Ashes (32 page)

He said nothing. Their sleigh swept past the village hall, where a knot of Rule men were marching a cluster of refugees inside, and then they were heading northeast down the approach road to the hospice. The forest closed in and echoed with the clop of horse hooves. Alex watched the snow fall, felt it melt on her cheeks like tears.

Chris cleared his throat. “Alex …”

“It doesn't matter, Chris.”

“No,” he said. “It does. I just …
can't
…”

“Can't what? Explain?” She darted a look at his face. His skin was tight and white as snow except for the two hectic stains of color along his high cheekbones. The scent of his shadows was stronger, as if they were closing around, trying to protect him somehow. “What's there to explain, Chris? We had sex ed in sixth grade, so if you need any pointers …” She heard the cruelty in her voice and choked back the rest. What the hell was she doing? She didn't
care
.

“You don't understand,” he said.

“You don't owe me any explanations.”

“But I wish I could,” he said. She heard his misery and something more: disgust. “God, this is so messed up.”

“Yeah, you
think
?” The frustration was pillowing in her head like hot steam. Any second, the top of her head would pop like a cork. “You're realizing this
now
?”

“Please, I don't want to fight with you.”

“You know, it's fine, Chris, really. It's your town. If you want to screw Lena, choose her to go play house with, do it.”

“Stop.” His eyes closed, and the small muscles of his jaw twitched and jumped. “Please. Alex, I don't
want
Lena. I never have.”

“Yeah? Well, you better clue her in.”

“Will you shut
up
?” With an abrupt twitch of his wrists, he jerked back on the dray's reins. The sleigh slewed, and she had to grab on to the side to keep from tumbling out, but then he was grabbing her by the arms and shaking her. “Do you think I
want
this? Do you think I want
her
?”

“Don't you? No, don't answer that. I don't
care
what or who you want!” she spat, and then she slapped him across the face, hard and fast, the sound as crisp as the snap of a dried bone. The sound broke something inside her, too, and she felt a sudden, hot rush of shame as he gasped and his hands fell away. The sting in her hand burned like acid. “Chris,” she said. “Chris, I'm sorry, I'm—”

“Why can't you like me?” he said, his voice breaking. His scent steamed then, hot and heady with a welter of contradictions: apples and fire and the electric roil of those cold, black shadows. “Why can't you like me just a little?”

She would never know how she might have answered, because he never gave her the chance.

Instead, he kissed her.

It was not like Tom at all.

This was more like a bomb.

She felt her body go rigid with surprise and then the quick lurch of her heart and a sudden breathlessness. For an instant, just an instant, she could've pushed him away. But she didn't. A stunning white heat scorched the thought right out of her brain, and then he was pressed against her and her body was tingling and she felt his hunger, his need, and she'd grabbed the lapels of his coat because she was starving for his touch; she couldn't get close enough, and the scent of spiced apples made her feverish and dizzy.

The kiss went on forever. It lasted for a second. She wasn't sure who broke it off. Maybe both of them did at the same time, or neither of them.

He let her go. “I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry,” he said, his voice ragged. “Please don't hate me. I just …”

“It's okay,” she said. The red splotch of her hand stood out on his cheek like a brand. Her lips felt bruised and swollen. “I shouldn't have egged you on. I was just mad.”

“I think …” Chris leaned back, his chest still heaving. “I think maybe when I get back I shouldn't be around you anymore. I can't
think
. When I'm out there, all I can think about is
here
and … being with you. I just … God, Alex, I'm just trying to protect you.”

Her automatic rebuttal—
I don't need your protection—
jammed up behind her teeth. He was telling the truth; she could smell it. This was like when he'd given her the sunglasses, only this time she held his feelings in the cup of her hands.

“You know what I worry about? I worry that when I come back, you'll find some loophole, something we've overlooked, and then you'll be gone and I don't think I—” Chris closed his eyes. “Please say something.”

“I'm so sorry.” She reached for his face, touched the mark she'd left there. “I don't hate you, Chris.”

He gave a sad half-laugh. “But you don't like me.”

“I kissed you back,” she said.

“After I surprised you, after I
forced
you …”

“No. You didn't force me. I think …” She pulled in a shaking breath. “I think I'm afraid to like you.”

His surprise and then the hope on his face were almost painful, and she had to bite her lip to keep from bursting into tears. Her hand was still on his cheek, and he covered it now with his own. “Why?” he asked.

A sob tried to push its way out of her mouth. “Because it means giving up. It means that you've closed up all the loopholes and there's nowhere else for me to go.”

“But Alex, the rules exist for a reason. They're there to keep you safe.”

“Then why does Jess think they need to change?”

