They reached Morton’s office, but before they got to his door, the two dogs began growling again.
“No more,” whispered Spider. “Please, no more…”
But, of course, there was more.
This was the world, and that’s how it was.
The door to the doctor’s office stood ajar. Ledger waved everyone back and clicked his tongue for Grimm. The dog looked into the room and then sat. No growls or tension.
Ledger stood behind him, sighed, cursed softly, and lowered his gun.
They went inside. Every drawer, every closet, every container in the large office had been pulled out, turned over, emptied onto the floor. There were some capsules there, but they were crushed—stamped into ruin. Bottles of powders had been smashed. Water and a few noxious chemicals had been poured over the broken capsules, ruining everything.
“No!” wailed Morton. He pulled free, and they all watched as he lurched around the room, pawing at the debris with bloody fingers. Then he dropped to his knees, buried his face in his hands, and began to cry with deep, racking sobs. “Gone…” they heard him say in a broken voice. “All of the RZ16, all of my store of ingredients… gone.”
Gutsy was unmoved by his grief, knowing it to be totally selfish. There was no chance at all Morton was grieving for the loss of drugs that could help Sarah, or Chong, or any of the wounded, except in that saving them was likely to earn him some clemency. And some drugs. She walked over and, ignoring his injuries, hooked him under the armpits and hauled him to his feet. Gutsy shoved him against the desk, took a strong handful of his shirt, and pressed the tines of her crowbar under his chin. No one made the slightest move to stop her.
“Tell me you can make more,” she said.
15
“THEY’RE REINFORCING THE WALLS,” SAID Ténèbres.
She and Trócaire walked along the inside of the rows of stacked cars, watching as men and women worked with chain hoists erected on sturdy pipe scaffolding. Through the open gates they could see teams of horses dragging more of the wrecked cars into the town.
When New Alamo had been originally fortified in the awful months after the dead rose, it had been surrounded by walls of stacked cars, and direct access to the town gates had been via long corridors of more stacked vehicles. The idea was to create a kind of chute or funnel that would make it easier to see anyone approach. That strategy had failed during the big attack, though, because the dead had simply swarmed through those corridors. The town walls had walkways on top from which townsfolk could shoot or hurl rocks, but the corridors were too remote and too long to man in that way. Now there were teams of people tearing down and repurposing the crushed cars.
The couple stopped to watch for nearly half an hour, sometimes holding hands.
One of the workers, a heavyset woman wearing a hijab, walked past them to a rain barrel, filled a plastic souvenir mug to the brim, and drank it all down. She wiped her mouth, shook out the cup, and hung it on a hook by the barrel. Then she noticed the two teenagers and gave them a nod.
“You’re new,” she said. “Refugees?”
“Yes,” said Ténèbres, “and happy to be here.”
The woman nodded and followed their gaze. “Wall’s going to be stronger than ever, don’t you fret. We’re going to make that wall so darn high and so darn thick that no one’s ever going to get in here again.”
Trócaire grinned. “Glad to hear that.”
The Muslim woman pulled a pair of heavy canvas work gloves from her back pocket. “You kids looking for work?”
“Yes,” said Trócaire. “We’ll do anything. Delighted to.”
The woman nodded and pointed to a tower of scaffolding on which sat a huge crane. “We’re about to start building higher levels. Don’t suppose you know how to use a boom crane?”
“No,” said Ténèbres, “but we’re fast learners.”
“Good. Lot of folks don’t like working that high up. If you care to volunteer, we’d be grateful to have you.”
“Then count on us,” said Trócaire.
16
THEY MOVED TO A CONSULTATION room.
Spider went out and brought back a nurse to dress Morton’s wounds. She was quick and efficient, but the scowl on her face made it clear she hated giving him any comfort. Manny Flores, the hospital pharmacist, was also brought in. Ledger told him everything.
“The doc says he can walk you through some steps to make more of the drug we need,” said the soldier.
Flores gave him a brief two-count of a stare, then turned to Morton, took a notebook and pen from the jacket of his lab coat, and said, “Tell me.”
Morton spoke fast, and Flores took furious notes. Gutsy stood with her friends and the California teens and listened, but much of the conversation shot completely over her head. Morton, gasping with pain and racked by desperate fear, spoke in a rapid-fire stream of technical terms, and Flores’s questions were equally niche.
The nurse wanted to give Morton a shot for the pain, but he snarled her away. “I need my head clear, dammit.”
At that, the nurse threw down the syringe and stalked out, throwing over her shoulder a hope that he died screaming.
“Really feeling the love here in your little town,” said Benny under his breath.
“We’re known for our charm,” said Alethea with a wicked smile.
Finally the pharmacist stopped writing and frowned down at the complex notes, then hurried out of the room. Ledger squatted once more in front of the injured physician.
“I was able to follow some of that, Doc,” he said mildly, “and what I heard was more of a stopgap measure than an actual treatment. You wouldn’t be trying to pull something, now, would you? Because that would be mighty unfriendly, and—I have to admit—I’m already feeling a tad cranky.”
“No,” said Morton between gritted teeth, “it’s the best I can do for now. I don’t have the right compounds to make a batch of the kind of pills we need.”
“That’s not the answer any of us want to hear.”
“Listen to me, you Neanderthal,” growled Morton, “do you think I want to die? Collins knew what she was doing when she came in here. She knew I had key ingredients locked up because I didn’t want anyone else to know about them. I made what I needed for Sarah after hours when the pharmacy staff was gone for the day. There was enough here to last for three months. Now there isn’t.”
“How much does Sarah have at home?” asked Gutsy.
Morton’s eyes shifted guiltily away. “Karen gets a week’s worth at a time. She was here four days ago, so…”
Spider made a sick sound and kicked a file cabinet. Morton flinched, then groaned as pain from his torn shoulder rippled through him. He eyed the syringe of painkillers. Ledger picked the needle up but didn’t use it.
“Talk first,” he said, “feel better after. You were saying, Doc?”
“If we cut the doses for one of the kids, maybe then we’ll have enough for me—”
There was a rasp, and suddenly the tip of Benny’s sword was touching Morton’s throat.