Free Stories 2015

by Baen Books

  We had a good distance to cover, so we took a shortcut through the canals again and came in through the H’town back door. The back door is also affectionately known as the “ass end” because, like most state projects, conditions suffered in direct proportion to the distance from the public face. As we cruised past lewd graffiti and marula speakeasys, I could see the familiar wake of offal in my mirror. Finally the alley we had been traveling poured us into Broadhead Highway. Nick turned so sharply that we almost slid across a lane, and then he picked up speed and began eating miles. As we topped a big hill I could see a commotion of hyenas a few blocks away in the Little Five Points of H’town. I could also see that we were going to be the first on the scene. This meant I had to quickly assess things and decide how many more units we really needed. Too few and you lack manpower. Too many and someone else does.

  Nick pulled up hard at the intersection and I took a quick look around. I could see hyenas milling about making that chatter that sounds like laughter. Most of them weren't hurt, but were likely bystanders or witnesses. There were several that were injured, though. I counted eight in various levels of walking wounded status. Some were actually walking, others sitting, but all with relatively minor wounds. Well, wounds that could keep for a few anyway. Then on the sidewalk I spotted a small group of girls huddled and wailing over some object on the ground. I took a longer look to see what possession had them so upset and then realized I was gazing at another hyena. This one was a different story. She was a mess of matted hair and blood, and breathing in gasps.

  In the distance I could hear sirens, more than one. I took another quick glance around the scene to double check myself and made a decision. "Change of plans," I said to Nick who looked up at me as I grabbed a backboard. "We’re taking the critical and leaving the rest to whoever’s next." He followed me to her and helped clear the wailers. I could see it was another young female, somewhere between adolescence and the twenty something equivalent in hyena years. She had one big bite mark encompassing her neck and chest. As I looked her over, pink bubbles blew out of a hole in her chest. I put an occlusive dressing over the opening, and looked for more. Nick helped me slip her onto the board and then we loaded her into the truck. Nick started reaching for the IV kit but I stopped him. "I got it, just go."

  The thing about trauma is that it is fixed by blood and surgery, two things I don't have in an ambulance. It is also time sensitive, so the key strategy is to get moving towards a hospital. The challenge is to do that while performing all the supportive tasks that keep the patient alive long enough to benefit from the trip. So as Nick was lifting off I was already working. The fact that I hadn't found my patient in a pool of blood was the best thing going for her. I searched her quickly for any major bleeders. There were lots of wounds but nothing squirting. Somehow the attack had missed major arteries, probably the only reason she was still alive. Her breathing was getting worse so that was my next priority. I grabbed a laryngoscope in one hand and an endotracheal tube in the other. Laryngoscopes are normally used to intubate humans who, by standing erect, have evolved one of the most crooked air paths in nature. The laryngoscope is a like a metal flashlight with a sophisticated pry bar attached. It is used to more or less straighten out the human airway so that you can see the trachea. In other words, it renders the human airway into a more quadrupedal state. Quadrupeds, hyenas for instance, are much easier to tube. You simply open their mouth wide and pull out their tongue to get a good tracheal view. Trouble is that by the square inches hyenas have greater bite force than a lion, which makes for a nasty place to put your hands. So I use the scope a different way, wedging it between the teeth on one side to prevent mishaps. The tube passed easily enough and I hooked up the auto vent. Listening to her lungs afterward I could hear good breath sounds on only one side. The injured side was virtually silent. I checked her pulse and found it weak and tachy. These things together indicated that she had air trapped outside of the injured lung. I took out a large bore IV needle and found a spot just above her third rib from the top. When I pushed it through the chest wall I was rewarded with a hiss of hair and an immediate improvement in her breathing. I listened to her chest again and heard good sounds everywhere. Rechecking the chest dressing I saw pink bubbles coming out from the edges. I ripped that off along with a good patch of the hair that was interfering with the seal. I followed that up with a quick pass with the clippers and then applied another dressing. The seal worked better on skin and I saw no more bubbles.

