Until Dawn

by Laura Taylor

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The rain continued all night, finally letting up sometime in the predawn hours. The first thing Dusk did when she got up the next morning was to head down to the river, and she wasn’t surprised to find a dozen or so other people there, simply taking the time to stare at the precious gift of running water. It was flowing smoothly now, a couple of feet deep in the middle, and would likely get fuller in the next few days as water from further up the catchment area filtered down. Further down the river, she could see a couple of the men standing around a waterwheel that had been set up, a surprisingly simple system of pipes designed to scoop water from the river and pump it up the hill to the village. According to Aidan, it had sat idle for months, the river too low for it to work, but now, they were debating whether the water was deep enough to give it a go.

  She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Mei-Lien and Torrent coming down the slope… and they were holding hands. How interesting.

  “Good news at last,” Torrent said happily. “With any luck, we’ll get a few more showers like this, and the grass might grow enough to make some decent hay before winter.”

  Suddenly, a frantic shout got their attention. “Aidan!” came a distant cry, then, “Whisper!”

  With a startled glance at each other, the three of them ran back up the hill, arriving at the fire circle at the same time as a group of men carrying a stretcher. “Get Whisper!” one of the men demanded.

  “He’s coming,” someone else said, pointing down towards his cabin. There was a body on the stretcher… no, the man was still alive, Dusk realised, catching a glimpse of him through the men surrounding him, but she didn’t recognise him. Surely she’d met everyone in the tribe by now? He was portly, far less fit than any of the men of her own tribe, and his hair was thinning on top and turning grey at the edges. He was covered in blood and seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness.

  Catching sight of the man, Mei-Lien let out a gasp from beside her. “Let me through,” she ordered, shoving a couple of men out the way.

  “Keep out of the way,” one of the men scolded her, pushing her away. “Whisper will take care of him.”

  “No, I’m a doctor,” Mei-Lien blurted out, shoving the man right back. Then she suddenly seemed to backtrack. “I mean, I was a doctor. Sort of…”

  “You’re a doctor?” Whisper yelped, having arrived in time to hear her declaration. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell us?”

  “I was in medical school,” Mei-Lien hastily clarified, looking suddenly embarrassed. “I hadn’t finished yet.”

  Whisper gave her a rapid once-over, and Dusk reflected that they were rather good at rolling with unexpected news around here. Then he gave her a single nod. “You’ll do,” he said impatiently. “Let’s get him inside.”

  The men picked up the stretcher again, and Dusk stepped in to help, lifting one of the handles and falling into step as they carted the injured man towards a building that she’d been told served as their medical bay. It was kitted out with plastic furniture – far easier to clean than wood – and the floor had been sealed with concrete. For the most part, the cabins had dirt floors, but concrete meant that treating people in this room was less likely to inadvertently cause infections, and it made it far easier to clean up blood and other bodily fluids.

  But as they stumbled along, the man came awake. He grabbed Dusk’s wrist, causing her to jump. “My wife,” he said, his voice hoarse, his eyes pleading with her. “My daughter. They took them.”

  “Who took them?” Dusk asked.

  “Slavers. From the Gully.”

  She was forced to concentrate for a moment, as they awkwardly shuffled through the door, then the stretcher was set down on a long table and she was being pushed back as others stepped in to tend to him.

  “Put pressure on the leg wound,” Whisper ordered. “Get his shirt off. Mei-Lien, take his vitals. There’s a stethoscope in the cupboard over there.” He pointed to one at the side of the room. A dozen people were all crowding around the man, cutting his clothes off, Whisper conducting a rapid assessment of his wounds.

  “Do we have any antibiotics?” Mei-Lien asked as she retrieved the stethoscope. “Iodine? Surgery kits?”

  “Look, Princess,” Whisper snapped at her, “this ain’t the Royal Prince Alfred. It’s field surgery at its dirtiest. Best possible scenario is we stop the bleeding, whack a few stitches in him and try to stop him dying of an infection, but that is it.”

