A single tear of rage trickled the length of Owen's scarred face. "I was hidden… but, Mom, she tried to stop them. The General knocked her down and tore off her clothes. He hurt her real bad, Doc… down there."
Silently, the doctor rose and went to the safe in the corner of his office. After a moment, he returned. "A new deal for the heart, Owen. The peaches and this." It was one of the last surviving cans of National Defense spam, bulky and rectangular and with its own turn-key for opening.
"Meat!" piped the boy excitedly. He picked up the can as if it were some priceless treasure. "Gee, I've never had real, honest-to-goodness meat before. If I have, I was too young to remember."
"Well, tonight you and your mom are in for a big treat. How about it? Is it a deal?"
"Deal!" agreed the child enthusiastically. They shook on it, Rourke's huge hand engulfing Owen's smaller one.
After everything had been squared away, Nurse Taylor cranked the door open. The howl of the western wind almost deafening in its ferocity. Owen covered the lower part of his face with a bandanna to filter away the swirling dust and began to lead the two dogs back out into the crumbling ruins that had once been the proud metropolis of Houston, Texas. He turned back once before the sandy haze swallowed him.
"So long, Doc," he said, waving. "And thanks a million!"
"Anytime," shouted the doctor over the wind. "Keep bringing me quality goods like these today and you'll have a steady customer."
Owen grinned and stared at Doctor Hamilton Rourke with an expression akin to awe. The man towered like a giant in the warehouse doorway, huge and powerful beneath the long drop of his white lab coat. His face was warm and friendly, the eyes sparkling blue, the full beard dark with a hint of gray.
The only peculiarity about his face was the forehead, which protruded slightly from the rest of his features. That was the result of the heavy-gauge steel plate that had taken the place of his frontal skull bone. The bumpy impressions of Phillips-head screws could be detected just beneath the skin. The cerebral replacement had been made years before the Burn had taken place; before the land gave way to chaos and nearby Dallas had disintegrated, becoming a thirty-mile wide hole in the earth. Before their Spanish neighbors to the South had invaded their borders, armed to the teeth and ready to take advantage of their sorry situation.
The nine-year-old scavenger regarded Rourke as though he were some sort of god. In a way, to many people in Ruin Town, he was one. For Hamilton Rourke was the man with the ability to make one's body whole again, no matter how severe the damage. He was the healer supreme, the medico grande.
He was the Flesh-Welder.
Evening came and, with it, the unnatural hues of nuclear sunset and the choking smoke of distant funeral pyres. The most recent bout of fighting had proved devastating for the western boundary of Ruin Town. An enemy mortar attack had battered a populated area of civilians, bringing much death and injury. The doctor and his nurse had been busy most of that afternoon and, as the shadows of evening grew long, the gathering of injured had slowly dwindled and only a few now remained.
Rourke was examining a Navajo woman with severe abdominal wounds, when a roar of vehicles sounded outside and a commotion broke out as those who had been waiting were pushed roughly aside.
"Out of the way, you sorry sons-of-bitches!" shouted a familiar voice. "We've got wounded coming through!"
"It's him!" said Nurse Taylor, her expression more severe than usual.
Rourke nodded grimly. "Yes… I know."
The band of soldiers, sweaty and reeking of blood and cordite, shouldered their arms and carried a single stretcher into the warehouse's cavernous chamber. Rourke exchanged a weary glance with Nurse Taylor as they set the stretcher directly across from the Indian that the doctor was attending to. He ignored the intruders and called to his assistant. "Nurse, prepare the operating room for surgery."
"Over here, Doc!" called the man on the neighboring stretcher. "Me first!"
Rourke regarded the man clinically. His only injury was a leg severed just above the knee. It was a serious wound to be sure, but not one that was critical at the moment. "I must take this woman first. She has some very serious wounds and she will die if I don't tend to them immediately."
The other cursed, drew a 9mm pistol from his hip and, placing the muzzle against the Navajo's temple, pulled the trigger. Gunfire and brains shot across the room, rebounding off the cinderblock wall. "Now, like I said before… me first."
