There was another place she could try, a familiar spot for Carla. It felt like coming home in some ways. In other ways, it made her incredibly nervous.

  Carla stared at her former high school, which she’d considered her second home. Outside, nothing had changed; the traces of degradation had not yet taken hold. But she was aware that the school’s interior would have changed dramatically. She knew that the classrooms had been converted into patient wards. And the school had suddenly become the closest thing her part of San Antonio had to a hospital.

  She walked up to the entrance to the makeshift clinic and pushed the door. All sense of familiarity vanished as a horrible stench hit her, making her gag and retch. Carla had grown accustomed to the odor of decomposing flesh in the weeks since the strike, but this was something else...something even worse.

  A woman wearing a bloodied apron appeared from a nearby doorway. She wore a yellow armband, identifying her as one of the medical volunteers.

  “Can I help you?” she asked flatly. The voice sounded equally of exhaustion and frustration.

  Carla was suddenly ashamed and uncertain if she should even be here. This woman was dealing with life and death and the pressure of that was etched across her face. The thought of her grandmother facing the recurring downfall of the world around her day after day steeled her resolve. “I hope so,” she said, digging into her pocket for a scrap of paper. “I was wondering if you had any of these drugs available?”

  The nurse glanced quickly at the list. “That depends; do you happen to have any experience in the medical field?” she asked, looking up.

  “Not much, I was a teacher...here, in fact.” She waved around the old hall. “I do know basic first aid,” Carla answered hurriedly, before adding, “and I can do basic stitching.”

  If the nurse’s frown was any indication, this was more than what she had expected. “Close enough.” She removed a pair of rubber gloves from a box and placed them in Carla’s hands. "Put these on and follow me."

  “Wait, what?” Carla stammered, unsure of what was happening.

  Carla attempted to keep up with the woman as she began to briskly walk away. “We're not in the business of free healthcare, honey. You can work for those drugs if you want them. We’re horribly understaffed. As a result, we could use your help. If that doesn’t appeal to you...well, you know where the door is.”

  Carla recognized that this was a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. She couldn’t afford to return empty-handed. Meredith and Maria had to get these drugs just to try and stay functional in this dysfunctional world. She told the woman yes, she would help.

  “Excellent,” remarked the nurse. “I’m Betty. And what do I call you?”

  “Carla—I'm Carla Garcia.” Her words stumbling out awkwardly.

  "Pretty name," Betty murmured hurriedly before leading Carla to a room she knew well as one of her previous classrooms. Carla felt a sense of comfort as she prepared to return to familiar land ...only to be confronted with a terrible new reality. The workstations were crammed together against a wall, so makeshift beds occupied the space. Apparently, when the nurses ran out of beds, they used exercise mats from Joshua's gym class. Carla had to take cautious steps across the human minefield of injured, sick, and dead.

  Patients were packed into the treatment room, nearly lying on top of each other. Most seemed to be in various states of consciousness; some were comatose—Carla wondered whether some were already dead, and no one had noticed. Others writhed in pain.

  "Come help me!" Carla jumped to attention and moved closer to Betty, where a patient was resting on his side.

  "What the hell happened to all of these people?" Carla asked, motioning around the room.

  "Some were animal attacks, others are gunshot wounds," Betty responded casually, as if such incidents were routine... which they technically now were.

  "I'm guessing this guy was an animal attack," Betty explained as she looked down at her patient. On his body, there were four severe cuts. All deep wounds. "I'm going to need you to stitch him up."

  "I've never stitched a person. Even if I can, will it even help? Those wounds look bad." They were red, and the edges were puffed outward.

  "Infection," Betty said as she cleaned the wound with a dark antiseptic solution. "Maybe a toxin...who knows? We don’t have enough antibiotics to go around so we have to do what we can." She pointed to the suture kit already on a tray nearby.

  "If it doesn't work, don't let it bother you. We just do the best we can. People are always dying here. It's the way the world is these days. We help where we can, that's all."

  Chapter Twelve

  Carla pulled her long hair back into a ponytail and began stitching the wounds. It was an awkward process with the ancient medical equipment, her lack of competence, and being unnerved by the nurse's non-existent bedside manner. Because there was nothing but localized anesthesia available, the patient was awake and in pain throughout the procedure.

  "Didn't actual stitches go out with 2D television?" the young man groaned.

  He wasn't wrong, bio-adhesives could not only seal the wound instantly, they also provided a nanobiotic boost and stimulated rapid regrowth. Unfortunately, this clinic had none of that.

  Carla was sweating as she pierced the man's flesh time after time. She engaged him in conversation as much to distract her from what she was doing as him.

  "How did you get these?"

  The man tried to turn and look back at her but just groaned. Finally, he answered, "My unit, we came under attack. We were supposed to be retrieving some bigwig at Lackland."

  "Wait, you're military?" Carla asked. She pulled up the piles of shredded clothes from the floor and studied the patches.

  "Yes, Alliance Army regular," he said weakly.

  "Who attacked you?"

  "It wasn't a who..." He went unresponsive and Carla was afraid he had died.

