The High Cost of Survival

Grand Key Hotel, New Town

Reagan Castaneda’s left eye opened first. Something was wrong with the right. The lid resisted, twitching madly.

Thoughts and impressions rushed to the surface of Reagan’s thoughts. He needed to get out of bed. Something was happening—fighting, a battle—and he desperately needed to get back into the fight. They were all in danger—terrible danger. He had been wrong... wrong about everything. The girls were not safe. Everyone at the hospital was in danger.

Light. Through the shutters. Twilight. Is it morning or evening? Where am I? Lying in a bed. Not the air mattress. Big. By myself. A room of soft oranges and pinks. Television set on a dresser. Painting of sail boats on the wall. This is a hotel room. Where am I? Why am I not at the hospital? I have to get to the hospital and warn the girls.

He looked down to see he wore only a pair of boxer shorts. His body, which couldn’t decide if it was hot or cold, had been sweating. The bed sheets lay wadded into a pile by his feet. He was bandaged—his left hand, his left leg, and a single oversized pad covering the left side of his abdomen. His heart sank. He couldn’t fight like this. His ears were piping radio static into his head, and it was leaking out of his skull, down to his fingers and toes. He tried to speak. His mouth opened, his lips cracked, and he made a sound, but not enough.

He had to get up. Everything depended on this. A battle seemed to be raging just outside the room. His friends were dying. They were in danger. They were all in danger, and they didn’t know it yet. Someone important needed him.

Someone? Mother?

Mother. I won’t let her down again.

Reagan gritted his teeth and gripped the sheet with his good hand, but he couldn’t lift himself. He could shrimp, though. Shrimping... what Coach Morris called the arching posture that could get another wrestler off of your chest. He shrimped to the edge of the bed, his whole body shaking from the effort. He would have to set his left foot down, and somewhere in his thoughts, he knew it was going to hurt. No matter. She was in danger. She needed him.

Now!

The door opened then, and someone ran in dressed like a maid. “Help! Lois, help me!”

Another one entered.

Damn it! I do not need room service. I need my gun!

“I’ve got his legs. Lift him up. Goodness, he’s heavy. Get the girl! Go get the girl to give him the shot. He’s going to pull out the IV.”

IV? Reagan fought against the pain. What’s happening? Think. Think. What do you remember? Make yourself remember! Images of a building made of corrugated aluminum. Ricky about to cry. A tattoo-covered man. Agonizing pain.

Soft, womanly arms held his head now.

“Mother? Mother?”

A soft, womanly voice shushed him. “It’s okay, baby. You’re going to be okay. You got hurt, but you’re going to be okay. We’re going to make you better.”

“...Don’t understand.”

Soft, womanly lips kissed his eyelid.

“...In danger.”

Someone took his other arm, and he felt a pin prick, but it was nothing against the warmth and comfort that now surrounded his battered head. His left hand had bandages over the palm, but the trembling fingers were free and they could touch the cheek of the woman who held him. He touched her neck and her chest, and when he touched her breast, she lightly moved the fingers away, but when they returned, she left them in place, and he kneaded at her softness with the ends of his fingers.

“You need to sleep,” the voice whispered. “We’ve given you medicine. We need you.” Her warm breath caressed his head, and another kiss came. “We need you to get better. It’s going to be okay, baby.” Soft, womanly arms laid his head on a pillow. “You just saw the devil, that’s all.”

The door closed, and he was alone again. He felt his breathing slow as he tried to focus his gaze on the wall. It started to move, and textured paint seemed to flow around plateaus of dry plaster.

“The devil.”

His right eye flickered madly, and his left eye settled into sleep.

In his dream, the night crew had set up outside a mechanic shop. Reagan didn’t want to go on this one—he needed a night off—but the day crew needed the truck, and the truck needed a new fan belt, and the shop was just south of Highway 1—Momma’s territory. Reagan hadn’t seen Momma Chic since the failed attempt to cross the channel, but he still ran into the boys occasionally and knew most of them; they all knew him. They would probably parlay. At the very least, he would give them a moment’s pause.

