by Rowe, Julie
There were a couple of cots in the room; one was occupied, the other wasn’t.
“He’s sick,” Gary said, waving a hand at the occupied cot. “Take care of him.”
Kini raised her empty hands. “With what?”
“You’ll get some stuff,” he told her giving her another push toward the cot. “But if he dies, you’ll be next.” Gary gave her a serial killer’s smile and left the room.
Kini reluctantly approached the cot. The smell of unwashed male almost overpowered the cat urine smell from the other room. All that was visible was brown greasy hair, so she pulled the sleeping bag back.
A man, late twenties to mid-thirties, unconscious and with labored breathing. His face shone with sweat and when she peeled more of the sleeping bag away she saw that the fabric was damp. An indicator of a prolonged fever.
Footsteps approached.
Kini glanced up as Gary came back into the room with several large cases covered in EMS symbols. The words just fell out of her mouth. “What did you do, rob an ambulance?”
Way to go, idiot. Goad the asshole into hurting you.
Gary flashed his teeth in an unveiled threat but didn’t do more than ask, “Can you help him?”
“I don’t know yet.” She’d been in the room less than a minute, and he thought that was long enough to diagnose an unconscious person? “When did he start getting sick?”
“Yesterday. Started complaining about a headache and coughing a lot. A couple of hours ago, I tried to wake him, but he wasn’t all there, you know?”
This was someone Gary cared about. A friend or brother? She raised an eyebrow.
He scowled at her with a suddenness that told her he wasn’t happy with revealing how important this man was to him.
She didn’t say anything, just opened the case of supplies closest to her.
It contained a blood pressure cuff, stethoscope, and other assessment tools. In another, IV tubing, needles, suture kits, and other tools for treating wounds. The third case contained antibiotics, painkillers, and other medications.
Gary watched her investigate the contents for a minute then turned to leave.
“Wait,” Kini said. “What’s his name?”
“Don,” the man said before he disappeared.
She returned to her patient, listening to his heart and lungs, and talking to him as she worked. “Hi, Don, my name is Kini, and I’m a nurse.” She took his pulse, found a digital thermometer in one of the cases, and stuck the business end in one of his ears.
So far, the signs weren’t good. His pulse was fast at 110, his lungs were full of fluid, especially his right lung, and his temperature was 105 degrees. She found a blood oxygen monitor in the first case.
Kini clamped the small device over one of his fingers. It read 82 percent, low, but not deadly. Combined with his fast pulse rate though…he needed advanced medical care no amount of goodies stolen out of an ambulance could provide.
She got up and went to deliver the bad news. Hopefully, they wouldn’t kill the messenger.
Gary and Bruce were talking in the living room, but they went silent as soon as they saw her.
There wasn’t any point in trying to sugarcoat any of it. “He’s got a fever and pneumonia. He needs to be on a ventilator and treated with medications used in an ICU, not an ambulance.”
“He has that hantavirus?” Bruce asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but with all the cases in this area”—she shrugged—“it’s the most likely cause.”
Gary stalked toward her. “You’re not even going to try to help him?” He walked around behind her, grabbed her by the hair, and hauled her back against him. He whispered into her ear, “Do you have a death wish, bitch?”
He thought he was scary. He had no idea the kind of scary she’d already faced down and watched die. “Would you prefer I lie to you? You’re wasting his time. He needs advanced life support. If you take him to a hospital now, he’s got a chance.”
“And if I don’t?”
“He’s got no chance.”
“Take him,” Bruce said. “I’ll stay here. Maybe she can help the others.”
“Others?” she asked. There were more sick people here? “You should take them all to a hospital.”
“Shut your face,” Gary said as he shoved her so hard she landed on her back. He raised his fist and she flinched, bracing herself for the hit.
“Go,” Bruce told him.
Gary hesitated, sneered at her, then walked toward the bedroom.
Kini met Bruce’s gaze. “You’re making a mistake.”
He tilted his head, studying her as if she were an interesting insect he’d never seen before. “Gary’s right. You do have a death wish.” He angled his head toward what she’d assumed was the kitchen. “Get up. You have other patients.”
Kini clambered to her feet and preceded Bruce into the kitchen.
No one was there.
“Keep going,” he ordered, pointing at the back door.
Outside was a large tent. Someone inside sounded like they were hacking up a lung.
“How many people need medical attention?” she asked. That tent was big enough to hold half a dozen people.
“Three.”
She turned. “I’ll need the medical supplies—”
“I’ll bring them.” He pointed at the tent.
Damn it. So much for a dash to freedom while everyone’s back was turned. She entered the tent to find four cots, three occupied by people coughing.
Even the inside of the tent stunk of unwashed bodies and urine. Did the smell of the chemicals they worked with seep into their pores, so they sweated it out later?
“Who’s this?” one man asked, sitting up to look at her. Skinny as a rail with pale skin and bloodshot eyes, he looked more than half dead.
“A nurse. She’s going to take care of you guys, hopefully make you better.”
