by wildbow
I could see him sagging with relief.
“You were right,” he said. He tried to stand, and I pushed him back down.
“Stay still,” I said. “At least until we can be sure there’s nothing more serious.”
“Right,” he mumbled. “You took that first aid class.”
More glass had penetrated his blankets and sheets. There were holes in his back, his arm and shoulder. All bled, but none seemed to have hit any arteries, gushing or releasing copious amounts of blood. It was still far more blood loss than I would have liked—his undershirt was turning crimson.
I climbed over him, glass stabbing my palm as I put a hand on the ground for balance. I wanted a closer look at his back. Had anything hit his spine? Fuck. There was one hole close to the spine, around the same distance down as his belly button.
“Can you move your toes?”
There was a pause. “Yes.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Then the next biggest issue is possible internal bleeding. We need to get you to a hospital.”
“They hit the entire city?”
“I think so,” I told him. No use letting on exactly how much I knew. It would only cause the both of us more distress in the long run.
“The hospitals will be overcrowded.”
“Yeah. But not going isn’t an option.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll need my sandals, downstairs.”
I was using my power to find them by the time I was standing again. I found something else. There were people in our kitchen.
The Slaughterhouse Nine? Had they followed me here?
My dad was unable to see, thanks to the blood. I drew my bugs together into a cluster, hid them in the folds of my costume, which I had tied around my waist. I crossed the hall to my room and found a pair of loose-fitting cargo pants from when I’d had a bit of a belly and a wider waistband. I zipped up the pants and tied a sweatshirt around my waist to hide the rest of my costume. I could sense them approach. One of them waved at a fly that flew too close to their head. Both were men.
Floorboards creaked as they ascended the stairs.
“Hello?” one of them called out. I tensed. I didn’t recognize the voice. They were right by my dad’s bedroom. I heard my dad respond and swore under my breath.
My knife was still strapped in against the back of my costume, which dangled around my knees. I bent down and drew it from beneath my sweatshirt.
Voices. One of them murmured something, and my dad replied. I couldn’t make out anything in terms of the words or the tone of what they were saying.
Quietly, aiming each footstep to avoid the worst patches of broken glass, I stepped from my bedroom, my knife held low and ready.
Two paramedics were working together to shift my dad onto a stretcher. I hurried to put the knife away.
One noticed me. “Miss? You’re alright?”
“I’m fine.”
“This your dad?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re going to take him to the hospital. Mind making sure our way out is clear? Maybe open the front door for us?”
“Okay.”
I felt like a machine, clumsy, almost emotionless, as I led them out of the house. There were two other ambulances parked in places I could see. None had windshields, mirrors or headlights. The explosion had blown out the flashing lights and whatever system had handled the sirens.
It didn’t fit. The timing of this, their preparedness.
But they didn’t look like any members of the Nine I knew. I could see one of the paramedics down the street—she was black. So it wasn’t the Chosen, either. Merchants wouldn’t be this organized or devious.
I reminded myself of where my knife was, in case I needed to draw it at a moment’s notice.
The two paramedics began loading my dad into the back.
“Can I ride along?” I asked one, the second they were done.
He looked at me, then grabbed something large, black and irregularly shaped from a pocket beneath the stretcher. Holding it in one hand, he put one hand on my shoulder and led me a short distance away. My heart rate tripled. My gut was telling me they weren’t normal paramedics, and this was the moment I found out just how.
“Here,” he pressed a bundle into my hands. It was large, bulky, and there were hard bits beneath the cloth. “You don’t want to leave this behind.”
I peeked at the contents of the bundle, then swallowed hard. It was my mask and the back sheath of my armor with the stuff inside. In my haste, I’d torn them off and left them where they fell.
“You’re with Coil?” I asked. I felt a quiet horror at the realization that Coil would now know who my dad was, and who I was by proxy.
He nodded once. “More specifically, your teammates sent us. They’d hoped we would pick you up and drive you here, but we weren’t able to find you, and we were delayed because we had to take safety measures first.” He looked towards the van. I realized he was talking about the removal of the glass.
Relief surged through me, and I felt tears welling up.
That relief proved short-lived.
“Our employer feels there’s very little you’ll be able to do with your father here, and quite a bit you could do elsewhere. He did say he understands if you want to prioritize your family.”
My eyes widened in understanding. Coil wanted me to attend to my territory, now, in this moment of crisis. “He wants me to leave my dad?”
It might as well have been a rhetorical question. The paramedic didn’t respond. I felt my heart sink.
“We’ll give him the best care we can,” he said.
I turned and climbed into the ambulance. My dad was gingerly dabbing at one of his eyes with a wet cloth. I was pretty sure he didn’t see me.
I bent over him and kissed him on the corner of his forehead, in a spot where the blood didn’t cover his face. He snapped his head up to look at me. The white of one of his eyes had turned crimson, the green of his iris pale in the midst of it.
“I love you dad,” I said, then I backed away a step.
“Stay,” he said. “Please.”
I shook my head.
I stepped back once again, and then hopped down from the back of the ambulance, turning away.
