Even with a head wound, Gretyl was faster on the uptake. She yanked Iceweasel’s other arm and they followed Etcetera to another yurt where the wounded lay on air mattresses, lit by pea-sized OLEDs hastily stuck to the walls and casting overlapping crazy shadows. It was chaos, an impromptu morgue, but she saw some were moving, some were attended by people crouching over them. Pocahontas, one arm bandaged, soothed a figure on the ground, a hand on his forehead, other hand holding a screen and concentrating on the readout. Iceweasel supposed she was conferenced in to the pool of walkaway docs who helped with care around the walkaway net, and she wondered how many of these skirmishes they’d dealt with in the middle of the night, lately. She wondered who was crawling walkaway net, doing traffic analysis to find and target those docs.
Before long, she was conferenced into a doc of her own, working with a mercifully unconscious zepp-rider, burned terribly and groaning every time she touched her, following the doc’s directions, sometimes asking him to send them as text because she couldn’t always understand him through a very thick Brazilian accent. She wondered what timezone Brazil was in, and whether it was the middle of the night there. Presently, another Brazilian doc came on the line and helped her set a broken leg using an inflatable cast from a pack that, ironically, the zepp had dropped off the day before.
She looked up from her patient, who’d been palpably grateful for the painkiller she’d placed under his tongue. Gretyl sat on one of the few empty pads, face in her hands. She went to her, put her arm around her shoulders, kissed her tentatively on her ear, tasted dried blood and smelled stale sweat and scalp-oil. Gretyl’s thick hair was a mat of blood.
“You okay?”
“Just tired. I ice-packed my head and someone in Lagos checked me for a concussion and pronounced me bloodied but unbowed. But shit, girl, I feel like I’m about to collapse.”
“That’s probably because you’re about to collapse.”
“You think?”
“Lie down. We’re almost through. Even Etcetera’s taking breaks.” He’d been manic, torn between rescuing more aeronauts from the burning wreck and tending the ones they’d gotten out. He’d pulled two dead ones out of the Better Nation and wept as he carried them, then tended three more who’d died on the infirmary’s mats, helping carry them to another yurt that was now a morgue. Limpopo shadowed him for some of that, so had Seth, helping around the edges, gently calming him before he hurt himself.
“Okay. How about you?” Her voice was thick, groggy.
“What about me?”
“You need a break, too. Look like walking death. I’ve got an excuse, I’m an old lady with a scalp wound. You’re bursting with youth’s vibrant juices. When you start to look like a zombie-movie reject, it’s a sign for you to take it easy. You can’t help anyone if you’re not taking care of yourself.” She paused. “I know I embody the opposite of that advice, but I’ve got an excuse: I’m an idiot. What’s yours?”
“You’re right. I’m going to grab a piss and do a walkaround and I’ll come in. Leave room on the mat for me, old timer?”
“I’ll use you as a pillow if you’re not careful.”
“Done deal.”
Gretyl tilted her face up and they kissed, and Gretyl kept her mouth closed, which she did when she was self-conscious about her breath, which was darkly hilarious under the circumstances. As ever, Iceweasel kept kissing until her lips parted, and they mingled breath and saliva for a moment that stretched like taffy before she broke off and struggled to her feet, putting one hand on a wall panel, which flexed and bowed, then bounced back when she got her balance.
She glanced back at Gretyl before she ducked through the door, and she was on her side, motionless. Iceweasel squinted until she made out the rise and fall of her chest, then stepped through into the night.
It was coming on dawn, gray with pink on the eastern tree line, black on the western one. Limpopo and Etcetera sat on folding chairs on the roadside, Etcetera holding her and weeping into her neck. Limpopo locked eyes with her; they raised their eyebrows at one another in simultaneous, are you okay? that made them both smile wearily. Iceweasel tossed her an okay sign and blew her a kiss. Limpopo kissed back and she turned to the dark woods, digging out the paper gauze she’d pocketed on her way out of the tent to use as bumwad. She picked her way through the underbrush, killing her chest-light when it came up, letting her eyes adjust as she sought out the requisite log with a tree nearby to use as a handhold.
She assumed the position and did her thing, listening to the sounds from the camp, the crackle of small things in the underbrush. She should have brought a shovel, but under the circumstances, no one would blame her for a lapse in woodcraft. She’d pack out the bumwad, at least, put it with med-waste in the incineration pile.
There was a louder sound in the brush, not scurrying and small. Big and stealthy. She tugged up her pants, tabbed them closed, peered into the night. She dropped the bumwad, patted her pockets, which had accumulated a litter of small devices and objects through the night. Nothing of use. Disposable wrappers. She looked into darkness, taking a step toward camp, trying to find a club-worthy branch. She snatched one up, sodden with water and rotten. She listened intently for the steps. No one from camp would sneak through the woods. She had visions of mercs, wearing smart stuff that was more than dark, bending light to make itself invisible.
She took another step. Someone abruptly yanked at the club and she reflexively tightened her grip, so she went with it, off balance. She fell with an oof, a confusion of sinking into wet things and colliding with sharp rocks. In the instant between standing and falling, a part of her brain that she was rarely on speaking terms with took over. She rolled with the fall, taking most of it on her shoulder, using the momentum to goose her motion as she got to her knees, then into a runner’s stance. She ran, because someone was right behind her and there was the camp, and if she could –
She couldn’t. Someone was in front of her, small but wiry, effortlessly catching her hands as she raced past, a grip immovable as a steel clamp, not painful but perfectly unyielding. She nearly crashed into the unseen person, but it sidestepped her neatly as a cartoon toreador avoiding a bull, swung her around in a parody of a square-dance move, bringing her up short with her hands pinned before her. She focused on the person who held her wrists, a woman, she thought, small and short-haired, features painted in a dazzle-array of grays and greens. She had small white teeth, visible through her parted lips, and eyes hidden behind a matte visor hooked behind her ears.
The other one was right behind her, moving swiftly and almost silently, breath easy. She made herself relax, feeling for just a little slack in the grip of the woman holding her. Was that it? It was. With terrified strength, she feinted a head-butt at the visor, then yanked her arms so hard she felt skin leave her wrists, felt something in her shoulder or maybe her ribs pop. It didn’t matter. She opened her mouth to scream as she ran –
Then she was back in the woman’s grip, a strong hand over her mouth. The small woman smiled, a You’ve got moxie, kid smile, or that’s what Iceweasel chose to believe. Then the person with the large, male hand over her mouth – smelling of machine oil and something else that tickled her memory – clamped something to her bicep that immediately tightened like a blood-pressure cuff. She felt a tiny lance of pain as the automated syringe found home. Her panic was pre-empted by another feeling, a delirious feeling like syrup in her spine and down her butt, delicious like stolen snooze-bar sleep. The feeling grew. She smiled as her eyes closed.