by Ilsa J. Bick
The cover story was plausible: a catastrophic stroke caused by a clot. Death came swiftly, painlessly. They told her poor parents their daughter never knew what hit her and was gone within seconds, too quickly even for a code. She could picture the scene: a military doc offering tissues to her weeping mom while her dad sat, the epitome of Midwest stoicism, as the doc murmured, There, there, and Perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise, and With all that brain trauma, she never would’ve completely recovered.
She wondered what Jane Doe Vance had slotted in her place. The DARPA 7UV9 boys would’ve made it all very realistic, right down to the missing legs and arm, the misshapen head. If her funeral was like those of other soldiers equally ravaged and just so much kibble, the death notification officer might have advised a closed casket. Parents of military members were tough that way, though. They knew the score. As shattering as seeing their child blown to bits might be—how very much of a son or daughter wasn’t there anymore—most would want a last fleeting look, even if all they glimpsed was a lumpy body bag that took up only a third of the coffin.
Every now and then, she thought what it might be like to see home again. Slip in a little before dawn and watch her dad go about the milking while her mom, framed in a yellow square of light through a kitchen window, made breakfast. Before the Black Wolf, she’d told herself she hadn’t wanted to risk being shut down for disobeying. Now, having slipped her leash, she wondered if she could. But to what end? She couldn’t knock on the door. Her parents would have a heart attack. How would she explain? Oh, well, there’s this top-secret sci-fi thing going on and, well, I’m kind of a prototype and ... A total non-starter.
“I think you’re selling your folks short, Kate. I also can’t imagine their love for you would change if you explained.”
You don’t know that, Jack. She’d caught that fleeting sparkle of mingled shock and fear in Gabriel’s eyes. You didn’t have to be a mind-reader to know he wondered just what the hell she was—and how human.
“Gabriel’s not family.”
“Fine. Then, call him an index case, a control.” Gabriel’s reaction was a good barometer against which to gauge everyone else. “Jack, he was completely freaked.” She’d smelled his fear, rank and acid. He still wasn’t sure about her, and it wasn’t only her prosthetics. Hooks, titanium legs, false arms and eyes ... hell, people always gawked. It was only human to look. In fact, she thought parents shouldn’t tell their kids not to stare. No, stare, get your fill, and what you think you can’t look away from becomes old hat after a while.
What scared Gabriel was how they’d rebuilt her and what they’d put in her head. Her parents would be no different because you couldn’t ever really know what happened inside another person’s brain, could you? Her parents would always wonder how much of her remained truly human. I’ve got spidey-sense now, better eyesight; I’m only getting stronger. For want of a better analogy, a colony of nanobots were staking out their territory—and expanding. And there’s Jack, either helped along or made by them.
My God, what if Jack was the face of the nanobots? What if he and they were the same? What if Jack was the template upon which the nanobots built themselves a body, an image, a personality? A nidus about which they grew and became something more?
Jesus. This was why the villagers always went after Frankenstein’s monster.
“You’re not a monster,” Jack said.
Shit. A small flutter of panic in her throat. She forced her mind to dodge away from that train of thought. She had to keep a lid on this. Whatever Jack really was, she wasn’t sure what she could do about that or if she should even try to interfere. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“Don’t be too sure about that.” She started walking again and steered the conversation back. “I can’t see my folks again, Jack. I gave Vance my word.”
“Which you’re so good at keeping, I see.”
“You really think my parents would be happier if they knew I was alive?” And understood what I am?
“Your parents might take comfort in knowing you’re alive, with a chance to be happy even if that isn’t with them.”
“Well, okay, thanks for that, but you’re not the one who’d put my folks at risk. They say the wrong thing to the wrong person, and Vance would be all over them in a heartbeat. What would be the point—”
“Kate.”
“Shut up, I’m not finished. You’re not the one who’d have to say good-bye again. I would, and why would I want to tear them up like that? Better for me to just stay dead—”
“Kate, honey, I’m not kidding. Be quiet a second and pay attention to what your senses are telling you.” A moment’s silence. “There it is again. You catch that?”
