Dusk was in the middle of washing her clothes out the front of her cabin when the first shout came. “They’re back! They’re back!” Sure enough, the dull drone of car engines sounded soon after, and she dropped her dripping shirt back in the bucket and rushed along the path and up the hill. Mei-Lien passed her on the way there, grinning and clapping, no doubt eager to inspect all her new equipment. A couple of hours had passed since the incident in the orchard, and everyone had calmed down for the moment, although from various comments that had been made, it was clear there would be consequences for the men’s actions. But before they even got close enough to see the vehicles, the shouts of welcome suddenly changed.
“Where’s Mei-Lien?” one man asked, sharp and urgent and, with a worried glance back at Dusk, Mei-Lien quickened her pace. A man appeared at the top of the slope, skidding to a halt as he saw Mei-Lien already on her way. “Get up here,” he ordered her, waving for her to hurry. “They’ve been shot.”
Dusk heard a gasp behind her, and glanced back to see Willow coming up the path. They both ran for the top, and when the two vehicles came into sight, Dusk’s heart just about stopped in her chest. There was blood smeared on the side of the nearest ute, one man being lifted out, blood soaking his shirt. Mei-Lien rushed forward, pushing her way in to get a look at him.
Another man managed to climb out of the tray himself, but he landed awkwardly on a wounded leg, and would have fallen over if Stormbreaker hadn’t caught him.
Stick was there a moment later, getting his shoulder under the man’s arm to support him, and they began a slow, hobbling walk down into the village. Torrent and Hawk arrived next, having heard the shouts, and got to work unloading the wounded men.
“Whisper! Are you hurt? Are you all right?” Willow was a mess of concern, and she tried to pat him down, to see if any of the blood on him was his own, but he brusquely brushed her aside.
“I’m fine. Dusk?” he snapped, handing his rifle to another man, who was hastily collecting all the weapons. He opened the passenger door of the ute, and from where she was standing, Dusk could only see a bloody smear on the door handle and an arm, soaked in blood. “Get over here. Aidan’s been shot.”
Inside the medical cabin, Mei-Lien leaned over Mario’s leg. He was sweating, clearly in pain, but determined not to make a fuss. Mei-Lien snipped off the thread and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Two more stitches, then you’re all done,” she told him. He nodded, gritting his teeth as she went to place the next suture. The wound on his leg was ugly, but even though dog bites tended to get infected, the men had reported that it had bled freely for a while, helping to clear any bacteria out, and then they’d cleaned it on their way home, so Mei-Lien was hoping it wasn’t going to turn septic. “Ask Nicholas to make a poultice for it,” she advised, as she finished the last stitch and helped Mario off the table. “I think he said meadowsweet was good for infections.”
She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, trying to get her hair out of her face, and was surprised when Torrent stepped into her line of view. After getting the men out of the utes, he’d been helping Whisper treat the less serious injuries. He pressed her hands out of the way and wiped her face with a damp cloth, and Mei-Lien realised she’d probably just smeared blood across her forehead. Then he went around behind her and gently pulled her hair back into a ponytail, securing it with a length of cord. She smiled gratefully at him, then took the cloth to wipe her hands. “How’s Steve?” she asked softly. The homesteader was resting on a portable cot, set up at the side of the room, and Nicholas had been trying to keep him as comfortable as possible. The wound on his leg was red and inflamed, but his immune system seemed to be handling the infection reasonably well. They still needed to get the shards of wood out of his leg, though.
“As well as can be expected,” Torrent told her. “He’s upset about his wife and daughter, so he’s not being terribly cooperative at the moment.”
Mei-Lien nodded, understanding Steve’s frustration. But another question had been bothering her, ever since the men had arrived back and she’d found herself treating multiple dog bites.
“Why don’t we have dogs?” she asked, scrubbing at a stubborn splash of blood on her hand. “They’d be a huge advantage for the tribe. And there must have been plenty of pet dogs that were abandoned after the collapse. I know there are wild dogs around. You can hear them at night.”
Torrent sighed. “Same story as usual,” he said, running a hand over his face. “We used to. Up until two years ago, we had three of them. Then they all caught parvovirus and died. Nature’s making life a hell of a lot more difficult for us these days. We’re on the lookout for a litter of puppies – we could steal one from a pack of wild dogs, if we ever manage to find their den, but so far, we haven’t been able to. Dogs would make a hell of a difference, though. For hunting, tracking, guarding the village…”
“Hey, Torrent, can you hand me another roll of bandage,” Whisper called from where he was still patching up one of the other men, and Torrent hurried over to the medicine cabinet to fetch one.
At the same time, the door opened, and Stormbreaker shuffled in sideways, carrying a box of equipment looted from the science lab. He set it down next to two other boxes that Mei-Lien hadn’t noticed yet, too caught up in treating her patients.
“Oh, you got it!” she cried, rushing over to rummage through the boxes. “A condenser! Perfect! And the conical flasks, and a thermometer. Fantastic! And you got sulphuric acid!” She set the bottle of acid down carefully on the bench, then caught Stormbreaker in a hard hug. “Thank you so much!” She let him go a moment later, going back to poring over the supplies, the impulsive gesture immediately forgotten. Stormbreaker smiled and shook his head, amused at her girlish enthusiasm. But then he glanced over to where Whisper was finishing up treating his last patient. Torrent was staring at him, a black glare on his face, and it took Stormbreaker a moment to realise the reason for it. He glanced automatically at Mei-Lien, her attention focused solely on the contents of her precious boxes, and then Stormbreaker shot Torrent a look of pure disgust before he headed out the door again. He’d had the chance to marry Mei-Lien, and had turned her down, and he had absolutely no regrets about the decision. If Torrent wanted to waste time getting jealous about the whole thing, he was an idiot.
