Blackout: A Tale Of Survival In A Powerless World- Book 1 Read online

  “Go!” Jacob said. “We’ll take care of Pippa.”

  I left Pippa’s room and headed to the next one over. Penny already looked dead. Her skin was pale green and covered in sweat. Thankfully, the wound on her leg was covered, though the stench now permeated every corner of the room. Jax sat by the woman’s side, her head in her hands, but she looked up when I entered.

  “Did you get it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And a syringe?”

  I emptied my bag onto the counter, spilling medical supplies all over. “Take your pick.”

  Jax leapt into action, choosing her tools from the options on the counter. I handed her the vial of penicillin. She inserted the needle into the bottle and drew the antibiotic into the syringe. Then she turned to Penny, found a vein in her arm, and inserted the needle. As she pushed the plunger down and the medication entered Penny’s bloodstream, I let out a sigh of relief.

  “Nice job,” Jax said, throwing the used syringe into the biohazard bin to be sterilized. “I didn’t think you’d get back in time.”

  “Will she be okay now?” I asked her. There was no immediate change in Penny’s state, though I wasn’t sure why I had expected one. “She’s going to make it through, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Jax answered, observing her patient. “She’s got a major infection. She’s probably septic. One dose of penicillin might not be enough to fight it all off. We’ll watch her overnight, but if she doesn’t improve, there isn’t much else we can do about it.”

  A violent gurgle interrupted our conversation. Penny’s eyes flew open. She clutched her throat, her back arching off the exam table.

  “She can’t breathe!”

  “Damn it,” Jax growled, returning to where my hospital haul was strewn across the counter. “She’s allergic to penicillin. Please tell me you found some epinephrine in that godforsaken city.”

  “Yes, it’s there somewhere!” I held down Penny’s hands and looked into her wild eyes. “Penny? Hey, it’s me. It’s Georgie. Just try to relax. We’re going to fix this.”

  Jax prepared a second syringe and jabbed it into Penny’s arm. A few seconds later, Penny’s airways opened up, and she took a huge, gasping breath. A drop of water splattered against the exam table. I wiped my eyes. I hadn’t realized I’d been crying. Penny’s eyes fluttered shut again as she dropped back into unconsciousness, but at least she was still breathing.

  “What happens now?” I asked.

  “Now we wait.”

  THE HOURS PASSED IN AGONY. We sat and waited with Penny, hoping for some kind of visible improvement. Camp Haven had no heart rate monitors or other equipment that needed electricity to run, which meant we had to track Penny’s status largely by guesswork. We took her pulse every few minutes, but there was nothing much else we could do but wait. The main problem was that Penny’s body had rejected the penicillin, and I could tell by the look on Jax’s face that she didn’t expect Penny to make it through the night.

  Sometimes later, Nita rushed in from the next room over. “Jax? Pippa’s just about ready. I’ve never done this before. What do I do?”

  “I’ll help,” Jax said. “You okay in here, Georgie?”

  Though I didn’t like the idea of being alone with a half-dead woman, I nodded. Pippa needed Jax more than I did. After all, she had a better chance of surviving than her mother. Jax and Nita left the exam room. Not long after, Jacob knocked quietly and entered.

  “Hey,” I said softly. “You’re not staying with Pippa?”

  “She kicked me out.” He stared at his mother, who looked more zombie than human at this stage. “God, she looks awful. Did you give her the medication?”

  “We did.” I rubbed my eyes. When was the last time I’d slept? “But it turns out she’s allergic to penicillin. Did you know that?”

  Jacob began to shake his head before a look of realization crossed his features. “Yes, I did. She used to wear a medical bracelet for it.”

  “What happened to the bracelet?”

  “She stopped wearing it because she thought it was ugly.” He groaned, leaned against the wall, and sank to the floor. “Oh, God. I can’t believe I forgot!”

  “It’s not your fault,” I told him. “It’s not like we thought we were going to facing this anytime soon.”

  “But I should have known—”

  I knelt on the floor and took his hands away from his face. “Jacob, stop. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since that damn EMP went off, it’s that you can’t keep blaming yourself for every single mistake you’ve ever made. Learn from the experience and move on. Better yourself. That’s our only option.”

