“Step where I step,” he told them, then turned and headed further in, towards what looked like a collection of sheet metal and broken down wooden pallets.
Tanya looked nervously to Dusty, but he just nodded his head quickly. “Go!” he hissed, his face pale from the pain of walking so quickly.
She hurried after Carl, watching him walk, and pulling Dusty with her. They followed his path, their eyes nervously straying to the ground. A few times they spotted suspicious things – a wire here, a stick there. Things that were out of place. It was enough to make the hair stand up on both of their necks.
Inside they saw an urban mess. Carl was already moving to the back door and stepping inside to lay Jessie down on the cot she had occupied earlier. She stirred, but fell back into a troubled sleep again. He stood there, scowling, then walked out and shut the door behind him.
“You – strip,” he said, pointing at Dustin.
Dustin stared at him, eyes and mouth wide open. Tanya looked at Dustin in shock, then back to Carl. “What?” she asked.
“You too,” he said to her. “Him first, he’s hurt worse.”
“What… what are you going to do?” she asked, her eyes going to the guns hanging from straps over his shoulders and then to the crotch of his pants.
“It’s called triage,” he said gruffly. “Make sure you ain’t gonna die anytime soon.”
“Are you a doctor or something?” Dustin asked, closing his mouth finally.
He shook his head. “Ain’t got time and you look like you got less. Strip!”
His hands went to his shirt, but still he hesitated. “Dude, she’s my sister!”
Carl just stared at him, then shrugged to make one of the rifle straps slide off his shoulder and into his hand.
“Okay! Sis, turn around or something,” Dustin said quickly.
Carl smirked at the misunderstanding. He took the other gun off and walked past Dustin, unloading them and putting them back in his cabinet. He replaced the pistol from his pocket in there as well and took off his jacket. By the time he turned around Dusty was standing in just a pair of boxer shorts, holding his badly bruised side and looking like he would have rather have been back stranded in the desert sun.
Carl moved over to him and walked around him, looking at him. He saw Tanya watching as well, though she was supposed to be turned around. It was not sexual curiosity, he noted, but rather concern for her brother.
“Anything hurt other than your side?”
“No sir,” Dustin said quickly.
Carl stopped in front of him and reached out slowly. He pushed Dustin’s hand away from his side gently but firmly, then touched it with varying pressure. The boy grimaced and cried out a few times as his hand moved around. Tanya hurried over, about to tell him to stop. but a look from him made the words die on her lips. He stopped finally and Dustin, his face sweating not so differently from Jessie’s, groaned.
“One or two broken, the rest cracked or bruised. You’ll heal,” he said. “I’ll wrap it in a minute. First your sister.”
“Strip,” he said, turning on her and seeing the questioning and suddenly terrified look on her face.
Shaking, her hands rose to pull her once-expensive shirt over her head. She held it in front of her a moment then, blushing furiously, let it fall to the floor. She wore no bra beneath it, revealing her athletically small breasts in the dim light. Dustin gasped, then winced and moaned a little at the pain in his side.
Carl walked around her like he did with her brother, then paused behind her. “The pants too.”
Her eyes brimming with moisture, she undid the clasp on her jeans and let them fall to the ground. He cursed softly, staring at the roadmap or surgical scars on her back. “You feeling all right?” he asked her cautiously.
She nodded, her throat too frozen to allow speech.
“Moving all right?” he asked. “You feel your toes?”
She nodded again, but the distraction he caused in her with his tonal shift helped her find her voice. “I broke my back a couple years back.”
He was quiet for a minute. “Okay,” he said. He made her jump when she felt both his hands on her back, tracing down her spine. It tickled a little and made her blush a deeper red.
“You feel that?” he asked her, his fingers pushing a little harder against her skin. She felt his right hand move like it hit a bump, jogging it up and over something over to the right.
“Yes,” she said. “I feel it. What’s your point?”
