by Ann Simko
Coyote Moon Book 1
Fallen
By
Ann Simko
Uncial Press Aloha, Oregon
2014
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 13: 978-1-60174-185-1
Fallen
Copyright © 2009, 2014 by Ann Simko
Cover art and design
Copyright © 2014 by Tirzah Goodwin
Previously published in a somewhat different version
by Lyrical Press, Inc., 2009
All rights reserved. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five (5) years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
Published by Uncial Press,
an imprint of GCT, Inc.
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To Dale, who's always believed in me.
To Bob, who's had to put up with me and my overactive imagination for the last twenty years.
Chapter 1
Ricco ran. Fear pushed him forward. Fear of what hunted him in the dark, of what he knew would happen if they caught him again. Fear kept him on his feet long after his body had given up. He put one foot in front of the other, the word, move, repeating in his head like a mantra.
Sweat dripped down his face. His left arm hung useless and limp at his side. Blood oozed from the bullet wound in his shoulder, soaking his fatigues, pasting them, warm and sticky, to his side. His right hand clamped over the injury in an attempt to slow the bleeding, but he had already lost a great deal of blood. Every breath tore at his lungs like broken glass. Muscles cramped and begged for rest, but he ignored the demand. He hurt, not only from the bullet that had ripped through his flesh, but from the dozens of scrapes and cuts inflicted as he stumbled and fell through the Nevada desert night. One thought kept him moving—to get away, to escape or die in the attempt—move.
Ricco's military training controlled him. Even now, injured and confused, that training made survival second nature. With blurred vision, he risked looking up at the star-filled sky, but finding the North Star amid the millions that gazed down upon him proved more daunting a task than he had hoped. He was relatively sure he still moved in the right direction. That would be any direction away from the base, away from where they had kept him, away from where they would kill him, eventually.
Sometimes in his dreams, he would remember sitting on the back porch with his father, gazing up at the stars. In reality, he couldn't remember the last time he saw the night sky, the last time he had felt the breeze on his face, or the last time his life had been his own. Memories were strange things. They warped and twisted over time, becoming what he wanted them to be, instead of what they were. Memories could not be trusted. Ricco had learned that long ago.
Mesmerized by the sight above him, he didn't see the small rock that tripped him and went down hard, shredding the flesh of his hands and forearms on the sandstone and shale of the desert floor. The sand, cool and gritty against his sweaty face, was soothing. He needed to rest, just for a moment, to catch his breath. He rolled from his side onto his back to take weight off his injured shoulder, and closed his eyes only for a minute.
The mantra played its one word symphony inside his head. He tried to ignore it and failed. It took everything he had to listen to the voice, and then the Marine took over and obeyed. He rolled to one side and pushed himself to his knees, ignoring the pain the movement cost him. He stood on watery legs, blinked sweat out of eyes that were no longer trust worthy and he moved.
The incline he had just struggled up gave him a view of the small valley below. He stopped and stared as he tried to catch his breath. The boulders beneath his hands grounded him. The coarse gritty texture of the rock he gripped kept him in the present. Ricco stayed on his feet fighting the insistent demands of gravity.
He narrowed his eyes at the sight. The image confused him, until he realized it was not a part of his imagination. A small orange glow penetrated the darkness and reminded him of swamp fires back home. It took a moment for the realization to make it through to his scrambled brain. He was looking at a fire. Fire out here could mean only one thing—people—and people could bring him something he had refused to dream of for years—freedom.
He needed ten steps, that was all, and then he could stop fighting. He pushed past the pain and the fatigue and moved forward. He fell after the first two steps and crawled the last eight, before he collapsed in the comforting glow of the campfire. His body began to shut down as blood loss, shock, and exhaustion overcame the adrenaline that had fueled him to this point, but he kept his eyes open long enough to see a man edge toward him, his every step more hesitant than the last. He's scared. Ricco could tell from the way the man held himself. He's a civilian. That was obvious from his quick, unguarded movements.
"Jesus, buddy, you okay?"
He couldn't answer, but he wanted to laugh. Do I look okay to you, buddy?
He closed his eyes at last and let fate claim him, pretending he had some choice in the matter.
Death was the one thing Ricco did not fear. He welcomed it. There had been times he even begged for it. All that mattered now was that he had gotten out. He would take his last breath on his own terms, and maybe, just maybe, the man in the light would see to it he finally made it home. After all this time, his father might finally have a body to bury.
With his last conscious thought, he reached for the dog tags around his neck and gripped them tight. He hoped the man understood the silent message.
This is who I am. This is me. Take me home.
Chapter 2
Midnight approached and he hadn't killed anyone yet. That was a good thing.
Doctor Dakota Thomas checked the batteries in his pager, and then the time on his watch. The pager had a full charge, and the watch informed him there were six hours left until his call ended. He hoped that with all of his in-house patients stable and, God willing, sleeping, he would make it through his first week back on staff without anyone dying.
