The woman holding the gun is the kind of thin fashion models eat nothing but lettuce and egg whites to achieve—or too many laxatives, in the case of Lauren’s friends. She’s pretty, or would be, if not for the acne on her face and the drawn-on brows that look like sideways commas.
She’s also sweating.
But what I’m most concerned about at the moment isn’t the gun.
It’s the fact that her hands are shaking as she swings toward Chase, who has just dropped down beside me.
“Hey,” I say, lifting my palms. The office smells like smoke and air freshener with a portable toilet thrown in.
“Sorry,” Chase says, laughter gone. “We didn’t know anyone was in here.”
“You weren’t supposed to,” she spits. “That’s the point. I got ’em!” she shouts over her shoulder toward the hallway.
Crap.
A male peers around the doorjamb. He’s got a short beard, and in his plaid shirt and glasses, he looks like someone’s science teacher.
“Now what’re we gonna do?” she says, glancing at him. “Huh? They’re gonna notice that the window’s broken. They’ll know we’re here!”
“We’ll have to move,” the man says, coming in to stand be-
hind her.
“I don’t wanna move! I like it here!” she says, and even though I put her at maybe thirty, she sounds like an angry teenager.
“Sorry about the window,” I say. “We’re just desperate—”
“There’s nothing here!” she says.
The man tilts his head. “What are you looking for?”
“Our friend has blood poisoning,” Chase says. “She needs IV antibiotics or she won’t make it. That’s all we’re here for. Nothing else.”
“Please,” I say, and don’t even have to pretend to beg. “We’re just trying to save a life.”
The woman shakes her head like there’s a fly buzzing around inside it and then curses. “What do we do now?”
They have it.
The pistol visibly trembles in the woman’s grip. I shift my weight away from the closet, toward Chase and the window. The pistol dips a fraction of an inch.
“So are we,” the man says, gesturing to the hall behind him. “We’ve got a friend who’s sick, too.”
“You got anything?” the woman says, hurling her words like darts.
I shake my head, stomach sinking. Because we literally have nothing to trade, let alone medication.
“There’s supposed to be stuff here,” Chase says. “If you want, we could look together. Both get what we need.”
“Nah,” the man says, chewing the inside of his lip. “What we need is all gone. Someone must’ve took it. But I—I think what you’re looking for might be here.”
“Oh, man, thank you,” Chase says, hand going to his chest. “You don’t know how—”
“But we need something, too. Sorry. That’s just how this has to work.”
“Like I said, we don’t have any drugs,” Chase says.
“We know where they are,” the man says as the woman glances at him. “We just need someone to go get them.”
“Okay,” Chase says, stuffing his hands in his front pockets. “Sounds easy enough.”
We don’t have time. We need the antibiotics I am certain are in the closet behind me—now.
And knowing they’re locked just eight feet away is making me nearly as jittery as the chick at the other end of the room.
“Can we, uh, sit down and talk about it?” I say. “You can write out the details?”
If she’d come closer, Chase could disarm her. I could disarm her. But right now I’m seriously worried about one of us getting shot just by accident.
“We have it. Hold on,” he says, and walks out into the hallway. A few seconds later I hear him in conversation with someone else.
How many people are in here?
“Where is it?” I hear Plaid Man say. The reply is mumbled, followed by a door closing farther down the hall.
“So those guys,” Chase says. “The ones at the bypass. What’s uh—what’s their story? I saw one of them pull into the sheriff’s office a few minutes ago. Is the Warden . . . a sheriff?”
The woman snorts.
“There’s no sheriff. No ‘law enforcement,’ ” she says, with a sharp laugh. “No Easter Bunny neither! Just James Elcannon and his friends doing what he’s always wanted to do ever since he got a job in the Municipal Department and tried to run for City Council and got laughed off the ballot. No one wanted the guy from sewer services.”
Sewer services?
“Though it probably had more to do with him getting kicked out of some militia. Too psycho for the three percent.” She snorts, and then flicks a nervous glance toward the window as though worried who heard it.
“What do you mean doing what he always wanted to do?” Chase asks.
“Take over the city. Duh.” She wags her head as she says it: duh. My sister used to do that.
When she was ten.
“He and his ‘orderlies’ ”—she air quotes—“hijacked the last fuel tanker to go through here from the Love’s truck stop almost six months ago. Moved it over to the self-storage place they operate out of on the north side of town. Probably dance around it at night. When the hospital generators started running out of fuel, they had to go to him and he became real important real fast. Especially cuz he provided security. When he got tired of supplying fuel, he closed the hospital down.”
