by AJ Rose
All that drained away when his eyes found Elliot, who stood frozen, gun still aimed in their direction, muzzle beginning to shake. Elliot’s eyes darted between him and the man on the ground.
Ash patted the air in front of him. “Elliot, put the gun down.”
Brian came up behind Elliot and pushed the muzzle toward the ground. “It’s okay,” he said.
Ghost was still going ape shit, and Ash made a quelling noise. Riley struggled to keep the dog under control. As Ash got to his feet, Riley approached Elliot with caution, then murmured to Brian.
“Quiet that dog.” Turning concerned eyes on his boyfriend, Ash put a hand to Elliot’s cheek.
Elliot stared straight ahead, like nothing could break the line of sight between him and the man he’d shot. He stared through Ash as if he weren’t there. Using both hands, Ash turned his face up, worry creasing his brow.
“Elliot, look at me.” Brown eyes finally shifted to obey, and he touched their foreheads. “You saved my life.” Breathtaking gratitude replaced his anger.
Elliot’s chin trembled. “I killed him.”
“He was going to kill me. Or worse, you.” Ash didn’t give a damn about Tim’s condition, considering what he’d put them through and what he’d done to their chances of surviving the mountains. Right now, Elliot was his only focus. Elliot, who was shaking apart in his arms.
Hysteria took its sweet time, but when it washed over Elliot, it crippled him. He fought Ash’s embrace, hyperventilating and saying the same thing over and over. “I killed him. Oh Jesus, I killed him.”
“You don’t know that.” He turned them toward Aaron in time to see him tear Tim’s bloody t-shirt from his side, pressing his hands to a bullet wound under his left arm. “See? Aaron wouldn’t bother if Tim were already dead.” Ash kept a firm arm around Elliot’s shoulders.
“Charlotte, I need bandages. Now.”
Charlotte didn’t move, glaring at Tim’s still form.
“Jennifer.”
“You said he cut up your bandages,” she said, kneeling beside the forgotten med kit and pawing through it, sniffing and trying to get herself under control.
“Tampons,” Charlotte said, finally stepping into action. “Ash had me grab a bunch for bandages. But I don’t know where the fucker scattered them.”
“I need something, a piece of sleeping bag. Whatever,” Aaron said impatiently.
“I shot him,” Elliot wailed. “I gotta go. I gotta go now. Take this,” he demanded, shoving the gun in Ash’s hand and turning tail. He didn’t stop when Ash called his name, running into the trees as if the hounds of Hell were on his heels.
Ash turned to the group, where Charlotte stood with a box of tampons, remarkably unscathed, in her hand. “Go after him, you idiot!”
Not needing to be told twice, he tucked the gun in his waistband and followed the sound of Elliot’s chant into the shadows, the trees more dense in this patch of forest than where they’d hunted.
“Elliot!” he called. “Please stop.”
Elliot didn’t slow until the elevation, upward climb of the trail, and increasingly difficult path forced him to. Ash caught up, grabbed his elbow, and yanked him around so they were face to face.
Ash panted, “I don’t care if he is dead, baby. You’re not. That’s all that matters to me. You’re not a bad person for standing up for someone you love.” Elliot frantically shook his head, but Ash stopped the motion with hands on his cheeks. “You love me,” he said, tilting Elliot’s face up. “Right?”
Elliot tried to nod but couldn’t in Ash’s tight grip. His eyes filled with tears, and he said, “Yes,” in the smallest voice Ash had ever heard. Ash’s chest flooded with warmth.
“I love you, too,” he said fiercely. “If you’d swapped places with me, I’d have aimed for his head. I couldn’t have watched him kill you.”
Tears spilled down Elliot’s flushed cheeks. “I did aim for his head. Brian bumped me. I could have hit you by accident.”
“Not your fault and not what happened. I’m fine, you’re fine. Tim may not be fine, and Aaron’s trying to make it so. But whether he lives or dies, you’re a hero, Elliot. You’re my hero.”
Elliot released a breath that was half sob, half laugh and let himself be kissed, snot face and all. When they broke apart, he closed his eyes and two more tears followed the tracks of their siblings to drip from his chin. “Say it again,” he whispered.
