Ashes (Ashes Trilogy 1)

She turned to see Kincaid’s eyes on her. “You won’t be working here much,” he said. “We got dedicated hospice staff still around for this.”

“It’s okay,” she said, although she was relieved. She could too easily see herself here. Back when the only thing she’d had to worry about was, oh, imminent death, she’d visited a few hospices for people her age and thought that waiting around to die with strangers was even nuttier than waiting around to die at Aunt Hannah’s. “How are you getting your tanks?”

“The way we get everything.” He started off down the hall, motioning for her to follow. “Either the guys out foraging bring ’em back, or they don’t. Right now, mostly they don’t. If it’s a choice between our guys grabbing a wagonload of antibiotics and bandages versus a couple oxygen tanks … it’s not a contest.”

“What are you going to do when you run out of supplies?” Alex asked. Foraging was all well and good, but there had to be limits to what they could stockpile. Judging from the nightly rifle fire, Kincaid must see his share of wounded.

“Triage,” Kincaid said briefly, like that explained something. She knew the word; her mother had worked the emergency room. But sorting the wounded by category didn’t answer anything unless …

She stared up at Kincaid. “What happens when someone’s really, you know, shot up pretty bad?” She didn’t want to say when someone can’t be saved or when someone’s going to die.

Kincaid held her eyes a moment. “If you’re smart enough to ask that question, you already know the answer.”

She did. Chris had said it. When there was only so much to go around, you did the math. Treat the ones who were either most likely to survive or valuable in some way. The rest? You had to hope the end came fast. She wondered if Kincaid helped those people along. Given the situation, she thought he just might.

Kincaid had two other assistants, both older men in their late sixties who’d been nurses but in retirement before. There were six techs, a fancy name for people like her who did things like mop up blood, change sheets, empty bedpans, bring meals. When he saw the look on her face, Kincaid laughed. “Don’t worry. When the patrols start coming back, someone’s usually hurt. That’s where you’re gonna cut your teeth.”

True to his word, Kincaid had her assist when a farmer hobbled in a few hours later. The farmer had laid his thigh open almost to his knee: Damn saw jumped and bit me. The wound was very deep, and Kincaid kept her busy irrigating away blood as he worked. Halfway through, when the bleeding was mostly under control and he’d put in the first few stitches, he handed her the Kelly clamp and tissue forceps and said, “You been watching? Good. Now, I want you to throw a couple stitches in that muscle there. Don’t be shy; just do it.” He watched as she threw in and tied off the first stitch, and then he nodded. “That was good. You done this before?”

“My mom was a doctor.” She could hear her mother’s voice in her head: Roll your wrist, sweetie; don’t be afraid to take a big bite. “We practiced on chicken legs. She said it was closest to what sewing up people was like.”

“Jeez, remind me not to come over for dinner,” said the farmer.

She tagged after Kincaid until well past dark, and when she walked out of the building, Chris was there with Honey. Which was only a little freaky. How had he known? It wasn’t as if someone could just pick up a cell. Was he keeping tabs on her? If so, that wasn’t good.

Compared to that morning, they didn’t talk much, nothing more than hi, how are you, just peachy, that’s good. That was fine. Once they were on Jess’s street—a cul-de-sac—he dismounted, waited while she stabled Honey in the garage at the end of the block, and then walked her to Jess’s house. She said good night and thanks, he nodded and said nothing, and that was that.

Which was fine.

Chris showed up the second day, but not the third, fourth, fifth, or sixth. Instead, Greg escorted her and pumped her about Tori. Unlike Chris, Greg was both chatty and sloppy. Which was how she figured out that supplies—backpacks, food, clothes—were cached back in the village. And also, that the southwest corner was the least heavily patrolled. “We even got a couple gas depots,” Greg said. “We’ve been siphoning gas from cars and trucks and stuff. Figure to use it for the tractors, chain saws, stuff like that come spring.”

“Why not use the gas now?” she asked. “Wouldn’t some snowmobiles work?”

“Sure, and we would, in an emergency. But no one’s going to be making any more gasoline for a long, long time. Once we use up our stockpiles, that’s it. We might figure a way to pump gas up from the tanks under stations, but we need an engineer to help us with that. Even if we can get at the gas, we still have the problem of eventually running out, and it’s kind of spooky anyway, you know? The noise? Anyway, the Council’s into us being self-sufficient and simpler, like the Amish. Which we already kind of were before the … you know. That’s why so many of the houses have hand pumps and stuff for water. Without those, we’d have been completely screwed.”

With that logic, Alex thought, Peter and Chris and everyone else ought to wear deerskins, give up guns, and take up bows and arrows. Or clubs. “What about the people you turn away? You don’t just throw them out with nothing, do you?”

Greg’s forehead crinkled in alarm. “Oh no, that would be like … wrong. They get, you know, a backpack and some supplies. Couple days’ worth of food, water.”

“What about guns? They’d need those, too, won’t they?”

“Yeah, but …” Greg scrunched up his nose. “They’d probably shoot us, right?”

“Good point.” She inclined her head at his rifle. “Nice. It’s a Henry, isn’t it?”

Greg beamed. “Yeah, it’s sweet. Big Boy .44 Magnum. The scope is completely awesome. I also got me a Bushmaster M4 for patrol. We got, like, this arsenal.”

“Cool. Where?”

“Well, we all got a couple guns at home, but most we lock up in the village hall, down in the basement below the jail. Keep the ammo there, too. It’s about the safest place in town.”

Well, that wasn’t good. She couldn’t think of a decent excuse that would get her into the basement so she could steal some ammo—or past a locked door, for that matter. So that meant she would have to steal a weapon from someone’s house. Did Jess have a gun? No, being a girl, probably not. One of the guys then, or maybe Kincaid …