“I’m going to try standing up and crashing this chair on the floor. The joints are weak. I think it’ll break,” said Kyle.
Kyle awkwardly stood, still bound to the chair. He threw his body to the concrete floor hoping the impact of the chair on the hard surface would break the wood. Kyle landed hard on his side, but the chair did not break apart.
“Damn it! I can’t get back up,” said Kyle. He struggled with the chair as he tried to shift his body. “It did something; I can feel the joints trying to give. Get up and fall on the chair, Robert. I think that will do it.”
Robert stood and slowly hopped his chair over next to Kyle. He twisted his body and threw his weight against the back legs of Kyle’s chair. There was a resounding crack, and Kyle’s chair broke apart. Kyle stood up and brought his hands forward. He could move, but he was still tied to wooden fragments of the chair. Robert was still bound to his chair and now lay on the floor.
“Get my knife. They left our stuff against the far wall. Hurry, cut me loose,” said Robert, in an urgent but hushed tone.
Kyle got the knife and brought it back to Robert to cut his bindings. Both men dashed back over to the far wall and grabbed their weapons. They quickly checked their firearms and went over to the door. Robert opened it just enough to peek out. They were in a concrete parking garage and he could see several people, who had apparently been living in the parked cars. There was no way out without being seen. They decided to wait for someone to return. This room was where the medical supplies were stored, so they would have to come back here. When someone returned to this room, they would take them as hostages and use them as a ticket out. Robert and Kyle stood behind the door, and waited for it to open.
Through the thin walls, they heard the familiar voices of Bull and Doc, getting louder as they approached the door. They were speaking with a woman, and Doc opened the door. He entered the room backwards, as he spoke to Bull and the injured woman. Bull was helping the woman, and was not paying attention to the room as he walked into it. He looked down at the woman’s bloodied leg. An instant after they entered the room, it was too late. Robert kicked the door shut.
Doc spun his body around and faced the two armed men. With a terrified look on his face, he held up his hands and said, “Just hold on. We can work something out. Think about what you’re doing now. This woman is hurt and I need to help her.”
The woman was weak, pale; she had lost blood, and was dehydrated. Bull was supporting her meager weight, or she would not have been able to stand. The woman slowly lifted her head. With a shaky hand, she pushed her long hair back from her face and stared at Robert and Kyle. At that moment, both men recognized her, although she looked different with the coal dust washed off her face by the rainstorm.
“Dorothy?” asked Robert.
With a weak voice, Dorothy replied, “I know you. What are you doing here? Why are you pointing those guns at us?”
While still staring at the loaded weapons pointed at them, Doc tilted his head toward Dorothy and asked, “How do you know these men?”
“I would have to say they saved me. I mean us. My son was there, too. That gang back at the coal cars was waiting for us. They started shooting at us and we ran away. I was hit in the leg, and these men helped us hide. I saw them capture two of Cyrus’s men, and they gave us a shotgun and rifle.”
“But we saw them wearing the red bandanas around their arms,” said Bull.
“I watched them take the red bandanas off Cyrus’s men,” said Dorothy, as the weakness in her legs began to overcome her. “They put them on as a disguise. I told them it was a bad idea.”
Bull glared at Robert and Kyle with anger and confusion, and began to ask of the two men, “Why would you—”
Bull was cut off abruptly when loss of blood and fatigue overcame Dorothy. Her knees buckled, and she would have collapsed to the floor if Bull had not quickly swept her off her feet. She lay unconscious in Bull’s arms.
“Get her to the cot,” said Doc, his attention directed toward Dorothy.
Bull gently placed her on the cot. Her pale skin reflected a yellow tone from the single incandescent light in the room. Shadows cast from the same light enhanced her sunken facial expressions.
Doc felt for a pulse and found that it was racing. This confirmed what was already obvious to him. She had lost a lot of blood, and now her blood pressure was collapsing. Her heart was trying to compensate for the lack of volume in her circulatory system by beating rapidly, to quickly move the remaining oxygen left in her blood. He knew what he needed to do and quickly went to a stack of boxes containing IV bags of saline solution, near a table with medical instruments. He reached out to get a small knife on the table to open the cardboard box that held the bags of saline. With his hand halfway to the knife, Doc looked at Robert and Kyle, and asked, “Are you going to kill us? If you are, just do it now.”
Robert slowly lowered his rifle and said, “No, patch her up.”
With a quick slice of the tape, the box was open. Doc tossed a bag of saline solution and some plastic tubing to Bull, who spiked the IV bag with the plastic tubing as Doc felt for a vein in the woman’s arm. Doc wiped her upper forearm with an alcohol pad and inserted a needle into a nearly collapsed vein. The tubing to the IV solution was connected to the needle and the bag began to drip fluid back into Dorothy’s body. Bull placed the bag on a pole and stepped back just as Doc stood and faced the men again.
With irritation Bull asked, “Well then, what do you want? If you’re not going to kill us, just leave here, just go away.”
“Listen to me, asshole. It wasn’t my idea to come here,” said Robert sternly to Bull, and also casting a critical glare at Doc. “My friend was on his way to settle a score and I was right behind him. As a matter of fact we would’ve been taking care of business by now if you hadn’t interfered.”
Doc tilted his head forward submissively, and his thick glasses slid lower on his nose. “What’s your business? Revenge? Extortion? Robbery?”
“It’s Cyrus. I’m going to kill him,” stated Kyle. “I’m fine with leaving now and doing that.”
“Do you know where he is?” asked Bull.
“There’s an Amtrak train stuck at the railroad hub, and his gang is staying in the sleeper cars. We guess that the rain will have driven them inside, and that’s where we’re going to hit them while they sleep.”
Doc’s face broke into a slow smile. This was the information and the opportunity he was looking for. Bull showed no emotion, but they could see that his mind was savoring this information, as his glance moved slowly toward the far wall and the ceiling, looking at nothing in particular.
Doc pushed his glasses back up again and said authoritatively to Bull, “Go get Hector. I’ll stay with Dorothy.”
Bull immediately turned and opened the door. He was halfway out when Doc had one more request. “Please explain to the men our… shall we say… misunderstanding with these gentlemen.” Bull nodded and left the room.
“We are going with you,” said Doc.
Doc did not wait for a response. He turned his back to Robert and Kyle, reaching for Dorothy’s wrist to check her pulse. He confidently nodded his head in agreement with himself regarding his assessment of her condition. He connected a new bag of saline solution to the IV and decreased the solution’s flow rate into her arm.
“You know you’re going to need our help… don’t you?” said Doc assuredly, as he flicked his finger against the IV’s clear plastic drip chamber, trying to remove some small bubbles. “Cyrus has a lot of men. His gang is getting bigger every day.”
“Keep talking,” said Kyle.
“He is a real threat to our survival. We have to go through that area to get water from the river. Getting coal off the coal cars was helpful, too. Cyrus has changed that for us, so he has to go. I won’t ask you what your motivation is, but I think we share a common goal.”