He stepped on the leg, and it supported his weight; he could still walk. Centering himself, he tried to see what was happening with Finn who was lying on her side clutching her body. Sara began walking toward him, dropping the spent magazine from her M4 and inserting a fresh one. She stepped into a moonbeam and Parker saw that she was splashed in blood and covered with mud; she looked barbaric.
A man came up off the ground and slammed into her. They went down in a tangle of limbs, too intertwined for Parker to take a shot, and he rushed forward. Sara screamed, the sound high-pitched but savage. The man yanked her head back by her hair and then she got the muzzle of the M4 up between them and shot him under his chin, blowing the back of his skull off.
Walking up to them, Ava hauled the body off Sara and helped her to her feet. After the brutal dissonance of the firefight, the sudden quiet near them seemed oppressive.
“Pull security, Ava,” Parker said. “Sara, strip the bodies—full magazines, medical supplies, better weapons, anything you think we can use but that won’t slow us down.”
“I’ve been hit,” Sara said. She didn’t sound in pain or scared, but matter of fact. It was the shock, Parker assumed.
Stepping up to her, he pushed her jacket back and lifted the collar of her shirt to check the damage. “It’s a through and through and you’re already coagulating,” he said. “We don’t have any time now but I’ll get it bandaged.” She nodded and went to work.
“What about Finn?” Ava protested, her words catching in her throat.
“I’m seeing to her,” Parker said.
Dropping down next to her, he inspected her, terrified of what he would find. She’d been so close to the soldier when she’d taken the round, her body had muffled the report of the shot.
She was dying.
Her stomach was torn open, half her guts on the marshy ground but her intestines weren’t ruptured. She writhed, moaning low—obviously in agony, but trying hard not to cry out in case there were more enemy in the nearby area.
Working on automatic pilot, making soothing sounds and telling hopeful lies, Parker tended to her wounds. Unhooking the trauma kit from his web gear, he put on gloves and immediately gave her ketamine from his supplies. Oftentimes, pain medication wasn’t initially given in large amounts for fear that the depressant qualities of such medications would hamper or even stop breathing. Parker gave no thought to that now—there was no point.
Finn didn’t need to be stabilized for transport. There was no emergency room or surgical team in her future. She was going to bleed out her last seconds in this stinking hardwood swamp. He gently placed the blue-gray looping coils of her intestines back in the cavity of her stomach and then packed the wound with moist gauze from the small bottle of sterile water he had in his kit. Finn watched him, her eyes dull and animal stupid with the powerful painkiller.
Parker looked up as Sara and Ava came over, shrinking their area of overwatch. Ava stifled a cry when she saw Finn, and came to one knee. Sara cried silently, tears spilling down her face.
Parker turned to check his daughter where she’d been hit.
Blood soaked her shirt. A round had entered above her collarbone and come out the back of her trapezius, above the shoulder blade. It looked like someone had taken a power drill to the muscle.
“Through and through,” he told her. “I’m going to use ketamine, but only a little; we have to move, and you’ll have to be alert.”
Sara nodded in a robotic motion, still staring at Finn. She didn’t move or cry out as he administered the narcotic analgesic, either. Using gauze and then copious amounts of medical tape, he dressed the wound after smearing it with antibiotic ointment.
Handing her a plastic canteen along with Tylenol for potential fever and a heavy dose of Cipro for infection, he told her, his voice quiet but firm: “Take these; drink this water.”
Mutely, she obeyed his commands.
He turned to Ava. “Are you hurt?” His voice was barely above a whisper.
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “How about you?”
“I need to dress this wound so it doesn’t keep bleeding as we move,” he said.
Sara seemed to snap out of her dreamish state. Reaching out and grabbing his forearm, she hissed at him, “We’re not leaving her.”
Parker met her eyes, and let her see the truth in them. “Of course not,” he said. “But we have to move quickly.” He looked at her more closely, realizing he had to keep her from sliding into shock. She needed something to focus on, a task for her consciousness to cling to like a life buoy. “We have to get her off the ground; we have to be able to move her—do you understand?”
