Clawed, Pounced, Mauled the Complete Trilogy

by Kym Dillon

  "I'm afraid that we don't have any time for you to get settled in, Dr. Arbinger," she said. "You're needed stat."

  Marnie was escorted to a series of large tents set up as operating chambers. They were sealed as thoroughly as they could be to better the chances of those being treated, but they were a far cry from the pristine operating centers that Marnie was accustomed to.

  The moment she was within the confines of the operating tent, she noticed two things. The first was that the scent of blood saturated the space, and the second was that it was her friend Jessica who was trying to save the man's life.

  Jessica barely looked up as Marnie came up next to her. Instead, Marnie observed in fascinated horror as her best friend slowly lost the patient that she was operating upon. The old man had once been very large, but some disease had wasted him away quickly. A stained cloth covered him to the waist, but Marnie saw that he had lost weight rapidly, and his skin was covered in thick boils, some pierced and deflated and others dark and round. The boils were clustered everywhere, but they were focused on his armpits and close to his throat, preventing him from breathing.

  "No, no, keep breathing," Jessica murmured, her voice raw and ragged. "Please... keep breathing..."

  Marnie assisted her friend for the next three hours, winning the man back to life time after time. Each breath grew shallower, however, and the space between them grew longer. Finally, even Jessica's talented hands had no more magic to impart, and the man took his last breath.

  For a moment, Marnie was afraid that her friend would collapse, but there was something different about the Jessica that stood before her. Jessica had always been strong, but now there was something ferocious about her. She knew what her cause was, and she had found a strength deep inside herself.

  "Welcome to hell," Jessica said bleakly. She drew her friend out of the tent, and after they both stripped off the contaminated gloves and gowns, she gave Marnie a deep hug.

  What the hell have I gotten into here? Marnie wondered, half-desperate. I left a safe life and job for...

  Then Jessica smiled at her, a small thing, but there was hope in it that helped quell Marnie's doubt.

  "You have no idea how much you're needed here," Jessica sighed. "This illness, whatever the hell it is, has already devastated two villages that I've seen. This man is the first one struck down from another village nearby."

  "Good," Marnie said, and she ignored Jessica's startled look. "That means that there's a lot he can teach us. Is there a mobile lab set up for me?"

  "There is," Jessica said, her words hesitant, and Marnie nodded. "Good. I've got a sample kit in my bag here, and I'll start by taking what I need from the poor man we just lost. Jessica, make sure that that lab is functional for what I need, I think you know what to look for."

  If Jessica was shocked by her friend's authoritative reaction to the human tragedy, she recovered quickly. A brief smile crossed her face, and she nodded.

  "Glad to have you on board, Dr. Arbinger," she said, and she left to do as Marnie requested.

  Marnie took a deep breath, slid on a pair of gloves and a sterile gown for the operating room, and went back in. The man on the table was a human, one who had loved and hated, cried and laughed, but right now, Marnie couldn't allow herself to see that. Right now, he was possibly an essential piece of a puzzle that needed solving, a piece that might allow others to be spared the same fate that he had suffered.

  Despite her resolve, Marnie looked down at the man with some compassion, her hands stilled on her needle.

  "Sorry, sir. I hope to make sure that this never happens to anyone else."

  She took her samples as quickly as she could while still being painstakingly thorough. How long had it been since she had had to do this in the field? How long had it been since she had had to remember that the samples that she used came from real people, many of whom suffered dreadfully before they passed?

  When she was done, Marnie covered the man with a white cloth, closing the operating room behind her. This was a medical camp, which meant that there were people here who would know what needed to be done with the man’s body. She had her own job to do.

  Marnie found her laboratory trailer set up exactly as she hoped it would be. It was a small piece of the familiar in a world where the trees towered over the edge of the camp and where the plains seemed to go on forever. She found equipment that she was used to working with, and she set to it with a steely determination.

  The next few hours dissolved away as Marnie sunk herself into her work. There had been no work done on this disease before, not at the level where she was used to operating, so she started from the beginning. Her field was a tug of war between precise action and waiting, but Marnie didn't leave the samples alone while she waited. Instead, she wrote down everything she could think of that she had observed during surgery, everything that trickled through her mind. One never knew where a breakthrough was going to come from...

  When she finally had samples that she could look at closely, Marnie scowled. It should have been impossible. The last time she had seen samples like this, it was from a historical textbook.

  The blood samples were presenting like a course of illnesses that had last appeared almost a thousand years ago, perhaps even earlier. This had all the hallmarks of what her ancestors might have called a medieval plague, but why should such a thing appear again? How would it even have survived.

  Marnie knew that her preliminary results were too simple to provide any real information yet. She set up a secondary round of tests, one that would need all evening to tabulate. She stretched, feeling her back crack a little, and left the laboratory tent.

