The Bleeding Crowd

by Jessica Dall

  Patience smiled. “You’re good, I admit. Witty.”

  “Too much so for her own good.” Ben sighed. “The amusement factor will wear off soon, I promise.”

  Dahlia stepped on his foot.

  “Jesus fucking...”

  Patience looked at the three of them and motioned to Ben while still looking at Dahlia. “So I take it he’s the one you’re here for.”

  Dahlia just looked at her.

  “I have the original Patience’s memory,” Patience said. “Well, something like it at least. I remember romance.”

  “Then how did we all end up in camps?” Jude frowned.

  “A long, very complicated, series of events.” Patience barely glanced at him.

  “You were married.” Something clicked in Dahlia’s head.

  “Yes, I was.” Patience nodded.

  “To a man.”

  She nodded again.

  “Seems like an odd political change.”

  “Politics has changed quite a bit,” Patience said. “Should I assume you’re revolutionaries?”

  “I’m really not,” Dahlia said. “I ended up here completely unwillingly through a series of my own long, very complicated, train of events caused by many singular choices.”

  Patience nodded with understanding. “Seems to be the way things work out.”

  Another redheaded woman walked through the door. “Lisa says she’ll take over from here.”

  Patience waved her away. “Let me finish.”

  “Lisa said—”

  “I’ll talk to Lisa then.” Patience sighed.

  “She’s in the office.”

  Patience left without another word. The door clicked shut. No one in the room spoke.

  Dahlia finally sat in a chair. “She seems nice enough.”

  Ben looked at her.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped.

  “Like what?” He crossed his arms.

  “That’s your ‘I’m annoyed, but she really doesn’t know any better’ face.”

  “Didn’t know I had one of those,” he said.

  “Trust me, you do.”

  He shook his head. “Well, in all honesty, you don’t know any better.”

  “Okay.” Jude rolled his eyes. “What happened to the kiss and make up, you two?”

  They both looked at him.

  He sighed. “Dahlia, Ben’s crazy about you. Ben, she feels the same way. Let’s move on.”

  “I didn’t know you were my spokesman, Jude.” Dahlia looked to him,

  “Well, we don’t have the time to deal with your bipolar, love-hate relationship right now.”

  Dahlia pressed her lips together before releasing a breath and looking at Ben. “Think we can make a truce?”

  “Do we need to make a truce?” he said. “I thought we had.”

  “You tell me.”

  “Jesus Christ...” Jude moved into the adjoining bathroom. “You two deal with it.”

  The door shut with a slam.

  Dahlia smiled before forcing it off and focusing on Ben. “So.”

  “So,” he repeated.

  She sighed heavily.

  “Have you heard anything from Jack?”

  “How would I have?” Dahlia raised an eyebrow. “I was here and you all were...elsewhere.”

  “Good point.”

  “Are you that jealous of him?” She didn’t truly have to ask.

  “You wanted to be with him,” he replied.

  “I wanted to stop fighting with you.”

  “Interesting way of going about it.”

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “It worked because if you didn’t want to talk to me, I wasn’t going to force it. We can’t fight when we aren’t talking.”

  Dahlia grinned at that.

  “Just tell her you love her already,” Jude called from the bathroom.

  Ben held up a finger, looking at Dahlia. “One second.”

  She watched him disappear into the bathroom, her eyebrows rising at the thud followed by a shout.

  Ben reappeared. “Sorry about that.”

  Dahlia pointed towards the doors. “Did you just hit him?”

  “Yes,” Jude called.

  A long-suffering sigh escaped her. “Men.”

  “What about us?”

  “I can very honestly say I’ve never hit anyone.”

  “Probably the reason women are so bitchy to each other,” Ben said. “You solve a lot of fights with a well-placed punch. Then you’re free to move on. No drawn out cold war period.”

  “Cold war?”

  He waved it away.

  She let it go, considering him for a moment. “Does that mean I need to hit you.”

  “Feel free to if you want.” He shrugged in reply.

