeth as he growled, but the infected have no fear.

Dog crouched,
gathering his legs for a leap to battle when there were two quick shots and
both females dropped to the dock, dead.  Rachel, so certain she was dead just moments
before, didn’t understand where the shots had come from until Dog whined and
she followed his gaze to the boat.  John stood in the door to the salon, rifle
still pointed at the two females.  For a moment he looked ok, then slid down
the door frame and collapsed onto the deck.

The first thing
I saw was a furry face and golden brown eyes staring at me.  I was on my back
and I hadn’t felt this tired since I had gone through the Army’s Special Forces
selection process.  Day after day of running, climbing, shooting, swimming, no
sleep, little water and less food.  Actually, this was worse.

I tried to sit
up and the pain that lanced through my chest convinced me to stay where I was. 
Dog whined and looked to the other side of the room where a rustling noise was
followed by Rachel leaning over me with a small smile on her face.  She was
scrubbed clean with her long hair back in a ponytail, but the bruising on her
face was a mask of ugly purples, yellows and greens.

“Welcome back,”
She said.  “How do you feel?”

“Like I got hit
by a truck,” I croaked, realizing how dry my mouth and throat were.

Rachel
disappeared for a second then she was back with a red plastic cup.  “Water.”
She said, and slipped an arm under my shoulders to help me raise up enough to
drink.

The pain was
something from another world, but I pushed it down and sipped from the cup.  I
could feel the coolness of the water all the way down my throat and tried to
drink more, but Rachel took the cup away and lowered me back down.

“Not too much
too soon.  You don’t want to get sick.” She said and set the cup on a table out
of my reach.

“Are you OK?” I
asked her.

She looked down
at me, smiled and shook her head like women do when a man is being a moron. 

“Am I OK? 
Seriously?  Are you OK?  That’s the question.  Do you remember what happened?”

I thought for a
moment before answering, “I remember finding you, finding the house.  There was
a firefight.  And I remember a guy with a big butcher knife in his back.  Was
that you?”

Rachel smiled
and laid her hand on my arm.  “Yes, that was me.  Thought I’d help after you
started shooting the place up.  You killed eleven men saving me, and you got
yourself shot in the process.  You’re lucky I’ve had some emergency medical
training.

“Do you remember
saving me a second time?  Shooting two infected females on the dock after I got
you to the boat?”

I thought about
it but couldn’t remember anything after checking the rec room and making sure
all of Rachel’s abductors were dead.  That’s fairly normal when someone is
severely wounded, but it’s still rather disconcerting.  Actually, it downright
sucks.  But on the other hand it’s probably not a bad thing to not remember the
pain.

“Nothing.  What
happened?  And by the way, how long have I been out?”

Rachel helped me
raise up for another drink of water then settled back into a chair, bare feet
up on the edge of my bed.  Dog sat next to the bed, chin resting on the edge
staring at me.  He was starting to make me feel a little self-conscious.

“Are you sure
you’re up to it?  You don’t need to rest?”  Rachel asked, pushing a stray
strand of hair behind her ear.

“I’m OK for
now.  Just tell me.” 

“OK, but you
just relax.  You’ve been out for four days and you still have a lot of healing
to do.”

“Four days!”  I
started to rise up but the pain reminded me to lay still.  “Where are we?  Are
we safe?”

“We’re in the
middle of the lake, anchored in 120 feet of water.  We’re not showing any
lights after dark and Dog and I are sleeping up on deck in case I need to repel
boarders.”  Rachel patted my rifle which was leaned up against a bulkhead next
to her.

“Now, if you’re
done with questions I’ll tell you a bedtime story so you can get back to
sleep.”  Rachel looked at me with her eyebrows raised in a quizzical
expression.

“I’m all ears,”
I said.

“About two hours
after you swam away that night I got tired of sitting on deck waiting for you
and went into the salon to get something to eat.  I had rummaged around and
found a trashy novel in one of the cabins and thought I’d stretch out and read
while you were off playing Rambo.”