by Joss Ware
Christ, El, get a grip. It was a flash of skin. It’s not as if you haven’t ever seen a slew of bare asses in hospital gowns.
Needing a distraction, Elliott looked around the room to consider the sleeping arrangements. He and the others hadn’t planned to stay here tonight, but now it looked as if they’d be shacking up with the kids in an old office building in this . . . whatever it had been. Some town in the middle of some county in what probably had been northern Arizona, but who the hell knew what it was anymore. An overgrown, jungle-like wasteland.
“What’s your name?” Elliott asked the girl who reminded him of Josie.
“Linda,” she replied, smiling bashfully.
“Pretty name.” Though he felt light-headed and weary, Elliott smiled back, keeping his expression gentle. “How far are you from home? Do you all live in the same place?”
“Yeah. Our parents are going to be all nuclear by now.” Her large eyes swam with tears. “We sneaked out and didn’t tell them, and now we’re so far from home.” A little wail caught at the end of her sentence.
Elliott patted her arm, giving it a little squeeze. “We’ll get you back home, safe and sound,” he promised. “You’ll just have to tell us how to get there.”
He hadn’t seen any sign of recent human civilization in their last day of travel, coming from the south, so the kids were either really far from home—or they lived in a settlement large enough to produce at least seven teens of the same age.
“Are you from Envy?” Elliott asked, as he did anyone they met.
Linda nodded.
Excitement spiked through him. “And you can get us there?”
She nodded again.
Elliott smiled, and the fog of exhaustion eased. At last.They’d found Envy.
After they’d emerged from the cave, Elliott and his friends had traveled on foot, horrified at the change in landscape. They scavenged for food and shelter for more than a week before they actually met any people. When they learned that fifty years had elapsed—an inconceivable concept—they were fairly numbed, paralyzed for a time.
How could one comprehend that the entire world had been destroyed? Most of the human race and its infrastructure—gone? Civilization annihilated?
It was beyond comprehension.
At last, trying to find answers to what had happened fifty years earlier—and how—Elliott and his companions had been unable to find anyone who’d actually lived through the destruction, and who could answer their desperate questions. Over and over, during their months of travel in a slow, concentric circle from Sedona, the band of men had occasionally encountered small settlements of people. Finally, about three weeks ago, they met someone who suggested that they go to Envy, the largest known settlement of people. Almost a city, in fact, where some of the survivors might still live.
Once they learned the city was north, they had at least had a direction in which to travel. And now they were closer than they’d ever been.
Wyatt interrupted from his position by the window. “Dred, they’re back,” he said, using Elliott’s nickname.
Below, he heard the faint squeak of the rope ladder and the sniffling, snuffling sound of sobs. He immediately discarded the thought that it could be the woman. She wouldn’t cry. Not someone who came blazing in like fucking John Wayne.
His guess was confirmed as the young blond teenager emerged, sniffling and sobbing as she rose from the top of the ladder. When she saw her friends, she gave a wail and stumbled over to them without hesitation.
“Dred!” Fence, their original guide from the caves, called for him as he appeared from behind the girl. The muscular black guy was carrying the bareback-riding woman in his arms as if she were nothing more than a kitten. Limp and unmoving, bruised and bleeding, at first she looked as though she’d been beaten to a pulp.
But gangas didn’t punch or strike. They tore and devoured.
“Put her here,” Elliott told Fence. His nickname had come naturally when he started med school and his friends had started calling him Dr. E.D. in texts and emails. Even though he joked that “Dred” made him sound like one of the X-Men, he didn’t mind the moniker . . . though it did give people pause during first introductions.
“What happened?” he asked Fence, looking down at her. Putting all thoughts of that up-riding shirt from his mind.
“Looks like she fell off her horse fighting the motherfucker. Horse was gone, and she was lying near a mess of ganga roadkill. Or would it be horsekill. Hoofkill?”