Sara nodded quickly. He could almost see the cogs of her mind, shut down moments ago, begin turning. She looked at him, her eyes sharp, listening to every word. He handed her the bayonet from the sheath on his harness suspender.
“I need you to get me four rifles, M4s like mine, understand?” He gestured to his own weapon and she nodded. “Dump the magazines, make sure there’s no round in the chambers, and bring them to me. Take your pistol in case some of them are only wounded, but use the knife if possible, understand? Soldiers could return at any time, so hurry.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Stay sharp, Sara,” Parker told his daughter.
“I got this,” she replied.
She sounded nervous, her voice wired tight with tension. That was fine—it was a tense situation. He started cleaning his wound with a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide as Sara slipped out into the trees to retrieve the rifles.
“I’m not going to take any,” Parker said aloud, glancing to Ava where she sat holding Finn’s hand.
“What?” Ava asked, not looking up.
“Ketamine,” Parker said. “I’m not going to take any pain medicine. I’ll take some Tylenol for inflammation and fever, and Cipro for the infection, but that’s all. Just so you know.”
Ava nodded once, a curt gesture. “Good.”
Parker checked on Finn. She looked back at him, eyes clouded, her breathing regular but labored. Her dressings were already spotted from seeping blood. He packed his own wound and used the last of the medical tape on the roll to secure it in place. He had to do the exit wound without seeing it, but it couldn’t be helped until they got in a more stable location. There was a clock ticking down in his head. It would take time for reinforcements to reach them, but they would be coming, and in numbers far too great to battle.
Sara came back with the rifles and set them next to him in a pile. She looked like her shoulder was bothering her; he took that as a good sign regarding her level of shock.
“Did you have trouble?” he asked.
She showed him the bayonet; there was blood on the blade. “A little; not much,” she answered. “Not enough to slow me down.”
“Good,” he said. “Now I need two uniform tops and two pairs of boot laces. Can you get those?”
Sara nodded. “We’re carrying her out of here? Making a stretcher?”
Parker nodded. “Hurry.”
He turned his attention to the rifles then. Double-checking to ensure they weren’t loaded, he laid them out in two lines of two. He began checking his own weapons.
“Count your ammunition,” he told Ava. “Check your equipment, and make sure your shoes are tied and that you don’t have another wound you haven’t felt yet. We’re moving out of here in a few minutes.”
“Where are we going?” she asked. “We’re not really going to try to make the Vineyard, are we? Not now?”
Parker shook his head. “I’m still thinking. But for now, yes, we need a goal. If we get lucky and beat the Council there, and if we can take the guards, they may have better medical supplies, better equipment. They may even have some medical staff; we’ll ask Sara.”
“All those ‘ifs’ and ‘mays’ are big ones.”
“Tell me about it.” He leaned over, meeting Finn’s eyes. He took her hand in his—it was cold in his grip. “We�
��re going to get you out of here,” he whispered. She didn’t reply, but her eyes shifted. It was a small thing, but he’d take it.
About twenty yards away, a single pistol shot cracked out of the darkness. Parker jumped, startled. Ava swung her M249 in the direction of the report, but Parker put a restraining hand on her arm.
“Wait,” he said.
Ava nodded.
A few seconds later, Sara called out in a low whisper, “It’s me, don’t shoot.”
She approached, pistol in one hand, shirts and shoelaces in her other. She held up the pistol, her finger lying alongside the trigger guard in the manner Parker had taught her as a little girl.
“One of them woke up as I rolled him to get the shirt off. Startled me; I was using both hands to strip him and the pistol was closer; I’m sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Parker said. “We’re leaving.”
He felt an overwhelming urge to take some Ketamine, but he pushed it firmly into the back of his mind and forced himself to focus on the task at hand. Once the adrenaline wore off, the withdrawal symptoms were going to kick in hard, and they needed to be far away from here by then. In the meantime, he figured the agony of his wounds were a good way to keep the adrenaline flowing and avoid dwelling on what came next.
