“What?” he asked. I hadn’t realized he’d looked back at me.
“Nothing,” I said with a smile. “I guess I just miss seeing the doctor side of you sometimes. It makes me miss home.”
He crossed the space and once again pulled me into his arms. His heart thumped steady and peaceful.
Thinking once again of Eden made my chest ache. I missed the trees and the cool morning air. I missed my tent and our watch towers. I even missed pulling weeds from the gardens.
A nurse stepped out of Morgan’s room.
“How’s she doing?” I asked, pulling away from Avian.
The woman’s face fell and she hesitated. “Not well. It looks like she’s going downhill fast.”
I gave a hard swallow. “And the baby?”
“It doesn’t look good for the baby either, I’m afraid. It will probably go when she does.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
The woman shuffled away.
“It’s not fair,” I said, standing there in limbo between the rooms of two fading people. “People can’t just keep dying.”
“That’s why we’re leaving the day after tomorrow,” Avian said, rubbing a hand over his head again. “It’s time to do something about it.”
I kept staring at the window to Morgan’s room and kept thinking about that baby growing in her stomach and how it didn’t have a chance of surviving. I thought about how crowded it must have been inside my mother’s stomach with my sister and me in there. I wondered if it felt like a relief as an infant to finally have some room once I was out, but that I probably wasn’t aware enough to feel anything.
I had been dying too, at that point, after all.
I suddenly gasped, feeling as if I had been punched in the heart with a ghostly, impossible fist.
“Avian, I need your help.”
EIGHT
Avian and I slept little more than a few hours that night. We had a whole new list of things to collect. We scoured the fifth floor for supplies, took what we knew could be spared from the hospital wing, and knocked on select doors of people we knew would help us and not say a word.
And I very carefully asked Dr. Evans some very careful questions about my past.
The plan was improbable, but not completely impossible.
I informed Royce that I hadn’t come up with a fourth member of our crew, but that I thought we could work just fine with the team I had come up with so far. He didn’t fight me about it, but we were packed for an extra person.
The night before we were to leave, Dr. Beeson radioed to let us know the van was ready. Bill, West, Avian, and I made our way to the back of the building to check out what they’d created for us.
We stepped out into the evening light, which reflected blindingly off the beast before us.
“Who-hoo-hoo!” West said, clapping and whooping as he walked toward it. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
I couldn’t help but admire the vehicle as well.
It had indeed been a fifteen passenger van at one point. But it looked as if it had the top of it chopped off and raised an additional three feet. It also had a huge luggage rack on top of that that already held a great deal of our supplies. And on top of the cargo rack, were six large solar panels.
The beast had been raised at least a foot and it sported massive, rugged-terrain tires. A set of flood lights had been mounted to the front of the roof, and the entire thing was midnight black. Even the windows looked blacked out.
“Is that a firing turret on top?” I asked, spotting the thick, long cylinder atop the solar panels.
“Indeed it is,” Dr. Beeson said, a grin spreading on his face.
“Hey,” Royce said, sounding offended. “This thing was mostly my baby. Don’t you go taking all the credit.”
“Excuse me,” Dr. Beeson said in an exaggerated voice, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “It’s all yours to show off.”
“Thank you,” Royce said, his chin lifting, a coy grin cocking in the corner of his mouth. “Come on, reclamation team.”
By this point, we were all grinning ridiculously as we followed Royce closer to the vehicle. He threw the side doors open and held his arms out grandly for us to check out the inside.
“The solar tank is made to withstand raging Bane, looting humans, and just about anything else this apocalypse has to throw at you,” he said as I stepped inside first.
The last row of seats had been removed and was stocked full of weaponry. The very middle of the roof had a hatch cut into it and opened up to the firing turret, just like a smaller scale version of our actual tanks. Running alongside the hatch in the raised portion of the roof, were two very tiny, claustrophobic looking beds. The front passenger seat was a glass encasement.
No one had to ask what it was for.
“If you can’t get there and back in this thing, you can’t make it anywhere,” Royce said, pride sounding in his voice.
“It’s a thing of beauty,” West said, settling into the driver’s seat.
“Your only problem should be if you get some particularly cloudy days,” Royce said, his excitement falling. “Since this is such a beast, the batteries powering it get drained fast. They don’t get to store much. So if you can’t get access to sun, you may be stuck for a while.”
“I see now why you called it the solar tank,” I said, stepping back out and admiring it from the outside. “You did good, Royce. You did good.”
Royce laughed, a full-hearted, belly birthed laugh, and clapped a hand on my shoulder.
Avian met my eye knowingly as we took one last look at the solar tank, and headed back inside.
“You ready?” I hissed.
Avian seemed to materialize out of the dark, pack slung over his shoulder. He clicked on his small flashlight and nodded.
Taking my hand in his, we slipped silently down the hall.
We descended the stairs, taking our time to make sure our footsteps would not echo on the concrete walls. Pausing briefly at the door to the hall, we found it empty and slipped out. Not a soul seemed to be awake as we jogged to the medical wing.
A few lights had been left on in the medical wing. We paused around the corner, watching for signs of life.
“Is there anyone besides Morgan and the kid in there?” I whispered.
“Just them,” Avian said, looking around the corner again. “A nurse comes to check on things twice a night, but no one will be around until morning. We should be good.”
We darted forward into the harsh light. Placing my fingers on the handle, I paused, looking up at Avian.
“I love you for doing this,” I said.
“Anything,” he breathed, a smile playing on his lips.
Taking care that the door handle didn’t make any noise, we pushed it open and stepped inside.
Morgan lay still and silent on her bed. She had slipped into a coma the morning before and was given less than five days to live. The baby’s vitals dipped, but not enough for the doctors to pull it from her stomach yet.
Grabbing the portable bed from the hall outside, Avian wheeled it into the room, right next to her bed. He opened the cupboard across the room and pulled out the portable oxygen unit.
“Careful with the tubes,” he said as I helped him switch her oxygen. Once replaced, we each took hold of the sheet beneath her and lifted her onto the wheeled bed. “Grab the IV tower.”
Wrapping my hand around it, I carefully steered it as Avian rolled Morgan and the bed with the portable oxygen unit out into the hall.
“Hold on,” I said before we entered the main hall. Avian stopped and I parked the tower next to him. Slipping to the entrance to the hall, I peered around the corner.
One of the members of security detail walked across the lobby. He paused, looking around, sweeping the area, before stepping out the front doors.