Out of Reach

by Kendall Talbot

  “Jesus, Lily, you’re hurt!”

  “No, no. It’s nothing.”

  “It doesn’t look like nothing.”

  “Just a bruised ankle. I’ll be fine.”

  “Wait there. I’ll come to you.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “For God’s sake, woman. Will you just do as you’re told?”

  She clenched her jaw, and the two of them stared in a Mexican standoff until Lily succumbed to his demands. “Okay! Hurry up and get in the water before the sun sets.”

  Even from this distance she heard him huff. “All right, Tiger Lily, keep your panties on.”

  She chuckled but bit her tongue as he readied to slip into the river. Her heart leapt to her throat when he splashed into the water. He kicked once and the current whipped him away. Within seconds, he was gone.

  Despite his instructions, Lily scurried to follow him, but fell to her hands and knees again. She howled at the pain. Her already battered knees stung with the agony, yet she got to her feet and carried on.

  Each step was a rushed repeat of the one before, and it seemed like forever before she’d scrambled off the rubble and returned to the rotting jungle floor. She went back to counting her steps, but waited until she hit a hundred before she stopped to whistle.

  As the sun slipped behind the trees on the opposite riverbank and darkness consumed what little light there was left, a niggling fear that Carter hadn’t made it ate at her like acid.

  She didn’t stop for water.

  She didn’t stop to rest.

  It was just good foot in front of bad foot and repeat.

  Suddenly Carter appeared, sodden, pale, and gaunt. She dropped her stick crutch and hopped to him. He dropped the backpack and hobbled to her.

  She clutched her arms around him, and he pulled her to his chest. Both of them talked and cried at the same time.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” he said.

  “I was so scared,” she said.

  Their mouths met in a heated kiss that said everything. I want. I need. She opened her lips and his tongue slipped into her mouth to dance a lustful tango. She tugged at his buttons, undoing them as quickly as her fingers could go. Her hands found his chest, and she glided her palms over his chiseled torso.

  He pulled back, distress marring his face. “Sorry. Oh God.” His breathing was erratic. His wide eyes looked horrified. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “What?” She frowned. “Kissed me?”

  “Yes, it’s . . . it’s . . .”

  “It’s what, Carter? I wanted it too. We kissed each other.”

  He blinked. Frowned. Looked completely lost for words.

  “What? Tell me.” She fisted her hips, demanding to know what was wrong. She thought they had something. Something special. The question she’d asked at Agulinta flashed into her mind. “You’re married, aren’t you?” She thrust her chin at him.

  His shoulders slumped.

  “Answer me.”

  He blinked at her. “It’s not that easy, Lily.”

  “It’s a yes-or-no question.”

  “Please, Lily, I promise I’ll tell you. Let’s get a campsite sorted for the night and then I’ll tell you my whole shitty story.”

  His candid response and pleading eyes had her rage simmering. “Okay, but you promised.”

  As he nodded, a pained look rippled across his face. She glanced down to his legs and noticed a dark stain on his shorts. “What’d you do to your hip?”

  He cleared his throat but failed to elaborate, and she had a funny feeling he was debating whether to answer.

  She huffed. “Forget it. You can tell me about that later too. Let’s find somewhere to camp.” Lily grabbed her pack, flung the strap over her shoulder, turned her back on Carter, hobbled to her makeshift crutch, collected it from the ground, and limped away.

  She would’ve strode away if she could.

  As the monkeys started their howling ritual to announce the onset of nightfall, she settled on an area a couple of feet away from the river. Its flat ground and broad expanse made it ideal for their overnight stay. She set about unpacking the contents of her bag and sighed with relief at the sight of her father’s journal. It was soaking wet but intact, and she was confident that once dry, it’d still be legible. As she plucked items from her pack and laid them around her, she wondered if Carter had looked through the journal, or her notebook. Once he turned up, she had every intention of asking him.