  She poked his chest lightly, testing the give. “Eh, I think I’d hurt my hand. I haven’t had any training to work up a tolerance.”

  “Well, you don’t need to have trained,” Ben said. “I don’t intend on you getting into a situation where you need to know unarmed combat.”

  “Well, no offence, Ben,” Dahlia said, “but I don’t think either of us intended to be in this situation at all.”

  “If I had my way you wouldn’t be.”

  “If you had your way, I’d be wrapped up like a vase.”

  “A vase?”

  “Or some other unprotected glass item.”

  He didn’t answer.

  She looked at the window, at the door, and then back at him. “Have you eaten anything?”

  Ben shook his head. “Are you hungry?”

  “Just wondering if you’ve poison tested any food they’re giving us.”

  “Poison,” Ben repeated.

  “It seems to be the preferred method of execution.” Dahlia looked at the bathroom. “You can come out if you want, Jude.”

  “I’m good,” Jude called. “You haven’t fully made up.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Ben called back. “Stop everything and take her right here?”

  Dahlia opened her mouth to speak.

  “Another colloquialism,” Ben cut her off.

  “If it helps, I suppose,” Jude answered, sounding less than enthusiastic.

  “Pervert.”

  “It’s not like I’d watch.”

  “Right.”

  “Can we get back on topic?” Dahlia shook her head. “Jude, get out here.”

  Ben leaned against the wall, watching Jude reemerge.

  A lull followed.

  “So you think they’re going to poison us?” Ben looked to Dahlia.

  “I don’t know. Just, Hea...” Dahlia stopped short of saying the name. “One of the women told me that all the men that are undesirable, I think that was the word she used, suddenly end up dying of cardiac arrest. It has to be poisoning.”

  “Poisoned with what?” Jude frowned.

  “Oleander, I would guess.” She looked at Ben, who looked vaguely lost in thought. “Remember the container someone sent me of the stuff?”

  Ben’s hand flexed as if going to the waistband of his pants, but he stopped it and nodded.

  “Really, I think H...she sent them. Some weird signal that I’m still not sure I fully comprehend.”

  “So you think they feed oleander to anyone they don’t want around,” Jude responded.

  “My theory.” Dahlia nodded. “It a pretty clean way of killing someone. It’s almost undetectable after a relatively short period of time.”

  “Relative to what?” Jude asked

  “Heavy metals, cyanide, basically anything you that can kill you. Oleander is metabolized so fast no one could prove anything and the worst you’d have to clean up is if someone vomited.”

  “It’s a little scary how much you know about it,” Ben said.

  “Class on accidental poisoning.” She shrugged. “Same basic principle. The intent behind ingesting poison doesn’t affect its overall effect.”

  Someone opened the door.

&nbs
p; Chapter Seventeen

  “You are smart.” A tall woman with dark hair and eyes stood in the doorway. “Patience said so. Then again, you are the woman, so you should have figured it out before them.”

  Ben tensed. “Who are you?”

  “Lisa, I take it.” Dahlia crossed her arms.

  She smiled. “Now how did you work that one out?”

  Dahlia looked over the woman in a deliberate way, taking her time if only to assert some sort of power. Lisa was pretty in a way, nothing special, but even with her hair pulled back tight from her face, there was some sort of strange beauty in her features. Maybe it was just the poise with which she held herself. She obviously wasn’t used to being disobeyed.

  “The guard said ‘Lisa’ wanted to take over, and based on the look on Patience’s face, that makes you the power behind the throne.”

  “We’ll have to be careful not to underestimate you.” The dark haired woman smiled. “Lisa Morgan. I’ve been head of government for the past three hundred years.”

  “So you’re a clone too.”

  “All of us are. No need to deal with turnover that way. Despite the worries, we’ve all maintained relatively constant personalities. Nature versus nurture right there, I suppose.”

  Dahlia took her time in responding. “You’re the one who runs things while Patience is a figurehead.”

