by Peggy Staggs
We were ten yards off the road. One of the men got off his vehicle and checked around the road.
“What’s he doing?” I whispered.
Jack shook his head.
The man pulled something from his backpack, moved to the hillside. A few seconds later he jumped back on his ATV and they took off back up the hill.
I started to get up.
Jack grabbed me. We hit the ground as a blast split the afternoon.
Several seconds passed before Jack let me up. The guy had blown up the hillside and a few trees.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Not only was his jacket ripped, blood was running down his hand. “Where’s your first aid bag?”
He held up his hand. “Shit.”
I found it. “Over here.” I pointed to a cleared spot on the ground.
He’d pulled off his shirt and was holding it against his wound.
“Sit still while I check the damage to your shoulder.”
“Later.”
“No. Now.” Being calm in scary situations is my strong suit. And I was doing a fine job of it right now. Of course, later I’d be falling apart. After all, those guys nearly blew us up twice. “Do you think they knew we were up here?”
“No. They were blocking the road.” He drew out the last word. “Why block the road? They already murdered my truck. We weren’t going anyplace in it.”
“Let me see.” I lifted his shirt to find he’d completely torn the stitches and now there was a three-inch gash at the top of his deltoid. “Hold still. You need more stitches.” The new gash didn’t look deep enough to do any real muscle damage. Still, it had to hurt.
“Put a butterfly on it for now.”
“Right. And that’s going to solve everything.”
“Doc, this doesn’t make any sense. If they want us dead, they’ve had more than one chance.”
“Seriously. I don’t want to hear that.” I couldn’t let him know how scared I was.
“You’re tough.”
“I’m not the one who’s got to be tough. You’ve torn everything open.”
“I’m okay.”
“Oh, I forgot, you don’t need any help, you’re Delta Force.” I didn’t shield the sarcasm from my voice. “Hold still. I’ve got to clean this out and see what I can do.” I opened his aid bag. It took several minutes for me to clean it out, stitch it, and put on another bandage.
“Thanks.”
As the sun left us for the far side of the ridge, I began to worry more. “What’re we going to do?” With his blood loss and his torn up shoulder I said, “Jack, it’s four. We’ve got to find some shelter.”
“We’ve got about two hours of sunlight left.”
“Can we make it back to town in that time?”
“No. It’s more than fifteen miles.”
I put my hand to his forehead. He didn’t have a fever, but the lines around his eyes told me he was in a lot of pain. “Do you have any more water in your pack? And from now on, I’ll be carrying it.” I took it. It was heavy.
“I’m fine. “ He reached for the pack.
“I don’t think so.” It weighed half what I did.
“Doc,” he warned. “There’s no way you’ll be able to carry it for long.”
He was right, but I was stubborn. “Then I’ll carry it until I can’t.” Stubborn wins every time.
“Damn it woman, you’re a pain in the ass.” He didn’t let go of the pack’s strap.
“Okay, here’s how it’s going to go. We trade off carrying it. Me first.” I tugged the strap out of his hand.
“You’re bossy.”
He wasn’t going to get his turn. I hoped I’d be able to tough it out to the shack.
“This way,” he said and started up the hill.
“Oh, no. We’ll never make it.” Our first trek up had been hard enough. Now with Jack’s extra injury, and me carrying an extra sixty pounds, it was going to be harder.
“We don’t have a choice.”
“We always have a choice.” I just didn’t know what that other choice was.
“In this case our only smart choice is up.” He pointed away from the road. “They’ll be back.”
Point taken. “Fine.” I struggled to get the pack on my shoulders.
“Still want to carry it?”
“Yes.” The bad news was I’d have bruised shoulders. The good news was, if I didn’t drop dead, I’d build muscle, which would burn more calories and I’d lose that five pounds I’d acquired somehow during the last few weeks.
»§«
Halfway up the hill I stopped. My shoulders ached. “We rest.” I slipped the pack off.
To my surprise, he didn’t protest.
“Sit over here.” I pointed to a rock.
He slumped down. “I’ll be fine in a minute.”
Yeah, I bet. “Drink some water.” I removed the last water bottle from his pack.
He took a drink, then handed it to me. “Your turn.”
I took a small sip. He needed the liquid more than I did.
He rubbed his leg.
“What’s wrong with your leg?”
“Probably stepped down wrong.” He covered the side of his leg.
“I know I don’t have a lot of practical experience, but you don’t bleed if you step down wrong.” I moved his hand and saw the tear in his jeans. “You know, you actually have a doctor with you. If you tell her what’s wrong she can treat it.”
I pulled up the cuff of his pants. His sock was bloody. “I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be white like the other one.” I took a deep breath and looked him right in the eye. “You’ve got to be the most impossible man in the whole entire world.” I pulled the backpack closer. “Take off your pants.”
“Why, Doctor Markus.”
“Oh, just do it. I’ve seen men’s legs before.” I focused on the tear in his leg. “No wonder you’re pale. You’ve got a gash in your thigh. Didn’t you feel that?”
“Sure.”
