She stared for a full minute, moving the hand over. “Well, at least I still got my trigger finger.”
A smile pulled at my lips. It might be that she was still on morphine, but Maxine always had the best outlook on life and that made all the difference. Leaning forward, she pulled Ronnie into a hug.
“You did fine, darlin'. Thanks for saving the hand.”
Emotion clogged my throat as I saw a tear run down Ronnie’s cheek and realized how much pressure she must have felt working on her friend like that.
When they pulled away, Ronnie quickly wiped the tear, as if it were never there.
“Alright, a few orders of business,” Ronnie declared, and started handing out pills to all of us.
“Kit, today in your med cocktail we have 600 milligrams of ibuprofen, an antibiotic, and your birth control,” Ronnie said in a silly voice. I could tell that Maxine accepting her hand as it was had lifted a huge weight off Ronnie.
I grinned and took back the pills with a bottle of water.
“Maxine, you are getting the good stuff, girlfriend. A twenty-four-hour morphine patch, two different antibiotics, a steroid, and birth control.”
Maxine grinned. “Thanks, doll.”
“Ask Dawn about her pain, but keep the convo short,” Ronnie told me.
Oh yeah, I was limiting my mental power usage
Dawn looked up at us when Ronnie had said her name.
‘Hey, how is the pain?’
Dawn nodded. ‘Pain better, but Dawn needs food. Thirsty.’
My stomach growled at that, and I felt awful we’d been chugging water this whole time and offered her nothing.
I peered out of the cave to where the green feeding pool was. There was a bluish slime across the top from the acid rain. The Galadrias got their water and food from the green stuff, so without it Dawn would deteriorate quickly.
“Umm, Ronnie, we might have a problem.”
My bestie's head snapped up from where she was rationing pretzels.
“Dawn’s pain is fine but she needs food and water. The feeding pool is contaminated with acid rain.”
Ronnie cursed.
We still had blisters from that shit falling on our skin. The cream had helped, but it wasn’t a miracle cure. I couldn’t imagine getting those blisters down your throat.
I reached over and stroked Dawn’s neck. ‘I’ll figure something out. This feeding pool is contaminated.’
Dawn’s eyes registered mild alarm but she nodded. She trusted me and I took that to heart.
“Can she drink some of our water?” Ronnie held up an eight-ounce water bottle and raised an eyebrow.
I had no freaking clue. Dawn understood spoken English pretty well and she shook her head.
‘Will pull out all minerals from Dawn’s body. Human clear blue is… like nothing.’
Human clear blue was freaking everything to us, but I understood her meaning.
“No, it will leach all the minerals from her body. I’m going to do a quick perimeter scan of Skyhome. See if there is anything else she can have.” I stood slowly, careful not to bang my already throbbing head on the top of the cave.
“Ronnie, you wanna come?” I motioned out of the cave.
Ronnie swallowed hard, making a face. “Actually… I can’t.”
She pulled her foot out of the sleeping bag and revealed a large walking boot.
My eyes widened. “What happened?”
Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen Ronnie walk since we got here. She had crawled in the cave all yesterday.
“I think it’s broken,” she declared, and Maxine let out a low whistle. “I’ll get an x-ray and a hard cast when we get back to Earth, but for now I should go easy.”
“Well, aren’t we just the perfect gimpy team,” Maxine observed.
Dawn couldn’t fly, Maxine nearly lost her hand, and Ronnie couldn’t walk. That meant it was up to me to protect us. The sudden weight of that pressed down on my shoulders.
Rifling through the one pack we had managed to bring, I handed Ronnie one of the low range walkie-talkies and slipped the other in my pocket.
“Just a quick perimeter check. If it starts raining, I’ll hightail it back here,” I told them both.
Maxine reached down and handed me her assault rifle. “Take this.”
I slung the weapon over my shoulder and nodded.
Stepping over Dawn, I started to walk out into the open. If only the Galadrias bottled the green stuff like humans did, we wouldn’t have this problem. There were gobs of the green stuff on the surface, but that would do no good since Dawn couldn’t fly.
I really wanted to connect with Damien and tell him I was okay, but doing that might compromise some vital organ in my body and I wasn’t going to risk that.
It only took me about an hour to walk the entire island, and I checked in with Ronnie every fifteen minutes. The once beautiful oasis was now… dying. The acid had eaten through every plant and blade of grass. The birthing pool was a sickly brown color, although I wondered if with time it would all grow back and improve.
Other than the one green feeding pool, I found no other sources of the stuff. I was just about to declare our situation really dire when I spotted a bright blue streak of fur and feathers in the sky.
With my hand on the trigger, I watched as the Galadria circled the island almost as if it was looking for signs of life. Was a breeder riding it? I’d never forget the time the sentries had controlled the Galadrias. Rode them like horses. It was sick. The moment he saw me, he started to descend.
‘You are Kit? Friend of Dawn?’ he asked when he was about ten feet from the ground.
I nodded, still weary. I didn’t have a full view of his back yet, and I’d blast him out of the sky if I saw a ghoul riding there.
He dropped then, landing fully, and a sigh of relief escaped me as I saw his back was clear of enemies.
‘Everyone left. Clyde can’t tap into our mind. Clyde feels alone.’ His thoughts were frantic and my heart pinched. He
