Gray (Book 3) Page 9

  He took his jacket off and his new shirt, and when he tried to untie the bandage, she stopped him.

  “Let me,” she said. She worked out the knot in the strip of shirt she’d put around the wound, and then carefully tugged off the gauze pads, taking care not to tear the scabs off with them. Both wounds looked better. She blew out a sigh of relief.

  “Gonna live, am I?” said Benjamin.

  “Yeah. You are.” She pressed at the edge of the exit wound. The excess heat was gone. She tested his skin down at his elbow for a comparison. Hardly any difference at all in temperature. It wasn’t as puffy now, and it wasn’t as red. The wound was still an ugly thing, but the scabs that had formed were doing their jobs now, and she would leave them alone.

  To Edith, she said, “What do you think about using mercurochrome on this?” The stuff hadn’t been used in American medicine for a long while, and she knew little about it, except her grandmother still had some in her medicine cabinet.

  “Hasn’t hurt anyone yet.”

  “But because of the depth of the wound, I’m wondering if that’s best, or….?”

  Edith stepped closer. “It seems to be healing on its own. I’d be sparing with the use of anything we have, as we don’t have much.”

  “At least I have clean bandages now.” Coral dabbed a bit of the mercurochrome at the edge of one of the scabs, where it looked slightly redder than the rest, and padded each side with a square of clean cotton, then tied another strip of clean cotton around it. “In a couple days, if it’s still healing, and if you’re someplace warm inside, like the kitchen, or Levi’s office, or here, leave it open to the air.”

  “My arm hardly knows what air is any more.”

  She washed her hands in soap and water, then turned back to him. Edith had put the trash into a can kept on the box of kindling. Anything burnable—and the old gauze bandages were—got burned for heat in their stove. Edith had quit feeding the fire an hour ago and had banked the stove, preparing for the end of the day.

  When Coral turned back to Benjamin, he was easing on his jacket again.

  “I wish that jacket wasn’t so dirty.”

  “The shirt is clean,” he said.

  “Maybe you can borrow another coat for a couple of days while this one gets laundered and dries out. That’d be good.”

  “What about yours?”

  “Mine, too. And our sleeping bags and blankets, if they’ll do those. I assume they have heat in the laundry so things dry quicker?” she asked Edith.

  The woman nodded.

  “Show me how to close the clinic up for the day.”

  “I can do it.”

  “No, I need to learn, so you can take your days off soon. You’ve done more than your share today. You kept me from screaming at that Gloria person, for one thing.”

  “She can be a trial,” said Edith. “It’s easy to tidy up and close. Shouldn’t take us five minutes.”

  Benjamin leant a hand, and Edith was right. In five minutes, they had everything put away, the floor was swept, and the chairs in the waiting area straightened out. Someone, probably Edith, had left a couple books in there, like magazines left in a regular doctor’s office. One Coral glanced at had pictures of African animals, so you could entertain a kid with it while you were waiting. As she put it down, it struck her than none of these children would ever again see a zoo or get a chance to look at a giraffe or zebra in real life.

  Edith had a key for the clinic door, and she locked it. “One of the few places we do lock,” she said. “Along with the kitchen and food stores.”

  They didn’t entirely trust each other, then. That made Coral feel marginally better about staying in Boise. Otherwise, it was a little too Stepford Wives for her. The Stepford Survivors. That they understood there would be theft among the small community made them seem more human to her.

  Edith walked with them for a few minutes then split off to go home.

  When she was out of earshot, Benjamin looked around to make sure they were alone and said, “Let me tell you about my day.”

  Chapter 12

  “That doesn’t sound good,” said Coral.

  Benjamin glanced around again. “It’s not awful—but it’s strange.”

  “Levi, you mean? Or Parnell?”

  “A few things. Yeah, them too.” He pulled his jacket tighter.

  When he adjusted his mask on his face, she remembered hers and dug in her pocket for the bandana, finding it and slipping it on. “Tell me,” she said.

