Nuclear War Club: Seven high school students are in detention when Nuclear War explodes.Game on, they are on their own. (18 page)

Doron looked intently at David, suspecting he had some treatment plan. But he had read
every
medical book used in the hospital for infection.

“It occurred to me in the middle of the night last night, that Ashley and Doron were correct as to our inability to treat Karen based upon
modern
medicine as in the textbooks,” David explained.

“I realized we can either whine about not having modern drugs, or instead of looking in the medical
textbooks
, we need to examine the medical
history
books,” David said.

“You see, it’s like this truck, it only runs because we went back to pre-computer chip technology after the attack,” David said.

‘Who has been in our situation? With someone gunshot and infected before these medicines we can’t find were even invented?” asked David.

“Special Forces? Behind enemy lines?” asked Doron excitedly.

“Great suggestion, but they probably carry some modern medicines. Think about the Civil War and World War I,” said David.

“These medicines were not invented. Thousands of men were shot, and probably infected. What was the treatment?” David asked.

“In the Civil War it was amputation of the leg or arm,” said Ashley. “My Dad talked about it a lot.”

Liu looked like she was going to puke. Jorge instinctively put his hand over his broken leg.

“Forget amputation,” said David, “We are not surgeons who could stop the bleeding.”

“In WWI, millions of soldiers were shot in filthy, diseased, trenches overflowing with sewage. Modern medicines had yet to be invented, and infection was wide spread. They were desperate, like we are,” said David.

“So what did they do?” asked David.

“What? What did they do?” asked an impatient Doron.

“They took fly maggots, the little white eggs that look like rice, and put them in the wound. The maggots ate the infected flesh, and when they got to the healthy flesh, it would start bleeding. Then they would take the maggots out,” David explained.

“I read this in a book over one hundred years old, and was leery. But then last night I was reading again the book Zeke found ‘
US Army Special Forces Medical Handbook-1982’
and it was on page 22-3 ‘Maggot therapy for wound debridement’!” he said.

“All the medical books warn the first thing any Doctor must do is not make the situation worse. They say ‘First, do no harm’.”

“We are not Doctors. If we could find any Doctors, I would get Karen there,” David said viciously. No doubt about that, Doron thought.

“But we don’t know where any Doctors are,” he said.

“The book says ‘Despite the hazards involved, maggot therapy should be considered a viable alternative when in the absence of antibiotics, a wound becomes severely infected, does not heal, and ordinary debridement is impossible’.”

Doron felt like smashing his head against the truck. How could he have missed this? It was so clear after David explained it. All the medical books he had read, all the ways he had tried to simulate the antibiotics or substitutes were foolish.

Doron suddenly understood the genius insight, the quantum leap of David’s realization that after the attack many areas of technology would go back to the past, like the truck.
Like the old movie he had once watched on Netflix,
Back to the Future
.

“The question is, Karen what do you want us to do?” asked David.

Karen reached out and held David’s hand, and looked him in the eye.

“David, you do your maggot therapy,” Karen said as forcefully as she could.

“I think it will work. My Dad always said I was a tough girl. He told me when I was seven years old, and thrown off the horse, I jumped right back on,” Karen smiled, as tears rolled down David’s face.

“And David,” she said softly, caressing his face with both hands wiping away the tears.

“If it doesn’t work,” her voice faded, “and I die anyway,” Karen paused to swallow some water.

“I will always be grateful you tried. You stayed up all night searching for an answer, you read the book for me. You never gave up on me. David, you never left me behind.”

39.

Doron could not find any maggots. Unbelievable, he thought, thousands, hundreds of thousands, of dead bodies had been rotting for weeks, yet no maggots could be found. He knew maggots survived the nuclear war, they were pestered by flies continually.

“I will get Karen’s maggots,” Zeke confidently assured Doron.

“They like covered, warm, wet, areas, like under plastic black garbage can lids, with food rotting nearby,” he explained. Doron was amazed when Zeke came back with a cup full of squirming white maggots in less than ten minutes.

Doron’s ego was pumped. He failed to discover the treatment, yet David asked
him
to perform the surgical procedure.

