“Someone lives here.” Houston said this without any stress in his voice.
“Do you think they’re here now?” Margaret asked.
“I don’t think so. At least, it doesn’t feel like someone is here right now. Those microscopic invaders in my brain are not sending any warnings. If they were, I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you. I’d be downstairs rushing the others out the door and into hiding.”
I know what he meant. You could love or hate what was happening in our minds since the microbes moved in, but they were great with sensing danger. That didn’t stop the human side of my brain shouting out about all the red flags popping up here and there; reminding me that what was good for the dead wasn’t necessarily good for the living.
“What makes you think someone lives here?” asked Margaret.
“This place is warming up like someone turned up the thermostat. And look, the drawers and closets are full of clothes and shoes, both men and women’s. Plus there are fresh towels in the bathroom.” Houston seemed surprised that someone like Margaret would miss something that obvious, but Margaret appeared to be distracted by something.
I walked into the on-suite and turned the shower on, just to see if this really was different to the other show home. I was richly rewarded with a shot of hot water. This was going to make the others very, very happy.
“Anything else, Einstein?” asked Margaret impatiently.
“Yeah,” said Houston. “There are magazines beside the bed. There’s even a copy of Sporks Illustrated.”
“You mean Sports Illustrated,” she said condescendingly.
“No, Sporks Illustrated. It’s a kitchen catalogue.”
I laughed out loud, but Margaret was not amused. “Are you two done with being stupid?” she said angrily. She let out a sigh of pure exasperation and said, “Look, I came up with you two because I wanted to talk about something. Have either one of you noticed how sick Danny has been lately?”
I looked at Houston to see if he understood what she was talking about and he did. Of course we were worried about Danny. He was hot to the touch; he was in pain and worst of all he smelled. At first I thought it was the scent of the dead following us, but when I carried him I noticed it was something different, something vile.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Margaret.
“Gangrene,” whispered Houston.
The word dropped like a poisonous spider descending on a thread. It’s what I feared as well but hoped I was wrong. I made sure to have antibiotics with me in my split kit ever since the Mclean High School Siege, but I didn’t think they were strong enough to treat gangrene.
“But how did he get it?” asked Houston.
“I don’t know,” said Margaret sadly. “Let’s quickly finish up with our search and talk to the others.”
We checked every corner and closet, paying special attention to the bathroom cabinets in hopes of finding medicine. No luck. This place was luxurious, stocked with expensive clothing and furniture but no electronics, no flashlights, no winter gear and even worse, no food. It was a house full of possessions but lacking anything of real use. I could hear my mother’s voice in my head declare: “Only the rich can afford this much nothing.”
“This place is as pointless as a reform school for goldfish,” said Houston as if he could read my thoughts. “Wait, I take it back; we have taps with temperature. Let’s give the others the good news about an empty house and hot water.”
The house was even emptier when we went downstairs because the others were waiting outside. We told them about the comfortable beds and warm showers, but they still seemed reluctant to come in. “The coffee maker in the kitchen just came on. That means someone else lives here!” said KC. “What if they come back?”
“One of us will stand watch and explain our situation,” Houston said encouragingly. “Besides, we need to get Danny inside and find out what’s wrong with him.” His expression looked grim. I’m sure it matched mine.
Danny had the final word. “I’m hungry. Can we go inside and have a bowla bisghetti?”
So we all went inside, but unfortunately we did not enjoy a bowla bisghetti. The kitchen was as useless as the rest of the house; it contained nothing edible apart from the coffee. I’ve never been a coffee drinker, but I found myself drawn to the smell. It made me think of the home I had when my family was still alive. Even better, its aroma helped to mask the smell of deteriorating flesh coming from Danny. It also made the rest of us hungry, and we greedily tore into the fat-fueled MREs in our split kits.
“I can’t believe this place has coffee but no food,” complained Nemesis. “Only college students can live off of coffee alone! Maybe someone resides here, but they don’t live here. Know what I mean?” There was no reply to this because we were too busy tucking into our meager dinners.
It was a good thing we ate quickly because it wasn’t long before Margaret ruined our appetites. “Little boy,” she asked with the voice of a patronizing kindergarten teacher, “why have you stopped scratching your leg?”