“I love you.”
When Elliot’s face crumpled, Ash pulled him in tight, and he buried his face in Ash’s shoulder and cried, the adrenaline bleeding out with each heaving breath. Ash rocked them side to side, just as Elliot had done for him on a beach in some random state he couldn’t even remember now, when he’d learned Charlotte believed their dad had haunted her house.
“Need me to sing?”
Elliot shook his head and clung to him. Ash didn’t know how long they stayed that way, but it wasn’t long before Elliot quieted and began to show signs of regaining his composure.
“I was so scared, Elliot,” Ash murmured, rubbing his back, the suddenly frail stature of his boyfriend hitting home. Belated shock and fear slammed into Ash, and he held on tighter. “Not for me, but for you. That you’d really trade yourself for me. That you’d have a seizure, and Tim would cut me down while you convulsed on the ground. Such a helpless feeling, and I can’t believe we’re okay. Because of you, we’re okay.”
Elliot shook his head in disbelief. “You fought him.”
“I had to. But if our positions had been reversed, I’d have torn him apart.” This time, it was Ash trying not to fall to pieces. He nuzzled Elliot’s neck and breathed him in, suddenly, instantly more aroused than he’d been in his entire life and against his hip, he felt Elliot’s matching erection. They shared a bruising kiss, as if by devouring each other, they could right all the wrongs in the world. It lingered, got heated and desperate, but went no further. As much as he wanted to lay Elliot down and take him, make them both feel alive and whole, now wasn’t the time.
“We need to go back,” Ash said. “I’m sure everyone’s worried about you, and your dog is going out of his mind so you need to calm him down. Think you can handle that? Sitting on the log and letting Ghost lick your face while we get this situation figured out?” He squeezed Elliot’s ass, wishing with everything he had they could just get naked and prove to themselves they’d survived.
With a weak laugh, Elliot nodded and together, with Ash’s arm firmly around his waist because he absolutely wasn’t willing to let go, they walked back to camp.
To find it in chaos.
Jennifer screamed in sobbing agony while Charlotte held her back. Brian held Ghost, who barked viciously, and Riley clung to him, hiding his face in the dog’s raised fur.
Tim and Aaron lay beside each other, Aaron’s bloody hands at his side, his face pale and splattered with blood. Tim stared with sightless eyes, a rivulet of blood having tracked from the corner of his mouth to his ear. He was dead.
And Aaron looked to be fighting for his life.
“He stabbed Aaron!” Jennifer screamed. “Lemme go! Aaron!”
“Keep her over there,” Aaron said to Charlotte, his head turned toward them. “I’m okay, Jennifer. I’ll be okay. Just stay where you are. I don’t want you to see.”
Ash said, “Elliot, help Charlotte with Jennifer. Calm her down. Whatever you have to say, do it.”
He feared Elliot would be too out of it from his own hysteria, but the space he’d taken to get himself together had apparently fortified him, and Elliot obeyed without question, getting Jennifer to the ground and leaning back on the log while Ash went to Aaron’s side.
“Jennifer, calm down. Your baby needs you to be calm,” Elliot said.
Perfect, babe, he thought, then focused only on Aaron. “Tell me what to do, buddy. Tell me how to fix you.”
“Pack the wound. Charlotte’s tampons are around here somewhere.” Aaron’s eyes were glassy with pain.
Aaron grimaced. “If it’s one of those, nothing you can clean it with here will help me.” Ash took his meaning; if it were a wound to his bowel, there was already no hope. They wouldn’t get off the mountain before infection set in.
“We’re getting you out of here. Back to Laramie. Somewhere. Fuck, I’ll call on Brian’s sat phone for a plane to fly us somewhere.”
“Ash,” Aaron said, stupefied. “Why didn’t that ever occur to us?”
They stared at each other, and unbelievably, both began to laugh, though Aaron stopped with a sharp yelp. “I don’t think planes are landing without power and air traffic control,” Ash conceded. “But maybe this close to the border, we’ll get lucky.” While he spoke, he worked two of the tampons out of their wrapping and took the bloody hunting knife from Tim’s curled fingers to cut them lengthwise. He spread one over the slit in Aaron’s skin. “It’s so small,” he marveled. “It doesn’t look like it did much damage.”