“We need you to study then perform this operation on Karen. You are our best,” David said simply. And he said it in front of the entire tribe. True, Doron thought, and only my due. But it’s good David recognized it.

Doron reread the military book on maggot therapy three times, then carefully counted fifty maggots into a jar. He had let Karen down once by failing to find the solution. He did not intend to fail again.

Liu and Doron carefully sterilized their hands and the area around the wound, put on gloves, then inserted the maggots into Karen’s festering wound. Doron thought it was ironic to sterile your hands to insert maggots that you took out of the garbage, but he did so anyway. He closed the wound with duct tape. Karen was fully conscious, and said she didn’t feel anything.

“All done. Now we need to camp so the Karen can rest and recover,” Doron told David.

“We need to camp near a water supply until Karen recovers,” David confirmed.

“Any suggestions?” David asked everyone at dinner, as he sat on the truck’s tailgate.

They had started eating around the truck because that was where Karen slept. She had two sleeping bags covered with a tarp roof Zeke had rigged over her head. If they had to leave quickly, she was already loaded on the truck. The camp was built around her truck each night.

Zeke had inserted three feet long, two by two inch boards into the holes in the side panels of the truck bed, then built a roof frame and covered it with the tarp. When they drove, he just removed the tarp, and left the roof truss erected, or sometimes just removed the side tarps and left the roof on to block the sun. Some nights Karen would ask them to take off the roof tarp so she could see the stars. When the pain was bad and she couldn’t sleep, she would lean against the truck cab and scan the horizon for attackers.

Zeke used tie downs connected to the tarp grommets for quick attachment of the tarp. He even found mosquito nets for the sides. Doron upgraded the truck tent to save rainwater by draining the roof into a heavy duty, construction garbage bags.

Doron and Liu helped Karen climb into her truck tent. Everyone stared, and David repeated his question.

“Any ideas on where to camp ?”

“We can camp anywhere with water. Follow a water line to a water tower. The water towers were often built near a spring or underground water source,” Doron said.

“Never, ever, waste water,” Doron said.

“There is no substitute for water. And you never know if, or when, you will find another source,” Doron said. He thought they were water spendthrifts, but they did seem to take his warnings seriously.

No one else had any ideas, so the next morning they searched for any water towers.

They were following a large water pipe, when Karen
started banging on the cab. “Turn into that dirt road,” she said.

“I used to ride my horse with Gonzalez’s daughter and they had an old fashioned hand pump outside their car repair shed, near the creek,” Karen pointed, seeming to gain energy. Doron followed her directions and found an old hand pump with fading red paint.

“You have to pour water in the top to get it primed,” Karen explained. Jorge seemed reluctant to pour his filtered water into the pump, but he shouted when the pump stated gushing water with each stroke.

“David,” Karen said.

“Yes?” replied David, rushing over.

“Search this area carefully before we camp. Word was Gonzalez hid illegal immigrants and heavily armed drug runners here,” Karen warned.

“If they had cash, there were no questions. Gonzalez said cash was bilingual, and answered all questions,” Karen said.

“There is a great camp spot about twenty yards before the creek. It’s flat and backs up against a red rock canyon. You can see the road curve for about half a mile in each direction, and it’s concealed. There are two narrow entrances through the canyon that are easy to defend. I used to ride Missy here when I wanted to hide,” Karen said.

Doron watched David, grab his guns, and call for Zeke. Liu joined them as they took off on foot. It was about half an hour before sunset, and Ashley and Jorge set up the tents.

Doron was extremely pleased with the camp. The pump water was pure. Having water they could drink without filtering was a luxury. And the water was less than thirty yards away. Doron treasured water, he knew it was literally life itself, so he quickly filled up both water bladders he had improvised from heavy duty garbage bags, and erected the improvised outhouse. Then he set up the rainwater drain on Karen’s truck tent roof to fill another bag.

After filling every garbage bag he could find, Doron
relaxed and realized they could have a shower every day provided it was from the pump, not the emergency water storage bags. And they could wash and clean their clothes. There were only two avenues of approach, both covered and concealed by solid rock cliffs on both sides.

