"Judd! Vicki! Janie! Anyone! Come quickly! Call an ambulance!"
Shelly shouted into the radio and out to the sky, and cradled the crying girl tight. She'd been building a sand castle on top of what assumed to be a dead-end manhole cover, and had been bitten in the ankle by a what Shelly assumed was rat. The animal was the size of a kitten, and looked slimier than it had the right to; it scurried off faster than Shelly's eye could catch it.
Acting on what training she had, Shelly told Cecilia to hold onto her and sing something, anything, at the top of her lungs, then bit the girl's ankle herself and sucked out some blood. She spat it out, rinsed the wound and her mouth with a water bottle, and ripped a sleeve to cover the wound before thinking better of it - the fabric was dirty. Hopefully it'd slow down any infection...
Cecilia was quickly carried inside, given ice to put on her ankle, and Vicki sat down with her to read her a story, to get he mind off it. Melinda quickly called 112 and explained the situation to othe dispatcher. "Ack that. We got an ambulance and a hunter coming your way."
"Hunter?"
"You said you couldn't recognize the critter, and it may have rabies or worse, we gotta find out. Children of the Tribulation, y'all are Christians, yes? I'd pray with you, but I'd get in the way, I'm Luciferian. Form a prayer circle, hold the kid down if she has a freakout, help will be there in 750 seconds. Good job with the first aid."
Ordinarily, Melinda would have been somewhat perplexed - Luciferians in Chicago in this day and age? - but as it was, it didn't matter. The possibility of rabies was a genuine concern.
Vicki and Cecilia stayed in the infirmary; the gash looked bad, but blood had mostly stopped and Cecilia found the gumption to laugh as Vicki read Where's God When I'm S-Scared? to her and tried to do the voices.
Judd and Melinda quickly mustered staff and kids outside of the small infirmary. Telling Cecilia that they were praying for her might have worried, so instead, Melinda listened in to wait for Vicki finishing the Frankenceleery scene and then asked Vicki and Cecilia if it was okay for the other kids to pray -with- her.
The six-year-old took this extremely seriously, and shouted at the top of her lungs, with two dozen adults and a good two hundred kids following. "Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for the beautiful day, but I hurt my leg, and I pray that You make it all better and also that the kitten rat thing that bit me will be okay..."
The ambulance was a new build, electric, low-slung but built so it didn't look like a hearse, probably straight out of the Pacifican region. Since there was no traffic, it drove in with lights on but sirens off, to avoid alarming the kids. Behind it was a small hooded figure in a loud motorcycle.
Vicki kissed Cecilia's forehead, figuring that it was okay to interrupt the prayer to let the paramedic in, and left the kid alone for a few seconds.
"... who are you?" Lionel asked the rider. He and Tanya were taking a short break from each other, with him volunteering at COT for a couple of weeks and her headed off into the woods. It worked for them.
"Zhou Jin, hunter, class C. Describe the vermin." The hooded figure was small, hairless, and pale enough to look slightly green, with an aquiline nose and penetrating eyes. Lionel called Shelly over to tell him what she'd seen. He followed the two, figuring they'd need a hand with the manhole cover.
The paramedic, to Vicki's mild relief, looked much more child-friendly. She was let into the building, and opened the door just as Cecilia finished "leading" the other kids and staff across the window through prayer.
Only later did Vicki notice that the paramedic had deliberately waited until after the last Amen to enter the room and set eyes on Cecilia. However, both women were able to verify that the gash had mostly healed; it had gone from fresh to looking like it'd happened a couple of days before, and more importantly, there was no infection. The paramedic made a few notes on a pad.
"This is a miracle!" Vicki enthused.
"Probably. But just in case, I'm going to administer immunoglobulin. You're the third case of verminoid infestation for South Chicago this week."
"... but she's fine! Look!" Vicki showed Cecilia her own ankle, and confirmed with her that it didn't hurt nearly as much. The two of them quickly said another prayer of thanks.
"Yes, like you said, it's a miracle: a macroscopic suspension of normal physical laws. It happens. Now... Cecilia, was it? I'm going to have to give you a little injection to make sure it doesn't get worse again. You've been a very brave young lady, so just keep that up a little longer."
Vicki briefly considered arguing with the paramedic, but figured that even if the antibodies had no job to do, they wouldn't hurt either. Before the Rapture, her family had briefly dabbled with the dodgy sort of faith healing before getting their doctrine straight, and after a couple of very preventable illnesses in the family, Vicki had decided that trusting God didn't mean mistrusting doctors. The injection took a second.
Melinda led the kids in another prayer of thanks, and people got back to work.
"... but it WAS a miracle! You saw it!"
"Sure did, ma'am. If the same situation happens again, do just what you did now, do NOT set up recording equipment to catch the miracle working, and give the victim a few moments alone as soon as it's safe to do so. And call us anyway. If miracles were reliable they'd be called medicine. We find that there's an inverse correlation between observation of pataphysical healing and its effectiveness. Now, I gave immunoglobulin to your kid, so she will be a bit under the weather for a few days, this is normal..."
"We've just witnessed a miraculous healing."