  We locked eyes. He leaned in, his lips nearing mine, but I bowed my head and pulled away.

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  He covered his eyes again. “No, no. You’re not the one who needs to apologize. I am. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry for putting you in that position. Old habits, you know? It just felt normal.”

  “I get it.”

  “You’re with Eirian now. Aren’t you?”

  I sat next to him, wrapped my arms around my legs, and rested my chin on my knees. “We haven’t talked about it in so many words yet.”

  “I’ve seen the two of you around camp,” Jacob said, stretching out his legs along the floor. “You fit together so well. It pissed me off at first because you and I were never like that. It was never easy for us. I didn’t realize that until now.”

  “I think we were both too busy convincing ourselves that our relationship would eventually work out,” I said. “We weren’t paying attention to the things that were keeping us apart.”

  “Yeah.” Jacob sighed. “I just feel like we could have done better. Any word on your dad?”

  “Not even a whisper,” I replied. “I even tried to sneak into Sylvester’s cabin.”

  “You did? What happened?”

  “Ludo caught me,” I told him. “I guess it’s a good thing he did. Otherwise, I might have gone the same way as your—”

  I cut myself off before I could finish the thought. I’d just remembered that Jacob had no idea that his father had died in the woods, mauled by a wild animal.

  “Like my dad,” he finished. He tipped his head back against the wall and blew his hair out of his eyes. “What do you think happened to him? Do you think he’s still alive?”

  I remained quiet, pretending to study my fingernails as I tried to think of something to say. Jacob nudged me.

  “Georgie? Hello?” He waved in front of my face. “You still in there?”

  “Jacob, listen,” I said, deciding that Jacob and I had lied to each other enough for one lifetime. “We saw your father in the woods.”

  His expression brightened. “You did? How was he? What did he say?”

  “No, you don’t understand.” I swallowed hard. “We found him—he was—”

  “He was dead, wasn’t he?” Jacob asked, his voice hollow.

  “Not quite,” I said. “He’d been attacked by a wolf. There was nothing we could do. If I could have saved him, I would have.”

  He tucked his head between his knees. “What did you do with him?”

  “Sorry?”

  “The body. What happened to him?”

  “We had to leave him,” I told him. “We didn’t have a choice.”

  “Where?”

  “Down the mountain a ways,” I replied. “Looked like he might have been walking back toward the city.”

  “I’ll have to find him,” Jacob said. “He’ll need some kind of proper burial.”

  “Jacob, there won’t be much left to find.”

  “I don’t care.” He shot up from the floor, as if he suddenly couldn’t stand being in such close proximity to me. “You don’t get it. He was a Christian. This would have mattered to him.”

  Before I could argue further about the dangers of going into the woods alone just to give Jove a funeral, two things happened at once. First, Pippa screamed next door.
It ripped through the walls and pierced my eardrums. Second, Penny’s body began to seize uncontrollably on the exam table. Jacob caught her as she rolled toward the edge of the table, eyes rolling so far back in her head that I could only see the whites of her eyes.

  “Help me!” he yelled, bracing his bucking mother against his torso.

  I took hold of Penny’s ankles, and we lowered her onto the floor. “Turn her on her side. Gently!”

  Together, we rolled her over. Jacob pinned her arms to the ground, trying to quell her movements, but I swatted him away.

  “Georgie!”

  “You’re not supposed to hold her down,” I snapped, putting myself between Jacob and his mother. “You could hurt her even more.”

  The seizure subsided as quickly as it had come on, but another problem soon arose. I pressed two fingers to Penny’s wrist, panic rising in my throat. Once again, she had no pulse. I started CPR.

  “Get Jax!” I ordered Jacob.

  He flew out of the room, but from the way Pippa was yelling, I had a feeling I knew which patient that Jax was going to prioritize. Seconds felt like hours as I pumped Penny’s heart for her. My mind worked in layers. The first was focused on saving Penny’s life. The second warred with the idea of losing yet another one of Jacob’s family members. The third listened to the heated conversation that filtered into the exam room from next door.

