A Season For Slaughter Part 57

"I'm not... a captain anymore. I'm an... Indian scout. What are you doing here? I saw you get crushed."

"Not quite, sir. Hold on, I've got a stretcher coming. The loading bay is a mess, but the team survived. You trained us better than you thought. We're dropping a rope now. Dr. Meier's got a medical bay rigged. We're going back up into the trees."

"She doesn't have enough duct tape for this-we'll never get the ship airborne again."

"Don't worry. We're okay. Lopez has a comlink working. We've got full network communications. They know where we are. Choppers are on the way. We'll all be out of here by tomorrow night. Can you feel anything when I do this?"

"No.

"How about this?"

"No."

"How about-?"

"Yowp! Yes, G.o.ddammit! Don't do that." After the worst of the pain subsided, I asked, "I can't move to see clearly. What was that?"

"Your leg. Your knee, actually. Just lie still, I've got a med-team coming." He held my hand. He shifted his grip upward so he could lay one finger across my wrist. To check my pulse.

"Status report?"

"We crashed."

"Got any more details than that?"

"We're about twenty, maybe twenty-five klicks northeast of the mandala. We've got fifty people accounted for. We're searching for the rest. People are still checking in. Most of the ship is in pretty bad shape, she broke her keel in three places, but a large part of the main deck is actually okay. A little precariously balanced, but the engineers are looking to secure things and see if they can level it off a bit. We've rigged a med-bay, we're working on a kitchen. We've got P-rations and bottled water, so we're okay for tonight. Actually, we're okay for a month, if we have to dig in, but I wouldn't worry about that. There's a rescue mission launching from Panama. In the meantime, we're going to try to keep everybody in the treetops. We don't know how long it'll take the worms to get to us, but we know they've got to be following the trail of debris we dropped. We're putting out probes and prowlers.

And we're laying down mines. Two of the spybirds are busted up; as soon as we find the others, we'll launch them. We may have to wait until morning. Hold on, the medic's here-"

I heard a rustling. I managed to turn my head. Somebody in a blood-spattered jumpsuit. He looked familiar. I couldn't see clearly.

He pushed something gently away from my eyes. He studied me impersonally, then began spraying my face with something wet and misty. It smelled of antiseptic and peppermint. A moment later, he was daubing gently at my eyes and my forehead and then my mouth and nose. "Boy, do you look like h.e.l.l." A quick last wipe with the cotton. "Hiya, sir." He grinned quickly at me. "Is that better?"

"Hi, Shaun. Love your bedside manner." My voice cracked. "Can I have some water?"

"Only a sip." He held a straw to my mouth. He pinched it off quickly. He wasn't kidding about a sip. I barely got enough water to wet my throat, not enough to swallow.

He ignored my protest and began unfolding a stretcher; his movements were quick and professional; he knew what he was doing. From somewhere, he produced a shears and began cutting open my jacket and shirt and began pasting monitors to my skin; one on the wrist, three on the chest, two on the forehead, two on my temples. As soon as they had all beeped green, he began wrapping me in a silvery blanket. I started feeling immediately warmer.

I felt him reaching around under my head; he was locking a neck brace into position.

"Is that necessary?" I asked.

"Just a precaution, in case we drop you."

"Do you drop many?"

"Hardly any. You'd be the second. Today, anyway." He finished with the neck brace and began gently feeling my collarbone, my arms, and finally my legs.

"Watch the knee," said Siegel.

"I see it," Shaun replied.

"No fair copping a feel," I said.

"Hey! You do your job, I'll do mine."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

"All right," said Shaun to Siegel. "You ready to try getting him on the stretcher?

I'm going to turn him on his side toward you, you hold him up, I'll slide the board under, then we put the whole thing together around him, got it?"

Siegel nodded. "I know the drill. Let's do it."

"Can we stop for pizza on the way up?"

"Shut up," said Shaun; he used a tone of voice that allowed no reply. "Okay?

One, two-lift!"

"Oww! G.o.ddammit! f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k! Son of a b.i.t.c.h! s.h.i.t! p.i.s.s! f.u.c.k! f.u.c.k!

f.u.c.k!"

"Hold him steady. Okay, got it. Let him down easy now. All right, let's fasten some straps." He patted me gently on the chest. "See, that didn't hurt me a bit." He was already locking the rest of the stretcher into place. A moment more and he and Siegel were lifting me up off the jungle floor.

"That way," said Siegel. "There's kind of a path-"

"No," I interrupted. "It's a worm-track. Stay off it."

"-that we need to avoid," he finished, ignoring me completely. "Shut up, sir," he added.

"Right," said Shaun. He listened to his earpiece for a moment. "They're lowering a sling."

"Hang on, Jimbo. You're almost home."

"We're a long way from home-what did you call me?"

