by Kenny Soward
The woman’s legs tensed as she struggled to move against those who were holding her down. Her eyes moved back and forth across the ceiling and then lit on the man holding her left arm. Her mouth moved as if to say something, though all that escaped was a sigh. When she failed to inhale, Natasha checked her wrist for a pulse. Apparently not finding one, Natasha moved her fingers to the woman’s neck to check the carotid artery as well. After a moment, she drew back with a shake of her head.
The man next to Sara caught Natasha’s expression before his eyes fell to the dead woman. “Oh, no, Jen!” he sobbed loudly, face contorted with emotion. “You can’t leave me. You can’t!”
Sara didn’t know the man, but her first instinct was to turn and comfort him.
“Sara.”
Sara raised her eyes to Natasha, whose expression was firm and steady as she held up the bloody instruments. “Have Todd clean these and drop them into the boiling water, okay? Then grab a fresh pair from the table.”
“Right,” Sara turned away from the couple and reached out to take the instruments, her hands shaking slightly as Natasha placed them in her palm.
Sara quickly stood and took the bloody instruments to the breakfast bar where Todd was waiting. She set them down, peeled off her bloody latex gloves, and pumped hand sanitizer into her palms. Once the sanitizer was absorbed, she snapped on a new pair of gloves and brought the fresh instruments over to where Natasha was working on the man with the head injury.
Natasha worked on the fleshy flap and told Sara to attend to the man’s missing fingers. The man held up his hand for her, and Sara grasped his wrist. Blood dripped from the three stumps down to the wrist where it saturated the tourniquet someone had placed on him. Sara ignored the warm, sticky wetness growing around her fingers and used a saline-soaked towel to get most of the dirt and blood off before she disinfected the area and began wrapping a bandage around all three fingers. The man winced and squirmed the entire time, and Sara couldn’t imagine how much it must hurt.
“Pack the gauze tight over the stumps,” Natasha said in a firm tone.
“Sorry,” Sara said, not sure if she was apologizing to the man or to Natasha. She pulled away part of the bandage, packed the gauze a little better, and then re-wrapped it.
Someone shrieked into a rag, and the salt-tangy smell of blood filled the air. The moaning and groaning grew incessant as Sara finished with the finger bandage, leaned forward, and tore the tape with her teeth before placing the man’s hand down against his chest.
“Doc!” someone shouted. “I think Sam is about to go.”
“You’re going to need to stitch this up,” Natasha said, hurriedly. Seeing Sara’s look of confusion, Natasha sharpened her tone and nodded at the clean flap of skin she’d fit neatly back into the gap in the man’s skull. “His head.“
“I can’t—”
“You’ve seen me stitch wounds at least three times. Remember how I did it, and do it.”
Then Natasha was gone, leaving her alone with the wounded man and one of his Good Folk friends who rested on her knees nearby.
“Sorry,” the wounded man said with a bloody grin at Sara. “Don’t worry, lady. I won’t scream.”
“Damn right you won’t,” his female accomplice said. She knee-walked closer and held out an open flask. The scent of the whiskey was slightly nauseating, yet at the same time it briefly cut through the other smells; fear, blood, and death.
Sara allowed the woman to feed her friend the whiskey as she started to sew him up. Natasha had assembled several sewing kits days before in the event they received wounded, and Sara was thankful for the woman’s preparedness. She unwrapped the clean wash rag to find a curved needle and some hospital-grade thread. She remembered how Natasha had sewn up Tex and tried to follow the process to the letter. She didn’t have time to worry about the man’s pain as she jabbed the needle into his skin and began to sew around the edges. It was almost a perfect two-by-two-inch square, except for one section where Sara had to work to find solid skin to put the needle through.
“Just like sewing up a hole in Todd’s jeans,” Sara murmured.
Then the skin flap shifted slightly beneath her fingers, and Sara caught a glimpse of the man’s skull gleaming white beneath the blood and fatty tissue.