A lot could happen in six hours, but considering this was Caliente, Nevada, and not New York City where he had done his residency, a quiet night was in the realm of possibilities. He remembered his first days as a resident intern, when all he wanted was a good, messy trauma. Now, after wading through more blood than he cared to recall, he prayed for uneventful nights.
Too wired to sleep, he wandered up to the small cafeteria on the third floor for a little carbo-loading and some unneeded caffeine. The cafeteria was long closed, and only vending machines were available at this hour. Not that it mattered. His taste buds had died during his undergrad days. Too many all-nighters and bad dorm room coffee had destroyed his ability to determine between a decent cup of Starbucks and sludge.
A table near the window offered him the sole company of his reflection and a day old newspaper. He picked the paper off the chair and smiled as he read the headline.
Local fireman rescues cat caught in drainpipe. Yeah, he would take home over New York any day.
The silence of the cafeteria gave Dakota time to sort through the list of things he needed to do over the upcoming weekend. Call my landlord about the leaky toilet. Fill the fridge with something more th
an baking soda and ice cubes. Find out if my brother is back in town. Ask about— He jumped and nearly spilled his coffee as his pager trilled. He laughed at his reaction and scanned the room for any witnesses to his jumpy nerves, before unclipping the small device from the waist of his powder-blue scrubs and reading the four-digit extension and text message. The Emergency Room had a trauma coming in.
It was after midnight on a Friday. As he rose from the table, he recalled his own youthful, misspent Fridays. With any luck, some drunk probably fell off the bed of his pickup and needed to be stitched up or maybe a bar fight got a little out of hand. A broken bone, a smashed nose—nothing he couldn't handle. He took the stairs down to the ER at an easy pace. The text message stated the ambulance was a few minutes out, so he should make it to the trauma bay before they did.
He didn't.
He exited the stairwell, turned the corner and hit the button to open the electronic doors to the back hallway of the ER, and heard sirens wailing and the screech of tires. An ambulance in a hurry was never a good sign. As he broke into an easy run down the long hallway, his pager trilled again. A second text message told him the trauma was a possible gunshot wound. Years of training took over, and he ran a mental checklist of tests he would need to order. Gunshot wounds were the norm for New York, but it concerned him that one had ended up in Caliente. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad as he feared. Maybe some farmer chasing coyotes off his property had shot himself in the foot.
One of the nurses he recognized from earlier that week fell in beside him as she ran out of the employee lounge. "Doris, what's up?"
"How should I know? EMS just pulled in with the guy."
At that moment, she didn't sound happy over the interruption of her break, but Dakota had seen her handle the chaotic pace of the ER with an efficiency that humbled him. "Dispatch says he's gunshot. Have you got—" He was cut short by a loud commotion and shouting voices. They raced around the corner and found the town's only two paramedics struggling to hold their patient down while they wheeled his litter through the wide glass entranceway into the emergency room.
"Mister, you've got to lay still!" The paramedic leaned his weight into his struggling patient, holding him by the shoulders on the narrow litter. The boy cried out in pain, and then went limp as Dakota reached his side.
"Hey, take it easy. We don't know what we're dealing with yet." Sliding his fingers along the unconscious boy's throat, Dakota felt for and found a pulse. He lifted one of the boy's eyelids and flashed a small light, checking for changes in the pupil. "Good, let's get him into the trauma bay."
The frenzied medic helped wheel the litter around. "I'll tell you what you're dealing with, doc—a freaking nut case, that's what!"
"What happened?"
"Beats me. We picked him up near Beaver Dam. A couple campers found him. He has a through and through in his left shoulder. We tried to control the bleeding and started some fluids on him, but he ripped the IVs out twice before he passed out. By that time we were nearly here, so we didn't see the point in trying again. He's been out of it until now. Just opened his eyes and flipped out, man."
"Doesn't look like he woke up in a good mood." Dakota and the medic grabbed opposite ends of the sheet the boy already lay on and slid him from the litter over to the exam table. Doris immediately went to work cutting away his shirt, but in a sudden movement that startled everyone, the boy sat up, shoved Doris into Dakota, and jumped off the table. When he saw the entranceway blocked by the two paramedics, he grabbed the scissors Doris had dropped and retreated into the far corner of the trauma bay.
Dakota helped Doris back to her feet. "You okay?"
"Yeah, fine." She smoothed down her scrubs and gave Dakota a wry smile.
"Jesus! See, I told you, a freaking nut case." The paramedic pointed towards the entryway. "I got a .22 out in the bus. You want I should get it?"
"What? Hell no, we're fine. We can handle this." He looked to Doris and the aide. "Can't we?"
When Dakota got no reply from his staff, the paramedic shook his head and turned to leave. "Don't say I didn't offer." He motioned to his partner. "Let's go, Jess." They walked out, leaving Dakota and his staff to handle the situation on their own.
"That's just great." He yelled after them, "Thanks a lot! You've been a big help!"
"Freaking nut case," the paramedic mumbled, and climbed into the ambulance.