  She unclipped the sodden sleeping bag from her pack, unrolled it, and was about to hang it over the branch of a nearby tree when she heard Carter’s heavy footfalls. Turning his way, she gasped at the sight of him.

  Sweat flooded his forehead, a ghostly hue colored his skin, and the dark stain on his shorts could only be blood.

  “Jesus, are you okay?” Lily limped to his side and the instant she touched his cheek, the fire burning beneath had her gasping. “You’re burning up. Come on, sit.”

  Ignoring the pain in her ankle, she placed her hands on his shoulders and guided him to the clearing. His camera strap lay crossways over his shoulder; she unhooked it and put it down. Glancing around for a place for Carter to sit, she spied the sleeping bag. It was wet, but at least it’d be clean. She spread it out, then placed her hand on Carter’s elbow. “Hey, you can sit here.”

  Tears glistened his eyes and he sucked the air through his teeth as she helped him to the ground. He curled to sit on his right buttock.

  She knelt at his side. A trickle of sweat rolled from his temple down his cheek and disappeared into his beard. Carter, however, didn’t move.

  A monkey screeched right overhead, making her jump. It also made her realize just how dark it was getting. She needed to get a fire going before she couldn’t see a damn thing.

  She leaned forward and kissed Carter’s forehead. “Stay here and rest a bit. I’ll get a few things sorted.” She handed him the water bottle and stood.

  Lily gathered a pile of sticks and dry grass and threw a fire together. The flames grabbed quickly and she dragged over a large log and rolled it onto the blaze.

  Water was next. Clutching her water bottle, she hobbled to the river and filled it. But even as she pushed the bottle below the surface to fill, she realized she had a problem. Without their saucepan, she had no way to boil it.

  She limped back to Carter, checked his forehead, and recoiled at the heat. A fever had taken hold. “I need to look at this wound. Can you lie back? I’ll have to take your pants off.”

  He huffed. “No peeking.” He made a guttural sound but Lily couldn’t decide if it was a laugh or a whimper.

  She cupped his cheek. “I won’t peek. I promise.”

  After lowering him to the sleeping bag, she spied the hole in his shorts. Her breath caught. “Jesus, Carter, you’ve been shot.”

  He blinked slowly and simply nodded, as if it were an everyday occurrence.

  A cold sweat prickled her forehead as she unbuttoned his pants, lowered the zip and peeled them open. Her heart pounded at the sight of the blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his hip and thigh.

  As much as she didn’t want to, she had to look at the wound to see how bad it was.

  She touched his shoulder and their eyes met. The green in his irises had dulled, their usual spark gone, replaced instead with a blaze of fear that drove dread up her spine. “I’m going to take your shorts off now.”

  “No peeking.” His gravelly words sounded painful, and she wondered if he knew he’d repeated himself.

  She chuckled, attempting to lighten the mood. “I’ll peek if I want to.” Her joke went unanswered and his silence was as loud as if he was screaming.

  Hooking her thumbs into the waistband of his shorts, she wriggled them down inch by inch. He worked with her, raising his hips slightly and pushing with his hands
. Once removed, she didn’t peek as she positioned his shorts over his groin and he put his hand on top, holding them in place. That simple move had her believing he was going to be just fine.

  She undid the butterfly clips and unrolled the bandage.

  Acid burned her stomach when she finally revealed his bloodied flesh. The wound in his butt cheek was a fairly neat yet charred circle, as was the exit wound at the front of his hip. Dark purple bruising colored the swollen flesh, marking the trajectory of the bullet beneath his skin.

  “Carter, I need to clean this. Do you understand?”

  He turned his head her way; his eyes were blank, and he seemed to look right through her. She shuddered and, swallowing back the lump in her throat, she stood.

  Upending the rest of the items from the backpack onto the end of the sleeping bag, the first-aid kit was the first thing she saw. She opened it and was surprised to find everything dry. She rummaged through the medications and popped out two pain-relief tablets.

  She crawled to Carter and touched his cheek. “Carter, hey. I need you to take some tablets.”