I’m still trying to comprehend something she just said. “He killed our friend over a gallon and a half of fuel—and you’re telling me they have an entire tanker?” I say, my hands starting to shake.
She lifts her brows till they become apostrophes. “Rumor has it it’s running low. Not that it matters. Everything goes through him now.”
“What’s he doing in there?” Chase nods toward the sheriff’s office.
“They been stocking stuff there ever since they ran out of room at the Store-More. He stops by every day when he’s making his rounds. Has a habit of paying surprise visits to his orderlies at the city entrances and hospital and wells where people line up for water every day at eight and five.”
“The Es on the houses,” I say with slow revelation. “They’re for Elcannon. His men have gone through them.”
“Ye-eah,” she says, waving the gun. “He runs. The city. Like I said.”
“How’d you know about this place?” I ask.
She looks away like she’s not sure whether to answer that question. Lifts a shoulder toward her ear as though it itches.
“My sister used to work here,” she finally says. “Her and another nurse. When they got sick, I took down the sign, told everyone the office closed down. That they shipped everything off to the one in Kearney.”
I stare, trying to reconcile the idea of a closet full of meds going to waste in the middle of a crisis.
She lifts her chin. “Oh, spare me. You should be thanking me!”
“For what?” I ask, wondering if she’s insane.
“Havin’ the medicine you need to save your friend. You’re welcome,” she says sarcastically.
“We appreciate it,” Chase says. “Do you know anywhere in town we could also find some gas?”
She laughs. “Sure. Just go up to the Store-More and ask nicely. I’m sure Elcannon would be glad to give you some.”
I narrow my eyes.
Plaid Man comes back, something in his hand. A laminated card of some kind.
“This is what you need,” he says, and tosses it to Chase, who catches it.
It’s some kind of ID badge for a Josh Lowell.
The top reads GREAT PLAINS HEALTH.
The hospital.
“I don’t understand,” Chase says. “The hospital doesn’t have any medicine anymore.”
Plaid Man sniffs and wipes his nose. “It’s there.”
Chase turns it over. The handwriting is barely legible.
“At the hospital,” I say slowly.
Plaid Man nods toward the ID badge. “We took care of him for a while. When we started running low, he said not to worry, he had access to all this stuff. Things were getting so bad, no one was paying attention like they used to. Until he got caught.”
“If he got caught they would have cleaned out his locker.”
“It’s not in his locker. It’s in the base of a lamp in the staff room.” He pauses. “Or in a sofa cushion or above a ceiling tile. He wasn’t right before he died.”
I stare. “Seriously?”
“Do we look like we’re joking?” the woman snaps.
“Sorry,” Chase says, and tosses the name tag on the desk. “This isn’t gonna happen.”
“What do you mean?” she says.
“The place is a crazy colony!”
She jerks her head to the door. “Show ’em!”
“What antibiotic are you looking for?” Plaid Man says.
“Piperacillin-something or vancomycin,” I say.
Plaid Man pulls something from his pocket. Two small glass jars with metal tops.
My heart stutters as he studies the labels and then holds one out, toward me. He takes a couple steps closer. Just enough so that I can read the label.
VANCOMYCIN
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Chase murmurs.
It’s all I can do not to launch myself at Plaid Man, the room having shrunk to that single glass jar.
“How many of those do you have?” I ask.
“More than this,” he says.
“Prove it.”
He hesitates, and then walks back out.
I look toward the window as though judging the time. But I’m straining to listen.
Again, murmured voices. A door shuts farther down the hall.
Plaid Man comes back with a box and three bottles in one hand. He tosses the box on the desk.
Surgical masks. A few pairs of gloves.
He turns the bottles in his hands. Holds them up, two in one hand, one in the other, for me to see. Shakes them slightly so I can see the white powder inside.
“We have IV equipment for it, too,” he says.
I bet they do.
I glance at Chase as though asking if we can get a puppy. Not for my benefit, but for theirs. Because (a) I have every intention of possessing those bottles one way or another in the next hour, and (b) as desperate as I am, they are, too.
“That’s all you see till we get ours,” the woman says and waves the gun toward the window.
“What if we can’t find it?” I ask.
“Then your friend dies.”