  “You need some serious lessons in medicine,” Mei-Lien snarled at him, shoving him out of the way so she could get a look at the leg wound, surprising even Whisper with her sudden fiery attitude.

  Why was no one paying any attention to what the man had said? “We have to help his wife and child,” Dusk said sharply, catching Whisper’s attention for a split second. “He might not make it. Shouldn’t we find out what he knows while we can?”

  “You’re in the way,” Whisper snapped at her, then, when she didn’t move, he forcibly shoved her back.

  Undeterred, Dusk deliberately ducked around him and got in his face. “A woman and a child have been kidnapped by slavers!” she insisted. “We need to go and -”

  A firm hand grabbed her wrist suddenly, and Dusk was dragged outside before she’d realised what was happening. When she caught her balance, she found herself face to face with Aidan.

  “His wife and child -” Dusk began again, but Aidan cut her off.

  “I heard,” he said.

  “We need to find out if he knows where they’ve been taken!”

  “He said they were Gully slavers,” Aidan said, and Dusk was partly relieved that someone was actually paying attention, and partly infuriated by his absolute lack of urgency in mounting a rescue mission. “So that means they’ll have been taken to the Gully.”

  “So how do we get them back?”

  Aidan raised an eyebrow at her. “We don’t.”

  “What do you mean, we don’t?” Dusk herself had been en route to that camp, and knew full well the horrors that would have awaited her. She felt sick at the thought of what the two women would be forced to endure.

  “The Gully has over two hundred slavers in it. If we took every single man in this village, we’d still be outnumbered four to one.”

  “But I’ve seen you fight!” Dusk insisted. “Your men are far superior to theirs. You took out two bands of slavers in as many days with no serious injuries on your side and total annihilation on theirs! Surely if you planned the battle properly, you could all but wipe them out!”

  “We win our battles through superior numbers and surprise attacks,” Aidan explained, his patience and calmness just serving to piss Dusk off. “We never, ever go into battle unless we outnumber our enemies. That way, we can team up on them. On the slavers’ own territory, and with odds like that, we wouldn’t last five minutes.”

  Dusk gaped at him, aghast. “You’re going to abandon his wife and daughter to those animals? Do you know what they do to women?” she demanded, prepared to explain it to him in vivid detail if he didn’t.

  “We asked Steve and his family to come and join this tribe years ago,” Aidan said, cracks beginning to show in his patience. “They live on a property up the river, secluded, but completely undefended. We told them it wasn’t safe, but they insisted on staying. And now you want me to risk the lives of fifty good men because of one man’s arrogance and stubbornness? It’s not going to happen.”

  “What if it was one of your women that got taken?” Dusk asked. “What if it was me, or Willow, or Mei-Lien? Would you just leave us to rot as well?”

  Aidan glanced back at the medical cabin, and Dusk thought for a moment that maybe she’d managed to get through to him.

  But then he turned back to her, cool denial in his eyes. “But it’s not one of our women. Is it?” Clearly considering the discussion to be closed, he turned and walked away.

  Inside the cabin, Mei-Lien faced off against Whisper, their two very different e
xperiences in medicine clashing head-on. “He’s been shot in the leg with an arrow,” Mei-Lien explained, attempting to keep herself calm. “It’s split and there are fragments left inside. He needs surgery to remove them.”

  Whisper grimaced. “The only way to do that is to tie him to the table.”

  “For goodness sake, don’t you have any medical supplies? Not even a local anaesthetic?”

  “We raided the pharmacies and veterinary clinics years ago. And we’ve used everything we took. We’ve had to fight for our survival out here. Those supplies kept us alive for three or four good years, but now we’re down to needles and syringes for medications we don’t have. We’ve got a tiny bit of suture material left, to sew up wounds that are just as likely to turn septic and kill the man anyway. Unless you have a better fucking idea, then we either tie him to the table to let you do surgery on him, or leave the bits where they are and hope for the best. Nicholas can make a few antiseptic herbal tonics and poultices, but that’s as good as it gets.”