“I need a towel,” Sara called out as she pushed the flap of skin back into place and held it. When no one came right away, her frustration boiled over and her voice took on an angry edge. “Someone bring me a damn towel!”
Barbara and Karen had gone out to round up every other towel they could find from the other cabins, and Todd wasn’t exactly swift with his injured ribs. Sara was about to get really angry, when the man’s companion rushed into the kitchen and brought over a fresh towel.
“Dab it.” Sara nodded at the bit of blood that had begun to run into the man’s eyes. The woman did as she was told and got the area clean enough for Sara to continue, and she was done in another fifteen minutes.
They worked that way for the next several hours, Natasha handling the worst injuries while Sara attended to the less severe ones. Barbara and Karen returned with the towels and lent their hands, which settled Sara’s nerves considerably.
They’d worked through six wounded when the front door of the cabin opened. Sara glanced over to see Tex step through with Zoe in tow. The little girl’s eyes went wide at the scene in the living room. There was blood everywhere. On the floor and walls. On their clothing and skin.
A hot streak flew up Sara’s spine, and she stood and walked past a pile of bloody towels to descend upon the old man.
Tex saw her coming, and he held up his hands in an appeasing manner. “Now, hold on, Sara. I—”
“Todd, take her upstairs,” Sara commanded, and Todd instantly turned away from the pot of boiling water to get his sister.
“Mom, I—”
“Not now, honey.” Sara didn’t feel remotely human, and she probably looked a lot worse. She wasn’t ready to deal with Zoe’s questions.
Todd started to turn the little girl up the stairs and stopped when Kayla pushed through the door behind him, leaning on the crutch Frank had made for her. “I’ll take her,” Kayla said, holding out her hand to the little girl.
Sara glanced at Todd and then nodded to Kayla. “Thanks, Kayla. Zo, I want you to go with Kayla.”
Zoe’s eyes moved from her mother’s blood splattered shirt to Kayla. “Go where?”
Kayla reached farther, sparing a glance at Sara. “We can help sort the towels and make sure people are comfortable.”
Sara wanted to protest, though there was no sense in hiding the from her daughter. And they needed the help.
Sara nodded at Kayla. “Okay, that’s fine. But don’t let her touch anything—”
“Too bloody. Got it.”
Zoe took Kayla’s open hand and allowed herself to be taken into the laundry room. When they were out of sight, Sara turned her fierce gaze on Tex.
“I’m sorry, Sara. I—”
“Where are Rex and Astro?” she asked.
“I put them in Dion and Natasha’s cabin. They’re fine. I finished with what I was doing and wanted to get that generator connected.”
“I though you were supposed to have that done already? We need to get the washing machine going so we can wash some of these towels. And we need heat, too.”
“Mom, are you okay?” Todd interjected with a look of concern. “I mean, I know you’re tired. We all are. But we can’t afford to tear each other apart right now.”
Sara looked at her son and then back at Tex. She blinked at the older man staring at the floor, and the heat in her head instantly faded. “Oh, gosh. I’m sorry, Tex. I’m just stressed to the max. There’s so much blood…”
“No worries, Sara. You’re right. I should have gotten that generator hooked up for you first.” Tex gave her a pointed look. “I’ll do it right now.” He turned and descended the landing to the basement with a fairly quick step.
“Sar
a!” Natasha called. “I need you!”
“Coming.” Sara flashed Todd an apologetic look and wiped the back of her hand across her sweaty brow. “As soon as Tex gets the electricity on, Kayla and Zoe can wash the towels.”
“I’ll make sure they get started on it as soon as the electricity is on,” Todd said before he moved gingerly back to the kitchen.
Sara turned to the wounded and dying with a heavy sigh and willed her weary body to keep moving.
Eight hours later, Sara walked stiffly outside with Natasha and Barbara. “I worked some long shifts as a waitress in my day,” she said, “but that was rough.” It was late evening, and the winds were still screaming mad, but there was a back corner of the porch beneath the upper deck where the winds didn’t touch.
