When you grow up a hemophiliac, the world around you seems like a dangerous place. Potential accidents and injuries lurk everywhere, waiting to strike. A bad cut or a blow to the gut can lead to a bleed, which, for me, meant landing in the hospital to be pumped full of clotting factor. As a kid, I hated being in the hospital, so I learned to play it safe. I didn’t play sports. I didn’t rough-house with my brother and sisters. I didn’t use sharp tools. I didn’t take risks. Instead, I took it easy.
It’s funny… The world we live in now is more dangerous than ever, yet I find myself taking risks every day, doing things I never would have imagined myself doing before. We’re surrounded by death, but in a weird way, I’ve never felt so alive. The daily dangers we face and the risks we take are necessary, in order to better our situation. Just like in business, sometimes the risks pay off. Sometimes they don’t.
And sometimes they backfire, leaving us in a far more dangerous situation than we were before…
Friday, October 5, 2012
Week Twenty-Four
Howard Dorough had lived in Florida all his life, but there had been times when he’d dreamed of moving to one of the big cities up north – New York, perhaps, or Boston, maybe even Chicago. All of his family was in Florida, though, and they’d meant more to him than he’d let them know when they were alive. They – especially Barty – had kept him rooted there, in the Sunshine State.
Not a bad place for a real estate tycoon to make his fortune. The hotel business had been booming in Florida, land of sand and sun, theme parks and palm trees. Tourism once made up the largest sector of the state’s economy. Not anymore, though. The only visitors they got now were the unwanted kind. The undead kind. The Sunshine State had become Zombieland.
Once again, Howie wished he could go north, somewhere with a real autumn, where the weather grew cool and the leaves changed colors in the fall. Instead, he was still perspiring like a pig under a canopy of green that provided only minimal relief from the unrelenting Florida heat. He had removed his sweat-soaked shirt, and the sun beat down on his bare back, streaming through the filter of leaves to bake his skin to a crisp while he worked. He was tan naturally, courtesy of his Puerto Rican mother, but he had never been so brown – or so strong.
Howie had always been trim, but also short and scrawny. At only five feet, six inches, his slight build had earned him the nickname “Runt” from his four older siblings. The kids at school had been crueler, calling him names like “Chihuahua” and “Munchkin.” (It didn’t help that he’d once played a member of the Lollipop Guild in a community theatre production of The Wizard of Oz.) He had never been able to play sports because of his hemophilia, so he’d never built up much muscle or endurance. Instead, he had surrounded himself with books and, later, computers, developing his brain, rather than his body.
Over the last few months, though, and in the last six weeks, especially, his body had changed. He had bulked out, built up muscle from all the hours of chopping and sawing, lifting and hauling, hammering and pounding, as he helped the others build the wooden wall along the coastline of the base. He had never been stronger or in such good physical shape. If Bree could see me now, he thought, smiling to himself, as he tossed a log into the bed of the truck.
Without Kevin, Nick, and Riley, and with Brian and Gretchen still gone, Howie made up one quarter of the manpower that remained on the base. He and AJ had taken over the logging duties, bringing fresh lumber for Jo and Gabby to continue assembling the fence. It had been a good bonding experience for both pairs – mother and daughter, and whatever he and AJ could be called. Two men with nothing in common, brought together by a virus that had killed virtually everyone else they knew, forced to work together to ensure their survival. Friends?
There had been a time when Howard had felt he’d never, in a million years, think of the tattooed drunk as a friend. He was a loose cannon, unhinged, unpredictable, almost uncivilized, compared to Howard’s straight-laced, practical, businesslike demeanor. They were complete opposites, but oddly enough, Howie had come to feel a sense of kinship with AJ. It was a yin and yang sort of relationship; in a way, their differences complimented each other, made it easier to get along. They didn’t butt heads for power, as Howie had with Kevin; in fact, there wasn’t a leader on the base anymore. Or, perhaps, they had all become leaders, in their own right.
Of the four, AJ and Gabby were the creative ones; they came up with the ideas. Jo and Howie were the rational ones; they made the plans, divided the work, and organized everything. Even with such small numbers, the four of them had such a balance that they’d managed to keep things running smoothly around the base, holding down the fort until the others returned.
“If Brian and Gretch are gone much longer, we’ll have this fence finished by the time they get back!” Howie called to AJ, who was high up in one of the tallest trees. He always climbed up high to start, sawing off the top branches first and then working his way down. They had given up on cutting down whole trees; with so few of them, it was just too tough and too dangerous, so they had settled for smaller logs instead. AJ was like a monkey in the trees; he liked to climb and cut, and being up high gave him the perfect vantage point to watch for the undead, while Howie worked down below, sawing the branches down to useable logs, piling them neatly in the back of the truck to bring back to the ladies.