“Taylor!”
Always like this, now. Always walking away, knowing how much it hurt him. I blinked more tears out of my eyes.
“You make sure he’s alright,” I ordered the paramedic, ignoring another of my father’s shouts.
The man nodded. “I can tell him we aren’t allowing ride-alongs, just in case we need more bodies in the back.”
“Thank you.”
My power buzzed at the edge of my consciousness as I turned my back on the scene.
Fuck all of this. Fuck the Nine. Fuck Shatterbird. Fuck Jack. Fuck Leviathan. Fuck Coil. Fuck Hookwolf.
Fuck me, most of all.
Plague 12.6
I never thought I’d be thankful in any way that Leviathan had trashed my hometown. Leviathan’s tidal waves had shattered many of the windows and the residents had put plywood, plastic and boards up in their wake. It meant there was less material for Shatterbird to use against us. Countless people had been spared from injury and death due to Shatterbird’s glass shards because Leviathan had gotten to us first.
But even without the glass, there was still sand.
I stepped out of the way as a trio of people moved down the street, supporting each other as much as they were able. Each of them had been blasted by the sand, their skin left ragged. It had turned a bruised combination of black brown and purple where it hadn’t been scraped off and left raw, red and openly bleeding. One looked as though he’d been blinded. The sandburns covered his upper face.
Two ambulances had stopped at an intersection just a block away from where I had announced my claim of territory. At a glance, I could tell that they’d had all mirrors removed and all glass stripped from the dash, doors and windshield. Those that had emerged from their homes and shelters we
re gravitating towards the ambulances. There was still dust settling on the streets, and I could taste it thick in the air, even through my mask. I wondered if we needed to be getting masks out to people. It couldn’t be healthy.
Heads turned as I approached. I’d put my costume on again, and I had a swarm of bugs following in my wake, giving me more presence. When people were this hurt and scared, it didn’t take much to tap into that primal part of their psyches and intimidate them just a little.
Surveying the scene, I could already tell there were going to be issues.
Hundreds, thousands of hurt people, many in critical or potentially critical shape, there were only two ambulances here, and the hospitals would be overcrowded. People were going to panic when they realized that they wouldn’t necessarily get help. They would get upset, even angry. This already unstable situation would descend into all-out chaos.
I told them I’d protect them, but there was no stopping this.
I wasn’t on my game. My thoughts were on Dad and on Tattletale, not on these people and all the factors that I was supposed to take into account. But I didn’t have a choice.
I gave the order, and my swarm spread out, flowing through the crowd. It was enough bugs to get people’s attention. I just hoped the benefits of having the bugs there would outweigh any fear or discomfort the bugs generated.
Using the bugs I’d spread around the area, I augmented my voice, allowing it to carry. “The most important thing is to remain calm.”
More people turned toward me. I stepped closer to the ambulances, where paramedics were working with some of the most critical cases. I felt like a charlatan, a pretender. The look of mixed fear and incredulity from the paramedics didn’t help. Still, someone had to take control and organize before people started lashing out, and the city’s heroes were apparently occupied elsewhere.
“I don’t intend you any harm,” I reassured them. “If you’re unhurt and able-bodied, there are people who need your help. Step forward so I can direct you to them.”
Silence and stillness stretched on for long seconds. I could see people who had no visible injuries, who were staring at me, unwilling to respond to my appeal. Generally speaking, the types of people who lived in the Docks weren’t the sort who were used to being neighborly, to putting society’s needs above their own.
Fuck me. My head wasn’t in the right place. I’d forgotten. I’d been taught in the first aid classes you had to be direct and specific when dealing with people in a crisis. Asking for help was begging for disappointment, because people would hesitate to step forward, or assume that someone else would handle the job. Instead of asking for help, we were supposed to single someone out of the crowd of bystanders and give them a clear, identifiable task. Something along the lines of, ‘You in the red shirt, call nine-one-one!’
And now that I’d fucked that up, I’d entrenched them. The status quo was now quickly becoming ‘not listening to the supervillain’, and it would be twice as hard to get them to go against the rest of the herd.
Which left me three unpleasant options. The first option was that I could abandon that plan, look weak, and lose standing in the eyes of everyone present. Alternately, I could speak up again, appeal to their humanity, beg, plead, demand, praying all the while for someone to come forward. That was the second choice, and it would make me look even worse to everyone watching, with only a miniscule chance of success.
The silence stretched on. I knew it had only been five or six seconds, but it felt like a minute.
The third of my ugly options? I could make them listen. Goad them into action with threats and violence. It meant I risked provoking the same sort of chaos and violence I was hoping to combat, but I suspected that chance was relatively minor. I could get people to do what I needed them to do. I’d maybe earn their respect, but I’d probably earn their enmity at the same time.
Could I do this? Could I become the bully, even if it was for the greater good? I was going to hate myself for doing it, but I’d left my dad behind to be here. I wasn’t about to fail.
“Alright,” I said, sounding calmer than I felt. My fist clenched at my side.
