Fenrir's Fangs

Chapter 4.
Doubt and Control
Where to Now?

   She awoke with a scream, tears beginning to dry upon her face and fear in her heart. Murphy rushed to her bedside and asked with a ruffled brow “ Are you OK?”
She looked at him with terror fading from here eyes and replied “ Yeah, just a nightmare.” he rose to his feet and said “Well, breakfast is nearly done and then we’ll go see about getting out there for your boyfriend again.”

   She climbed out of bed as slowly as she possibly could, her muscled raged against her efforts to move, the running she had done had taken it’s toll and her legs felt as if they had been lit on fire. She winced as she came fully to her feet, mulling over the dream as she crept to the bathroom to pee, sitting even hurt, and as she did her back screamed in agony and she hissed in pain. “Hurry up!” Murphy yelled to her as she heard silverware clatter in the little kitchen. She pulled up her pants and went towards the small couch. By the time she got there he had already begun to eat, her plate steaming on the table.

   The hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon and fried potatoes was the best thing that she had tasted in months and she shoveled it in as if she had never eaten before in her life. Murphy chuckled at the sight and she blushed slightly, realizing that she was making a pig of herself. “Don’t worry about it.” he said. “I understand, I’d imagine that the meager rations that you had to live on were not very tasty.” he continued with a smile as he began to eat again. her hunger overrode her inhibitions and she continued to eat, and soon enough it was gone. Her stomach full and her mind calm she began to gear up, which didn’t take long, she holstered the Bull and pocketed as many bullets as her hip satchel could carry.

   As they walked outside she had noticed that it was beginning to get cold, ‘winter must be coming; she thought to herself. ‘ just because they blacked out the sky doesn’t mean that mother nature isn’t going to continue her cycle.’ she smirked as she climbed into the tank. “Where to now?” Murphy asked as he prepped the tank controls.
“maybe he went home…” she said as she sat.
“and where is that?” he asked as he started the engine.
“Just go North on twenty-ninth street and take a left on Franklin Avenue.” she said with a grimace as she readjusted herself.
And with that the tank began to rattle forward towards twenty-ninth, and the search began.

   I awoke with a splitting headache and a slight chill, gray snow covered me like a blanket. I moaned as I sat up, finally realizing where I was, I instantly reached for my gun, luckily still dangling in its’ lanyard over my shoulder. “ Oh hell…” I whispered as I rubbed my forehead, the pain in my leg showing itself. “Oh yeah huh?” I inquired to myself with a wince, ‘this may be it, defining moment here.’ I thought to myself as I tried to stand. My leg could hold my weight, but not well, I could barely walk, at best. “That’s awesome.” I said to myself as I sat back down and unwrapped it to survey the damage. I untied the knot and began to slowly pull the make shift bandage away, revealing a gaping hole as big as two fist side by side, and at least two inches deep, the blood had clotted and a scab was beginning to form. ‘ could be worse, I could be dead.’ I thought to myself as I retied the knot and stood once more.

   I began to walk slowly, trying to keep the new scab from tearing open. I came to the gate and opened it cautiously, considering what had chased me in here. ‘ Silence…too much silence…’ I thought to myself as I stepped into the alley. Nothing was moving save for the newspapers that seemed to perpetually be moving throughout the city. I began to walk down the alley when the ground began to shake, a loud clanging of tank treads preceding it. Hobbling faster now, I reached the end of the alley, the tank was coming up the street slowly, so I sat on the curb and nursed my wound until it arrived.

   Wolf hopped from the idling tank and nearly ran me over as she slammed into me for a hug. “Are you OK?” she asked as she looked down at my leg. “ One of those red bastards got a hold of my leg, but I should be fine.” I told her as I lifted my shredded pant leg up over the makeshift bandage and slowly unwrapped it. “Sweet Jesus! He got you good, we need to get you back to the holdout!” she said in dismay as she stood me up and drug me to the tank. “ I’m fine, really.” I said as I climbed the steps, trying not to limp. The drums of shells that hung from my hip clanged into the tank and every time they did I winced in pain, my claim of being fine was not going to stick this time.
   I sat on the hard  seat positioned behind Murphy and winced again, the wound had begun to bleed again. “good to finally meet you.” Murphy said, hand poised to be shook. I shook his hand and said “So you’re the guy who saved our ass earlier, thank you.” the look of pain on my face drew his attention to my wound, and as he say it he pulled the pistol from his hip and put it to my forehead. “You’ve been bitten, your going to turn, I can’t let that happen.” he said as he pulled the lever back. “Get that out of my face.” I retorted as I pulled my shotgun. “ Knock it off you two!” Wolf yelled “ He’s not going to turn , if he was going to he would have already, now put the guns away.” Murphy lowered his revolver slightly, still wary of me. I dropped my shotgun, my strength wasn’t going to hold out much longer, I felt like I was going to pass out again. ‘ This is some bullshit.’ I thought to myself as my head hit the seat.

