Chapter 10

Angie

I thought the day the canisters fell and my brother Benjamin and I got trapped in the tunnels, I’d seen the worst that life could throw at me.

I was wrong. This carnage was so, so much worse.

NINE HOURS LATER

The natural light was almost gone. Shadows danced eerily against the worn canvas of the medical tent where Donahue was attempting to patch up the worst of the wounded. I checked the fyre egg in the fyre egg lantern on the rock beside Carter. The glow was weakening.

Carter glanced briefly up at me as he hunched over his worktable His green eyes were bloodshot, his shoulders slumped in fatigue. I gave him a grim nod.

He shook his head at me and turned his attention back to the little boy. The kid’s left arm had been sliced open, clear down to the bone. The worse gash, the one Carter was concentrating on, was an inch wide and running the entire length of the kid’s forearm. It didn’t look good.

Ever since the first truck filled with causalities had followed Stevron and I back to our base camp, Carter, Dirk, and I had been trying our best to stem the flood of blood and stitch up the wounded as fast as we could.

Nine hours, non stop, and the wounded kept coming. It was down to a trickle now. One or two drifting in every ten or fifteen minutes. I wish I could say that I counted to a thousand before yet another truck veered off the highway toward our camp.

The sound of an engine reached my ears. I sighed with dejection. This time, I’d gotten to eight hundred and ninety-three. So close.

I turned and caught sight of a pair of headlights. The truck, one of ours, came to a stop. Jonah Barks and Char Twiller, two men I’d only met hours ago, jumped down from the cab. They unloaded three more people. Two they left among the less wounded while Char carried an old man in his arms toward the medical tent. Char glanced hard in Carter’s direction. An odd expression crossed his face and I felt chilled.

Jonah headed our way. “How’s the kid doing?” Jonah asked when he came to stand beside me.

I brushed back a dark lock of the little boy’s hair before giving Jonah a slight shake of my head. I wet my lips and swallowed.

“I meant, him.” Jonah gestured with a stubby thumb to Carter.

Carter who hadn’t heard Jonah and Char’s arrival continued to work on the little boy’s arm.

The chill feeling spread along my sweaty skin. “Carter’s holding up,” I said warily.

Jonah snorted. “I still can’t frigging believe that the kid hasn’t had some kind of medical training. I’ve never seen anyone stitch up people faster. And the way he sets bones. Are you sure he ain’t carrying any of that healing blood in him as well?”

The chill turned to an icy burn.

When it came to Carter I hadn’t felt much of anything, except resentment and anger, toward the guy. He was a thorn in my side. A constant and ever present reminder of how life had once been. The fact that he was a Shipley and that his family had been instrumental in the incarceration of my father hadn’t helped matters.

That said, it didn’t mean I liked the way Jonah was staring at Carter. And his words had vaguely suggested that Carter wasn’t a Far Beyond but a member of the Sapphyre Wings people. That possibility made me suddenly uneasy and surprisingly protective. I already suspected Stevron of being a Sapphyre Wings, could Carter also be as well?

Despite my doubts, I answered Jonah’s question. “Positive.”

“How did the canisters effect him?”

I never liked to talk about what the canisters did to us, any of us, and I certainly didn’t owe Jonah Barks anything, so I simply stared at the squat man. I guess I didn’t look too friendly because Jonah held up his hands.

“Hey, don’t go all ballistic on me, lady. I’ve got my reasons for asking.”

As if sensing my agitation Carter looked up and gave Jonah a jaundiced glare. “You’re in my light.”

Jonah looked to Carter in surprise. “I thought the kid couldn’t talk.”

“Hear,” Carter corrected. “I can’t hear. Now move!”

I stiffened. I’d never heard such malice in Carter’s voice before. Nor had I ever seen the level of hostility I saw in his now narrowing eyes.

Jonah eyed Carter. His eyes darkened dangerously as he measured the much younger man. I straightened and took a protective step closer to Carter. My right hand slid over the handle of the knife strapped to my thigh.

Jonah noticed my action. He slowly took a breath, lifted his shoulders, and rolled his head from side to side.

“Too many people have died today. I’m not looking for a fight.” He stepped to the side allowing the fyre egg’s weakening light to penetrate the growing darkness around us once again.

Carter shot me a glance, then his eyes went to Jonah. I read the contempt on his face. Obviously so did Jonah for the older man growled. “Friendly, ain’t he?”

Carter snarled back at Jonah then dropped his head and began working on the little boy’s arm again.

I wet my lips.

The change in Carter, since the Prayers attack, was so dramatic it was hard to believe. I’d always viewed Carter as some kind of pacifist, easy going and…well, a kid that couldn’t do much harm.

I wondered if I’d seen the last of the kid I’d come to know over the past couple of years. Too bad really. Without me knowing it, I’d kind of gotten used to Carter. He’d grown on me. Aw well, like most things, the good was short lived.

I returned my attention to the task I’d been doing before Jonah had interrupted me. I dipped a couple of strips of blood soaked fabric, that had been ripped from the shirt of a dead man, into a basin of hot soapy water. I rubbed the fabric between my hands trying to wash as much of the blood as I could out.

We’d used the last of our clean gauze up hours ago. Cutting up the clothing of the dead had been our next best option.

Jonah watched me and Carter work. It was a long time before he spoke. “The way I see it.” He paused and ran the back of a grimy hand across his mouth. “I’m thinking we got hit because they think you and your crew were hiding amongst us.”

My hands stilled. I lifted my head. I saw suspicion in the older man’s eyes.

I couldn’t say I blamed him. The rumours had been flying for weeks. We’d been hearing snippets everywhere we went. A word here, a phrase there. Some strange looks and sometimes even more.

I gave him a blank look. I didn’t want him to see how terrified his words made me.

Jonah took a deep breath and then worked his jaw. The man was tense. When he didn’t say anything further, I wrung out the strips of cloth and lay them flat on the table beside the little boy.

I tried to keep calm, but I could feel the familiar tremors starting in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t dare look in Jonah’s direction again. And I prayed he wouldn’t speak. Wouldn’t pursuit his line of thinking. That he wouldn’t start asking questions.

Carter finished his stitching and broke off the threaded end. He moved methodically onto another gash, this one on the little boy’s upper arm. Several minutes passed. Jonah continued to watch both Carter and I. I expected him to speak. It made me even more frightened that he didn’t.

Carter suddenly heaved a sigh and reached for the jar of salve. He ran a finger along the inside wall of the jar and came up with a very small amount on the end of his forefinger. He quickly dabbed a smattering of the healing gel over the puckered stitching crisscrossing the little boy’s arm, then nodded to me.

I picked up a strip of fabric and began wrapping the still damp cloth around the boy’s arm. I knew I shouldn’t be wrapping a wound with a damp cloth but I didn’t have much choice. When I was finished, I lifted the boy into my arms and turned to walk to one of the many small campfires that had sprung up. I handed the child to a woman. Whether the lady was the child’s mother, I never asked. I simply turned and headed back to where Carter was helping an elderly woman sit in a chair beside the table.

Another gash needing stitching. I glanced around and saw that Jonah was gone. That’s when I noticed my hands were shaking. I tried to breathe but my throat tightened. In the back of my mind the tap, tap, tapping had once more begun.

©Legend of the Sapphyre Wings by Janet Merritt