Don't Catch Me!

Chapter 26 - E.R.

Chapter 26 – E.R.

Again I landed in his arms.  His look of loving devotion was so clear in his eyes. He loved me.

His eyes left mine and he carefully lowered me to the ground as he took in our surroundings.   We were in the middle of a street in what looked to be a small town.  Joel slowly turned around scanning the pavement and houses.   While he did this his arms released me and his hand found mine.

“We have to get off the street.” He led me towards the nearest house.  Strangely enough the front door was open.  Using his hands he silently indicated for me to stay there.  I nodded and watched him checking all the rooms off the hall.  He picked up a newspaper off the table as he came back.

“It’s fine, I think this is a E.R.”

“An emergency room?  Why?”

“No, an Extinct Reality.  You would be surprised how many of these there are.”

“How can you tell?  This place doesn’t look much different to the last dimension.”

He held the newspaper up to me.  The headline read “Influenza Pandemic sweeps Asia.” He shrugged, “It is truly surprising how fragile our civilization is.   The more technologically advanced the dimension the more susceptible they seem to be, especially those dimensions that have perfected air transportation.  A virulent virus can wipe out a small country in a matter of days, a continent in a week, and the world population would be infected and mostly dead by the end of the month.  Of course it depends on incubation periods and the like.  But I have yet to find a dimension with a cure for the virus.  That would be a significant find!”

“Are we safe?”

“Virus’ can’t survive UV light and being outside a host.  If it had been bacterial we would have had to quarantine ourselves.  The spores can survive for decades.”

“So they are all dead?  Everyone?”

“I can’t be sure.  They might have been forced to evacuate and just never returned.  It’s been a while though.  The newspaper is ten years old.”

“So what now?”

“I don’t bother with these dimensions.  If the company are interested then they can come here later and take samples.  There is nothing for me to learn here.”

“Joel, is there any danger?  Is there a chance that we will be hunted down, captured, forced to fight, tortured, enslaved, or battle armies of mutant zombies?”

“Well I can’t vouch for the zombies, although that would be a new one for me.  But I think we are fairly safe here.”

“Great!  We are not leaving until I have had at least ten hours sleep and some sort of bath.” I swayed slightly on my feet.  Living on the run ever since I left my dimension meant I had not had a decent night’s sleep and I was shattered. 

“Aren’t you hungry too?”  Joel laughed softly and on cue my stomach grumbled.  “How about you have a look in the kitchen, there might be some canned items that are still edible.  And I will sort out somewhere for you to sleep.”

I stretched and yawned an “OK”.

I found the kitchen and hunted through the cupboards, making an interesting discovering in the bottom drawer.  I also found a can of baked beans that although was past its expiry date the can still looked in good condition, and a packed of unopened rice.  Cooking the food was going to be the challenge.  Out in the back garden I found some bricks and between them I made a small fire then placed an oven tray between over the top to balance on the bricks.  I put my pots on top and stirred while I waited.