The impotence I was feeling washed over me. I wanted to help my wife more than words could ever possibly convey, yet I was the one she was trying to help. Would have been like me being in a search party where I was the one missing.
“I’ll be back.” She leaned in, stroked the side of my face and kissed me.
I had a sinking feeling this would be the last time I saw her.
“BT, could I talk to you for a minute?”
“Well, that can’t be good,” I said before I closed my suddenly heavy eyes.
“He’s lost more blood than you can possibly replenish. You can only loosen and tighten the tourniquet three or four more times before you have to keep it on.”
“You said he’d lose his leg if we left it on.”
“He’ll lose his life if you take it off. I’ll be gone for about an hour. If I haven’t found help by then, you’re going to have to help me by holding him down. I found a hacksaw in the garage that should be able to get the job done.”
“I wish you were kidding.”
“Me too.” She gave BT a quick hug and quickly went down the stairs.
“She’ll be alright,” BT said, coming back into the room as we both heard the front door close.
I didn’t think so, but that could have been because I felt like shit, so everything I dwelled on was tainted with that sensation.
Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – TRACY
As Tracy left the small ranch-style home, she did not feel particularly great about her odds of success. Mike’s lips had been so cold when she’d kissed him that she did not think he would survive much longer without some real help…professional help. She had an hour, and she wasn’t going to waste it.
They were on the outskirts of some place; couldn’t really call it the suburbs as the homes weren’t nice enough. Her chances of finding a doctor in these ranch and mobile homes were slim. Her only other choice was to take the truck and go closer to town. Time was her mortal enemy as she crossed the unkempt lawn heading for the nearest house. She hoped she would luck upon a doctor who was a gambling addict and had lost all his money, thus placing him in this lower income settlement.
“Who’s gambling now?” she asked aloud.
The first house had no front door and the smell coming from the doorway was an immediate response to her question of whether any one lived there. If they did, they were in no shape to help her husband. At the second, she knocked and tried the doorknob, which was locked.
“Please, I need help,” she begged.
She thought she heard something inside move, but she wasn’t sure and she couldn’t spare the time to investigate. On to the next house she moved. She was beginning to lose hope after fifteen houses and thirty minutes had elapsed. The homes were getting further apart, and soon she would pass the point of no return. Even if she found someone, she probably wouldn’t have enough time to get them back. She could see five more houses before a bend in the road that signified the end of the line for her, or rather Mike.
“Dammit, he wouldn’t have failed me. I’m already giving up.” She had no reason to think the doublewide ranch she was walking up to would be any different than the others, yet she knocked with a renewed vigor. The door opened.
“Hello?” she called in.
She was convinced that someone had not opened the door, but rather the likelihood that her knocking had opened a door that was not completely closed. She would have turned to go to the next house if not for the smell that brought her over the threshold.
“It smells like maple syrup in here,” she said softly.
Tracy’s eyes adjusted to the gloom of the interior of the room. She gasped aloud when she saw all the animals staring back at her. A moose head took up the entire wall of the trailer to her right. Directly in front was a stuffed fox poised to jump on an equally stuffed quail. Deer heads, lynx, an errant raccoon, and even a few chipmunks dotted the rest of the small room. She could tell there were all manner of other animals lining the hallway that led to God knew what.
“Probably some human heads in here.” Tracy had creeped herself out completely and was backing up to leave when she heard the telltale sound of a revolver’s hammer being pulled backwards.
“Well, hello there,” a voice said to her left.
Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 10
“Whoa,” I said when BT pulled the tourniquet off for the first time.
It looked like someone had poked a hole in a waterbed and then sat down on the punctured mattress. Although, in this case, it wasn’t water but rather blood. It shot up like a fountain. The second time went much smoother as BT thought to cover the wound with a piece of cloth. I knew I was in trouble; the blood loss was making me cold and my thoughts, which had already clouded, were now fogged out as well. My teeth began to chatter when I had to ask BT if I knew him.
“You’re not kidding, are you?”
A momentary ray of sunshine and lucidity broke through. “How much time do I have?”
“We’re down to about fifteen minutes.”
“Is…is my wife here?” I could barely stammer. I’d never been so cold in my life.
“Not yet, man. She’ll make it.” BT looked to the front door in the hopes that by just speaking her name she would magically appear.
“BJ, you have to promise me something.”
“It’s BT…forget it. Tell me, man.”
“If she’s not back in time, I want you to pull that tourniquet off and let me die.”
BT’s eyebrows furrowed, he got angry. “Don’t be so fucking selfish, Mike! It’s only a damn leg, you gonna check out on your wife and kid…and even me? Because of one less leg?”
“That’s not why, man.”
“Then educate me, because that’s what it sounds like.”
“Listen, if you have to take my leg, we won’t be able to move for days. The chances that those idiots back at the auto store find us are greatly increased, not to mention our buddies from above. And if I get an infection, which is pretty damn likely, Tracy will refuse to move me. I could linger like that for weeks, man. It’s more likely that all of us will die here, and I will not have my son be raised an orphan.”