“Those slackers!” AJ shouted back, jokingly. Neither of them asked the questions that were really on their minds: What was taking Brian and Gretchen so long?? And what about the others? When would they be back?
Howie often found himself searching the sky while he was working outside, putting his hand up over his eyes to shield them from the sun as they panned the horizon, hoping to spot a plane. He’d caught AJ doing the same thing. Both of them kept their ears pricked, listening not only for the moans of zombies, but the distant rumble of an engine that would signal their friends’ return. With each passing day in which this did not happen, the worry that something disastrous had befallen the others grew, gnawing away at Howie’s gut.
He was surprised by how much he’d come to care for the other eight survivors in their group. Though he had the social skills necessary to succeed in business, Howie had never been much of a people person. He got along with most people reasonably well and had made a respectable CEO, known for being level-headed and fair. But he was also seen as uptight, and his serious disposition and inclination towards privacy had isolated him from others, kept him from making many close bonds with other people. In his old life, he’d had many acquaintances, colleagues and business contacts, but few true friends. He had been closest to his family.
His ex-wife, Bree, was one of the few who had been able to pull him out of his shell. But then, he’d always had a way with women. Even though his sense of humor left something to be desired, he knew how to play “Sweet D,” as his college girlfriend had dubbed him, and charm the ladies. He had money and style, along with his wink and winning smile, and once women found out he wasn’t gay, they enjoyed being wined and dined by Howard Dorough. That was how he had managed to score a knockout like Bree. She had been a trophy wife, it was true, but she was also the mother of his child, and he had cared about her, even after their separation. And, of course, he had loved his son, in a way he had never loved another person before and would never love again.
No, his relationships with the others here couldn’t compare to that level of love, but still, Howie cared for them more deeply than he’d ever expected to when he, AJ, and Kayleigh had first arrived on the base. It brought him some comfort, to have companionship in this crazy new world, but it a way, it caused more worry and created more fear. He wasn’t just concerned with his own well-being anymore, but that of eight other people, as well. They had already lost Kayleigh, who had been his closest friend on the base, and the pain of her death still plagued him. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing someone else, let alone five of them. He hoped at least one of the groups would make it back soon and put his restless mind at ease.
“Heads up! Incoming!” bellowed AJ from up in the tree. Snapping back to attention, Howie looked up in time to jump back out of the way, as a severed branch crashed down through the leaves and landed at his feet. He dragged it into the clearing where the truck was parked and knelt down beside it, picking up the handsaw to whittle it down to a leafless log.
In between strokes of the saw, he could hear AJ rustling around in the tree. Howie glanced up once and saw that AJ had moved down to a lower perch. He was straddling a tree limb, his legs swinging freely on each side as he happily sawed away at the end of the branch. In his dirty wifebeater and torn camo pants, his rifle holstered to a sling across his chest, he looked more like a guerilla fighter than a lumberjack. Make that gorilla fighter, thought Howie, smiling at his pun as he watched AJ’s legs swing. He looked comfortable enough in the tree, but the smile slid off of Howie’s face as he thought, This is dangerous. We really should look for a ladder. Neither of them knew what they were doing; AJ was certainly no logger. But he had taken charge of the operation after Kevin and the others had left, and Howie knew better than to try to tell AJ what to do.
His eyes returned to the fallen branch in front of him, as he went back to his own task. The two of them worked quietly for awhile, the racket of their saws keeping them from talking to each other. It was tough work, and Howie paused often, to rest and to listen for zombies. It was during one of these pauses that he heard an ominous sound… not a moan, but a creak.
He looked up again. AJ was still sawing away, oblivious, but Howie didn’t miss the way the bow he was straddling sagged beneath his weight with every stroke of the saw. The branch looked thick enough, but it wasn’t going to support his weight with the added pressure he was putting on it. “AJ!” he called, but AJ either didn’t hear him or chose to ignore him. He was hunched over in concentration, his left hand gripping the tree branch for balance, while his right arm pumped back and forth, sawing hard and fast for a few more seconds.
“AJ!” Howie shouted again, more frantically this time, knowing what was going to happen mere seconds before it did. There was just enough time for him to realize it, but not nearly enough to prevent it. The limb creaked again, bending lower, and just as AJ lifted his saw and straightened up, looking down in surprise, the wood started to splinter.