The op had gone wrong from the beginning. They crossed the highway in front of strip shops and signaled for the spotter. Nothing. They waited and tried again. Still nothing.

In the dream, Reagan felt no wind, the air hot and still, like the inside of a glass jar left sitting in a windowsill.

Ricky stood next to him, breathing heavily.

Reagan gave the kid a hard time, like he always did. “You okay down there? You want up on my shoulders?”

The boy looked up, frightened. If he’d understood, he gave no sign. His fear revolved around the south side of Stock Island, and the feeling that the entire area had been sucked deep down into a hot, dark cave, never to be heard from again.

They used caution, checking doors and windows around the strip shops, and stayed put while Reagan scrambled down the street to get a view of the body shop. A light was on—not bright, just a weak glow that came from deep inside an open roll-up door.

They came wide around from the north, Reagan and Ricky sweating, with Derrick Adisa and his father Louis right behind. Fragments of a conversation came back. They’d been talking about the two gunships they’d seen the night before, circling south of the island, in the open water just east of Cow Channel. Both ships had turned on their spotlights as they went round, and round, and round. Someone must of have been trying to get out with a scuba tank.

But Chance Crawley, who lost his right leg below the knee in Afghanistan, and who refused to leave the island during the riots because it was his first real vacation since he got out of the army—and he had no intention of letting a little thing like a mass panic cut it short—had pointed out in his rapid monotone, gunny-sergeant voice, “Nobody smart enough to track down a scuba tank this late in the game would be stupid enough to swim south.”

“Maybe they thoughts their chances were better under the water than above it,” said Doty Emfinger, a pint-sized, wind-up doll of southern angst who’d worked as a mate on one of the island’s charter boats. “Found it in the garage.”

“Or maybe the ‘Tragers can swim,” said Mickey Jones. He was tall and broad, with huge hands that might have crushed footballs or fought MMA, if they’d not belonged to a soft-spoken computer programmer with an unkempt beard and a list of medical ailments that Reagan strongly suspected were mostly in his mind.

“Let ‘em swim,” said Louis, in his thick Jamaican Creole, which had everyone who mimicked him say ‘mon’ every third word, although Louis Adisa rarely said it himself. “Swim out there and become Navy’s problem.”

“And spread and turn the whole world into Lower Key craziness,” said Mickey.

In the dream, they talked about the world outside the cordon, including school and road closures reported on the radio. Bits of conversation floated through his mind while the scene kept shifting from the inside of a fishing store, where they’d expected to find the Momma’s boy, then back to the side of the mechanic’s shop, where they looked at each other and gestured back and forth.

Inside the store, Derrick sucked his teeth at something Doty had just said about the quarantine ending. “Nah, ain’t gonna be like that. They all gonna be sitting out there thinking this shit is contained, and then one day we all gonna look out over the water at some big-ass mushroom cloud filling up the sky. The Navy, figuring they had everything under control ‘cus they could sit around an island, is gonna be like, ‘What?’ Reagan knows what I’m talking about.”

Reagan knew, indeed. Derrick could be self-absorbed dick, but he was like Reagan—they both understood how the world worked. One day you were going through life like you always did, and then, poof, it was all over. Everything you’d worked for was gone, and every one of your dreams just went up in mushroom-cloud smoke. You’re bug-out car was sitting in a storage unit in Jacksonville, with its maps and water filters, and you were stuck inside a government quarantine. Shit happens. Just when you think you have it all sorted, it rears up out of the water and grabs you and pulls you down into the crushing depths.

Reagan could feel his own breathing, could feel his chest tightening.

They’d sent in Ricky, and Crawley covered from behind a Mazda in the parking lot with an AR-15 that was running out of bullets.

In his mind, Reagan was shouting to Ricky, even though his mouth was not moving and no sound came.

