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AVALON’ EYES FLUTTERED open. The light from the bare overhead bulb was swinging crazily, as though an earthquake was occurring, yet she felt no tremors. She blinked, trying to steady her vision, but it had the opposite effect. The only escape was in closing her eyes and still the world spun.
“Ahhhh!” groaned Avalon and she rolled onto her side and threw up. Or she tried to, but nothing came out.
“Hey, easy there,” said a male voice and a hand stroked her back.
“Trench?” she croaked, licking dry lips.
“Yeah, it’s me Avalon. Go easy, you are very sick.”
Avalon tried to swallow and found that she couldn’t. Her throat was swollen shut. She gasped, drawing in a deep breath that caught on the obstruction. The sensation of choking on air made her eyes open again. Panic crawled her skin and she gasped and tried to sit up. Her arms flailed and her glazed eyes bulged. Trench grabbed her arms and pushed her back down.
“She is hyperventilating around the tube. Give me a syringe, quick!” he snapped, holding the struggling Avalon down against the sheets.
Cris handed Trench a needle brimming with sedative and he plunged it into her upper arm. Avalon’s struggles weakened and then she relaxed. Her breathing relaxed along with it, allowing air to reach her lungs. Trench watched her sink back into unconsciousness, worry drawing a deep sigh from him.
“She can’t keep going like this. She isn’t able to eat.” Magnum moved up on the other side of Avalon, gazing down at the unconscious teen. “She is a wreck. Look at the welts. They nearly cover her entire body. Her skin is expanding like a balloon.”
“I know! I don’t know what else to do for her.” Trench had ventilated Avalon with a rough tube that they used in the kitchen. It was a crude effort, and one that he had only known because of his time at medical school. He had left Solace University when the economy collapsed. He had not been able to gather the required funds to continue. The middle class kids had been the first to drop out. His knowledge of how to perform the procedure came as a result of his time spent assisting his veterinarian father. His father’s practice had collapsed about the same time that he left school. When people were starving, they didn’t take their pets to see a vet when a bullet was cheap. What he had been able to do for Avalon was keeping her temporarily alive but she needed real help. “Were you able to get anyone from the SOS on the radio? Avalon needs a real doctor.”
Magnum shook her head. “No. No one is answering right now. I will keep trying but you know it’s just chance when we do make contact.”
“Keep trying. It’s urgent. Broadcast twenty-four hours a day. We must reach them!”
“I will keep trying. I promise.” Magnum touched his shoulder in comfort then left the room.
“Stay with her, Cris. I need to check on something.”
Cris took his place beside Avalon as he got up and left the room. They had placed her back in the small office off of the kitchen. Two chairs had been brought in to sit beside Avalon’s bed.
Trench crossed the kitchen to a small refrigerator, the only one that still worked in the restaurant. He opened the door, checking their scavenged supplies. They were running low on the medications they had stockpiled. He frowned, knowing a mission to restock them would be fraught with danger as it would pit them against the Imbroglio gang. They had been expanding their territory lately, with the help of outsiders. Cris and Magnum’s description of their encounter left no doubt now, who those outsiders were. If they had been recruited by the Feds, then the war was about to escalate to new levels. He used the term subconsciously, for the Imbroglio gang used WAR as their symbol to define their territory. It was a turf war that encompassed the entire city. The main medical stash that they had located was in an abandoned veterinary clinic, on a hotly disputed border that the Imbroglio gang was sure to be patrolling. The takeover of the warehouse was ill news at the best of times, but now it weighed on Trench’s mind.
He searched through the contents of the fridge, sorting the supplies and counting out what remained. They had gone through a lot of supplies since Avalon’s arrival. He grimaced at the direction of his thoughts. Anyone else he would have tossed out of the gang, immediately. Everyone had to pull their own weight. It was part of the code. No one could be a drain to the others, or a burden. Maybe I should toss her out. She has lived on her own long enough and survived. She doesn’t need our protection. Yet there was something about her that attracted him, as no other female had ever done. She was feisty and independent yet beneath that louder than life exterior, he sensed a kind person, one not jaded to life, as they had become in the ghetto. That raw innocence that ran just below the surface attracted him in a way that shocked him. He knew he would not cast her out.
Trench ran a hand over his face when he realized he was standing in the fridge door opening, staring at nothing. Angry he went to close the door when a flash of movement caught his eye. Frowning, he opened the door wider and peered at the glass jar in the door tray. It was the jar that Cris and Magnum had put the squashed bee after it fell from Avalon’s clothing.
The bee was twitching. He leaned in closer and squinted at the bee. Its legs were jerking. He picked up the jar and held it up to the naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The second that the jar came in contact with the warmth and light from the bulb, the bee rolled onto its feet and began moving its wings. Shocked, Mitch watched as the torn wing regrew before his eyes. His eyes widened and he hastily checked that the lid was on tight, then shoved it back in the refrigerator door and slammed it shut. That damn bee was dead! I saw it! What the hell is it doing reanimating itself? He backed away from the fridge, eyes fixed on the container that suddenly seemed inadequate protection against what was re-growing in the jar. His first instinct was to flush it down a toilet, but would that be enough to destroy it? He doubted it.
Trench wrenched his eyes away from the fridge and ran over to a metal drawer that held odd supplies. He yanked it open and pulled a roll of duct tape from the drawer and was half way back to the fridge, intent on taping the thing shut when he realized all the medical supplies were in there. His anxious steps slowed then stopped, half way back, considering the dilemma. He reversed his steps and pulled a piece of paper and a black marker of the same drawer, and wrote a warning in big, bold letters:
“Bee is alive. DO NOT OPEN DOOR UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. Trench.”