  I was standing in order to have better access to the chest, and that’s when the ambulance dropped about two feet and lurched hard to one side. "Starboard," came Nick's belated warning. "Sorry. Hippo!" I’ve been ambulance surfing long enough that that didn't throw me off too much, but it did tell me that we had entered the canal again, which meant we were getting close. Strangely enough, ERs really don’t like surprises, so I keyed up my shoulder mike and called the hospital. As they took their usual time to answer I moved back up to the neck and started working the clippers so I could get a better look at those wounds. She had been very lucky. Nothing but minor lacerations, carotids intact. She must have gotten her neck behind the canines. Mostly she had crush injury and thus possibly a broken neck, but she had moved her limbs enough that this didn't seem to be the case. When the ER got back to me, I had moved on to shaving around her jugular, and as I gave a brief report I slipped an IV into it. I had about a minute of travel left so I looked over her body one more time and then put another IV into her forepaw. When we pulled on the hospital ramp she had a good pulse and was breathing on her own.

  #

  I walked out of the ER and found Nick hosing out the back of the truck. One complaint that never changed between partners was that I could really mess up a truck.

  “They took her straight up,” I said in greeting. “We made the hour, man. She very well might make it. Thanks for the gas.”

  Nick nodded thoughtfully. “You really think she’s got a chance?”

  “Yeah, I do. She’s young and healthy, but she sure took a beating back there.” I gestured with my head randomly, even though back there was too far to really register on my sense of direction.

  “And yet you’re glowing’” He said. I looked at him puzzled. “You’ve been a curmudgeon all night, and now nothing but glee.”

  I shrugged, “I like to work.” He raised his eyebrows at this. “I like the real work, Nick, when it matters.”

  He nodded again. “Does it ever make you wonder why you have to be elbow deep in blood to be happy? Doesn’t that seem like a disease when you really think about it?”

  I might have replied with something sarcastic or degrading, but as it was, his remarks caused me to look at myself, not internally but at my clothes. I really was elbow deep in blood. So, “shit!” was my reply.

  With that I headed into the facilities for a wash and change. On the way I made a little mental calculation, sort of a cost benefit analysis. It was never enough for me to just wash out the blood and wear it again. Most diseases are non-zoonotic, that is they don’t cross the species barrier, but enhancement had included human DNA and that blurred the interspecies line. So the shirt was headed for the trash. I finished my change and computation simultaneously and looked in the mirror. “Broke even for the night,” I said to myself. “Just should have stayed home.”

  Those blood stains were often called rookie marks, but in ten years I hadn’t lost them. When I fought for life it was all out, and lesser things became ethereal. It had cost me, but never more than I could afford. Still, Nick was right, I was glowing. For a person who has experienced this sensation so often, I remained ignorant of its source. Was it adrenaline? No, I had lost that response to trauma long ago. The challenge? It didn’t seem all that challenging anymore. Or maybe just the feeling that I had really been useful? I don’t know, I often think I am too jaded to get that feeling now. Because what really was useful? If she lived, chances are she’d be a burden on the state or, worse, anothe
r hyena whore. But despite everything, I believed in the hope of youth. I believed she had some chance and I would give it to her and to everyone who really needed me. And I hated everyone who didn’t and still asked me to do more.

  Yet I knew it was deeper than that. It was something I knew but never voiced. I needed the lions, you see. I absolutely craved them. Early in my career the lions were my favorite people, because they were simply the best trauma producers in town. I could always depend on the lions to give me that glow, to provide me with that sense of usefulness in the world. And these days I hated them, for more than any reason, because they had stopped living up to their end of the bargain. They had grown soft. They weren’t killers; they weren’t king of the beasts. They were overgrown pussycats who needed to be woken up from a drunken stupor. Adult teddy bears who wanted me to hold their hands. The beast was burned out, and what was left sickened me. Deeper still, I knew Nick was right. This was a disease. This was wrong thinking. Yet how could a man walk away from that usefulness? How could you turn away from such a glow?