  He groaned in response. She tugged him toward her so his head rested on her chest. “Open your mouth.” She held the bottle at his lips and when they parted, she popped both pills on his tongue and poured in water. He swallowed loud enough for her to hear. “Good, that’s good. Now lie back down. I’ll be back in a sec.”

  She eased Carter backwards to lie on his good side and tried to ignore the blood oozing from both his buttock and his hip. While she’d never seen a bullet wound before, she’d seen enough injuries while growing up on a farm to know she needed to stop the bleeding.

  But she had no idea how.

  Lily returned to the backpack contents, hoping for inspiration. The pocketknife was promising with its selection of knives, miniature tweezers, scissors, a nail file, and even a toothpick, but in the end she gave up on it.

  Think, Lily, think. She studied the bits and pieces, praying for a solution.

  Carter groaned.

  “I’m coming, Carter. Hang in there.”

  She picked up the large metal spoon, thinking that she could at least heat some water in that. But it’d take forever to sterilize a decent quantity. Conceding that she had no choice, she poured water to the brim of the spoon and held it over the fire.

  It seemed like an eternity before bubbles appeared at the surface. However, as it hit the boiling point she realized she had nothing to pour it into. She clenched her jaw at her lack of planning.

  They had two water bottles. What she needed to do was fill one up with water from the river, and use the other one to hold the boiled water. She placed the spoon of already boiling water onto the sleeping bag, emptied Carter’s water into her bottle, and tipped out the remainder. Securing Carter’s bottle between her feet, she picked up the spoon by the handle, but it’d stuck to the sleeping bag. Grumbling under her breath, she tugged at the metal handle and it released, splashing the hot water onto her legs.

  The spoon tumbled from her hand and landed on her calf.

  “Shit.” She flung the metal off and gasped at yet another injury to her already battered body. The hot spoon had burned a red oblong shape onto her flesh. Tears welled in her eyes and a sense of uselessness gripped her. Her chin dimpled, and when a lump formed in her throat, she let the tears trickle down her cheeks and fall onto her chest.

  Through the blur, she looked at the sleeping bag and saw that the hot spoon had melted the synthetic fabric. An idea whizzed through her brain, and she jolted upright. Flicking the tears from her cheeks, she blinked at the melted fabric. It was a sign. Her father’s favorite saying, Everything happens for a reason, raced through her mind.

  The hot spoon would be the perfect tool to cauterize the wound. She turned the utensil over in her hands. Can I do this?

  Lily had branded cattle before. Growing up on a farm had taught her many things that’d required her to step out of her comfort zone. Skinning animals was one of them. But what she planned to do now, was about to hit the top of that list.

  Carter moaned, and that was the incentive she needed.

  Lily picked the melted plastic off the spoon and washed it. She then held it over the fire. Her heart was set to explode as the flames licked the underside of the spoon. The trick would be to get the metal hot enough that it’d cauterize the wound, but not so hot that it’d burn the nerve endings. Her fingers trembled and she willed them to stop.

  In the blink of an eye, the metal changed from silver to red, and aware that she’d taken it too far, she tugged it from the heat. Resting it against a log to cool down, she went to Carter.

  “Hey, can you hear me?” If he did, he didn’t show it. “I’m sorry, but I need to cauterize your wounds. It’ll hurt a little.” She scrunched up her face. “Actually a lot.”

  His chin rested on his chest, and his breathing bordered on snoring. It occurred to her that he could have passed out. With the amount of pain he was about to experience, that’d be a good thing. The biggest problem she could envisage was getting Carter to stay still when she touched that blazing spoon to his hip. It’d hurt like hell, and even though he looked unconscious, he was sure to snap out of it once the pain hit. She decided the only way to do this would be to sit on him, pinning him down when she applied the hot metal. She figured it was like branding cattle, brutal yet necessary, quick and efficient. Touch the skin for one to two seconds, seal the blood vessels, stop the bleeding, simple.

