Omen Operation

by Taylor Brooke

  “I need more water,” Cambria said.

  The small bowl of water she’d been using to flush his wound was clouded, murky with blood and grime.

  Nicoli nodded. “I’m guessing none of you are very familiar with the river about a quarter mile east of here, are you?”

  “Porter mentioned hearing it at our camp, but we’re not very sure where it is,” Brooklyn said.

  “It runs the length of these woods. We collect our water from there.” Nicoli reached for the shotgun that was now resting by the fireplace and hoisted the barrel to rest casually over his shoulder. “I’ll show you if someone wants to join me.”

  Brooklyn’s attention was captured by Porter. Even if he did seem to be doing all right, she preferred to stay with him—that was quite clear to everyone in the room. Julian was the one who agreed to go even when Gabriel glared at him from her place behind the recliner.

  Gabriel watched them go and chewed nervously on her lip when the back door shut quietly behind them.

  It was hard for her to accept help from a couple of people they didn’t know. Especially a couple of people who could very well turn on them at any second. But Brooklyn could see the relief hidden inside Gabriel’s eyes. They were hooded, and her breathing was even, shoulders relaxed. Even if it wasn’t the most ideal break they’d been given, at least they had a break in general.

  “I’m going to stitch you from the inside out,” Cambria said softly.

  Porter nodded. “I assumed so. Seems to me you have a basic understanding of what to do. Are you a nurse?”

  “Vet tech,” she hummed.

  Porter raised a brow. “Well, thank you, Cambria. For helping me.”

  “It’s against our code to leave anyone in need without assistance. It isn’t human.”

  “Your code?” he asked curiously.

  Cambria smiled, but ignored the subject completely.

  “The reason I told you I’ll be stitching you up from the inside out wasn’t because I assumed you hadn’t already known that, but because I don’t have any anesthetic. You’ll feel everything.”

  Brooklyn’s face squirmed as if she’d felt Porter’s discomfort herself. The thought brought her back to Terry’s cabin, to being held down on a table. Porter’s wound was much more severe, but she could relate.

  Porter’s mouth twisted into a wrinkled frown. He gave a curt nod. “Do what you gotta do.”

  ***

  Julian kept up with Nicoli’s brisk pace and catalogued his surroundings as they went.

  There was an odd-looking tree, bent and warped with its roots hanging over the edge of a small divot in the earth. They jumped down over a cluster of rocks and looped around a bushel of pale pink flowers. Finally, they descended toward the banks of the river. This part of the woods felt different than the rest. It was secluded, rich with plant life, a place that Julian would have loved to explore.

  The river was quiet and hardly moved except for the small ripple of waves that skidded across the top of the water when a small puff of wind blew against it.

  “Are you and your friends out here on your own?” Nicoli asked.

  Julian cleared his throat. “We got separated from the rest of our group.”

  “I’m assuming that happened when the bad people Miss Brooklyn told me about came upon you in these peaceful woods?”

  “Yeah.” Julian handed over the clean bucket when Nicoli reached for it. “That’s about right.”

  Nicoli dipped the lip of the white bucket into the river and collected a substantial amount of water.

  “I know what it’s like to run.” Nicoli’s words were blanketed in a throaty laugh. “Cambria and I, we’ve been running for a long time. We’ve taken in strays along the way, people like you and your friends. Only if they chose to stay and only if they were on board with our cause and with our code.”

  Julian’s heart was beating faster than he expected. He nodded along, turning to walk beside Nicoli once they started to make their way back to the cabin.

  “What is your, uh, cause…?” Julian asked timidly.

  The taller man smiled, and his lashes closed around one of his eyes in a quick wink. “Revolt, my friend. Revolt.”

  ***

  Brooklyn jumped when the back door swung open. Gabriel tapped her nails against the window that she’d been leaning against.

  “Bring it here,” Cambria said, curling her fingers toward Nicoli.

  Julian shuffled close to Gabriel, and her eyes asked him questions that he couldn’t answer in the crowded room. But he did lean in and breathe against her ear, “We’ll trust them for now.” It was enough to allow her to relax a bit more.