  The African twilight was a lilac gray, suffusing the air with a soft glow that Marnie had never seen anywhere else. The camp, spread out over perhaps a Chicago city block, hummed with quieting activity, and Marnie found the quartermaster who showed her where to get her rations and the small tent where she would be sleeping.

  Once her hunger was sated, she asked around for Jessica, only to receive a shrug.

  "She's where she always is. Waiting."

  Puzzled, Marnie pressed for more information. She was finally directed to a large flat rock on the eastern edge of camp, the side that faced the harsh grasslands. She was warned, not so jokingly, to watch out for lions and hyenas. For some reason, that more than anything told her brain that she was not simply on a camping trip in the United States, and she resolved to remember that.

  The rock that had been pointed out to her was tall, sticking up from the ground like some sort of ancient sentinel. Against the fading light, Marnie could see Jessica's slight form seated on top. Jessica's back was perfectly straight, and she stared off over the grassland as if she were waiting for something. It wasn't an easy climb to the top of the rock to join Jessica, and by the time Marnie got to the top, she had scraped up her palms and was breathing hard.

  "You could have lent a hand," Marnie said, sitting next to her friend, trying to catch her breath."

  "Honestly, it was too much fun watching you climb up here," Jessica said with a grin.

  Marnie glared at her, and then gave it up. No one could ever be mad at Jessica for too long. Her friend had a kind of mischievous joy to her that made it feel like you were all part of the fun.

  Jessica slung an arm over Marnie's shoulder, pulling her close.

  "God, I'm glad you're here."

  "Me too," Marnie said. "You've needed a proper hematologist out here for..."

  "Well, because of that, but for more than that. I've missed you a ton. It's... it's so easy to get turned around out here..."

  Marnie cocked an eyebrow at her friend.

  "I could see that already, but is there something else? You seem different, and as difficult as this clearly is, and as heartbreaking, I don't think that that’s all there is to the story."

  Jessica drew her breath slightly roughly, and for a moment, Marnie thought she would clam up. Jessica did that sometimes, when she didn't want
to share what was inside her, even if you could tell that it was eating her up.

  "It's not. Marnie. Marnie, you are definitely going to laugh, but I met someone."

  The confession felt almost painful, and for a moment, Marnie was frozen. Jessica had always been among the most fiercely ambitious of their class, the one who had charged ahead and never thought about anything as simple or plebeian as companionship or marriage. In many ways, Marnie, who had always felt the wistful affection for home and hearth, had envied that resolve.

  Now, even in the dim twilight, she could tell that Jessica was blushing, and to her surprise, her friend looked miserable.

  "Oh honey," she said, hugging Jessica tightly. "You don't look as happy as you should be with that."

  "I wish it were as uncomplicated as him being married or something like that," Jessica confessed. "It's... god, I don't even know where to start."

  "Start at the beginning, go on through the middle, and then be assured that I will still be your friend at the end. How does that sound? Also, there's nothing uncomplicated about dating a married man. I did that once by accident and... yeah, never again. If I can't run a background check on a guy, I'm not even meeting him for coffee."

  Jessica laughed a little at Marnie's words. Where Jessica had always been fiercely independent, some of Marnie's own dating exploits had been the subject of teasing and fun back in the day. Marnie was a little stung by some of the comments of her fellow students at the time, but these days, she thought that they had been more on target than not. Romance had very little place when you were trying to save lives.

  "All right, all right. So, to start at the beginning... I guess it all started when I was trying to find transport to this camp. I think you remember when I fell out of communication..."

  Marnie did, and Jessica was poised to continue when suddenly she stiffened.

  "There!" she said, pointing across the plain, and Marnie followed her pointing finger to see two figures on horseback materializing out of the gloom.

  That was a little strange, it was almost like she sensed them before she saw them... Marnie thought, but she didn't have much time to ponder the thought. Jessica was scrambling down from the rock. Her friend was in such a hurry that Marnie was certain she had scraped the heck out of her hands and knees on her way down, but Jessica didn't seem to care. Jessica, usually so very calm and collected, was now sprinting across the open grass towards the two men on horseback, and Marnie was following along wondering what in the world came next.

  3

  A dozen thoughts ran through Marnie's mind as she followed Jessica across the grassland. It did not occur to her to leave her friend to fate, but it did occur to her to wonder what in the world was going to become of the two of them.

  Who the hell had she met out here? Who could she have possibly met while she was on an aid mission? Who made her look up from her work long enough to acknowledge that she had needs beyond what the WHO accounted for?

  At first, Marnie thought it was a trick of the fading light. The two men who were cantering towards them looked enormous. It had to be an optical illusion of perspective. Then they came closer still, and with a start, she realized that it was no trick. The two men mounted on horseback were abnormally tall and broad, and Marnie felt a trill of apprehension run up and down her spine.

  One sat on his horse with effortless expertise, but the other...

  Marnie quickly realized that the second man, the one whose horse lagged, was not well. He was conscious, he had to be, as he held the reins in his hands, but she could tell from his posture, from the way he rocked back and forth with each motion of the horse underneath him, that he was hurt.

