Voidhawk

by Halstead, Jason

  “Colonel, I found Doc Vincent,” Lieutenant Mike Somers announced.

  “Doctor,” he said, nodding towards her. “What casualties?”

  “Nine KIA Sir, at least three more soon to follow,” she said, standing stiffly.

  He frowned. “Twelve men, damn.”

  “So much for a bunch of untrained city-slickers,” a man muttered behind the Colonel. Dawn recognized him immediately, he was their chief mechanic and the guy that could probably turn a bicycle into a corvette if he had enough time.

  “That’s enough Chief Foster,” the Colonel said.

  Another man, whom the Chief was glaring at, had the decency to clear his throat and glance away. Dawn knew him too, he was their resident spook. She knew him better than most, in fact, though only because her best friend worked for him.

  “Come on, Chicago had two things, Mafioso and cockroaches,” the Chief pushed, “and that’s what survives the kind of shit we been through.”

  Captain Snow bristled. “They weren’t here when my scouts came through two days ago.”

  “Enough!” Colonel Wilson barked. “You men have a problem, you deal with it on your time, not mine.”

  Dawn tried to fade into the background. She considered slipping out the open bay door and running back to her ambulance. Either her hesitation saved her or she neglected to act in time, the Colonel turned back to her. “Doctor, thank you. I speak for all of us when I say that.”

  Dawn blushed a little, surprised at their leader’s empathy. She nodded and snapped off a salute, then turned and hurried away. If she made good time she might still find some warm food. She couldn’t help but wonder about the argument. Either the Chief didn’t care for Captain Snow or there had been a colossal fuck up. Either way, things had not gone as planned. Hopefully what they ran into today would be the last of it.

  She ran into another familiar face as she made her way through the impromptu camp. “Hey, Haskins! What’cha got there?”

  Billy Haskins was one of her frequent flyers. He was like a cat with nine lives, having dodged serious injuries more times than she had fingers. Dodging a critical wound often meant she got to put her signature into his flesh with a needle and thread though, and he often joked that his body would be worth millions someday when she became famous.

  Only problem was nobody was famous anymore.

  “What we scrounged up from the attack,” he said, slowing so she could check out the laundry basket of goodies he carried tight against his belly. “Best get back to your ride, Oscar left you a present.”

  “Ooh, a present,” Dawn said, rolling her eyes. “It better not be another gun, you know I’m no good with them.”

  Billy laughed. “They had a stash of meds.”

  Dawn’s eyes widened. “Remind me to give you guys a kiss!”

  Haskins stopped abruptly, ready to pucker up. Dawn had already double timed it back towards her ambulance, anxious to see what they had found. She forgot about her hunger as soon as she saw the hockey bag full of goodies laying beside the driver’s door. She almost cried out loud, seeing how stuffed full it was.

  She stopped and laughed before she opened it. The black and silver bag had been defaced by sparkling pink lipstick. The words read: “Love, Oscar”

  Oscar Chavez, another character that had a special place in Dawn’s heart. He was a lady’s man too, but Dawn wouldn’t let him have that part of her heart. Rumor had it he’d made his way through a fair share of the women in the camp already, but none of them had anything bad to say about him. She could see why; not only was he a good guy, but he never tried to hide the fact that he was an incorrigible hound with a great sense of humor.

  Inside the bag she found enough supplies to keep her boys patched up for at least a few weeks. Antibiotics, pain pills, bandages galore, even some surgical tubing and syringes. A few syringes, one of which she nearly cut herself on, and some extra vials of stuff that she couldn’t imagine they’d ever need: nearly two dozen bottles of various steroids with the cheap labels used by underground labs.

  “Who’d be stupid enough to be on this junk now?” She wondered, tossing the gear back in the bag. She picked up the surprisingly heavy bag and hauled it back to the rear doors of the ambulance. A few minutes later and it was stowed away; she figured she’d have time to sort the stuff out later. For now she had a mental inventory of it.

