Chapter 23

Militia Field Hospital
Outskirts of Raleigh, North Carolina (last holdout)
June 1, 2011

“Triage, triage now!” Anne barked her rather sharp order at me, even as Sam, Aaron, and the rest of us carried out her instructions.

Triage ... bad news for all, but especially for the unlucky patients on the wrong end of triage. It was an ever present reality of medical combat duty, the elephant in the room, but it was also a sign that things weren’t going all that well. It was bad enough to have to sort out and prioritize some patients over others on the basis of their chances, but far worse to have to do so in a hectic, frantic manner. Mistakes were sure to happen, even more than usual, of course.

At least we didn’t get sent to Charlotte first, thanks largely to the fact that the city fell first. The New Black Panthers accepted a truce that allowed them to withdraw from the town with any of their adherents and migrate outside of the Republican Front’s territory. Evidently, they were less attached to and enamored with any one city as they were with their revolutionary worldview and dreams of building a socialist black utopia somewhere in the world. It was very smart of them and allowed for less of a bloodbath, did it not?

The motherfuckers holding Raleigh weren’t quite so reasonable. They were also supremely confident that if they died for Christ, or their version of him, anyway, they would go straight to Heaven as martyrs. The Holy Assembly of the Kingdoms of Our Lord and His Christ was, well, as nasty as a bunch of religious zealots could be. They had better tactics than the Klan, for the most part, but they were also far less willing to retreat. They were also cannibals or headhunters or some such nonsense.

Yeah, we saw the fucking bones in the sectors that already fell. Sickening, no doubt of that. Bones stripped of any meat or marrow to them, as if cooked and eaten by these twisted Jesus Freaks. Ugh, bunch of inbred knuckleheads, and they accused us West Virginia hillbillies of being toothless crackers! True, Barry and Summer were lovers, but could you honestly tell me that they had bad genes not worth concentrating instead of diluting?

By now, we had overrun much of the suburbs, but there were still some of them in enemy hands and the inner city was still hostile territory. The body bags kept coming, the casualty lists getting longer by the hour, and all of our resources and supplies were taxed to the max. Hence, yes, the aforementioned triage, bane of any medical staff’s existence, to say nothing of the hapless patients.

“This one’s not gonna make it, Chief,” Kara warned as she noticed that the fundie soldier lying on the stretcher had half of his face gone.

“Yeah, unlikely as hell. He’s lost too much blood. You know what to do,” Sam instructed her, carrying out Anne’s orders as always.