18. The Band-Aid House Was Rude
THE BAND-AID HOUSE WAS RUDE
GRACE
The band-aid houses are the most important targets. One on the east side and one on the west side. Medical supplies. The things we need most and have the least of, because you can find food in every restaurant and water in every cooler but first-aid supplies are specialized and limited.
The east band-aid house is small, a single room with a counter and cabinets and a cot. One wrong person inside, a WonderSphere medic based on the red cross armband, and Beck handles it.
When we step back into the plaza, Wondie Hat is near the frozen yogurt stand.
Closer. Still smiling. Still shuffling. Still wearing the world's worst souvenir hat with the confidence of a man who paid thirty-two dollars and intends to get the full value.
"Wondie Hat is still coming," I say.
"Following sound," Grant says.
"Following me emotionally," I say.
The west band-aid house is bigger. Three rooms. Waiting area, treatment room, supply closet. Joel opens the door. We hear movement inside. Shuffling. Multiple shufflers.
"How many?" I whisper.
Joel peers through the gap. "Five. Treatment room."
"Five in one band-aid house?"
"They were probably treating injured guests when it happened. They would have been in close proximity."
I don't make a joke. There's usually a joke. My mouth is a joke factory that operates twenty-four hours a day with no quality control. But sometimes the conveyor belt stops and the workers go home and there's just silence where the funny used to be.
From somewhere behind us, plastic scrapes on tile.
I look back. Wondie Hat is closer.
"Wondie Hat moved again," I whisper.
"Toward the noise," Grant says.
"Then let's make less noise," Joel says.
Grant lifts the sleepy stick. "I can dart two from here. Maybe three, but the delay still applies."
Joel opens the door wider.
Grant fires through the gap. One dart. Two. The first hits a woman in a SUNRISE GRILL visor. The second hits a man in a guest shirt with blood down the front and one shoe missing, because shoes remain the first casualty of civilization.
Both wrong people jerk. Neither goes down.
"Loading screen," I hiss.
The five wrong people turn toward us. All five.
Joel shoves the door open and goes in first. Beck follows with the axe held tight because there's no room to swing big in a first-aid station unless you want to remove a cabinet, a person, and several OSHA regulations.
The waiting room is small. Chairs line one wall.
A rolling cot sits near the treatment room doorway.
There are posters about heat exhaustion and hydration and one cheerful laminated sign that says WONDIE SAYS: SAFETY FIRST!
Wondie is a liar.
The first wrong person reaches the waiting room before the sleepy stick finishes buffering. Joel catches it with the wrench, a hard strike that knocks it sideways into the chairs. His second strike stops it before it can rise.
Beck steps past him, axe low, efficient, his grin gone because this room has no space for grin-shaped behavior.
The second wrong person staggers forward slower, sedative starting to drag its limbs out of order.
Grant moves in beside me, knife already in his hand. "Don't watch," he says.
"I wasn't planning to."
He finishes the darted one quickly. Then the treatment room door bangs open all the way. Because the west band-aid house is having office hours.
"Cot," Joel says.
We push.
The rolling cot slams sideways into the treatment room doorway. Its wheels squeal across the tile. One wrong person hits it from the other side and bends over the mattress, arms reaching, jaw working. A second presses in behind it. A third tries to wedge through the gap between cot and wall.
Beck swings, but the axe catches the edge of a cabinet. "Too tight," he says.
I jam the friendship paddle across the cot because apparently the friendship paddle has been promoted to medical infrastructure.
The wrong person on the cot grabs the paddle. Its fingers close over the blade.
"No," I tell it.
It pulls.
I pull back. "This is not your paddle. This paddle has friends."
Joel drives his shoulder into the cot from my left.
Grant grabs the IV pole beside the wall and hooks it through the cot frame, pinning the wheels against the baseboard.
Beck drops the axe angle, steps in close, and uses the handle like a lever against the wrong person's chest instead of trying to swing.
For three seconds, we're not four people. We're one terrible machine made of panic, furniture, and bad posture.
The wrong person's hand slips on the paddle.
I shove. Joel shoves. The cot slams forward, crushing the first two wrong people back into the treatment room doorway.
Grant shifts beside me, close enough that I feel his sleeve brush mine, and fires past my shoulder.
"Grant!"
"It was clear."
"It went past my ear!"
"Your ear was not the target."
"That's not as comforting as you think."
The dart hits the third wrong person in the throat.
Grant winces. "Not ideal."
"Is it still going to work?"
"Yes."
"Then we'll discuss your bedside manner later."
Behind us, something bumps the outside door.
All of us freeze.