It was a refuge from the moaning and wailing victims of the horrific attack on the Good Folk. It was a refuge from the stench of blood and death. The bitter coffee they drank helped with that, too. Each of them held a steaming hot mug in their hands, and Sara relished the warmth that traveled up her sore wrists.
“Healthcare is not an easy profession by any stretch of the imagination.” Natasha looked tired, yet she seemed to thrive on the chaos. No, it wasn’t that she thrived on the chaos. She thrived on forming the chaos into something resembling order, comfort, and safety. And she was ruthless about it. A real captain of healing. “Emergency room work can really push you to your limits.”
Barbara stretched her legs out from where she sat on a porch chair that hadn’t blown off the side of the mountain. “I thought about getting into nursing out of high school, but I think this kind of work requires a special breed. You were awesome in there, Tash.”
Natasha scoffed. “Shoot, I’m no doctor. If it weren’t for you two, we would have lost five or six of those folks.”
“Wait until Jake hears about my first time stitching someone up,” Sara said, shaking her head in wonderment.
“I hope he’s not squeamish,” Natasha said. “That last guy we treated… when his blood pressure dropped, I thought he was a goner. You and Barbara stabilized him.”
Barbara gave a half-hearted salute. “I just found the holes and applied pressure.”
“You found his nicked radial artery and got some pressure on it quick. Held it with one hand while helping Sara clean and stitch someone else.”
“All in a day’s work,” Barbara shrugged.
Sara smiled at the girl before she reached over and put her warm hand over Barbara’s. The girl turned her head, regarding Sara with a questioning look. Sara didn’t say anything, and she didn’t expect anything from the girl. Yet, Barbara was starting to feel like a daughter to Sara, someone her own daughter could look up to.
The back door opened, and Steven stepped outside. He closed the door behind him and walked around with a pot of coffee.
“Top you ladies off?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sara said with a single enthusiastic nod. She held out her cup and gave Steven a weary grin.
“Most definitely.” Barbara echoed Sara’s sentiment and held her cup out eagerly.
Steven poured the round and held the pot out to Natasha.
“Not me.” The nurse stood up. “Break time is over. Time to collect some blood. Your healthy people game, Steven?”
“Just ask them.” Steven nodded. “They’ll line up to give every ounce of blood they have.”
“I just need a pint from each.” Natasha gave her hands a single clap, picked up her coffee cup, and slipped back inside the cabin.
Steven watched Natasha for a moment before he turned back to Sara and Barbara. “That woman is incredible.”
“Tell me about it,” Sara agreed. “She’s worth her weight in gold.”
Steven placed the pot down on a bench that ran along the rail and then turned to face them, crossing his arms across his wide chest. “Ladies, I just wanted to thank you for what you did today. A lot of people owe you their lives.”
Sara winced up at him, thinking of how she’d first reacted upon seeing the wounded. “I wish I hadn’t frozen. You know, at the beginning.”
“You got over it quick. I have to say, I’m impressed.”
“The question I have for you, Steve,” Sara said, ignoring the compliment. “What happened to your people out there?”
“We’d just taken back the hospital from a group of local thugs. The last ones we were aware of in the area. Everyone was pretty happy about that. We were on our way to Trailmarker’s when the same crawler unit we ran into a couple of weeks ago hit us. Honestly, we’d been avoiding them since that first run-in. The military folks up at White Pine promised their help, so we keep waiting on them.”
“We may have run into those crawlers a few days ago.” Sara glanced at Barbara.
Steven straightened. “And you lived? That’s something to brag about.”
“It wasn’t a full unit.” Sara shook her head. “Just one and a half guards.”
“One and a half?”
Sara launched into the story about how she and Barbara had been out scavenging when they’d come to the lodge and found Kayla outside injured and bleeding. About how Barbara had taken the girl out to the car while Sara had gone inside to check on the rest of Kayla’s family. Finally, Sara recounted the firefight inside the lodge, getting her ear shot off, and Rex’s part in helping subdue the crawler operative who’d come out of the bathroom. She recalled how she and Barbara had taken down the wounded crawler at the end. She told the story quickly, her words coming out in a rush as the emotions of that day welled up inside her again.
