Petey was right behind her, barking and yelping as they went, running down the hospital hallway. Behind her, Gina heard another gunshot ring out and the wall next to her exploded in a burst of plaster. The gunshot echoed throughout the hall, and Gina covered her ears without slowing.
She didn’t hear another shot the entire length of the hallway, and soon Petey and she were passing the welcome desk. She flung the door to the walkway open, Petey hot on her heels. Then they were in the garage.
Gina flung the door open, dropping into the driver’s seat immediately. Petey jumped across her lap, taking up residence in the passenger seat, standing and looking out the window, growling. She slammed the door, turned the key in the ignition, and they squealed out of the parking garage in a few short seconds.
“Oh, my God,” she said, as much to Petey as to herself. That had been close. Luckily, she had ditched the man in the hospital. What had been wrong with him?
She didn’t have to try to remember him for long; with a bang he burst out of a side door to her rear, waving the gun wildly. She heard the gun firing, loud even this far away. There were a couple of dull thunks as the bullets penetrated the body of the car, but both she and Petey seemed to have escaped unscathed.
She turned out of the drive and into the road as the man fired one last shot. She ducked her head instinctively, another dull thunk in the side of the car, and there was a burst of fire in her leg. She screamed in pain, swerving, but managed to keep to the road.
Gina looked down at her thigh. As she watched, a deep red bloomed on her bright pink scrubs. She’d been hit. She’d been shot. That man had shot her. She could barely believe what had happened. The pain had been a flash of brightness, but had dulled considerably – she knew it was the adrenaline coursing through her.
It hadn’t hit the artery, or else she knew she would be close to dead already. Still, she was bleeding badly. She could feel the warm wetness running down her thigh, soaking her seat. She could hear the drip of her blood falling on the floor mat. Beside her, Petey whined.
Gritting her teeth, with one hand on the wheel, she reached in the backseat, fumbling for a first aid kit, gauze, styptic powder – anything that could slow down the bleeding. She knew that she would need stitches too, but first, she had to get out of this area. She couldn’t risk that man running up on her while she was sewing herself shut.
Gina found a first aid kit, stacked among the bags in the back, and tossed it into the seat next to Petey. He jumped out of the way. “Sorry, Petey,” she told him, unzipping the bag with one hand, only half paying attention to the road.
She switched hands on the wheel, used her free one to rip the scrubs apart where the bullet had entered her left thigh. Then she switched hands again, grabbing some styptic powder and ripping it open with her teeth. She covered the wound with it, hoping it would be enough – but knowing it wouldn’t.
She was going to have to pull over. There was no other choice. She glanced in the mirror, hoping that she had put enough distance between her and Grady. She started to pull over to the side of the road, but as she did so, she noticed a beat-up black truck coming towards her.
The truck started to slow, to pull up next to her – and Gina gunned it. In her mirror, she saw the door swing open, and a man in frayed cut-offs climbed out. He aimed a rifle at her, but didn’t fire. He paused, then shook his head, and climbed back in.
What in the hell? she thought. What is going on?
She was so wired up that she couldn’t even imagine stopping. But she was really starting to get woozy. She would have to stop soon, whether she wanted to or not. Thoughts echoed and repeated.
What in the hell?
What is going on?
What in the-
Gina’s head slumped against the wheel and she listed to one side. Her car slid from the right lane into the left. She came to and sucked in a breath, jerking the wheel to the right. Petey let out a yelp of alarm as he was pitched to the side. Gina blinked rapidly, trying to clear her dimming vision, but it was useless.
“Wha-”
She couldn’t even form a complete word, and darkness started to close in.
What is going on?
Petey.
Then her head fell against the wheel again and jerked the car to one side. With a crunch and the sound of Petey’s desperate whining, Gina’s car careened off the road.
*
There was a loud noise, loud enough to shake the ground underneath Dean’s feet. He looked up from his meal pack and at the swinging lights above him. Something had just hit, right near the shelter. Another bomb? It was a possibility, but he hoped that yesterday was the first and last of them.
He considered his options for a few moments, then got up out of the metal chair and set his meal pack down on the table, half unfinished. He’d had them before, but he hadn’t remembered just how vile they were. Still, it was food, and he was lucky enough to have a surplus. He could choke it down.
Should he go outside and check out what had happened? The answer was a resounding no, but he found himself leaving his kitchen anyway. He was curious; he could at least peer through the peephole in the door. That couldn’t hurt.