   
   
   Reaching down to hip level Wolf’s thumb tickled the snap on the worn leather holster that had graced her side for some time now. She couldn’t remember where she had found a holster for the hand cannon but it was new when she had picked it up.  As her nail grazed the edge of the beaten brass snap and tugged it open Murphy’s head came up, looking from Omen to Wolf he sighed and put the machine he controlled into gear, Wolf adjusted  Omen‘s upper half and slammed the door shut. Even though it wasn’t very far back to his secure warehouse the blocks seemed to creep by, it hadn’t seemed such a long trip out to find her husband but the trip back seemed to take hours. They spent the trip in silence, Murphy occasionally looking over  at Omen and Wolf shaking his head and muttering to himself. She knew he wanted to kill Omen, That wasn’t going to happen. She would shoot them both if she had to but only if Omen turned, nobody was going to kill him, not after they had come this far, not without giving him a chance.
   Wolf was pulled violently from her thoughts as the tank came to a stop and the door to the warehouse started to make it’s way up along it’s tracks. Omen mumbled something in his pain induced slumber as she shifted his head out of her lap. Wolf pulled the Bull from it’s holster and got out of the tank, a lone zombie shambled into sight as Murphy turned his back to hit the switch that brought the huge bay door back down. With a practiced motion she leveled the gun with it’s drooling face and squeezed the trigger. Murphy whipped around in time for a little blood and a hunk of gooey brain matter to spatter his shoes as the door rumbled down into place shutting off the sanctuary from the dangers outside. Without a word or a thought she went back to the tank and began shifting Omen out of the seat, Murphy came and grabbed his shoulders as Wolf eased his legs out taking care not to bump the wound and dislodge any of the clots that were keeping the wound from bleeding further.
   With no small effort they managed to get Omen’s weighty form across the room and onto one of the beds close to where Wolf had slept the night before. As she began to loosen the knot in the crude bandage Murphy grabbed her hand.
“You might not want to do that, I’m not trained medically and that looks to be a nasty wound.”
“It’ll be alright” Wolf said pulling her hand away from his grasp “I’m a Doctor, granted I work on animals but this is no different than a horse or a really big dog.”
Murphy’s eyes got wide, he looked as though he were about to say something then squared his shoulders and set off to another part of the warehouse as she continued to work the knot loose. Just as she was about to pull the edges away Murphy returned with a wheeled cart, the kind with two shelves, both of which were loaded with boxes, plastic containers and assorted medical apparatus. Nodding she began digging through the boxes for the anything he had that she might find useful. At some point while Wolf was equipping herself for the horrors that would surely greet her when she pulled the bandage away from the wound Murphy had come up with a bag of torn sheets, a hotplate, and, a pan of water. While he plugged the hotplate in and started to heat the water Wolf assembled the things that she thought she might need from the rather decent assortment of medical goods Murphy had come up with and laid them out along the edge of the cart.
   Yanking the rumpled sheet from the unmade bed she had slept in previously Wolf went to the head of Omen’s bed, kissed his motionless lips and whispered “I love you” in his ear before covering him from the head to the knees with the sheet. Murphy’s face lost color and he looked to the floor.
“I’m sorry” he said
“Oh what the ****? He’s not dead, I just know I won’t be able to hold my composure if I have to look at him while I work, I covered him so I can go back to the clinic in my head. Like I said a big dog or a horse, I can’t do what I need to do if I see it as my husband.”
Murphy looked slightly confused but didn’t question as she pulled a pile of sterile gauze off of the cart and onto the edge of the bed. She grabbed a bottle of sterile saline from a box and began to slowly pour it onto the bandage to soften the scabbed areas even though surely the blood had kept them moist enough to prevent pulling. The damage became apparent as soon as she pulled the makeshift bandage away. Tendons were showing through a pretty serious mess in the meaty part of the outside of Omen’s calf. The skin on the edges was already beginning to fester and a greasy yellow gray pus was oozing from under the chunks of flesh that hung like a macabre fringe around the outside edges.
“Just a big animal” she mumbled to herself.