  “Let’s keep walking, but slowly.”

  “Maybe we should head for the kitchen.”

  “We have some time before supper.”

  “So let’s walk around the block.”

  “Sure.” He rewound his scarf. “Cold.”

  She nodded. It was getting colder. Or maybe going in and out of heated spaces was making the cold feel worse.

  “He asked about what we’ve seen out there. I explained more about the cult. He wouldn’t give me my rifle back.”

  “That’s not surprising.”

  “He said he’d think about it the first time he sent me out hunting.”

  “What do you mean, hunting?”

  “Like Kathy and them were doing when we met them. Scavenging, really. Looking for supplies and canned food.”

  “Then he gave you that as a job?”

  “That’s his hope, he said, that it would work out. For now, I’m to apprentice as a perimeter guard—no gun, just a lookout—and I help Parnell out when he needs me. That’s what I did today.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “All he had me do today was report to another guy who had me haul boxes of books and scrap wood to the kitchen, for burning.”

  “What was weird about that?”

  “This isn’t some sort of utopia,” he said.

  “No.” She hadn’t believed it would be. It was better—or closer to the old world—than anything they’d seen so far, but she no longer trusted other people. “What’s bothering you in particular?”

  “I got to see Levi’s quarters when I took wood there, for one thing. Just a glimpse, but it’s pretty fancy, compared to Doug and Abigail’s place. And he has a stove, and it had heat coming off it, even though he wasn’t there.”

  “Does he live alone?”

  “Can’t say for sure.”

  “No one else was there?” She wondered why they’d waste fuel for the stove, then.

  “There were signs a woman had been staying there. When I asked another laborer if he was married, he laughed. Apparently, there have been several women.”

  Coral said, “That’s not too odd. If the women are willing, it may be the privilege of command. I mean, presidents slept around a lot, right?”

  “It wasn’t the idea of a woman, or her nightgown, or whatever. It was the place, and everything in it. He definitely uses more than his share.”

  “Some of us are more equal than others,” she said. When Benjamin looked at her strangely, she said, “It’s a quote from a book I read in high school. I mean, you have government of any sort—and Boise counts as a place with government—then you have a privileged class, right?”

  “You’d have to see it. Some of what was in there was not necessary. It was indulgent.” He was getting frustrated trying to communicate with her. “It was wrong.”

  “Okay.” Coral didn’t want to belabor the point. Besides, she trusted Benjamin’s view of the situation. Even if he couldn’t put something into words, she believed in his judgments. “What else?”

  “It was—I don’t know. Then Parnell was interested in you, which makes sense. But there was something else going on.”

  She grabbed his jacket sleeve to stop him and make him look at her. “Whoa, you mean something sexual from him? Toward me?”

  “No, no. I don’t mean interested in that way. There was a kind of greedy look in his eyes. Not sex. Some other kind of greed I can’t identify. So be careful with him. And something else odd? After talking
with Levi a few minutes, after I’d answered his questions about our route, and what we’d seen, I felt like I was disappearing, right before his eyes. Like I was turning invisible for him.”

  Coral could easily imagine that. That couldn’t be good news. The leaders could reject Benjamin from the community and force her to stay. Not going to happen, no how, no way. If they didn’t want him, she would leave with him. “I shouldn’t have let them separate us,” she said. “It was stupid of me. Tomorrow, I’ll talk to him, tell him that if he wants me as a doctor, you need to assist me.”

  “I’m not qualified to do anything like that. I’m not even good with people.”

  “Who cares? We’ll pretend you’re doing one thing and you can be useful doing another. You can be the receptionist, pull up patient files, tidy the rooms. Whatever. We need to stick together until we know more about this place.” And before any kind of serious trouble visited them while they were apart from one another.

  Benjamin was shaking his head. “I don’t think that’s going to fly.”