  “Exactly.” Lisa nodded, amused. “It’s what she’s always been. She has a more sympathetic character than the rest of us. Most people didn’t really seem to be fans of radical feminists.”

  “Can’t imagine why,” Ben said, giving her a sarcastic smile when she looked at him.

  “You’re the alpha male, I take it,” Lisa said, examining him. “Personally I maintain that we should have continued getting rid of you all. Natural leaders are always trouble in oppressed groups.”

  “So you admit we’re oppressed,” Ben said.

  Lisa laughed. “What else would you be? Anyway, somehow you got your chips out, and we want to know how.”

  “We figured it would be a little too easy for you to track us down the other way,” Ben said.

  “You managed it without dying,” Lisa observed.

  “It seems that way.”

  “Who helped you?”

  “No one.” Ben crossed his arms.

  “Take off your shirt,” Lisa ordered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.” Lisa pushed her jacket back to reveal the handle of a gun.

  Ben paused and then pulled it off over his head.

  Lisa motioned him forward, looking at the scar. “You had a surgeon help you. You can’t make a cut like that without some training and without surgical supplies in the very least. Who helped you?”

  Ben twitched, but managed not to so much as glance at Dahlia. “We aren’t barbarians; we have basic motor skills.”

  Lisa was already studying Jude, who hadn’t been as successful about not looking at Dahlia. She switched to Dahlia without turning her head.

  “You’re in the wrong color.”

  Dahlia raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re a surgeon.”

  “No,” Dahlia corrected. “I’m not. Truly.”

  “What was the outcome of the 23 Treaty?”

  Dahlia frowned, unable to dredge that fact from memory.

  “If you were trained as a legislator, you’d know the answer without thinking,” Lisa said.

  “I never said I was in the right colors. I just said I’m not a surgeon, which I’m not.”

  Lisa continued to examine her.

  “Test me.” She held her hands out. “I’m telling the truth. I’ll say that under any sort of lie detection test you want.”

  “Why did he look at you then?” Lisa nodded at Jude.

  “I didn’t see him look at me.”

  “He glanced at you,” Lisa insisted.

  “Well, he’s madly in love with me, so he looks at me a lot, but just doesn’t want Ben to know since Ben’s the ‘alpha male’ and has laid claim. Very like a man I would imagine.”

  Ben gave her a strange look, but remained quiet.

  Lisa nodded for a second and then drew her gun and fired a shot. Ben jerked back, his hand flying to his shoulder. Startled, Dahlia stared, but forced herself to remain still. Jude moved, letting Ben lean against him and easing him to the ground.

  Lisa looked at Dahlia. “Oh, don’t look like that. I didn’t aim for a kill shot. Though, you never know without medical help...”

  Dahlia frowned, the fact that she didn’t fully understand the last question distracted her well enough to keep her from looking at Ben. Lisa met her eyes for a moment before smiling and leaving the room.

  Dahlia waited a minute for the door to click and then turned and knelt next to Ben.

  “What do we...?” Jude stared at her.

  “Move your hand.” Dahlia touched the hand Ben pressed to his shoulder and looked at Jude. “Get him upright, I need to check his back.”

  Jude nodded, helping Ben sit and rest against him.

  She looked at the wound, trying to study it through the blood fast obscuring the area. She examined his back. “It didn’t go through. It’s probably in the bone then from the speed that thing was going.”

  “It was a bullet,” Jude said.

  “Whatever it was.” Dahlia frowned, hands shaking.

  “Can we stop analyzing and do something?” Ben asked in a weak voice.

  The door opened, a bag came through, and the door shut.

  Jude frowned. “What’s that?”

  Dahlia released a breath. “A physician’s bag.”

  “They’re giving us medicine?” Jude looked at it.

  “She’s trying to make me prove I’m a doctor.”

  “It’s fine.” Ben shook his head. “I’ll survive.”

  “Ben.” She shook her head.