  “That’s barbaric,” Mei-Lien spat at him. “Haven’t you even tried to make penicillin? It’s mould, it grows on bread. It’s not rocket science!”

  Whisper stared back at her blankly. “I haven’t the faintest fucking clue how you would turn mouldy bread into something that could save a man’s life.”

  “And while we’re on the subject,” Mei-Lien charged straight on, “ether can be made from alcohol and salt water. It’s not the best anaesthetic agent, but it’s serviceable, given the circumstances. All you need are some simple pieces of science equipment. The sort of thing you’d find in a high school chemistry lab.”

  “Well, fuck, but we’re fresh out of chemistry labs as well!” he said, completely exasperated by now. “You want me to just reach into my ass and pull out a good ol’ Bunsen burner?”

  “There’s a town near here, isn’t there?” She was grinning now, ideas swirling in her mind. There were so many other chemicals and medications she could make, if only she had the right equipment. A distillation set. Measuring cylinders. A burette. A decent thermometer…

  “North of the Gully,” Whisper confirmed. “But getting there is like wading through a pit of vipers.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “What the hell are you doing?” Dusk demanded, as the men of the village scurried about collecting boxes, food and water supplies, bundles of rags. “Whisper? The town of Eden is under the control of a gang of raiders. You said so yourself! Why would you go marching into that sort of trouble when you won’t touch the Gully with a fifty-foot pole?”

  Whisper marched into the main cabin and Dusk was momentarily forced to leave off following him as three men hurried out the door, carrying two tarps and a bundle of ropes. When the entrance was clear, she rushed to catch up with him. Aidan wasn’t around right now, having disappeared after a brief discussion with Whisper, Nicholas and a couple of other men, or she would have been unleashing her displeasure on him, instead. She watched as Whisper dialled a combination into a lock on a large metal cabinet set against the far wall.

  “The difference,” Whisper told her, “is that if we bring back what Mei-Lien’s asked for, we can make some huge advances in our medical supplies. This is the first time in years that we’ve had someone here who can not only make use of the equipment, but teach the rest of us how to do it as well. And I, for one, am willing to risk my life for that kind of benefit.”

  He opened the cabinet, and Dusk just about fell over as the door swung wide to reveal a tidy collection of rifles. “Holy shit, you have guns!” she gasped. “Why the fuck wouldn’t you use those to attack the slavers? You were going up against them with nothing but knives!”

  “Lack of ammunition,” Whisper said simply, pulling out the rifles and setting them on a table. “Nobody’s making any more of that, these days. Or at least, not around these parts. The Gully slavers don’t have guns. The Eden tribe does.”

  Dusk sighed, swore to herself and wandered out of the cabin again. Aidan had accused her of seeing the world in black and white, and this was just one more example of how he was right. There seemed to be a thousand nuances to any battle here, any situation, any minor decision. In many ways, life had been easier when it was a simple case of kill or be killed, when men could be classed as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, rather than these endless shades of grey that twisted her in knots.

  She’d been shut down about rescuing Steve’s wife not only by Aidan, but by Nicholas as well. She’d been certain the ageing man would have supported the idea, would have seen the barbaric cruelty of leaving women to be raped and tortured. “Decisions have consequences,” he’d explained in his calm, straightforward way. “Aidan’s right – we asked Steve to come and join us numerous times, and we told him straight to his face that if his farm was ever attacked, we would not help him defend it. It’s true, we’ve been attacked here as well, so there are no guarantees either way. That was by a different band of slavers, by the way. If the Gully knew where we were, they’d have wiped us out a long time ago. But my point is, Steve was given a choice. And choices have consequences.” He peered at her shrewdly from beneath bushy eyebrows. “You know all about having to make tough choices, don’t you, Dusk?”

  Damn the man. To say she’d forgiven Aidan would be overstating the point, but she had ruefully come around to understanding his point of view.

  She saw Whisper heading out of the cabin with an armful of rifles, another man hurrying along behind with boxes of ammunition, and she turned to follow them up the hill.