  She tied off the last stitch, cleaned the wound, applied a dressing, and rolled him over to his other side to get a good look at him. Mid-twenties, good shape, and most of all, still breathing.

  "You did well," Betty said, glancing over her shoulder.

  "Why isn't he in a field hospital? He's Army.”

  "No idea, girl. Someone just dropped him off like a lot of the others. I don't ask any questions anymore. Just treat them, move to the next and hope for the best".

  The two women struggled to move him off the table, taking care not to rip out the sutures. Carla gathered the bloodied blankets and prepared to discard them.

  “No!” Betty yelled loudly, scaring Carla. "What on earth do you think you're doing?"

  "Replacing the bed linen."

  Betty shook her head and pulled Carla's blankets from her grasp and began remaking the surgical table with them. "What?" she asked. "Do you believe we have a linen fairy making regular deliveries? We must make do with what we have around here."

  Carla couldn't disagree with her reasoning, but the image of the next patient being placed on a bed of blood-soaked blankets made her sick.

  She spent the next few hours rushing through her duties, giving each patient the care they needed offset by what little she could actually provide. The stream of people she saw all began to blur together, but she was most haunted by a small child, thin and malnourished. She guessed he was around seven or eight-years old, making him almost the same age as Rachel, her neighbor’s child. The boy's skin hung off his body like it belonged to someone else. And Carla thought of her sister's warning and wondered if this was what awaited all the other children in San Antonio—a future of starvation and despair.

  Betty approached Carla and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Why don't you just take five?" she said gently. They were the first words of compassion Carla had heard come out of the woman's mouth all day.

  "No, I want to keep going," Carla said unconvincingly. In truth, she wanted to give up, to be anywhere else. This place was worse than anything else she'd had to do. Still, the handful of nurses, volunteers, and doctors were doing this day after day. It made her feel small, useless, and unworthy.

  "Trust me," Betty said. "If the constant flow of sick and injured doesn't kick your butt, the smell will."

  Carla nodded quietly, already overwhelmed by what she had seen so far. She did excuse herself and went outside into the schoolyards, happy even for the not-so-fresh air. She inhaled as though coming up for oxygen after nearly drowning.

  She'd met a few of the others helping in there. They were all pleasant but also showed signs of stress. Carla wondered how long Betty had been there, what kept her going. The woman might have been compassionate at some point, but now that facade had been eroded down to hard bedrock. She didn't seem to care, acted like it was just a job...but that couldn't be true. This wasn't a job you did just for an extra ration credit, and no one was getting a paycheck anymore.

  A part of Carla wanted desperately to walk away, get away from the horrors back in there. Forget the meds, and just go back home. But that would mean facing her sister and grandmother again and seeing repeats of earlier episodes with them until...She couldn't even see what the end of the cycle might be. The last few hours had changed her, or at least her perspective, she could only do so much. But like Betty, she had to be able to at least do that.

  There were people inside who could use her help. Carla felt she should be thankful that no one had died yet as a result of incompetence. After several minutes of collecting her wits, she stood. She couldn't just leave, that wasn’t how she was wired. She needed to 'make a difference' as Maria would say. Today it was in that trauma ward. Carla knew one day soon it could easily be her or someone she loved lying on those bloody linens and makeshift tables in need of saving or at least in need of a friendly face and a caring touch as they passed.

  Betty rushed past waving her to quickly follow. A huge military truck parked at the front door of the school, and several soldiers leapt out.

  They unloaded a lot of stretchers all bearing more and more wounded patients from the truck. Carla helped the other volunteers sort the injured by severity. "Third room on the left," Betty yelled as she pointed at a litter passing by. The troops nodded and the line of stretchers disappeared down the darkened hall.

  "What the hell happened to them?" Carla asked as her light illuminated some of the grotesque wounds.

  "Who knows? One of the soldiers said, ‘Food run gone bad.’"

  “You would think animal attacks or something." Betty shrugged as she lifted a bloodied linen, peered underneath, then motioned for it to join several others already placed against a wall. "When the food started to run out, some people began looking for calories wherever they could. I used to be a dog person, you notice they are nearly all gone now? Of course, this is cattle country and yeah…some tried with larger animals. And, as you can guess, nature has a way of retaliating. I'll leave the rest to your imagination. These look like something else though."

  The thought made Carla nauseated, outraged that humans had already resorted to such barbaric measures to survive. But soon, similar actions might be totally normal. She began to hope she wouldn't be around to see that day.

  Betty lay a hand gently on Carla's shoulder. "These patients aren't going to make it very long. However, one of us has to stay with them...you know. Nobody should die alone."

  Carla got it, but she didn't much want to be the one. She and another volunteer held a vigil over the dead and dying as the truck drove away and the doors to the school closed.

  The other helper, a girl about her same age, pointed at the man she was sitting with. "Wow, what were these guys shot with?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "One of the others said they were attempting to get food from Lehigh when they were attacked," the girl said sadly. "Should have realized that would be a suicide mission."

  The words made Carla shudder. She made eye contact with the girl and shook her head, as if to say, 'Don't ask too many questions.'