Dakota felt a little uneasy watching them leave. Traumas he could handle. Armed, possibly psychotic patients, not so much. He turned around. The kid had wedged himself between the wall and a portable storage bin. One bare, bloody foot stuck out from his small hideaway. Dakota motioned Doris and the aide out of the room. "Okay, now what? I suppose calling security is out of the question."
Doris made a noise that sounded like Phffft. They both knew that "security" was Charlie, an overweight, semi-dried-out geriatric alcoholic who slept through most of his shift. All one hundred and twenty pounds of Doris would be better protection.
"Well, someone's gotta go in there. He's going to bleed to death if we just stand here looking stupid." Calling Charlie was beginning to sound like a good idea.
"Wow, Doctor, all those years of higher education has graced you with astute powers of observation." Doris took the stethoscope from around his neck and kept it. "No sense in giving him another weapon."
"Thanks for the concern. So you're not going with me, huh?"
Doris gave him a shove in the direction of the trauma bay doors.
"Wow, Doris, all those years as a nurse has graced you with the ability to instill great confidence in your fellow coworkers."
That got a smile out of her, but she took another step back anyway. "I promise I won't let him hurt you, Dr. D."
Dakota stepped through the open doors, and for the first time felt thankful for his thorough, if not gruesome, experiences at Mt. Sinai. Blood smeared the floor in great, sweeping swaths. From behind the storage bin came the sound of rapid, labored breathing, followed by a few unintelligible words. It sounded to Dakota like crying, or maybe praying. He couldn't tell which.
He approached carefully, remembering his patient was armed. With all the blood he saw, it would be surprising if the guy could put up much of a fight, but adrenaline is an amazing thing. "Hey, pal, I just want to talk to you, okay?" That's right, Mr. Smooth, Mr. Non-threatening. Let's keep it cool. Sometimes the approach worked, and sometimes it didn't.
His words brought movement from behind the storage bin. He crouched down to his patient's level, duck-stepped to the far wall, and saw a mess that used to resemble a human being.
A cut over the bridge of the young man's nose had caused twin lines of crimson tears to roll down either side of his face and drip from his chin. His khaki t-shirt and desert-brown military fatigues were shiny and wet with fresh blood, most of it coming from his left shoulder. He had a gunshot wound all right, and it wasn't from shooting at coyotes. He stared at Dakota with vacant, dilated eyes set in an impossibly young face. Milky-white skin peeked out from beneath the blood that covered it.
Dakota gave his patient a quick visual once-over. Shock. He expected that, but the kid was still on his feet, so to speak. He also saw fear, lots of fear. The fact that the kid was scared didn't surprise him. What did surprise him was the level of fear. Dakota felt it coming off the kid in waves.
The kid couldn't be any more than eighteen, nineteen tops. Dakota wondered if he would ever see twenty.
The kid blinked his eyes several times and seemed to focus. Every muscle in his body tensed as though he just realized that Dakota was there. His eyes scanned around the room, and he made a frantic effort to push himself farther back against the wall. He took on the look of a trapped animal, and with a quick, panicked motion, brought the scissors up to his chest defensively. He held them there gripped in a bloody fist.
Dakota had no delusions that the kid would use them if pushed too hard.
Careful to keep his movements as slow and non-threatening as poss
ible, he sat on the floor, eight feet in front of the kid. "My name's Dakota. You look like you could use some help." He motioned to the injured shoulder. "You're hurt."
His gesture caused the kid to flinch and tighten his grip on the scissors.
Dakota watched the hand carefully. "I'm not going to hurt you, pal. How about giving me the scissors?"
"You're not from the base?" The voice was high-pitched and on the verge of cracking from panic.
Dakota suddenly realized the fear wasn't focused on him, or even the hospital, but on something else entirely. He gave a quick headshake. "Nope. I'm not sure which base you mean, but you were found about thirty miles from here. Lucky for you, some campers came across you and called EMS. They brought you here. Do you remember anything about that? Who shot you?"
The kid glanced at his shoulder, and then back to Dakota. "Where am I?"
Dakota indicated Doris and the aide, in the entrance to the trauma bay. "You're in Lincoln County Memorial Hospital."
A look of confusion swept across the kid's face. "Where...where is that?" His voice faded out on the last word.
Dakota wanted to get the kid on the exam table and start working on his injuries, but as long as he was talking, and he still held the scissors, he would take it slow. "This is Caliente, Nevada. You're pretty much in the middle of nowhere, my man."
"Nevada?" He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes for a moment. "Yeah, makes sense. Keep us away from people." His eyes blinked open again, and he looked past Dakota at the blood-smeared floor. He followed the bloody trail back to where he sat, and then dropped the scissors and stared at his hands, as though realizing for the first time that they were gloved in blood.
Dakota slowly inched forward and pulled the scissors out of reach. Now that he felt more in control of the situation, he concentrated his attention back on his patient. He knew the rest of his staff was just behind him, watching, and waiting to jump into action, but all he could see now was the bloody young man trembling in front of him. Nothing else mattered.