Get out! This isn’t what it looks like. Run!

The boy did come out. He appeared in the entrance, his steps robotic, and stopped, his little body absolutely still except for his chin. Crawley clicked on the flashlight mounted on his rifle, a low-power light from forty feet away, but now Reagan could see Ricky in the soft light. He looked out into the darkness, straight ahead, never turning to Reagan or the others. Whatever he’d just seen inside had the little boy’s entire body hanging limp. The corners of his mouth had turned down, and tears filled his eyes. He appeared utterly defeated, like a child just scolded by a viciously demanding parent.

Doty let out a stifled laugh.

Reagan was already moving. Now out of his body, looking down from the dream of the parking lot, he could see that Reagan Castaneda’s body had coiled into a sprinter’s start. Powerful muscles surged forward—a tenth of a second, a quarter of a second.

Not enough time. Not enough time. The boy is about to die. You have to move faster!

He had to make himself move faster.

Get him out of there! He screamed at his own body.

Two charging steps and he made contact. Now back inside himself, his mind held the frame as he looked into the open door. He could see cars, one of them up on a lift, and a shadow with a rifle.

Make yourself look. Make yourself.

He held Ricky in his arms as they dove for cover, their bodies spinning through the air.

Got it. Hold the frame. There. Not big. Average. Caucasian. Short blonde hair. Black shirt and BDU’s. Tattoos. Like the biker you fought, but not like him. Words. Patterns. An Etch ‘n Sketch done by a child.

Reagan mentally zoomed in on the face, a composite of the initial glimpse and the later battle, complete with blood flowing freely from its broken nose. In the beginning, its eyes had been mad with anger. Now, in the light of the auto shop, the bloodshot irises appeared calm. Lips purple, so no question of full blown infection, yet dead calm, a cyborg bent on eliminating its targets with the smooth efficiency of a computer program.

Reagan was sitting up in bed when Mary Stratton brought him his lunch, a bowl of seafood soup that had rapidly become one of the staple meals. Her hair was pulled back in a brown and gold head band, her face a portrait of a woman trying her best not to look worried.

“What are you... doing here?” Reagan sputtered.

“I’m checking on you.”

“Not safe.”

“I came with part of your day crew in the black van, and it’s a short drive. Should you be up like that?”

He answered slowly, every word a struggle. “I think it’s okay. The only thing that really hurts is my hand.”

“Did you eat anything this morning?”

He nodded. “What about... everyone?”

“The hospital? Ricky still isn’t speaking—”

Reagan shook his head. “Everyone.”

Her voice nearly cracked from worry. “We’re okay.”

“I need Morenz.”

“He’s going to come over this evening.”

Now, Reagan shook his head with fury and frustration. He winced and reached for the bandage at his hip.

Mary went to him, took him in her familiar arms, and helped him onto his back.

“Not at night,” he managed. “We can’t go out at night anymore. I have to tell him what to do.”

“Maybe tomorrow afternoon.” She again delivered her words with the same PTA-mom rhythm that never showed fear, as if making physical contact with Reagan had somehow slowed her heart rate, but still her chin wrinkled with strain. “Did you... did you kill it?”

Reagan shook his head.

“Well, don’t worry about it. The others are doing all the worrying right now. Trust me. It’s all they’re talking about. They’ll figure out what to do.”

“Only one thing to do.”

“Reagan, you lay back on that pillow. Right now. I mean it.” She smoothed the sides of her flower-print dress while sitting on the edge of the bed, then took a long minute to compose herself, and reached behind her and brought out a stack of odd papers. “I’m going to read you some get well cards while the soup cools. Then we’ll see if we can’t get you propped up enough to eat. It has big pieces of fish, but you let me help and you move slow. We can’t have you hurting yourself anymore.”

She flicked on a soft wall lamp and read the cards written out in pencil and crayons, on manila and printer paper. “Look what he drew.” Her voice filled the room with gentle affection. “This is from the little Hamilton girls, Angel and Karas. They wanted to come and see you so badly.”