If you use right now, he told himself, you die.
Using the bootlaces and his heavy-duty military masking tape, he secured the four rifles, muzzle to buttstock, into two poles. Next, he threw two of the BDU tops to Sara and said, “Do what I do.”
Together, they tucked the sleeves inside of the shirts and then buttoned them up. Working together, they fed the rifles up through the sleeves, forming a makeshift stretcher.
He knelt down beside Finn, brushed her hair out of her face and, on impulse, kissed her forehead. He looked up and saw Sara watching him.
“We’ve been through a lot together,” he said, his voice catching in his throat. “Both Ava and I owe her our lives.” Looking down at Finn, he smiled. “She packs one hundred pounds of whoop-ass in a two-pound can.”
Finn looked up at him, she coughed and a trickle of blood spilled over her lip to run down her throat. Reaching over, Parker grabbed handfuls of her clothes, soggy with blood, at the shoulder and knee, and rolled her up onto her side facing him hoping the Ketamine would keep her from feeling any pain.
“Slide the stretcher under her,” he said.
When Sara had done so, Parker rolled Finn back; she moaned, eyelids fluttering, and he winced. Once she was in place, he looked up at Ava and Sara.
“We have to adapt. I’ll be at the front, which means my hands won’t be free. Each of you take a pole and keep your weapon ready in the other. That means pistols only: keep the M4s on your 3-point harnesses. It helps that she’s less than one-hundred-twenty pounds,” he told Sara. “Because with your shoulder wound, you won’t be able to trade out hands when your grip gets tired. A travois would be better, but it’s impossible to drag something through this undergrowth.”
Ava looked down at her M249. The sheer volume of firepower she’d been able to deliver with it had saved them more than once during the firefight, and she seemed reluctant to part with it.
“Ava,” Parker said, “I know, but we don’t have a choice.”
She looked over at Finn and then nodded, setting it down and taking a loose M4 to replace it. She secured it to the body sling before tugging at the straps on her pack, and then stood, Glock ready. “Let’s go.”
As the three of them moved into position, Finn made another gurgling noise and lifted her hand. Instantly, Ava was on a knee beside her. Taking Finn’s face in her hands, she leaned in close.
“What is it? What do you need?”
Finn gargled her own blood again, but the word was clear. “Gun…”
Ava sob-laughed.
“And though she be little, she is fierce,” Sara said and Parker snapped his head up.
“I used to say that to you when you were little,” he told her.
“I remember.”
Parker fought the emotion threatening to boil over inside him and walked over to the body of the man who’d shot her and snatched the M9 pistol from his leg holster. He racked the slide, ensuring a round was in the chamber. Walking back to Finn, he knelt and put the weapon in her hand.
“A round’s in the chamber, so be careful with it. And keep your head to the side so you don’t choke, understand?” he told her.
She nodded.
Then, picking Finn up, the group fled.
25
They moved as fast as they could—as fast as they dared. The night began taking on hallucinogenic qualities, creating living nightmares of pain, exhaustion, and terror. Sara stumbled along, her wounded arm dangling uselessly at her side most of the time. Parker hadn’t secured it with a cravat sling because she’d need it to fire her pistol if they were caught by surprise. Finn lay quietly, soaking the stretcher with blood.
Parker led the way, attempting to pick his way around patches of Coyote quicksand, deeper pools of water, and tangled brush. They were leaving a trail a blind man could follow, even at night. One of Parker’s boots had filled with blood from his hip wound, as well, but the pain was a dull, distant ache that made him fear he was sliding into shock.
Despite how light Finn was, and their broken, exhausted states, they continued stumbling across the dark terrain lit only by what they could see of the moonlight and stars since they didn’t dare use headlamps. Sara began staggering as she fought to remain upright. They crossed a stream and came up out of the bottomland.
