THE DAY THE WORLD FELL

CHAPTER SIX

Ben managed to get his father in the back of the SUV with the help of Anya. Edgar wasn't looking so good, he lost a lot of blood and looked as pale as the moonlight. There was something his father wasn't telling him, he just knew it. But this wasn't the time to pester him about it. Ben just wanted to get his father home and make sure his mother was alright. She had to be safe in her home and waiting for them to return. 

Ben helped Anya put the supplies into the back seat with his father and helped her with the passenger side door, as any gentlemen should. Apocalypse be damned.

"Is my father really going to be okay?" he asked.

"I don't know. I can't tell the extent of his injuries without the proper medical equipment." she went quiet and looked off into the distance as Ben drove away. It was quiet and tense on the ride. Ben worried for his father and all of them stressed over the current circumstances. They'd seen the movies, read the books, flipped through the comic books. If they creators of those things got it right, then everyone was in for a tough ride. Survival of the fittest. The meek will die off first.

Anya noticed Ben straighten his back and look more confident when they turned onto a dirt path leading to an old farmhouse. It was about to stories and a shade of light blue. It reminded Anya of the color for baby boys in the hospital. She forced that thought away and grabbed the arm rest when the road turned bumpy. A woman ran outside and met them in the driveway. She was beautiful in her old age. Long silver hair twisted into braids that reached her hips and a long thin gown that blew with the gentle breeze. Her expression was twisted with concern. She reached the back door and flung it open to meet her Husband.

"Edgar! What happened? I saw the news channel and the helicopters were circling the city. Everything is burning and people are getting violent. Did someone attack you?" she helped him out and supported the wounded side like a crutch. "Lets get you to the rocker." She moved him up the stairs with as much strength as she could muster. Ben reached up to support the mans back from behind. Anya followed quietly, unsure of what she should do. She waited on the porch beside Ben as Edgar sat in the rocker. He was starting to look worse. His color began to fade and he was short of breath now. 

"I'm sorry Edgar," Anya said, "I don't think we can hide it much longer. I need to look at the wound and redress it."

"Already? Is it that bad?" asked Ben as Anya bent down with the medical kit in hand.

"Edgar, you should tell them." Anya looked up at them.

"Edgar, Ben? Who is this and what's going on?"

"Dorothy, do you remember those comic books Benjamin used to read as a boy?" asked Edgar

"Barely, ghouls or something? A terrible sight, I wished he'd have never picked those up." she replied.

"Well it seems, the books were right." Edgar wiped his sweaty face with his shirt and looked up his wife. " Their real. Ghouls, Zombies, Undead. Whatever you wanna call them. The grocery store was full of people. This woman stumbled in, covered in blood. Delirious and moaning. She wreaked of decaying flesh. She kept walking and when the store clerk asked if she was okay, she lunged for her throat and tore it out. There was blood and panic everywhere. I didn't see it until it was too late. I had run toward the back, I was going to leave through the emergency exit. A shelf was pushed by a couple of men struggling to get past and it fell on me."

"You told me that you reached for a can and knocked it over on you." Anya interjected. 

"Yes, well. I didn't want to tell anyone what actually happened because well... I didn't know if she had bitten me."

"Who had bitten you? The bloody lady?" asked Dorothy.

"No, the elderly woman. She was shopping and got between a few men who just didn't care or couldn't see through their panic. They mowed her down like football jocks going for the tackle. She wasn't moving and I was too scared to turn around. Those same men knocked the shelf down on me. I think she turned and crawled a little towards me. I felt something hot and wet close over my ankle and then it just burned so bad. I think someone kicked her hard enough to get her off because she was dead when Anya got there." Edgar looked down to Anya and weakly smiled, "This is Anya, she's a nurse and didn't have anywhere else to go."

"Well Edgar, this is definitely a bite and it looks infected. See this," she pointed at the purple strings already spreading through his calf up to his knee. "That means it is in the blood. I'm not sure what this is. If it is like you said and it is what we have read in books and watched in horror films, then I don't think we can cure it. I can try to clean it and give antibiotics but I don't have any on hand. It's all in the clinic. That's about forty minutes away I think. You are short of breath and sweating too fast." She stood and felt his forehead with the back of her hand. "And I think you are running a fever. Not to mention that your color has drastically diminished."

"So you're saying he isn't going to make it." wept Dorothy.

"I'm not sure. I don't know anything about this infection. It could be parasitic, bacterial, fungal. The antibiotics I could give him for the infection have to be correctly dosed and prescribed for the type of infection. This is tricky. If I give him the wrong ones, the infection could continue to spread and it would even develop an immunity to the drugs. Preventing him from healing with a better dosage." She wiped her hands clean on the towel she pulled from her kit and hung her head. "I am only a nurse, I just started in the clinic and to be honest I wanted to specialize labor and delivery. This isn't my area of expertise. I wish I could better help." She looked to Ben and frowned. He had his head in his hands and looked to be sobbing.