  There was a rusty shed at the top near the road that Dusk hadn’t thought much of before, but now the wide roller doors had been opened and a cluster of men were busying about putting the wheels onto one of two old Toyota Hiluxes that were parked inside. As she watched, Stormbreaker popped open the fuel cap on one of the vehicles and started filling it with a clear, yellowish liquid from a large plastic tub. There were a dozen or more such containers stacked against the far wall.

  “What’s that?” she asked, slipping through the throng of men to talk to him. “Diesel? Wouldn’t it have gone off by now?”

  “Diesel would have,” Stormbreaker agreed. “This is vegetable oil. We stockpiled it when the riots were going on. And then looted a whole pile more, after the shit really hit the fan. A few modifications under the bonnet, and the old diesel engines love it. It’s also an emergency food supply,” he added, peering into the funnel to make sure he didn’t overfill the tank and spill the oil all over the floor. “If we were in serious danger of starving to death, the calories in it would keep us alive for a good long while. There’s plenty of edible weeds around here – nettles, dandelions, scurvy weed. A bit of that for vitamins and a bit of oil for calories, and you’d be surprised how long you can keep going.” The news wasn’t a surprise. All manner of plants, animals and insects that were usually considered waste or vermin suddenly became edible, if you were only hungry enough.

  “Coming through!” a voice suddenly called, and Dusk saw Stick rushing into the shed carrying a car battery, with Tom bringing a second one at a more sedate pace. Dusk had been rather startled to discover that the tribe had a large solar panel array in one of their fields, though they’d admitted that they rarely used it anymore. After a couple of years, they’d adapted pretty much everything they did to old fashioned ways, using old bicycles rigged up to grinding wheels to grind grain, making candles from tallow for light, doing all of their cooking and heating with wood fires. Sooner or later, the car batteries would stop working as well, but so far, they’d held out. The two batteries had been hooked up to the solar panels and were now installed quickly back into the cars.

  A few minutes later, the vehicles were ready to go, and the men stood back, a number of them fidgeting nervously as they waited to see if they would be going anywhere today.

  Holding two sets of keys, Aidan went over to the first ute and climbed into the driver’s seat. He slid the key into the ignition, turned it, and…

  “
Yes! How about that! Bloody marvellous piece of machinery!” A chorus of cheers went up as the engine smoothly roared to life. “Gotta bloody love a Toyota,” Stick said enthusiastically.

  But it wasn’t over yet. Aidan went to the second vehicle and turned the key, and the gathered crowd listened as the engine whirred but failed to turn over. Aidan held the key in position, while the men muttered encouragements to the car. “Come on, baby. Be good to us today. You can do it, you little champion. Come on…” The engine finally came to life, spluttered, choked, and Aidan got his foot on the accelerator, revving it a little. It settled down and kept running, but it clearly wasn’t as happy as the first one had been.

  Minutes later, the two vehicles were out of the shed and parked on the road, and the supplies the men had gathered were hastily loaded into the back.

  “You said Eden was north of the Gully, didn’t you?” Willow asked, loitering anxiously near the road as Whisper handed out the rifles. There weren’t enough for everyone, and Dusk wondered what it would feel like to be going on this trip without a weapon in hand. “How will you get past them?”

  “We’re not going that way,” Whisper said, his tone hard, his attention on the men. “We go west, inland, then north, east and south again. It’s a pain in the ass and it takes a couple of hours, but it gets us there safely.” He was nervous, Dusk realised, and why wouldn’t he be? They were taking half their tribe into territory that was occupied by an enemy who knew the layout of the town far better than they did and who had better weapons. They must have high expectations of Mei-Lien’s capabilities if they were prepared to take this sort of risk.

  Speaking of Mei-Lien… “Princess?” Whisper called, as the men piled into the trays of the utes. “You got that list of what we need?”

  “Right here,” Mei-Lien said, handing him a couple of sheets of paper.

  Whisper looked over the list… He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know what half this shit is.”