“Alex.” He moved closer, and when he gathered her up, she didn't resist. “I want to protect you. I
want
to take care of you. If you stayed, would that be so bad?”

Her hands hooked on to his jacket, and she held on.

“No,” she said.

They rode in silence the rest of the way, but she stayed close, their thighs touching, her hand looped through the crook of his elbow. The snow was thicker and beginning to swirl by the time they got to the hospice. When the sleigh had coasted to a stop, however, she did not jump down. Beyond the glass doors, she could see the hospice guard watching, his hand on the push bar to let her in.

She turned to Chris. “How long do you think you'll be gone?”

“Awhile, maybe. Couple weeks.” His mouth moved in a tense, uncertain, lopsided smile. Snow clung to his dark hair. “Don't worry. I'll have someone here for you.”

“I'm not worried about
me
.” She took his hand, and their fingers laced. “When you get back …”

“Yeah,” he said.

This time, when they kissed, there were only apples: sweet and crisp and right.

That afternoon, one of the nurses dashed out of the treatment room for something or other, and left a clutch of fresh instruments spread on a tray. One was a Gigli saw, a coil of wire that could cut through bone—or a tree, or a man's neck. The saw was sixteen inches long with two handles. Coiled, she could slip it into her jeans. A saw like that would come in handy on the road for a girl on the run.

She left the saw where it was.

Two weeks into the New Year, a nurse stuck his head into the treatment room where she and Kincaid were putting the finishing touches on a laceration and said, “Boss, just got word from an advance scout. Hank and them's coming in hot. Found someone in an old barn up by Oren.”

“We know how bad?” asked Kincaid.

“Sounds septic. Wound infection, looks like a bite.” He paused. “Boss, they say he's a Spared.”

At that, she almost gasped. Her first thought was that Tom had been bitten. Could it be? No, it couldn't be Tom; too much time, nearly two months, had passed.

“Get me a gurney for out front, and get a tech in here now. I'll be right there,” said Kincaid, and then to her: “Go on, finish up. We don't got all day.”

“Sorry.” She concentrated on that last stitch, then tied and snipped. She did it all calmly enough, but her heart was trying to break through her ribs. She reached for a packet of gauze bandage, but Kincaid was already stripping off his gloves. “Leave it, leave it,” he said. “I need you with me.” He snapped his fingers at a tech, pointed at the patient, and was out the door with Alex on his heels.

Dashing down to the lobby, they pushed out through the double doors as first a single rider thundered down the approach road, followed an instant later by a horse-drawn flatbed sleigh. A man she didn't know, but who must be Hank, was handling the horses; Alex spotted two boys in the sled. With a little stab of surprise, she recognized Greg. What was he doing here? He'd gone out with Chris…. All thoughts of that vanished when she realized that Greg was doing CPR.

“Whoa, whoa!” Hank shouted, as the horses charged around the breezeway. He pulled back on the reins hard enough that one of the horses reared in protest. “Whoa, easy!”

The two horses stamped and jolted to a shuddering halt, and then Kincaid was dashing for the sleigh, hoisting himself onto a runner. “What do we got? How bad is he?” Then he got a good look and said, “Oh Lord.”

Heart jamming into her throat, Alex crowded in beside Kincaid and then didn't know whether to sob with relief or fury.

It was not Tom. Of course, it wouldn't, couldn't be. The boy was young, no older than eight or nine. And Greg had ripped open the boy's jacket and shirt to do CPR, so she could see the birdcage of his ribs and the knobs of his shoulders. His eyes were closed and sunken, and he was deathly pale, his lips almost blue. The right leg of his jeans was shredded and oozy, and the smell was overpowering. Her breath thinned as she caught his smell: rotting and fetid.

“Found him by his lonesome in a barn. Arrested on the road,” Greg said, without breaking stride. He was sodden with sweat, breathless from exertion. “Been at this about … four-one-thousand, five … go.” At his signal, the other boy who'd preceded the sleigh up the road—she thought his name was Evan—squeezed an ambubag, forcing air into the unconscious boy's lungs. Greg ducked his head into his shoulder to smear away sweat. “Ten minutes now.”

“Ten minutes too long,” Kincaid said. He turned as Paul, an elderly male nurse with a permanent beer belly, rattled up with a gurney. “I got this, Paul. I want IVs set up, large bore, and get me a CVP line—”

“I don't know if we got one, Boss. We're so low—”

“Find me a damned line, Paul! Don't you show your face without one—you got that? And get out the crash cart, whatever you can scrounge. Move it!” As Paul hurried back inside, Kincaid wrestled the gurney alongside the wagon, butting it in place with his hips. “All right, people, bells and whistles on this one. Let's—” He paused, a curious expression creasing his weathered features.

