Chapter 7 #2
Mrs. Creeley regarded her with a perplexed expression. “I’m not alone. Harb’s here. Thank you kindly but no need to concern yourself with us.” She strolled along the flower bed, setting down the can to pull a weed and toss it aside with a sniff.
“Harb?” Ryan asked.
“My husband.” Her answer was cheerful.
Tamsyn heard the moaning and growling of an approaching infected and pivoted, blaster at the ready, but there was no one in the street.
A series of thumps sounded from inside the house, coming from the upstairs bedroom and the growl rose to a shriek.
Appalled, mouth open in surprise, she gawked at Mrs. Creeley.
“There he is now,” Mrs. Creeley said calmly. “Not up to visitors today I’m afraid, Tamsyn dear. Maybe another time.”
“You’re keeping an infected inside the house?” Jeff asked in total disbelief.
“He caught the flu like everyone else, you know. Except me. After all those years teaching school my immune system is tougher than any virus. He would go and volunteer at the hospital and I’m afraid someone bit him. He’ll be fine,” she said, nodding to herself. “It takes a long time to recuperate.”
“Mrs. Creeley, he isn’t ever going to recover,” Tamsyn said. “He’s dangerous to you. The infected don’t remember who they were or who anyone else was—”
“Don’t be silly, we’ve been married for fifty-two years, of course he knows who I am.
” Hands on her hips, Mrs. Creeley trembled with indignation.
“The vows are for sickness and health, you know.” She looked at the two soldiers behind Tamsyn and seemed to register for the first time the fact they all held blasters at the ready.
She retreated, hands out as if to ward them off.
“You’re not here to hurt my Harb, are you?
I won’t let you touch him!” Turning, she scampered up her stairs and through the front door, slamming it hard.
Tamsyn heard the three locks engaging, one by one, and then Mrs. Creeley peeked out from the curtained side window. Go away, she mouthed.
“Orders, captain?” Ryan said, sounding a bit dazed.
Jeff stared at the sky as if seeking an answer in the clouds, then lowered his gaze to Ryan.
“Our mission parameters don’t include breaking down the door of a civilian to kill an infected they’re harboring.
We’re not here to eliminate every infected from the planet, we’re here to find a way to fight the outbreak, to identify the root cause and report to the Sectors.
Today specifically we’re here to find what Cody needs and get our asses back to the ranch.
” He turned on his heel and headed across the street. Ryan shrugged and followed.
Tamsyn hesitated irresolutely before rushing to catch up with them. “But sooner or later he’ll break out of wherever she’s got him locked up and he’ll kill her. We can’t leave her here.”
“You heard the lady—she doesn’t want help.
She specifically didn’t ask for our help.
” Jeff paused at the porch steps and addressed Tamsyn in a patient tone.
“I get this is or was your town and you care about the people who lived here. But Mrs. Creeley over there isn’t entirely sane anymore, watering her flowers and acting as if all the neighbors will be coming home someday.
She’s a tiny microcosm of what’s going on all over this planet.
We can’t solve individual cases—my focus has to be at the higher level, in the spirit of what my men and I were sent here to do.
The circumstances have changed but the mission hasn’t. ”
“Besides, if we bust in there and take out Harb,” Ryan said, “What do you think happens to her?”
“Take her to the ranch—” Tamsyn began.
“And then what? She’s not all there in the head.
She’ll try to fight us. She’s never going to forgive us for killing Harb, she won’t go willingly and are we going to keep her a prisoner?
” the soldier said. “Captain’s right, we have to let this one go, as much as it bothers me.
We’re in a war and war is hell, believe that. ”
The decision to walk away from Mrs. Creeley’s situation sat completely wrong with Tamsyn but she could see where Jeff and Ryan were coming from. “If—when—we find answers out there beyond Rosewater and maybe a solution, then will we come back and help people like Mrs. Creeley?” she asked.
“Of course. Maybe not us personally, but whoever is in charge of the planet,” Jeff said.
“But don’t kid yourself, it’s going to be a long long haul before anything like planetary order is restored.
And there are millions of infected out there, roaming around.
At least Harb is under lock and key. Now are we doing this or not? ” He gestured at the front door.
Tamsyn thought of Cody, fighting so hard to beat the virus and took a deep breath. “Yeah, break it down and let’s hope we find what we need here. There was only one other patient in the files who was using freyquitanal so the odds are getting slim.”
“There’s always New Damarkal,” Ryan said optimistically as he took a position next to Jeff.