  Dawn glanced around, seeing some nearby campfires, and decided to try her luck. She walked up to the closest one and glanced at the faces huddled near the fire. Many were huddled together, more for companionship and hope than warmth. It was the beginning of fall so the cold weather had not set in yet but there was a promise of a chill to come.

  “Doc!” A couple of them greeted her, smiles coming to their face. Dawn greeted them in tune. She seldom felt like it these days, but she knew what it meant to her troops.

  They weren’t hers, they were the Colonel’s. Even still, she referred to them as hers. Their blood might be on Colonel Wilson’s roster, but it was on her hands and her… her what? Was it on her soul? Did every death touch her and leave her hurting? She used to feel that way, but Dawn had long come to the acceptance of death and that there was only so much she could do. She tried, and she often felt guilty that she had not tried harder.

  She wondered how many men and women in the convoy there actually were that she hadn’t shared a special moment with. Not the kind of special she barely remembered, but the intimacy of knowing they put her complete trust in her to make them better and help them get through to the next day.

  “I hate to impose, but have you guys got any scraps left?” She asked.

  “Shit Doc, don’t you ever think you’re butting in!”

  Dawn looked at the man who had spoken and felt a nagging itch in the back of her head. She knew his face… and his ass, come to think of it. She’d pulled some shrapnel out of it when he’d fallen on a rusted shopping cart. His name wouldn’t come to her though. She smiled in spite of it. “Thanks, what ya got?”

  “Got some Jiffy Pop and some roast dog,” A brown haired slip of a girl said. She detached herself from the slightly older man she was snuggled up against and pulled out a dented hubcap that had been cleaned – she hoped – and turned into a serving dish.

  “Poor Lassie,” Dawn muttered, reaching in to take some of the strips of cooled meat. She felt the grease on her fingers and tried not to think about who’s pet it may have been at one time. “I’ll pass on the popcorn, can’t stand the kernels in my teeth.”

  “It’s Jiffy Pop!” The girl persisted.

  Dawn laughed. “That’s okay. Thanks guys!”

  She settled down to absorb all the warmth and the companionship that she could. She enjoyed the camaraderie even though she mostly listened to them talk. Living vicariously through others even reminded her stomach to flutter a few times when she saw the couples sharing their warmth.

  “Hey Doc, how come I ain’t never seen you with a man?” Rusty ass man said to her, startling her.

  Dawn blushed, then laughed as a girl threw a rusted can across the fire at him and berated him for being “such a man.”

  “What?” He protested. “Good looking woman like that, just a shame to see her go all lonely, that’s all.”

  Dawn laughed again. “Just too busy, stallion, sorry to disappoint you. You rather I’m off holding hands with some dreamy guy or waiting for you to fall on another cart so I can patch you up?”

  It was too dark to tell, but the way he looked away quickly she knew she’d embarrassed him right back. “You remember that?” He asked a moment later, after the laughter had died down some. That caused it to renew, to his further embarrassment.

  “Best set of cheeks I’ve worked on yet,” Dawn teased, with a wink.

  He laughed too, deflating the situation further and allowing them to find another topic of conversation. Dawn was glad, she didn’t want to spend much time on that topic. She’d lost enough friends, she didn’t want to lose anymore. Defini
tely not another someone special. Chad had been her dream man and he got picked off by a group of the fishmen the aliens left behind.

  She hugged her knees to herself and smiled as she got up. She was about to be lousy company, it was best if she did it on her own. Her boys and girls had enough crap in their lives these days, they didn’t need her dragging them down any.

  “Sorry guys, I got a bunch of sick people that need to be checked on before I crash, thanks for the food though, that was the best use of a poodle I’ve ever seen!”

