Sooner Dead

by Mel Odom

  "Thank you." Hella glanced up at the hillside and made out Stampede behind his rifle. She couldn't hear if he made a response. Sliding the rope from her shoulder, she took a few quick breaths and went down again.

  Face almost scalding from the heat, Hella dragged the grappling hook over the orange blob till tension tightened the rope. She swam backward, shoved the alligator's corpse out of her way, and stopped when she could put her feet in the mud. Leaning back, she hauled on the rope.

  The object stubbornly remained immobile, causing her to wonder if it buried itself too deeply in the mud. Then finally the suction gave way, and the object slid toward her. Despite her best efforts, the grappling hook slipped off twice before she got the thing into the shallows so she could see what she was working with.

  Judging from the humanoid shape, Hella felt certain she was dealing with another fractoid. Making out specific details about the creature was hard. When it cleared the water, the heat baked the sludge caking it into a hard, dry crust.

  As she walked off a few paces toward the rising shallows, she set herself to pull again. A second alligator exploded up from the depths where it had evidently been lying in wait for unsuspecting prey. It hurled itself from the water and lunged toward her.

  Hella didn't try to run because the buoyancy of the water would lift her and the mud beneath her boots would betray her. Instead she shifted her weight to one side and twisted her shoulder away from the predator. Her left hand came up instinctively and formed a weapon. A line of bullets hammered the alligator's side as it twisted and thrashed.

  A round from Stampede's rifle punched through its body and tore out its heart before it reached the shallows again.

  Shaking, heart pounding, Hella took up slack on the rope and discovered that it had come free during the attack. It took her a moment to defeat the paralysis that gripped her and walk back into the deeper water to secure the fractoid again.

  Trusting the heat-resistant rope, she coiled three loops around the fractoid's head and secured the grappling hook. She put her back into pulling, stretching out each stride she took to cover more ground more quickly. Even when she reached the saw grass that covered the shoreline, she didn't feel safe. The grass concealed predators as well as the water.

  Even worse, the grass impeded her efforts to drag the fractoid across the open ground to the tree line. Stampede held his position to watch over her.

  She looked up at him and took the comm link from her ear. Her breath blew hot and quick from the effort of dragging the fractoid. After shaking the water from the comm link, she slipped it back into her ear. "Can you hear me?"

  "Yeah."

  The connection sounded a little shaky and crackled every now and again, but Hella didn't feel cut off anymore.

  "Is it still in one piece?"

  "She." Gazing down at the recovered fractoid, Hella saw that the being was definitely female. She had breasts and rounded hips. Mud obscured her face. "I don't know. She's got mud and muck all over her. And she's heavy. Even after she cools down, she's going to be hard to move. We should have brought Daisy."

  "Yeah, I know how that would have worked out. The first time Daisy saw one of those alligators going for you, we'd have had a battle royal in the middle of that swamp."

  "Is Riley still on his way?" Hella knelt, slipped her knife free of her soaked boot, and picked at the hardened mud coating the fractoid.

  "He's practically on top of us."

  "The Sheldons?"

  "So far there's no sight of them."

  "At least Riley and his guys can do the heavy lifting." Hella examined the scorched metal revealed under the crust. The surface was burned black, but a silvery gleam remained beneath the flakes. However, the fractoid woman had melted down in several places. Sadness touched Hella's heart as she regarded the inanimate body. "I don't think this one made it."

  As she stood up, Riley and his men arrived. She slipped her knife back into her boot as Riley fanned his men out to set up a protective perimeter.

  "Hella?" Riley looked from the inert fractoid woman to the dead alligators then to Hella.

  "I pulled her out of the swamp as soon as I could, but I think she was already gone before she got here." Hella started to stand up, but the fractoid woman reached out for her and locked partially melted fingers around Hella's wrist.

  Pain surged up Hella's arm and tore a scream from her throat. She looked down as her wrist cooked in the heated grip of the metal woman. Hella yanked her arm and tried to get away, but the fractoid's hold was merciless.