“’Cause it stopped itching and started hurting,” said Danny. “But it don’t hurt no more. Now look what I can do!” He hitched his loose trousers to his knees, exposing swollen and blistered skin. Three of his bug bites had been replaced by holes that leaked the most foul-smelling pus imaginable. Half of us gasped in horror and the other half cried out “NO!” in unison. Danny must have misinterpreted our shock as surprise and enthusiastically responded with, “See? I can make my finger disappear!” He poked one of his tiny fingers into a purple-red hole near his knee and sure enough, it disappeared right into his leg. Mouse turned around and threw up in the sink behind her. The rest of us covered our mouths in shock. It’s what Margaret and Houston feared, but nothing could have prepared us for the uncovered stink and sheer grossness of it. Danny’s leg was puffy and the skin around the holes was soft, putrid, rotten, and dark. It was unbearable to look at, and the rank odor coming from it made it hard to breathe.
Dan cried out, “No, it can’t be!” and grasped his son into a tight bear hug as if he could protect him from his own infection.
Margaret breathed out heavily and said, “It’s liquefactive necrosis. Wet gangrene.”
“What is that?” yelped a traumatized Jesse. “Is there a cure? Will he die?”
This made Daniel hold his son tighter and cry even harder. Margaret went into full-on clinician mode. I probably would have too if I knew as much about gangrene as she did; it’s a better way to deal with a crisis than running around waving your arms in circles and weeping. “He must have transferred bacteria from all that nasty dirt under his fingernails into the bug bites. The area around the site must have been steeped with stagnant blood. That in turn would encourage the bacteria to grow faster and promote septicemia. It’s logical, really, because there’s easy contact between infected fluid and circulatory fluid. The bacterial infection will lead to septic shock and yes, he will die.”
Danny didn’t react to this. The kid was just told he had something that would kill him and he didn’t seem to take it in. Instead he sleepily said, “I don’t understand her. She talks in scribbles.”
“Confusion is one of the symptoms. There may be rapid heart rate, lightheadedness, low blood pressure, shortness of breath...”
“Wait, you said it was caused by bacteria! My dad put stuff in our split kits that kills bacteria!” Jesse said hopefully. Dan let go of his son so he could turn around and look Margaret in the eye. He appeared as optimistic as Jesse did.
“That’s nice,” said Margaret wistfully, “but antibacterials will not work on their own.”
“Why not?” asked Dan.
“Because they will not be able to penetrated the infected tissue enough to cure it. This is serious stuff! If we were in a hospital he would undergo surgery for debridement and have powerful antibiotics intravenously.” She saw the question in our eyes and quickly explained, “Debridement is the removal of dead tissue. Anyway, if that doesn’t work they amputate the limb to keep the infection from spreading and killing the host.”
“What does amputate mean?” asked a mildly curious Danny.
“It means they’re going to have to chop off your…” Jesse started to explain, but was quickly silenced by KC yelling.
“Jesse! Quiet!”
This brought tears to her eyes and she ran off to the living room.
“Did anyone notice a hospital on the way here?” Dan asked in desperation. “I bet we could break into the garage and find a car and hotwire it and find a map in the glove compartment and find a hospital on it and…”
“We’re on it,” Houston said, walking towards the one door from the kitchen that we didn’t open. “You stay and take care of Danny.” Nemesis followed him without explanation.
An uncomfortable silence followed. Margaret broke it by making things even more uncomfortable. “At least it’s not Gas Gangrene. If it were, his skin would make crackling sounds when you pressed down on it. And it’s not Fournier’s Gangrene where the genitals…”
“Shut up Margaret!” shouted KC before she could finish her medical musings. “You’re not helping!”
Now it was Margaret’s turn to feel hurt. She stomped off to the living room; presumably to let Jesse know what an insensitive and ungrateful older sister she had been cursed with. I should have pointed out that Margaret had been very helpful and useful in diagnosing Danny, but KC was my girlfriend and Margaret was, well, Margaret was annoying.
I heard the sound of tinkering in what I assumed was the garage, so I walked over to the door to see if they found anything. To be honest, I also walked over there to get away from the putrid smell coming from Danny’s decaying leg. I was relieved he didn’t seem to understand what was going on. I don’t think I could have handled a five year olds hysterics on top of everything else.
The door opened before I could reach it, and Houston stepped through holding a set of keys. I was disappointed to see the golf cart behind him instead of a sedan, but it was plugged into a socket and could still be of help in transporting Danny. The problem was, I had a map to the area. I had studied it over and over before I filled the ambulance up with friends and refugees and I knew there were no hospitals anywhere near us. If they existed at all they were off the map, and we would have to take a gamble and set off in different directions trying to find one. And if it was off the map, it was too far for a golf cart to go before running out of juice.
I felt sick with the thought of sending Danny’s father over the edge with my There-is-nothing-close-enough-to-treat-your-son-before-it’s-too-late” info, but Houston one-upped my bad news with a bulletin of his own.
“Hey, did you guys notice the electric fence around this place?”