“No,” Sophie said. “My grandma’s hurt.”
“Oh, honey,” I said. “She’s not your grandma anymore.”
Sophie said nothing as she moved to pull the dead end-stager off her grandmother. Peggy was in bad shape, but still moving; there were cuts and bruises all over her face, and bright red blood was oozing out of the tooth marks on her shoulder. I fumbled with another cartridge, loaded it into the chamber.
“Is she going to die?” Sophie asked.
I raised my rifle and tried to sight Peggy, who was rising stiffly to her feet. “Come on, Sophie,” I said. “Get away from her. We have to go.”
Sophie turned back to look at me, frowning deeply. “Is she going to die?”
“Yes,” I said. “Not right away, but yes, she probably is. Bite wounds are bad—they get infected, and the blood she’s lost is going to make it worse.”
“Tell me what to do. To help her.”
I took a step forward, nudging Sophie aside with the rifle barrel. Peggy looked up at me, silent, her face unreadable. “There’s nothing you can do to help her. Your grandma is gone.”
“No, she isn’t,” Sophie said. She turned to Peggy and looked her in the eyes. “You’re sick, I know that. But you aren’t going to hurt me, and I’m going to help you.”
Peggy’s ragged breathing slowed as Sophie held her, becoming more regular. After what felt like a long time I took a breath, looked right and left, and then dropped my rifle. I unshouldered my pack, took out some steri-wipes, two syringes of my moxifloxacin/clindamycin bite mix, and one of morphine. “Give me her arm,” I said.
Sophie took Peggy’s right hand in hers and straightened her arm. I found a good vein, wiped it clean and tapped the three syringes, one after the other. “That should help with infection,” I said. “Do you want to do the bandages?”
Sophie’s mouth quirked up into a tiny smile, and she nodded. “How do I do it?” she asked.
I handed her a steri-wipe, tore open a pack of chitosan sponges, and handed it to her. “Clean your hands first, then press these into each of the wounds.” I held my breath as she touched the first sponge to Peggy’s bite marks. “Careful, it might hurt her,” I said.
Peggy flinched as Sophie applied the sponges, but did not move. “Now what?” Sophie asked.
“Here,” I said, passing her the bandage. “Wrap this around the wounds five or six times, nice and tight.”
When she was done she looked back at me. “Is that it?”
“That’s everything we can do,” I said. I put a hand on her shoulder. “We have to go.”
She looked her grandmother in the eyes for another few moments, then stood and turned. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”
The firewatch tower stood a few hundred feet down a path past the cabin, silhouetted in the evening light. A narrow wooden staircase zigzagged inside the tower’s timber frame, up to the observation post and radio tower at the top.
I paused at the bottom of the staircase, letting Sophie go ahead of me as I watched to see if anyone was coming after us. Peggy was sitting where we had left her, watching us, more still than I had ever seen an end-stager. We climbed up carefully, the stairs creaking and groaning as we rose, and by the time we got to the top the sun had nearly set.
Sophie had said nothing since we started up the stairs. She stopped a few steps below the platform and looked down at me: the stairs reached the platform on the west side of the tower, so we could just see each other in the pale pink light of the setting sun. Down below I could see the whole Ranger compound and I understood why it had angered the end-stagers so much, looking so mockingly like a home.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“Find the radio,” I said. “See if it still works.”
“And then?”
“We let people know you’re here.”
“Do you really think they’ll come and get me?”
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “We’ll tell them what happened. To the Rangers. They’ll have to do something about that, and . . . ”
After a few seconds she nodded and climbed up onto the platform. There was a small shed there, with a narrow walkway around it and a metal antenna on top. Sophie opened the unlocked door to the shed and we slipped inside.
The small room had an air of long disuse: the flashlight’s beam revealed a narrow cot, a folding wire-and-nylon chair, and a desk on which sat a pair of binoculars and a radio and microphone. The radio was old and bulky, a black box with a front panel covered with switches, and even before I reached the desk I knew it was broken. I flicked the on switch up and down a few times, but nothing happened.
Sophie sat down on the cot, saying nothing. I sat down next to her, and as I did the flashlight flickered and died. In the darkness I could hear her banging the butt-end of the flashlight; a few moments later I felt her shifting her weight and then a tiny blue square of light appeared in front of her, just enough for us to see each other’s faces.
“Hey, my phone works up here,” she said. “Two bars, that’s not bad. Should I . . . should I call somebody? Who should I call?”
“Nine one one, I guess,” I said. “That’s got to do something.”
We sat there a while longer, neither of us moving or speaking. “Are you going to come?” she asked finally.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’m here for good, like everyone else.”
“The Ranger that was . . . one of the ones in the room, she looked a lot like you. You could pretend you’re her. You could come with me.”
“No,” I said after a long moment. “I have too many people counting on me.” I took a breath. “More than I thought, maybe.”
Sophie nodded slowly. “I think I need to stay here too,” she said. “To take care of my grandma. And I think maybe you need someone to take care of you, too.”
“Maybe,” I said, and reached out to take her hand. She smiled, and then we both zipped our jackets and went to sleep sitting up.
Dead Song
Jay Wilburn
The man walked into the dark room and closed the door behind him. He put on the headphones and sat down on the stool. Images of zombies flashed on the screen in front of him. He ignored them and opened the binder on the stand. He pulled the microphone a little closer and waited.
In the darkness, a voice came over the headphones and said, “Go ahead and read the title card again for us slowly so we can set levels.”
The man read with particular slowness and articulation, “Dead Doc. Productions presents The Legend of Tiny ‘Mud Music’ Jones in association with After World Broadcasters and Reaniment America, a subsidiary of the Reclaiment Broadcasters Company, with permission of the Reformed United States Federal Government Broadcasters Rights Commission.”
He waited silently after he finished.
The voice finally came back on, “Sounds good. We’re going to get coverage on the main text for alternate takes. We’re also going to have you read the quotes as placeholders until we get character actors to replace them. Read them normally without any affected voice. If we need another tone or tempo, we’ll let you know and we’ll take another pass at that section. There is also some new material we are adding into the documentary.”
“Okay,” the man answered.
The voice ordered, “When you’re ready, go ahead with section one, then stop.”
The man took a drink of water, swallowed, and then waited for a couple beats. He began, “Dead World Records was one of the first music companies to come online after order was restored. They were recording and signing artists during the height of the zombie plague. Tobias Baker and Hollister Z are credited with founding the company.