Stranger

Forty-eight

“Is she dead? Zak… is she dead?”

“Just clear back there; let me see.”

On the drive back to the cabins on the mountainside Michaela had shown no sign of life. Where her skin showed through smears of blood it had been the color of milk… a deathly gleaming white that chilled me to the bone. I’d carried her into a cabin to lay her on a bed. Immediately the others had gathered ’round, their eyes huge with shock when they’d seen the wound on top of her head. Boy sat on the floor with his back to the wall, his knees hugged to his chest, watching people rushing ’round with bowls of water, towels, surgical dressings. I crouched beside the bed as Zak carefully moved Michaela’s long hair aside so he could inspect the wound.

I repeated the question. “Zak? Is she dead?”

“Ben, pass me that mirror.”

Ben handed Zak the small mirror from the dresser. Zak held it beneath Michaela’s nose. It seemed to take forever before I saw the glass mist.

“Thank God for that.” Zak sighed with relief. “She’s breathing.. .. It’s shallow, but it’s there.”

“What now?” I asked.

“We’ve no medical training. All we can do is patch u p her wound, then wait and see.”

“Jesus.”

Zak gently parted her hair. “But look at the size of the scalp wound. It’s a big one… there’s a lot of blood, too.”

He must have seen my sickened expression.

“Greg, that’s a good sign, believe me.”

“Good? You call that good? The bastard nearly tore off her entire scalp.”

“It shows it was a glancing blow. Instead of coming down hard into her skull, the club struck at a shallow angle, tearing her scalp.” Zak peered down at the head wound. It was a three-cornered tear like when you rip clothing on a nail. Through the pool of blood there gleamed the pink curve of the skull. Zak knelt with his hands open, fingers splayed. They barely trembled, yet I noticed they were smeared red from fingertip to knuckle.

“OK, OK. I know I can do this. I can. I can.” He clenched his jaw. He was psyching himself up to do something. “Tony, find me that first aid kit. Not the domestic one. The big one we found in the ambulance.”

“What are you going to do?”

“This is a bad tear in her scalp… really bad. I’m going to have to sew it back together.”

I looked at him. “You’ve done this before?”

“No, but trust me.” His eyes were fixed on the bleeding wound. “I know I can do it. One thing, though.” He looked ’round. “Clear the room. I need to be able to concentrate.”

With Zak working on Michaela in the cabin I had to keep myself busy. Dark clouds overlaid the sky like a purple bruise. With Tony’s help I shifted the dynamite to a spare cabin some distance from the others. This stuff should be stable, but I wasn’t going to take any damn-fool chances. For a while we worked without talking. Only when I moved the Jeep to a garage alongside one of the cabins did Tony break the silence.

Wrapping a rag around his hand, he reached into the back of the Jeep to pull out a hunk of what looked like steel rod. As thick as my thumb, it was maybe two feet in length.

I stared at it for a moment.

“The hornet’s weapon of choice,” Tony said at last. “Evil-looking thing, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Do you think that’s what hit her?”

“Could be. But there’s no blood.” He shook his head, sickened. “Maybe one threw it as you passed, or he lost his grip on it when they attacked.” He looked more closely at it. “The problem is, they smear these things with their own shit. Whether it’s a crazy ritual or whether it’s to spread infection I don’t know.”

I found myself glancing back at the cabin where Michaela lay. “What are you saying, Tony?”

“Michaela should really have a shot of antibiotics and a tetanus inoculation.”

“You mean if she recovers from the head wound she still might go down with blood poisoning?”

“It’s happened to us in the past. We’ve lost people.”

“But you’ve got first aid kits and medicines, right?”

“But we haven’t any antibiotics or inoculation shots. They’re long gone.”

“Hell.” I rubbed my jaw. “But I know where there are some.”

“The bunker?”

“First thing tomorrow we’re going back there.” I shot him a grim look. “We’re going to take whatever we need from that place.”

“But you said it was built like a fortress.”

“It is… so this is where we start making the impossible possible. It’s a habit we’re going to have to learn; otherwise we won’t survive.”

“Greg… Greg!”

I turned to see Boy come running across the grass. His eyes were big as boiled eggs; the whites flashed in a way that sent shivers prickling across my back.

Boy shouted, “Greg… Tony! Zak says to come back to the cabin!”

The bedroom where Michaela lay was in near darkness. Zak had drawn the blinds and turned down the kerosene lamp until only a smudge of light burned in the glass tube.

She lay flat on her back, her black hair fanned out across the pillow. Zak nodded for me to go closer. As I crouched beside the bed her eyes opened. For a second they gazed up at the ceiling, as if puzzled by her surroundings; then she turned her head slightly to look at me.

“Michaela,” I whispered, “it’s Greg. You’re going to be all right.”

Her lips moved noiselessly for a second, then she breathed out the words: “Sorry, Greg… I messed up… should have been sharper. .. a whole lot sharper… uh.” She grimaced.

“Don’t apologize.” I moved closer and squeezed her hand.

“Let my guard down… that was stupid of me…”

“Take it easy. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I did, Greg… I should have kept my wits… these days you get lazy you’re gonna die… oh…”

“Sshh… Easy, Michaela.”

Swallowing, as if she had something stuck in her throat, she lifted both fists to her temples. She began to press her head so hard her knuckles turned white.

“Michaela, what’s wrong?”

She sighed. “It hurts… ssa’ bitch… uh.”

Zak ran his hands across his head, angry with himself that he couldn’t do more for her. “I don’t think she’s suffered any brain damage. I did a good job stitching her scalp, but it’s going to be sore for a while.”

“Isn’t there anything we can give her?”

“All we’ve got now is Excedrin.”

“They’re not even going to take the edge off pain like that.”

“I know, Greg. Good God, I wish I could do more for her. She doesn’t deserve this… She pulled us outta more crap than I don’t know what. She kept us together, like…” He shrugged as words failed him. “Hell, she doesn’t deserve this, Greg,” was all he could repeat.

She didn’t deserve it. I gritted my own teeth as I watched her shudder as waves of pain ran through her. Her knuckles whitened again as she pushed her hands against the side of her head.

What’s that old saying? Life’s a bitch and then you die…

It came ringing back at me as I crouched there holding her hand. It came like a huge tolling bell that thundered the words ’round my head. Be a Viking, I said. Work miracles, I said. Do the impossible , I said. And, Jesus Christ, all I could do was watch the face of the woman I loved spasm as the agony tore through her like a goddam razor.