The handle turns. The door opens inward.
Wondie Hat stands in the entrance.
The foam mascot head fills the doorway, smiling its big cheerful sunglasses smile over a body that has no business being attached to it. The head is too large for the frame, so when Wondie Hat tries to enter, the foam sphere catches on the jamb.
Then Wondie Hat pushes harder. The foam squeaks.
The cot lurches under my hands as the treatment room wrong people shove from the front. Wondie Hat shuffles in from behind. The room has become a sandwich and I'm the deli meat with anxiety.
"Joel."
"I know."
"Beck."
"I see him."
"Grant."
"Still loading."
"I hate this clinic."
Wondie Hat tears free of the doorframe with a rubbery pop and staggers into the waiting room. The foam head wobbles. The sunglasses are still smiling. The mouth underneath is not.
Beck turns, but he can't swing. Not with me, Grant, the cot, and three wrong people behind him.
"Take the head off," Joel says.
"The foam one or the real one?" Beck asks.
"Start with foam."
Beck grabs the Wondie head with both hands and pulls.
Wondie Hat grabs him back.
"Rude," Beck says.
Grant steps behind Beck, catches Wondie Hat's wrist, and pins the arm down. I abandon the cot with one hand, keep the paddle jammed with the other, and kick the rolling stool toward Joel.
"Stool!"
He catches the stool with his foot, hooks it, and kicks it hard into Wondie Hat's knees.
Wondie Hat buckles.
Beck yanks.
The foam head comes off with a horrible rubbery gasp. Underneath is a wrong person with gray skin, snapping teeth, and a vacation lanyard still hanging around its neck.
For half a second, nobody moves.
Then Beck swings the giant foam mascot head like the world's worst pillow fight and knocks Wondie Hat sideways into the reception counter.
"That was for morale," he says.
"Focus," Joel says.
"I'm extremely focused."
Grant's dart finally does its job in the treatment room. The third wrong person behind the cot goes slack and drops out of sight. Joel shifts, grabs the cot frame, and shoves it fully across the doorway, trapping the remaining two inside.
"Now," he says.
Beck finishes the former Wondie Hat, then joins Grant at the cot. Joel keeps it braced while they handle the three trapped behind it, one at a time.
The room goes quiet except for all of us breathing too hard.
The mascot head lies upside down near the reception desk, sunglasses still smiling at the ceiling.
I point at it with the friendship paddle. "No one wears that."
"Wasn't going to," Beck says.
"You thought about it."
Grant lowers the sleepy stick. "That was... suboptimal."
"The sleepy stick has terrible customer service," I say.
"It bought time."
"It buffered during combat, Grant."
"Yes."
"I'm leaving a review."
Joel opens the supply closet with his key. His hand is steady. Mine is not.
Inside: boxes of bandages, bottles of antiseptic, rolls of medical tape, packets of over-the-counter medication, two emergency splint kits, a defibrillator with a green light still blinking, and a box of surgical gloves.
"Worth it?" Beck says.
"Worth it," I say. "But the band-aid house was rude."
We fill two tote bags with the portable supplies and leave the larger equipment locked inside the closet for retrieval with a maintenance cart. Joel marks it on the map.
Joel writes THE BAND-AID HOUSE on a piece of cardboard. Tapes it to the door.
After the west band-aid house, the rest of the big middle feels easier, not easy.
Nothing is easy anymore. But easier. We clear two more restaurants.
A café. A candy shop that I insist on entering personally because candy is a morale resource and the Glue manages morale and the Glue needs chocolate.
The candy shop has no wrong people. It does have Kevin.
Kevin sneaks inside as soon as we open the door. I don't know how. Nobody knows how. Kevin has transcended the basic laws of spatial reasoning to get inside a candy shop where he's eating a display of saltwater taffy directly off the shelf.
"Kevin."
Kevin chews. He looks at me with horizontal pupils that communicate a level of contempt I haven't experienced since my last performance review at the job I had before this life, the life where I worked in an office and had a desk and didn't carry a friendship paddle and hadn't been headbutted into a pond by a goat.
"Kevin, this is strategic candy. You're eating strategic candy."
Kevin pulls another piece of taffy off the shelf. Chews. The wrapper crinkles under his hoof. He's unmoved by my authority.
"Grant, your goat is in the candy shop."
"He's not my goat."
"Jurisdictionally. Veterinarily. Kevin is your goat and he's eating my tactical taffy."
Beck wraps his arms around the goat's midsection and lifts. Kevin's legs go stiff with outrage and his head swivels toward Beck with the expression of a creature whose sovereignty has been violated and who will remember this.