  "So, these aren't soldiers coming from a battle?" Carla asked.

  "Militia maybe, soldiers that have gone AWOL and just got hungry. Who knows?"

  The woman Carla was kneeling over suddenly seized her hand in an unyielding grip. She had a large puncture wound in her abdomen. Dark blood continued to seep out and soak her clothes. She struggled to draw in breath but was obviously trying to speak. Carla leaned in closer.

  "Where?" she began, sputtering and wheezing, as if every breath she drew hurt her and brought her closer to death. But she was determined to say something. "Where are my children?"

  Carla wanted to reassure her. To reassure her that they were safe. But she couldn't bear the thought of lying to this dying woman. Instead, she could only stammer, "I- I don't know. I'm sorry."

  The woman grimaced and began writhing on the stretcher. The other girl looked up and shook her head. The woman grasped her once more with surprising strength and Carla struggled to think of anything helpful to say.

  But the woman knew what she wanted. Her hoarse voice rasped out exactly what she wanted. "I failed them all. Kill me. I can't go on like this, none of us can."

  Carla recoiled, as if stung by wasp. This woman was no different than her or the countless others who were just trying to feed their families. The woman was in horrendous pain, the body moving so much Carla had to lay on her to keep her on the stretcher. Still, she couldn't find it in her to take this woman's life. She was here to help people, not kill them.

  Obviously hearing the woman’s words, Betty came out of the classroom and put her hand on Carla's shoulder. "Leave this with me," she murmured, her tone warm and cold at the same time. "I’ve changed my mind. You don't have to be here for this."

  Carla understood what was about to happen and was totally repulsed by the idea.

  Betty sensed the shift in her new apprentice and offered a sad smile. "It's called mercy, Carla. We give them what they need."

  Betty held out a small bag, which Carla accepted. In it must be the two medications.

  "Thank you, Betty." She looked down at the dying mother once more, then pulled Betty in for a hug. The older woman stiffened at the touch but slowly relaxed to the embrace. "Thank God we have you."

  "Hopefully, we'll see you again…if you can handle it, of course. You did well today."

  Carla walked away from the building feeling the almost imperceptible weight of the bag in her hand. She mentally weighed the pills she had worked all day for against the piece of her soul she knew she'd lost forever. She did not expect to ever go back.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Somewhere in that long walk home, Carla realized the most terrifying aspect of today was not witnessing the horrors. It was realizing without any doubt similar fates awaited them all. She'd spent so much of her adult life as a caregiver but today trumped them all. Tonight, she needed someone to comfort her, to take her in their arms, and tell her everything was going to be okay.

  She stared longingly at Carson's house, jealous of him and his wife, his family. Yet he was willing to throw away the very thing she needed. She didn't understand men, or love or anything about the world anymore.

  Nobody was out on the streets, no children were playing, and no civil patrols. Despite the chaos elsewhere in the city, tonight her street was calm. She found Maria in her favorite chair, telling Joshua stories from her youth. It didn't matter whether she was telling him for the first or twelfth time. Joshua was always a good listener.

  "Nice to see you, Carla," Joshua remarked as he stood up quickly.

  "Come in, dear," Maria said motioning Carla into the living room. "I was just telling your young man about everything you do at school. I hope you stayed out of mischief today."

  Carla knew that at that moment to Maria, she was a teenage girl with her entire life ahead of her, free of worries, or tragedy. Tonight, she wished she could see herself through Maria's eyes... but she couldn't.

  Everything was too much for her. And there was no stopping it this time. She ducked into the kitchen instead, not wanting to appear weak in front of others. She slumped into a chair and sobbed gently into her hands, afraid that they would see this side of her. She was being stupid and weak, but she couldn’t help it.

  Joshua peeked his head in first, then eased in the small room slowly. He could read the room as well as anyone and debated whether to console his friend or leave her alone. He simply couldn't bear the thought of leaving her like this in such a situation, so he strolled over to the table and gently pulled out the chair next to hers.

  "I can't do this, Joshua," Carla cried. "I was hoping to, but I can't." I simply cannot. My abuela doesn't recognize me. And my sister…" She burst into tears, unable to fathom Meredith as anything approaching a functional adult.

  Joshua looped an arm around Carla, and pulled her close, allowing her to cry, gently rocking her back and forth, a sensation that Carla was unfamiliar with but liked. After several minutes, he whispered, "Why don't you tell me about what happened?"

  She shook her head, but realized she still held the paper bag in her hands. She placed it on the table, dried her eyes and slowly began to tell him about their classrooms that had been transformed into trauma wards, the blood-sodden blankets, and the beds built from his exercise mats.

  When the mats were mentioned, Joshua stiffened, then remarked, "Well, at least they’re in use."

  She nodded.

  "There’s more?"

  "There was a woman who was dying. She asked me about her children. I could give her no peace. Then she asked us to..." She couldn't continue.

  "Did you?" Joshua asked, obviously understanding.

  "I couldn't. The head nurse said she would. I just took the meds and left."

  Josh opened one of the bottles. "Only ten pills. The other appears about the same."