  They laughed and welcomed her back anytime. The doc was always welcome. It almost eased her coming foul mood. Almost. She still managed to find it, reliving the scene where she watched Chad head into a building while she waited in their pickup truck. It looked promising, back then some places even had some power and this place was one of them. It had been a gas station, over in southern Ohio. He got one shot off with his shotgun, but couldn’t pump it in time to deal with the strong hands of the aliens that grabbed him and…

  Dawn stopped and closed her eyes, taking deep breaths. She hated that memory. Hated it so bad it made her weak in the knees every time. She opened them and pushed on, forcing herself to focus. She repeated her mantra in her head, mentally naming off the bones in the human body, starting from the toes. It worked, pushing aside the horrible image slowly.

  “Doc Vincent!”

  Dawn stopped, a few feet short of reaching for the door to her camouflaged ambulance. The Colonel had demanded she paint over the highly visible white and red when she found it abandoned at a hospital, but he allowed the red cross on the side. There were still plenty of fishmen and a few other tribes of slave races that had escaped, but mostly they ran into humans and humans knew what the red cross meant.

  “Doctor, I hear you got some supplies today, is that right?” First Sergeant Brad Kinnison demanded. He’d once been one of the top NCOs the army had to offer. Now he was the guy that made life a royal pain in the ass for most of the camp. Sure, he kept them in shape and alive too, she supposed, but sometimes it wasn’t a life she was so sure she wanted.

  “Yes Top,” she said, turning to stand stiffly and address him.

  “What’d you get?” He asked.

  “Top? I haven’t had a chance to stow it away yet,” she said, knowing it was not going to go well for her.

  “Why the hell not?” He barked. “Let me see it!”

  “Yes Sergeant,” she said, turning and opening up the back of her ambulance. She hoisted the bag up, barely, and put it on the gurney in the ambulance. He said nothing about the graffiti on the bag, for which she was grateful. She showed him the contents, wondering as he showed particular interest in the vials of anabolics.

  “I expect a written report of this stuff by morning. You get it stowed and accounted for, got it?” He asked her.

  Dawn sighed. There went her beauty sleep. “Morning? Do you know how late it is?”

  He leaned in close to her and dropped his voice a few octaves. “Doctor Vincent, you joined this convoy, you agreed to follow the chain of command. Just because you’re a medic don’t mean your shit don’t stink, got it?”

  The hair stood up on the back of Dawn’s neck at his surly tone and the deadly serious look in his eyes. Most of the men in the camp were scruffy or had bears growing. Not the Sarge. Somehow he kept his face clean shaven. It displayed the lean features and sharp angles that, like now, could look downright mean. His dark brown hair and almost black eyes made the shadows of night darker as well, further intimidating her.

  “Doctor,” he said, looking around, “if we don’t have an inventory, how do we know somebody didn’t break in and steal the supplies? How do we know you’re not popping pills yourself to keep yourself buzzed…and putting everyone else in danger?”

  Dawn’s mouth fell open. Her, pop pills? “I’d never-“

  “I heard that too many times to believe it,” he growled. “Look doc, you’re a decent medic and a good woman, but we got rules here for a reason. You might not like them, but you need to obey them. You don’t…well, you remember what it was like before we found you?”

  The color drained from Dawn’s cheeks. She’d had this speech before, when she first stumbled across the convoy. Or, as the Sarge had reminded her, when they found her stumbling aimlessly along a road without a sense of purpose or a useful thought in her head. She nodded, biting back her bitterness at being manipulated, and said, “Yes Top, I’ll get it done.”

  He stared at her a minute longer, the hard lines of his eyes shifting a little. “Do you understand, Doctor?”

  She did. Damn him, she did understand. She was an educated woman and she knew exactly what pricks like him were doing. A strong leadership kept people together. It kept people working as a team and depending on each other. And it kept them busy, a simple thing that probably saved more lives than all the medicine she had in her possession.

  “Yeah, I understand,” she said with a sigh of defeat. “Now get out of my face, I’ve got a lot of work to do.

  He nodded then turned and stalked off without another word. Dawn stared at the overfull bag and fought back the strangled sob that tried to escape. She took a few breaths to center herself and wondered where that had come from. Was she PMSing? No, she had a few weeks still. Too much stress, she figured. She chuckled self-deprecatingly, no relief to be had tonight, she had work to do!