  “I swear to god, Dahlia, if you touch that bag—”

  “You’d be a little more threatening if you weren’t bleeding out.” She moved toward the bag. “Lisa hit something and I have to stop the bleeding.”

  “Don’t forget to get the bullet out,” Jude said.

  “Is it important?” Dahlia said.

  Jude hesitated. “I think so. I’ve never been shot.”

  “Dahlia...” Ben frowned with pain.

  “You’ll bleed out at this rate, Ben. Shut up and save your strength.”

  He glared at her, the effect somewhat lessened by the grimace already on his face.

  She pulled out the supplies in the bag, scanning them before picking up a pair of tweezers. “I admit I have no idea what I’m doing, so I’m just going to try to treat it like a really, really deep splinter.

  He winced and nodded.

  “Lean him against the wall so you can get some water,” Dahlia said. “I need to wash some of this away.”

  Jude nodded, moving without question.

  “This is going to hurt, Ben. Just grab my leg or something if you need to.”

  He nodded again, barely moving this time. She studied his face for a moment and then did what she could to find the bullet through the blood. He gripped his own thigh, trying to let her work. She worked as well she could without being able to see. The tweezers hit something hard and she pulled. The bullet came out, but Ben barely reacted.

  Dahlia grimaced.

  Jude knelt with several cups of water. “I couldn’t find anything else to put it in...is he okay?”

  “He’s going into shock.” Dahlia shook her head. “Lay him down again.”

  “Is he going to—?”

  “Get him horizontal!” she snapped. “We need to stop the bleeding.”

  Jude maneuvered the all but unresponsive man until he was lying straight.

  “Put some pillows under his feet, or anything that will get his legs up.” She took the gauze cutting it raggedly and pressing it over the wound.

  Jude propped his feet up and looked at her. “What now?”


  “We...” She shook her head in agitation. “Keep pressure on that.”

  “Is he going to be—?”

  “I don’t know, okay?” she snapped, looking inside Ben’s mouth and then checking his pulse. “At the hospital we’d start giving him a blood transfusion. Not like we can do that here.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We try to stop the bleeding.” She left her hand on his wrist. “Come on, Ben. You shouldn’t be unconscious. Come on...”

  He continued to be unresponsive.

  She got up, taking a blanket and putting it over him, waving Jude away from his shoulder. “Let me see.”

  Jude looked as though he wanted to ask something, but refrained.

  “The bleeding is slowing some,” she said. “He’s a good healer if nothing else. Hopefully we can get that...then if we can keep him warm and find some way to get his blood pressure up...”

  “Like what?”

  “Compress his legs maybe?” She sat back on her heels, pitching the bridge of her nose and taking a long breath before finding his pulse on his wrist again. “I’d say make him mad, but...really, I don’t think there’s anything we can do. This isn’t what I do. We just have to hope that the blood loss...”

  Jude just looked at her. “But, he’s alive.”

  Dahlia nodded. “His pulse is weak, but there, so, yeah.”

  “There’s really nothing else we can do?”

  “Unless you have a couple liters of O negative that we can transfuse, no, that’s it.”

  Ben’s eyes fluttered half-heartedly.

  “Ben?” Dahlia touched his face, unsure whether or not to be happy the color that was slowly coming back to his cheeks or worried about how clammy his skin still was. “Ben? Can you hear me?”

  He didn’t open his eyes, but spoke in a quiet voice. “Yes.”

  “Good.” She smiled with relief. “Just lay right there. Don’t move.”

  “Wasn’t planning on it.” He breathed. “Water?”

  Jude moved to one of the glasses, but Dahlia held out a hand to stop him. “You don’t give people in shock liquids. My ER knowledge may be rusty, but I know that much.”

  “Why not?” Jude frowned.

  “I don’t know, something about the digestive system not really functioning...” Dahlia wiped her forehead. “I really don’t deal with this kind of thing, Jude. I don’t think I’ve seen as much blood as I have on this trip since a rather disturbing class right before I started my internship. I deal with colds and herbs...”