“Not that deep, no, but I need to get it looked at. Pack it. Gotta stop the bleeding.” Aaron grimaced as Ash pushed cotton into the wound, but he nodded vigorously, as if convincing himself he needed this despite the pain. “If the knife didn’t nick any organs, it’ll just need stitches.”
“Jennifer, you hear that? Aaron thinks he’ll just need stitches.”
“He always tells me that,” Jennifer said. Ash glanced up. She seemed calmer and had stopped fighting Charlotte’s hold on her, instead tucking into it for comfort and reassurance.
“This time I mean it, honey,” Aaron said, holding the cotton already on the wound while Ash unwound more tampons.
“I need tape.”
“My shirt’s ruined. Tear off a strip and tie it on if you can’t find the tape.”
“Brian, tape? He’s gonna be okay, Riles,” Ash said, taking in the splotchy face of his nephew for the first time. The kid was going to need a shrink the second they reached civilization.
Brian and Riley let Ghost go to do a quick circle around the camp, finding a dirty roll of silicone tape with one side covered in grit. Ash brushed it off as best he could and then secured the flattened tampons to Aaron’s side.
When Aaron grasped his arm to try and sit up, Ash stopped him, alarmed. “What are you doing?”
“Ash, you cannot single-handedly get us out of this situation. We need to think. To plan. I can sit up without dying.”
Motioning the others over, Ash said, “Bring the log if you can move it.”
With much grunting, Charlotte and Brian got the fallen tree close enough Aaron could, with Ash’s help, lean against it. Jennifer crawled to his good side and folded herself in, peppering the side of his face with kisses. Ghost attached himself to Elliot, who immediately came to Ash’s side and wrapped around him. Ash hugged him close.
Aaron winced, despite having not moved. “I need a doctor, Jennifer needs to get the baby looked at, and we have zero supplies. We need to get out of here, and fast.”
“I think we can help you with that,” a new voice said.
Ash turned and his stomach dropped, ice filling his veins.
What else could possibly happen to us today?
A group of five soldiers, four men and one woman, all covered with face paint, moved into their camp with combat weapons a motion away from aiming and firing.
24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Day 47
Rock Creek Ridge, Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming
* * *
Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.
—Thomas Carlyle
* * *
DONNIE WATCHED THE PERIMETER as Roger knelt beside the injured man in the group of campers. “Campers” was a relative term, considering their equipment was demolished, one man lay dead, and another was in need of immediate transport to a medical unit. Add in a pregnant woman, a dog barking itself hoarse, a little kid who looked like he’d seen a ghost, and the rest of the entourage moving in a shell-shocked stupor, and it was clear these poor people had been through the wringer. Their haunted eyes told the same story.
Matt had found a clear patch for radio communications and was on the horn with patrol HQ, requesting a rescue chopper to their coordinates for immediate evac.
“No place to land, so we need a rescue winch, as well as a backboard and a basket. Two patients, one stabbed lower right quadrant and the other pregnant with labored breathing and sharp abdominal pains. Request medic on board. We need one body bag for morgue transport as well. Second chopper will be heavy five people, with rendezvous point on Highway 101 just east of the rescue coordinates.”
“Is this your whole group?” Ness asked the blond guy with the longer hair, who seemed the most in control of the situation.
“Yeah, what’s left of it,” he said bitterly. He looked so young.
If he was the one holding everyone together, Donnie was impressed. “What happened here?” he asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.
Chris backhanded his shoulder lazily. “You don’t ask it like that. You ask them if they’re okay and if we can get them anything, and then you say, ‘Are any of the events that occurred here relevant to the medical situation of your friends?’ Jeez, didn’t they teach you that in basic?”
Donnie couldn’t help but smile. He knew what his friend—lover? Partner? He had no clue—was doing, trying to make the guy, who frankly seemed about at the end of his rope, laugh.
