“You’re such a dick,” it said.
He was walking.
Then he was inside a building.
Then he was inside a vehicle.
Then he was moving again, but this time it was more like floating.
No, riding.
Riding in a vehicle.
Clouds passed by above his head, outside an open car window. Bright, white clouds. When he was a kid, his mother (Charlie to her friends) used to tell him that if he stared long enough, the clouds would magically transform into whatever he was thinking at the time. When he got older, he realized it was just his imagination at work. But he still loved his mom anyway. She was a beautiful woman, kind and generous, and he never heard her say a bad word about anyone.
“You’re still alive?” a voice said.
There was a lyrical quality to the voice that he appreciated, as if it were reaching down from the clouds floating above him.
“God, how are you still alive?” the voice asked. “You must have lost at least two pints of blood out there. What are you, 200 pounds? You lose any more and you’re never going to wake up. Can you hear me? No, of course not. Just keep staring at those clouds.”
He wished the voice would shut up, because it was ruining what was, up to that point, a perfectly good staring-at-clouds moment. It had been so long since he’d allowed himself to indulge in such pointlessness that getting interrupted made him feel cheated. These eleven months had been one battle after another, and he was tired of fighting. So goddamn tired.
“Oh, shit,” the voice said. “You’re bleeding again!”
Oh, so that’s what that dripping sound was. I thought someone had left a faucet running.
He closed his eyes and the clouds disappeared. He might have also rolled off the seat and landed on the floor, hitting his head against the door, but that could have just been his imagination.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
The second time Will opened his eyes, it was to the rhythmic plop-plop-plop of rainwater. He was lying on the front passenger seat of the Ford F-150, reclined back as far as it would go. He was shirtless, and there was fresh gauze wrapped around his midsection. The throbbing pain felt like a sledgehammer pounding his brain in tune to the plop-plop-plop of the rain outside.
He groped along the side of the seat, found the lever, and pulled it. The seat lifted him up into a semi-sitting position. He stared out the bullet-riddled windshield and into a muggy, dark-gray world, sheets of rain falling over a familiar opening.
He was back in Fredo’s auto body shop in the city of Harvest, in one of its garage ports. For a moment, he was alarmed that it was nightfall. With some effort, he was able to lift his hand until he could see his watch: 5:11 p.m.
Why is it so dark?
“I can’t believe you’re still alive,” a voice said.
Will looked over at Zoe, sitting in the driver’s seat, watching him with curious eyes. Her white doctor’s coat, covered in dried blood, was thrown over the headrest, and he thought she looked odd in just a T-shirt and pants.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” she said.
“Am I?” His voice was labored and quiet. Was he whispering?
“You lost at least two liters of blood back there. Probably closer to three. But all it did was knock you out for half a day. What are you, the Terminator?”
He managed a grin. The truth was, he hurt. Every inch of him, and all he wanted to do was lie back down and go to sleep for a long, long time. But he didn’t, because it was too dark outside and his instincts kept him awake because of it, even if his watch told him it was only because of the rain.
“Do you always carry thread and needle around with you?” she asked.
“It seemed like the thing to do.”
“I tried to suture your wounds, but you were bleeding too much. I’ll have to do it later when you’re stronger. By the way, what happened to your leg?”
“I was in a helicopter crash.”
“What about your left arm?”
“Someone shot me.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah.” He sat up a little bit more. “How long has it been raining?”
“About thirty minutes.”
“We’re back at Fredo’s?”
“I didn’t know where else to go.” She looked conflicted. “And you were bleeding so badly, I wasn’t sure if you would survive anyway. But you did. Just barely.”
Will felt sticky, as if he were sitting in gum. He looked down at his seat, and even in the semidarkness saw that it was covered in blood. His blood. It stuck to his clothes, and his shirt, dark black with blood, was crumpled on the floor at his feet. It had been white when he put it on this morning.
“Do you have another shirt?” she asked.
“I did, but I gave it to Gaby last night.”
“That explains the bloody shirt I found outside.”
He nodded and laid his head back down. “You saved my life.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I’m a doctor. What the hell was I going to do, let you die out there?”
“There was a third guy…”
“He gave up and ran back to town after you took off.”
“He didn’t try to stop you?”
“I think he was confused. And scared.”
“Good for me, then.”
“Yeah, really good for you. There weren’t that many guys in hazmat suits back in town. Most of them were probably en route, bringing over more people from the other camps. If there had been just one more vehicle back there, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Must be my lucky day.”
“Yeah, lucky you.”
She picked up a water bottle and handed it to him. He drank greedily, devouring the whole thing in a couple of gulps.
“It’s rain water,” she said. “I’ll refill it later.” She took the bottle back and continued to watch him. “I can’t figure you out, Will.”
“What’s got you so confounded, doc? I’m not that deep.”
“The fact that you keep fighting, when everyone — or most everyone — has given up. I know you have the island, but instead of going back to it, what do you do? You run over to the camp. Then the town. Why?”
“Know thy enemy.”
“It’s more than that. You want to save people, don’t you?”
“You’re the first one to ever accuse me of that, doc.”
“I doubt that. Maybe you and I are more alike than I thought. We both can’t stand the idea of people who need help not getting it.”
Is that it? Maybe…
He said instead, “Decent working theory, I guess.”
“What you have to realize is that those people back there don’t want your help. They’re perfectly satisfied with where they are. To you that may sound unfathomable, but they’re not like you, Will. They’re not soldiers.” She looked out the windshield, into the pouring rain. “Not everyone can fight forever. Not everyone wants to.”
He watched the rain with her. Slowly, he began to enjoy the melodic plop-plop-plop against the garage roof, the almost calming effect of water cascading to the concrete driveway in front of them.
After a while, he said, “Thanks again, doc.”
“How’s the pain?”
“Like someone’s poking me in the eyeballs with a spear.”
She reached into the back for his pack, unzipped it, rummaged around, and then took out a bottle and read the label. “You don’t have much left. Looks like you might have given all the good stuff to Nate.”