Stung (20 page)

I don’t wait to see if I’ve hit him to find my next target. I aim and shoot again. And a third time.

“He pulled the pin!” Arrin whispers, her words barely making it past my ringing ears. I look at Bowen and Tommy. Bowen stands and chucks the grenade down the road, then he and Tommy run in the other direction. Gunfire fills the quiet morning. Bowen lurches and falls to the ground, and my heart misses a beat. Did he get shot? Is he dead? Tommy crouches down and pulls Bowen back to his feet. And then the grenade explodes, shaking the hotel, deafening my ringing ears, and creating a cloud of dust that hides Bowen and Tommy from view.

“We have to get out of here!” Arrin says, standing. Her voice sounds muted, like I’m hearing it through water. She darts toward the door. I take one final look below and swallow a surge of dread. While Bowen’s hidden by dust, I’ve been seen. The men too far from the explosion to be hurt are pointing at me. Guns go off and bullets whiz by my head or send sprays of glass flying from the building. And men are running toward the hotel.

“Oh, crap.” I sprint after Arrin.

I sprint down the hall to the stairs, but before I make it to the thirteenth floor I hear the sound of feet thumping in the stairwell below, of someone coming up. Arrin stops and waits for me.

“They’re about to catch us. No mercy,” she says, her eyes hard. “Kill before asking questions.” A knife appears in her hand, and she pivots on the balls of her feet, braced for a fight. I balance the gun on my shoulder and wait. The thumping of feet grows louder. And louder. When the sound of heavy breathing accompanies the feet, I know we are about to die.

Men come into view, and all I focus on is the place on a broad chest where I have to put the bullet. In spite of the gun pointed at them, they don’t slow. I grit my teeth and find the trigger.

“No!”

I squeeze, and the gun discharges a split second before it is knocked out of my hands.

One of the men reels backward and topples head over feet down the stairs. Triumph swells inside of me. I’ve hit my target.

“What did you do that for!” someone booms.

“Fo,” Bowen groans.

I lower the gun and stare in mute shock. Bowen lies in a crumpled heap of blood and clothes on the landing below. I run down the steps and grab his shoulders. He goes rigid at my touch. “Not so rough,” he gasps.

I let go and stare at him. “Are you badly hurt?” I ask.

“You
shot
him, idiot,” Arrin snaps, slamming the rifle against my chest. I clutch it and everything goes numb—my fingers, my ears, my brain. Unable to move, to speak, I stare at Bowen.

Tommy eases Bowen to sitting and slings Bowen’s arm over his shoulders. Then he glares at me. “Never trust a woman with a gun. He comes here to save your life and you almost kill him,” he says, staring at me like I’m trash. “Are you hurt bad, man?” he asks Bowen.

Bowen nods and cringes, peering down at his stomach. Blood is soaking his shirt, oozing onto his pants, and dripping onto the floor. “I need coagulant. Now. Where’s your backpack, Fo?” Bowen asks. His voice is as unsteady as my hands.

“In the room,” I say, unable to take my eyes from the blood. Every heartbeat that passes, his blood flows more quickly, dripping off the hem of his shirt and splattering into an ever-growing puddle on the dirty floor. I turn and start running up the stairs toward the fifteenth floor.

“Hurry!” Tommy calls. “We fused the stairwell door to buy some time, but we’ve only got a few minutes at most.” I run faster, taking the stairs three at a time until I reach the fifteenth floor. I sprint down the hall to room 1515 and crash inside, jerking to a startled stop.

A small boy, maybe six years old, is sitting on the bed, an entire chunk of Spam straight out of the can in his hands—one of which is marked with the sign of the beast. He’s gnawing on the meat so intently he doesn’t notice me.

I take a step toward him and his eyes dart up to mine. The Spam falls from his hands to the mattress and he flinches. “Please don’t hurt me,” he whispers, wrapping his arms around his knees and pulling them against his chest.

“I won’t,” I say. “You can have the meat. There’re peaches, too.”

He lifts his head and stares at me with wide, shocked eyes. “Where’s your mom?”

“She’s asleep in another room.”

I jog to the backpack and pull out three cans of peaches, tossing them onto the bed. “Take these to her and tell her some bad men are coming and you guys need to hide.” He puts the Spam and three cans of peaches into his tattered shirt and jumps off the bed. I sling the backpack over my shoulder and run back to the thirteenth floor.