  She turned to Jessica, but Jessica only had eyes for the man in the lead. Marnie almost attempted to gain her friend's attention, but she had to do a double-take. The look on Jessica's face was a strange one, anger and longing and something sorrowful. It pained Marnie to see the mix of all those emotions there. There was something going on here that she could not understand, but what was far more important to her at that moment was the injured man.

  Jessica was greeting the man in the lead with words that sounded harsh even to Marnie, but Marnie’s attention was already drawn to the second man. In the dim light, she noticed that he was dressed for hard travel and that he was a white man, but his wounds quickly commanded her attention.

  "Hey there, sunshine," he slurred, and she realized that he must have been delirious.

  "All right, looks like you need help," she said, almost to herself.

  She glanced at Jessica and with a burst of irritation saw that her friend was currently in what looked like a very deep, very intense, if not heated, conversation with the other rider. Neither of them looked very concerned that this man was hurt, possibly in great pain, but Marnie knew that she did not have the time to take them to task. She needed to act and to act fast, and after a moment, she sighed.

  "Sorry, sir, this is not going to be fun for either of us," she said.

  The horse, a narrow-faced leggy animal, blinked at her, and she grimaced at it.

  "And it's not going to be fun for you, either," she said.

  The saddle was Western, which meant that at least she got stirrups, and with a grunt, she pulled herself up into the saddle with the man. She was lucky, because just as she did so, the reins trailed from his hands, and he slumped forward against her back. If Marnie hadn't been there to break his fall, he would have tumbled straight down to the ground.

  As it was, Marnie needed another two arms or more to handle the horse and to keep the man steady, but she managed to click the horse forward.

  "When you two are done doing whatever the hell it is you are doing, get to camp," she snapped at Jessica and the other newcomer. "This man needs help."

  The two broke off from their now furious argument to look at her with wide eyes, but before she had passed them entirely, they were back at it.

  Marnie's mind was occupied with keeping the man slumped against her back steady and thinking ahead to what he might need, but she spared a thought for her friend.

  Jessica had never acted like that before. It was so out of character for her to think that fighting with someone should take precedence over aiding a patient. What in the world was going on?

  The mysteries didn't end there. Dr. Carter was the first to meet her directly outside of camp, and when she saw the man slumped over Marnie's back, she didn't bat an eye. There was something about her that seemed to expect all of this, and she called for two men from camp, telling them to get Marnie and her guest to one of the quiet trailers.

  The two men helped Marnie get her charge to one of the trailers set up for medical aid, and to her relief, they heaved him off the horse and straight onto the simple bed inside. They left quickly without a word, however, and she wondered if was her imagination or if they really did look over their shoulders at the unconscious man with fearful expressions.

  It had been a while since her residency, but Marnie found that this work was like riding a bicycle. Once mastered, no matter how long she’d been away, her hands could do this work while she was sleeping. It was just another night in the ER, patching up some man who had been unlucky. He might have stumbled while working at a wood bench or he might have badly misjudged his prowess in a fight, but either way, he had been unlucky. As she hurried her way through her sanitation procedure, Marnie took a moment to hope that this man's lack of luck would not prove fatal.

  She used her shears to clip away the shreds of his bloodied shirt, and in an absent way, she realized that his blood was all over her back, caking as it dried. There was a strange intimacy to that that stirred something inside her, but right now was not the time to figure it out. With the shirt out of the way, she could now look at the extent of his injuries, and they were extensive.

  There were ragged wounds dug into the man's broad chest, some shallow and some deep. They were not made by a knife or even a machete, but instead she realized that the ragged wounds must h
ave been the work of a bite. It made no sense, though, because she had seen wounds of this sort, and these weren't just wounds made by a frightened or enraged animal. Instead, these were meant to create a prolonged and painful death. It was as if something with the ferocity of an animal and the cruel intellect of a human being combined had attacked this man.

  Marnie worked with the single-minded intensity of a battlefield surgeon. Her attention was focused on stopping the flow of blood and repairing the tissue to the best of her ability. At some point, she realized that there was a third mystery to be solved.

  "How are you healing so quickly?" she asked behind her mask.

  The wounds were fresh, but here and there, at some places, she could see and feel evidence of healing. Tissue and cartilage had knit together to create a maze of flesh that seemed far more healed than it should have been. However, instead of helping her in her work to heal this man, it had made it worse. Bone and flesh had healed inappropriately, creating a situation that had staunched the worst of the bleeding but that had deformed the flesh around it. The man's superhuman ability to heal himself was now working against him, as his body sought to fix itself without regard for what the fix would do.

  Soon, Marnie found that she was fighting his body even as she was fighting the wounds that had been dealt to him. When the man started to wake up to struggle, she hurriedly filled a syringe with the most powerful sedative she had, praying that it would work. When she felt his muscles relax, she took a shaky breath of relief and got back to work.