  “We have some menthol,” Nicoli said with his eyebrows drawn tight and a grimace on his face. “It might make things a bit less…horrible.”

  “Save it for after,” Cambria said. She was lacing a thin sewing needle with thread.

  Porter’s gaze was hardened and callous as he stared up at the ceiling. Brooklyn stood next to the arm of the couch and reached down to tap on his forehead.

  “How long will something like this take to heal?” Brooklyn asked.

  Porter pulled his bottom lip between his teeth and rolled it. “A few weeks. Less if I can get to my supplies.”

  Fresh water flushed the wound, and Porter winced, gritting his teeth as Cambria dabbed the inflamed rim of the gash with a clean cloth.

  “Iodine?” Porter gritted when he spotted a small bottle of dark liquid on the trunk.

  Cambria nodded. “Correct. Did you think I would use river water to clean you out without disinfecting it first? Please.”

  Porter smirked.

  “Don’t hold your breath, all right?” Cambria added quickly.

  She didn’t give him much time to prepare. Within seconds of speaking, she had the needle sliding into the flesh on the inside of the wound. His hips lifted up from the couch, and he dug his heels into the cushion. The shirt he was wearing was gone. A sheen of sweat started to form across his torso, which was clenched tight along with his jaw, his hands, and his eyes.

  Brooklyn wanted to reach down and touch him, to reassure him that he would be all right. The person she used to be would have done that. The girl who was about to graduate high school and had a future to look forward to—she would have done it. But Brooklyn sat back and nibbled on her nail beds, torn between the compassion she had buried down under the rubble of distrust and the growling bitter voice that whispered “he deserves it” in the back of her mind.

  The make-shift procedure lasted only a few minutes. Cambria’s speed and nimble hands were impressive. Brooklyn finally felt somewhat at ease when she saw the clean white bandage wrapped snug around Porter’s shoulder and chest.

  Porter didn’t look at all like he was relieved. His cheeks were blotched bright red, and his eyes were swollen from tears that ran down the edges of his cheeks. He pawed them away carelessly and adjusted his glasses. Not once had he made a sound. Not one cry or whine or plea.

  Brooklyn thought maybe he looked at the pain as a punishment.

  Nicoli placed a hand on Brooklyn’s back and pointed through the window toward a cluster of trees on the left side of the cabin. “We have another camp out that way. More people, supplies, food and water. There’s a room upstairs where Porter can stay, but the rest of you are welcome to share our space if you’d like.”

  Brooklyn glanced at Gabriel, who nodded back at her.

  “That would be very much appreciated,” she answered. “I’d like to stay with Porter, though, until he’s doing a little better.”

  “I’ll stay here so you can get some food,” Cambria said softly. “Nicoli will have Plum whip up a healing remedy, and when you come back after dinner tonight, we can trade posts.”

  It was hard to agree to leave Porter alone. But Julian cleared his throat, and Brooklyn saw his eyes shift around nervously. He gave a slight shake of his head, a warning not to oppose their generosity.

  “Thank you,” Brooklyn sa
id.

  Nicoli smiled and hoisted the shotgun up over his shoulder again. “Follow me.”

  Brooklyn’s fingertips trailed against the couch beside Porter. His hand brushed tentatively against hers. She took long strides out the back door behind Gabriel. Brooklyn glanced over her shoulder just once to see Porter’s gaze lingering on them as the door swung closed.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The camp Nicoli spoke of was composed of a small slew of tents upright with old rugs and carpets set out in front of them like welcome mats. An old shed that had the same vintage feel of the cabin was the center point. It loomed eerily in front of a smoldering pit of almost burnt-out logs with four or five tents scattered around it. Some vibrant animal print fold-up chairs sat around the fire. An old clothes line stretched between a long pole and the shingles on the top of the shed.

  Whoever they all were, they’d been out in the woods for a long time.

  A wind-chime sang when the flap of a tent drooped open. It hung from the top of a small orange tent and a brightly stitched oriental rug was beneath it. A pair of dainty feet stepped out, toenails a glittery bubblegum pink.