“Yeah.” Her anger sputtered as aromas and odors filled her nose. Even with the wind working against her, they were very strong: fresh wood smoke, the funk of sweat and dog, the very faint tang of wet iron.
The brackish funk of blood.
“How far away?” Jack asked.
“I can’t tell. Close, I think.” Boy, that dog worried her. What it might do about the wolves was anybody’s guess. She glanced right. The wolves were at attention, ears pricked forward, noses up. The alpha met her gaze, his eyes bright green coins in her headlamp, and then he did an odd thing. Ducking his massive head, the gray inched a little closer—and whimpered.
She’d spent a lifetime around animals on the farm. She’d seen Six do this, too, sidle up to Tompkins for comfort. If she wanted, she could reach out now and ruffle the gray’s ears. But why was the wolf worried? Getting nervy about the dog, she could see. But anxious?
“Maybe it’s not worried in the way you mean, Kate. You’re assuming the wolves are worried about what they sense ahead.”
“You think they’re worried about me? For me?”
“I’m suggesting they’re as sensitive to you as you are to them. That gray’s decided you belong to one another, and not as a pet, either. More like Tompkins and Six.”
“They were a team. Tompkins was in charge.” No, that wasn’t always strictly true. There were moments when Six simply refused to budge until his stupid human got the message. The dog knew its job well. With the wolves, it was like Wittgenstein: a lion might learn to speak, but a person could never understand.
“Well,” Jack said, “unless you’re learning wolf.”
4
“Naw, I don’t think you’re not crying wolf here,” Mark said, slipping a needle into the crook of the girl’s uninjured arm. “This is one hurting kid. She’s really been unconscious the whole time? Hasn’t said anything?”
“Not a word.” Sarah watched as Mark plugged in an IV line and then thumbed open a roller clamp to start the flow of saline from a bag they’d hooked to a nail in a ceiling joist in lieu of an IV pole.
The girl looked like crap. She hadn’t so much as flinched or even twitched when Mark slid that needle in. Her skin was pallid, the hollows under her almond-shaped eyes the color of old coffee. Her lips were so pale they were almost transparent. In the nine hours and change since Sarah and Hank had discovered her, the girl’s arm had purpled and the tissue begun to grow mucky. The bandages weren’t sodden, but Sarah didn’t like all the ooze or that faint odor of rotten meat. Her fault. She should’ve taken off these old dressings hours before. In her defense, she had been so focused on getting a landing area cleared for a rescue chopper, she let it slide, reasoning the girl would be receiving proper care soon enough. Idiot. In the time Mark had been there, she’d boiled up two pots of water, which Mark let cool then used to flush the wounds, aiming jets of water through a large-bore syringe to clean away muck. For crying out loud, she should’ve thought of doing the same thing hours ago. What was wrong with her?
“What about her pack?” Mark asked.
“Nothing much except duct tape, a couple energy bar wrappers.” From the opposite side of the blanket she and Hank had strung to screen the girl, there came a rattle of tags as one of the dogs gave itself a shake. N
either had been happy to be excluded, Soldier in particular, who’d seemed to think guarding the girl was his job, but she hadn’t wanted the dogs around when she and Mark took down dressings. The poor girl was in enough trouble already without dog hair or saliva getting into the mix. Handing over a strip of surgical tape, she said, “No ID. I think she got out in a hurry and just grabbed the nearest thing. Lucky she had duct tape. She’d never have made it this far otherwise. The question is, what was she doing out here in the first place?”
“She could be a runaway.” Accepting the tape, Mark carefully secured the needle. “Wandered into some hunters’ camp. They might have taken her in and then she skedaddled or ... you know.” He shrugged. “There might have been some trouble.”
Trouble. He meant assault and maybe worse. The thought sent a shiver leapfrogging up her spine. She’d checked, but if forced to write all she knew about a rape exam, she’d fill a postage stamp and still have room. “You’re thinking a runaway they wanted to shut up.”
“She wouldn’t be the first kid who hitched a ride and then got into deep shit. Or it still might have been a hunting accident. She’s wearing black. Be easy to mistake her for game.”