“And this wasn’t worth mentioning when I stitched up your shoulder for the second, no third time, because?”
“No time. Hand me a field bandage.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Immobilize it.”
“Then what? You’re going to walk through the mountains with chunk out of your leg? It’s going to hurt like hell. And I mean really, hurt like hell.”
“Wow, two swear words.”
“Yeah, well, funny man.” I looked at it. There wasn’t much I could do out here. “Hold still.” I packed antibiotic powder in it and put a clotting pad on it. Finished, I let him wrap his leg.
“Put your pants back on and take your jacket off, I want to check your stitches.”
“They’re fine. See? No blood running anywhere.” He shivered.
I put my hand on his arm. “You’re clammy and you’re shivering. Don’t you have anything in your pack you can put on?”
“No.”
“Then what’s in there that’s so heavy?”
“Things to keep us alive.”
“Not if you die from hypothermia.” I helped him on with his jacket. His shoulder was stiffing up.
“The construction shack isn’t far. Probably has a stove.” As if on cue, large white flakes began drifting down around us. To make it worse it was wet snow. Not the fluffy dry kind. Nope, this was the kind that could turn to rain at any moment.
“Perfect. Things can’t get any worse.”
“Things can always get worse,” he said.
Rummaging through the backpack, I pulled out a space blanket. “This will keep you warm.”
“And make a nice target. Not a lot of red and silver sheep wandering around up here on their own.”
“It looks like our only chance is to get to the shack as fast as we can. If you start to hurt worse, or you get dizzy—”
“I’ll let you know.”
“You will not. And we both know it.”
He gave me a weak
smile.
The sun was setting. I had no idea how long it was going to take to get uphill, with Jack’s injuries. And the snow switched to rain, I hoped we’d make it before he passed out, or it got dark, or the rain turned back to sleet.
The shadows around us deepened. “It isn’t far now,” he said.
“The good news is we haven’t seen those ATV men since they blew up the hill.”
“Can’t be far.”
If I got him talking, it would keep him focused on something other than his shoulder and leg. “What are we going to do when we get there?”
No answer.
Yeah, I didn’t know either. That’s when the rain turned back to sleet.
The trees became sparser the farther up we went.
“Jack,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be okay to go down to the road now? It would be much easier.”
“If I knew where the enemy was, but I don’t.” I wasn’t sure Jack was on the Idaho hillside with me right now.
I stepped in front of him. His eyes were haunted. I touched his face. He was burning up.
The touch made him smile. “Those shots came from a long way off. If they’d been any closer, it would have blown my shoulder off.” He took my hand. “Lucky shots. So why shoot at us from so far away?”
I didn’t have any idea. I was more worried about him. And the weather wasn’t helping either of us.
“They want us up here.” He let go of my hand.
Ahead, I could see where the dirt had been carved away. As we got closer the equipment came into view. And finally, a small building. The sleet turned to snow.
Instead of hurrying off the hill, Jack crouched down, pulling me with him.
“What do you see?” I tucked in beside him. I didn’t see any signs of life around us.
“I want to be sure we’re alone.” He pointed to the rim around the cutout area. “If they’re here, we won’t make it ten yards.” He turned me around and pulled something from his backpack that looked like half a pair of binoculars. With it, he scanned the rim of the area. He settled back on the ground. “I don’t see anything, but we stay put until dark.”
The sounds up here were very different from the ones at the B&B. Here they were soft, almost cautious. I remembered Jack’s words earlier. Anything big enough to eat us came out at night.
I squeezed his hand. He turned to me.
“You okay?” I asked. The air had turned ice cold as the snow around us deepened.
“I should last long enough to get you out of here.” He pulled me closer.
The teaching or research job on the coast faded in importance. Focus, I thought, the cold is getting to you.
Below, the shadows crawled across the terrain. The sun slid behind the trees and the area below fell into murky shadow. The once bright yellow machines were now masked gloom.
“Let’s go.” Jack staggered to his feet.
“It’s not completely dark,” I pointed out.
“It’s dark enough. I don’t want either of us breaking a leg. And we need to get out of this snow. When we get down there we’re going to run from one piece of equipment to the next, then to the shack. When we get to the last piece of junk, we stop. Got it?”
“But the door is open.”
“That’s the problem.”
“I don’t understand.” I began to shiver.
“Doc, what’s the last thing you do when you leave anywhere?”
“Close the door.”
Jack raised his spyglass and scanned the area.
“Are we safe here?” I asked.
“We aren’t going to be safe until—” He left the rest of the sentence to my imagination.
I wanted him to say they’d gone home for the night. They’d given us up for dead and left. Anything, except they were still out there.
After another scan, he returned his glass to his pack.
As he reached for the pack, I grabbed the shoulder strap. “Oh, no, you don’t. I’m carrying it.”
“Doc, I’m fine.”
“Ha, I don’t think so and since I’m the only one here with fancy initials behind her name, I get the only vote.” I shrugged into the heavy pack. My shoulders screamed with pain. I didn’t have to look to know an ugly mass of broken blood vessels spread across each one. He wasn’t going to know that. As we turned to make our way down the hill, I tried in vain to relieve the pressure on the bruises.
