“I believe it’s absolutely necessary,” I said.
Sighing, Duane said, “I would feel better if I could take part in the first watch, then.”
“I don’t think Sam would mind.”
“I appreciate it.”
I was startled awake from a deep slumber. I initially thought I was dreaming, but as the cloudiness of sleep lifted, it became apparent the sobs I heard were real. There was just enough light in the room from the outdoor pole-light that I could see Quill sitting up in her bed and hugging her pillow. I threw the blankets off and sat up.
I let my eyes adjust to the darkness before slowly walking to Quill’s bed. For a brief instant, I thought about waking Avery and making him deal with her since they were closer. I told myself I could handle it. That and I thought it would be beneficial if I talked to the girl. Up until that point, I had not said more than a few words to her. I needed to vet her as much as form a relationship with her.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Through sobs, she said, “I know.”
“Why are you moving away like that then?”
She shook her head.
“Talk to me. It’s okay.”
“It’s really not okay,” she whispered.
“We’re safe here. We have Sam and Duane just outside the door there in the truck. We’re good.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“Then what is it?”
She wiped her eyes. “I’m a monster, aren’t I?”
“Huh? No. I mean… No, you’re not.”
She wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her long shirt. “If you knew how I felt, you wouldn’t say that.”
“How do you feel?”
She wiped her mouth again. “I can’t tell you. I don’t want to be alone again.”
“We’re not going to leave you.”
She began to cry again in earnest, spit running out of the corner of her mouth. “I’m hungry.”
Puzzled, “That’s great. I’ll take you over to—”
“No!” She yelled.
Avery rustled but didn’t wake up.
“You can’t get me the kind of food I need.”
“What kind of food do you… need?”
“I don’t want to be alone… and I don’t want to feel this way. Please, make it stop – the feelings. Make them stop.”
“You have to tell me what those feelings are. I can’t help you if I don’t know.”
“I had a dream. My hands were in fists, and I was beating something. I was so mad, but I don’t know why I was mad. I remember the blood. But in my dream, it didn’t have a name. I didn’t think of it as yucky blood. It was natural. When I woke up… my mouth was watering. It still is.” She began smacking herself in the face.
I grabbed her arms. “It’s okay. It was just a dream. That’s all it was.”
She began to shake her head. “No, it wasn’t. When I woke up, I wanted to eat something… I wanted to eat you.”
I backed away from her bed.
“I told you,” she said. “I don’t want to feel this way.”
I was halfway between my bed and hers when I looked to my left, where Avery slept and wondered if our relationship would ever be the same. We wouldn’t have a relationship at all if he was dead. Quill might not have been in the Order, but she represented a clear danger to our group. She was a child, and that was what it was, but danger was danger. Age didn’t mean anything where that was concerned, especially if you had to worry about going to sleep. I eyed the bag in which my silver revolver lay on “Fuck,” I said, as Quill whimpered.
Avery had awoken.
Chapter 7
Aadesh and I were at a loss as to how to help Tish. We had a short training session on hypothermia and frostbite during our first-day orientation at the Patch. I was drunk, and Aadesh stoned, so neither of us remembered much other than the trainer lady was this beautiful, Inupiat woman. At least with hypothermia, we knew we had to increase her body temperature. The frostbite was in a whole different league we weren’t prepared for.
The hypothermia was supposed to have been the easy part. Tish was acting out in such a violent way, we couldn’t do something as simple as keeping her covered with blankets. To make things worse, she ripped and tore at her face, forcing us to initially tape gloves on her hands so she wouldn’t scratch her eyes out. When that didn’t work, we tied her arms to the couch with duct tape.
The hope was always that she would be able to help us treat her once she got better. Even when the threat of hypothermia had passed, and she seemed to be in her right mind, she wasn’t willing to help. She would blankly stare off into space or just break into sobs when we asked her for help. At one point, I forced her to look at her toes. “You’re going to lose your damn toes if you don’t help us.” It didn’t affect her in the slightest. No response. Nothing.
It was only after she had succumbed to the pain that she finally asked Aadesh for something to help with it. Miley seemed to be prepared for almost anything. He had a cabinet full of medical supplies, including a liberal amount of pain medications. Luckily for her, she got all the pain meds she needed to help with her pain. Unluckily, I got all the pain meds I desired. But goddamn did I feel so much better than I had in a long time.
Time passed, and we settled into a routine: sleep, eat, care for Tish, and sleep some more. Aadesh handled it much better than I did. He cataloged things, made lists, and went on supply runs. I helped for a while, but that soon changed as I fell back hard into old habits. There was a reason William and I became such good friends: we were both addicts.
After a few days, Tish’s hands and face had gotten much better. The only indication of frostbite that remained was the pink skin that covered a good portion of the affected areas. Her feet, though. They were a different story. Her big toes were black, and several of her other toes didn’t look much better. Even with as hateful and angry as she had been with me, it was painful watching someone essentially give up on living.
Looking back now, it’s ironic that I felt that way about Tish. Introspection was not a particularly strong point of mine during those days.
I used my terrible relationship with Tish to escape responsibilities. I mean, I didn’t want to upset the patient and make things worse for her, especially since she seemed to be teetering on having a breakdown. On some intellectual level, Aadesh agreed it might be better for me to stay away from her. Still, he also knew that I was quickly reaching the summit of what would be a fast, downhill decline. He also knew that if I wasn’t helping with Tish, that meant he would have to take care of everything. He didn’t have the energy to fight me over it. That left all the time in the world to indulge myself in an almost never-ending supply of drugs that Barrow offered.
There was plenty of booze in Barrow, but I chose prescription drugs over drink. And why not, there was an endless supply of medications available in the deserted drug stores and hospital. There was morphine, OxyContin, Adderall, and, well, just about anything else you could imagine, and I did imagine. Did more than imagine, in fact. Best of all, it was all free and without legal consequences. It was an addict’s paradise. To most people, the end of the world sucked, but I was uncommitted in that regard.
My drug use got so bad I spent hours and hours at a time passed out or near comatose in my makeshift bedroom. When Aadesh forced me out of the room long enough to show me the secret passage in Miley’s office, I was so high I could barely keep my eyes open, much less pay attention to or care about what he talked about. The only thing that half-assed got my attention was Miley having turned his garage into one big EMP-proof Faraday Cage.
It seemed to me there were two likely reasons Miley had taken the precautions he had. He knew what was going to happen, which seemed unlikely. Or that he was just a paranoid rich guy who had too much free time on his hands to dream up ways the world could kill him off before he got to spend his money. In reality, I barely cared at that point. I remember Aadesh showing me assorted bits of working electronics he had found. The entire time the only thing I could think about was did I have enough morphine to last until the next supply run. The fear of sobering up was almost as scary as the Sniffers. Shit like Faraday Cages and working electronics barely showed up on my radar of things I cared about.