“Darlin’, you’re back’s busted – and it’s busted bad. No way you can walk right now.”
Her eyes widened at his statement. She tried to reach back and showed a level of flexibility that impressed him. Her fingertips slid along the skin and just barely managed to brush the spot between her shoulder blades he was referring to. “Oh,” she said, feeling the bump of her spine being dislocated so badly that her spinal column must have been severed.
“It’s okay,” she said, turning and smiling at him. She immediately remembered that she practically nude and her arms crossed in front of her.
“Okay?” he asked, surprise showing on his face. “What are you?”
“Can you set it?” She asked him timidly. “I don’t want it to heal like that, it’ll put me off balance.”
“Is she for real?” Carl asked, turning to face Dustin. For the first time they saw through the mask of indifference he had worn. He was genuinely surprised and confused.
“Tell him,” Dustin said, looking around for a place to sit down. As much as a forbidden thrill that it was to steal looks at his sister’s body, the adrenaline was wearing off and the pain of his ribs combined with his exhaustion were threatening to do him in.
“I broke my back a couple years ago,” she said again. “Those scars you saw are what they did to fix me. I was paralyzed. I, um, I was selected to get some special experimental surgery since I made the news. There’s computer chips that take over for my spine.”
“No shit?” he asked, unable to imagine it being a lie, especially since he had seen the scars.
She nodded. “So, can you set my spine back in place?”
He shrugged. “Never tried before. I guess.”
He motioned for her to turn around and she did so. Dustin looked up from the chair he had found, smiling at his sister thinly then lowering his head to his chest again.
“Drop your arms to your side,” Carl ordered. She did so, surprised that Dusty did not look up again. He was hurting bad and it hurt her to see him suffering. She was getting used to her own situation, but being naked in front of her brother and a stranger still felt wrong.
“You look strong,” he said, distracting her.
“I’m a gymnast,” she answered his unspoken question. “Broke my back trying out for the Olympics.”
He grunted and stepped around her. He motioned over to a round wooden pole that he had suspended from some chains that hung from the ceiling. “Can you hang from that?”
She gave him a withering look, which made him smirk again. “Can I put my clothes back on?”
He chuckled. “Not yet, I need to see what I’m doing.”
She muttered something about him being a pervert, then flexed her legs and sprung up to easily grab onto the pole. She hung from it, her hands overhead, and glanced down at him. “Want to see me do a routine while I’m up here?”
“Just hang there,” he told her. He moved behind her and, to her complete surprise, wrapped his left arm around her hips.
Tanya gave out a squeal of surprise. He was touching her panties and touching her butt! She was ready to let go and try to fight back when she felt him pull down a little. She tightened her grip, afraid that if she let go he’d have his way with her. She was strong, but this guy seemed like he was built out of the same stuff as the desert rocks.
She felt a grinding or rubbing in her back, then a burning flash of pain. His hand pressed hard against her back, stealing what breath she had left, and moments before her
grip gave out she felt a pop in her back that suddenly washed away the tension that had been building all morning in her neck and back. She gasped and realized she was only hanging on by her fingertips.
“Don’t let go,” he said, moving quickly behind her. He was back in a few moments and pressed something cold to her back.
“It’s an old lawnmower blade,” he told her. “Not sharp. It’s cold because I keep it in the freezer, helps stop bleeding and swelling. You’ll hate me for it, but it’s a splint and it will keep the swelling down.”
He wrapped some gauze around her torso, starting with her belly and moving up her abdomen until the gauze and his hands brushed over her breasts. She held on, her arms able to handle the load but sheer exhaustion beginning to make them burn. That and embarrassment as she felt his hands touch her in places nobody else had ever touched her. His movements were anything but amorous, she knew, but still it was awkward for her.
“There, that ought to do it,” he told her. He grabbed her around the hips and added, “let go, I’ll help you.”