  “Jax, my mother’s heart stopped again,” Jacob was shouting over Pippa’s anguished groans.

  Jax’s reply was muffled and agitated. “In case you haven’t noticed, I kind of have my hands full at the moment. Push, girl!”

  Pippa released another bloodcurdling scream.

  “Please, Jax,” Jacob begged. “She’s dying.”

  Beneath my palms, Penny’s heart did nothing to contradict Jacob’s statement.

  “Nita, go!” Jax ordered. “See what you can do for her.”

  Moments later, Nita and Jacob returned to help me. Nita rifled through the vials on the counter, filled a syringe, and dropped to her knees beside me and Penny.

  “Keep going,” she encouraged, pushing the needle into Penny’s arm.

  My arms were giving out, but I repeatedly pushed on Penny’s chest with the last of my strength. Nita held Penny’s wrist with two fingers, searching for a pulse. Jacob paced from one end of the tiny exam room to the other, threading his fingers through his hair.

  “God, not Mom too.” He looked up the ceiling and pressed his hands together. “Please God, don’t take her too. What am I supposed to tell Pippa?”

  I had never heard him pray before. He was at the end of his line, but so was everybody else.

  “One last big push!” Jax yelled next door. “Go, baby, go!”

  Pippa screamed her loudest yet, a prolonged, determined yell that shook the walls of the med bay, followed promptly by an intense cry of relief. My arms buckled, the muscles no longer able to keep up the work. Nita took my place. As I backed away from Penny, I already knew that our efforts were pointless. Penny stared blankly at the ceiling with cold, empty eyes.

  “Give me more epinephrine!” Nita shouted.

  I moved toward the counter to obey, but someone grabbed me from behind. It was Jax, her hands wrapped in clean towels.

  “Don’t waste it,” she said, looking down at Jacob’s mother. “She’s gone.”

  “No!” Jacob shoved me out of the way and scattered the vials across the counter. His eyes bulged as he studied each label for the right one. “No, we can’t let her die. Nita, what are you doing?”

  Nita had stopped pumping Penny’s heart and sat back on her heels. She looked up at Jacob. Her long, dark hair was askew, and her pretty olive skin flushed red with stress and grief. “I’m sorry, Jacob.”

  “No, she can’t be dead!”

  Everyone in the room cringed as he swept the vials from the counter in a fit of rage. They scattered everywhere, bouncing off the floor and rolling away. One shattered, spraying some kind of drug across the walls of the exam room. Jax gripped Jacob under one arm, and with an astonishing show of strength for such a small woman, yanked him out into the hallway.

  “Get yourself together,” she ordered, pinning Jacob to the wall. “This is the end of our world, kid. Shit happens. People die. But my job is to make sure we prevent as many people from dying as possible, and I can’t do that if you’re throwing the only supplies we have all over my med bay.”

  Jacob struggled against her grip, his face growing redder as her fist pressed against his windpipe. He appeared deaf to her words. She smacked him hotly across the face. Nita and I both jumped at the sound of skin against skin, but Jacob’s eyes cleared. He stared into Jax’s face, and his chin began to tremble. Then he collapsed altogether.

  “It’s okay,” Jax said, lowering Jacob gently to the floor as he sobbed in her arms. “Everything’s going to be okay. Girls, get out of that room and shut the door. He doesn’t need to see her.”

  I didn’t need further coaxing. Nita and I hurried out, leaving Penny and the fallen medication. I didn’t look back as I shut the door. It wasn’t something I wanted to see either.

  “Nita, can you check on Pippa and the baby?” Jax asked, still holding Jacob. “They were okay when I left them. Georgie, maybe you should come here.”

  I sat on the floor as Nita went into Pippa’s room. Jacob was completely sprawled out. Jax wiggled out from underneath him, and I took her place. He rested his head in my lap, and I threaded my fingers through his hair, combing out the tangles. We stayed like that until he fell asleep, out of exhaustion or grief. Jax and Nita helped me get him into one of the cots. Afterward, I left the med bay, found a quiet spot away from everyone else, and cried. If I never had to see the inside of that exam room again, it would be fine with me.