As he felt her warm throat for a pulse, Elliott couldn’t help a smile. There was little to joke about nowadays, but that didn’t stop Fence from finding a bit of levity whenever he could.
“Blondie—her name is Benji, for chrissakes—was running away. We found her not too far from this one. I guess she was coming back for help, ’cause she couldn’t lift her,” Fence replied, gesturing to the unconscious woman. “Didn’t get too far before we found her, and Benji brought us back to where she was, on the ground by a pile of ganga crap,” Fence continued, a note of relish in his voice at the description. “The job was already done, and we didn’t even have to use any more bottle bombs.”
Which was a good thing, since they couldn’t just walk into a CVS and buy more alcohol.
“Benji seems all right,” said Elliott as he considered the rider’s pulse; it was steady and strong in her narrow wrist.
Her skin felt warm, but not overly so. And in a moment, he’d know exactly what was wrong with her, thanks to whatever the hell had happened to him during the fifty years he’d been suspended in time.
Then he noticed a leather pack strapped under her shirt. He gently pulled it away, its heavy contents clunking metallically, and set it aside. The removal of the pack’s wide band exposed some very perky curves covered by the thin white shirt. A fit female patient, likely in her late twenties, observed Elliott the Physician. With a smoking-hot body, noticed Elliott the Man, who was usually tucked away when Elliott the Physician was on duty, but who hadn’t had sex for fifty years. Or at least, for six months.
“Girl’s scared pissless,” Fence remarked. He grinned, his smile clear and white in his dark face. “But if you want to check her out, feel free. She’d probably love a handsome doctor like you taking care of her.”
“She’s a bit young,” said Elliott. Not the case with the woman in front of him. From what he’d seen, she wasn’t too young at all. In fact, she was just about right.
“Yeah, for a guy who’s eighty years old,” Wyatt, who’d just walked up, added dryly.
“But I’m a young eighty, and still two years younger than you,” Elliott returned with a smile. “Now let me see what I can find.”
Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes to concentrate, for this was still new to him. Then, scanning his hands just above the woman’s body like a human MRI, he waited for the images to appear in his mind. Like full-color X rays.
He still found it unfuckingbelievable, this amazing ability he’d somehow acquired while hibernating, or being cryogenically frozen, or time traveling—or whatever it was, for fifty years. Too damn bad he hadn’t had this gift . . . before. Think of the lives he could have saved.
Before.
His concentration broke for a moment, and the internal images turned to gray mush.
Lips curling tightly inward, he pushed away the thoughts and felt the strange hum that skipped through him. He focused on the internal buzz, scanning the images that reappeared in his mind.
No head injury. No internal bleeding . . . just a fractured ulna, and the fifth rib. Some kind of meat for her last meal, and some vegetation. She was at the middle of her menstrual cycle.
His eyes flew open in chagrin.
Christ. Like he needed that damn information.
Then he realized the teens were all staring at him.
“Do you know her?” he asked, suddenly uncomfortable, though he didn’t know why he should be. For all they knew, he could have been praying over her. They could
n’t have any comprehension of what he was doing—he barely did himself.
No one responded to his question, though he saw a few furtive glances between them. Great. They looked more awkward and nervous than they had after the ganga attack.
Drawn back to his patient, he looked down. “What the hell was she doing out here by herself?” Elliott muttered. Bruises and lacerations all over her face, Elliott the Physician noted. Thick hair of an indiscriminately dark color, snarled and ratted from that wild ride. And fine, long legs that had to be strong as hell if they held on bareback like that. Elliott the Man’s mouth went ridiculously dry at the thought of her riding bareback.
Okay. Get a grip, Elliott.
Yeah, it’d been fifty years and seven months since he’d had his hands on a woman’s body. But it wasn’t like he hadn’t slept through most of it.
Be a fucking professional. She’s your patient.
With that pep talk mentally ringing in his ears, he reached over to her left arm, the one with the fractured ulna, bared by the short sleeve of her shirt.