Tanya slumped backward in his arms, momentarily overwhelmed by the overload. Carl gently let her slide down his body, careful not to touch her inappropriately, and then picked her up and laid her on his cot.
“That’s going to hurt,” he told her. She stared at up him, scared again. She was lying in his bed, naked for all intents and purposes.
“Get some rest,” he said, tossing a blanket over her. “And don’t worry, I’m not going to rape you.”
She nodded, but clutched the blanket to her. It was hot out but the comfort felt good against her skin. She looked over to Dusty and saw him slumped in his chair, already asleep. Carl, their gruff and mysterious benefactor, was coming back already from a cabinet he had gone to and had another roll of flexible cloth in his hand. He was going to wrap her brother’s ribs. Her eyes fluttered shut, her brain accepting that she was safe and in need of rest even if her conscious mind was still lost in the chaos of the day’s events.
Chapter 5
Jessie woke up with a gasp. She turned over and retched, puking up nothing but feeling like there was more to come. Her stomach clenched and clenched making her throat burn and her chest hurt. Finally, tears in her eyes, she collapsed back onto the cot. The pain and the convulsions drove the fuzzy dream images from her mind but she still held her hand, cradling her missing finger. Jessie gasped through dried and cracked lips. She hurt all over, worse than a morning after a great party. She felt like shit and wanted it to end.
She slowly sat up and looked around, desperate for a bottle of something, a cigarette or a joint, and preferably something harder. She saw nothing, just the same damn closet she’d been in the last time she woke up. She groaned and fell back on the cot. She remembered fleeting glimpses of lucidity that featured Carl checking on her, Tanya and Dustin peering through the door towards her, a cool rag wiping her forehead, and a few sips of water from a metal cup.
Hunger rumbled through her stomach. She sat up again and reached up to pull her hair back out of her face. Lacking anything to tie it back with, she just let it fall and stood up. She felt like hell and didn’t care if everyone knew it. The thing was, she’d gotten this far, at least. As long as Carl hadn’t shot the kids, she stood a good chance of cashing in still.
She made her way to the door and opened it, and saw something that reminded her of the first aid stations when she served in the Army and was stationed in the Middle East. She saw everyone looking over at her. Tanya, in a chair sitting stiffly with no shirt on. In its place was gauze that was wrapped tightly around her torso. Dustin was laying on an old couch, his ribs wrapped up almost as thoroughly as Tanya’s were. Carl alone was without. He looked up at her from the table with the monitor on it.
“How ya feeling?” he asked.
“Like shit,” Jessie said. “Got anything that’s not poisonous in here to eat?”
“My stuff’s clean,” he said, standing up and heading towards his kitchen. “Only poison you got you put in yourself.”
She scowled at him, but the pounding in her head stopped her from retorting. “Whatever,” she grumbled. “I need something to stop my head from blowing up.”
“No drugs here,” he pointed out.
Jessie glanced at Tanya and Dusty, then back at Carl. “Coffee?” she asked, an edge to her voice.
He shook his head, a ghost of a smile on his lips.
“Jesus, how do you live?” she asked, disgusted.
“I do okay,” he said with a shrug, then pulled out a tin of meat and grabbed some strings of it.
“What’s that?” she asked, her stomach making her interested in spite of how her head made her want to pass out.
“Javalina,” he said, pulling out a few pieces of the previously cooked meat and tossing it on a metal plate for her.
“Have-a-what?”
“Javalina,” he repeated. “With a ‘J’. It’s a wild pig.”
“Oh.”
Carl put some of the roast pig on other plates and carried it over to the others, giving them a chance to sate their hunger. Everyone ate in silence, Jessie violating the silence only with the sounds she made devouring the food. She had not realized how hungry she was until it hit her lips. When she was finished she looked around, ready to take a bite out of the table or her plate if she thought her teeth could take it.
She forced herself to calm down, then turned to look at the others. Already her headache had abated a little, but she still felt like she’d been kicked by the mule in a Mexican donkey show. “What happened to you?” She asked, looking directly at Tanya.
