Chapter 2

I woke up feeling groggy. The night before had been rough. I hadn't slept well at all. I was too terrified. I had kept a protective watch over my little sister after what I had heard. Luckily, she had slept soundly.

Last night after I had left the bathroom, I walked swiftly to our tent. There was no one in sight. Everyone was probably already inside their own tents. I got inside and checked the clock; it was 9:55. I zipped up our tent opening and stuffed all of our things in our bag besides the black handgun. I looked at January she was already asleep in her sleeping bag.

I laid back on my own sleeping bag and put the handgun by my side. I noticed that everything was completely quiet. Besides the shallow breathing of my sister and the chirp of the crickets outside, I heard nothing. Then, distantly I heard a low hum. It seemed very out of place in the silent world around me. The hum gradually got louder until I recognized what it was, a truck. I tensed instantly as I heard the vehicle comes to a stop right outside the store.

I heard the sound of heavy boots stomping, car doors slamming, and I swear I made out the soft jingle of guns being carried. Everything was abruptly silent for a moment. I jumped when I heard a loud banging coming from the front doors of the store. I covered my mouth and suppressed a squeal.

It stopped and I heard a muffled voice say, "There's never anything here, why do we always check this place?" I heard a sudden gunshot and a scream of pain.

An angry voice said, "You do not question Samil Asling's orders! We check every building, every night! We have to kill off every single one of those damn rebels!" I heard other low whispers that I couldn't make out and then suddenly I heard the boots stomping again and the car doors slamming. The hum of the engine revved and I heard the truck pull away, leaving me still gripped in fear. I had felt half awake all night.

Now, I tiredly dressed in a t-shirt and jeans and pulled on my boots. My sister was already gone and when I looked at our clocked I noticed it was 7:30. I might have missed breakfast. Before I left the tent I grabbed the Book of Illnesses out of our bag and left. I walked to the eating area and saw that some were still eating. I grabbed a package of Poptarts from the table and headed to find the old employee lounge where the makeshift hospital was.

As I passed the many children stocking the shelves with food and supplies they were grabbing out of bags, I literally ran into Ash. "Scarlett, I was looking for you." He said cheerily. I tried not to blush.

"Oh hey. Your back from the raid." I noticed he was carrying a cardboard box.

"Yep, we got some extra food supplies and some medicine for the sick. I heard you were gonna be a new doctor so I was gonna give the drugs to you." He gave me the box he was carrying full of bottles of medicines, syringes, and ointments.

"Oh thank you. So that's why you were looking for me?" I said, slightly disappointed.

He nodded. "That and because I just wanted to see you," He smiled. "See you later, Scar." He winked and left. My stomach seemed to be filled with a million tiny butterflies.

I continued on my way to find the hospital. I came to a door that said 'Employee Lounge' on it and pushed my way in. Inside was a room filled with mattresses and couches and on them lay sick and injured children. I'd worked with the doctors at bases before and I'd seen the pain in the men and women's eyes and I'd smelt the smell of burned flesh, the vomit, and the blood. But this place was worse. The sight of agonized children was horrific and the smell was far more disturbing.

A short scraggly haired girl in rubber gloves and a hospital mask came over to me. She looked about thirteen and wore thick glasses. She looked like she hadn't bathed in weeks and seemed exhausted. "Hello, I'm Kaylori. You must be the new doctor." She held out her hand and I shook it.

"I'm Scarlett, I've brought the medicine that they got in the raid." Kaylori went over to a cabinet that hung on the wall and opened it. I noticed there were a package of gloves, facemasks, and only one container of liquid inside. I recognized the liquid from the bases it was morphine.

"Well Scarlett, I need you to put these on," She handed me a pair of gloves and a mask. "We have a lot of work to do." I shoved the gloves on and pulled the mask over my face. She led me over to a mattress with a sleeping blond curly haired little girl on it. She looked deathly ill. Her face was pale, her lips were blue, and she had dark circles under her eyes.

"Surina, wake up," Kaylori said softly. This was Surina, Maddox's sister. " I just don't know what's wrong with her." She said to me. Surina's eyes slowly opened revealing two light blue eyes. She coughed violently.

"What are all of her symptoms?" I asked putting down the box of medicines and bringing out my Book of Ilnesses.

Kaylori looks exasperated. "Where do I start? Well she has difficulty standing, dizziness, coughs, shortness of breath, fatigue, fever, wheezing, body aches, chills, chest pain, and is just weak in general. I don't know what to do." I grabbed a thermometer from a table nearby.