  “We won’t know what he’ll think about it until we ask.” And she’d ask for their supplies back, too—all of them, including the hatchet and rifle. If they wanted her as their doctor so damned much, they could accommodate her requests. Benjamin and she began to walk again. “Did anyone order you to be somewhere tomorrow morning?”

  “I’m supposed to report to Parnell again after breakfast, in the library.”

  “Good. I’ll come—” but she was interrupted by a call from a person in the distance, too far away for her to make out. “Who is it?” she said.

  “Martin, I think,” said Benjamin.

  Coral raised a hand in greeting, and Martin detoured their way.

  When he came closer, he yelled, “If you’re headed to supper, you’re headed the wrong way. It’s over there.” He pointed back the way they had come.

  “Oh, right,” Coral said.

  “I’ll walk with you, so you don’t get lost.”

  She and Benjamin would have to finish their conversation later. But that was okay. She needed to think on how to approach Levi, how to sell him on the idea that Benjamin was required at the clinic.

  Chapter 13

  In their dining room, she recognized two people from today at the clinic at another table and nodded at them. The feeling that gave her was odd, as if she were a real doctor, someone who needed to be professional on off-hours and maintain a cool distance. She could feel herself wanting to speak less at the table, to avoid eye contact. It wasn’t merely her distrust of strangers, either. This reticence was about being The Doctor. Would she have lasted as a doctor in the former world? Maybe working as a surgeon—

  “Coral!” It was Abigail.

  Half the table was staring at her, waiting for her to respond to some question. “I’m sorry. I was lost in thought. What did you say?”

  “I asked if you wanted your hair cut after supper.”

  “Thank you,” said Coral. “I would. And then I’d like to make it an early night, crawl into bed.”

  “Hard day at work?” said Abigail.

  Coral gave a noncommittal shrug. “I’m tired. Still catching up on eating, I guess.” She looked down at her plate. The food was already gone and she had no idea what she’d been eating. Tuna, by the taste in her mouth.

  “We’ll go straight home,” said Abigail.

  “Not me. I need to drop by the library,” said Doug. “But I’ll be there fifteen minutes after you.”

  Light was fading from the gray world as she, Benjamin, and Abigail hurried across campus and to the apartment buildings.

  She and Abigail took the two metal chairs outside, to get the most of the dim light. Abigail cut Coral’s hair, fiddling with it until Doug walked up and said, “Looks good,”

  “I don’t know,” said Abigail, backing up and studying her. “I didn’t have much to work with.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine, thank you,” said Coral, summoning a smile. “When people compliment me on it tomorrow, should I send them to you for their own haircuts?”

  “God, no,” said Abigail. “Too nerve-wracking.”

  The three of them went inside, where Benjamin was sitting next to a window with a scrap of rawhide in his bare hand, turning it this way and that. His right boot was on his lap.

  “What’re you up to?” asked Doug.

  “Thinking about if I can fix Coral’s old boots. The shoes she has now aren’t that great for walking on snow.”

  “Where’d you find the leather?”

  “I asked Tyler—you know him?—for it when I caught sight of it today in a scrap pile.” He put his boot back on but didn’t lace it. “Where are your old boots, Coral?”

  “I don’t know. Not upstairs in the room?”

  Abigail said, “I took them to the clothing storage, sorry. I didn’t know you’d want them. No offense, but nobody would have grabbed them in that condition, so I’m sure they’re still there if you want them.”

  “Okay,” Benjamin said. “Maybe you can show me where that is tomorrow on the way to breakfast, and I’ll do what I can to fix them.” He cocked his head at Coral. “You wanted to get to sleep early?”

  “I did,” she said. “Thanks again for the haircut, Abigail. And for letting us stay here.”

  “You’re totally welcome,” Doug said.

  “Absolutely,” Abigail echoed. “I love having the company.” There was a wistful note in her voice.

  Coral and Benjamin climbed the dim staircase. Behind them, they could hear the soft murmur of the others’ voices. They stripped off shoes and gloves and crawled under the stack of blankets and quilts that were piled on the futon.

