Crucible Zero

  Then he pushed me upward, extending his arms with a grunt. A new set of hands reached down around me, even wider and larger than Abraham’s hands.

  “Relax,” Foster said. “You are safe.” He pulled me up out of the vehicle, and the world spun so hard, I thought I was going to lose my lunch.

  I didn’t want to go into another timeway. I was in no shape to face crazy, gun-wielding Slater or anyone else who might be waiting for me there.

  I tucked my head against Foster’s chest and waited for the scent of roses. But the scent never came and the world never shifted. Maybe the dizziness was just a head wound.

  What kind of a life was I living that a head wound was the preferable option?

  Foster carried me to wherever safety might be, and when he stopped, he lowered me to sit with my back against a tree.

  “This is loaded.” He handed me a handgun. “The mercs are still out here.”

  The mercs! That fear brought a shot of clarity through my veins, and I took the gun with one hand and wiped the blood out of my eyes with the other. Definitely head wound.

  “Just go get Quinten and Neds,” I said. “I’m all right.”

  Foster pressed his big hand on the side of my face in such a kind gesture, I was surprised by it. Then he turned and walked away.

  I took stock of where, exactly, I’d landed. Tree above me; brush around. I could make out the spindly radio tower to my right.

  I didn’t see the road, and since I was too dizzy to stand, I didn’t bother looking for it.

  Instead I controlled my breathing, working hard to use my ears and eyes to sense if anyone was coming my way.

  Soon I heard footsteps, heavy and steady. Foster. He worked his way up out of the ravine to my left, his arm around Neds.

  Neds both looked a little banged up, and I noted his left arm was tucked up against his chest, as if moving it would cause him great pain, but they were both conscious. A massive bruise had already spread across Right Ned’s face. “Wait here.” Foster handed Neds his other gun, glanced at me, and then walked back down to where the vehicle must have come to rest.

  Neds were standing, though both of them were pale as sun-bleached sheets.

  “What happened?” I asked, squinting up at him.

  “They shot out the tire.” Right Ned’s voice was strained. “I couldn’t keep it on the road, and when we came around the curve, we rolled down the hillside.”

  “Did you see Quinten?” I asked.

  “Woke up to Foster slapping my face, then dragging me up here to you,” Right Ned said. “Abraham still alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Figures,” Right Ned said without any heat.

  Left Ned was being uncommonly quiet. I glanced over at him. His eyes were a little dazed.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. “Both of you?”

  “We’ll live,” Right Ned said.

  “If we don’t get shot,” Left Ned whispered. “Or eaten.”

  “We’re going to be fine.” I placed my palm against the tree and pushed myself up carefully, as if I were balancing on a trapeze in a high wind. It was slow and not very graceful, but I managed to stand without vertigo pushing me over.

  “Are you okay, Matilda?” Right Ned asked.

  “Knock on the head is making me dizzy,” I said. “I’m fine. Keep your eyes and ears open for mercs. They must have seen us go over.”

  “They might think we’re dead and leave,” Right Ned said.

  “Are they that sloppy?” I asked.

  “No,” he admitted.

  We waited. The road was above us. Foster had climbed about three-quarters of the way up the hillside and left us on a ridge that jutted out a bit, with plenty of bushes to offer us some camouflage. The wind through the bushes and trees rattled and hissed, and a distant bird or two called out, but I didn’t hear the buzz of the motorcycles. Why weren’t they coming toward us to finish the job?

  An unsettling answer came to me. “Did any of them have scopes? Sniper rifles?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” Right Ned said. “I was too busy crashing a bus.”

  I gave him a wan smile.

  The wrenching sound of metal twisting rang out from below us. I hazarded a glance that way, but looking down the hillside made my head swim.

  “Are they okay?’ I asked.

  Right Ned looked down, while Left Ned kept an eye on the horizon.

  “Foster is braced on a broken tree outside the bus,” Right Ned said. “I don’t see Abraham or Quinten. Wait—there’s Abraham. He has him. I don’t think he’s conscious.”

