February 15th, 2013
Devils Head, Colorado
1
"Damned spider wasn't even the size of my fingernail," Samantha muttered bitterly, about to cause herself a lot of pain because of it. Her leg was bad, the wound hard and swollen, black in the center with angry red lines of infection aiming for her heart. She shivered in the cold hunting cabin, building up the nerve to do what had to be done.
Green Falls and Woodland Park, Colorado had been looted like every other place she'd come through, but both had pharmacies surprisingly intact, and she had tried all the antibiotics she found on the spider bite, giving each a couple days to work. Though they had clearly slowed down the infection that had eventually made walking impossible, it was now life or death. She would have to do surgery on herself.
Sam was holed up in the Devil's Head Hunting Lodge, taking shelter in a large, rustic log cabin. There were older, uncomfortable furnishings around a beautiful stone fireplace, an outhouse in the back, and huge glass windows in the front that gave her a view of dwarf birch trees with black moss climbing most of the smooth trunks.
The other walls were decorated with a buck, a bear, an angry bobcat, and a calendar still on December. The floor under her was cold stone, the forest still in the thick of winter. Isolated and alone, she was about to try treating herself so she could recover while waiting out the powerful blizzard she could feel pushing closer.
Terrified of passing out and bleeding to death, Samantha let her mind go where it wanted, thinking about the trucks and sport utility vehicles in the long gravel driveway. The thick layer of dust on the floor said no one else had been here since all hell had broken out, not even the bloody smears that she was sadly becoming used to. There also weren't any bodies - not even a meadowlark or a stray cat, and that too, made her worry. It told her there were probably a number of predators around here that were keeping the carrion cleaned up.
Her stomach dipped at that thought, and when she closed her eyes, she saw the doomed man on the sofa again, heard the single shot. The compound was fifty miles behind her, but Pat's grotesque face was her daily companion.
"Won't last as long as he did if you don't do this, Sammi," she told herself.
The dark infection lines crawling outward from the wound were already six inches long, and she could only hope this drastic action would drive them back. Bandages and other supplies spread out next to her, roaring flames in the marbled fireplace at her booted feet, the dirty blonde pulled her cap down tighter over her long braid. It was time to shoot, Luke, or give up the gun.