by JJ Pike
She felt in his waistband. Fumbled with the snap on the sheath. She took out his beautiful knife with the antler handle and gave it to Barb. What was she going to do with it? She couldn’t touch his bandages or the tourniquet. They had nothing fresh, nothing clean. Their only hope was to get out of the subway tunnel and find a doctor. They would amputate at the elbow, but that wasn’t so bad. He was alive. Bill was alive.
The thought brought her terror and panic down a notch. Bill was alive.
Barb was talking to him. Was he saying words? What words? She had to know.
“I am going to need you to pretend you are a pirate,” said Barb.
Alice laughed, though it was more like a bark than a laugh. “I don’t need to look away. I’m fine. Tell me what I need to do. What does he say?”
“I’m going to remove the bone.”
“What? No. We can’t do that down here. We need to get him to the surface.”
“I think he’s right. We remove the bone and cauterize the wound.”
Alice’s brain fizzed out. No warning, no rising sensation or dread, just darkness.
When she woke there was a fire at the far end of the subway car. Bill was propped up a few feet away from the fire and Barb had his knife in the center of the flame. She crawled to her husband’s side. She had to be there, to help, to be of some use.
“We have no sedatives, no alcohol, nothing that will help him. He made it through the first phase, so it’s possible that he’s no longer sensing pain in the same way he was when I removed the bones.”
Alice could only stare. Who was this sensible woman and what had she done with loony Barb?
“I took a course in pain management after my daughter died. Depression increases the perception of pain and I have a lower lumbar injury that flares up when I get particularly stressed, so I went to NYU and took a course so I could learn how to manage it. Took me forever to convince them to sign me up, but my shrink wrote a letter citing chapter and verse and eventually they let me in. I was the only non-nurse in there. I made some good friends.” There she was. Mad Barb was still tucked inside crazy-practical Barb.
Alice leaned against Bill. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she did want him to know that she was there. He turned his head and looked right at her. His face was covered in sweat, his eyes brimming with tears. He’d done this for her. What could she do for him?
“Talk to him,” said Barb. “Tell him that you love him. That will help.”
“We will be out of here soon,” said Alice. “We’ll go back to the cabin, see the kids, take a vacation. Maybe we can go back to the Gulf of Mexico with your mom and rent a beach house. She’d like that. She told me she wanted to get away to a sunny place.”
“Move to one side,” said Barb.
“Move?”
“He might lash out. This is going to hurt.”
Barb had to have taken all the bags in the subway car and emptied them of anything flammable to make such a blaze. The knife still sat in the fire. It wasn’t glowing. It needed to glow, didn’t it, before they could do what they were going to do? Alice still couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that they were going to hold that blade to his flesh.
Barb held a bar up to Bill’s mouth. Something to bite down on. Bill turned his face from Alice and accepted the bite block. But it wasn’t a bar. It was his bone. Alice had to fight the nausea and panic. It was unreal. Of all the things that had happened to her, this was the worst.
“You need to move further away from him,” said Barb. “I’m serious.”
“I’m not moving. I’ll stay here.” Alice held her husband’s hand, though it was slack in his lap. “I love you, William. I love you more than you will ever know.”
The sound of his cries was rivaled by the smell of barbequed flesh.
Barb held the heated knife to his wounds not once, not twice, but five times. She had to heat the knife between applications. It was a living nightmare. Bill dropped the bone from his mouth the instant the knife was applied, so he’d been cursing up a storm though not once did he curse her or their children or their life.
Barb took the phone and held the light to the burned stump of Bill’s arm. “I wouldn’t take the tourniquet off just yet. That might buy us some time.” She slid her arm under Bill and indicated Alice should do the same.
“So soon?” said Alice.
“The water’s coming,” said Barb.
Alice turned to see the water lapping at the step to the subway car. Barb was right, they had to move now.
Bill’s progress was slow. He leaned on the women, dragging his feet. But he never complained and he never gave up. It took them 15 minutes to clear two cars and make it back to Maggie-loo and Pete. The dog had stayed at Pete’s side, tail thumping as soon as she saw them.
“We’re going to sit him down and check on the others.”
Alice eased Bill into a chair. She stroked his hair, whispering all the while, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
Barb was back sooner than she’d expected. “The boy didn’t make it.”
Alice nodded. She understood the words, but there were no feelings attached to the fact that a young man had died in the last hour.
“You’re going to have to support Bill and I’ll help Pete and the four of us will evacuate the premises.”
“With Maggie-loo?” Alice didn’t want to be too close to the dog, but she’d brought her back to her husband. How could she not be grateful?
“Maggie-loo is good. She will never leave Pete. Once I get him moving, she’ll follow.” Barb went to Pete. He threw his arm around Barb and the three of them stumbled to the end of the train.
“With me, my love. We’re almost there.” Alice picked Bill’s arm up and draped it around her shoulder. It flopped behind her. She lifted it again. “Just a little while longer. We have to make it. You can’t give up.”