Skinny let out a cackle that scraped across her nerves endings like a cheese grater. “Make me better? The Pope doesn’t have a chance in hell of doing that.” He flopped back onto the cot. “You’re wasting this sweet young thing’s time.” He laughed again.
Kini winced and tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone as dry as the desert around them. Her usefulness as a nurse was the only thing keeping her alive. “Do you mind if I attempt to give you a second opinion?”
“Whatever, lady.” His laughter descended into a wheeze.
Well, she had at least one semicoherent patient. After a glance at the other two occupied cots, she approached them cautiously.
Standing a couple of feet away, she said tentatively, “Hello?”
She got a snore for a response. At least he was alive.
When she queried the last cot, a rough and irritated voice barked, “Will everyone please shut the fuck up.”
Two complainers and a snorer. Better than three dead.
Movement had her spinning around, preparing for a fight. It was Bruce with the medical supplies. He handed her the stethoscope with a frown that told her he’d noticed her reaction.
“I’m not going to kill you,” he said in not much more than a whisper. “Not now, anyway.”
“Gee, that’s so reassuring.”
Wait, had those words come out of her mouth?
Kini closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable reaction and resulting pain.
A couple of seconds later she opened her eyes to find Bruce staring at her like she’d put her crazy pants on backward.
“When I’m tired and sore I get snarky.”
He just stared at her coldly then walked away.
It took her twenty minutes to take the vitals of all three men and document them in a notebook she’d found in one of the cases. Of the three, Skinny was the healthiest, but none of them were well.
She spent a long time listening to their lungs. They didn’t have pneumonia, but the sound coming from them wasn’t right, either.
Bruce came back at that point, and she saw no reaso
n to lie to him.
“All of them need proper medical care.” She pointed at the stolen medical supplies. “This isn’t enough.”
“Get them up and able to work,” he ordered. “I don’t care how.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but the cold expression on his face, so completely devoid of emotion, scared her. It took her a couple of seconds to get her vocal chords working again. “I need to know what got them sick in the first place, before I can give them any kind of treatment. What were their symptoms?”
He shrugged. “They started coughing and constantly complained of having a headache.”
She sucked in a breath. “The chemicals used to make the meth. Did any of you wear any kind of mask or breathing apparatus?”
He raised one eyebrow. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Those chemicals are dangerous. They may have damaged lung tissue.”
“So they don’t have that damned disease?”
“Their lungs don’t sound right, but they don’t sound like pneumonia, either.” She looked at the three men. “I could be wrong though.”
“Can they work?”
“I don’t know.” She studied Bruce. “Can they?”
He glanced at the house then at his watch. “We have a quota to meet.”
“If the damage is the result of the chemicals, making them work will only hurt them further. It could kill them.”
He barked out a laugh. “This isn’t a union. They don’t get sick time or anything else for that matter. They produce or they die.”
And she’d thought he was the nice one. “What are you going to do with me?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Smoke walked the dirt bike a quarter mile out from the Rogerson place. Ever since they’d talked to Emmaline, he’d had a bad feeling about this place. The murders of the two deputies and Freddy getting himself and his buddy shot cemented his opinion that nothing good was going on.
He’d stayed away from the road, coming toward the property at an oblique angle. When he got to the fence, he used his knife to unhook the bottom of one link from its neighbor. Once started, the process to completely unravel the steel link only took a minute and he was through. As soon as the buildings came into view, he hid the machine under some scrub brush then found a good place to watch the house and the ragged tent behind it.
The sun was going down. Soon darkness would turn this dangerous game of hide and seek deadly.
A tall, skinny guy came out of the back door of the house and headed for the tent, coughing hard enough to wake the dead.
“Hey, lady,” the guy called at the tent. He cleared his throat, or tried to. “Uh, Nurse?”
“My name is Kini.”
Smoke jerked his small binoculars up and watched her come out of the tent, a stethoscope around her neck. “What do you want?” Covered in bandages, and bruises, and with bags under her eyes, she’d never looked better.
She was alive.
She was okay.
A burned, twisted wire deep inside his spine unwound and cooled off a little. She was okay.
“Bruce wants you.” Skinny dude angled his thumb at the house.
She backed up a step. “Why doesn’t he come get me himself?” She sounded defensive, cautious. She didn’t want to go into the house.
“He’s on the phone.” The guy gestured toward the back door again. “Hurry up.”
With a huff, Kini walked around the guy and went into the house.
The sick grin on the skinny dude’s face didn’t give Smoke the warm and fuzzies. Getting her out of there was his only priority, but how many men were in the house and how many in the tent?
Had they taken her to treat their sick? He couldn’t see anyone on a watch detail, and he would have seen someone if there was anyone to see.
As soon as the skinny dude disappeared into the tent, Smoke moved, silent and sure, until he stepped on something oddly squishy.
Looking down, he realized it was a hand, partially eaten and withered by daytime heat, but a human hand. On the middle finger was a ring, its shape familiar. The last time he’d seen it was two days ago on Nate’s hand.
For a long moment, Smoke’s brain refused to make the connection. Then, with rage raining white noise inside his skull, he flung the dirt off the face of the body and had to snuff out a snarl.
