The Self-Proclaimed Medical Expert (Part 3)

Anthony Evans

We all fell silent after that, marching on with the sun rising on our left. It was slow progress as some of us didn't shake the ill effects as quickly as others. If I was honest, I was likely the last one to make it back to normal but I couldn't tell the others such a thing. I could simply pass it off as minor frustration at the incompetence of my travelling companions and move on. As it had been my first slip, I was decently sure that everyone would simply dismiss the event and move on as if none of it had ever happened. I would just need to be more cautious in the future.

It was a solid two miles before we stopped. Silent permission was given to pass around the water rations as we settled on the dusty ground, though I was still rather skeptical that we were far enough out from the contamination area. Even so, Maria wasn't the only one desperate for a drink. Water was a precious commodity and none of us dared waste it. In the Underground, there had been aquifers that we could consistently draw from, untainted by the raging war above. Out here, it was a matter of distilling water ourselves or finding clean wells. Needless to say, conservation was the only way we survived.

"Is anyone going to explain what happened back there or are we just going to sit around and ignore it like everything else that sucks?" Maria was staring straight at me the entire time she spoke, as if her childish glaring would invoke some burning need for me to open up. It didn't. I had no reason to explain anything to her or anyone else. But I had already made up my mind to give an explanation anyway.

"It was a chemical leak," I replied evenly. "We must have been near an old underground military storage facility or dumping ground. Before the war really escalated and the bombs started, military police were ordered to use chemical agents to suppress the riots. Most of them were fairly harmless, just designed to cause discomfort and irritation of the skin or eyes. As things got worse, they intensified the chemical components without really considering the risk. The most common one, a high-dose agent designed to induce severe nausea and vomiting, was dangerous enough to cause anaphylactic shock and asphyxia in more than half the cases."

I paused but it seemed that my assessment and analysis of the situation didn't do justice to the matter. Maria still stared at me and the others just looked like they were waiting for me to drop another shoe. The unfortunate disadvantage of maintaining knowledge was that no one seemed to understand or appreciate it. This was the entire frustration of my life. No matter how I tried to educate these people, they always seemed to only welcome subpar eloquence and average stupidity.

"We must have been lucky," Darian chimed in. "From what I remember, the gas would kill you in minutes. What was leaking must have been diluted over time." Strangely, he was right, though I certainly couldn't agree with his level of tact.

"Lucky?" Carley was always the first one to overreact and fly off into a panic. "So we can now add sleeping too close to invisible sources of gas leaks to the giant list of things that will kill us out here. That's just fantastic. Thanks for telling us. Now, we're all terrified to breathe. Anything else we should know?"

I could understand her upset. Darian's uncultured and unfiltered answer was bound to cause issues. Of course, Carley wasn't exactly wrong either. There were still so many things that we didn't know about this broken world we lived in. The more we moved, the more danger seemed to spring from the mist. It was a constant cycle that was more the fault of Nathan's insatiable need to keep moving around than anything. If he would ever stop looking for people and start looking for a place to stay, we might actually have the chance to adjust and adapt. At this rate, we were just chasing the imaginings of a child.

"Actually, there is a bit of bad news." Nathan was digging in his pack as he spoke, his voice muffled by the fabric but still loud enough to draw everyone's eyes. He pulled out the radiation detector we kept for testing food and water sources. More sensitive than a Geiger counter and able to run without a need for a power source, it had been one of the best contributors to our survival. But it seemed there was now a problem. When I looked a little closer, there was a long, black crack down the middle of the casing.

"Please tell me that it still works," I said. It was possible the crack was nothing but cosmetic but my forte was medicine and biology, not the last dregs of 'modern' technology.

"I don't know," Nathan replied with a shrug. "Technically the case is simply containment but we'd have to test it on a known source of radiation to be sure that the readings are accurate. The only one we've come across in this area is almost fifty miles northwest of here."

He pulled out the map from his pack to confirm his assumption. It was more like a book, really, with page upon page of roads and markings. We had added our own understanding of the terrain as it had changed since the war. There were thousands of locations we had noted in our wanderings. Radiation hot spots, clean wells, safe hunting grounds, sinkholes, and places to shelter were all scribbled on the paper. Landmarks between decimated cities were diligently recorded for reference and the map itself had become our way of tracking our movements through the years.

"If we backtrack that far, we'll be almost two days behind," I said, stepping over to scan the map.

"No, it would be closer to a week or more," Nathan replied, pointing at the bigger problem.

"A week?" Carley raised a blonde eyebrow at us both. "There's no way that fifty miles would set us back that far."

"It would if we had to skirt the city in the middle," Nathan responded evenly, holding up the map for her and the others. "We can't risk going straight through this late in the season with what we know of the cities. Taking a week off our travel time could put us in a bad place but picking up contaminated food or water might be worse."

"I say we take a vote," I interjected. It was a logical conclusion in a group of five or more to vote on the best course of action for the whole. I was sure everyone would see the best solution to the issue at hand.

"Alright," Nathan said. "Those in favor of backtracking to test the detector?"

Every hand went up except mine. So much for trusting in the logical solution.