Read Online Afterbirth by Belinda Frisch - Free Book Online Page A

rubber and spilled the liquid onto his mouth and face.
    “Dammit.” Reid grunted, frustrated. “What do you want?”
    He thought back on his work before The Collapse and suddenly he knew.

CHAPTER 15
     
    “This is probably the brightest room to do it in,” John said.
    Frank followed John through the battered rectory door which dangled from one hinge. Bright wasn’t the first word that came to his mind. A sunbeam spotlighted the dusty desk where Father Matthew had penned hundreds of inspiring sermons. Dried, bloody cast-off spattered the walls and floor and a severed hand rotted behind a growing nest of cobwebs in the corner.
    John pulled up a chair and cleared a workspace for Frank to tend to his wound. He removed the bandage for a second time and laid his hand palm-up.
    Frank opened his kit, arranged his supplies, and mixed a capful of iodine into a tumbler of sterile water. “I can’t stitch that, you know. Not yet. It’s too infected. If I close it now, there’s no way to properly clean it.” He prepped an irrigation syringe and flushed the debris from the deep gash that ran from John’s wrist to his elbow. “Any deeper and you’d have been dead.”
    John shrugged. “If I’d have known that two weeks ago, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” He squeezed his hand into a tight fist. “Jesus that burns!”
    “Then you’re really going to hate this.” Frank dipped a small brush into the solution and scrubbed at the dirt clinging to the wound’s rough and reddened edge. John’s eyes closed, and for a minute, Frank worried he’d pass out.
    “Hang in there. One more time and I’ll cover it up.”
    John pulled the flask from Frank’s pocket and opened it with his teeth. He drank until liquid spilled from both corners of his mouth and set it down on the desk. “You’re gonna need a refill.”
    Frank grinned and scrubbed a little harder. “That was the refill.”
    John hissed through his teeth as Frank rinsed and patted the wound dry.
    “This ought to stop the bleeding.” Frank pinched the wound together and applied a row of steri-strips. He wrapped John’s forearm with a clean roll of gauze and taped the loose end in place. “We’ll leave it alone for a day or two and I’ll clean it again.”
    John’s eyes lit up. “You’re going to stay?”
    “Let’s not make a big deal out of it. I owe you one, and besides, you looked like you were ready to faint. I don’t see how you can clean it yourself. You up to showing me where you keep the goods?”
    John set his hand on the corner of the desk and stood, wobbling and then moving more steadily. “Anything useful is in the catacombs, where I’ve been staying.” He took two penlights from his pocket and handed one to Frank. “I found a bunch of these in the storm kits Father Michael put together for the blizzard a couple of years back. I’ll take you down there and you can see what’s left, as long as we’re sticking together.”
    The last bit sounded as much like a plea as it did a negotiation. Frank considered, for a minute, having someone else to look out for, another mouth to feed, another liability, and then he remembered John, knee deep in the hole Holly would later be buried in, digging when he was too weak to. “Yeah, why not?” Frank organized his kit. “Solitaire gets old.” He left behind the trash and followed John out the door.
    A tattered paper runner from a long-forgotten wedding crinkled as Frank walked down the aisle toward the decimated altar. Blood clung to the pews and the white marble steps leading to the pulpit.
    “What the hell happened?” The fall breeze blew through the shattered windows and sent a chill up Frank’s spine. He grabbed the wooden podium and knocked the bible from on top of it. The crash of the hardcover on marble echoed in the cathedral ceiling and a flock of pigeons ascended from the balcony.
    “Father Matthew tried to get us all down here.” John pushed on the ornate wooden door that