  Riley ran over to her, but even with the hardshells amplified strength, he wasn't able to budge the woman's cruel grip. The stink of her own burning flesh filled Hella's nose.

  Then a silvery mist poured in from above and instantly took Scatter's shape. He reached down and took the fractoid woman's hand, and the harsh grip finally opened.

  Her mind wrapped in agony, Hella looked at her cooked wrist and tried to move her fingers. When she couldn't, when she realized that her hand no longer obeyed her, she grew even more afraid. Finally, thankfully, Riley grabbed an ampoule from his med kit and stabbed her in the leg with it. The pain, and her conscious mind, drained away. The last thing she remembered seeing was the fractoid woman's crazed, soot-blackened gaze as Scatter held her tenderly in his arms and broadcast that machine language.

  Hella struggled through the cobwebs that wrapped her mind. She tried to open her eyes, but they felt as heavy as bricks. When she tried to take a deep breath, it felt as if someone were sitting on her chest.

  "Easy." Stampede spoke softly. "You need to rest, Red."

  Everything came back to Hella in a rush. Adrenaline spiked through her system when she thought about her ruined hand. She opened her eyes and tried to sit up.

  Moving gently, Stampede pushed her back into her bedroll. No, it wasn't her bedroll. She gazed around the unfamiliar tent.

  "Pardot gave us access to one of the med tents." Stampede sat cross-legged beside her. His rifle rested across his knees.

  "My hand?"

  Stampede tried to speak and couldn't for a moment. "It's bad. Pardot was all for amputating it."

  Hella drew her injured arm up to her chest. The pain still throbbed, but it felt a million klicks away.

  "I wouldn't let him." Stampede's ears flattened. "I don't think he was as invested in the situation as he needed to be to make that kind of call."

  "More interested in his new toy?"

  "Yeah."

  "Even though it's broken."

  "Not entirely broken. Scatter has been able to talk to her a little. The fractoid woman isn't tracking very well."

  "I know the feeling."

  Stampede touched her shoulder lightly. "We'll get through this."

  "I know." Hella closed her eyes for a second and realized she was parched. "Is there any water around here?"

  Stampede picked up a nearby canteen and held it for her to drink.

  Hella remained silent for a while, trying hard not to remember how bad her arm looked. Was the meat really so cooked that it was ready to fall off the bone?

  "Scatter wanted to talk to you when you woke up, but Pardot won't let him." Stampede looked through the tent door. "Pardot put Scatter under lockdown. When he escaped and came to the swamp where we were, Pardot dropped all pretense of being friends." He paused. "If you hadn't been laid up, Red, we'd have bailed on them at that point." He heaved a sigh. "I really should have already made that decision. That way maybe you wouldn't be in the shape you're in."

  "What did Scatter want?"

  "When he found out Pardot wanted to amputate your hand, he got all worked up."

  "Why?"

  Stampede hesitated. "He thinks he can save it. Or you can."

  "Because of the nanobots."

  "Something like that."

  Hella studied the thick gauze wrapped around her hand and wrist. Thinking of what she was about to do almost made her sick to her stomach. "Help me sit up."

  "
You should rest."

  "According to Pardot, I should have my hand chopped off. And if we stay here, I don't see a good ending happening for us. Do you?"

  After a brief pause, Stampede shook his head and twitched his ears. "No. I don't."

  "Then help me sit up."

  Stampede lifted her gently into a sitting position.

  "I need this bandage removed."

  "You don't want to do this. Trust me."

  "I'm going to have to see it sooner or later, and it's going to have to be checked for infection." Hella pushed away all her fear and sickness, but she was afraid it would snap and rush back in on her if she wasn't strong enough to handle it. "I need to do this now."

  "All right." Stampede pulled a small throwing knife from somewhere on his person and slit the white gauze that covered her wound. "You might lose some skin. Maybe more. Normally you don't cover a burn because there's a tendency for the wound to stick, but Pardot said the wound had to be covered to prevent infection."

