Kenopsia (Book 1 of Pandora's Wake: The Nomad Chronicles)

“You alright?” Esther asked.

“Hmm? Erm, yes, yes, I’m okay.” Shamus wheezed.

“You sort of zoned out on us there for a moment!” Ember patted the Irishman on the shoulder.

“Just hard to concentrate.” Shamus shook his head, trying to clear it.

“That’s the spore poisoning,” Ronan commented, “Bit like trying to think when you have the ’flu – it all seems a bit harder.”

Shamus nodded, “Sooner we get this done the better then. Lead on Gruppenführer!”

The others stared at one another in shock for a moment, but if Joanas took the reference as an insult the Oberfeldwebel didn’t show it. He waved the group up the narrow corridor, leaving a security element consisting of Kurt and Ashley behind in the reception area, to watch their rear and to cover the stairs.

On the way up the corridor, the group carefully and quietly checked each of the exam rooms as they passed it, noting that each seemed to have been left more or less intact when the hospital was evacuated. Small dressings, paper towels, hand sanitisers, all were partially stocked as if the hospital had been abandoned in the middle of a perfectly normal day. At the far end, the passageway opened into a wide intersection. To the right were several curtained booths which served as the urgent care suites. To the left, the passage came to an end a few meters down, with heavy fire doors on the far wall leading into the central building.

Silently Joanas pointed at Shamus and Ember and then at the fire doors, indicating they should check they were secure, before leading the others right to check the urgent care suites.

Shamus tentatively pushed the fire doors open with the tip of his baseball bat before peering around them. Directly opposite the doors were two lifts to other floors. Looking left he saw a passage which led into darkness. Through the gloom, he saw that he would have to pass two doors to get to that darkened area. A stairwell led off the passage as well, granting, he suspected, access to the upper floors. From what he could see from here, these would also allow access to the basement area.

“We are only supposed to be making sure the doors are secure!” Ember hissed from behind Shamus, who only half-heard her.

“Hmm?” He was certain Ember had spoken, but he couldn’t figure out what she had said.

“I said... we are only supposed to be checking the doors are secure!” she repeated, a little louder.

In his confused state, Shamus vaguely wished she would keep her voice down so whatever it was that was lurking on the stairs wouldn’t hear them.

Esther Yadin held her pistol in a double-handed grip as she surveyed the emergency care booth. Behind her, she could hear Mathias Forrell and Joanas doing the same with two of the other booths. She scanned the room. It was a standard critical care suite for an emergency department. Unlike everything else she had seen since arriving in the hospital – this didn’t look like it had been evacuated quite so calmly and methodically. The bedsheets on the room’s one and only gurney were crumpled and soiled. There was no mistaking the smell from them as human excrement. It soaked the blankets and had dripped onto the floor by the gurney. It looked as if someone had slipped in it at some point. The waste was old, perhaps a week old and had dried out now. Sample bottles around the room were filled to the brim with urine. Not all the bottles had been sealed, adding to the nauseating smell in the confined booth. Near the gurney stood a saline drip stand. An empty bag still hung from one of its arms. Gingerly Esther crossed to it, carefully manoeuvring around the fouling on the floor. She took hold of the tubing near the end and raised it to get a better look. At the end of the tube was a torn and blood-stained dressing, and the shunt which should have been in the patient's hand, its sharp end stained brown with dried blood.

“Well, that’s unsettling!” Esther muttered under her breath as she heard Ronan, Mathias and Joanas call “Clear!” on their three booths.

Moving back to the corridor she leant out,

“In here! This I think you should see!”

The two Germans looked at each other before nodding to Esther and coming back down the passageway whilst Ronan followed, his customarily expressionless face as inscrutable as usual. From the other end of the corridor, Ember and Shamus pulled the fire doors shut and wedged an entrenching tool through the handle to bar them.

“It won’t hold against a determined attack,” Ember warned, “but it will slow them down. Perhaps we can find a way to make it more secure later!”

“Agreed.” Joanas nodded, then, following Esther into the booth she had checked he fell silent for a moment. The others peered in around him.