“Someone gets shot once, that’s probably an accident. A kid gets plugged twice with time in-between, it’s not. She took a bullet to the back.”
“Running, you mean.”
“Be my guess. Besides, there’s nothing upslope to hunt.”
“Except you found her in a gully, going uphill. That suggests she was lower and then tried working herself higher. She could be from town.”
“Lonesome’s not that big. An Asian kid would stand out.”
“Unless she was a hitchhiker some trucker picked up. She gets out in Lonesome, gets herself into trouble ...”
“Doesn’t work. We found her on a side of the mountain that’s tough to get to from town. She had to come in from the north.” She thought about that a second. “I wonder why the guy didn’t track and finish her off.”
“Well, it didn’t snow until a couple days ago. That would make tracking easier, if someone even did. She’d have had a head start.”
“I think it’s obvious someone came after her. You’ve got two gunshot wounds, one older, one more recent.”
“Okay. Whatever. You might be right.”
His tone set her teeth. “Don’t blow me off.”
“Was I? I wasn’t aware. I was just thinking, though, it’s probably safe to assume any bad guys after her would’ve shown up by now. Present company excluded, no one’s nuts enough to be out in this.” Mark gave the Remington propped by the front door a pointed glance. “Maybe it’s a good thing we met outdoors.”
So she couldn’t aerate him by accident was what he meant. Well, maybe Mark was right. She and Hank had found the girl in a gulley almost a half mile downhill. Anyone hell bent on tracking her should’ve shown himself by now. Hank would already have briefed the sheriff, too. She wondered if they’d mounted a search or set up roadblocks. “Mark, you’ve seen combat. Any way you can tell the weapon or the bullet or whatever? I mean, other than a rifle. That might help narrow things down in terms of a search.”
“Not really.” Mark adjusted the saline’s drip rate. “I’m not sure it much matters, either.”
“Oh?” She was surprised. Her professors always emphasized the importance of ballistic analysis. Exit wounds were sometimes very helpful in determining the weapon used. Small caliber bullets without a lot of speed, such as .22s, tended not to exit; it was also why some fortunate souls could live out their lives with a bullet rattling around their skull. The entrance wounds from high-velocity rounds and somewhat slower, heavier, and larger bullets might look the same, but the more energy a bullet had going in, the more of an exit wound it blew out. One professor spent an entire lab period firing different caliber weapons into a side of beef. A slug from a high-velocity rifle could chunk out a wound the size of a softball. “Doesn’t the exit wound tell you something? Hank thought she’d been shot as she was running away and from someone higher up. You have to be tracking pretty carefully to bring someone down on the fly, don’t you? Like a sniper?”
“A sniper?” A nose wrinkle, as if the words tasted bad. “I thought we were talking hunters.”
No, he had. “This doesn’t feel accidental to me.”
“Yeah, I’m kind of getting that vibe. Look, I’m not saying this isn’t important in the long run, or even reasonable. I’m not just sure how figuring out the kind of weapon helps.”
“Well, if I were a deputy at a roadblock, I’d want to know what I’m looking for.”
“No one’s driving tonight, Sarah.”
“But they might tomorrow.”
“Sure. Okay. Of course, you’re right.”
His tone practically screamed there-there. “Why are you blowing me off about this?”
“We’re back to that?” Sighing, Mark gave her right arm a squeeze. “Look, I’m just really tired, okay? Of course, you have a good point. I didn’t mean to piss you off.”
“I’m not pissed off.” She was, as her grandmother would say, a little nettled. She also noticed he hadn’t taken his hand from her arm, and that gave her an odd feeling, not all of it bad. He actually was a pretty good-looking guy. Not that she was looking, mind you. She’d only happened to notice he wasn’t entirely objectionable. She didn’t normally like facial hair; men in these parts tended to let theirs grow mountain-man wiry and wild. By contrast, Mark’s dark-brown, well-trimmed beard and moustache suited his features, which were square and strong. He had the high cheekbones to carry off the beard, though his gray eyes were a bit small. If they’d been a touch bluer, he could’ve been the stunt double for that actor who played Thor. And then, of course, there was the rest of the package: good shoulders, nice butt.