I hesitated. Someone was approaching. I felt them passing through the bugs I’d dispersed through the crowd. Charlotte.
“You’re not wearing your mask,” I said, the second she was close enough to hear me, my voice quiet. “Or the paper cube.”
“The cube got crushed when I was helping someone. I was glad you didn’t use your power,” she said. Then, loud enough that some people nearby could hear her, she asked me, “What can I do?”
I owe her one hell of a favor.
I’d had my bugs sweeping through nearby buildings since I’d arrived. I hadn’t really stopped, even after I got home. I had found several of the wounded. A man lying prone, two kids huddled near their mother. The mother’s face was sticky with blood, her breathing quick. The children were bleeding too. I could sense a man stumbling blindly through what had been his home, hands to his face.
I almost sent her after the blind man, but reconsidered.
I pointed at a warehouse, and spoke loud enough for others to hear, “There’s a woman and two little kids in there, you won’t be able to help them alone.” Which was a large part of why I had chosen them.
I spotted a twenty-something guy with an impressive bushy beard and no shirt. Aside from one cut on his stomach and some smaller patches of shredded skin where the sand had caught him in the back, he seemed to be in okay shape. “You. Help her.”
He looked at the older woman beside him. His mother? She was clearly hurt, and had the remains of two or three white t-shirts bundled around her arm. It was clear the limb had been caught by the sand; it looked like a mummy’s arm, only bloody. Anticipating an excuse on his part, I pointing to the nearest group of injured and told him, “They’ll look after her. There are people who need you more. Second floor. Go.”
He looked at his mother, and the look she gave him was answer enough. He helped her hobble over to the group of people I’d indicated, leaving her in their care, and joined Charlotte in running for the warehouse where the woman and kids were.
Now I just had to keep my momentum.
“You and your friend,” I spoke to a middle-aged guy and his buddy. “There’s a guy slowly bleeding out in the factory there. Go help him.”
The second that passed before they moved to obey left my heart pounding.
I turned to the next person and stopped. He was one of the few people with actual bandages on his wounds, and he stood near his family. Even with the gauze pads strapped to his face, I recognized him from earlier. Or, to be specific, I recognized the little boy R.J., and I knew this man as his father, patriarch of the rat infested house from early in the day.
“There’s a blinded man in the brick building over there,” I told him, facing him squarely. “Go help him.”
“Why?” he challenged me, his voice gruff, his gaze hard. “I’m hurt. If I go, I’m going to miss my turn with the ambulances.”
Asshole. There wasn’t even a shred of gratitude for what I’d done to help him and his family, and he didn’t even seem to need his turn at the ambulance that badly either. I had to resist the urge to hit him or set my bugs on him.
Worse, I couldn’t help but feel like he was seeing through the image I was trying to portray. Seeing the girl behind the mask, who was just trying to pretend she knew what she was doing.
I turned to the next person, a solidly built woman with scratches and the sandburns I was quickly coming to recognize all over her face. She had even taped half of a sanitary pad over one eye. It wasn’t my brightest move, but I asked her, “Are you going to whine like a little girl, too, if I ask you to help someone?”
She smiled a little and shook her head.
“Good. Go. Left side of the building. He’s blind, and there’s nobody else there to help. I think he might have inhaled sand, he’s coughing pretty violently. Don’t push him to move too fast or too
much. Take your time walking him back, if the bleeding isn’t too severe.”
She obeyed, moving off with a powerful stride. When I looked, R.J.’s dad was gone. He was stomping off toward the ambulances, keeping the crowd between us, dragging his wife at his side with R.J. hurrying to keep up. Knowing how angry he was, I had to hope he wasn’t the type to take out his anger on his family. I didn’t want to be indirectly responsible for their pain.
There were more people to pick out of the crowd, more orders to give. It was all about setting them up so that refusal made them look bad, both to themselves and to others. Social pressure.
By the time I’d sent two more groups, some of the others were coming back to be directed to the next few injured. I gave them their orders.
Which only raised the greater problem. How were we supposed to handle these people who were hurt and waiting their turn? They were scared and restless. That unease bled over into their friends, families and maybe their neighbors, who were scared for themselves and the people they cared about. Already, they were gathering around the ambulances, pleading for help from too small a group of people, who had their hands full saving others’ lives. Some were simply asking the paramedics for advice while keeping a respectful distance, others were demanding assistance because they felt their loved ones were more important than whoever was getting care or attention at that moment. The paramedics couldn’t answer everyone.
People in this area formed closely knit packs. They would step up to defend the people they cared about far more quickly and easily than they had with my appeal to help strangers just minutes ago. I didn’t trust them to remain peaceful if this kept up.
What the hell was I supposed to do with them?
As lost as I felt in that moment, I managed to look calm. My bugs gave me an awareness of the situation, and my eyes swept over the scene to get a sense of the mood and what people were doing.
I spotted a mother picking at one of her son’s wounds, and I realized what she was doing. I hurried to stop her. “What are you doing?”
Riding the highs and the lows of emotion from the past hour or two, I might have come across sounding angrier than I was. She quailed just a bit.