“I can’t, Mike. I just can’t sit here and watch you bleed out.”
Now it was my turn to get angry. It was my life and I’d check out of it any way I pleased. “Then don’t, find a fucking pack of cigarettes and go out and smoke a couple. I’ll take care of the rest on my own.”
“She’ll be back. She has to.”
“Yeah, with her damn bone saw. I’m not sitting here while she carves me up like a Thanksgiving turkey. She can’t sew up an artery. How do you think that butchery is going to go?” I could tell my words were having the desired effect on BT. The man couldn’t even stomach needles, so I was going to throw out all the verbal punches I could for him to leave the tourniquet off. I’d physically punch him if I thought I had the energy to raise my arm that high.
BT gagged a bit.
“There will be muscle flapping on its own, tendons curling up on themselves—”
“Stop.” BT had turned his head and had his hand by his mouth.
“…veins squirming like snakes…”
“Stop it or I’ll tie this damn thing around your mouth!”
“How is he?” a worried Tracy said from the doorway.
“Thank God you’re back, he wanted me to let him die.”
“Well, hello there,” someone said from behind Tracy, a large caliber revolver appearing over her shoulder.
It was just now that I noticed her hands were halfway up. BT dove for his rifle. It was kinda like watching a bear go for a salmon, albeit a slow bear, but a bear nonetheless. He never had a chance.
“I wouldn’t do that, friend. I can shoot a squirrel from twenty yards with a pellet gun and you, my friend, are no squirrel.”
“And I’m not your friend,” BT growled.
“Well, that’s yet to b
e determined. This your husband, miss?”
“It is.”
“I’ll be damned. You weren’t lying. You realize I had to be certain, right?”
“I understand. Will you help him now?”
“I’ll do what I can. So you’re Michael Talbot?” the man asked as he sat down next to me.
“Unimpressed?” I asked him, my teeth chattering.
“I wouldn’t say that. I just figured you’d be bigger like this fella.” He thumbed over to BT.
“You a doctor?” BT asked.
“Not quite.”
“Veterinarian?”
“Not so much.”
“Sous chef?”
“I wish.”
“Tracy?” BT had finally had enough of trying to pull the answer from their mystery guest.
“Taxidermist,” she replied weakly with a waning smile.
“Oh, fucking great.” BT stood. “We can have him mounted when he’s done! What makes you qualified to work on my friend?”
“Mrs. Talbot, your friend is making me quite nervous. It is generally very quiet when I work.”
“BT, come on.” Tracy grabbed his shirt. He moved surprisingly easy for one so large; almost like the big baby didn’t want to stay there and watch. “We need to let him work.”
“You know he stuffs animals for a living, right?”
Tracy was pushing him through the door. “Let him work, it was him or us,” she said, making a sawing motion.
“Yeah, he’ll work fine.” BT had turned and was looking over Tracy’s shoulder, taking up pretty much the entire doorframe. He would not quite go out, like maybe he thought that was a safe enough distance.
“I studied to be a doctor,” the man said, maybe to assuage my fear or more likely his bigger threat—BT. “Flew through pre-med, took a couple of years of med school as well.”
“And yet you settled on taxidermy?” BT couldn’t help himself.
“Easier, the animals I work on don’t complain and talk back.” He turned to make sure that BT knew he was talking about him.
“I’m keeping my mouth shut,” I told him when he looked at me directly as if to question my stance.
“Anatomy is anatomy. We are all surprisingly similar when you get right down to it.” He was busy laying out a rolled up leather parcel that contained all manner of macabre tools you would expect to see in a museum under the ‘Medieval Doctor Tools’ sign. He poured a small bottle of rubbing alcohol over the stainless steel implements.
“Seems legit,” BT said.
“Shut up, man,” I told him.
I winced when he started probing around the hole.
“I’m afraid I don’t have much need for anesthesia, and by the looks of your blood loss, we don’t have time for niceties anyway.”
“Mo-morphine?” I thought I was going to crack my teeth from the violence of the chattering.
“You two are going to have to hold him down. I’m afraid this isn’t going to feel too good.” BT and Tracy came all the way back in.
The last thing I remembered with any coherency was BT holding my legs in place and Tracy putting my head in her lap. Then, Herr Doctor grabbed something that resembled a scalpel for elephants and opened my leg up. The pain was considerable, the blood loss rapidly negating the receptors. I didn’t need to be a patient to realize I was slipping.
I think I screamed out, although, in all honesty, I wasn’t completely sure. It could have even been BT, come to think of it. I crossed at one point—I know I did. There were no pearly gates or fiery demons though; in one moment I was alive, in pain, cold, worried, confused, and a thousand other things we as humans are and then, in an instant, there was nothing. I’m not saying I was in a black void, I’m saying specifically that I was no more. Gone, wiped clean from existence. I wouldn’t have even known that I’d passed had I not been brought back into the world of life with all its doubts and pain.