“Come on, you guys.” Barb shouted as she pulled the door open. The stench of sewage filled the compartment. It was going to be hell wading through all those germs and contaminants and infectious agents. “We need to go now.”
Alice watched her friend sit Pete down on the edge of the train, his feet already in the water, then skootch herself in front of him so he had someone to lean on as he splashed down beside her. The water lapped the step and receded, lapped and receded.
Alice knew she couldn’t carry Bill, but neither could they stay put.
Maggie-loo leapt into the water behind Pete and Barb.
Now it was just the two of them, Bill almost passed out from pain, Alice exhausted and out of options.
The dead kid. He’d been wearing one of those long Goth coats that Paula had been so fond of in her “emo” phase. Alice grabbed Bill’s knife and ran to the kid. She apologized as she cut his coat from his still-warm body, thanking him and asking God to protect him all the while.
She raced back to Bill to find him prone on the seat. “Don’t die. Don’t die. You and me, #notdead.”
She looped her hands under his arms and slid him down onto the coat on the floor. She grabbed the collar and heaved. He moved an inch. She pulled again. He inched forward. She didn’t care how long it was going to take, she was going to drag him to freedom.
The water came into the car, racing down towards them in a rush of foam and grime and foulness. She pulled, Bill budged. She pulled, he slid. The water, disgusting as it was, helped them. Alice managed three steps before she had to stop again. She puffed, reaching into her last store of energy.
“You can do this, Mom. Winners never quit, quitters never win.” Thank you, Paul. You’re everything a mother could hope for in a son.
“Are you ready, my darling? We’re going to swim.” Alice jumped into the water. It was up to her armpits now. Bill was a deadweight, but the water was in their favor. She dragged him to the end of the train and pulled him in beside her. He went under. She panicked, diving in the filth to bring him back to the surface, flipping him on his back so she could float him t
o safety.
The subway beneath her feet was a mess. She tripped, she lost Bill, she found him, she went on. She held her face close to his, telling him all the while that he was her everything. He had to know that. That was why he had come, because he knew she would never survive without him.
“It’s going to be different now,” she said. “I’m going to be different.”
Bill didn’t answer. He was out. She prayed as she had never prayed in her life that he wasn’t dead.
There was a mighty splash behind her. She turned to find Barb at her side. “Figured you could use some help.”
“Where’s Pete?”
“On the platform. He’ll be fine. Maggie-loo’s looking after him.”
The two women made better time than Alice had made on her own. They reached the station in under ten minutes, though the water had already crested the platform and was bouncing off the pillars, making waves.
Barb climbed out first, then held Bill’s arm so he didn’t float off while Alice clambered onto the platform.
“Nearly there,” she said. “We’ll get out of this mess, find you a hospital, get you situated, then be home.”
Together the women pulled Bill out of the water.
“I’ll get Pete upstairs, then come back for you.”
Alice nodded, dragging Bill to the steps that led to their freedom. So close. Her heart was in her mouth and while her muscles screamed in protest, she lugged Bill up one step, rested, then another, rested.
Fifteen minutes later, Barb was back at her side, red in the face and sweating like a madwoman, but undaunted. “You ready? One, two, three, lift.”
Bill was a deadweight, his head flopping towards his chest as they carted him up three flights of stairs.
#notdead, she thought. #notdead, #notdead, #notdead.
Alice could smell the fresh air. Good old Manhattan, a stinking hodge-podge of contradictions that added up to a place she adored.
They broke out of the subway and onto the street.
Pete was laid out on the sidewalk, Maggie-loo lying at his side. Barb was a mess of cuts and bruises and streaks of blood, some hers, most of it not. Bill was tattered and torn and burned and bruised, but he was breathing. Alice didn’t care what she looked like. They’d made it.
She was far enough downtown that she wouldn’t be able to see K&P, but she turned to survey the city that had dominated her life for so many years.
Manhattan was unrecognizable. Buildings had fallen leaving gaps in the skyline. There were ropy coils of black smoke reaching into the sky. It was a war zone. But they were so far south of the collapse. What had happened? Had the fire department detonated more explosives? To what end? It was incomprehensible.
A plane buzzed overhead, swooping in low and making her duck for cover. Another followed in its wake. They were too low for commercial aircraft. They were military. Jets. They dipped and soared, circling back and taking another pass. They skimmed the buildings towards the East River, then ducked out of view. A fireball shot up into the air, raining molten debris down on the city. It was impossible. Impossible. #notdead, but for how long? Manhattan was under attack.
MELT – Book 4
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Special Thanks
Many thanks to my awesome Beta Team, without whom none of my books would be possible. -Mike
Though writing is usually a solitary act, we're lucky enough to have two brains to bash together to keep us on story-telling track. Beyond the names on the cover, there's a team of professionals behind the paper curtain who make us look like we know what we're doing. I'd like to thank my editor, Erin McCabe, who's wit, wisdom, and brilliance keeps me from sailing into obscurity; the talented Christian Bentulan for his beautiful covers; and our dedicated team of Beta-readers, who give their time, talent, and opinions freely. Any errors that have slipped through the net are mine and mine alone. – JJ Pike