“What the fuck?” Shamus stared at the scene of disarray.

“Oh God!” Ember gasped in horror as the realisation of what she was seeing hit her,

“They left someone behind! When they evacuated, they left someone behind!”

“It would seem so” Mathias Forrell agreed as he moved in, instinctively checking the drip as Esther had done and carefully eyeing the other evidence, “Which rather prompts the question – where is this person now?”

“You hear that?” Kurt asked Ashley.

“That scratching? Yeah, I thought I heard a scratching back there,” she jerked her head back towards the nurses’ station and the waiting area.

“Go check it, I’ll cover this entrance.”

“ME?!” Ashley squealed, more loudly than she had intended.

“Ja, you. Unless you want to watch the stairs and the lift and I’ll go check?”

Ashley swallowed hard. Her mouth had gone dry and her palms were beginning to sweat.

“Nuh uh! I’ll erm... I’ll go check,” she tried to stand up, but her legs were shaking so badly she couldn’t seem to get them to work. Cursing herself mentally she waddled across to the nurses’ station, her crossbow held tightly in both hands. Slowly she raised herself up on trembling legs and peered, tentatively, over the nurses’ station.

In the shadows of the foot-well behind the desk, something moved.

Ashley screamed.

Ronan was the first to burst back into the waiting area from the northern passage, the others hard on his heals.

He looked around his shotgun at the ready, finger on the trigger guard, ready to slip into the firing position in an instant.

“What is it, what happened? We heard a scream, is everything alright?” Knut’s voice broke in over the radios Jonas, Kurt and Mathias wore. His voice sounded strained, breathless, and he had forgotten the radio etiquette that Joanas taught him, probably in the excitement.

Kurt was unable to answer. The soldier was doubled up wheezing, laughing and coughing all at once, unable to get his breath. He was over by the nurses’ station and next to him a red-faced Ashley was sitting on the desk, her knees pulled up under her chin.

“Arse hole!” she scolded Kurt, which just seemed to set the German off again. He let out a quick burst of laughter which gave way to coughing and wheezing as he tried to catch his breath, the fungal spores in his lungs making it harder to get the oxygen he needed.

“We are investigating now, report momentarily, over,” Mathias answered as he swept the room to the right for any sign of danger, his shotgun at the ready.

“Report at once Unteroffizier!” Joanas snapped.

Kurt shook his head, taking two deep gulps of air, trying to catch his breath. He’d started laughing when he realised what had frightened Ashley, but the laughter had set off a coughing fit as the alien spores in his lungs made breathing difficult.

“He can’t catch his breath!” Mathias observed, “And the oxygen deprivation is making him light-headed!” He pushed the button on his radio to speak. “We need a medic in here, Kurt is having trouble breathing!”

“What happened?” Ember asked gently as she took Ashley’s hand, “Are you okay?”

“I just got a fright!” she seemed embarrassed “We heard something moving, so I came to look. I nearly jumped out of my skin! I feel so bloody stupid, it was only a rat!”

“A rat?” Ember tried not to sound too critical, but of all the things they had encountered since the end of the world, being afraid of a lone rat seemed so silly now.

“I know, I know!” Ashley shook her head, “I’m not even frightened of rats! It just surprised me and I was already so uptight.” she laughed, a strange chuckle that sounded nervous.

“You sure it was a rat?” Ronan asked.

“Well, I didn’t get a look at it really, just a shadow but yeah, big rat or a small cat maybe, but too small to be much else. It ran under the chair.” she pointed.

Shamus tentatively pushed the chair out of the way with his baseball bat in one hand, his other hand gripping a torch that pointed at the floor under the desk and chair.

“Nothing here now,” he said,

“Looks like it escaped down this broken air vent.”

In the foot-well of the desk was a small vent, no more than 10 inches wide and about half that length. The grill over the vent had a ragged hole in it, rusted through, Shamus thought.

Doctor Allmendinger leant over Kurt as he breathed steadily through the mask she had secured over his face.