Fully registering the warmth of her skin, he gently examined the bone beneath, concentrating, keeping it impersonal. She stiffened with discomfort beneath his light fingers, and he felt and saw the disjointed ulna. He’d have to splint it up, and that was going to make it difficult for her to ride again. Damn shame, when she was so good at it.
He stopped his thoughts right there before they could go down some wayward path with creative images of his patient riding bareback.
Good. Very good. Raging hormones under control.
Closing his eyes, Elliott focused and saw the fracture again in his mind, a slender, jagged break, the bone slightly misaligned . . . and he felt a surprise sizzle of energy flit through him.
Elliott resisted the urge to open his eyes, focusing instead on the hot rise of power flowing through him. This was new, this flush of energy. Was it because he was concentrating more carefully?
Of course, the whole fact that he could scan someone and read their insides was new, but this was something he’d never experienced before. His brows tightened together, he ignored the soft rustling of the watching teens and their hushed whispers, and steadily focused on his mental images.
Suddenly, a sharp pain sliced through his own arm. He gasped in shock and his eyes flew open, but he didn’t release her. His arm ached like a bitch. His left arm. It didn’t just ache, it was beginning to fucking hurt. Like someone had stabbed him.
He looked back down at the woman, who hadn’t moved. If anything, her face seemed to have relaxed. Elliott focused again on her broken arm, looking for the image in his mind, still feeling the pounding of pain in his limb.
He understood that he was somehow transferring her pain to his own body. Wow. He was even more talented than he thought.
Maybe she’d rest easier. He could bear the pain for a bit, give her some relief.
And then he focused on the image in his mind and realized that he couldn’t see the break any longer. Her ulna was now a pristine, white bone.
What the fuck?
Had he healed her?
Elliott stared down at his hands around her arm, realizing that the pain still blasted through his own limb. He’d healed her and taken the pain into his own body?
Unbelievable. Absolutely amazing.
What the hell would have happened if she was having a heart attack? Or if she had cancer? Could he absorb the rest of her pain by concentrating over other areas of her body?
This was miraculous. Learning that he had acquired the ability to read the internal state of a person’s body had been an accident in itself. And now this? Excitement and disbelief washed over him. Not only could he actually diagnose an injury or illness, but now it appeared he could also heal them.
The implications were staggering.
“She’s a Runner,” said Linda suddenly, breaking into Elliott’s wild thoughts.
He turned to look at her, his mind swirling with the impossibility and the implications of what had just happened, and at the same time, focusing on the girl, who suddenly looked terrified.
A Runner. Clearly spoken as a proper noun. He hadn’t heard that term from anyone else in this world before. People had mentioned bounty hunters. And whispered about the Strangers. But he’d never heard mention of Runners.
Of course there were a shitload of things he didn’t know about what this world had become.
Six months after waking up in this post-apocalyptic hell, and Elliott had stopped trying to figure it out. He’d almost stopped wondering why he and Quent had awakened with extraordinary capabilities—like his being a human MRI machine and Quent being able to touch something and “read” its memories—and Fence and Wyatt and Simon, who’d also been caught in the cave during the catastrophic events, hadn’t.
If they ever found someone who’d lived during that time, maybe, God willing, they’d have some answers.
Or maybe they’d just have to get through the rest of this damned life never knowing. Why. How.
And why the fuck him?
Linda shook her head mutely, as if she’d been elbowed. Or kicked. Big tears had gathered in her eyes, and Elliott felt the wave of antipathy from the other teens. Clearly, there was something else going on here.
Silence.
His arm still screaming with pain, Elliott looked over the group of them. He sat back on his haunches, which were in much better shape than they had been six months ago. Nonstop physical activity, and walking hundreds of miles—not to mention fighting gangas and living in survivalist mode—had turned him from the fit jogger he’d been into a lean, muscular candidate for the Special Forces. Not that they even existed anymore. He didn’t think.