  #

  With no need to hurry we took the long way back, using the dirt roads that skirted the marshes rather than going through them. Along the way we passed numerous alleyways leading between the trees. These were water routes for buffalo and other hoofers who liked to live traditionally. As we passed by, one shadow caught my eye. “Stop,” I said. Nick looked at me and applied the brakes. “Back up to that alley.” He complied and I got a better look at a strange but familiar lump way down at the other end. “That’s a body”.

  “It’s somebody sleeping.”

  “I don’t think so. Let’s take a look.” We pulled down the path kicking up clouds of dirt with our jets until we couldn’t see. Nick stopped and, when the dust cleared, our headlights revealed a good size buffalo on his belly at the end of the trail near the water. I got out slowly and approached him. Buffaloes sleep on their feet so I knew he wasn’t sleeping, but still I approached with caution. Despite my feelings about lions, I do have a healthy dose of fear of buffalo. Not all of them, of course, but these old loners had a nasty and well earned reputation. They angered easily and were very hard to calm down once they got started. I could see he wasn’t breathing and when I tapped his forehead he was cold.

  While I was checking him out Nick had radioed for AC and soon another set of headlights joined ours. The officer walked up next to me and shined his light down.

  “Natural?” he asked hopefully.

  “Not at all,” I answered. His eyebrows lifted at that. I gestured for him to crouch down next to me and pointed at the nose. “You see that pattern of cuts and bruises?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s a lion bite.” This seemed to confuse him. “He didn’t rip a big hole because that wasn’t his intention. This is a suffocating bite, blocks the mouth and nose. But here’s the more interesting move.” I pointed at some scratch marks on his left horn. “That’s where his right paw was. He pulled him down by the nose but made sure he fell on his horn so his neck would snap.”

  “Huh,” said the cop. “You seen this before?”

  “I read a lot. And I’ve seen a lot of old nature films. Mutual of Omaha. That sort of thing.”

  “Well, if a lion killed him, why hasn’t he been eaten?” That was a good point. I pondered while I looked for any signs of dining.

  “Maybe we scared him off,” said Nick. AC’s eyes grew big and wide as they met mine.

  I flashed my light outward thinking maybe we were being stalked. What I saw was much worse. My light reflected off water—and several pairs of large round eyes. “Hippos!” we all exclaimed, realizing the answer to the perp’s absence. As one we sprinted for the cars and hopped in. Hippos were not to be taken lightly. I heard the cop calling for an elephant squad over the radio and the dispatcher answered that she would advise Fire. We sat for awhile then thanking our luck that we saw the hippos before things got ugly. Shortly thereafter I heard the rumbling of the fire department coming through the jungle. Nick looked into the mirror and his eyes got as big as the hippo.

  “Shit!” was all Nick could get out as he slammed the rig in gear and we swerved up and right. “Those aren’t elephants!”

  A curious rivalry had developed as a result of enhancement. You see, rhinos are nature’s firefighters. Long before genetic science started working on them, rhinos regularly stamped out fires on the plains of Africa. No one knows why, but that’s what they did. For obvious reasons elephants were better suited for the job. Still rhinos insisted on their place in the fire department, and being unlike elephants, that is to say not too bright, they had few other job skills so, much to everyone in public safety’s chagrin, human resources always found a place for them. Unfortunately, in addition to the deficiencies already mentioned, rhinos are myopic.

  The arrival of the rhinos was accompanied by a loud crash and the cursing of the AC officer who apparently lacked Nick’s reflexes. Nick winced, I laughed. “Whew,” I said, punching Nick in the shoulder, “dodged that paperwork. Is the cop all right?” The cop appeared to be fine as he immediately rolled down a window and started screaming at the rhinos trampling his crime scene. Then all hell broke lose as the hippos decided to defend their turf. What followed was about ten minutes of sheer chaos as the two groups of titans clashed, head and tusk. I watched, howling with laughter, as the body was trampled and the crime scene turned into churned mud. Finally the elephants showed up and calmed everyone down.