"I didn't call you anything, except maybe a pain in the a.s.s."

"You wish. Forget it. I'm a married man."

Shaun allowed himself a broad sigh. "Why is it all the good ones are either married or straight?" For a while, neither one of them said anything as they struggled through the uneven terrain of the jungle muck.

Finally, they came to a place where the sky above was clearly pink and bright. I could see the yellow light of an open bay far above, and it made me think of another time and another airship. Only that time, it hadn't been my a.s.s in the sling.

Shaun and Siegel finished attaching the cables, and then Shaun gave a thumbs-up signal, and they lifted me back up into what was left of the Hieronymus Bosch.

The trip up was a lot slower than the trip down. And much less eventful.

Millipedes also a.s.sist in the process of dirt removal; whether a feeling of fullness or some other biological mechanism drives the millipede to the surface is unknown; what is known is that the millipede will also exit the nest to defecate. This may be a survival mechanism, as the gastropedes within a nest will catch and eat any large, slow millipedes they find wandering around the tunnels.

There is also a thick black boa-like creature that preys on jellypig congestions. Its exact function in the nest remains unknown.

-The Red Book, (Release 22.19A)

Chapter 72.

"n.o.body got out."

"Pain would be much more effective if we got the message before the event instead of after."

-SOLOMON SHORT.

Lizard wasn't there waiting for me.

They rushed me sideways down a tilted corridor into a makeshift medical section.

The beds were hung from overhead beams, and Dr. Meier had one arm bandaged.

She took one look at me and said, "Oh, s.h.i.t-"

"Where's Lizard?" I demanded feebly. "Where's General Tirelli?"

She ignored me. She was already cutting away my pants. "G.o.ddammit, look at that knee. Shut up, Jim. Let me think." Something p.r.i.c.ked my arm. One of her a.s.sistants was starting an IV. Another was bringing up my readout on a screen.

"He's very shocky," she said. "And he's suffering from exposure. I'm amazed he's conscious."

Dr. Meier turned and studied it. "Did they find the portable scanner yet?"

"Yes and no. It's busted."

"s.h.i.t." Meier turned back to me. "This is going to hurt, Jim. Wait-" She shoved a rag into my mouth. "Bite that."

She was right. It hurt. A lot.

When I regained consciousness, she was wiping my face with a damp cloth.

"Sorry," she said. "I had to find out how bad the damage was. Do you want some water?"

I croaked an a.s.sent and she slid a straw between my dry, cracked lips. The water was warm and sterile and tasteless; it was the best drink I'd ever had in my life.

"Slowly," she cautioned. It dribbled down my chin anyway. As she lifted it away, she added, "The good news is you're going to keep your leg."

She watched me carefully while I considered the import of her words. I must have still been in shock-or maybe they were sedating me. It didn't mean anything. "What's the bad?" I asked.

"I'm going to try to save the kneecap. We've already injected a local anesthetic.

That'll ease the pain a bit. I wish I could operate immediately, but it's tricky, and I'm waiting to see if they can level this ship, so I can have a real operating room. And, if the choppers can get here fast enough, I'll wait until we can get you back to Panama, although I'd be a lot happier if we could go straight through to Miami."

"Will I walk?"

"Your basketball days are over, but I don't think you're going to need a cane. At least, I hope not."

"What about the rest of me?"

"You're pretty badly banged up, but nothing permanent. I think your collarbone might have cracked again-the same place as last time, but I'm not sure. You've got a couple broken ribs, but you didn't puncture a lung, you lucked out there. You've got scratches in places where most people don't even have places, but as near as I can tell, we caught you on the first bounce, or you found some softer than usual jungle."

I looked around. "Where's Lizard?"

Dr. Meier's face went grim. "Um-"

"What?" I demanded.

"Jim, the briefing lounge was crushed. n.o.body got out."

"Lizard did. She talked to me. She called me on the phone. She put me on hold.

She wasn't in the briefing lounge. She was climbing up a corridor. That's the last I heard from her. G.o.ddammit! Doesn't anybody listen? Let me up from here-I'll go look for her myself."

"You're not going anywhere-"

"If n.o.body else is-" I started trying to lever myself up. Dr. Meier pushed me down with one hand. It barely took any effort at all.

"You try that again," she said, "and I'll nail you to this bed. You stay here. I'll tell them. I'll find someone. But stop worrying. If she's still alive, we'll find her. I promise."

I grabbed her arm. "She's the only thing I've got in the world-"

"Jim, let go. You're hurting me. I promise-" She pried my fingers loose from her arm.

"Let me talk to Siegel! Please-"

"He's out checking the defenses."

"When is he coming back?"

"I don't know. He doesn't have a lot of time for this, Jim."

"I've gotta talk to him."

She sighed. "I'll leave a note for him."