  “Plum,” Nicoli said, arms open as he showed off Brooklyn, Julian, and Gabriel as if they were long-lost friends of his. “I’ve brought some wandering souls to our home. They’ll be joining us for dinner tonight and perhaps tomorrow night as well.”

  The young woman who crawled out of her tent was lean and bony. Two long braids twisted out from the brim of a well-worn straw hat, and a thin white sundress hung over her body like a shirt that was two sizes too big.

  “Hey y’all,” Plum said. Her words were coated in a thick southern accent. “Seems a bushel of jumpy critters by the look of ya.”

  Nicoli grinned. “They are rather jumpy—I must say.” He winked at Gabriel, and she couldn’t help but roll her eyes and smile back at him.

  “Well then, how ’bout I find somethin’ for us to eat, and we get on with some cookin’?” Plum said.

  “I’ll actually be starting dinner myself tonight, Plum. One of their friends was badly injured, and I would love for you to whip up some ointment to help with the pain. Can you do that?”

  She nodded and shrugged. “I sure can, Nic. Do any of y’all have names?”

  Plum’s eyes were almost too big for her face. They sat far apart beneath thick, unmanaged eyebrows and glowed prettily against her light lashes.

  “I, uh…” Brooklyn cleared her throat. “I’m Brooklyn. This is Julian and Gabriel.”

  The other two nodded. Julian raised his hand in a friendly wave while he looked wearily around the camp site.

  “What happened to your friend, then, hmm?” Plum asked. She was reaching back into her tent and rummaging around. A stone mortar and pestle rolled out on to the mat, followed by a few vials filled with different colored oils.

  Brooklyn didn’t know how to answer, how to make something terrifying and otherworldly seem plausible and realistic. She tried to sugar coat the words to herself but it just came out sounding wishy-washy and incomplete. Which, it was. Everything was still so incomplete. They had no real idea what they were fighting against, and they had no idea when whoever they were running from was going to find them.

  Plum smiled, her legs crossed and her hands in her lap, watching them expectedly.

  Gabriel flipped one of the chairs around and sat down. “We’re running from some bad people. They found us, and they hurt him.”

  Her words floated around like ash, clogging up the space they all shared. Brooklyn almost choked on them.

  “Bad people?” Plum asked slyly. “What kinda bad people are we talkin’ ’bout? Because there’s bad people who beat their dogs an’ their wives, there’s bad people who sell smokes to little ones, and there’s bad people who steal from their mama. We talkin’ bout those kinda bad people here? Or are we talkin’ ’bout the kinda bad people who can throw you in a room and lose the room?”

  Brooklyn’s face tightened up.

  “We’re running from the government because they think they own us,” Julian said.

  His words came out slurred and rushed like the moment they had popped into his head he’d let them explode past his lips. The instantaneous regret that washed from his forehead to his slack jaw was brightened with a deep blush.

  Plum tilted her head to the side and grinned. “Well, aren’t we all? It’s hard to come across likeminded folk. I’m sure Nicoli is jumpin’ for joy over y’all’s arrival if that’s the truth.”

  Nicoli walked into the shed and started preparing something for dinner. Brooklyn still didn’t know how far they could stretch the truth until it ran out of oxygen and deflated right in front of them. What Julian said hadn’t been a lie—not in the least. But the details that went along with it could cost the people harboring them their lives and so far…well, so far, Nicoli, Cambria, and Plum all seemed like people Brooklyn might have called friends.

  Julian looked relieved and nodded, eyebrows raised high on his forehead. “We’ve been on the run for a little while now. What about you? How long have you been out here with Nicoli?”

  Plum stood up and walked into the shed, returning with a bundle of herbs and flowers in her arms along with a bag full of spices. When she talked, it sounded like butterflies tap danced on the edges of her lips. She was whispery and chirped at the end of some sentences while humming at the end of others. Everything about her seemed whimsical and dreamy, like perhaps she walked right out of a southern sunset.

