Carrion (The Bren Watts Diaries #1)

Chapter 18

"He needs medicine," Margot said, checking the temperature on Carson's forehead. Carson lay on the couch, covered in blankets from neck to toe. Carson could barely talk.

Margot also checked Carson's blood pressure by pressing her finger on Carson's wrist, felt his pulse, and counted with her watch. His blood pressure was unusually high. Margot was a registered nurse in Paris, and although her English was somewhat limited, I was able to discern what she was saying.

Felipe acted as Margot's translator. She said something lengthy to him in French that I couldn't understand. "She said he needed antibiotics. None of the first aid kits carries one. She can bring down the fever as best as she could, but nothing more."

"But we already applied Neomycin in it," said Aria.

Margot spoke something to Felipe, and he translated, "The ointment is a good job, but, in this case, the ointment couldn't stop the infection. It needs something a puissant--stronger."

"There's a pharmacy a couple of blocks down from here," Miguel said. "It's close to the diner where I worked."

"Then, we have to go get some for Carson!" Aria said.

"Are you crazy? Do you know what's out there?" Natalie huffed. "I'm not stepping foot outside those doors!"

"But it's Carson, Nat. He might die," Aria pleaded.

"She's right," Logan chimed in, surprising Natalie. "It's Carson we're talking about."

"You're not getting out there. You barely know how to shoot a gun!"

Logan winced and gritted his teeth. "I have to try, babe--"

"No, Logan. You are not going out! Let him do it!" Natalie pointed at me.

All heads turn to me, and I paled. My hands started sweating as I saw their eyes bore down on me for a response. Here I was, standing with a LAR-15 slung against my back and a shotgun in my hands--armed to the teeth--and essentially becoming the poster card for a raid through the pharmacy.

I gulped down hard. "Uh--what kind of medicine?" I asked Margot.

Margot paused. "Anything ending with a '-in' is antibiotique. Penicillin good, but look for better. Le plus tôt le mieux."

"The sooner, the better," Felipe added.

"Or we can choose not to do anything." It was Joe who said it, and all heads turn to him. "I say we handcuff him."

The room suddenly grew cold.

"Handcuff him? Why would we do that?" Aria asked.

"He might have it," Joe said. He had Daniel behind his leg, and the man gently pushed the boy back to the manager's office where Henry and Christina were, playing on some toy displays on the office desk.

Meanwhile, the room turned ugly. Aria was livid for Joe to insinuate that Carson had the sickness, but the others who didn't know him, took a step back, including Felipe, but Margot insisted on staying by Carson's side.

"Vectors. He'll turn into a vector just like Bren said," Bobby said, looking around the room to find someone that agreed with him and Joe. 

He mainly looked at me with the latter notion, and I blanched. "Hey, don't get me into this."

Bobby ignored me. "We've encountered many of them outside before, and if it's a sickness, then we should have it by now, but we don't. Carson is the only one who got bit, and now he's sick! It makes sense!"

"We don't know that!" Aria insisted.

"But we do! Look at him."

"No! Maybe we can still save him. Perhaps, if we get the medicine he needs," Aria said. She placed the flashlight over Carson's eyes. "See? He didn't have their weird pupils. He's fine."