Nathan. A bullet hole between shadowed eyes.
These fucking assholes had killed his cousin. The same assholes had Kini inside this hovel of horror.
She wasn’t going to end up in one of these shitty, shallow graves. He would do anything, kill anyone to prevent it.
The lock on the lessons he learned in foreign deserts and lost jungles, lessons that kept him alive, but could only bury him at home, disintegrated.
A vicious, violent joy filled him.
The fuckers were dead. Every last one of them. Dead.
His soul all but sang, justified, justified, justified kills.
Smoke took the endorphin rush and used it to focus on what he had to do next, and next, and next. Kini wasn’t safe yet.
He left the body of his cousin and moved into a position where he could look into one of the windows to the front room of the house. Someone was turning on a couple of lights.
A whole lot of glass jars, plastic tubing, and other shit made seeing anything clearly impossible, but with the window busted, he could hear everything just fine.
“You want me to what?” Kini asked someone in a tone filled with a caustic combination of hostility, fatigue, and pain.
“Work,” a male voice, sounding pissed the fuck off, said. “My people are too sick.” A Texan accent.
“Your people are dying and doing this is what’s killing them.” Her voice scraped across Smoke’s nerves, with jagged, sharp edges. He’d heard that kind of strain before in the life he’d left behind weeks ago. It took days of witnessing violence and death with little sleep to achieve. Years of training couldn’t guarantee a soldier could handle it. How close to her breaking point was she?
“Get. To. Work,” the Texan ordered.
“No.”
Fuck. This conversation was going downhill fast. A distraction needed to happen yesterday. He tensed, preparing to be that distraction.
A cell phone rang.
That was a little too convenient.
There was a two-second silence then the asshole said, “What?”
Smoke waited. Should he take the Texan out now while he was distracted by his phone call? Or instigate a larger disruption with a greater likelihood of separating Kini physically from the men he’d seen?
“I’ve got it under control,” the Texan said, his voice vibrating with anger. “Just keep the Feds too busy to come out here.”
Another pause.
“I don’t give a shit if it’s the fucking Marines. Keep them away from here, because if I go down, so do you.”
Smoke had to get her out of that house and away from the Texan and Skinny, and he had to do it now.
He went back to where he’d left his dirt bike and walked it to the road leading to the buildings, maybe 150 feet away. The moon was nearly full and the sky was clear. Good conditions for what he wanted.
Once he was around a corner and behind a collection of stones, trees, and the remains of some kind of rusty farm equipment, he kick-started the bike. After revving the engine several times, he dropped it and disappeared into the landscape. The back country only looked barren. To someone who’d spent most of their life here, it was traversable. To an outsider, it could be a death sentence.
Smoke moved fast and made it back to a spot where he could watch the house in time to see the Texan hauling ass down the road toward the bike.
Kini wasn’t visible anywhere.
“Get your hands off me!” The sharp words and the unmistakable crash of broken glass had him heading for the house at a sliding run he’d perfected as a kid while hunting with his father and grandfather.
Fast and silent, he went in through
the front door, his rifle in his hands.
Kini was struggling with the skinny dude, but he had her pinned up against the wall and was using his body to hold her in place.
The asshole laughed. “Fight me, baby. I like it,” he said as he mauled one breast through her blood-stained shirt.
Adrenaline hit Smoke’s system and he detonated. He slung his rifle behind his back, freeing his hands as he ran. A bullet was too good for the asshole. One arm went around Skinny’s throat while he pummeled the other man’s kidney with his free hand. Smoke ignored the choking sounds coming from the asshole’s throat and kept hammering away. By the time he was done with Skinny, he’d be lucky if he could piss blood. “How do you like it now, baby?”
Kini staggered a couple of steps, knocking over a couple of metal buckets with a splash and clatter.
Smoke dragged Skinny farther away from her and began hitting his face.
“Smoke, I think you’ve convinced him to stop.”
Really? The image of Skinny, his body pinning Kini’s, passed through his head. Nah. He kept beating the shit. He got to kill whoever he wanted.
Kini frowned. “Smoke, he can’t breathe.”
Gee, that’s too bad.
“Smoke,” Kini said in a severe tone. “You’re killing him.”
And that was a problem, how?
Small, warm, bloody hands wrapped around his wrist. “Please, Smoke.”
Behind her, the floor around the buckets she’d upended began to smoke.
He looked into Kini’s warm chocolate eyes, a gaze so full of hurt it made the killing rage that had hijacked him retreat enough for him to think.
Those delicate hands pulled at the arm clamped around Skinny’s neck. He released the asshole and stepped back, pulling Kini with him.
Skinny flopped onto the pitted wood floor like a sack of potatoes.
Kini reached out with one hand toward the asshole’s neck. Smoke took another step back, taking her with him. She glanced at him. “I need to see if he’s still alive.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
She stared at him, turning even paler than she already was. “Because you’re going to kill him anyway?”
He didn’t respond. He didn’t have to.
“No,” she said, determination putting some color back in her face. She laid one hand along his jaw. “I don’t want his death on your conscience.”