Luck was with us. We got off the hill without falling or being shot. Now all we had to do was make it across the open area to the shack.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Too many bullets, too many explosions, too many injuries and too many hills. About the only thing that didn’t hurt was my hair.
At the edge of the clearing, Jack raised his hand to his injured shoulder, then down to his leg. “When did I get old?”
“You’re not old, simply temporarily damaged. Maybe we should run more or workout.”
“Sounds like a plan. As soon as these unplanned holes heal.” His voice was laced with pain. “The only gym in town is at my place.”
“Let’s worry about surviving.”
He checked his rifle, the only thing I’d let him carry. My backpack was forever living in the woods under a tree. No doubt some tiny creature would claim it for their home. Home...the picture of Jack standing in the doorway of his home with Lois by his side flashed into my head with such force, I blinked.
A handful of intrepid weeds had struggled through the hardened ground only to face the deepening blanket of certain death.
A few hundred feet away, through the increasing snowflakes, I could see the dim outline of the shack.
We stood in the deep shadow of the bulldozer, ten yards from the shack.
“Wait here,” Jack said.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I took hold of his uninjured arm.
“To make sure the shack is clear.”
“I know, but...” What? You’re hurt.
“I’ve been in worse shape.” He tugged against my grasp.
“No.” I didn’t yield. “You’re not going alone.” I took in a deep breath. My breath formed fog as I let it out. “You’re not going without me.”
He put his hand over mine. “Doc, it’s my job.”
I let him go. Standing here fighting was only going to make him weaker and me more determined.
He disappeared behind the shack. Darkness had settled in the basin. There’d be no stars or moon tonight only snow clouds. Would he be able to see in the gloom inside? A silhouette stepped around the far corner. I knew by the limp it was Jack.
He moved to the door and inside.
Life slows in the silence of falling snow. The small building became no more than impression through the mammoth flakes.
Something moved.
“Jack?”
“Doc. The shack’s clear.”
I plodded through fresh snow.
The first thing I did when we were inside was shed the pack. “Is there a stove in here?” I asked as I peered around the dark building.
“Hang on.”
I heard him rifling through his pack. Finally, a tiny light blinked on. He shown it around the area. It fell on a cot, a broken bench and finally a woodstove.
“They sure left a lot of stuff,” I said.
“Probably in a hurry to leave the town high and dry.”
“We have a broken bench to start a fire with.” I hoped against hope he wouldn’t say no to a fire. I could hardly squeeze my words out between chattering teeth. He wouldn’t survive the night in this cold. The only upside I could come up with was that shivering burned a lot of calories. Yes, no matter what, I obsess about my weight.
In the timid light of the mini flashlight, I bent down and began prying the bench apart.
“Let me do it.”
I didn’t bother answering.
“Fine.” He hobbled to the stove, pulled newspaper and kindling from a pile on the floor and started a fire. Next, he went to the one window
in the building and pulled down what passed for a curtain. No doubt it had once covered building supplies.
I stomped the bench into stove-sized pieces and put a few in the stove. “At least we’ll be warm.” It was more hope than fact. There was enough wood to make a dent in the cold. I felt like we’d climbed into a freezer and lit a match to keep warm.
The wood from the bench wouldn’t last long. I searched for something more to burn. “Jack, lay down on the cot.”
“On my way in here I saw a pile of wood. It’s under cover. We need it.”
“I’ll get it. Lay down.” I beat him to the door. Big deal. He could hardly stand.
“You’re not going out there.” He reached out and pulled me into his arms. “You’re shivering.”
“Hauling wood will warm me up.”
“You’re the most stubborn woman I’ve ever known.”
“Oh, like I haven’t heard that before. I will go get the wood.”
“I’m going with you.”
I gritted my teeth. “You may stand in the doorway.”
He protested, I ignored him and went outside.
“I can’t believe this. It’s snowing harder,” I said.
It didn’t take long before we had a decent pile of logs. What I hadn’t counted on were the splinters. By my third trip, I had a hole in my favorite red sweater and I was colder than I thought possible. And, I had a splinter in my hand.
The good news was the logs were dry and burned a great deal better than the remains of bench.
“Now, all we have to do is stay warm until morning,” I said as I forced Jack to lie down on the cot. “Rest.” The blanket on the cot smelled like a dead animal. I pulled the space blanket up around his neck. “Lie still.”
“Right now, that sounds good.” He closed his eyes.
I eyed his rifle leaning against the wall. With all he’d been through today, I’d have liked nothing more than to let him sleep. First, he needed water. On my list of concerns was the gash in his leg. I was worried about shock and infection.
“Jack?”
“Doc.”
“What do you have to eat in this magic bag of yours?”
“I have lasagna, beef stew, or chili MRE’s.”
“Sounds very gourmet of the Army.”
“Yeah, they were made to take in the field. That’s their best quality.”