"Surina," She looked at me sadly. "I'm Scarlett. I need to take your temperature so could you open your mouth for me?" I asked nicely. She opened her mouth slowly. I stuck the thermometer under her tongue. I waited for a while and when I pulled it out it read 102.5. I thought for a moment then checked my book. "Well by the sound of her symptoms I'd say she has a severe case of Pneumonia."

"What do we do?" Kaylori asked worried. I started rummaging through the box of medicines.

"Well, we need to give her an antibiotic, right away."

"We haven't had antibiotics in years. I've been giving Surina cough suppressants." She said. I found penicillin in the box. I hoped that Surina wasn't allergic. I grabbed a grabbed a syringe, cleaned it, and filled it with penicillin. I grabbed her small arm and injected it.

"Let's give her a dose every eight hours and see if she improves." I said throwing the Syringe into the garbage can. Kaylori nodded. She led me to the next bed. It held a sixteen-year-old boy. He was sitting up, watching me.

"I'm Cobalt." He said, strained but tried to smile. His hair was matted to his forehead and his clothes were torn and dirty. He had a white sheet covering him.

"I'm Scarlett." I pulled down my mask and smiled at him.

"Well, you better take a look, because it feels like hell," Cobalt wheezed pulling off the sheet strewn across his legs. He had on a pair of cut off shorts and his left shin, I noticed, was wrapped in bloody gauze. "Had an accident on a raid. We were sent to get some weapon supplies a town away in an old military base. When we got there a small group of Them were staked out there. When They ambushed us I was stabbed in the leg. We barely got away," He looked down solemnly. "Well, most of us got away. Two didn't make it."

I frowned. "I'm sorry." He shook it off.

"It's alright. Happens a lot." He responded. I turned my attention to his leg. I grabbed a roll of clean gauze from the table and a rag. I rummaged through the box of medicines and found antibiotic ointment.

"Kaylori can you get me a water bottle and some scissors?" I asked her. She nodded and went to a cabinet. She pulled out a bottle and some medical scissors and brought them to me. I opened the bottle and drenched the rag. I took the scissors and began to cut the gauze off his leg. He winced when I slowly peeled the wrap off.

I gasped, the injury was worse than I thought. The cut was deep and the skin was yellowing and puss was spilling out. It was still bloody. "How long ago did you get this?" I asked, nervously.

He looked worried. "Two weeks ago. Why?" Two weeks? It was a miracle that he wasn't extremely ill or even dead. The cut hadn't been sewn and no antibiotic ointment had been applied to the area.

"Do you have a medical sewing kit?" I asked Kaylori. She shook her head.

"That's why I didn't stitch it." She replied.

"Check the box for a kit." I said urgently. She started to dig through the box. I wrung out the rag onto the wound. Cobalt winced.

"There isn't one but I have an idea, I'll be right back." Kaylori said, rushing out the door. I tried to clean off the puss and blood.

"Is it gonna hurt?" Cobalt asked, painfully. "If you sew me up."

I bit my lip. "I'll give you a dose of morphine before. It'll help." I replied. I went to the cabinet and got out the morphine bottle and got a syringe out of the box of medicines. I cleaned and filled the syringe and then laid it on a clean rag on the table.

Kaylori came running in holding a small case of something. She handed me a regular at home sewing kit. "It's for sewing clothes but that's all that they got in the raid." She said breathless.

"We'll just double thread the needle," I said. I opened the kit and pulled out the thread and a needle. "Kaylori can you thread it? I'm going to inject Cobalt with morphine." She nodded and took the needle and thread. I grabbed the syringe and turned to Cobalt. He looked nervous. "No need to worry. You'll be okay. Just relax." I told him, trying to calm him by stroking his hand. He seemed to relax a little. I grabbed his arm and injected him.

"It's warm." He reveled. I nodded. Kaylori handed me the threaded needle. I waited a few minutes for the morphine to spread then instructed Kaylori to distract Cobalt. She held his hand and started to talk to him.

"Look at me Cobalt." She said. He looked into her eyes, smiling. I started to sew. Cobalt tried to look down and see what was happening but Kaylori kept pulling his face to look back at hers as she talked to him. From what it looked like, he wasn't feeling any pain. When I had sewn the skin together finally I cleaned the area with a clean, wet rag and rubbed the antibiotic onto the wound. Finally, I wrapped the gauze around his leg and tied it.

"Done," I said to both of them. "We'll take out your stitches in a few weeks." I looked at Cobalt. He seemed fine besides being a little drugged. The door suddenly opened and Ash walked in. I smiled at him. "Hey, what are you doing here?"

"I've been assigned to help the hospital." He smiled at us. Kaylori went to the cabinet and threw him some gloves and a mask like she had done to me.