The captain raised his booted foot and kicked the door open, splinters flying.
He and Ryan entered with blast rifles at the ready and Tamsyn waited outside, blaster in hand, keeping an eye on the street.
She glanced at the Creeley house again and bit her lip.
The soldiers weren’t wrong in their cold-eyed assessment—the world had gone to hell and she was continually confronted by the unthinkable aspects of the situation she was in now.
But she’d made her decision to ally with these people and she believed they were uniquely situated to actually affect the balance of the disaster on Randal Four, so for now she’d swallow her dismay.
And her focus today needed to be on getting the medicine Melly believed would help Cody.
She’d find an opportunity to talk to Melly privately and see if the doctor agreed they’d done the right thing today.
If she’d been here with them would Jeff have done anything differently?
Hard to say. The captain was pretty hardheaded and totally focused.
Difficult choices had to be made and she recognized the truth of the statement their tiny team couldn’t solve every situation they ran into.
She guessed if she actually left Rosewater with them, she’d better be prepared to handle more incidents of this type.
Ryan appeared in the doorway. “House is clear. Captain’s begun the search for this med we need. He says for you to come in and help while I stand watch.”
Tamsyn holstered her blaster and ran up the steps, passing him on the porch. She found Jeff in the upstairs bathroom, clearing out the contents of the medicine cabinet, dropping the various bottles and injects into a backpack.
“You found it?” she asked.
“No, but remember doc said to bring any medicines we found for her stockpile. This poor lady sure had a lot of problems.” He indicated the bulging sack. “Or she kept every medication she was ever prescribed.”
“But not the one we wanted,” Tamsyn said bitterly. “Check the bedroom next?”
“After you.” Jeff gestured courteously and she exited the small bathroom, heading for the bedroom.
The room was in a shambles, the bed covers ripped and dragging on the floor, the nightstand tipped over and the mirror on the big bureau cracked.
Tamsyn guessed Mrs. Sanss had torn things up in the final stages of becoming one of the infected and then had fled her home, whether trying to escape the inevitable or to seek victims. An empty vial of a common flu remedy lay empty on the carpet and a bottle of cough syrup had spilled all over the floor, leaving a sticky green puddle.
Tamsyn checked the closet while Jeff pulled out the bureau drawers but neither one found what they were searching for.
She stared at him, unwilling to accept defeat when Cody was counting on them. Suddenly she snapped her fingers. “Kitchen. Some drugs have to be taken with food so she might have stashed what we’re hunting down there.”
The kitchen was dated, with faded curtains and ancient appliances clad in colors long out of style.
The counters were cluttered with unwashed dishes and rotting fruit so after a quick survey Tamsyn headed straight for the pantry and flung the door open.
One shelf was crowded with what had to be a selection of all the supplements known to humanity.
Impatiently she plucked the bottles and containers off the shelves and dropped them onto the counter.
When she moved three expired bottles of vitamins she thought she was seeing things at first when an unopened box of freyquitanal was revealed.
One hundred capsules. There was a half full bottle of the same pills next to it.
“Jackpot,” she said, grabbing the two precious containers and backing out of the pantry.
“You found it?” Jeff’s grin was huge and relieved.
She handed him the box so he could see for himself. “How fast can we get to the ranch and let the doctor start administering this to Cody?”
“We’ll be there in less than an hour.” He gave her the box and she stowed it in her backpack. “I don’t see anything else here we need, do you?”
She gave the cupboards, which he’d been going through, a quick check. “No, I have plenty of supplies out at the ranch and you have a cache in the APC’s, right?”
“Right.” He ushered her through the dining area to the front door and Tamsyn burst through the front door to the porch with a shout. “We found it!”
Ryan gawked at her. “Guess we’ll be leaving then.”
“You got it, soldier.” Jeff took Tamsyn’s elbow and steered her toward the APC. “Let’s get out of here before our luck turns.”
She entered the vehicle and took the seat assigned to her, holding the precious backpack in her lap.
Ryan went to the controls and Jeff sat in the seat next to him.
The hatch closed with the usual sold thunk and Ryan backed them into the street, accelerating so fast she barely had time to glance at the Creeley house.
“There are probably dozens of other Mrs. Creeley’s across the planet, trying to save a loved one who turned,” Jeff said quietly to her. “If she’d asked me to take action, I would have.”
“I know—I get it. I don’t have to like it but there’s not a whole lot to like about the current world we’re living in,” she said honestly.