Page 78 of What Blooms in Barren Lands

Bastard.

“Agreed.” Finlay nodded with a casual smile cast in my direction. “Laura’d suire welcome some pain r’lief fer her endometriosis, the puir lassie. Any objections, chief?”

“None at all.”

“So do we target a hospital then?” Russ suggested. “They usually have them biggest pharmacies nearby.”

“Those are all in big cities. The nearest one is in Corte. Population over six thousand.” Jean-Luc shook his head sceptically. “That’s a suicide mission.”

“There may not be six thousand of them left,” I pointed out. “We’ve seen that most furies died weeks after the Outbreak of their own injuries.”

“Even if it’s a thousand, though,” Einar speculated, his breath tickling the hair above my right ear. “That’s still impossible for us to clear. Except ... excuse me, sweetheart.” He hoisted me up and walked over to the bookshelf by the fireplace,pulling out an old map of Corsica, the paper so frail that it nearly fell apart in his hand.

I made space on the coffee table by pushing the sugar bowl and everyone’s cups to the side. Einar spread the map in front of us and located Corte with his fingers.

“Where exactly is the hospital, Jean-Luc? Do you remember?”

We all leaned closer to the map, Einar and I kneeling side by side on the rug.

“I know almost exactly,” Jean-Luc said, his face creased with concentration like a dried prune. “It’s about there, at this edge of the city closer to us. Madeleine had her treatments done there.”

“Right. Well, we wouldn’t need to clear half the city to get there. That’s good. We could clear just the passage to the hospital and the hospital itself. Quietly, not to draw hordes. It could be doable, if only just barely. Do we have enough petrol to drive there with all the cars?”

We had six vehicles: Jean-Luc’s and five more we found abandoned but functional in Vizzavona.

“Not even close.” Jean-Luc shook his head. “But there’s a petrol station right about there.” He jabbed his finger into a spot close to Vivario, a nearby town en route to Corte. “With luck there’ll be some left there.”

“We can try to get more food anywhere on the way to the hospital, if not in the hospital canteen itself,” Albert pondered out loud. “It’s as good a place to look as any.”

“Sounds like we have a plan.” Einar nodded.

The night was very dark when our caravan of cars drove back through the gates of Vizzavona forty-eight hours later. It had snowed intermittently throughout the day, and as Einar opened the door on the driver’s side, a gust of freezing, wet wind slapped me hard against the cheek. Others followed Einar’s suit, letting even more numbing cold air in, but I sat there, in the middle of the back seat, unwilling to go out and face the elements. As well as anything else awaiting me out there.

How had it only been two days since we came up with that mad scheme, the seed of all the day’s destruction?

The door to my left was wrenched open and strained its hinges against the relentless gale. Einar’s face came into view.

There was an ugly gash under his right jaw, the stubble around it dark with dried blood. Cuts and scratches showed bloody through his tee. He was pale, and the skin of his face stretched tautly over his cheekbones.

“Let’s go, Ren,” he said in a voice that didn’t allow for an argument, and yet I didn’t move.

I shook my head. Multiple times and fast like a child protesting.

“If you were a bloke, I’d slap you right now to make you snap out of it. But I don’t want to do that to you, all right? Please, just get out of the bloody car.”

And I did, reluctantly, upon hearing the note of desperation in his plea. Sparse, tiny snowflakes flew in all directions, and the wind howled as if in sympathy with our own desolation.

As I straightened up, I could see people emerging from their dwellings, blankets and shawls wrapped around their shoulders, eyes wide and shining in the dark. Some, no doubt, just as unwilling to hear the news as we were to deliver it.

“Where’s the last car?” Jean-Luc got to us first, looking as if he had just seen a disturbingly believable magic trick.

“Had to leave it,” Russ replied to him grimly.

“How did you all fit into five cars?”

“We didn’t all come back, Jean-Luc,” Einar said, his voice breaking a little.

A circle of onlookers was forming around us. A circle of concerned friends and family members, some about to be devastated. My hair was whipping against my face mercilessly, but I made no move to fasten it.