  Hella nudged the bandage free. Her head swam as her blackened flesh came into view. It was raw and red in places, like meat that had been burned on the outside but not cooked all the way through. Threads of blood dripped onto her jeans.

  She tried to move her fingers and couldn't. She almost cried and gave up then. Everything was just too hard and too unfair. Blinking back tears, she concentrated on her arm and tried to re-create the rhythm Scatter had taught her.

  At first nothing happened. The scarred, disfigured meat around her arm just sat there and nauseated her. Then almost imperceptibly, the rhythm grew stronger and more sure. Her flesh started to heal, tanned skin reclaiming the charred areas.

  After a couple of minutes that left her dripping with perspiration, Hella could move her fingers. In spite of the new wave of pain that burned up her arm, she smiled at Stampede. "I don't think it's permanent. I think I'm going to be able to fix it."

  Without a word, Stampede leaned into her and hugged her tightly, the way he had when she'd been a little girl. It felt good. But she briefly felt just as frightened as she had back then, and she didn't like that at all.

  CHAPTER 25

  Groggy the next morning, her arm still pulsing pain up into her skull, Hella woke when Stampede stepped into the tent. Through the flap, late-morning sunlight fought the shadows for ground space.

  "We're not moving?" Hella sat up by herself, quietly groaning in pain when she inadvertently used her injured arm.

  "Not yet." Stampede passed over a plate of food culled from their remaining supplies. Sausage links, boiled potatoes, and onions filled the tent with a pleasant odor.

  "What are they waiting on?"

  "Pardot isn't convinced the fractoid female is going to survive her landing here."

  "If she doesn't?"

  Stampede rolled his shoulders. "I guess we'll wait until Colleen Trammell has another vision."

  Using her injured arm to hold the plate, Hella lifted food to her mouth with her fingers. "Has she been having other visions?"

  "If she is, nobody's telling me." Stampede's ears twitched and his nostrils flared. "I think we're getting frozen out of the information."

  "We were never inside the loop anyway."

  Stampede smiled, but it was a cold expression that only served to bare his teeth. "I know." He scratched his chin. "Pardot is also keeping Scatter in a cage. Some kind of electromagnetic field that Scatter can't pass through. I've seen him try a couple times. It's strange watching him melt away and end up flattening against an invisible field."

  Hella lost her appetite at that bit of news, but she made herself keep eating. She needed to keep her strength up, and she'd been starving when she'd woken up. She suspected that had a lot to do with the energy the nanobots were using to heal her arm. "I don't like the idea of leaving Scatter behind."

  Rolling an eye her way, Stampede looked at her. "Nobody said anything about leaving."

  Hella shook her head. "I can't believe you'd think about staying after all this."

  After a brief hesitation, Stampede growled and shook his head. "Right now we'd be out here alone too, Red. With the Sheldons around, maybe that isn't a good idea."

  "We can take care of ourselves."

  "You're not at your best."

  "Getting better all the time." Hella set the plate aside and flexed her hand. Her forearm hurt, but the pain wasn't as bad as it had been the day before.

  "Maybe. But what if that wound gets infected? Even with the healing you've done, maybe it's all on the outside and you've left a lot of damage on the inside." Stampede shook his head. "All this mojo you're doing, Red, it's all new to you. If you have problems with that wound and we don't have medical help... things could go badly."

  Staring at her injured arm, Hella found the healing rhythm again and focused on it. More of the burned areas along her arm went away. After a while she'd gone as far as she could, and she just wanted to go back to sleep.

  "For the time being, we're going to ride with the expedition." Stampede took her plate. "While they sit, you're healing. If we're running through the Amichi Mountains for our lives, you're not going to be able to do that." He stood and looked uncertain. "So you get some rest and heal up as fast as you're able."

  Hella put her good arm across her eyes and sank back to sleep.

