Double Or Nothing Read online

  Double Or Nothing

  Sean Patten

  Contents

  Double Or Nothing

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Fighting Chance

  Chapter 1

  Double Or Nothing

  Copyright 2019 by Sean Patten

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.

  All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  May 9 2020: 05:30 Pacific Time

  The sun rose slowly over the western horizon, the oranges and yellows mixing with the crackling fire of O’Donnelly-Reeder airport in the distance.

  I’d spent the night watching the airport burn. It reminded me of something I’d heard on a TV documentary about prehistoric man that I’d seen long ago; how, in lieu of any of the modern entertainment choices we had, our ancestors used to pass their evenings around the fire, entranced by the dancing flames.

  “Entertaining” was hardly the word I’d use; it was just hard to look away.

  The fire was small in the distance—no bigger than my thumb turned on its side—but I knew what it meant. Hundreds of lives had been lost in the disaster, and Steve and I had been lucky to escape in one piece.

  As I stood leaning against the power substation shed, my arms crossed and my eyes narrowed, a moan from inside let me know in no uncertain terms that while we’d escaped with our lives, we were hardly out of the shit.

  Steve was still hurt. And the wound was more than a splash of vodka and some bandaging would fix.

  I should’ve been tired. Between the scene at the casino, the chaos on the Strip, and everything that had followed, I should’ve collapsed in total exhaustion as soon as my head hit the bundled up pile of T-shirts that had been my makeshift pillow.

  But I hadn’t been able to bring myself to get some sleep.

  Part of it had been the smell.

  The mild wind had carried the scent of the burning airport towards us. Most of the smells were about what one would expect—the astringent scent of gas, the rubbery smell of tries, and the acrid thickness of smoke.

  But there was something else, something that I at first couldn’t place. The more I tried to pick it out, the more I realized what it might’ve been—the smell of burning flesh. It was an awful smell, rich and thick and almost sickly sweet.

  And the worst part was that my stomach, by now craving anything to eat, didn’t discriminate, didn’t care that it might’ve been human meat. It grumbled eagerly as the scent drifted into my nose, demanding I get up and follow it.

  Not a fucking chance. I knew the days ahead would be something like hell on earth, but I made a silent vow to never stoop that low in order to survive.

  Ancient man believed that eating a part of an animal gave you some of its strength, but I imagined eating human meat was the total opposite—the more of it you ate, the more of your humanity you gave up.

  It was a line I’d never cross, and I hated the fact that the scent on the wind was already making me consider such things.

  I turned my attention back to the fire, trying to let the throbbing glow of the flames on the horizon clear my head. There was no sense in trying to puzzle out moral dilemmas that might become relevant weeks or months into the future.

  Here and now. Here and now.

  The “here” was the substation, and the “now” was the dawn of the first day after the catastrophe.

  More importantly, the “now” was that my brother was inside with a nasty gash on his leg. The “now” was that I didn’t have the supplies to give him the treatment he actually needed; that we didn’t have any food or weapons or anything else that would allow us to even think of holding out here for any meaningful amount of time.

  A plan was forming in my mind, and Steve wasn’t going to like it one bit.

  The booze inside the substation appeared in my mind’s eye. It was early in the morning and I hadn’t had a wink of sleep, but man, did a strong belt of that sound good. I imagined polishing the bottle off, falling into a stupor, my last thoughts before going out being that maybe, just maybe, the problems would take care of themselves.

  I knew it was a bad idea—a fucking terrible idea, in fact. But a little oblivion sounded pretty nice right about then. Anything to take my mind off the issues at hand.

  Okay, I thought to myself. How about this—you get Steve taken care of, you find some weapons and then a safe place to hunker down. Then you can have a drink.

  I couldn’t help but laugh at my own thoughts, how I was thinking of matters of life and death like they were errands to run before I could put my feet up, turn on the game, and crack open a cold one.

  A better motivator was the fact that if I didn’t get a move on and figure all this out, Steve would likely be dead of infection within days. That is, if some roving bands of thugs didn’t find us and kill us first.

  The sun had risen higher, its brightness by then almost totally obscuring the fire of the airport off in the distance.

  Show was over. Time to get to work.

  I stretched out my limbs, relief and fatigue running through them in equal measures. I allowed myself a yawn as blood flowed through my worn-out muscles.

  From within the substation I heard another moan, followed by another. That meant Steve was up, and the time for standing around was done.

  I’d kept a lookout for the evening, but a new day had dawned.

  I was ready to move.

  Chapter 2

  “Oh, fuck! Fucking hell!”

