Chapter 12
Seeing that Alex really was alive was different to hearing from Jake that he was. I gently stroked Alex’s cheek with my hand before turning to Jake’s newfound stash of everything the apothecary had and I was more than grateful to see three different types of antibiotics. Once I’d seen everything I ripped apart Alex’s shirt to use as a tourniquet around Mare’s arm and leg. Neither of the arrows looked as though they’d gone far in, probably due to lack of practice with them, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
“Thank you for telling Jake not to do anything.” I told Mare
Mare smiled back at me. “I knew he was going to pull them out. All I could do was hope that you had more training.”
“I do.” I reached out and squeezed the hand of the arm that didn’t have an arrow in it. “You look like you were lucky.”
“Screaming at them seemed to put them off.” The smile turned into a grin. “They were using long range weapons so I thought it was worth a try. I knew it would bring someone running.” Our eyes met. “You managed to find a hiding spot?”
“Now that I know they had bows I’m not certain it was so nice, but I did manage to find the weapons. They’re all in a basement.” I thought back. “I didn’t notice that anything was missing.”
“As far as I could tell they were homemade.” Alex sighed. “There’s a difference between someone making a bow who knows what they’re doing and someone who doesn’t. I’m actually surprised they reached Mare, let alone did any damage.”
“Did you run them off?” I asked.
“For now, but they know we’re both injured and we aren’t going to get far. Maybe that cellar of yours would be good for us to shelter in for tonight, before we head into the deep wastes.”
“We aren’t making any decisions until I’ve looked at your injuries, Alex.”
“Kat…”
“You can argue with me later. For now we wait, because I know you.”
“How do we know there’s going to be a later?”
Even though it was much harder than it had been before I forced myself to focus on what I was doing. It had to be done right, otherwise I could cause more damage than I fixed, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t worried about what Alex had just said or that I didn’t want to ask him what he was talking about. Finding the words was harder than I wanted it to be, as I was scared that his injuries were worse than he wanted to admit to Jake. When I felt a hand on my shoulder I knew it was Alex’s.
“I didn’t say that to scare you, Kat. The mercenaries are going to come back and we need to decide what we’re doing before they do.” He squeezed gently. “We both know there’s a chance they’ll come back before you’re done. I want to know that you’re going to stay with Mare and Jake. You’ll need them and they’ll need you.”
One tourniquet was tied around Mare’s arm. Instead of replying I focused on removing the arrow from it, using a knife that I kept clean for the purpose, even though I didn’t think I’d ever need to use it. Being gentle when you cut into someone’s flesh wasn’t easy, but she didn’t make any noise, so I hoped it wasn’t hurting too much. Of course it helped that Alex had offered her the flask he kept in his bag. The only time he’d ever offered it to me was when I was in more pain than I had ever been in before from an injury that had got infected. At the time we were too far from anywhere to get any help, but between the two of us we stopped me from dying.
Jake gave me some water. It was cold and plunging my hands into it wasn’t much fun, but I wasn’t going to be digging around in Mare’s arm with grubby fingers. That was a way of making certain that it ended up infected. He’d managed to scrounge up some soap from the apothecary as well.
Once my hands were clean, truly clean for the first time in months, I moved onto the part that might end up being harder than I expected. Once again I was being as gentle as I could as I explored the wound to work out exactly where the arrowhead had reached. It was the head that would do the damage. Luckily that one hadn’t gone too far in, so I just tugged it out. Then she winced and took another sip of Alex’s drink. Although she was bleeding a little it wasn’t bad at all. We had some clean fabric, thanks to Jake, so I made a pad out of it she could keep on the wound until the blood stopped.
I moved on to the other arrow as she held the pad with her free hand. That one looked as thought it was slightly further in. As it was her thigh I didn’t think it would have reached the bone. “As soon as you’re done, Kat, we’ll go to the basement you found.” Alex’s voice was quiet, so he didn’t disturb me or make me jump. “You can check on me there.”
“There’s not a lot of light down there, so we’re going to need something I can use to see you better.”
“Hopefully there are another couple of glowlights in my bag. I held on to them in case of an emergency just like this one.”
“Glowlights?” Jake grabbed hold of a phrase he didn’t know as a way of distracting himself from what I was doing and that made me think he might not be the person to train for the sort of jobs that I did, but Mare was the fighter. “What are they?”