  WEEKS LATER, things began to go back to normal, or at least as normal as they could be in Camp Haven. Penny’s body was cremated. There was no ceremony. Jacob went back to work, throwing himself into the efforts for rebuilding the camp’s ruined wall. He worked dawn until dusk, drowning his grief in manual labor. I only ever saw him in the Bistro at mealtimes. Part of me was fine with that. His empty expressions were difficult to look at, and our limited conversation was falsely nonchalant. Pippa was finally able to leave the med bay for the first time in over a month. Her newborn, a little girl that she had yet to name, was doing well. The problem was with Pippa herself. Like Jacob, she had not taken the news of her parents’ deaths well. On her first day out of the med bay, she left her baby with the other people who looked after the children and disappeared for hours on end. When night fell, Jax organized a search party to look for her with no luck. I finally found her holed up in a hollowed-out tree near the edge of camp. She didn’t say a word, but merely picked up her baby and walked back to her bunk in silence. The situation repeated itself each day. She dropped off the newborn, vanished to a different hiding place, and reappeared in the evening to collect the child. After a while, we stopped looking for her. One day, I found Ludo and Jacob at odds with each other outside of the med bay. The baby lay swaddled in Jacob’s arms, screaming as the two men yelled over her.

  “This is more than postpartum depression, Mason!” Ludo was saying. “She hasn’t been pulling her weight. You of all people should know what that means.”

  “You’re seriously going to hold a tribunal for a seventeen-year-old girl?” Jacob challenged. “Our parents are dead, Ludo!”

  “Okay,” I said, ducking between the two to scoop the baby from Jacob’s arms. “Have either of you noticed that this pretty little girl is upset?” I fixed the blanket around the newborn’s face. “They’re so noisy, aren’t they, pretty?”

  “He wants to kick Pippa out,” Jacob said, fuming.

  “I don’t want to do anything,” Ludo growled. “But she isn’t giving us much of a choice.”

  “Ludo, is this really necessary?” I asked him, swaying back and forth in an attempt to soothe the squalling child. “Pippa’s had it pretty rough. Like Jaco
b said, she just lost both of her parents. And she’s taking care of a child that she never intended to keep to begin with.”

  “That’s the problem though,” Ludo replied. “She isn’t taking care of her. She disappears all day. Doesn’t help out in maternity. Doesn’t help out anywhere else. I don’t even see her at the Bistro. I mean, does she even eat these days?”

  I decided not to mention that I had been bringing Pippa breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day. For now, I was the only one she allowed near her. Sometimes, she even hid out in the communications office with Eirian and me.

  “She needs more time,” Jacob argued. “She’ll get better.”

  “Not unless she lets someone help her,” Ludo said. “We have therapists here. There are people that she can talk to.”

  “She doesn’t need a shrink,” Jacob replied.

  “Lucky for her, no one here ever got a degree in psychology,” said Ludo. “Listen up, Mason. I’ll give her another week to pull herself together. She needs to meet with our camp counselor. If she blows it off or she disappears again, that’s it. I’m calling a tribunal to figure out what to do with her.”

  The week passed without change. Pippa continued her absent streak, except she stopped cluing me into her hiding places once I suggested that she should consider attending the meeting with the counselor. She seemed wholly unconcerned about the prospect of a tribunal, which made me worry for her even more. Clearly, the events of the recent past had had a traumatic effect on her. She wasn’t thinking straight. It wasn’t her fault, but the rest of the camp couldn’t understand that. Ludo officially put in a request to gather the tribunal, but this wasn’t the piece of news that really surprised me that day.

  “I got a meeting with Sylvester,” Jacob announced over lunch at the Bistro. It was a rare occasion that we sat together. Usually, he avoided me, but Eirian was working through lunch, and so I was much easier to approach.

  “You did?” I missed my mouth, and a piece of beef plopped from my spoon back into the bowl of stew. It didn’t entirely concern me. Food was thin on the ground, which meant that each meal grew more and more difficult to stomach. “You mean it was actually approved?”