“I didn’t have a lot of options. I was bleeding too much. Even if I could get the bleeding stopped with pressure, it would have started again as soon as I started walking. I didn’t know if the bullet had hit an artery or a major organ or anything or if I was going to just keep bleeding internally. I knew I couldn’t actually perform surgery on myself, and I did what I had to do to get myself moving.”
“Shit.” Katrina wraps her arms around her legs and lays her chin on her knees. “That had to have hurt so much.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had anything hurt more,” I say. “It was a big wound, and I had to use one hand to pull the skin together so I could get the needle through. I barely made it. Nineteen stitches total.”
“Wow.”
“Once those were done, I tried to reach around to the wound at my back, but there was no way. It wasn’t bleeding as bad as the exit point, so I found some Dermabond and did my best to spread it around.”
“Dermabond?”
“Glue.”
“Glue?”
“Surgical adhesive, yeah. It’s like superglue for skin. It’s better for smaller cuts, but I couldn’t stitch myself in the back, so it was the next best thing. I held it closed as much as I could, and spread the adhesive over it. After that, I got it covered with gauze and taped up both of the wounds.”
I turned a little and lifted my shirt again. I can’t quite see it myself, but I’ve looked at it in the mirror a few times. The scar is round and still a little red where tissue grew over the hole. It’s ugly, no doubt about that.
“I tried to get up then,” I tell her. “All I could think about was Hannah. I wasn’t really sure how long I had been gone, and I was still a good five hundred yards from where I’d left her, and the whole area was covered in rubble. As soon as I tried to stand, I fell again.”
“Because of your leg?”
“Yeah. Honestly, the belly-wound had me distracted enough I hadn’t thought about my leg. When I looked at it, it wasn’t bleeding much. The bullet grazed my leg pretty deep but didn’t really penetrate. It burned and itched, but I didn’t have time to stitch it up. I applied more glue, a bunch of surgical tape, and wrapped it as tight as I could. Wrapping it that tight made it hurt worse, but I could put some pressure on my leg then.”
I rub at the spot on my thigh.
“Does it still hurt?” Katrina nods toward my hand on my leg.
“Sometimes.” I take in a long breath and take down another long gulp of vodka. “Once it was taped up, I still couldn’t walk well, but I was moving. However, I was stumbling and falling every couple of steps, which jarred every wound. At that point, I didn’t care about the pain. I was just pissed it was taking so long to get anywhere, and I needed to move faster.”
“I found a crutch in the rubble. There was only one of them, and the end of it was broken. It wasn’t long enough to use properly, but it was enough for me to pick my way through the rest of the rubble. I made it outside, and I could see the parking garage where I’d left Hannah, but I didn’t see her anywhere.
“I kept telling myself that she was hiding inside the garage somewhere, that she had taken shelter in one of the abandoned cars. I was screaming her name over and over again, but I didn’t get an answer.”
I stop. I can hear my own voice echoing in my head, crying out for her and getting no response. I can feel the sense of dread and panic as it threatened to overwhelm me.
“Are you okay?” Katrina’s voice pulls me back to the present.
“Yeah.” I grip the top of the bottle but don’t drink. I need to keep going. “Then I looked out into the street, and I saw these grocery bags. They looked weird just lying there, right in the middle of the concrete. I didn’t think they had been there before, so I made my way over to them and found some canned food inside. I also saw some other bags near a body, and I think they belonged to the guy lying there. The stuff that had gone bad was left beside him, but the good stuff was what I found in the street. I figured Hannah had seen the bags and went to see if there was anything useful in them. That’s when I saw…”
I have to stop again as the memory floods my head: the broken branches, the crushed grass, and all the footprints near the row of hedges. I remember the blood on the ground and the lingering smell of semen.
“There had…had been a struggle. I was too late. They already had her. There were footprints coming from the back parking lot of a different building, but they only led back to an alley. They must have left by the road, and there wasn’t any sign of them to follow.”
Katrina nods but says nothing.
“I looked everywhere. For weeks, I barely slept. I searched anywhere and everywhere, finding more survivors than I ever expected to find, but I never found a trace of her. Every group I talked to was nothing but men, and none of them had even seen another woman since the attack. It wasn’t until the second month that I found someone who thought he knew who Caesar was. In the end, he didn’t have any idea where to look for him, though. I’ve found similar leads since then, but they all end up going nowhere.”
“You’re still looking,” Katrina says.
“Yeah.”
“It’s hard to track someone after that much time.”
“It doesn’t matter. She was depending on me. I was supposed to keep her safe. I won’t give up on her now.”
“Well, what do you know for sure?”