He entered the hallway, if you could call it that. It was 60 feet of solid, cold concrete. The kitchen was at the far end of it, a staircase leading upwards to the surface on the other. To his left was the small bathroom, to his right the generator room, full of everything that kept this place going. Before he quite knew what he was doing, he was closing in on the staircase. Now to his left was his bedroom: a small, quaint room with a table for work, a recliner for reading, and a cot for sleeping. To his right was the storeroom, packed full of gasoline, oil, tools, and all of the extra food that he couldn’t fit into the kitchen.
The stairs were ancient steel, built to last. He clambered up them slowly, heart beating in his chest. The door was built of solid steel, too. It was thick, pure metal, with reinforcing bars running through it to lock it into the concrete door frame. There was no way this door was getting opened if he didn’t want it open.
And now, for some reason, he did.
The peephole was small, unnoticeable from the outside door. Hell, the whole bunker was unnoticeable: it was built into the cliff face that made up half of a massive stone gully. The side the bunker was on was sheer rock, straight up for nearly a hundred feet. The other side was part of a mountain, covered in thick overgrowth and giant trees. The slope was nearly 70 degrees, so it had seen few visitors over the years.
As one last precaution, thanks to nature, the rock wall and bunker, were covered in a mass of creeping vines. Unless you were standing right in front of the door, it was invisible, and no one was stupid enough to climb down the slope. After all, what was the point of climbing all the way down, and then back up, for nothing?
His little part of paradise.
Or, rather, it had been.
About 20 feet to the left of the shelter, there was a huge patch of crushed undergrowth. Even one of the smaller trees had been knocked down.
“What the hell?” Dean muttered to himself. He decided that he had to go check it out, even if he hadn’t wanted to. He turned and ran swiftly down the stairs. His shoulders brushed each side of the hallway, but he didn’t notice the claustrophobia, for once. He had to figure out what was going on. His survival could depend on it.
He went into the storeroom and flipped on the light. The energy-saving lightbulb took a few seconds to come on. By the time it had, he’d already grabbed what he needed and was back out the door. In one hand, he held one of his grandfather’s old Geiger counters. In the other, his grandfather’s .357 Magnum. Whatever was out there, he intended to make short work of it and be back inside before he was in any real danger.
He stopped at the door, aiming the Geiger counter forward. He flipped it on, relieved to find that the area was clean. He breathed a sigh of relief he hadn’t even known he’d been holding in. No bomb, then. The area was clear of radiation.
The sun was high in the sky, but between the cliff face, the mountain looming over him, and the foliage, it was still gloomy. That didn’t bother him, though.
He went slowly, taking care to avoid any fallen leaves and twigs, moving silently. To his right was the broken path of vegetation. To his left, against the cliff, was a small red car - totaled. He looked at it for a few seconds, but no one moved inside. Could someone have even survived that? He didn’t know, but he was going to take no chances. He took another glance up the mountain. He would have to figure out a way to head up to the road and disguise where the car had swerved off. He couldn’t risk drawing any attention to himself.
But first, he had to deal with whoever was in the car. He crouched low, gun outstretched in his hand. He imagined how ludicrous he must look – his massive body hunched over, gripping a tiny gun. Still, there was no one to see him, except whoever was in the car, and they weren’t moving.
He got to the car, gun at the ready. Inside the car was a woman, hair dark with blood, leaning against the steering wheel. “Hey,” he growled, but she didn’t answer. Was she dead? He tapped the gun against the door frame. Bits of glass fell to the forest floor.
The door was dented in. He peered at it closer. Was that a bullet hole? He grabbed the handle and started to pull, but it was jammed tight. With a massive yank, it popped free and swung out. His earlier suspicion was right: her leg was a bloody mess and he could see where a bullet had entered her thigh.
Carefully, he leaned her head backwards, and there was a flash of movement from the passenger footwell. Dean felt a flash of pain in his left hand, saw blood – his blood – spraying across the car, and he jumped backwards, gun outstretched. A small dog, some kind of terrier, was on the woman’s lap, growling and snapping at him. Dean lowered his gun.
“Whoa, hold on, buddy,” he said to it, but the dog didn’t back down. If anything, he growled even louder. Was the woman even alive? Should he put her out of her misery? The scent of blood was filling his nostrils, driving him into a bloodlust. It was overwhelming. But he couldn’t kill her. That wouldn’t be fair.
Should he leave her? Every bone in his body told him to. Other people were dangerous. She could be dangerous. She didn’t look like it, but she could be. He took a glance in the back of the car: jam-packed full of bags. Probably useless stuff.
He couldn’t leave her, no matter what he was telling himself. It wasn’t right. His emotions were warring: what he’d been taught, what was right; did any of it matter?