“You alright Kurt? Feeling better now?”

“Ja.” he nodded.

“We need to get you treated for those spores, but the nebuliser should help you breathe for a while at least. Ashley, can you stay with him while I go tell Joanas?”

Ashley nodded, and the doctor patted her on the shoulder before heading out of the treatment booth and into the corridor. She headed back to the waiting room, waving to Mathias who was posted by the fire door Ember and Shamus had barred with the entrenching tool earlier.

In the waiting room, Joanas had taken up the watch of the stairs and the lift from Kurt’s previous position. Ronan had turned the nurse’s station into some form of bunker and was also aiming down the room towards the lift and the stairs while Ember and Shamus were lounging about on the waiting room chairs.

“Kurt is going to be okay for now, but we need to get him and the others treated very soon,” the doctor explained to Joanas, a note of concern in her voice. “I am especially concerned about Jacob’s injuries and the children, how soon can we get in and get to work?”

Jonas pursed his lips, never taking his eyes off the lift and stairwell,

“Well, there is a chance there is at least one survivor somewhere in the building, but I don’t think he will be a danger. Beyond that, we’ve a bit of a rat problem. I’d prefer to have checked the whole building, but from what you are saying there isn’t time. Okay, if we can barricade this area off for now, and post guards, you can bring everyone in and get to work. I’ll take a small detail and check the rest of the hospital but we’ll leave a security detail here and at the fire doors. Good enough?”

“Good enough!” Doctor Allmendinger smiled, a glimmer of relief in her eyes, “We just have one more problem, well two actually.”

“Of course we do!” Joanas rolled his eyes, “Go ahead, doctor.”

“We are going to need some power up here. There must be an emergency generator somewhere, probably in the basement,”

“Not a problem, I will search the basement first, fire up the generator then finish searching the area. You said two things, what is the other?”

“The medicines I’m going to need, they will be in the pharmacy, if they haven’t been taken already when the residents evacuated. I need to get to them.”

“No, out of the question, until we have searched the building it isn’t safe for you to leave the secure area, we only have you and Cherubin with any medical experience. Make a list of what you need and we will send a detachment to the pharmacy to retrieve it, yes?”

The doctor considered arguing for a moment, but thought better of it,

“Yes, that will do.”

“Good.” Joanas nodded, “Esther, take over here for a moment! Doctor, start writing your shopping list.” Then, speaking into the radio, “Joanas to Knut, you can start bringing everyone in now! Over.”

Within moments the first of the nomads pushed their way through the doors, Margot Monnier came first, leading her son Sebastiane and daughter Camille by the hand. The two children looked pale, even in the dim light. Both were wheezing heavily. Behind her came her eldest daughter, Delphine, leading Ronan’s small dog, Karloff with her.

At the sight of the dog, Ronan’s usually expressionless face split into a grin and he slid out from the nurse’s station to greet it.

“Here boy, did you miss me?” Turning to Delphine he smiled again “Thanks for looking after him.”

“Oh it is no chore, he is adorable!” the teenager grinned at the dog as she rubbed it behind the ears.

“Ronan?” Selina Allmendinger’s voice held a note of concern, “How long have you been hurt?” she pointed at the blood-stained tear in his shirt and the wound beneath.

“This?” Ronan Shrugged, “It’s nothing serious, hardly bled at all – I think it happened back on the road, with the gore hounds.”

“You’d better let me take a look,” doctor Allmendinger’s tone would brook no argument, and Ronan nodded, following her to the triage room.

“Take care of Karloff!” he called to Delphine, unnecessarily. She was already rubbing the small dog’s stomach as it rolled on the hospital floor, its little paws wagging in the air.

Dr Allmendinger checked the drawers as Ronan stripped off his torn shirt. She found some instruments still in sterilised packaging in the drawers, and some dressings, nothing she would not have expected. Underneath the shirt, Ronan’s torso had long, whip-like wounds from the tentacles, and the bruising was already blossoming. She drew in a breath and took some cotton wool and a bottle of disinfectant over, setting them up on a stand. She poured the disinfectant into a small dish and tore open some cotton wool swabs.