  Benjamin lay on his back. Coral turned to face him, so she could talk right into his ear and keep her voice low. “Tell me the best way to approach Levi, if I want to get something out of him.”

  “Hmm,” Benjamin said. “I guess your best approach is to act like him. That hearty, bluff, fake thing he does like a salesman. Problem is, I think he’ll be hard to pin down.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Oh, he’ll nod like he’s agreeing, but then he’ll ignore what you said and do what he wants to do anyway. You watch.”

  “Will he make promises that he’ll break, do you think?”

  “Absolutely, and with a straight face. No hesitation, no guilty look, nothing. He’d say a bald lie. And maybe deny a few days later that he ever said that, precisely. Or he’ll say it’s in the works and keep putting you off. I’d bet money on it.” He made an amused sound. “If there was still such a thing as money.”

  “Okay,” she said. “So what if I tell him you’re working with me? Not ask. Tell.”

  “But why would we do that? We can’t suddenly say I have medical training, too. If that were the case, we’d have said so when they caught us out there.”

  “I know.” Coral’s thoughts scrambled around, and finally she lit on one idea. “Because you’re a man.”

  “You mean, like, protection for the clinic? Standing guard?”

  “No. I’ll say, there are male patients, and what if they have something sensitive they don’t want to talk to the female staff about, especially to me, a stranger.”

  “Like an STD?”

  “Or prostrate problems or erectile dysfunction. Guy stuff.”

  “I think most guys can talk to their doctors about that, even if she’s female.”

  “Not older men, maybe. Or teens.”

  “Erectile dysfunction generally doesn’t strike teenage boys. And so far, I’ve only seen two people in town who look to be over fifty.”

  He was right about the lack of old people. “I wonder why there aren’t more. You don’t think they drove them out early on?”

  “Nah” he said. A minute of silence passed, and then he said, “Strike that. Not impossible. I’d give it maybe a one in ten chance that happened.”

  “One in ten? That’s a pretty high number. You don’t trust them.”

&n
bsp; “Do you?”

  “I’ve felt nervous since the beginning, but I thought I was being paranoid and kept talking myself into going along with everything. I do think Abigail and Doug are on the level, and probably Edith. But I believe your gut feelings more than I believe anybody else’s promises and explanations. If I found out something horrible about the three people I think are okay, that wouldn’t shock me, either. Nothing would shock me.”

  “Not any more.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “By the way, has anyone told you about bath day?”

  “Huh? No.”

  “Edith mentioned it. Saturdays, they use the kitchen all day after breakfast for baths. They boil water and run all three hundred people through, a dozen at a time, twenty minutes shifts, eight or nine hours of it, all told. They have to eat cold food that night, but everybody gets a warm—or at least a tepid—bath once a week.”

  “Waste of fuel. They don’t have much extra to be using it like that.”

  Coral thought having clean hair and clothes once a week sounded great, but he was probably right about the fuel. Maybe the town leaders thought the boost to morale was worth burning through fuel for baths. “Tell me what you did see today, about the fuel stores and anything else we might need to know.”

  For the rest of the evening, they told each other what they’d seen and heard of the city, its supplies, its defenses, and its strengths and weaknesses. By the time she was drifting off, Coral was reassured that they could escape, if need be. During the day, there were people going from one job to another, or out supervising kids. At night, there were perimeter guards, but there were miles to patrol, and Benjamin said they could slip past.

  It was time to start planning and collecting whatever would not be missed. She wanted to be ready to run at a moment’s notice if things took a bad turn here. She didn’t want to put that off, either.

  Her fishing gear was still with her. For some reason, they hadn’t asked for it. Her knife was in her pocket, returned to her—she reached down to touch it to reassure herself of that. They had their burlap sacks and a short length of nylon rope. More rope would be good. A few cans of food would be nice. Real backpacks—or at least one—would help tremendously.