“Sorry, West.” He said with mock innocence and turned his attention to the blond guy again. “What’s your name?”
“Asher Caine. Ash for short.”
“And his?” Donnie lifted his chin to indicate the geeky dude around whose shoulders Ash had a secure arm. The geeky guy didn’t quite seem as with it as Ash. The white dog kept contact with the geek at all times.
“Elliot. That’s Aaron, Jennifer, Brian, Riley, and Charlotte. That hunk of meat on the ground was Tim.” Ash pointed to each of their party in turn, his sneer at the dead man clear. “And the dog glued to Elliot is Ghost. Seizure dog; he goes with us.”
Donnie nodded. “Won’t be a problem.” He shifted his focus to the geek, Elliot. “You have seizures?” He got a nod. “Medication for them? Have you had any today?” A head shake. Real talkative, this one.
“Elliot, you probably need to get seen with Aaron and Jennifer.”
“I’m not going without you,” Elliot said. So the guy could speak. Good to know.
“What do we need to know that’s medically relevant?”
Ash’s eyes blazed at Elliot briefly, and then he said, “His epilepsy is triggered by stress. He needs to be on the medical ride in case the problems we had today cause a big one.”
“You leave me alone,” Elliot said, “and I might as well drop here and now with the shakes. I need you.”
“Hey, tell me what I need to know, and I’ll make the decision,” Donnie said, authority creeping into the words. Ash started to speak. While Chris and Donnie listened, Roger finished assessing the stab wound victim, and he and Ness moved to the others in camp. Ness got the little boy to smile and the dog wound down to a rhythmic chuffing.
Thank god, because Donnie had been going nuts with the noise.
“If there’s anything you want to take with you, or anything you can salvage, do it now,” Matt said, tucking away the radio. “We have half an hour for the rescue helo, and our transport is right on its tail.”
Ash tried to disentangle from Elliot, to no avail. “I don’t want us to get split up,” he said worriedly.
“Why would we split you up?” Donnie asked, genuinely confused.
“Well, I’m not fit for service, but he is, so you’re going to sign him up, right?”
Donnie tried to figure out where they’d got that idea and came up blank. “Well, we’re trying to get recruits, yeah, but as far as I know there hasn’t been a draft
instituted. You’re free to join or not.”
“You mean you’re not making people enlist?” Aaron said, the effort to speak loud enough for the words to carry across the clearing obviously difficult.
“No, sir,” Donnie confirmed, more confused than ever. “We’ve been asking people to enlist, but if they say no, they go to a refugee camp for disaster relief support.”
“Oh, thank god!” Jennifer exclaimed, hugging the stabbing victim carefully around his neck.
“We could have gotten help so much sooner,” Charlotte grumbled as she dug through the detritus. “Oh hey, an undisturbed backpack,” she said, yanking the found item from behind a bush just beyond the clearing. Taking it to the log beside the wounded man, she dumped it out, and they went through the contents, which seemed to be a large amount of freeze-dried food pouches, a couple boxes of ammunition, clothes, a toiletry bag, a handful of LifeStraws, and one cooking pot. “Oh, son of a bitch!” she exclaimed, looking at the geek, an iPod held aloft in her hand.
For the first time, life flashed in the geek’s face and he let go of Ash to snatch the device from her, the gray headphones trailing from his hand as he checked it over.
“Battery’s dead.”
“We might be able to find you a charger back in Fort Collins,” Chris offered.
Seven heads snapped up. “There’s power?” Ash asked, awestruck.
Ness nodded and spoke carefully. “Some. We’re working on more.” Donnie knew she kept the information about the solar panels to herself in case these people had nefarious purposes. Donnie honestly didn’t think this ragtag group of survivors was responsible for any acts of terrorism. Hell, they’d barely lived through the politics of traveling together. Still, he hadn’t forgotten his sergeant’s admonishment about his disclosure to the two widowers. Donnie didn’t make the same mistake twice, so he kept his mouth shut. Chris clamped his lips together, too.
Oh, he’s going to be bitchy later. And on the heels of that thought, Bonus for me. He’s energetic when he’s bitchy.