  The wind shifted, bringing with it the low rattle of engines approaching.

  “Shit,” Left Ned whispered. He shifted the gun in his hand, but still wasn’t using his left arm.

  I scanned the rise, which was probably about twenty feet above us. The angle of the overhang might be enough to keep us hidden from the casual glance, but the mercenaries were hunting us.

  There was nothing casual about this.

  Foster was making a bit of noise getting Quinten up the rise. He finally made it to the little outcropping where we were standing.

  Quinten was draped over Foster’s shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Unconscious. There was a lot of blood on what I could see of him, and a lot of blood covering Foster’s hand, which held him secure.

  “Is he alive?” I said, horror twisting my stomach.

  “Yes,” Foster rumbled. “We must treat him.”

  My duffel had, miraculously, remained draped over my shoulder. I had Evelyn’s little sewing box in there and some bindings, but no other medication.

  “He said we have to do it fast,” I said. “That wounds go bad quick nowadays. You need to let me stitch him up. Put him down, Foster. I need to look at him right now.” I was talking too fast, my voice rising with each word.

  Panic. Even though a small, reasonable part of my mind knew panic would not help anything, I was shaking, my heart racing.

  Foster kept walking up the ridge, carrying Quinten, right on past us.

  “Foster,” I said. “Don’t. They’re coming!”

  Abraham powered up the cliffside, resting a moment on the outcropping. Quinten’s heavy trunk and bag were in one hand, and more gear was strapped across his back and chest and in his other hand.

  He glanced up after Foster, then at both of us. “Stay here. I’ll put this down and come back for both of you.”

  “Quinten’s hurt,” I said, rather unnecessarily, since Abraham was the one who had pulled him out of the wreckage.

  “Mercs are on the way,” Right Ned said.

  “I know,” he answered, starting up the hill. “We’ll take care of that too.”

  I watched the path Foster chose up the hill—a diagonal that sent rock and dirt shifting and rolling down the hillside with each step. I could do that. I could make that climb. There were small bushes I’d be able to use as handholds, and it wasn’t far.

  “Let’s go help Quinten,” I said to Neds.

  “He’ll come back for you, Matilda,” Right Ned said. “No need for you to fall down the cliff going after him.”

  “I’m not going after him. I’m going to help Quinten,” I said, securing the gun. Climbing might not be a good idea, but climbing with a loaded weapon in my hand was clearly a stupid idea.

  “All right,” Left Ned said. “Show us what you can do, Tilly.”

  I met his challenging gaze, and couldn’t help it. I smiled. “I like that name, and I like you using it. Also, be prepared to be impressed.”

  I took a step, holding my breath against the sway of the world, then took another, following Abraham’s route.

  It was not easy. My head rushed with heat and pain; my arms and legs shook; and, if I wasn’t very, very careful about how I shifted my gaze, how I turned my head,
everything rocked and reeled.

  I heard Neds starting up after me, and one time when I miscalculated a grab for the branch in front of me, I felt his hand press against my back to steady me.

  “You got this,” he said.

  I would have thanked him, but all my air was currently being used to feed my starving lungs and racing heart.

  I couldn’t hear the engines over the pounding in my head. But when I took the last step up the hill onto the level shoulder of the street, I wanted to fall down on my knees and not move for a week.

  Instead, I took stock of our situation.

  Foster and Abraham had set everything they were carrying down the road a ways, off to one side under a fir tree. Foster knelt next to Quinten, and had amazingly produced a blanket of some sort to drape over him.

  I started that way.

  Abraham turned, saw me. His eyes went wide, and then he shook his head, walking toward me.

  “I told you I’d come back for you,” he said once he was near enough. His eyes took in my face, flicking up to my head, where I knew blood matted my hair. The blood down the side of my face was dry, so I assumed the bleeding had slowed or stopped.

  “You’re injured,” he said.