Finally, she told Steven about the three crawlers who’d come to the gate yesterday and questioned Sara’s people. She described the tense situation, the ensuing firefight, and how Sara and Dion had run them down on Pine Bluff Road.
When she was done, Steven looked back and forth between the two women, and his gray eyes were filled with admiration. “That’s quite a story, Missus Walton. I would say you two are lucky to be alive, but I’m not surprised you came out of it on top. Not surprised at all.”
The generator roared to life on the deck below them, and a second later the porch light came on. That meant at least the cabin would have light and heat as long as they could keep the generator filled with fuel.
“Way to go, Tex,” Sara said with a soft cheer, and she raised her cup of coffee and clinked it against Barbara’s in sober celebration.
Chapter 3
Yi, Pine Bluff Mountain, Tennessee | Several hours earlier
Chen drove the rattling Ford Explorer to the foot of the road and started to pull onto it.
“Stop here for a moment,” Yi said. His eyes looked past the big sign on the corner that read Pine Bluff Road and followed the road up to multiple bumps until it came to a sudden curve that wound up into the mountain. A trail of vehicles disappeared out of sight around the bend. It was the remnants of the Good Folk force they’d just attacked on the road. They’d hit them once, wounded several of them, and then withdrew to watch where the militia people scurried off to.
“Is that their camp?” Ivan asked from the back seat as he watched the trail of cars.
“I don’t know,” Yi murmured. He didn’t, though a good feeling began to permeate his psyche. These militia people had been a nuisance ever since he and his dragon warriors had started operating in the area. They’d even surprised them on the road once—Yi’s first and only setback. Since then, the locals had started to organize and subdue the criminal elements in the area, the very ones Yi had originally stirred up.
If it was their base of operations, Yi could crush them once and for all.
He looked in his side mirror and saw Katrya and the rest of their forces behind them. Almost twenty deadly operatives, armed to the hilt and filled with a newfound sense of purpose.
“Follow them, Yi.” Katrya’s order came through Yi’s helmet.
“I suggest a few of us go on foot to scout ahead,” Yi said, “and drive the rest of the vehicles back down the road in ca
se the militia people return.”
“Very well,” Katrya responded. “Myself, Yi, Chen, and Elsa.”
Yi glanced over at Chen with a nod. Chen pulled the Explorer off the road and put it in part. They both got out and walked to the front fender. Katrya and Elsa met them there, and together they walked up the road.
“Slowly,” Yi reminded them as his eyes scanned in all directions, his rifle cradled in his left arm.
The road grew steeper as they approached the first of the hilly bumps, and Yi spotted a flash of reflective plastic scattered on the road. It looked like an accident had happened.
“Stop!” Yi exclaimed. “Right here.”
“What is it?” Katrya asked.
“Something on the road.” Yi’s eyes narrowed as he put together the story of the scattered debris before him: pieces of indeterminate metal, fiberglass, and screws; two puddles of antifreeze streaking the pavement green; several fresh oil stains; fragments of glass strewn across the rough concrete.
A fresh wreck, for certain. But what did it mean?
On a whim, Yi lowered the tactical display on his helmet and turned on the magnification setting. He looked up the road where the militia people had disappeared and then scanned higher up the side of the mountain.
There, barely visible on an outcrop, was a lookout platform with a man standing on it.
“Stand back!” Yi called out to the others, gesturing to a copse of trees on the left-hand side of the road. “Behind the shadow of these trees.”
“What is it?” Katrya held her rifle tightly in both hands, barrel pointed at the ground and impatience written across her face in a grotesque frown. “What did you see?”
“Two things,” Yi stated. “One, they have a lookout perched on one of the outcroppings and would see us if we moved up any further.” Then he pointed at the other side of the road directly across from them. “Two, I believe there was a wreck here, and the vehicles were pushed over the side of the road.”