"I agree with you, ma'am. Other side effects may include a bit of extra intestinal activity, so be sure to-"
The paramedic was getting back in the ambulance; Vicki and Judd still had questions.
"You're treating this like it happens every day. I understand that you're an EMT and probably see a lot, but... if I could effectively spread the word about this!"
"Yeah, and if my aunt had another tail she'd be a nekomata. Look, this is rare, but not crazy rare. Second time this week, for example. It happens. Mostly to Christian collectives. Good for you and less work for us! We still have to do our homework, though. The Chicago area is doing well, but it can't afford an epidemic. But yeah, those fwd:fwd:fwd emails I'm sure you get about this or that healing? I'd say a good ten percent of those are true."
"...Mostly?"
"Other faiths average three to five percent. So I guess you're doing good, This is mostly a Christian area, so you wouldn't hear much about other miracles."
The sewers carried sound remarkably well, such that the entirety of the COT campus heard a chtonian shriek interrupted by the shwing of a blade hitting metal.
"You guys are tax exempt, so, no charge. Suggest you tip the hunter, though. Seriously, if this happens again, even if you can deal with it internally, call us, we have to track vermin attacks and plan for an epidemic. Glad all went well."
Judd and Vicki waved at the ambulance as it drove off. At least they wouldn't be stuck with a bill. Cecilia was in good spirits; Shelly had bandaged the wound, and the little girl only had a slighty limp, probably more due to the bandage than anything else. Looks like that was the end of it.
Lionel sat with the couple when the search results for confirmed miracles in the area came in; according to the local hospital, there had been quite a few. The most recent, other than theirs, was the miraculous healing of a similar vermin-inflicted wound at the House of the Feathered Serpent. There was a low-resolution picture to go with it, a big guy grinning like an idiot and showing off what looked like a detailed scale tattoo that he immediately had done over the healed wound.
"What do you think?"
"I think you guys should get a newspaper subscription. You've been a bit isolated. Anyway, why not? Jesus gave me my arm back" Lionel pointed out.
Vicki checked her email only every two or three days, as a rule; now it was coming in early, since they had to get on the ethernet for this bit of research. Silly, really, what with COT being a network node site, but she didn't want to bother Naima and Chang too much, and had gotten into the habit while on the move - anything actually urgent, she'd get a phone call for. "Hey, look. Chaim's in town."
"Yeah" Lionel confirmed. "He's doing a series of conferences and wanted to pass by to check on Rayford. I was going to go with, two days from now. Want to come? Honestly both of you could use a break, even if it's just for a day."
Judd and Vicki looked at each other. Why not?
"Right. Well, we are in the Kingdom, so... miracles make sense, really. But how about these plumed serpent guys-" The door knocked, loudly.
Judd opened it to see the hunter, smelling like the sewer he'd just been in and wearing a bloodthirsty grin.
"De vermin's dead. But I'm gunna say you gotta blow the nest, 'coz you still got a few down there. Use lye, acid, gunpowder, chlorine gas. We do full service, come back with da big trukk. Leave it to me, I take a big weight off your shoulders."
Outside, wrapped in what looked like tin foil, was a stack of what Judd figured were the biggest rats he'd ever seen. At least one had extra teeth outside its face, like tusks. They'd all been neatly decapitated with a pair of hatchets that the hunter was quick to hide behind his poncho as soon as he saw that Judd saw them. Kids, being kids, were wanting to take a closer look and the staff was having a hard time keeping them away.
"Er... Thank you. We'll definitely let you know. You got a business card?"
The hunter produced one from the same holster he had his hatchet in, and flicked it at the corkboard nailed on the door. It stuck by a corner.
"Thank you, Mr. Zuljin." Vicky hoped she had pronounced that correctly. "We, uhm, aren't much of a cash economy, but in lieu of a tip, would you accept a shower and some baked vegetable casserole?"
"That sounds delicious. On that note, those wraps aren't for eating - burn the, and do it downwind."
"Uh, thanks, but we... really don't have much of a taste for meat here."
"Heh. More for me, den! Shower much appreciated. Lead on."
It had been a long, hot day, and getting rid of the carcasses had made it longer and hotter. Just a few months ago, leaving the ceiling fan on would have been a luxury; now they could easily afford it. Kenny was safely sleeping in his own little room, another luxury they had room for now.
After the initial large influx of orphans during the lean times, once things settled down and the world came back from the brink of civilizational collapse into its current state of manageable chaos, it had been easy enough to find families that wanted to adopt - enough so that COT could afford to be picky and make sure that children went to reliable, vetted couples. The plan was to gradually transition COT's focus from foster home to boarding school.
Judd and Vicki had time for intimacy again, and were snuggled against each other in the big bed.
"Watcha thinking?"
"I think that was the last emergency for a while, so... weren't we talking about giving Kenny a little brother or sister?"
"Hey, don't jinx it... Why don't we get busy on that, and if the Lord wills it, it will happen."
A bit of affectionate shuffling under the sheet later, the couple found that they were just too tired for that from the days' events.
"We should go see Rayford with Lionel and Chaim. He hasn't been in a good place lately."
"Yeah."