Hank, who'd already leapt down to help move the injured boy to the gurney, looked over at Kincaid. “Doc, you okay?”

“Yeah, just a sec. Greg, hold up there, let me check for a pulse.” And then Kincaid stared right at her, grabbing her eyes, and she read the question as if he'd spoken it aloud:
Is it safe?

It was a question she knew would come eventually, one they'd never asked before.

“Is there a pulse?” said Greg.

Kincaid didn't answer. She knew she couldn't afford to be wrong. The dead-meat stink was unmistakable, but it was also

different: gassy and almost sweet.

“Doc?” Hank asked.

Dead meat, yes; that's infection, not the Change.
She gave Kincaid the barest of nods.

“I'm not getting anything. Greg, keep on those compressions. All right, let's go,” Kincaid said. “Move him on three. One, two …”

Straddling the gurney, Greg continued CPR all the way to the treatment room as Evan trotted alongside with the ambu-bag. She and Paul started the IVs, and Paul had found a CVP line somewhere that Kincaid now threaded into the boy's subclavian vein.

“This is the last of the bicarb,” Paul said, handing Kincaid a syringe. “You sure you want to—”

“Can't think of a better time. Push that on in there…. We got atropine? All right, hold on…. Greg, stop compressions.” Eyes closed, Kincaid listened through his stethoscope, then said, “Hold on, I think … Paul, push that atropine in.”

They waited. Greg was panting, the sweat running in rivulets down his neck. Paul glanced at a stopwatch. “Fifteen minutes, twenty seconds, Boss.”

“I got something,” said Kincaid, glancing at his watch now and counting under his breath. “Paul, get me a BP.”

“Sixty over thirty, Boss.”

“All right, that's not great, but it's not terrible. This boy might make it after all.” Kincaid snapped on a pair of gloves. “Let's see what we got. Alex, I need your hands—glove up.”

The stink that pillowed from the boy's left thigh smelled of rot and was bad enough that even Kincaid winced. Someone had tried to bandage the wound, but the wrappings were soggy and stained green and yellow with pus. Alex felt her stomach turn over as Kincaid peeled away the oozy gauze wraps. Pus, yellow-green as snot, puddled in the open wound, and the shredded flesh along the wound's margins was black. Thin red streaks coursed the length of the boy's thigh to his knee and radiated to his crotch.

“Seventy-five over forty.”

“All right,” Kincaid said as he began sponging away the mess with gauze pads. On the gurney, the corners of the boy's eyes twitched, and then he let out a low moan. “I know,” Kincaid murmured as he worked. “I know it's bad, son. I'm sorry, I know. You just hold on there.”

“That's good, right, Doc? His pressure?” asked Greg, arming away sweat.

“Well, it's not bad. You boys catch a name before you hightailed it outta there?”

“Naw. Like I said, he's been out of it.”

“Okay. Alex, draw up a couple fifty-cc syringes of saline and irrigate the hell out of this, would you?”

Alex was glad for something to do. As she pulled up the fluid, Greg said, “You can save him, right?”

“We are certainly going to try. He might lose that leg, but one thing at a time. Greg, get yourself into some dry clothes before you catch your death. How's that arm of yours? Either you boys hurt?”

“Naw, everyone got out okay, Doc,” said Greg, flexing the arm where he'd been wounded three weeks before.

“Good, I didn't want to be patching you up again. What about the others?”

“They're about a day behind.”

“All right. Now you two get on out of here and let me work. Paul, get me a surg kit; we're going to be doing some cutting here, and I want some Cipro in him right now.”

Paul pulled a small glass vial from a mostly empty med cart. “Boss, that's the last of—”

“The last of the Cipro, I know. Just do it, Paul. Alex, you can stop irrigating. Cut away the rest of his clothes, so I can see what I'm doing.” Kincaid glanced at her over his mask. “Let's just hope this poor boy stays out.”

As Kincaid cleaned and debrided the wound, she worked a pair of heavy surgical scissors through the boy's pants, cut those away, and then attacked what was left of his shirt. Slicing through flannel, she suddenly recoiled. “Oh, gross.”

“What?” asked Kincaid.

“I think …” The boy had another large bite wound, raw and weeping and filled with what looked like white rice—and then the rice
moved
. “I think they're maggots.”

“Really?” Kincaid took a long look and then nodded. “Excellent.”

“Excellent?” Alex goggled at him. “What's good about maggots?”

“Because they eat the dead stuff and leave healthy tissue behind,” said Kincaid. “See the margins there? That's all viable tissue. Alex, see if you can scoop a couple dozen of those little guys onto some gauze.”