"Put these on. Though, we don't need anyone else to help really. This girl's got it under control. She's got a gift." Kaylori nodded at me. I didn't think using a book to discover a girl's illness and taking care of a raider's wound was really a gift. I just knew what to do from experience at bases. But I was just glad I could help.

I met the five other children in the hospital. I met Calix and Stence, other raiders who were injured in the raid that Cobalt was. Calix was blond and small but Ash claimed he was super fast. Stence was a large seventeen-year-old African American guy who always looked pissed. Both Calix and Stence had broken their legs.

I met Exia, who was sick with a bad case of the flu. She was ten and had very long brown hair. Then there was Oona who was sixteen and shockingly seven months pregnant. Last but not least there was Sheppard. Sheppard had been rescued from a torture chamber on one of Their bases. He had had his voice box cut out so he could not speak. But I wondered if he could, what kind of horrible things he would tell.

At about 5:30 we went to get the patients their dinner. They got to eat earlier than everyone else so that we could have time to bring them their food. Ash and I decided to stay and eat with Kaylori and the patients. Also someone needed to help feed Surina. Kaylori said she usually did it but Ash volunteered to. I watched Ash feed the sick seven year old and wondered if he had had a younger sibling or if he was just naturally good with kids. He even made her smile. Maybe it was just his charm.

"He's a babe, isn't he?" Oona sighed. I looked over at her. She was patting her swollen stomach and staring at Ash. I nodded. "Are you guys together?"

I chuckled. "No. Of course not."

She looked surprised. "Why not?"

I scoffed. Love is the last thing on my mind."

She looked at me suspiciously. "Is it?" I looked down. I had actually thought about love a lot. But I wasn't ever going to admit that, to anyone. "Too bad. You guys would be cute." She looked sad all of the sudden.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"It reminds me of Cy, he was my boyfriend you know, that's why I'm like this," She chuckled and motioned to her stomach. "He died in the big raid accident," I frowned and patted her hand. I wasn't good with this kind of thing so I didn't know what to say. But she seemed to shake it off and held her head high. She looked up, over my head. "Well, hello Ash." She winked.

I turned around to see him standing there looking concerned. "Is everything okay?"

"Yep. Just telling this lovely girl about my Cy." She winked in my direction. Ash nodded respectfully.

"Have you seen your sister today?" Ash asked me, changing the slightly uncomfortable mood.

"No, I haven't." I said. I looked at the clock on the wall it was 6:30. I hadn't seen January all day. She must be pissed. "Damn it. I've got to go. My sister is going to be pissed that I ditched her all day." I cleaned up my dinner and said goodbye to Kaylori and the patients.

I pushed open the door. Ash came up behind me and said, "Do you know what your sister's been doing all day?" He asked. That made me nervous. Had she gotten in trouble or something?

"What did she do?" I sighed.

"Well she's been working her ass off," He marveled. "I've never seen someone her age work that hard in my life."

"Where was she working?" I said surprised. He looked a little weary; like he was going to tell me something I didn't want to hear.

"Well, she's been in training all day. To be a raider." He replied. Yep, I didn't want to hear that. All I could think of was injured Cobalt and Oona's dead boyfriend. But January was a wimp! She couldn't be a raider. She wasn't strong enough.

"Not a chance. January?" Ash had to be joking. January was far from hard working and tough. But he just looked at me seriously.

"She's actually really talented. We could really use her in raids and…" I cut him off.

"No way. Could you take me to her?" I was mad. They didn't even ask me how I felt about them training my baby sister to go on deadly raids! Ash nodded and led me to the other side of the store and through a door into a courtyard. The courtyard was surrounded by a high fence and sectioned off into training areas. One area had many teenagers sprinting from one end of the courtyard to the other; another area had an army style obstacle course that some were training with.

The next area had tables covered with a large collection of guns, ammo, and grenades and a range with makeshift targets to shoot at. There was my eleven-year-old sister shooting a sniper rifle. "January!" I called. She looked at me and smiled. She put down her gun carefully and bounded over to me.

"Scarlett, there you are. I've been training all day! I'm going to be a raider!" She said excitedly, her grey eyes sparkling. Her scraggly blonde hair had been swept into a ponytail and she was wearing a dark green tank top, black shorts, and her boots. She had gotten tan from the sun exposer and her nose seemed extra freckled.

"Um. Hell no. How did you even get into this anyway?" Before my sister could reply there were a bunch of yelling coming from inside of the store. Everyone, including my sister, grabbed a gun from the table and hurried inside. I grabbed a shotgun and went with everyone else to investigate.