Dusk peered at Aidan’s arm, relieved to find an exit wound, as well as an entry one. “Looks like it went straight through,” she said, dabbing at the seeping blood. “You’re damn lucky.”
“Doesn’t exactly feel that way.” He was sitting on a stool in their cabin, bare-chested, with his bloody shirt draped over his knee. He’d refused to go to the medical cabin on the grounds that there were other people more seriously injured than him and he’d just be getting in the way. Not in the mood to argue with the stubborn man, Dusk had dragged him away to their own cabin instead, cleaning and treating his wound herself. Though she didn’t have Mei-Lien’s qualifications or Whisper’s experience, no one lived long in this world without learning a few things about first aid and patching up injuries. The initial panic she’d felt at Whisper’s blunt declaration that Aidan had been shot had faded now, replaced with a relief that left her feeling a little shaky, along with a warm admiration at his stoicism.
“Can you feel this?” Dusk asked, pinching one of Aidan’s fingers.
“Yes,” he replied, his tone suggesting he was merely humouring her.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she retorted immediately. “I want to make sure there’s no nerve damage. Can you feel this?” she asked, pinching another finger.
“Yes.”
“And can you make a fist?” He curled his fingers inwards, wincing as he did so.
“All right, looks like you’ll live. Let me bandage this, and we’re all done.”
“It’s fine,” Aidan said, losing patience with all the fuss, but Dusk wasn’t having it.
“Look, I get it,” she said, in as condescending a tone as possible. “You’re a big, tough man, and you want to stay in character. That’s fine. But let me remind you that if this gets dirt in it, an infection can still kill you.”
“Oh, I’m well aware of that, thank you very much,” he said drily. She made short work of dressing the wound, securing a bandage firmly around it and tying it off.
As she moved away to clean up, Aidan caught her hands, pressing a kiss to the back of one. They were rough hands, tanned and leathery after years of hard work outdoors. “Thank you,” he said softly, looking her in the eye. “I brought you a present. From town.” He leaned down and rummaged beneath the pile of rags he’d dropped on the floor when they’d first arrived. He’d made a damn fuss about collecting something from the car before he’d let Dusk drag him down here and, more concerned about his wound and the amount of blood on his clothes, she hadn’t paid much attention at the time. But now, he pulled out a rectangular, green package, and it was so long since she’d seen one like it that it took Dusk a moment to recognise it.
“Coffee? Oh my God, it’s actually, real coffee! You are a champion! And we’ve got milk, too! Best Christmas ever!” she said gleefully, though it was currently well into February.
“We don’t have any filter papers,” Aidan told her, “but we can probably rig up something with a cotton cloth to filter it through.
“Yeah, awesome. Not a problem,” Dusk agreed easily, not concerned about the details. If they could magic an anaesthetic agent out of a couple of bottles of five-year-old chemicals, making a cup of coffee couldn’t be too much of a problem. She reached down for her knife, intending to slice the packet open and just inhale that heavenly aroma… but as she did so, Aidan caught her chin in his hand, a sudden, deep frown on his face.
“What happened to your face?”
Caught unawares, Dusk pulled back sharply, having forgotten about the bruise that had probably formed by now, and the move only confirmed that something had gone down in Aidan’s absence. “Nothing,” she said firmly, turning around so he couldn’t see it.
But he was on his feet in an instant, steering her over to the window to have a look in the light. He’d been too distracted in the chaos earlier to notice, what with a handful of his men injured and his own wound to take care of.
“What happened?” he asked again. “That bruise wasn’t there this morning.”
If she hadn’t reacted so stupidly, she could probably have passed it off as a simple accident, getting butted by one of the sheep, for example. But there was no way Aidan was going to believe that now. After having a few hours to think about it, Dusk hadn’t wanted to be the one to tell him about the incident with the men in the orchard, or at least, to not make a big deal of it. Of course, he’d find out one way or another, but Dusk was worried that if she went first and started demanding retribution, she and the other women would have their freedom and independence drastically curtailed. As had been demonstrated that afternoon, the men’s first reaction to realising their women were in danger had been to keep them safely tucked away in the village, where they couldn’t get into any more trouble. She was far too independent to put up with any kind of mollycoddling, and to be fair, she and Rochelle had done a pretty good job of beating up their attackers anyway.
“A couple of the men decided to get fresh,” she said, aiming for casual indifference. “We took care of it -”
“Who?” Aidan demanded, and for one, shocked moment, Dusk recoiled from him, a shaft of fear stabbing through her. Though she’d watched Aidan kill people and dismember their dead bodies, she’d never seen him get truly angry before, having had the impression he was an entirely even-tempered and level-headed man. The fiery rage in his eyes was startling, coming from a man she’d actually begun to trust…
“It doesn’t matter who they were,” she insisted, still trying to play down the incident. “Torrent and Hawk came and cleared them off. It’s no big… deal,” she finished lamely, even as Aidan stormed out the door and marched off down the path.
“TORRENT!” she heard him bellow, and cringed. If the rest of the village hadn’t heard about the fight by now, they were about to…