Their food situation had improved once he deduced they should focus on truck trailers, not stores. The truck had several crates of canned soup, peanut butter, saltine crackers, potato chips, cookies, and most importantly three, fifty pound bags of rice lining both sides of Karen sleeping bags, like military sandbags. Everyone had a craving for fresh fruits or vegetables or anything not from a can. When Zeke found a lemon tree sheltered in a pass, each one hoarded their three lemons.

They all needed a rest, so however long it took Karen to recover they should be set. Doron wanted to be sure they used their time wisely. They needed to clean and oil their weapons, then scrounge around to fill up all the gas tanks.

“David we need training on military tactics. The greens would have wiped us out if anyone other than Karen had been on guard duty,” Doron told David.

Doron started a group “lessons learned” discussion about the firefight. For example, Zeke had already told everyone the greens he shot should have had one person keep a lookout, and they could not afford the same mistake. That was a lesson learned.

Doron wondered if they would learn their lessons before it was too late.

David walked up to Karen’s truck tent and knocked on the side panel. Liu nodded at David and said, “If you will be here a few minutes to watch her, I want to get some more water.”

“Sure,”said David. Karen opened the tent flap and moved the fly screen.

“How are you feeling?” David asked.

“Actually, it’s about the same. I was expecting some difference when Doron and Liu filled me with maggots, but so far, nothing,” Karen said.

“How often do they check you?” David asked.

“Every hour, on the hour, they peel back the duct tape and look. I am incubating fifty little baby maggots. When it hurts, or they see blood as the maggots eat healthy flesh, they will take the maggots out. If the infection has stopped, my temperature should go down,” Karen explained.

“You seem pretty upbeat,” David said.

“Well, at least we are doing something. And I believe this will work.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“After the firefight, Zeke and I checked the bodies. The four dead greens each had a M-16 headshot. You had the only M-16 besides me, and I never fired at them. Where did you learn to shoot?”

“Prairie dogs.”

“Prairie dogs?” David asked.

“During the summers Dad worked on huge ranch in Montana, owned by the same family,” Karen said smiling. Those were really good times, she thought.

“All the ranch hands carried an AR15 on the cattle range. The Colt AR15 is the civilian version of the M-16. Only difference is no automatic fire,” Karen explained, her eyes lighting up.

“The owner paid a bounty for each dead prairie dog. They destroyed the range, and there were no wolves to eat them. Dad and I would get up early, saddle the horses, and shoot them before we went to Church,” Karen said.

“Dad would give me a bonus if I could shoot the prairie dogs in the head. Now these prairie dogs are about the size of a squirrel, and we were shooting them from about twenty to thirty yards when they would pop out of their holes,” Karen explained.

“After a couple of summers, I got to where I could hit the prairie dog in the head about four out of five times,” Karen said.

“You know David, I still can’t believe my Dad is dead. I saw the ranch destroyed, our trailer burned, and all the horses dead, but I still can’t accept it,” Karen said with a somber, yet detached voice. It was quiet for a few seconds.

“The AR15 doesn’t kick, it’s easy to shoot and accurate,” she said with forced cheerfulness to lighten the mood.

“And it’s a lot easier to hit a human head than a prairie dog head,” Karen explained.

“Except the prairie dogs don’t shoot back,” said David quietly.

“True. But when you are being shot at you just react, you don’t think.”

“Will you teach everyone how to shoot, and whatever you did to kill the greens?” David asked.

Karen looked him in the eyes and said, “Yes.”

Liu returned with a five gallon plastic bucket of water.

“Now get away from my tent, David,” she said, flicking her hand dismissively.

“A woman likes to puke, and incubate her baby maggots, in private,” Karen laughed.

40.

Jorge thought the rest camp was for Karen’s benefit, but everyone seemed utterly exhausted. They slept all day and all night, except when on guard duty, for the first maggot day. He wondered if it was due to the shock of the firefight, or the accumulated, interrupted sleep of guard duty.