“How are the Elbers’, Doc?” Ronan asked as worked.

“Better than I feared. Jacob has whiplash and a lot of bruising, Mia has a mild concussion. Now, let’s take a look at you.”

“Do you want me sitting or lying, doc?” asked Ronan.

“Sit.” She said, indicating a stool. She raised his arms and moved around him, examining the wounds. She carefully lifted some cotton wool on tongs, dipping it into disinfectant. The wounds did not seem deep, but they had to be cleaned.

“This might sting a little,” she said to him. Ronan shrugged as if he expected it. She didn’t dare give him any painkillers until they located a new supply, Jacob needed them, and Ronan seemed like the kind of man who would grit his teeth and bear it if he had to. She swabbed the wounds on the left, lifting his arm. Ronan drew in a breath as she did it.

“Cold.” he said, grinning at her.

She worked around the wounds methodically, using up the cotton wool swabs and disinfectant. All the while, Ronan sat quietly. Selina had not even realised how hard she was concentrating until she was disturbed by a strange sound. Ronan was humming.

“Have you had some painkillers?” she asked him, quietly.

“Never needed ’em, doc. Doesn’t hurt that much, really,” he said. There was something in his voice that bothered her, an edge of wariness, that she wasn’t used to.

“Ronan, some of these wounds will require some butterfly stitches. That’s just strips of sterile tape, I won’t have to use a needle. I am concerned though that you don’t seem to feel anything. Is it a localised numbness?”

“No,” he said. His eyes were narrow and his teeth were gritted now.

“I may have to run some tests.” She said.

“They’ll be a waste of time.” he snapped. “Put your wee bits of tape on and I’ll be out of your way.”

“Ronan, I am concerned that those animals have secreted a poison, and that the numbness is the first stage of some kind of paralysis. I cannot let you walk away when you may become more ill!”

“I don’t feel pain, doctor. I never have.”

Dr Allmendinger stood for a moment, processing what he had said.

“How long have you known you had congenital analgesia?”

The huge Irishman shrugged again as if her scolding was nothing he hadn’t heard before.

“Since I was a wee ’un,” he admitted, “but I don’t want the others to know about it.”

“Ronan, you could get seriously hurt! You can’t tell when you’re injured. Pain is there for a reason, to warn us something is wrong if you don’t feel any...” the doctor trailed off as Ronan waved his hand,

“Look, doc, I know what you’re saying, and yes, I get it, I do... but... well, go take a look around. We’re all in danger of getting seriously injured, or worse, all the time. I know, you think I shouldn’t put myself in harm’s way. Should stay off the combat missions,” he could see from Selina’s face that he had predicted, exactly, what she had been about to say. “But look, I’m good at this! I am. I’m a good shot, I’m big, but I don’t lumber around like an ox, and...” he sighed. “I’m no good for anything else, you see? This is all I’m good at! Hell, before the Event, I was a total waster, doctor! You didn’t know me, but I was! It took the end of the fecking world for me to be any use to anyone. I’m not going to let anything change that, doctor’s orders or not!”

Selina stood in silence for a moment, her mouth half-open from where she had begun to speak, before realising she had no idea at all what to say to any of that.

Ronan sighed,

“Look, doc, I tell you what, I’ll come see you every day, right? You can check me over, see if I’ve hurt myself if that makes you feel any better, but you aren’t going to stop me from going on the dangerous jobs. You just aren’t!”

Doctor Allmendinger nodded in resignation. “Alright. Alright, but you come see me every day Ronan, or I swear I’ll tell Knut and the others, you understand?” she searched the Irishman’s face for any sign of resistance, when she found none she nodded, “I’m going to give you a list of things I need from the pharmacy. Since it’s obvious you are going to volunteer to go find it.” She shook her head in exasperation, “Take it to Joanas and the two of you can start organising volunteers, he knows what else has to be done.”

“Ah now, that’s more like it Doc. You’re a star!”

“Yeah,” she mumbled “Burning out!”