  We dressed a few wounds on the rhinos and checked the cop for injuries then left the scene. It was late and things were finally quieting down again, time for an end of shift nap. We pulled into a quite spot, off the beaten path and nestled between a grove of trees and a huge termite mound. We were just stretching the seats back when we heard a thump in the back. We looked at each other, Nick at me with alarm and I with annoyance. Someone had slipped in the back while we were dressing rhinos. That happened sometimes, a homeless guy or a drunk looking for a place to sleep.

  “Hey, you can’t sleep back there!” I yelled. Nick turned and looked through the passage to the back. Then he yelled as someone grabbed him. I grabbed my big light and started back. He may be annoying but nobody beats up my partners. I saw Nick sprawled face down on the stretcher with a lion standing on him. “All right, buddy!” I said rearing up to smash him on the nose, and then I saw his eyes. They were wild, not a speck of humanity there, and it hit me then; the dead buffalo, the attack on the hyenas, it all added up. There are stories, urban myths really, of feral unenhanced lions roaming the jungles. I never believed them, but at that moment I decided I was looking at one.

  No one beats up my partner, but even more so, no one eats me. Not the noblest rule to live by, but "live" is the important word in that notion. I was back up front and out the door even faster than I had fled the hippo. Slamming the door behind me, I ran for the trees. I heard the crash of glass and the metal of the door straining as with a great weight, but by this time I had reached the nearest tree. Up I went, six feet, eight, and in a flash I was pulling myself up a good twelve feet off the ground. And then it hit me, the leopard stashes!

  Something viselike grabbed my foot and I was instantly yanked back the way I had come. I hit the ground hard and had the wind forcibly knocked out of me. I could feel my diaphragm spasm in pain as I was rolled over. I looked up and saw three inch fangs dripping over my face. Just as I began to catch my breath again a giant paw stepped on my chest and crushed it out of me. I didn’t see my life flash before me, all I saw was that terrible death grimacing at me. Gasping in carrion laced breath against the weight on my chest I managed an appeal. “Oh God…please!”

  “Thank you,” said the lion. And with that he turned and walked into the trees. I watched him go with a mixture of awe and confusion. I recognized him then. I had seen him twice more that night. Vaguely I realized that the carrion breath had contained a hint of tobacco. I turned and looked back towards the truck. Nick was looking cautiously ou
t the side door, obviously bruised, but obviously alive. I looked back to the jungle’s edge where the lion had disappeared. “Thank you?” I wondered. “What the hell?”

  #

  It was sometime later that I figured out that sarcastic thank you. The truth was in that Aesop story you see. The truth of tooth, and claw and respect. In the end, the lion’s share is fear.

  Author's Note:

  It is a dream I had during my last tour at Grady EMS in Atlanta. If it is about anything it is burnout, which is a state of mind that can be characterized as having played god and come up short. It's a weird mix of frustration, and hubris, and powerlessness, and dreams of dead kids. It's also when most medics quit. Someday I will get around to writing about what happens next, when you survive burnout and keep playing. That's a weird mix of serenity, deep confidence, and goodwill towards man. But that's another tale.

  The Adventurer and the Toad

  by Ryk E. Spoor

  Author's Note: While set within the Balanced Sword/Phoenix in Shadow universe, this story takes place in the four-year gap between the time that Poplock Duckweed left for Zarathanton and the time that he met up with Tobimar Silverun. It doesn't spoiler any events for the Balanced Sword trilogy, but does give us another look at one of the favorite locations from Phoenix Rising (based on what readers have told me)… and perhaps a new pair of heroes with a lighter touch!