Bowen is lying on the landing again, eyes shut. His face is so pale that a smattering of freckles stands out on his nose. Even his lips are gray. Arrin is kneeling beside him, staring at his face, and Tommy is gone. Arrin sees me and takes a knife from her
pants. She lifts his shirt and puts the blade on Bowen’s stomach.

“No!” I scream, leaping down half a flight of stairs and landing beside them, my feet slipping in blood. I yank the knife from her hand and stare at her, horrified.

“I was going to cut his shirt off, dimwit,” she snaps, taking the knife back. “He’s wearing a Kevlar vest and we’ve got to get it off him.” She lifts his shirt and slices through the fabric. With unsteady hands I unzip his Kevlar vest.

“The vest didn’t work,” I whisper, staring at Bowen’s bloody stomach.

“Hello! You shot him at close range! Vests don’t work at point blank!” Arrin says, rolling her eyes.

I ease his arms out of the vest and cringe. His stomach is so bloody, I can’t tell where the wound is. I take a packet of coagulant from the backpack and tear it open, then sprinkle it over his entire stomach.

He gasps and his eyes open, rolling back into his head. Arrin takes a scrap of his shirt and wipes the blood from his stomach. But when the shirt comes away, covered with blood and white beads, new blood oozes onto his skin so fast, I still can’t tell where the wound is.

“You need more,” she says. “Lots more.”

I open another packet and hand it to Arrin. “You pour it,” I say. I lift Bowen’s head and cradle it in my lap. Leaning down, I kiss his pale lips. They are as cold and unresponsive as clay. Without warning, he jerks away from me as coagulant hisses
in his wound. He moans and curls up on his side facing me, clutching his stomach.

“What in the …” Arrin breaks off, face draining of color. She turns her head to the side and vomits on the stairs.

“What?” I ask.

She shakes her head, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. “It went clean through him,” she whispers.

“What did?”

She dry heaves and squeezes her eyes shut. “The bullet.” Without opening her eyes, she points a bloodstained finger at Bowen’s back. I lean over his body for a better look.

A chunk of flesh is missing just below Bowen’s ribs, and blood is pulsing out of the wound. I gag once and then make myself take a deep breath. The air smells like blood and death, so I breathe through my mouth.

I grab my backpack and find three more packets of coagulant—all the coagulant I have left.

“Hold him down on his stomach,” I say.

Arrin, eyes still closed, climbs atop Bowen’s shoulders and pushes them to the ground so she is sitting on his back. I open all three packets of coagulant and at once pour the tiny white beads onto the gaping wound.

A scream tears out of Bowen’s mouth, echoing in the narrow stairwell. He arches his back and thrashes, throwing Arrin from him, hands clawing at the ground. I jump on his legs but can’t hold him still.

The coagulant fizzes and bubbles, mixing with blood and
expanding to fill the wound. And as it spreads, the bleeding slows. Bowen’s body goes from tense to limp and then sags into the floor. I climb off his legs and put my hand on his cheek. His skin is ice cold and damp, his blue-tinged mouth hanging limply open.

“Bowen?” I whisper.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t even stir. I put my hand beneath his nose. There is no breath coming from him.

“You killed him,” Arrin says matter-of-factly. “He couldn’t stand the pain of the coagulant. Don’t you know
anything
, Fo? If you use coagulant on major wounds, you have to sedate the person first.”

“Bowen!” I pat his cheek, shake his shoulders, but he doesn’t stir. The breath catches in my chest and comes out as a sob.

An icy hand finds mine and tries to squeeze. “I’m not dead.” His eyes flicker open and meet mine. “Not yet. Help me up and bring me my pack.”

I tug on his shoulders and help him sit, but he’s too weak to stay that way unsupported. He wobbles and teeters to the side, and I grab him before he falls. I kneel behind him and support his weight, and Arrin hands him his pack. When she sees how badly his hands tremble, she unzips it for him.

“What do you need?” she asks.

“Water bottle, IV bag, and packet marked
blood loss
,” he says. He leans against me and shuts his eyes, and his body goes utterly still. I can’t even feel the rise and fall of his ribs.

Gunshots echo from below, three in a row, and Bowen stirs. “Hurry up, Fec. We’ve got three minutes at best,” he says, words slurred as if he’s almost asleep. Arrin holds out the water bottle,
IV bag with a long plastic tube and needle attached, and small vacuum-sealed packet. “Fiona, fill the bag to eight ounces with water and
don’t
let your hands touch the water,” Bowen instructs. Carefully, I fill the clear plastic bag. “Now pour in the
blood loss
packet.” His voice is barely more than a whisper.

