by now. We can still help, and we will not abandon them.”
“You’re crazy.” Eric finally looked up at me, his face bleak. “This is crazy, Kylie. Everyone is gone, even Doc Adams, and he set this whole place up. You might not want to accept it, but it’s time to face facts.” He nodded at Maggie and Jen on the other side of the bed. “This is futile. We’re the only ones left, and we can’t save anyone. We lost. It’s time to throw in the towel.”
“No.” My voice came out flat, cold. “This isn’t a stupid boxing match. These are people’s lives. I’m not going to abandon them. Even if I can only give them a peaceful last few days, that’s better than doing nothing.” Eric snorted, and I stared him down. “But I’m not keeping you here.” I pointed past him at the entrance to the makeshift clinic, the opening covered with plastic strips. “You can walk out anytime. If you want to leave, there’s the door.”
He glared at me before he reached up and tugged down his mask. I could see the grim line of his mouth and jaw, and my heart sank, but I kept my expression calm.
“You expect miracles,” he said, taking a step back. Glancing around the small, cloth-walled room, the patients huddled beneath the bloodstained sheets, he shook his head. “You can stay here until the city crumbles around you, and the stink of dead bodies makes your insides rot. You might not have a family, but I haven’t seen mine in weeks, and I don’t even know if they’re still alive.” His face crumpled with worry and fear, and I felt a stab of guilt before he curled a lip and sneered at me. “So you stay here with your cadavers and the virus until one of them kills you. I’m done.”
He spun on his heel and walked across the room, pushed through the door in a swoosh of plastic, and was gone.
I wanted, badly, to sink into a chair, to rub my tired eyes and even get a little sleep, but that wasn’t an option. Glancing at the two remaining interns, I gave them what I hoped was an encouraging smile.
“Maggie, go check on Ms. Sawyer,” I said, and she nodded, looking relieved to do something that didn’t involve large, violent patients. “Jen, why don’t you check the supplies, see what we have and what we’re running out of. I’ll keep an eye on Mr. Johnson.”
They hurried off, and I hoped I’d managed to hide the worry and constant strain of keeping this clinic alive, the despair that another had gone, given up, and the secret fear that he was right. I noted the hopeless slump of their shoulders, the exhausted way they carried themselves, and knew they wouldn’t last much longer, either.
* * *
Walking to our tiny operating room, I turned on the sink and ran my arms beneath the cold water, letting the dried blood swirl into the basin. I glanced up, and a thin, pale girl stared back at me from the mirror, blood speckling her face and streaked through her fine blond hair, which hadn’t been washed for days. Dark circles crouched beneath green eyes, the telltale marks of exhaustion, her cheeks gaunt and wasted.
“You look hideous,” I told my reflection, which nodded in agreement. “You’re going to have to sleep sometime or you’ll be fainting on the patients.”
But there was no time for rest, no time to take a break, especially now that Eric was gone. This small clinic, hastily set up on the edge of urban D.C., was the last hope for those infected with Red Lung, the virus that had decimated the city and turned the downtown area into a war zone. Makeshift clinics had been constructed around the city to help with the overwhelming number of sick, but it was never enough. As more people died and civilization broke down, chaos and riots had spread rapidly with nothing to stop them, the worst of mankind coming to the surface. All the other hospitals had closed down, the dead left to rot in their rooms, or laid out in rows in the parking lot. As the city had emptied, even the other clinics had begun to vanish, the doctors and staff either dying or giving up in despair. As far as I knew, this was one of the last, but there were still infected people out there, and they deserved some kind of hope. Even if it was very slim.
Splashing water on my face, I rubbed my tired eyes. Now, if I could just cling to a bit of that hope myself.
“Hello?” A deep voice cut through the beeping machinery and coughing of patients. “Anyone here?”
I jerked up. Hastily I dried my hands, scrubbed the towel over my face and hurried out to the main room.
Two strangers stood just inside the entrance flaps, both young men, one leaning on the other with an arm around his shoulders. I blinked in shock; the second man had on a stained white lab coat much like mine. He had light brown hair and glasses, and even across the room, I could see he was badly hurt; his shirt was torn, especially his sleeve, and his arm looked as if he’d stuck it in a meat grinder. The other was tall and broad-shouldered, holding his friend’s weight easily. His shirt and jeans were stained with blood, though I suspected it wasn’t his own. His gaze met mine, dark eyes appraising beneath a mess of short, mahogany-colored hair.
“Can you help us?” he asked, his voice rough with worry. “We saw this place from the road. Is there a doctor around?”
“I’m in charge,” I said, stepping forward. “But this is a quarantined zone. You can’t be here—you’ll both be exposed to the virus.”
“Please.” His brown eyes grew pleading, and he glanced down at his friend, who seemed barely conscious, hanging from his shoulders. “There’s nowhere else to go—the other hospitals are empty. He’ll die.”
I sighed and gave a brisk nod. “In here,” I ordered, and he followed me into the operating room, hefting his friend onto the table as gently as he could. The other moaned, delirious, and his arm flopped to the counter. His skin was flushed, feverish, his face tight with pain.
I cut away his shirt and coat, revealing an upper torso that was pale and slightly overweight, but he didn’t seem to be wounded anywhere else. I would examine him thoroughly later, but the arm was the most pressing concern. Gently, I lifted the mangled limb from the table to study it. Several torn, bloody holes ran up the limb from wrist to elbow. The flesh around the wounds was hot and puffy, deep punctures well on their way to infection.
“These are teeth marks,” I said, frowning at the strangely symmetrical patterns through the mess of blood and shredded skin. “What attacked him?”
“I don’t know.” The voice behind me was husky, evasive, but I wasn’t really listening. I studied the arm further, trying to match the bite patterns with what I’d seen before: dogs, cats, even a horse, once. Nothing fit.
Except...
“These...almost look like human bite marks.” But that wasn’t right, either, not with this type of deep puncture wound. The thing that had left these marks had long canines like a predator. Human teeth were not capable of this.
The stranger’s voice was stiff, uncomfortable. “Can you save him?”
“I’ll try.” Turning, I fixed the stranger with a firm stare. He gazed back, eyes hooded. “What is your relation to this man, Mr....?”
“Archer. Ben Archer. And we’re not related.” He nodded to the body on the table. “Nathan and I... I worked for him. He’s a friend.”
“All right, Mr. Archer. Not to be rude, but you can either help me or get out. I can’t be tripping over you every time I turn around. If you think you can take direction and do exactly as I tell you, you’re welcome to stay.”
He nodded. I