“We have to rest,” Ava called out. “We all need water.”
“Top of the hill,” Parker said. “Where we have elevation.”
Pushing up the trail into a narrow cannon clogged with cheatgrass and elderberry bushes, they fought to make the short climb. Exhausted with the effort of it, they sank into the grass behind a little stand of willows. In the distance, Parker could see the road connecting the cabin to the highway below them on the other side of the bluff. He didn’t see any headlights.
Looking in the direction of the cabin, Parker could see plumes of black smoke rising in the distance, and he said a silent goodbye to the cabin he’d worked so hard to stock. The part of him that had become so barbarous in the last week wished that Spencer had been among those soldiers he assumed were caught in the fire. After everything that had happened at Stapleton Mall and then the TV station, how was it he was here? Now?
He drank some water and then bent over Finn. There were less trees here, and the moonlight revealed more than it had in the hardwood swamp by the river. Her eyes were open, but could only track if he leaned in very close. With the Ketamine, her pupils were shiny now, and she seemed to be floating on a pillow of painkillers and blood loss.
Parker adjusted her dressings where they’d come loose. When he looked up again, Ava was staring at him, a silent question on her face. He shook his head and Ava settled down next to her friend to cradle Finn’s head in her lap. She stroked her hair, tears running down her face unchecked now.
Sara didn’t seem to know what to do. She hadn’t been close to Finn like the others, but they’d shared desperate danger together—the sort of thing that forms lasting bonds. Stopped here, she’d come stand next to Parker for a moment and then walk away, unable to look any longer.
“I need to talk to Finn,” Ava said quietly. “Alone.”
Parker, who’d long suspected Finn’s feelings for Ava, and knew Ava almost certainly had also, nodded. As he rose, Ava, still quietly crying, continued stroking Finn’s hair. He’d already ceased to exist for the two of them entangled in this goodbye. He walked over to where Sara watched the road below them.
Sara didn’t turn as he came up, simply continuing to stare out into the middle distance. She hugged the arm of her wounded shoulder to her, and the breeze played with her hair a little. Her profile looked so much like her mother’s that it made Parker’s chest hurt.
“You need to let
me wrap that arm now that we have time,” he said.
She nodded, but didn’t move. “We’re not going to be able to save them, are we?”
“We’re walking wounded,” he said. “And Finn…” he trailed off.
“What can we do?” she asked.
“We let your mother try and repay us,” he said. “We try and make for this train she spoke about. If that doesn’t work, we go to Lake Michigan, then Canada. After that last battle, they’ll never stop looking for Ava and me. Probably only the fact that the Council has such limited access to aircraft, even with their planning, has saved us to this point.”
“I want to go to the Vineyard,” she said. “We might be able to beat the Council there.”
“Sara,” he said, “the Council obviously knows their person on the inside is gone. They know their operation is done for, and they’ll move in. They’ll probably have already taken down the place. We need to pick our battles at this point because that force that showed up at the cabin didn’t exactly ask about your well-being before they opened fire and sure didn’t give a damn when they knew you were there. I hate to say this but maybe they were cleaning house and you got swept up in it.”
Sara didn’t answer, but she lowered herself to the ground when Parker opened his kit. Silently, he checked her wound, cleaned it again, and then redid the dressings. This time, he added a sling to take the weight off her arm.
“I’m tired,” she said. “The idea of us going to the Vineyard got me this far, but…” she trailed off, not bothering to qualify her last statement.
“We can’t hide,” he said. “We can only run. We have to find the most brutal terrain possible and cut through it, staying as far away from population centers as we can. We’re better outfitted than we’ve ever been, but we don’t have the luxury of time.”
“We’re just waiting for her to die, aren’t we?” Sara asked.
Parker didn’t answer. Instead, he packed up his medical supplies carefully, trying not to let his eyes linger on the pre-filled loads of Ketamine. You use, you die, he repeated to himself as he put the supplies away.
911: The Complete Series Page 45