“Shit!” Howie heard AJ yell and saw him start to scramble, bringing one leg up onto the branch to boost himself up. But it was too late: a second later, the bow broke clean away from the trunk, and down came AJ, saw and all, hitting the ground at the base of the tree with a sickening thump.
“Oh my god!” Howie rushed forward to where AJ lay in a crumpled heap, sprawled out on his back. The tree limb was on top of him, pinning his left leg underneath it. Even with the branch in the way, Howie could tell it was bent at an unnatural angle. “AJ?” he asked frantically, afraid to touch him or try to move anything, for fear of hurting him worse.
AJ groaned. “Fuck, that hurt,” he rasped, his voice sounding strained.
It was a relief to hear him talking, even cursing. Hovering over him, Howie smiled hopefully and asked, “Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere… my leg, mostly. I can’t… move it,” replied AJ, struggling with the effort. Howie was glad to see him moving the rest of his body, though it probably wasn’t a good idea. “Get this thing off me…”
“Okay. Okay, I’m going to. Just lie still,” said Howie, bending down to grip the branch. Easy does it. You can do this, he coached himself. He knew he was level-headed, good at handling high-stress situations. The sight of blood didn’t bother him; if it ever had, he’d gotten over it a long time ago. It helped when it wasn’t his own.
That was a good thing, because when he dragged the tree limb off of AJ, there was plenty of blood. It flowed from a gaping wound in the side of his shin, just below the knee, where a jagged piece of leg bone protruded. Seeing the white bone, tinged red with blood, poking through the torn skin, Howie couldn’t help but cringe. He had to look away, but even then, he still saw it in his mind’s eye. It was a sight his memory would never let him forget.
AJ noticed his reaction. “What is it?” he asked, coughing, as he struggled to sit up.
Howie turned back around. “No, don’t look,” he started to say, but it was too late. AJ had already lifted his head far enough to see. Maybe he was already slipping into shock, or perhaps it was just the rush of adrenaline that had delayed his response to pain, but it wasn’t until he actually saw his own leg that he started to scream.
“Oh god… oh god!” he panted, hyperventilating in between heartwrenching, guttural cries of agony. It lasted only a few seconds, until a fresh spurt of blood from the hole in his leg caused his face to drain of all the color that remained. AJ’s eyes rolled up into his head, and he toppled backwards in a dead faint.
At first, Howie wasn’t sure whether to be more concerned or relieved that he was passed out cold. At least the horrible screaming had stopped. But then the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, as AJ’s screams were answered by an even more horrible sound: the ravenous moan of a zombie. It was enough to make his blood run cold; he felt a chill, despite the heat. All the noise had alerted the lingering undead to their presence, and soon, very soon, he knew, the walking corpses would come staggering through the trees to claim the fresh human flesh they craved.
He was not about to leave AJ lying around to become zombie meat. Forgoing the most basic rules of first aid, he bent down and pulled AJ into a sitting position, sliding his arms under AJ’s and around his body. AJ’s head lolled, unconscious. His body was heavy and limp, dead weight. It was a relief he wasn’t any bigger than he was; otherwise, Howie never would have been able to lift him. But the surge of adrenaline coursing through him, the pure desperation to get himself and AJ away from there, must have bolstered the muscle he’d built up over the summer. Somehow, he found the strength he needed to hoist AJ over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold.
As he did, he heard another sickening crunch. Broken leg, he thought, wincing. He couldn’t see it, but he pictured AJ’s leg dangling like a rag doll’s. It needed to be stabilized; he was going to make it worse, picking AJ up this way. But what other choice did he have? It was too late now. Struggling beneath AJ’s weight, he waddled towards the truck. Thankfully, the tailgate was still down, the bed not yet full with logs. He eased AJ down onto it, climbing up to drag him in further. AJ moaned, his eyelids fluttering, and Howie squirmed as he imagined the pain his friend was in, pain that had probably doubled in his efforts to get him to safety.
“Hang on, AJ,” he whispered. “I’m getting you out of here. I’ll take you to Jo. She’ll know what to do.”
He patted AJ’s shoulder awkwardly, then jumped out of the back of the truck and raised the tailgate. Leaving both saws and AJ’s gun on the ground, he rushed around to the driver’s side and climbed into the cab, just as the first zombie emerged from the trees. Howie didn’t hesitate. The key was already in the ignition, and as soon as he turned on the engine, he threw it into drive and slammed his foot down onto the accelerator. He swerved to plow into the zombie and felt a sickening, yet satisfying bump as the tires rolled over the fallen corpse. “Sorry!” he called over his shoulder, thinking not of the zombie, but of AJ, being jostled around in the back.