I open the packet and pour it into the water. It turns deep, dark green, so green I can’t see through it.

“Good girl,” Bowen says. “Now seal it and then hand me the needle.” I seal the top of the bag, like a Ziploc bag, and then pick up the needle attached to the tube and hold it out. “Arris, get me a Mylar strap … a rubber-looking thing. Should be where you got the IV.” Arrin rummages through the backpack and pulls out what looks like a really thick rubber band. “Fo, tie it above my elbow—tight.” I take it and cinch it into place. Bowen takes the needle and jabs at an invisible vein in the crease of his elbow. The needle slides in. Bowen removes a little clamp on the IV bag.

“Arris, hold the bag above my head,” he says. She lifts it, and green liquid fills the tube and goes into Bowen’s arm through the needle. He shivers and droops more heavily against me.

Another gunshot rumbles the building.

“They’ve broken through the stairwell door. They’re coming up,” Bowen says. “Help me to my feet.”

I loop my hands under Bowen’s armpits and heave, surprised that he isn’t heavier. He stands and wobbles. His eyes roll back in his head and his knees buckle, his limp weight pulling me down as he crumples on top of me.

Footsteps echo in the stairwell, a frantic, staccato pounding that matches my heart. I struggle to get free, but with the floor slick with blood, and Bowen as limp as a corpse, I can’t.

“I’m sorry. I’m too weak to move,” Bowen whispers.

Arrin sets the IV bag on the ground and helps get Bowen off me.

“We have to go, Fo,” she says. She grabs my wrist and pulls me to my feet. I look at Bowen, pallid and blood covered on the landing. “We have to leave him or we suffer a fate worse than a slow death!” She claws at me, digs her nails into my forearm, and
pulls. I don’t budge. “He’s going to die, anyway! And he’d want you to save your own skin! Come on! I know a way into the tunnels if we can get to an elevator shaft.”

“No. You go. Save yourself.” I pick up the rifle and rest it on my shoulder, ready to fight.

“But he’s going to die!”

“I am not leaving him,” I say, looping my finger through the trigger. The footsteps are close. Bowen stirs, and his icy hand slides around my ankle.

“Arris is right. I’m going to die. Go. But Fo, I want you to know that I love you. I’ve always loved you.” His hand falls away limp against the floor.

“I won’t leave you,” I mutter. The stomping feet are so near I can feel their vibrations in the stairs. I firm my shoulders and take aim.

“It’s Tommy,” Bowen whispers. “Don’t shoot.”

Tommy comes around the corner and jerks to a stop. “Don’t shoot me!” he barks, his eyes wide, and I lower the gun. He runs to Bowen and drapes Bowen’s arm over his shoulders. “Fo, get his pack and put it on—leave yours. Then get the IV bag and hold it as high as you can. If we get fluid into him, he might live to see tonight. If we survive that long. Now come on. We’ve got to find somewhere to make a stand.” I nod and pick up the IV bag from the bottom step.

Tommy drags Bowen through the door to the thirteenth floor. I follow on their heels, IV bag held above my head, ultraheavy backpack pulling on my shoulders. Arrin is already gone. I never saw her leave.

As the door swings shut behind me, I hear the pounding of many feet coming up the stairs. Tommy pauses and presses something into the creases of the door. He spits on it, and it starts to fizz and smoke, tainting the air with an acidic, metallic smell and sealing the door shut.

“That’ll buy us a few more minutes,” Tommy says, turning down the hall.

We go into three different rooms before Tommy finds one he deems acceptable—one with a mattress for Bowen. He helps Bowen lie on the bed and hangs the nearly empty IV on the headboard above him. Next, Tommy opens his backpack and takes out grenades, ammunition, and two small guns.

“Where’d you learn to shoot?” he asks as he loads the guns.

“My father. He was in the air force when I was a kid—got disabled. He taught me how to shoot,” I say, surprised that many words find their way out of my numb body.

Tommy looks at me. “You still are a kid.” His words make me pause. For the first time since waking up in the wrong body, I feel older than I look. Ancient.

He hands me one of the small guns. “For when Bowen’s rifle runs out of ammo,” he explains.

I take the gun and tuck it into the waistband of my pants. “Why don’t we go out the window? Down the fire escape?” I ask, peering at the shattered window.

Tommy laughs, a cynical sound. “No fire escape out that window.”