Reaching behind her and grabbing blindly from the cart Wolf retrieved a long needle and two vials of Proparicaine that she was very happy Murphy had happened to find a box of. Unsure of exactly where and how much of the drug was needed in a human she thought she had probably used a little too much but Omen had some serious body mass, If he woke up while she was working she didn’t want him to feel anything at all. Satisfied that no pain would be felt Wolf began to use the sterile gauze squares to fish around in the wound, pulling out gobs of dark red slop and dropping the used bloodied squares of sopping gauze into the now empty plastic box that had previously contained an assortment of clamps and scissors which she had dumped into the pot of now boiling water on the hotplate.
Finally out of her normal head space she had managed to go into Vet mode, flushing the wound and beginning the task of finally surveying the real damage. There were damaged blood vessels everywhere, several small tendons had been severed, and to top if off two big hunks of skin and muscle tissue were totally missing.
Murphy watched in silence as she reached back to the cart again and grabbed what she needed without looking away from the wound for a second. Wolf didn’t have exactly what she needed but with luck she could patch things up well enough to keep the leg useable. After tying off the mess of small arteries and veins that wouldn’t stop bleeding she started to bring the ends of the tendons back together using the staples and suture thread she’d found in the cart. The repair job looked more like a grade school embroidery project than anything she learned in college but hopefully it would hold well enough for things to heal or at least until she could get Murphy to help her loot a hospital or vet clinic for the other things she would need to finish the job properly. After ensuring that the inside of the wound was taken care of Wolf went about the task of removing the dead tissue and debris from the edges.
Wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead with her forearm Wolf cut down into the skin just below the wound and pulled a section of loose muscle up towards the gaping hole, repeating the process above the wound she worked and stretched the small wires of muscle to meet in the center of the wound and placed a few loose sutures connecting the two to keep everything in place. With a deep sigh and one last inspection Wolf put several drains in and packed the wound with gauze and topped it off with a folded piece of cotton bandage that she had soaked in an antibiotic ointment that she found in a box. After carefully wrapping the leg in long strips of the cotton bandage then placing a layer of tape above and below the bandage as well as the two safety pins she’d found in her pocket to keep everything secure, she then dipped her hands into the now cooling water in the pan for a quick rinse and shambled off towards the shower in the far corner of the warehouse.
Dressing quickly she went back to check on Omen, he seemed to be resting well enough. Murphy had removed the sheet and placed two thick pillows under Omen’s calf then covered him in a couple of heavy blankets. Digging through the boxes once again Wolf found a box full of vials containing various antibiotics, a bag of ringers solution and an iv catheter. Unsure of human dosages she pulled up a syringe full and injected it into the bag of fluid before gently slipping the catheter into the thick vein in Omen’s wrist just behind the palm of his hand.  Smiling her thanks to Murphy she pushed her bed closer to the one that contained Omen’s lifeless form. Crawling in slowly and silently her head no sooner hit the pillow and she was fast asleep, exhausted from working so long on the wound and the sheer emotional impact the day had taken on her already tortured mind.

   Murphy leaned his head on the back of the couch and looked out through the sky light at the darkening night. He wondered about the couple that now shared his little oasis. How did that woman manage to do the things she had done all day without rest or help? He doubted that he could have helped the man, If he hadn’t had the presence of mind to pull his gun out Murphy probably would have shot him right there. Then again Wolf absently flicking the strap open on her holster had made up his mind. He would bring them back to his warehouse and hope the man didn’t turn when he regained consciousness. He hoped that if the man did turn he wouldn’t have to kill the woman as well, he had been safe here for a long time, nobody was going to get him dead even if they were the first people he had talked to since the other guy that had stayed with him had gotten himself shredded and eaten. Looking through his food stores Murphy selected a bag of chips and settled down into the couch dozing off with the half empty bag still in his hand.