  “Used to live in Georgia,” she started as she tore open the bag of spices with her teeth. “My mama died when I was a tiny thing, so my daddy raised me. He got himself cancer and died about eight months ago. So I decided to get in his car and drive it ’til I couldn’t. I made my way out to these parts, but my daddy’s old car crapped out on me before I could get to Portland. I hitchhiked up to Seattle, and that’s where Nicoli found me. Some guys I thought were nice fellows offered me a ride back to the place I was stayin’. Turns out they weren’t no nice fellows at all and tried to put their hands on me.”

  Plum paused to shove a piece of gum in her mouth and smacked it loudly. She grinded the dark star-shaped seeds up with the pestle then poured in half of one of the vials and continued to mix it all together.

  “Those two good-for-nothing woman beaters almost got me in the back of their old town car. If it weren’t for Nicoli bein’ there to stop ’em, I’d probably be rottin’ somewhere in a back alley, bein’ rained on.”

  “What’d he do?” Gabriel asked.

  “Oh, he shot one of ’em right there in the kneecap with a pistol,” Plum said.

  Brooklyn shifted to look at Julian, and he gave a half-shrug. Gabriel grinned ear to ear.

  “Then he got me all wrapped up in a blanket and brought me back here. Told me I didn’t have to stay or nothin’ and that his way of life wasn’t for everyone. I stayed, though. Didn’t have much of anythin’ to go back to anyways.”

  “What does he mean by his way of life?” Gabriel asked.

  “Same as you, I s’pose,” Plum said. “’Cept you’re runnin’ and we’re fightin’. And when we’re not fightin’, we’re plannin’.”

  Brooklyn was curious, but pressing the matter wasn’t going to get them anywhere except into trouble. She opened her mouth and inhaled a sharp breath. “And what is it you’re making? Nicoli said it was an ointment?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Plum hummed. “Peppermint leaves, aloe, cardamom, dried gotu kola and some marigold. I’m grinding it all together with some rose oil extract and coconut oil so it can be applied like a salve.”

  “Oh…” Brooklyn was taken aback by the impressive concoction. “That’s…amazing. How do you? I mean, have you done this before or…?”

  “Oh yeah, back home, I worked in a little flower shop on the edge of town. We did this for people a lot when they were sick or hurt. It was always nice bein’ able to offer an alternative to the poison those doctors and such like to shove down our throats. They
just love makin’ us sick, makin’ us die.”

  Julian clicked his tongue ring against the back of his teeth and nodded. “Oh yeah, Porter’s a doctor. He’s definitely good at poisoning people.”

  Gabriel kicked him in the leg.

  Plum stopped stirring the murky off-white substance in the mortar and looked at Julian quizzically. “Your friend over there in the communications cabin is a doctor?”

  Brooklyn wanted to reach over and clasp her hand over Julian’s mouth before he could make another mistake with his words.

  “Yeah, but he’s a, uh, a good doctor. Still our friend. Still running from the bad guys with us,” Julian said and shifted on his feet. He glanced at Brooklyn, but she was staring at the ground.

  The dirt was dark and moist in the lush forest. Brooklyn sifted the soil between her fingers. What Julian had said had hit a nerve that sent a ripple of unease throughout her bones.

  Still our friend

  Porter was still their friend. After everything, he was still important. Brooklyn had convinced herself that at one point in time she would be angry enough to do away with him, whether that meant aiming a gun at his head and pulling the trigger or leaving him for dead in the woods. She assumed that over time the distrust would evolve into hatred. She believed that maybe some things couldn’t be forgiven.

  Still running from the bad guys with us.

  But he wouldn’t leave her. Not even if she pointed a gun at him.

  Porter wouldn’t leave Brooklyn’s side.

  Something about that made her feel dizzy and sick and sweaty.

  The door of the shed swung open, and Nicoli stepped out, holding a couple bowls filled with leafy greens, colorful strands of beet and carrot. “I’m sure you’re all hungry, and it’ll be getting dark soon. Eat; keep warm by the fire, and when night falls, make yourselves comfortable in any of the tents.”