His eyes cold, Doctor Rourke left the dead woman and turned his full attention to his murderous patient. General Jeremiah Payne reholstered his Beretta and grinned smugly around the stump of a confiscated Havana. The commanding officer was a perfect example of the old redneck term "lean and mean", being as wiry as a weasel and twice as crafty. He wore a stained gray Stetson with a gruesome hatband constructed entirely of shriveled human ears… ghoulish trophies of the many battles he had won. Most were swarthy in color, Cuban and South American more than likely, but a few were black and Indian in origin.
"How bad is it?" asked the General. "A freaking SA grenade took it off at the knee. Right the hell off! Can you fix it for me? Have you got the part in stock?"
"Yes, a supplier brought a suitable replacement earlier today. But it will cost you."
"Sure, Doc. You name it. Guns, grub, gasoline… I even have some gold I filched from the Bank of El Paso. Just get the show on the road, will you?"
Doctor Rourke motioned for Payne's men to carry him into the room that adjoined his office. A gas generator ran noisily, providing a battery of fluorescent lights overhead. "Nurse, prepare two pints of type A positive blood," the doctor said, then started toward the freezer for the appropriate limb.
"Yes, sir." Nurse Taylor emptied a packet of what looked like cherry Kool-Aid into a container of distilled water. It was a unit of synthetic plasma crystals, "instant blood", which had been developed when 95% of the world's blood supply became contaminated with the AIDS virus.
Ten minutes later, the IV had been hooked up and Payne was sedated. The other soldiers in the General's group waited uneasily outside as the doctor and nurse donned heavy canvas gowns, neoprene surgical gloves, and bulky welding helmets. After both ends of the host and replacement bones had been prepped, Rourke connected a stainless steel clip to each end. They were cellular stimulators, designed to generate growth and healing by way of delicately administering charges of electricity. He then opened a sterilization box and brought out a synthetic bone rod. An equally sterilized electrode was produced. Holding the electrode in one hand and the bone rod in the other, Rourke lowered them to the primed sections and pressed a pedal switch with his foot, generating the necessary voltage.
Carefully, he began to weld the two halves of the femur together. A hissing crackle from the union of rod and electrode spat blue-white sparks of flaming bone splinters into the air like fireworks and, slowly, the two ends began to fuse into one. Fifteen minutes later the first step of the procedure was completed. Lifting his mask, Rourke took a long mill bastard and began to file away most of the excess flash and globules of molten bone.
Then, taking a soldering iron and a spool of synthetic nerve filament, he began to carefully hot solder a few key nerve endings in place to ensure proper motor function. The operation drew to a close when the helmet was again lowered and the muscles of the leg were welded together using a special flesh-fiber rod. After the melding of muscle tissue had been completed, the epidermis was closed with a staple gun that injected skin sutures into the upper layers.
An hour later, Jeremiah Payne awoke from his anesthesia. "Hurts like hell!" he grumbled, but he was thankful to see the new limb.
"It will hurt for a couple of days," informed the doctor. "There will be a few little problems to work out – muscle coordination, stress and weight adjustment, perhaps possible tissue rejection."
"Well, let's hope that don't happen." The General caressed the pearl handle of his pistol for emphasis.
Pa
yne's men carried him from the recovery room into the open warehouse. The injured who had been waiting had been taken care of and sent on their way. One of Payne's flunkies lit him a cigar and the commander pointed to the rear of the transport truck outside. "Go ahead, Doc. I'm ready to pay my tab. Pick out anything you want."
"I want none of your pilfered goods, General Payne," he told him. "There is only one thing I want in return for my services."
"Name it."
Rourke regarded him gravely. "I want you to leave those poor people in Ruin Town alone. I've heard of the heinous crimes you've committed, the awful acts you've performed there. Just give it a rest, at least for a month or so. Find fresh territory to conquer."
The General began to laugh heartily, as if someone had just told him an obscene joke. "Now, why would I wanna go and do something like that? Hell, it'd be like butchering the goose that laid the golden egg! Ruin Town and every other providence hereabout are ours for the taking. Besides, what are those people to you? They're nothing but a bunch of niggers, wetbacks, and redskins. They're not even your own kind! What do you care?"