When I came to, BT was no longer sitting on my legs, but rather next to me. He was asleep, our transfusion tube back in place. A roaring fire was no more than ten feet away and I had enough blankets on me that I knew Tracy must have raided every house on the block for them. I could not, and would not, dwell on who had used them previously and what manner of unsavory creature might have been living in the myriad of cloth I was under. I was just happy to be warm and alive. Tracy was in a chair a few feet away, also asleep.
“Ah, good to see you awake. I was not so sure you were going to make it.” The taxidermist had walked into the room and leaned down to look at me. He placed his hand on my forehead. “No fever. That is a plus. I have given you fish antibiotics, they are surprisingly similar to human antibiotics, which I’m sure you know are difficult to come by these days.”
“Thank you,” I croaked. My throat was as dry as if someone had poured a cup of talcum powder down it.
“It was nothing. I’ve had harder times with beaver pelts.”
“I bet you have.” BT was awake.
I don’t think the man got the slight, and I wasn’t going to fill him in on it, as he just looked over at BT, confused.
“What’s your name?” I asked, after he allowed me a few sips of water.
“Been a long time since anyone wanted to know my name. Chance Butrell.”
“Thank you, Chance,” I told him, putting my head back on the pillow.
“I’ve been shot at four times since this invasion started and all of them by people. I never thought I’d meet someone I actually wanted to help ever again. When your missus came into my home, I almost shot her just to be over with it. You know, her-before-me type of thing.”
I shuddered thinking how close Tracy had been to going into that void. It wouldn’t have been her who’d cared, just those around her.
“I’ve killed three people. It was nice to finally try and even up the score a little. I used to live in Dallas.”
Apparently Chance wanted to talk, and since I was in no shape to walk away, I guess I was a captive audience as was BT, considering the tether between us.
“My wife left me exactly two weeks before they came.” He looked and pointed up. “Kicked me out, said she wasn’t in love with me anymore and that she loved my brother, Wayne. Doesn’t that beat all? My own brother. We never got along great but I would have never screwed his wife, if he’d had one.”
“Was your wife a doctor?” BT asked.
“No, just a gold digger. I lived in Texas where everyone hunted, and stuffing and mounting an elk could cost upwards of fifteen to eighteen hundred dollars. I had a reputation as a pretty good taxidermist. I worked eighty to ninety hours a week, every week.”
“Why would a gold digging woman leave you then?”
“My brother hit the damn lottery. The good-for-nothing oaf, who had not so much as swung a hammer in his thirty-nine years of existence, used five dollars from the money our mother gave him to go food shopping with and bought some power numbers. Did I tell you he still lived with our parents? He didn’t venture out and need to come back, he just never left. Spent all day down in the basement playing video games. Thirty-nine years old. I tried to bring him on as an apprentice, and I fired him three hours later. He kept asking when we were going to be finished for the day. He won fifty-two million, didn’t share a penny of it with our parents, even though it was their money he’d used to buy the ticket. He had to go to court, lied through his teeth that he’d panhandled for the money and therefore didn’t owe them anything. Ungrateful bastard, been sucking them dry like a fat tick for years, and when he could turn around and help, he basically told them to kiss his ass. I should have noticed the change in my wife. She went from calling him every name in the book behind his back to openly flirting with him, stroking his arm, and flipping her hair back and forth. Looking back it’s easy to see, but back then, I was so consumed by my work, I guess I didn’t want to.”
“Wow,” was all BT could manage. I would have said the same, but I was feeling terribly sleepy, and the idea of nodding off sounded m
ighty appealing. I caught the end of his story just as I fell asleep.
“She ultimately saved my life. I have to give her credit for that.”
“She came around?” BT asked. I think he was completely enthralled in Chance’s story, and if I didn’t know better, I would have thought the gang-member-cop-wannabe was a closet romance novel reader.
“Naw, she kicked me out, remember? I told you that part. I moved a few states over just to be away from her. I left a week before the aliens leveled Dallas.”
“Holy shi…” and then I was asleep.
When I awoke hours later sunlight was streaming into the house. Beads of sweat were on my forehead. The forty-eight blankets on top of me were now making me uncomfortably hot. I felt about as strong as a seven-month-old baby as I attempted to move my arm and pull some of them off of me.
“Little help,” I said, noticing that BT was no longer attached.
“Talbot, shh.” Tracy had her back up against the wall next to the window, rifle in her hands. I knew that pose, someone or something we didn’t want to be there was outside. BT was up against the wall on the far side of the room—also next to a window. I couldn’t see Chance, but my guess was that he was behind me. I crawled out from underneath my cocoon.
“Well, hello there.” Chance had reached out and grabbed my shoulder. He was surprisingly strong for as wiry as he appeared. “Slow…move slow or we’re going to have to start over.”
I don’t know what he was watching, but just pulling myself out from the covers had taken an exhausting three minutes. I realized once I was out that I had a makeshift heavy-duty cloth cast on my leg.
“It was the only way I could think of to keep you from moving your leg. The stitches need at least three, preferably four days to heal properly.”
“You’re telling me I can’t bend my leg for four days?”
“Mike, shut up,” Tracy hissed.
“Would you rather be dead?”
“Good point. What’s going on?”
“It seems that whoever put you into my care is in the neighborhood.”