At first light, he would come out to inspect if there was a body floating or one somewhere along the bank having drowned. If he didn’t find a body, he’d come at this from Maureen’s farm and track backward until he found the footprints again.
With a sigh of angry defeat, he turned to head back home. At the last possible second, Tristan realized too late that he wasn’t alone. He raised his rifle as the hair came up on the back of his neck. His instincts were too slow. Something struck him with one solid, hard clubbing to the back of his head, neck, and part of his face. He almost immediately lost consciousness and hit the cold ground.
Chapter Thirty-one
Wren
Elijah knew of a veterinary clinic, but it was too far away to travel, and they would’ve had to go back through that dangerous ambush. So, unfortunately, they were in the back of a furniture store in the mattress department. There was no heat, and it was damp and cold, but at least they were safe. Elijah had carried Dixie in and placed her on one of the clean, white mattresses on display. It wasn’t clean anymore or white.
“See?” he said, holding the light and prodding with a pencil. “I think it just grazed her. No entry point. No hole, right?”
“Yeah, I think so,” she said, worried for the big dog.
Everyone had medical supplies, just the basics, in their backpacks whenever they left their homes. He dug around in his toiletry case, which was where Elijah kept his supplies, and pulled out some wound cleanser, gauze pads, and sterile wraps.
“Find some antibiotic cream, too, Elijah,” she instructed and stroked Dixie’s head.
Wren took it as a good sign that the dog wasn’t whining anymore and kept trying to lick her own wounds.
“We’ll be able to see better tomorrow with good lighting,” he commented as she tried to shine her flashlight on the wounds for him to work.
The wound was on her front left leg, a graze really, but it had managed to lay open her skin, cause a lot of bleeding, and peel back her fur. It also managed to scare the hell out of Wren that she was going to lose this pet that she didn’t even know she needed or ever wanted.
“You don’t think she needs stitches? You sure?” she asked him with nerves twisting her stomach. Her motto had been not to get attached to anyone ever again. She couldn’t even seem to harden her feelings towards a dumb dog.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Elijah assured her. “Trust me. I grew up with two brothers. We were very familiar with stitches, broken bones, cuts, and injuries. Plus, we all played sports. This just looks like the equivalent of a badly skinned knee for a human.”
She sighed with relief as he worked diligently and swiftly. For the situation being stressful, Elijah seemed oddly calm and in control.
“Should we stay here for the night or try to keep going?” she asked as he finished applying the salve.
He glanced around and paused, “Not sure. It’s not occupied, but the windows at the front of the store weren’t all boarded up. Just some. And the back door didn’t have that great of a lock. I could probably kick it in pretty easily.”
“Yeah, but not everyone’s built like you,” she commented honestly. His thighs were immense.
He just offered a chuckle and kept bandaging the dog’s leg. Wren was also glad Dixie hadn’t tried to bite either of them. She really could not imagine how terribly painful that would be.
“Stay here with her,” Elijah told her and left them after he finished.
“Shh, it’s okay, girl,” Wren said in a soothing tone. She ran her hand down the dog’s side and tried to offer calming words and touches. It seemed to work because her eyes didn’t seem so wide and afraid as they’d been when she’d first turned in her seat to find her bloody and panicked.
Elijah came back a few minutes later carrying a lit candle and said, “It seems like this place will be okay, but it’s cold. I found a thermostat over there and turned it up, but who knows? Might not have the gas on to the building anymore.”
“Yeah, a lot of the buildings around here look like they got nuked or something.”
As they’d driven through the city, they’d both seen the devastation of the virus and the military converging into one huge battle. Buildings were burned, homes torched, trees were standing like charred, black cigars with no branches, areas were cordoned off with tall chain-link fencing with razor wire at the top as if the military had tried to secure specific sectors but failed. It was nothing more than a ghost town.
“If you’re not gonna be too cold, we can stay here,” he said. “Plenty of blankets and pillows.”
As he set the candle down on the nightstand, he indicated the stacks of pillows, throw pillows, blankets, and comforters currently covering the display beds.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“Not really, but she probably is,” she said of the dog, who looked up with sorrowful eyes as if to emphasize the point.
“I’ll be back,” he said and left again.
Wren worked on gathering their haphazardly thrown down backpacks and weapons as they’d both been too concerned about Dixie to be orderly. Then she set up a bed situation by pushing two queen-sized beds together and making it as comfortable as possible since she wanted Dixie right with her throughout the night. Elijah returned with a box of food from the trunk of the car from that hospital and set it down on the bed.
“Found her dog food,” he said first and poured out about a cupful onto the