  She kicked on the battery power, lighting up the bay of her truck, and got to work. It took almost two hours to write everything down and get the new gear stowed away. As tired as she was and as much as she would have liked to kick the Sarge right between the legs, she realized it was better to do it now than to put it off until later. Procrastination had once been a skill of hers, but these days she knew better.

  Finished with the work she checked the meter on the batteries and smiled, she had more than half her charge left. That gave her plenty of juice to listen to a little music later on. Tomorrow, when they moved, the batteries would recharge.

  Finding the Top didn’t take too long either, she had a hunch he’d be near the command vehicle. The same place she’d all but fled from earlier. With a resigned sigh she rubbed her neck and stepped up to knock on the wall next to the open bay door.

  “Doc! Come on in,” said one of the aids that doubled as a guard. He seemed genuinely happy to see her.

  Dawn smiled at him, remembering his name. “How’s the foot Dan?” She asked him. He had twisted his ankle on some rubble a couple of weeks ago and she had been there to put him in a makeshift splint.

  “Doing great. Still a little weak, but I been careful with it like you said,” he responded, grinning wider.

  She smiled and nodded, then stepped past him. Her smile faltered as she looked into the artificial glow of the fluorescent bar lights that were strung up overhead, showing several people going over maps of the area. She cleared her throat softly, then when that got her nothing, she finally spoke up, “Top, I’ve got the data for you.”

  The First Sergeant looked up and glanced at her. He grunted, turning to accept the paper she pushed into his hand. His eyes scanned through it briefly. He nodded and turned back, dismissing her without so much as another word.

  Dawn glanced past him at the maps. A thought came to her as she looked at them. Maps had never made much sense to her, but it did remind her of what she’d been thinking while running through the inventory of supplies.

  “Sir, can I ask a question?” She said, her voice not nearly as strong as she had hoped it would be.

  The Colonel glanced up at her, frowning. He looked down at the maps then back up, apparently deciding there was nothing classified available. “Go ahead, Doctor Vincent.”

  Dawn blushed. She always did when somebody referred to her that way. She had been the next closest thing to being a doctor before they showed up. Before 27 days of the world ending and everything being tossed upside down. Before over 99% of the Earth’s population had been taken or killed by alien technology so superi
or there was no defense other than to run and hide from it.

  “Sir, it’s all these supplies,” she stammered nervously. “They had a lot of medical supplies.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” He asked, trying to smile patiently.

  “Well yes, but it was most first aid and black market stuff,” she said. “I don’t know what else the scavenging teams found, but I don’t think this is all of it.”

  He frowned. “Explain yourself, Doctor.”

  Dawn pushed past her blush and figured now was a great chance to prove herself. Now or never. “If they had access to that much stuff then they must have found some real supplies at a hospital… and they must have had some people there who knew what to get.”

  “What are you saying, Doctor?”

  “Sir, there’s got to be more supplies. Real supplies, not just local painkillers and first aid kits. General anesthesia, disinfectants, and real surgical tools too,” Dawn said, her expression and voice raising as the prospects excited her.

  “Dawn, we’ve been discussing almost that very thing,” The Colonel said with a sad smile. “We think there’s more of them, possibly a lot more. If we keep going are we going to run into more ambushes?”

  “Sir?” Dawn asked, confused. She hadn’t stopped to think beyond the possibility of having more supplies. Possibilities like those supplies being defended. “I didn’t… um, I guess I didn’t think about that.”

  He smiled at her. “That’s all right, we haven’t run into any large groups in a long time, none of us were ready for this. We all got sloppy, next time we’ll be more careful.”

  “Yes Sir,” she said solemnly.

  “Get some sleep, Doc,” he advised her. “Tomorrow might be exciting.”

  Dawn nodded and left, cursing herself the entire way back to her ambulance for not making the obvious leap of logic. Of course more supplies meant more people – who would take that stuff off to a fight and leave other things behind unguarded?