DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second Book

PART 8, SECTION 5

Muldoon was a wreck.

I hadn't been all the way into town since I'd shot up that squad of rangers and robbed the pharmacy, months ago. No one had plowed any of the snow, and the streets had devolved into muddy pathways snaking haphazardly through abandoned vehicles. The carnival rides still loomed ominously above town, motionless and dim, covered in sooty snow.

Avoiding the streets, I cut through the Burger Shack parking lot. I put up my hood and kept my head down. But it didn't seem like I was in much danger of being seen. I'd hitched Kaypay as inconspicuously as I could in one of the fair-grounds stalls, and since I'd left her there I hadn't seen a single sign of life. No one was patrolling the streets. No FEMA supply helicopters hovered overhead. I wondered if maybe the air drops were becoming less frequent, or had stopped altogether.

I knew I should avoid the town center, but, since I was in Muldoon, I wanted to check out the state of the pharmacy. One way or another, we would have to get access to it again for antibiotics. I needed to know what we were up against.

I sloshed through an icy puddle to cross Cottonwood Street, and I peered around the corner, careful to keep mostly hidden behind an abandoned horse trailer. 

But no one was there. The town center was completely empty. No pedestrians, no Home Guard. No one.

Not only was the pharmacy unguarded, it wasn't even there. A fire had burned out an entire block of buildings. What had been the pharmacy had been reduced to a few charred studs standing amid snow-covered ashes.

I fell back against the horse trailer's cold aluminum wall, suddenly overwhelmed. We had no prospects for food, and, now, no way of getting the antibiotics we needed.

As I leaned against the trailer, staring at the gray sky and trying to convince myself that I could figure out what to do if I just stayed calm and took things one step at a time, I caught a familiar scent.

At first I thought I was hallucinating. But then I smelled it again. . .

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