Dan paused, not knowing if he should be truthful about the soldiers.
But as he looked beyond the gun’s muzzle, he saw the man’s face coming into focus for the first time.
He was in his forties. He had dark, sunken eyes, but there was something about them that seemed… Dan wasn’t sure what. Hopeful, maybe?
His beard and hair were long and dirty. His clothes were torn and filthy. He wore what looked like a backpack, similar to the one Dan had carried until he’d run into the soldiers.
This man didn’t look like a soldier. He looked like a regular guy trying to survive the chaos of the EMP’s aftermath.
At least that’s what Dan hoped.
And of course that didn’t make him honest or safe.
Dan took a deep breath. Then he spoke. And if he was going to tell the story, he figured he might as well go all in. His only choice was to trust. “We were kidnapped. I didn’t know her before.”
“Who kidnapped you?” interjected the man.
“Some soldiers. I don’t know who they were. They killed my friend. They had…”
“Military trucks and gear?”
“Yeah,” said Dan. “How did you know?”
“They’ve been the scourge of this area for the last month.”
“Who are they?”
“That’s a complicated question.”
The man seemed willing to have a conversation, to discuss things. That was a good sign.
“Are you going to kill us?” said Dan.
As Dan waited for an answer, he was painfully aware of his pounding heart. He held his breath.
“No,” said the man. “Unless you try something.”
“What do you want?”
The man lowered his gun, and offered Dan a hand, helping him stand up.
“I’m doing what everyone’s doing. Looking for food. Gear.”
“Scavenging?”
“Yeah. I have to be careful. I’ve come across some bad people. Sounds like you have, too.”
“Your name isn’t Max, by any chance?” said Dan, wondering if it was at all possible that this man was the same one that he’d spoken to on the radio.
But the man shook his head. “Nope. Call me Rob.”
“I’m Dan, and this…”
He suddenly realized he didn’t know the woman’s name. And what was more, she was in need of medical attention.
“I don’t know her name. But she needs help. I need to get the bullet out of her.”
Rob crouched down in front of the woman and began examining her. He took a careful look at her bullet wound.
“Hmm,” he said. “It doesn’t look too bad. It didn’t hit anything important. I think I can get it out.”
“Are you a doctor?” said Dan.
Rob laughed. “Not even close. But I’ve had the unfortunate displeasure of doing a few of these.”
The way Rob spoke sounded almost eloquent, completely belying his rough and dirty appearance. Dan wondered what he’d done before the EMP, but this wasn’t the time to ask.
“Can you speak?” said Rob, addressing the woman.
She looked up at Rob, opening her eyes fully for the first time since they’d gotten into the house.
“I think so,” she croaked.
“What hurts?”
“My ankle.”
“Can you walk?”
She shook her head.
“She could barely make it in here,” said Dan.
“And the soldiers? You said you escaped. Do they know you’re here?”
“I don’t think so. They kept driving.”
“That’s good. But we don’t have much time.”
“We don’t? I thought we’d have to stay here for a while and hide out.”
Rob shook his head as he removed his backpack, opened it up, and began digging through it. Dan saw that his fingers and hands were filthy, as if he’d been digging in the dirt.
“We don’t want to stay here long,” said Rob. “When I hit houses like this, I’m always quick. I’ve had too many run-ins already. I know better now.”
“Is it the soldiers?”
“Nope. Just regular people. They’re the most dangerous sometimes. You got lucky with me, kid. If someone else had showed up, well, let’s just say it wouldn’t have gone so well.”
Rob had emptied half of his backpack onto the kitchen floor. There were plastic grocery bags filled with things. The pack stank like partially-rancid food.
Finally Rob found what he was looking for. A small Dopp kit made of a synthetic black material.
Next, he fished out a large bottle of vodka from his pack. He unscrewed the flimsy lid, and for a moment Dan thought that Rob wasn’t who he’d seemed to be. He wanted to take a drink now?
But Rob just splashed the vodka on his hands and rubbed them together vigorously. He got most of the dirt off and then splashed a little more.
“Nice and clean,” he muttered to himself as he unzipped the bag. The contents, unlike those of the backpack, were neatly organized. It was some kind of field medical kit, with nice-looking metal instruments that gleamed when the light hit them.
From his pocket, Rob shook out a couple pills into his palm.
“Now you’re going to want to take these,” he said to the woman. “They’re time release, so you’d better chew them.”
He fed them gently into the woman’s mouth.
She chewed them slowly, a look of pain on her face.
Dan watched as Rob splashed vodka onto a clean-looking rag and wiped down a pair of steel forceps.
“Now this is the really unpleasant part,” he said. “It’s Dan, right?”
Dan nodded.
“Now, Dan, I’m going to need you to cut away the rest of this young woman’s sleeve there. You’ll find a pair of scissors in the medical kit.”
Dan took the scissors and found that his hands were trembling. But he managed to cut the woman’s sleeve entirely off, revealing her bare arm over which the blood was running.
“We’ll deal with the bleeding after I get the bullet out. Now if you could be so kind as to wipe away some of this blood, I can better see what I’m doing.”
Dan followed Rob’s instructions and wiped down the area.
“Now you’re going to have to trust me,” said Rob, speaking to the woman in a soothing voice. “This is going to hurt, and I’m not a doctor. But I’ve done this before. And unfortunately in these present conditions this is probably the best medical attention you’re going to receive.” He turned to Dan. “Why don’t you get her something to bite down on in case those pills haven’t kicked in yet.”
Dan found an old wooden spoon in one of the cabinets and placed it in the woman’s mouth. Her eyes, now with constricted pupils, drifted sleepily over to Dan’s face as she bit gently down onto the spoon’s handle.
Dan gave her a look that tried to convey what he was feeling, that they had no better option than to trust Rob even though they’d just met him.
“This is going to hurt like hell,” said Rob.
Dan watched as Rob used the sterilized forceps to dig into the woman’s wound.
Dan held his breath. It seemed to go on forever.
Rob remained completely silent.
It was hurting the woman. When Dan glanced at her face, the pain was plastered all over it. The agony seemed to be growing on it. She was biting down forcibly on the wooden spoon. Dan worried it might break.
It had only been a minute, maybe two, when Dan heard a sound from the other side of the house.
Rob glanced at him, his eyes wide with surprise.
“Shit, they’re here.”
“Who?”
“Other scroungers.”
“What do we do?”
“I might only have one chance at this. You’ve got to get this one, kid. There’s a handgun in my pack. In the bottom.”
Dan didn’t bother questioning it. He knew he needed to act. It was all up to him.
Dan dug frantically in the backpack, tossing aside more plastic bags and gear until he came to a handgun.