  Steve was up, all right, and by the sound of it he wasn’t doing well.

  I took one last glance at the horizon, trying to burn the image into my mind. By this point the fires of the airport had been completely obscured, and all I could see was the sun rising up over the desert, not a sign of civilization other than the power cable towers trailing off into the distance.

  It was likely to be the last peaceful sight I’d see in a long time, and I savored it for a moment before turning back towards the substation.

  “Christ!”

  Steve.

  Another curse sounded from inside the shack. I almost didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see the extent of it, but there was no putting it off. I pulled open the door and stepped into the cool interior of the space.

  Steve was on the ground where he’d fallen asleep, only now he was curled up, his hands wrapped around his leg. I hurried over to him and dropped to his side.

  “How’s it looking?” I asked.

  Steve flicked his eyes, still bleary with sleep, up in my direction.

  “Morning,” he grunted.

  This was some relief. I doubted my brother would be bothering with pleasantries if he were in severe pain.

  “Morning, s
unshine,” I said right back. “Let me take a look at it.”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Didn’t sound fine by the noises you were making,” I said.

  “Just being a baby,” he said. “Trust me—it’s nothing.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” I said.

  Steve let out a snort of a laugh.

  “Sure thing, doc.”

  He took a slow breath before removing his hands from the wound.

  It didn’t look good. The white T-shirts I’d wrapped around the gash were now a deep, dark red, soaked through with blood that had seeped out over the night. I pulled the shirts off and tossed them aside, getting a better look at the wound.

  “Well?” he asked. “What’s the story?”

  The gash appeared just as deep as ever, the ragged wound still open like a sliced cut of meat. But there didn’t seem to be any signs of infection, so far as I could tell.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I mean, I’m not a doctor,” I said. “Not like I can give you a for-sure diagnosis.”

  “Do your best.”

  “Well,” I said. “You were in the military—tell me the signs of infection.”

  Steve closed his eyes and spoke.

  “There might be pus,” he said. “The skin around it would be all red and swollen.”

  I was relieved to hear him speak. I’d known the answer to the question, but I’d wanted to see how clear his thinking was.

  “Right,” I said. “And there’s one other sign.”

  He closed his eyes and nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Wound’s more painful.”

  I nodded right back.

  “Tell me how this feels.”

  I placed my fingertip on the side of the wound and gave it a slight press. Steve responded with a wince.

  “Better? Worse?”

  “Hard to say,” he said, a slight grin curling his lip. “You did just jab me in the side of an open wound.”

  “I’ll take your smart-ass response as a good sign,” I said.

  “It hurts,” he said. “But it’s not miserable. Saw a guy back in the service get an infected wound.”

  “That right?”

  He nodded.

  “Some dumbass sliced his hand on a piece of metal, didn’t tell the doc because he wanted to look hard. Told me he ran it under some water, threw a Band-Aid on it, and went about his business.”

  “And how’d that work out for him?”

  Steve shook his head.

  “Jackass ended up in bed, just about crying like a baby. We had to pry it out of him what the issue was, but the smell tipped us off before he’d even gotten a word out. Guy’s hand looked like it’d been dipped in toxic sludge.”

  “Sounds like an infection, all right.”

  Another nod.

  “Dude was lucky he didn’t lose his hand.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  I glanced down at his leg, imagining how it’d look totally infected, nightmare scenarios of amputation running through my mind.

  “Get that thought out of your head right now, little brother,” said Steve.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I can tell what you’re thinking,” he said. “Trying to figure out where you’d have to cut to take the whole thing off. Imagining what I’d look like with a big, gnarly stump. Maybe even wondering how big the wheelbarrow you’d be moving me around in would have to be.”

  I let out a slight laugh.

  “Easy with the imagination,” I said. “You’re not that far gone yet.”

  “But I might be before too long.”

  “Let’s not worry about what might happen,” I said. “Focus instead on what we can do about it.”

  I got up and headed over to the drawer with the T-shirts and grabbed a fresh one, along with the bottle of booze.

  “Ready for this?” I asked.

  “Not really my preferred way to start the day,” he said drily. “Can’t you make me an Americano or something first? Help me wake up a little?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Maybe if you’re nice I’ll scramble up a frittata to go along with it.”

  “Now we’re talking,” Steve said. “Maybe some thick-cut bacon right on the side.”

  My stomach let out a long grumble.

  “Okay,” I said. “Easy on the food talk.”

  “Can’t help it,” he said. “I’m hungry as hell.”