  Minutes or hours later, a shadow hesitated at the front of the tent. The flickering shift of the persons presence outside the flaps woke Hella. From the short, slender build, she knew her visitor was neither Stampede nor Riley.

  A moment later Colleen cleared her throat outside the tent. "Hella? Its Colleen Trammell. May I come in?"

  "All right." Hella sat up effortlessly on her bedroll. She cradled her injured arm in her lap.

  Colleen entered with a medical case in one hand. She gazed around the tent briefly.

  "Stampede's not here."

  "I know." Colleen sat beside Hella. "I thought maybe one of the fractoids might be in here."

  "I thought Scatter was being held in a cage and the female fractoid was hovering on the edge."

  "He is and she is." Colleen rummaged in the medical case and came out with a fistful of hypodermics. "Still, they've surprised us so far. Scatter's not like anything we expected, and the female has managed to survive in spite of everything she's suffered."

  Hella nodded at the needles. "What's that?"

  "Antibiotics. Steroids. Medicine that will help you get better."

  "Nobody thought to give me these yesterday?"

  Colleen eyed her levelly. "Yesterday no one thought you were going to survive your wounds. I think even Stampede believed you were going to die."

  "I didn't."

  Colleen smiled. "I know. Now we're going to see if we can keep you alive. Roll up your sleeve, please."

  Hella didn't move.

  "You don't trust me." Colleen didn't look surprised or offended.

  "With all due respect, no."

  "Why?"

  "Stampede would say that we have different agendas. He's more polite than I am."

  "I see." Colleen took another breath and let it out. "Is there anything I can do to change your mind?"

  "Let me talk to Scatter."

  Colleen shook her head sadly. "That's not going to happen. Dr. Pardot doesn't like the influence the two of you have over Scatter." She frowned. "Or the influence Scatter has over you two. Dr. Pardot isn't sure which way that works. And, frankly, neither am I."

  "Then it looks like we don't have a lot to talk about."

  Colleen sat for a moment longer. "I wish I could change that."

  Hella wanted to tell her that she did too, but she couldn't lie to the woman like that because she kept remembering that Colleen was involved mostly because of her sick daughter.

  Colleen stood and headed for the tent flaps. "I hope you get better. I do like you, Hella."

  Without a word, Hella watched her leave. She felt tired and sad and empty. Focusing, Hella unwrapped her wounded arm and looked at her
burns. For a short time, she drew on the strength she'd built up, triggered the rhythm again, and watched as unblemished skin gradually replaced the burned, oozing flesh. When her head thrummed with pain and she couldn't focus enough to maintain the healing effect, she rewrapped her arm and lay back down. After a few minutes, she slept.

  Stampede returned after dark. He brought three rabbits on spits that were brazed almost to golden brown perfection and stuffed with vegetables and spices. The succulent smell filled Hella's mouth with saliva, and her stomach grumbled. She couldn't believe how hungry she was because she'd been eating jerky all day and had felt full until the rabbits appeared.

  After handing her one of the rabbits, Stampede sat down with two of them. Dust covered him and dried mud clung to his hooves and lower legs.

  "You've been exploring." Hella pinched meat from the rabbit and popped it into her mouth. The grease was filled with flavor. She had been in only occasional contact with him over the comm link in between long naps that had taken up most of her day.

  "Scouting the Sheldons."

  "They're still in the area?"

  Stampede nodded and rubbed a hand across one of his horns. "Yeah, but there's something going on."

  Hella waited.

  "They've started running patrols through the forest. I think they're looking for something."

  "Us?"

  "Don't know."

  "If they were going to look around, you'd think they'd have looked around when the second fractoid came through the ripple."

  "They did. You just weren't conscious when Riley and I had to hide you in the forest. We were lucky and got through them."

  "Oh."

  "The Sheldons weren't too dedicated to the effort yesterday, but they're spending more time at it now."

  "Does Riley know?"

  "Riley has his men out there keeping the perimeter, but he's not exploring much farther than that."