Chapter 141: Skye

He takes the fourth and final vial of blood and gently pulls the needle from my arm. I sigh in relief as he presses a swab to the pinprick hole and tells me to put pressure on it. I comply with his instruction. After placing the vials in a tray and setting them aside, he walks stiffly to the nearest chair and lowers himself into it, leaning an elbow on the armrest. He looks contemplative for a moment before he begins speaking.
"It was such a long time ago," he says. "I want to get the facts straight and my memory isn't young anymore."
"Take your time," Emery says. "We don't have any place to be."
She can speak for herself. I have to get back to Old Tucson and make sure the fucking zombies haven't overrun the place in my absence. Though we've set up an efficient line, holding them at bay, they still pour in daily. Masses of them, trying their luck on the guns and knives that await them in the hands of the hardened soldiers, driven from their own cities to this Sanctuary. Still, I want to hear Bishop's story, so I settle in, my hand still cradled in Taran's as I listen.
"As you know, I was around to see the Fall. It was a mess of panicked people, Primitives taking advantage of the panic, cities, countries, everything falling apart. So many people died. Not just from the Death Kiss, but from each other. Neighbours turned on neighbours, police, military, anyone with weapons, they tried to keep the peace, tried to maintain order, but it wasn't possible. Not with that much fear and hysteria. No one believed anyone. Wild theories about the Primitives flew all around us. It was a terrible time. I would argue the worst, though I've seen many tragedies since then."
"You would have been young," I muse.
He nods. "Mid-twenties, fresh out of medical school, brand new to the military, where they were hiring doctors to help cope with their injured people on the front lines of the Primitive attacks."
"That must have been awful," Taran says, her voice filled with compassion for the horrors the young doctor must have seen and experienced.
He shrugs. "At least I felt like I was helping. I couldn't fight. Couldn't aim or shoot a gun to save my life. So I aided the men and women putting their lives at risk to save ours."
"Women?" I ask in surprise. "There were female fighters?"
Women don't usually hold positions in the police or military. Their wombs are considered too valuable. His words remind me of how tough it was to learn from Wolfe how to shoot and fight. Suddenly I feel proud of this new accomplishment of mine. I've always known I was tough, a fighter, but I'd never been given the opportunity to use weapons before now. Like my ancestors, like the women of our past, I've become a warrior.
"Yes," he says proudly, a twinkle in his eye now as he looks at me. "While men in the military still far outnumbered women, at the turn of the century, women were starting to hold many more important positions. Not just in the military, but in government and world organizations as well. Sadly, we've lost much of the ground women fought for."
I nod, gaining a new respect for the doctor. As much as I loved Silas, he thought that a woman's place was in the harem, in a locked wing of the Fortress where they couldn't be harmed by the world around them. His laws governing the city reflected his values toward women. Gentle, kind, but misogynistic. His views did start to change as his body failed and he had to rely on me more and more to help run his city.
"You were saying?" I encourage Bishop.
He smiles toward me and continues, "When it became clear that the fall of civilization as we knew it was near, we were discharged, told to go back to our families and await news on our next move. Of course, most of us knew that meant we were screwed and being told to go home and await the apocalypse in comfort with our loved ones." He pauses and rubs at the dark grey hair sprouting across his head. "I'd made friends with many people in the unit I was stationed with. People take kindly when you help save their lives. One of the higher ups warned me to get the heck out of Chicago... that's where I lived at the time with my wife and our young son. My parents and sister were a few blocks over."
"Did you?" Taran asks. "Take his advice and leave Chicago?"
He nods. "I wasn't about to turn down that kind of advice from a four-star general. He saved us, me and my whole family. I went home and packed them up and we drove as fast and as far as we could get before we ran out of gas. My dad was ex-military too, so between the two of us, we were able to set up a new home in the mountains." His eyes flick to mine. "Like your grandparents, we reasoned there would be less Primitive activity the further we got from crowds of people, their main source of food."
"Obviously you didn't stay in the mountains. What happened?" I ask, beginning to get a picture of what this man went through with his family. He doesn't even have to say the next part, I already know. The former United States wasn't as well protected as Canada. Not as many wide-open spaces to get lost in. They wouldn't have been able to hide far enough, deep enough before they were discovered.
"Over the years we were picked off one at a time. Rogue Primitives would attack while we were out in the woods looking for necessities. An Outsider took my sister. We never found out what happened to her." He trails off for a moment as we all imagine the possible horrors. Raped, sold, killed. A common practice still. "My wife actually died... a more natural death."
We wait, giving him time to grieve all over again for something he's probably tried hard not to think about for years. Or maybe he has. Maybe he still thinks about her every day. I don't know, I've never experienced all-consuming love. I loved my husband but I wasn't in love with him. The spark, the passion, whatever it's called, hadn't really been there for us. At least not for me. My brain flits to Wolfe, but I shut that thought down before it can even happen.
"How did your wife die?" I ask as gently as I can.
He smiles in remembrance. "She was beautiful," he says. "A handful of a woman, both physically and otherwise. She was feisty and sharp-tongued. She once picked up the butcher knife as a Primitive broke its way through the back door and into our kitchen and stabbed it through the eye before it could touch any of us. She yelled 'not in my kitchen' and went right back to cooking, stepping over top of its twitching body."
A laugh bursts out of me at the image of the soft-spoken, mild-mannered doctor being married to such a brave woman.
"Died of cancer," he says sadly, the smile melting away. "At least that's what I think it was. There was no way to test her up in the mountains. No way to get her the medicine she needed. I suggested leaving to go find some, but she didn't want me to put my life in danger and I couldn't leave her alone like that. Too weak to defend herself and our son."
"Of course, you couldn't," Taran says reassuringly.
"So I watched her die, just waste away right before us. Her last words were to beg me to take Brandon, our son, and go to a Sanctuary city. By this time, Sanctuaries had arisen and were considered safer places for humanity to gather and begin rebuilding once more. When she passed, we left for Chicago, the nearest Sanctuary."
No one says anything as we picture what it must have been like back then. Then I ask the question that lingers on all of our minds. "What happened to Brandon?" Bishop has a wife in Sanctuary, a woman he must've met and married here. But he has no children that we've seen. Like every other story, his will end in tragedy.
"Died," he says, confirming my suspicions. "From infection. There were no antibiotics left in Chicago and he couldn't fight the fever. After I lost Brandon, I couldn't stay there anymore. I heard about a Sanctuary that was looking for a doctor and set out on a convoy headed west. I've been here ever since."