"So you refuse to pay up as promised?"
"You got it, sawbones. I'm not about to strike such a foolish bargain – even if you did give me a new leg."
"Then get the hell out of here!" shouted Rourke in an uncharacteristic burst of emotion. "And don't bother coming back. I'll not have anything more to do with you or your men!"
The soldiers in the General's unit carried their superior out the open door and into the cool twilight, placing the stretcher across the back of a jeep. "Oh, we'll be back alright… any time we please. And you'll have no choice but to patch us up… or die if you refuse."
Rourke and Taylor stood in the gathering darkness and watched as the convoy of jeeps and supply trucks headed west toward Ruin Town. From their hooting and hollering and discharging of arms, the doctor knew that his harsh words had riled something terribly dangerous in the General's men that night. Something that would plunge the poor citizens of that settlement into a hell of fear and humiliation until the soldiers moved onward at the crack of dawn.
"I'm sorry, but you can't go in there. The doctor can't be disturbed."
"But we must see him, senorita. It is urgent, a matter of life and death!"
Rourke opened his eyes. He had been napping at the desk of his darkened office. Frantic silhouettes appeared in the light of the open doorway. The physician reached for the switch on the desk lamp, while his free hand clutched the .44 Magnum he kept holstered beneath his coat at all times.
He relaxed his grip on the weapon when he realized there was no violent intent to the sudden intrusion, only desperation.
Rourke knew the Mexican couple; Eduardo and Naida Guevara. He had repaired the man's hand once when a wild dog had torn it from the wrist. Eduardo now stood with his hysterical wife, his arms wrapped around a blanket-bundled child. The face of the small girl, perhaps four years of age, stared glassy-eyed at Doctor Rourke, her skin as deathly pale as candle wax.
"Please… oh, please, Senor Doctor, you must help us!" pleaded Nadia, her face damp with weeping. "You must help our poor Maria!"
"I told you before," insisted Nurse Taylor, looking strangely near tears herself, "there is nothing the doctor can do."
Rourke stood and motioned for the man to bring the child closer. He peeled back the bloodstained blanket with gentle hands. The sight of physical mutilation had never bothered the doctor before, but what confronted him now filled him with revulsion and horror.
"Who, in God's holy name, did this horrible thing?" he asked.
Eduardo's face twisted into a mask of agonized grief. "It was the General and his gringos, Doctor. They came this night to wreak havoc upon us all. Our poor daughter, Maria, she was chosen from among many children and brought into the street of Ruin Town. He said that he wanted to show us who was truly the King of Houston. Then he pulled his machete, senor … the bastardo pulled his machete and hacked off our little Maria's arms!"
Naida wailed in grievous recollection. "Oh, please, Senor Rourke… you must do something! Take little Maria into your room of wonders and make her whole again!" With that, the woman emptied the contents of an old shopping bag onto the desktop before him.
Two tiny severed arms, pale and bloodless, lay upon his desk blotter. The miniscule fingernails were painted bright pink, perhaps with a bottle of nail polish the parents had discovered somewhere in the ruins.
"I'm sorry… but I can do nothing," muttered Rourke, feeling utterly helpless in the presence of those tiny limbs. "Your daughter is dead."
"But you must do something!" screamed the mother, grasping at the lapels of the doctor's white coat. "It is your duty! You are --!"
"I am not God!" bellowed Rourke, breaking from the woman's claw-like hands. "Now, please… just go. And take this poor child from my sight."
Silently, Nurse Taylor ushered the man and wife from the office. They took the child and her tiny appendages with them. Outside, the nurse gave the grieving parents her condolences and, in the gentlest way possible, convinced them that some good could come from their daughter's senseless demise. They agreed and, instead of surrendering their child to the flaming pyres, donated the girl's body, knowing that some other child might benefit from that which Maria had unwillingly forfeited in death.
