I looked at him. “You’ve done this before?”
“No, but trust me.” His eyes were fixed on the bleeding wound. “I know I can do it. One thing, though.” He looked ’round. “Clear the room. I need to be able to concentrate.”
With Zak working on Michaela in the cabin I had to keep myself busy. Dark clouds overlaid the sky like a purple bruise. With Tony’s help I shifted the dynamite to a spare cabin some distance from the others. This stuff should be stable, but I wasn’t going to take any damn-fool chances. For a while we worked without talking. Only when I moved the Jeep to a garage alongside one of the cabins did Tony break the silence.
Wrapping a rag around his hand, he reached into the back of the Jeep to pull out a hunk of what looked like steel rod. As thick as my thumb, it was maybe two feet in length.
I stared at it for a moment.
“The hornet’s weapon of choice,” Tony said at last. “Evil-looking thing, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Do you think that’s what hit her?”
“Could be. But there’s no blood.” He shook his head, sickened. “Maybe one threw it as you passed, or he lost his grip on it when they attacked.” He looked more closely at it. “The problem is, they smear these things with their own shit. Whether it’s a crazy ritual or whether it’s to spread infection I don’t know.”
I found myself glancing back at the cabin where Michaela lay. “What are you saying, Tony?”
“Michaela should really have a shot of antibiotics and a tetanus inoculation.”
“You mean if she recovers from the head wound she still might go down with blood poisoning?”
“It’s happened to us in the past. We’ve lost people.”
“But you’ve got first aid kits and medicines, right?”
“But we haven’t any antibiotics or inoculation shots. They’re long gone.”
“Hell.” I rubbed my jaw. “But I know where there are some.”
“The bunker?”
“First thing tomorrow we’re going back there.” I shot him a grim look. “We’re going to take whatever we need from that place.”
“But you said it was built like a fortress.”
“It is… so this is where we start making the impossible possible. It’s a habit we’re going to have to learn; otherwise we won’t survive.”
“Greg… Greg!”
I turned to see Boy come running across the grass. His eyes were big as boiled eggs; the whites flashed in a way that sent shivers prickling across my back.
Boy shouted, “Greg… Tony! Zak says to come back to the cabin!”
The bedroom where Michaela lay was in near darkness. Zak had drawn the blinds and turned down the kerosene lamp until only a smudge of light burned in the glass tube.
She lay flat on her back, her black hair fanned out across the pillow. Zak nodded for me to go closer. As I crouched beside the bed her eyes opened. For a second they gazed up at the ceiling, as if puzzled by her surroundings; then she turned her head slightly to look at me.
“Michaela,” I whispered, “it’s Greg. You’re going to be all right.”
Her lips moved noiselessly for a second, then she breathed out the words: “Sorry, Greg… I messed up… should have been sharper. .. a whole lot sharper… uh.” She grimaced.
“Don’t apologize.” I moved closer and squeezed her hand.
“Let my guard down… that was stupid of me…”
“Take it easy. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I did, Greg… I should have kept my wits… these days you get lazy you’re gonna die… oh…”
“Sshh… Easy, Michaela.”
Swallowing, as if she had something stuck in her throat, she lifted both fists to her temples. She began to press her head so hard her knuckles turned white.
“Michaela, what’s wrong?”
She sighed. “It hurts… ssa’ bitch… uh.”
Zak ran his hands across his head, angry with himself that he couldn’t do more for her. “I don’t think she’s suffered any brain damage. I did a good job stitching her scalp, but it’s going to be sore for a while.”
“Isn’t there anything we can give her?”
“All we’ve got now is Excedrin.”
“They’re not even going to take the edge off pain like that.”
“I know, Greg. Good God, I wish I could do more for her. She doesn’t deserve this… She pulled us outta more crap than I don’t know what. She kept us together, like…” He shrugged as words failed him. “Hell, she doesn’t deserve this, Greg,” was all he could repeat.
She didn’t deserve it. I gritted my own teeth as I watched her shudder as waves of pain ran through her. Her knuckles whitened again as she pushed her hands against the side of her head.
What’s that old saying? Life’s a bitch and then you die…
It came ringing back at me as I crouched there holding her hand. It came like a huge tolling bell that thundered the words ’round my head. Be a Viking, I said. Work miracles, I said. Do the impossible , I said. And, Jesus Christ, all I could do was watch the face of the woman I loved spasm as the agony tore through her like a goddam razor.
Forty-nine
I watched Boy through the binoculars. Disguised in rags, carrying a backpack on his shoulders that reached all the way down to the back of his knees, he limped ’round the fake house that comprised the bunker. I could see that he wore one shoe. His head hung down, exhausted.
“The kid’s acting the part well,” I said.
“He loves Michaela like a sister.” Tony crouched beside me. “He’d give his life to help her.”
Zak crawled through the leaf mold, keeping below the bushes. “Anything happening yet?”
“Nothing.”
“Boy’s been hanging ’round there for two hours now. Are you sure this bunker guy can see him?”
“He can see him, all right,” I whispered. “He can hear, too. My guess is, he’s sitting there watching Boy to make sure this isn’t some kind of stunt. So keep your voices down.” I glanced at Zak. “Is Ben ready?”
“He’s about a mile down the road with the Jeep.”
“Any sign of hornets?”
“None that we’ve found, but that’s a big forest out there. You could hide a whole army; no one’d ever know.”
We crouched there beneath the bushes just inside the forest fringe. I watched Boy sit at the main entrance to the bunker. He’d done as I’d instructed. He’d made an act of finding what you’d suppose was simply a big country house in the forest. He’d examined the fake doors painted on concrete walls, looked at the astroturf grass. Then he’d sat down, his head hanging down as if he was too tired to take another step. Every now and again a squall of rain came from dark skies. Trees groaned and hissed before the coming storm like restless animals. It was as if they sensed something big was breaking.
I kept my eyes fixed to the binoculars, seeing Boy’s dirt-smeared face. In my mind’s eye I was seeing Michaela, too. When I left the cabin that morning her face had a white, unnatural look, as if it were made from the same waxy stuff as candles. She breathed steadily, but she still hadn’t fully regained consciousness from the attack the day before. In fact, she seemed to sleep more deeply now. I found myself asking myself how you know when someone has slipped from natural sleep into a lethal coma. It scared me more than I dared to admit. Zak had done a good job of the suturing, however. After cutting a little of her hair away from the scalp he’d neatly stitched the flap of torn skin back. That had stopped the bleeding. The rest now, as they say, was in the lap of the gods.
Minutes crawled to midday. I began to wonder again about the steel trap door on the annex roof through which Michaela and I had escaped. That would be the easiest way into the bunker, but I was certain Phoenix would have gone across to manually close it. What’s more, it was locked from the inside. If I did risk climbing up onto the