My God, you sound like the girlfriend in a chick flick who hasn’t had sex since the Pleistocene. Weird, a guy this hot hadn’t made Lonesome’s gossip mill. Josie, her search and rescue mentor, knew everything about everybody. A man like Mark she’d have mentioned.
“I was only looking for something that might help figure out who did this,” she said.
“And I’m with you on that. I’m just more focused on keeping her alive than the whodunit. Now, she’s got bowel sounds, and that’s means you’re more than likely right and that flank wound’s an in and out and missed anything vital. We get enough fluids into her to keep her kidneys going and make up for some of that blood loss. We might just keep her tanking along until we can get her down. She could even wake up.”
That would be good. Then the girl might tell them what happened. Well, if she spoke English. “Can we do anything else for her? She’s still a real setup for an infection.”
“Took the words right out of my mouth.” Unzipping another compartment of his pouch, Mark rooted around then tugged out a much smaller plastic IV bag about the size of a paperback. The top half of the pouch was filled with a clear fluid separated from a white powder in the lower half by a foil strip that he now pulled off. “Broad-spectrum antibiotic,” he said, folding the pouch in half and massaging the bag in both hands. “Never leave home without it.”
“Cool.” She watched as the liquid turned milky. “You always this well prepared?”
“Most of the time.” He flashed another grin, which she decided she liked. “Once a combat medic, always a combat medic because you just never know.”
As he backfilled a secondary line with fluid, she held out a hand. “Give me the mini-bag. I’ll hang it and screw in the secondary line.”
“Thanks.” He waited as she clambered onto a chair and slipped the bag onto another nail. Opening all the roller clamps, he nodded as antibiotic streamed into the primary. “That’ll do her. We’ll repeat in twelve hours.”
“I hope she’s long gone by then.”
“Wouldn’t count on it, even if the snow does let up. Speaking of which ...” Pushing up on his thighs, Mark put both hands to the small of his back and arched
until the bones cracked. “I’d better call in, let everyone know I made it, give them a status update.”
“Good luck with that,” she said as they ducked around the blanket. “Radios don’t work all that well up here. Not even sat phones.”
“Still got to give it a try.” Dumping his pouch on her table, Mark pulled on his parka then his vest. He unhooked the radio she’d spotted earlier. “This might do the trick.”
No way that radio—slim and black with a thick, rubberized rigid antenna—was standard issue. Compared to what this guy had, Hank’s department-issue unit looked like a kid’s toy. Mark had more tools and gadgets than a Leatherman. “What kind of radio is that?”
That nice grin again. “Special forces. We used them in-country. Got a range of about twelve miles and don’t weigh much. The county doesn’t care what we use so long as we can send and receive on all the right channels. How’s reception from that tower? It’s got a trap, right? Is it unlocked?”
“Yeah, it’s open. They only padlock the trap onto the catwalk once the season’s over, but you’re saying you want to go up to the top of the tower now?” The steel steps would be icy and treacherous. The last thing either needed was for Mark to become a patient. “First off, it’s freezing, Mark, not to mention still snowing. Reception’s always crappy up here, too. On the other hand, I’ve never used a radio like that.”
“What do you do in an emergency?”
Pray. “I haven’t had one until now.”
“Well, I got to try.” He moved for the door. “My mom always said I was half-goat.”
“Hang on.” Taking her still-dripping parka from its peg, she shoved an arm into a sleeve. “At least let me come out and give you some decent light.”
“Naw.” He strapped on his headlamp. “This’ll do. But I could use something hot. I brought some MREs just in case, but if you’ve got something better ...”
“Oh. Sure.” At the mention of food, her stomach growled. She’d completely forgotten to feed the dogs, too. What time was it, anyway? Had to be close to eleven. “You okay with beef stew? I can heat up some beans, too, and I have canned peaches.” Could she make a cobbler? She had tinned milk, flour, sugar. She almost blurted out a suggestion they make snow ice cream as Hank had taught her but caught herself. Mark seemed like a nice guy, but what was with the sudden Martha Stewart? She was getting as giddy as a sixteen-year-old.