“Sure,” she said faintly, not at all sure she wouldn't pass out. She couldn't get rid of the image of flies buzzing over the boy's

wounds, landing and laying eggs.

And then she thought,
Hey, wait a minute.

“You want some help?” asked Paul, although he sounded like he'd be just as happy if she refused.

She did not disappoint. “No, I'm good.”

“Oh, we are going to give you bad boys a regular feast,” Kincaid said. “Warm you maggies right up.”

“They look pretty warm to me,” said Alex. “They're moving all over the place.”

“He is the only person I know who would get excited over a bowl of maggots,” Paul observed as he pumped up the blood pressure cuff again. “Ninety-five over sixty-two.”

“I like the sound of that,” Kincaid said. “Paul, get us another catalytic heater in here and then see if you can scrounge us up a plastic container and an apple.”

“You want to eat?” asked Alex.
“Now?”

“Eventually.” He winked at her over his mask. “Apple's for the maggies. Old fishing trick. The maggies'll keep somewhere cool and dark for a couple weeks.”

“We could start our own maggot farm,” said Paul.

“That is a very good idea,” said Kincaid. “We find somewhere warm enough. Flies'll die otherwise.”

“I was joking.” Paul rolled his eyes. “Be right back. Boss, I hope you and your maggies will be very happy.”

“Oh, we will,” Kincaid said, “we will.”

Great, now she'd be babying maggots for the foreseeable future. Alex thought it would be a really long time before she looked at rice the same way again.

Presuming, of course, she ever saw rice again.

“That's it,” said Kincaid. After peeling out of his gloves, he dragged the mask from his face and sighed. “Wish I hadn't had to cut away so much tissue to find healthy muscle, but can't be helped. Between me and the maggots, though, those wounds might just granulate in. They won't be pretty, but if he's lucky, he won't lose the leg.”

“Is he going to make it?” asked Alex.

Kincaid's mouth set in a grimace. “If things were even halfway normal, I'd say only fifty-fifty. He's already arrested once, and he's septic. Fluids'll help, but we only got a couple more bags and no more antibiotic. If his blood pressure falls again, I got nothing left to give him.”

“Maybe it won't,” said Alex. “Maybe you got to him in time.”

“Maybe. Be a damn shame, all this effort and risk for nothing. Just got to hope for the best.” He looked behind Alex. “Greg, take this girl home before she passes out.”

“Just waiting on you, Doc,” said Greg from the door.

Night had fallen hours before. Now she glanced at Ellie's watch and saw that Mickey said it was pushing ten. Untying her mask, Alex said, “Have you been there the whole time?”

“All”—Greg checked his pocket watch—“six hours and twenty minutes.”

“And it's way past my bedtime,” said Kincaid. He looked as if he was going to fall down, and when he dropped into a chair, he let out a long groan. “Many more nights like this, and I'm going to be old before my time.”

“You need to rest,” Paul said. A huge butterfly splotch stained the chest of his scrub top, and a sheen of sweat glistened on his ruddy scalp. “We're not kids anymore.”

“I heard that,” said Kincaid.

“You should get some sleep,” Alex said. She was dead tired and she could smell herself. “I can watch him for a while. All I need to do is wash up a little bit.” When Kincaid opened his mouth to protest, she said, “Come on, if something bad happens to you, we're screwed.”

“She's got a point,” said Paul.

Kincaid grumbled some more but eventually gave in. “I'll bed down here. You come get me in four hours,” he said as Paul ushered him out. “Don't you forget.”

“I won't,” she said, and then after he was gone: “Maybe.”

“You really do look beat,” said Greg, who looked only marginally better than she felt. “You want company?”

“I'm fine,” she said, and then ruined it by yawning. “Look on the bright side. You won't have to come get me in the morning.”

“I'll bring you a change of clothes. Chances are Doc is going to let you knock off tomorrow, though.”

“Yeah, well.” She glanced at their patient, whose color was only a little less white than his sheets. His dark hair looked artificial, like something penned in with a Magic Marker. Then she began to gather up soiled instruments. The plastic garbage bags were overflowing with soiled and bloodied gauze and the remnants of

the boy's clothes. “Let's see what happens. You should go home.” “I'm gone.” Greg tipped her a wave. “Just don't tell Chris.”

Now what
, she thought, as she began tidying up the treatment room,
would I tell Chris exactly? Oh, bad Greg left me all by my widdle wonesome?

She
had
thought of Chris, too, and often. Not obsessively, not the way she had with Tom—but that had been different, hadn't it? She wasn't sure now what she'd felt with Tom, but they'd fought together and he'd been hurt, maybe dying, and she'd been on a mission to save him.