Another one of the kids spoke up. “It’s nothing. Just heard the word ‘Runner’ before.”
“But she wasn’t running,” Elliott reminded them, very, very gently. He reached over to touch the back of Linda’s hand, meeting her gaze steadily, paring through the shock that still lingered in her eyes. “Who is she? How do you know her?”
But the girl just shook her head and looked down, biting her lip.
What the hell was the big secret?
Hiding his frustration, Elliott looked back down at his patient, noticing the perfect almond shape of her eyelids and the short, very faint crinkles at their corners. Not wrinkles—he knew better than to even think that word near a woman, but . . . laugh lines, maybe, or the evidence of time spent in the sun. A beautiful woman, even beneath the cuts and grime. Beautiful and gutsy.
What had she been doing out there alone?
At last one of the teens, the kid who seemed to be the leader, asked, “Is she going to live?”
They did know who she was. So it must be Elliott that they didn’t—or wouldn’t—trust.
He nodded, realizing that the pain in his arm had dissipated. That was pretty fucking amazing. A little bit of pain, and he could heal someone’s broken bone. Cool. “Yes, she’s going to be fine. But we need you to show us how to get back to Envy so I can take care of her.”
The leader, who’d nudged Linda into silence, looked at him with blatant suspicion. “I don’t know if we can trust you.” He closed his mouth mutinously.
“At least tell me her name,” Elliott said.
Just then, he felt the change. He looked down right as her eyes began to open. She shifted slightly, her movement accompanied by a small groan. She looked up at him, and even in the dimness, he could see that her eyes were cloudy and dazed.
“It’s . . . Jade,” she said on the gust of a soft breath. “Name’s Jade.” Her lips, split and cracked with blood, moved in either a grimace or a smile.
Elliott saw her gaze shift unsteadily from his face to beyond, scanning over the hovering teens, snag for a moment, and then back to him.
“Who’re you?” she asked, her lips stretching again, and some of the murkiness leaving her gaze. Their eyes met and he felt a whoosh of . . . something. Hot, heavy, and strong.
&nb
sp; Hoo-boy.
“Are you . . . an angel? Raphael maybe?” Her voice sounded deep and husky, not unusual for someone awakening from an injury.
Elliott smiled back, wondering how much of his expression she could see in the low light. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m just a doctor.” That’s right. Her doctor.
“Mmm,” she replied as her gaze shifted to land on one of the kids behind him. Her voice was still rickety and deep, and her breathing unsteady from that aching fifth rib, but she continued, “Not an angel . . . damn.”
Her eyes fluttered closed, but the little temptation of a smile remained. Blood oozed from a cut that she touched with the tip of her tongue as if to relieve a twinge of pain. And then she shifted again, her lids opening wider, clarity bursting into them. “A doctor? There aren’t anymore doctors.”
The sultry pleasure—real or imagined—was gone from her voice, and the note that replaced it was decidedly displeased. He could see her try to focus on him, even felt her gather herself up as if to resist.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice stronger now. “Take off your shirt.”
What the hell? He frowned, wondering if she was hallucinating—but she was looking at him with lucidity in her eyes. Not invitation, but blazing suspicion. Her heart rate had increased, and so had her breathing.
“Ow!” someone cried out.
Elliott turned to see Linda, holding her arm as if she were in pain. The other kid standing next to her looked surprised, so it was clear that he hadn’t just slammed his elbow into Linda’s arm.
“What is it?” Elliott asked, recognizing more than minor discomfort in the kid’s face.
“I dunno. It’s my arm,” she said, her voice rising into a sob at the end. “It started to ache a little. Now all of a sudden, it really hurts!”
Frowning, Elliott reached to touch her, gently palpating the girl’s arm. Her left ulna.
An odd sort of frisson sizzled along his spine and Elliott closed his eyes to concentrate on the mental scan, his belly feeling heavy.