“I'm not completely sure. Every so often we find caches of them and I make sure we always keep some.” Alex sounded just as grateful for the distraction, although that was probably because he was in pain. “They seem to be something the people of the world before this one thought might be important. I just wish we knew more.”
“A lot of our history was destroyed,” I explained, carefully probing Mare’s leg with a finger. She took another gulp of Alex’s drink and then he took it off her, which was probably so she didn’t end up getting so drunk she couldn’t walk, because there weren’t enough of us whole to carry her safely into a basement. “The people from before saved some books, but it was nowhere near enough for us to understand them or why they created this wasteland out of their world. What little we do know tells us that this might have been an accident, although there’s also a chance it might have been done on purpose…”
“Or it might have been a mix of both.” Alex had read everything he could, because he’d always wanted to learn more about the people who lost their lives in the blasts. “There are a few books in Fifth City, that I believe were written by those who set off the nukes, talking about the choice that they had to make. It was hard to read, but I really do believe it’s important that we learn from their mistakes.”
“So we don’t make the same ones.” Jake sounded amused. “How would that even be possible? Could we reach that technology level again?”
That was just the sort of debate that Alex loved, which made me smile. “I think it is possible.” Alex sighed. “At the moment, though, we’re too focused on survival. Every day is a struggle within the wasteland that was once, supposedly, a beautiful country.”
“We know it was.” I felt the arrow head. It had penetrated further but not as far as the bone, so I started tugging it out as I spoke. “There are pictures in all of the towns of the country those people lived in and sometimes I hate them for causing this. If they hadn’t we could have lived in that world rather than this one.”
“Maybe it was beautiful, but that doesn’t mean it was better than this.” Jake sounded unsure and I wondered who he’d argued that with before, as they’d obviously made him uncomfortable with saying the same thing to us, although it was already a point that Alex and I had agreed on in the past. “I admit the mercenaries, the mutants, and the ghouls make things difficult. The towns, from what you’ve both told us, are different. People work together as best they can to live in this wasteland, because they aren’t comfortable in the cities. Although I never would have left if it wasn’t for Mare’s brother I do understand that.
“Four of my friends left the city before I did. I seemed to gather them around me for some reason.” Listening to Jake was nice and it seemed to calm Mare, as taking the arrow out was much easier than before, but there was also a chance that might have been the alcohol. “They all talked to me about what they thought life
would be like out here and I listened to their dreams, knowing it couldn’t possibly be the way they thought it was, yet civilization, as you call it, seems like it might be. I wish I could have seen Hamilton as it was before the mercenaries hit. I wish we could have a chance to see more of it, rather than going straight into the deep wastes - it’s just I get this feeling that he needs us more with every day that passes.”
“Why do you think that?” Mare’s leg was bleeding more than her arm, so I held a pad to it, knowing we needed to wait for that to stop before we went anywhere. “I know you can feel people, but can you also feel their emotions.”
Jake sighed. “The longer I’m out here the stronger my abilities seem to get. Maybe I am a mutant.”
“Don’t say that.” My voice was much louder than I expected it to be, because I hated anyone saying that about themselves. “Having different abilities doesn’t make anyone a mutant. We don’t know what makes mutants into the creatures that they are, but I’m certain it doesn’t have much to do with their abilities.” I tried to work out how I could convince him there was nothing wrong with being able to feel people. “The one thing I’ve noticed with the mutants is this urge to kill.”
“So far that isn’t something that you appear to be afflicted with.” Alex laughed, squeezing my shoulder. “I should have stopped to think before I judged you, Jake, but out here idiots die quickly. Honestly, it’s better that way. Fortunately you may well have actions at that point have nothing to do with who you really are - they were pure fear.”
“They were and I regret them now, because I’m glad we have two companions who know what they’re doing out here.”
I found myself smiling, as Mare attempted to get up. “Sometimes we are making it up as we go along.”
Eventually, after many tense stops, we managed to make our way to the basement. Mare lay down in one corner, looking more than a little tipsy. Jake flitted between her and where I was looking at Alex’s new injuries, as he held the glowlights so I could actually see what I was doing. Tomorrow would be a time for decision making, because we were safe for the night, although that didn’t stop Alex from setting up a watch to make certain we weren’t set upon unexpectedly by mercenaries.
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