“Back up,” he told the dog. “I’m here to help!”
The dog’s throat still rumbled with a low growl, but it didn’t move. Dean glared at it, expecting some kind of trap, but when he bent down and undid the seatbelt the dog didn’t attack. His head in the car, Dean surveyed the situation better. Blood was everywhere, but on the floor where the dog had attacked from was a first aid kit. And it wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill, cheap store-bought one: this was a hospital issued, real one.
“Where did you get this?” he asked her, though he knew there would be no answer. He pulled back, and the dog started to growl, as if telling him, Come back. “Hold on, buddy.”
Dean opened the back door and rifled through a duffel bag. What he saw surprised him. Most were packed full of hospital supplies: pills, IVs... anything he could think of. That along with her scrubs. Was she a nurse? Or had she just raided the nearest hospital? The closest one would be Grady Memorial, about 10 miles back. If she’d raided that, then the country was in a bad spot. Grady wasn’t a shining example of what a hospital should be, but if it was shut down, things were bad out there.
He went back to the woman, placing a finger against her neck. There was a pulse, but it was extremely weak. She didn’t have much time. The amount of blood she had lost was staggering. He didn’t have enough supplies in his bunker to save her, but maybe she did.
“Let’s get her inside,” he said to the dog. He looped an arm underneath her legs, feeling her slick blood soaking him, and another around her back. He lifted her easily, mindful of her head on the door frame, and then he was running inside. The dog was hot at his heels; silent, but always there.
He took her down the stairs two at a time. He ran down the hallway and deposited her onto the table in his room, where he had the most light. He hesitated for a split second, but then ripped the scrubs off of her: he had to check for more wounds. After a quick look, he was sure that she’d only taken one bullet, deep in her upper thigh. It had missed the artery or she’d be dead already, but it was still causing some serious damage.
“Wait here,” he told the dog. Dean was back outside in seconds, grabbing four duffel bags in each arm. He didn’t know what was in each, and he hoped that he wouldn’t have to make a second trip back out. He dropped them on the floor of his bedroom. Blood was all over the table already.
He started tearing through the bags, looking for what he needed. He found some IV bags, then found the tubes he would need to connect them to her. There was a rusty IV pole in the storeroom. He ran and got it, along with his medical bag of tools: scissors, scalpels, needles, and thread for the stitches.
He left the room, running across the hallway, and looked to his right: the doorway was still wide open. Every bone in his body told him that he needed to close it, close it right now, but this woman was on the verge of death. Every second mattered. Against every survivalist bone in his body, especially now with what was going on, he ran back into his room and got to work.
*
It had taken him a while, but Dean had done all he could, and he hoped that it would be enough. She seemed as though she would live. He’d started by hooking her up to the IV, replenishing the fluids she’d lost. Then he had to dig the bullet out of her thigh. She’d stirred once while he was doing it, so he’d given her a shot of one of the various drugs she’d brought. It had knocked her right out.
He’d had to clean her wound and stitch her up. There wouldn’t be any serious damage, assuming that she survived. These things were tricky, especially working on a table buried deep in a war shelter. He’d given her antibiotics to fight off any infection, covered her with a blanket, and had gone back outside. The dog would protect her.
He had climbed up to the top of the slope, carefully walking out onto the road. The road ran halfway up the mountain, twisting and turning as it went. He saw where she had driven into the ditch on the far side of the road, then the car had jerked to the left and gone right off the road and down the mountain. He kicked through the dirt, erasing any trace of her tire tracks in it.
That was the least of his problems, though. She’d driven straight through the metal barrier. It was twisted and broken. There wasn’t much he could do about it except to bend it back into shape, so that it resembled what it had been before. With any luck, people speeding along this road wouldn’t notice.
What were the chances that someone would notice that a car went off the road here? Probably slim. But if they did, and they were desperate for supplies, then following the trail would lead them right to his front door. That was something he couldn’t have. But he had done all he could do.
Standing on the edge of the road, looking down, he could barely tell that a car had sliced through the undergrowth, even with his superior vision, and the knowledge that the offending car was down there even now. Looking down the steep slope, it was a wonder she hadn’t flipped the vehicle. If she had, even with all of her supplies, he wouldn’t have been able to save her.
He took one last look at the road. Nothing else I can do, he thought, so I’d better get back. And so back he went, deciding on the way that he would move
all of her supplies into his bunker. For the time being, at least.
MUNDO (BBW Bear Shifter MC Romance) (MC Bear Mates Book 2) Page 58