He drove more carefully after that, but still quickly, speeding back up the coastline of the peninsula, until he spotted Jo and Gabby working on the wall. Rolling down his window, he slowed the truck and stuck his head out. “AJ’s hurt!” he shouted. “He fell from a tree! His leg’s broken!”
Jo came running, Gabby on her heels. “Take us to the medical center,” she said, and without hesitation, she boosted herself up and over the tailgate to get to AJ.
Gabby climbed into the passenger seat and looked at Howie with wide eyes. “What happened?”
“The branch broke,” he murmured, shaking his head, as he removed his foot from the brake and drove on. “He should never have been up that high… We should have used a ladder…”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gabby shrug. “I climbed trees all the time as a kid. I fell out of one once and broke my wrist. It wasn’t that bad. I got a cast that went all the way up to my elbow – lime green – and all the kids in my class got to sign it. It was pretty cool at first, except it got real itchy, and that was annoying. And when I got it cut off, my arm was all, like, white and shriveled – you know, like when you stay in the bathtub too long? And it stunk! Eww, it was so gross!” She laughed, then added, “But it went back to normal. It’s fine now.” In his peripheral, Howie saw her rotate her wrist freely. He continued to stare straight ahead, wishing he could tune out her incessant chatter. “He’ll be okay,” Gabby said assuredly. “My mom can fix him up.”
Howie wished he had the same confidence. He wanted to tell Gabby, “I bet your wrist didn’t break clear through the skin, did it?” But he said nothing. He had never broken a bone himself, but he knew it would take more than a lime green cast to make AJ’s leg good as new. If the world were normal, AJ would surely need surgery. But Jo was just a nurse. Her medical skills were impressive, no doubt; he would never forget that she had saved his life. Still, he knew there were limits to her expertise.
He pulled up in front of the medical center, stopping just short of the front doors. “Go in and find one of those gurneys on wheels,” he told Gabby. She nodded and scrambled out of the truck, running into the building. Howie got out, too, and went around to the back, where Jo had already climbed down and was lowering the tailgate. “How bad is it?” he asked her in a low voice.
Her face looked pale. “Bad,” she whispered back.
Gabby brought the gurney, and together, they carefully eased AJ out of the truck bed and onto it, wheeling him into the building. It was a mess inside, supplies and equipment thrown haphazardly everywhere, some of it used and soiled with bodily fluids. The air stunk like death. But at least they had cleared the place of zombies. There were no undead around to bother them as they took AJ into one of the rooms to do what they could for him.
Howie had to hand it to Jo – she knew what she was doing. At first, she barked out order after order, sending Gabby and him to search for supplies, asking them to hold things for her as she worked on AJ. Howie watched, impressed, as she started a pair of IVs, one in each of his arms, to give him painkillers and antibiotics. “Infection is the biggest problem we have to watch out for now,” she explained quietly, as she tended to AJ’s open wound. He was unconscious, thanks to the combination of shock and sedatives. “With an open fracture like this, the infection can get into the bone, and if that happens…” She trailed off, shaking her head.
Howie could guess what she was leaving him to infer. AJ would face losing his leg… or death. He prayed it wouldn’t come to that. “That’s what the antibiotics are for, right?” he asked hopefully. “To keep that from happening?”
Jo nodded, but she said, “It’s still a risk. We’ll have to be diligent about keeping the wound clean.”
He fell silent as he watched her carefully wash out the hole in AJ’s leg, removing fragments of bone with a pair of tweezers and cutting away the ragged edges of his torn skin. She realigned the broken bones as best she could before dressing the wound and stabilizing it with a splint. It took a long time, but Howie was still surprised when she stopped her work. “You’re not going to put a cast on it?” he asked.
She shook her head. “We won’t be able to watch for infection if he’s in a cast. The splint will have to do for now, to keep it stable.”
“He needs surgery, doesn’t he?” Howie expressed his earlier thought.
“Yes,” Jo admitted, looking grim. “But it’s too risky. I’m no orthopedic surgeon; I don’t know the first thing about pinning broken bones back together, and I doubt they have the supplies here for that kind of operation. I’d probably end up doing more damage than good if I tried.” Her shoulders sagged in defeat. “I think our best option is to keep his leg clean and immobilized, until it heals on its own. He’s lucky in one way: it looks like a clean break. The bones will fuse back together eventually, as long as they’re kept aligned. How much use he’ll get out of that leg, though, I can’t say.” She sighed. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Wait and see… Howie was tired of waiting. Waiting for AJ’s leg to heal. Waiting for the others to return. Waiting for some sign that the world as a whole was not a lost cause.
The longer he waited, the less hopeful he felt.