  I’d been putting off thinking about it, but something to eat sure as hell sounded good. Nothing to do about that for the time being, however.

  “Okay,” I said. “Get ready.”

  Steve nodded and closed his eyes. I pulled off the cap of the bottle and tilted it down onto the cut.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Steve said through gritted teeth.

  “Hurts less than the alternative,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, opening his eyes. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  I went to work with the bandage, covering the wound. Once that was done, I watched it for a time, a thin strip of red appearing in the shape of the cut after a few moments. But it didn’t grow.

  “What’s the word?” Steve asked.

  “You bled through the shirt last night, but it looks like it’s slowed down.”

  “That’s good.”

  “It’s good,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods. Infection’s still an issue, and then there’s the matter of sealing that thing up.”

  “You’re talking about stitches?” he asked. “Or staples?”

  “Something like that,” I said. “Hell, some superglue would do the job. But they’re all things that we don’t have here.”

  “Okay,” Steve said, nodding. “Then we head back into town, stop someplace for supplies. And it’s only been a day since this all went down—not even that. Bet we could even go by one of the hospitals.”

  “Not a chance,” I said. “Any hospital’s going to be as much of a nightmare as the airport last night. Imagine the busiest hospital on its worst day, only now it doesn’t have any power and the staff’s all running on zero sleep.”

  “Fuck,” he said. “Then we go into town, like I said. Hit up the nearest pharmacy, grab whatever. Hell, bet we could even swing by a library and grab a medical book or two.”

  I stood up, realizing that there was no putting it off any longer—it was time to tell Steve about the plan.

  “There’s not going to be any ‘we’ about it,” I said.

  Steve crinkled up his eyebrows.

  “What are you talking about?”

  I gestured towards the wound.

  “Look at that,” I said. “There’s no way you’re walking on it.”

  “I know it’s bad,” he said. “But I can find something to support my weight. And I bet they’ll have crutches at the pharmacy.”

  “Bringing you along would triple the time it’d take to do this,” I said. “And what would happen if we got into a situation like last night? Remember those pricks who nearly killed us on the Strip? Imagine that without us able to make a quick getaway.”

  Steve held up his palms.

  “Okay,” he said. “I get it. But what’s the alternative? You seriously thinking about…”

  I said nothing, my stony face answering the question.

  “No,” he said. “No fucking way.”

  “No other way to do it,” I said. “You’re staying put.”

  “Not a chance,” he said. “No chance in hell I’m letting you go into the city alone.”

  “Not up for debate,” I said flatly. “You’re staying here.”

  “No way, Justin.”

  “You’ll be safe here,” I said. “No one’s going to think to come to a substation, even if they did happen to find it. And we can get the door barricaded up before I go.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about,” he said. “It’s you! One g
uy wandering around out there might as well have a goddamn target painted on his back!”

  “It’s a chance I’m going to have to take,” I said. “Otherwise we’re both screwed. How long do you think that wound’s going to stay like that for? What do you think’s going to happen if we don’t give it some proper treatment?”

  “I don’t care,” Steve said. “I’m not letting you go out there and risk your life on my behalf.”

  “It’s not just about you,” I said. “This place might be a good spot to hole up for a little while, maybe even until the worst of it all passes. But we’re not going to last more than a couple days without any supplies. We need food and water, and you know it.”

  Steve said nothing, that hard expression still on his face. I could tell that while he didn’t like what I had to say, he knew that I was speaking total sense.

  “What would you do if the roles were reversed?” I asked. “What would you say to me if I told you I wanted to hobble through town with a nasty gash on my leg like that?”

  “I’d…tell you to shut the hell up, to stay put, and let me take care of things.”

  “And that’s what I’m telling you right now,” I said. “So, let me do what needs to be done.”

  Steve looked away, clearly still not liking the situation.

  “You need something,” he said. “A weapon—anything.”

  I couldn’t disagree with him there. And Steve needed some way to defend himself, too.

  I found myself thinking again about my stash back home, all the supplies I’d been saving for the collapse that I’d always feared could be just around the corner.

  Here and now. Here and now.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’re right.”

  I took a quick inventory of the inside of the substation.

  “What about one of the folding chairs?” he asked.

  “Someone’s been watching too much wrestling,” I said.

  Steve laughed drily.

  “Just brainstorming,” he said.

  “Let me take a look outside.”

  “Sure.”

  I stepped out of the shack, the air noticeably warmer than it had been earlier. Steve would be okay inside—the shelter was likely to stay reasonably cool. As for me, I’d be trudging through the desert heat without any supplies but what I’d manage to scrounge up.