Nurse Taylor escorted them to the warehouse door and, upon returning, found Rourke pouring himself a shot from a vintage bottle of Jim Beam.
"Are you alright, Hamilton?" she asked from the doorway.
"No," he answered truthfully. He emptied the glass in one swallow and tipped the bottle for a refill. "No, I'm far from being alright."
"I'm sorry I let them in… it was my fault…"
Rourke lifted haunted eyes to his loyal assistant. "No, my dear, it most certainly was my fault. I was the one who sent Payne on his murderous rampage. And that's not all. I've let this whole thing get out of hand, you know, this precious service I provide. I've allowed these poor people to think that I'm something more than a man… that I'm some great healer sent down from the heavens to repair their crippled bodies. I let them believe that!"
Nurse Taylor regarded the doctor with an ache deep in the pit of her soul. She could remember a time, before the social and economic unrest, before the random nukes of the Burn, when Hamilton Rourke had been considered an exceptional man by those around him. A great man, to be sure, but not some divine healer. He had been a respected surgeon and professor of anatomy at Rice University back then. All that changed, however, during a mass assassination attempt at an international medical symposium. Half of the great minds of the world had been mowed down by terrorist bullets.
All died, except for Rourke. Only an experimental procedure known as "brain-grafting" could salvage his injured mind. A team of able surgeons had deftly joined Rourke's cerebral cortex with the frontal lobe of the only available donor; a blue-collar welder who had perished from a fall off a five-story scaffold. Rourke's recovery had gone slowly and, during that time, the world as he knew it crumbled in chaos and nuclear annihilation. Eventually he began to practice again in the ruins of Houston, but using a new kind of medicine from an entirely different perspective. The melding of the two minds – surgeon and arc welder – had brought about the development of the highly specialized procedure known as "flesh-welding".
The doctor spoke, breaking Nurse Taylor's train of thought. "You know, I've been seriously considering moving our operation elsewhere. It seems as though we have lost our purpose here in Texas. Maybe we should move on to the Southern states. There is much resistance in Florida and Georgia… many injured who could benefit from our knowledge."
Taylor gave him a tired, little smile. "Anywhere you want to hang your shingle is fine with me."
The doctor capped the bottle of liquor and stared at the nurse with sad affection. "Louise… I don't feel like I can make it through this night alone."
"Neither can I," she whispered. She removed her star
ched white cap, let her long dark hair fall to her shoulders, and came to him.
And, when they kissed, their tears mingled with a mutual bitter-sweetness.
A week had passed since the hellish assault on Ruin Town. After a grueling seven day session of mending and repairing Jeremiah Payne's hideous handiwork, Rourke and Taylor had had enough. They were on the verge of packing their equipment and possessions, when the steel door reverberated with a furious pounding. It was Payne and his men and, from the ferocity of the commander's swearing and threats, it sounded as though he was in great physical pain.
"Are you game for one final operation?" Rourke asked his assistant after the threat of blowing the door with C-4 had been issued.
The nurse was about to protest, but was silenced by a strange look in the doctor's eyes.
"What have you got in mind?"
"Just trust me."
When the door was raised, Payne's unit was in like a flash, faces mean and enraged, the ugly muzzles of their weapons covering the two. A couple of soldiers carried a bloody stretcher that bore the devastated remains of what had once been a human body. It was the agonized, but still living body of General Jeremiah Payne.
"What happened to him?" the doctor asked indifferently.
"We were heading down to the southern limits," said Colonel Walker, Payne's right-hand man. "The Cubes and the SA's are joining for a major offensive, planning to take Houston by storm. We were out recruiting manpower when the General's jeep hit an IED. It killed the driver instantly and the General – well, he's a real mess as you can see."
Rourke crouched beside the stretcher, secretly gloating at the extent of the man's injuries. The General had been literally blown in half, his intestines and abdominal organs hanging below the ribcage where his pelvis and legs should have been. The left arm had been torn away at the shoulder, leaving only the right one to grip the stretcher pole in white-knuckled agony. He checked Payne's pulse. It was weakening by the moment, but perhaps there was still time to do something for him.
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