  “I know. I can feel it.”

  “You . . . feel?”

  Oh, right. He didn’t know that about me. “I’m just full of surprises,” I said.

  The rumble of engines finally registered. They were coming our way. Close now.

  I pulled my gun and turned my back toward Abraham, expecting the mercenaries to round the bend in the road and be on top of us any second.

  Abraham reached out from behind me. His hand slid down my arm, and he wrapped his fingers gently around my wrist, lowering the gun slightly. He had stepped so close, I unconsciously leaned back into him to steady my stance.

  “Take care of your brother,” he said, his voice low and intimate, his mouth tipped down by my cheek so that he might kiss me if I turned even just a fraction of an inch. “I’ll take care of our company.”

  I nodded, felt the rough of his stubble interrupted by the silky smoothness of his stitches against my cheek, the scent of him bringing back memories of things I wanted so badly, I ached.

  “Go,” he said gently.

  I lowered the gun and he stepped back an inch. I turned and made my way to Quinten as quickly as my unsteady head would allow.

  Foster was standing off the side of the road over Quinten, but had taken the time to unpack a couple of items: an ax and a wicked-looking machete.

  He shifted his grip on both, gave me a short nod, and strode over to where Abraham stood in the middle of the road about thirty yards or so from me. Neds had just made the rise in the hill and he hesitated, then chose to walk my way, pulling the gun from where he’d had it tucked in his belt.

  The engines were growing louder. I knelt next to Quinten and assessed the damage. Broken nose, scrapes on his face, and bruising. His cheek was split. I ran my fingers over his head. Deep cut there. That wasn’t good.

  Then I checked his neck, which seemed okay, and pulled off the blanket to get his jacket and shirt open enough that I could look for breaks and cuts on his torso. Torso looked relatively fine—bruised, though. Most of the blood I’d seen on Foster probably came from the gash on Quinten’s thigh.

  “Okay,” I said, watching his breathing, which was even and clear. “This isn’t too bad. We can take care of you, Quinten,” I said. “You’re going to be fine.”

  I pulled the duffel over my head and held still while a wave of nausea rolled over me, then unzipped the duffel and pulled out the sewing kit. “Do we have any antibacterial?” I asked Neds. “Anything to coat those scrapes to keep them from getting infected?”

  Neds crouched down, opened Quinten’s bag, and handed me a metal can with a screw-on lid. “Use it sparingly,” he said. “It’s strong.”

  “Got it.” I used one of the cotton wraps as a rag, retrieved a canteen of water, and cleaned Quinten’s head wound as best I could. I’d always been competent at stitching up the beasts on the property, and Grandma and Neds and myself back in the day. But right now, even with my hands shaking, they were more than competent. They were brilliant, practiced, knowledgeable.

  It was like I’d somehow become even better at tending wounds overnight.

  Which I supposed was partially true. Evelyn had had a fine hand with stitching, and I was certain she had used her skills to look after the injured. She must have been downright amazing at it, and the muscle memory remained with me.

  Thank you, Evelyn, I thought as I unscrewed the lid on the container and sniffed at the pearly blue contents. It smelled of licorice and lemons—a lot like the scale jelly I remembered.

  I used the clean cloth to scoop up a bit of it and spread that over Quinten’s wounds. I also dragged the thread through it before sewing up his cuts with quick, even stitches, leaving room for some swelling.

  A gunshot cracked the relative silence. I jerked and looked over my shoulder.

  Abraham had just shot a man on a motorcycle right through the head and was stepping to the side as the vehicle wobbled, fell, and skidded down the road.

  He took aim at the next rider—a woman—and fired; missed. Foster rushed forward, brandishing the machete. He swung for her head.

  I turned away, my stomach and nerves not up to watching the grisly deaths. The other mercenaries must have realized we weren’t yet over-the-side-of-the-cliff dead. They pulled guns and started shooting.

  Abraham and Foster stood their ground and returned fire.