  Her stomach flipped like acid in a blender as she went through the process in her mind. Heat the spoon, sit on Carter, touch the metal to his wound, count to two, lift. Simple.

  A wave of nausea barreled through her. She panted, mouth open, fighting the revulsion and forcing herself to focus.

  Once the queasiness subsided, she treated the situation like she did any project—with professional efficiency. Mentally, she pictured the process and repeated it over and over to ensure she understood the action plan.

  As her shirt was the only dry clothing around, she removed it and laid it beside Carter. Kneeling at his side, she placed her hand on his cheek, feeling the fire beneath. “Carter, I’m going to fix you now.” Lily leaned forward and kissed his lips. “I’m sorry.”

  With tears stinging her eyes, she curled his forearm over his chest and rolled him fully onto his side. On the farm, she’d handled many baby calves who hadn’t survived their birth. Carter’s lifeless body felt the same. Lily shoved that shitty thought aside and gritted her teeth. “You are not going to die.”

  Carter’s eyes were closed, his breathing settled. He looked peaceful. For now.

  She stood up and spied his camera. Her thoughts went to Carter’s passion to document everything in pictures. Would he photograph this? She decided he would, and although it sickened her, she lifted the camera, removed the lens cap and watched, dismayed, as water dribbled out. She fiddled with a few buttons and was surprised when it whirred to life. The display, however, failed to light up. Glancing through the lens, she noticed bubbles of water in the frame too. Unsure if the camera would even work, she still clicked off a series of photos. First shots were of Carter at a distance, taking in his whole body, and followed by a few close-ups of his hideous wounds. Unable to procrastinate a moment more, she placed the camera aside and, sick to her stomach, she reached for the spoon.

  She held it over the flames and counted out the seconds—one, two, three. At twenty-one seconds, it glowed red. She pulled it from the fire and poured water over it until it was cold again.

  She sucked in a huge breath and let it out in one big gush. “This is it.”

  With a firm grip on the spoon, she held it on the flames again and counted. One. Two. Three. At eighteen, she pulled it from the flames, hopped to Carter, knelt on his back, and pressed the blazing spoon to his flesh.

  Carter bucked violently and let out a bloodcurdling scream.


  Chapter 16

  “I’m sorry.” The words Carter heard sounded like they’d been spoken from a great distance and carried across the wind. His body was heavy, held down by the weight of the world and yet he felt comfortable, at peace. He wanted to stay right where he was forever. His wife appeared before him, smiling her young, beautiful smile. She tucked a lock of her frizzy blond hair behind her ear in the signature move he loved.

  “I’m sorry.” The words came to him again, but Penny’s lips didn’t move. Something touched his cheek—her hand maybe—and when he felt a touch to his lips he opened them.

  He coughed, choking on the liquid that’d been poured into his mouth. His eyes shot open, and he blinked at the darkness. A woman appeared over him, half her face shrouded in darkness.

  “Hey there.” Her words were soft and gentle.

  He blinked and blinked some more, trying to make sense of what he saw. For several horrifying minutes, he didn’t know where he was, but then it came back to him, every sordid horror. The gunmen. The fear. The pain.

  “Are you okay?” Lily touched his arm.

  “No.” He tried to swallow, but it was like swallowing rusty coins.

  “Here. Have some water.”

  She cupped his neck, and when the bottle touched his lips, he gulped back the cool liquid. After several mouthfuls, he tried to sit, but gasped at the agony. He recalled the pain, the burning fire that pierced his skin, the torture that consumed his whole body. He remembered being shot, and glanced at the bandage wrapped around his hip. But it wasn’t the blazing bullet that’d hurt the most—it was something else.

  “What’d you do to me?”

  She sat back and scrunched up her nose. “I cauterized your wounds.”

  “You fucking what?”

  “I used a hot spoon to stop the bleeding.” She said it as if she were talking about a pair of shoes.

  His jaw dropped. “How’d you know what to do?”

  She shrugged. “I figured it was like branding cattle.”