Page 7 of The Last Sanctuary
“Either option would have been preferable.”
She went rigid. He wasn’t entirely wrong. She’d allowed herself to be distracted by other things—her birthday, the letter, her mother. She’d let her guard down. And it had cost her. “You’re the one who said it was just the flu.”
“I was wrong.” His expression was shell-shocked. “You don’t put yourself in danger for anyone. Do you understand me?”
“Yeah, I get it. Message received.” She forced herself to think of something other than the microscopic virus particles that might be percolating through her blood at that very moment. “Zachariah is suffering. He needs medicine.”
Her father lowered the tranq gun. Wearily, he rubbed sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. His skin was sallow. Bruises circled his eyes from weeks of stress, lack of sleep, and overwork. “No.”
He turned away from her, likely to head to the rear of the park, to the wolves, where he spent his free time after the animals had been fed and cared for.
Her father was a man of few words—quiet, intense, and contemplative. Her mother had hated it. Raven had grown used to his taciturn nature, to his long silences. Today, his reticence was unacceptable.
“No? What do you mean, no?” She repeated the same thing she’d said eight days ago, when Zachariah first started coughing, when he’d quarantined himself inside his loft. “There must be something we can do. We should call Dr. El-Hashem in town?—”
“No doctors left to call. I told you.” His accent thickened. He’d moved to the States from Tokyo when he was a kid, and he barely had an accent anymore unless he was angry or upset.
Her mind filled with the images of the overrun hospitals and medical centers, guarded by soldiers refusing the sick at gunpoint. The screaming children, the weeping parents.
“What about Dr. Carter?” she asked, grasping at straws.
Dr. Carter was the exotic animal vet who cared for the wild animals that called the refuge home. He hadn’t come to treat Electra the bobcat’s abscess three weeks ago.
On vet days, Dr. Carter used to let Raven assist with fecal screening programs, routine vaccinations, and other issues that cropped up.
Kodiak, a two-hundred-and-sixty-pound black bear, needed a claw cutting for an ingrown toenail; Gizmo, a bonobo, suffered a toothache that required an extraction under anesthesia.
When he’d failed to show, her dad had called him. After multiple messages, the vet’s wife had finally answered, coughing violently and raw with grief. Dr. Carter had died two days before, another casualty of the Hydra Virus.
Three days after that, the phones had stopped working.
“Then the pharmacy in town?—”
Her father’s gaze hardened. His eyes were black as onyx and mirrors of her own. He glowered at her. “Too dangerous. Absolutely not.”
“Zachariah is our friend. He’s worked here forever. He stayed to help even after everything went to hell. We can’t just?—”
“He’s dying,” her father said flatly. His fingers tightened on the tranquilizer gun. “He’s a dead man walking. Nothing we can do at this point.”
She gestured helplessly. “He’s also suffering. He’s in pain. Some meds can ease?—”
“I said no.” Her dad coughed into his mask. He had asthma. He was always coughing. The stress—and the mask—made it worse. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face.
“But—”
“How do you think he got infected? He went into town to look for more fuel for the generators and to get meat from the renderer. I warned him to be careful. He wasn’t careful enough. He tried to help someone, and look where that got him? Got us?” He winced, as if speaking the words physically pained him. “You will not risk yourself for him, not for anyone.”
She gave a sharp jerk of her head, capitulating as she always did. It made her feel selfish and helpless and impotent. She longed to grab her pack and run as far away from this place as she could.
“We don’t risk the living for the dead.”
“I know that.” She hated it, but she did know. Her father was right, as always, as much as she resented it—and resented him for it, at this moment.
Vlad snarled his discontent. He hurled himself at the fence. He wouldn’t stop until her father holstered his tranquilizer gun. He didn’t put it away, though Vlad was obviously agitated. Deeper in the park, several of the wolves started to howl.
A cool breeze rustled through the oak trees interspersed throughout the wildlife refuge. Fall had transformed the leaves into rich shades of fiery red, burnt orange, and plum purple. Fallen leaves littered the pathways and enclosures.
Her dad coughed again into the crook of his arm. He wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. His face had hardened into his usual expression—flat, closed, and impassive. “The hybrids need to be fed. The bonobos need fresh hay in their night house. And when you’re finished with that, Vlad’s house needs scrubbing out.”