  “Shit,” Left Ned breathed. “If those two ever decide to kill us . . .”

  “Not going to happen,” I said.

  “But if they do . . .” The sound of another crash, and then an engine shifting gears to turn and retreat filled the air as I finished binding first Quinten’s head, then his leg.

  I glanced over my shoulder again. Abraham and Foster were running—and those two big men were fast—after the remaining two mercenaries, one who was on foot, and one who still had his motorcycle beneath him. The road was strewn with blood, gore, and motorcycle wreckage.

  Foster tackled the man on foot and then commenced to pound the guy’s head into the concrete until he no longer moved.

  The remaining merc fired at Abraham over his shoulder. He didn’t miss. But Abraham was still running toward him. He lifted his gun, took aim, and shot the tires of the motorcycle out from under the man.

  Man and machine went flying, twisting and tumbling, and landed in a mess of metal and flesh. Abraham slowed his pace, and calmly walked up to what was left of the man and shot him in the head. He stared at him a moment, then walked off to the motorcycle to see if it could be salvaged.

  Galvanized are mercenaries. Dangerous. Quinten’s comments rang through my mind. No loyalties to anything.

  No kidding. There was no hint of mercy in that man, nor in Foster, even though they might have just killed people they knew.

  My brain was trying to grasp the cold-blooded actions I’d witnessed and match it up to the gentle and kind people I’d known them as before. Although they had been gentle and kind to me, even in my time they had once been killing machines—super soldiers who had been deployed by governments seeking control.

  Abraham and Foster were no strangers to destruction, chaos, killing. Not in that time, and, certainly, not in this.

  Abraham had asked me if I’d ever killed a man before. He had told me I might not want to walk that path.

  Right now, in this crappy moment beside this crappy road, dealing with my wounded, unconscious brother, I didn’t think I wanted to see anyone die ever again.

  “Okay,” I said, finishing putting some of the goo on every tiny scrape I could find on Quinten’s body. “You’re next, Neds. Where are you hurt?”

  “That,” Left Ned said
, pointing at Right Ned’s face. “And the shoulder.”

  “Anything else?” I asked as I did my balancing trick to stand on the ground that seemed to be swaying side to side.

  “You’re pale as a bone, Matilda,” Right Ned said. “I think we need to get a look at your head.”

  “I’m fine, and stop stalling,” I said. “But it would help if you were sitting. You’re a little taller than me.”

  He glanced over at the road, and I followed his gaze. Abraham and Foster were dragging the bodies to the side of the road and sorting through the vehicles.

  “We can’t stay here, can we?” I asked.

  “Dead bodies will draw the ferals within a hundred miles.” Right Ned sat down with a groan. “And we have only a few hours until it gets dark.”

  Crap. I pressed at the bruise to see if Right Ned’s cheek was broken. He hissed in pain and his eyes got watery.

  “Jesus, Matilda.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t think it’s broken.” I checked the pupils of his eyes, then Left Ned’s. “No concussions. Let’s look at that shoulder.”

  “It’s dislocated,” Left Ned said.

  I ran my fingers gently along the joint, and Right Ned cussed.

  “You’re right,” I said. “It’s dislocated. I’m going to set it into place. Ready?”

  They both nodded, inhaled, and held their breath.

  “One . . . two . . .” I pushed his shoulder with a sharp, abrupt punch.

  “Whoreson,” Left Ned seethed.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Sorry. Let’s get that in a sling.”

  “No time,” Left Ned said.

  “Wrong. We’ll make the time.” I dug around in the duffel, then looked through Quinten’s stuff and was surprised and happy to find a sling folded in a small canvas bag. I pulled it out, looked over the buckles, and helped Neds into it, adjusting the straps for his wider shoulders and chest.

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “Hurts like hell,” Left Ned said.

  “Better,” Right Ned corrected. “It’s better.”

  “Can you take pain pills?”

  “Let’s save them for later,” Right Ned said. “We need to get to shelter before nightfall.”