When she finished, she set them upright on the night stand, eased him up against the head board, and then spooned the soup into his mouth. Finally, she asked, “More?”

He nodded.

“Well, at least you have an appetite.”

“I need the calories,” he ventured, then feeling for anything stinging in his torso. “And if they have any canned pineapple, that’s good for healing.”

“Reagan, you’re going to be in bed for weeks.”

He shook his head with a laugh. “Like hell I am. We don’t have weeks. We need—” He stopped, gazing into the eyes of lovely concern. “Sorry, but... I’ll be back fast. I know how. I won’t push it farther than I can, but I’ll get back fast. I’ve been hurt wrestling before. The trainers couldn’t believe how fast I came back.”

Mary stirred the remaining soup, and brought up the spoon with a big chunk of lobster meat. “Well, we do need you. I just don’t want you to overdo it. Everyone was so concerned. They’ll be so relieved to hear that you might be back sooner than expected.”

“A week, week and a half, tops.”

“Reagan!”

“Not going out, just up and walking. Don’t worry, I won’t go back out until I’m close to full strength, but I need to get back on my feet. We have work to do—planning, equipment. It’s okay, really. Besides,” he said, and gave out a laugh. “I got a little handsy with one of the maids yesterday. I owe her a nice dinner out, at least.”

For a moment, Mary only stirred the soup.

“That was me, Reagan, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone.” She hung her head down near the bowl, and he could only see her bangs swaying loosely over her crinkled brow. “I don’t know what you thought you were seeing. I came to check on you, and had just walked out with Lois, and then I heard you moving around, so I ran back in. We were so scared. That night, Mickey came back first. Then Louis and Derrick arrived with Ricky, and they shouted and woke everyone up. They were getting the day crew together to go after you when you... when Thomas up on the roof saw you... saw you staggering across the golf course.” She set the bowl down on the night stand’s last open space, and added matter-of-factly, “There was so much blood.”

“I’ll be okay.”

She leaned over to him, her arm touching his. “Of course you will. You’re Reagan Castaneda. And we love you, Reagan. We do. We love you. Everybody asks me about you. They’re going to throw a parade and shoot off fireworks when you come back. Louis told everyone how you saved them. You’re our hero.”

She gave his arm a squeeze and smiled, looking at him with moist eyes.

“So,” said Reagan, breaking the long silence. “Do you like Greek food?”

She stifled a laugh, then let it take hold, with the sound of tension releasing into the quiet of the hotel room. Then, still holding his arm, she kissed his cheek.

Dr. Aiden Morenz possessed the energy of ten normal men. He had thick, wavy hair on his head, and it was nearly as thick on his arms and legs. Solid and muscular, he was expressive with an infectious grin. He entered in shorts and a rugby shirt, holding a clipboard.

Reagan was out of bed, on his good leg, hand braced against a wall, doing calf raises.

“What... the... hell.”

Reagan half smiled, half grimaced. “I’m okay.”

“You’re a God-damned lunatic. Back,” Morenz said, and pointed. “Get your ass back in that bed.”

Reagan complied. “We’re screwed, Doc.”

“Maybe.” Morenz looked down at his clipboard and shrugged. “Maybe not. They have their monster, and we have you—out of bed two days after being shot, stabbed, whatever the hell else.”

“You weren’t there. This guy wasn’t even angry. You should have seen it. He fought us, ran through us like we were nothing, and never even let out a snarl. No screaming, no tearing his clothes off... just going at us like some amped-up, heavily trained son of a bitch, armed to the teeth, reloading, transitioning from one weapon to the next.”

“Not possible.”

Reagan started to shout, but Morenz stopped him with a raised hand.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he called out, pointing at Reagan’s hip. “That is some of my best work. You’d better not ruin it.”