“My back was broken,” she said.
“Your back? Yeah, didn’t that happen a couple of years ago?” Jessie asked, trying to make sense of it.
“Right, that was fixed. It was broke again in the plane crash.”
Jessie stared at her, then turned to look at Carl. He lifted his hands.
“When I broke it before they put microchips in that read the signals from my brain. It sends them to other chips in my body, replacing my spine. When it broke in the crash I was so shook up and shocked I never felt or noticed it,” Tanya explained.
“You don’t have a spine?” Jessie asked, shocked.
“I have one, my spinal cord was severed and never healed. Carl checked us over to make sure we were okay and noticed my back was broken again. He fixed it.”
“Does it hurt?” Jessie asked, her child-like curiosity pushing past her other issues.
“Not much,” Tanya said, smiling at Carl.
Jessie’s eyes narrowed as she caught the look. She turned and saw him smile back, although it was only a faint twitch of his lips.
“It hurt when he set it, but it’s okay now. It has to heal and it’s swollen and tight, but mostly I just feel the stiffness. Without a working spinal cord I lost most of the feeling in my back,” Tanya continued.
Jessie made a noise only a step or two above a grunt acknowledging what she said. She turned her attention away to Dustin, who was watching her. “How ‘bout you, big guy? How’re you doing?”
He matched her smile with his own, thrilling Jessie inside and making her cast a triumphant glance at Tanya. Her smile faded slightly when she saw Tanya was not looking back at her.
“Ribs are messed up, but not too bad Carl said,” Dustin replied. “Gonna hurt a while though, but they’re already feeling better and it’s only been a couple of days.”
“Couple of days?” Jessie asked, her mouth staying open in shock. “I slept a couple of days?”
“You ain’t done yet,” Carl said behind her.
“Ain’t done what? Sleeping? I sure as shit ought to be!” Jessie said.
“Ain’t done getting over the shit you done to yourself,” he said.
She glanced at the others then back at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m fine.”
He walked over to her, fast enough to make her draw back with eyes wide in alarm. He grabbed her arm and hel
d it up in mid-air. When he was sure she was paying attention and understood, he let go. “Just hold it there,” he told her.
She frowned at him and smirked, as though he was an idiot that just left his village behind. In a few seconds though the tremors that had been making her hand quiver and spasm had their way with her and her hand began to shake. She pulled it away and cupped it to her stomach, covering it for the first time in her life with her disfigured hand.
“What about them?” she asked, quickly changing the topic. “They tell you their story?”
“Yep,” he said, scorn for her visible in his yes.
“You gonna help us?” She asked.
“Us?”
“Yeah, I promised them I’d help them get back.”
“You’re bad news,” Carl stated flatly.
She stared at him, her lips parted in shock again. Warring emotions made her stomach twist and her throat tighten. Moisture threatened to gather in her eyes while she wanted to get up and scream at him or slap him.
“I saved them!” she managed to gasp finally, and that gave her strength to continue. “Some motherfuckers stole my car and I got them out of there! I pulled them out of a burning plane! How the hell does that make me bad news?” She had stood up at some point in the altercation.
“Were you looking to help when you went to the crash?” Carl said calmly, unperturbed by her near shouting.
She opened her mouth, ready to retort. Ready to tell her latest story. “I…”
Carl just shook his head and turned away to take care of the leftover food.
“Well fuck you too!” she shouted at him.
He ignored her, then flinched when her plate bounced off his arm and ricocheted off the fridge to the floor.
“I’m out of here,” she fumed, hopping off her chair. “C’mon?” She turned to Tanya and Dustin, waiting for them to jump up and follow her.
“Where you gonna go?” Carl asked her, his voice a few octaves lower than usual.
“Ain’t nowhere that ain’t a few days of walking,” he continued. “No water, no food, you ain’t got a chance.”
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