Plague Land Series, Book 1 by Alex Scarrow

Author:Alex Scarrow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2017-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

There were bodies in the office’s waiting room. Not that Leon’s mom felt she could call them bodies; they were just clumps of clothes, almost like the small piles of laundry Leon left lying around for her in his bedroom like cow pie in a field. In the corner, she glimpsed a stroller and a pink snuggle suit; she was too slow when she looked away to not see the little skull and its two dark orbital sockets staring back at her. Much of the floor of the waiting room was dotted with clothes and scarecrow bones. She stepped warily clear of each pile, examining the floor for the weblike tendrils of fluid.

“Mohammed…where’s all that stuff gone?”

He nodded. Clearly he’d noticed that too. There was little to suggest these bodies had ever been anything more than bones and rags, except for a network of faint stains on the office’s knitted carpet, snaking pencil-thin lines that radiated out from each body like old, disused country roads, marking where the liquid had once been.

They made their way around the receptionist’s desk to a back room lined from floor to ceiling with partitioned shelves and pigeonhole compartments stuffed with small, white packs and cartons of pills, many labeled with patient names.

“We should get several kinds of antibiotics for your daughter,” he said as he pulled the cartons out one by one, reading the contents of each. “And also we should gather a selection of general-purpose antibiotics. Also analgesics of whichever kind you prefer. The brand is not important; it is the same whichever you choose.”

Leon’s mom started sorting through the boxes in the pigeonholes. “You seem to know a lot about medicines.”

“I used to be a practicing pharmacist,” he replied.

“Here?”

“No, back in Syria.”

She looked at him. “I thought you said you came from Bangladesh?”

He shrugged. “Originally.”

“Then you traveled there?” She let the question be open and nonspecific, but he nodded.

He knew exactly what she was asking. “I went to help my brothers and sisters.” He nodded solemnly. “Yes. I was there.”

“Did you fight over there?”

He ignored her. Pulled out a cardboard box and emptied the contents on the floor. “Put what you find in here.”

“Did you fight?” The question came out sounding like a courtroom accusation.

“No. I was just a medic.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Healing wounded terrorists?”

“Healing wounded people.” He turned to look at her. “It is all ancient history now, Mrs. Button. Irrelevant. Now it is just the few of us who have survived that matter.”

“Yes.” She offered him a conciliatory smile. “You’re right.”

• • •

Leon squatted down at the edge of the duck pond and examined the water. Lily pads and a carpet of what looked like green algae rested on the still surface. He’d sat beside ponds before, the ones in Central Park, for instance. The water’s surface there had rippled with activity, the wakes from radio-controlled boats, the ripples caused by ducks and geese paddling around and squabbling for hunks of tossed-in bread.

The water here was as flat and still as a mirror.

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