Reagan settled back on the bed. “You’re an asshole. Listen, I’ve figured it out. Key West had the old Naval SEAL proving ground. God, how in the hell did they ever fit so much on this tiny little island. Anyway, that’s what this fucker is... was... whatever. Don’t shake your head. This guy was special forces all the way. He was a SEAL, and he’s infected, and his training is keeping his head screwed on straight.”

Morenz continued shaking his head. “Because he looked like something you saw on the History Channel? C’mon, Reagan, he could have been anybody. You’ve had training. He’s had training. But infected? Not a chance. Did you see his lips?”

“Purple.”

“Lips turned cyanotic? You’re sure.”

“I was this close to him,” he growled, holding his good hand two feet in front of his face. “With power on in the area, and a flood lamp going nearby, and... you’re still shaking your head.”

“Reagan, the brains we’ve cut open look as though they belonged to ninety-year-olds who drank of case of Irish Red every day. I don’t see how it’s possible. Even if he’s a recent case, and even if he’s not in the excited delirium state, I don’t see how. If he’s out of his head, but coherent enough for all that, he’d half to be right on the edge, but if he’s right on the edge, his lips shouldn’t have turned, and he shouldn’t have been able to amp up. And if he really was in an excited delirium of some sort, he shouldn’t have been able to come back out of it. None of the cases we’ve seen can do that. Even before all of this, dopers who went into that state never came back out again without some serious medical attention. Cardio overstrains the heart and they die.”

“This guy didn’t come back out of it. He was never in it. Well, sort of, he was, but he wasn’t really. I don’t know.”

Morenz’s laugh was pained. “Well, then you may have just pronounced our death sentence, buddy. I take it back. Do all the exercise you want.”

Reagan shook his head. “Still a chance. We go after him with everything we’ve got, track him down before he infects anybody else.”

“Yeah, Mary told me your little recovery timeline. That’s beautiful. I’ll tell the other doctors. They’ll be so excited to hear it. Apparently, everyone we’ve ever treated has been slacking off.”

“You know, the funny thing is, my hand is the only thing that really hurts.”

“Of course it is. It has the most nerve endings. The hip is a through and through—just meat. I’m not real worried there. The leg is a little messier. We’ll have to watch that for infection.”

“Nobody goes out at night anymore.” It wasn’t an observation; it was a command.

“We agree on that, at least.”

“When we do this, we all go out together. Derrick and Buehl are just going to have to get over it. We find this thing and we destroy it. Everything else moves to the back burner.”

At this, Morenz simply nodded, waited a moment, and then said slowly and quietly, “Did you see what happened to Crawley?”

“No, he was covering the body shop when the rest of us took off. If he hasn’t come back, then he’s dead too.”

“So Doty is dead, then?”

“He got him with a head shot.”

Morenz laughed weakly, full of disgust and concern. “This is great—a special forces Bontrager. Just great. I love this disease. Give me something, Reagan. Tell me you hurt him, at least.”

Reagan made a scoffing noise and stared straight ahead. “I hit him with blows that would have killed a normal man. I don’t mean knocked out, I mean dead. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about here. The last one finally got his attention, pissed him off.” He shook his head, still staring off at the black television screen and the total oblivion beyond it. “He still had the sense to call it a draw. He’d lost his weapons. I had his knife, and he was bleeding pretty good.”

“You know you’re not leaving this room until you pass the test, right?”

“I didn’t get any on me.”

“You got cut. That’s how Mary’s husband got it. Remember?”

“If I start losing my memories, just hand me my pistol. I’ll take care of it myself.”

“Knock off the macho shit.”

At this, he turned, looked the doctor straight in the eye, and said, “Can you imagine me as one of them?”

“Okay,” Morenz answered distantly, as if dreaming. “Good point.”

That night, he replayed the scene in his head.

Hero? If they only knew.

He got Ricky out of the way, taking the bullet himself. The kids with crayons would have loved that. But then they ran for it, leaving Chance Crawley and all seven of his bullets to take on the creature inside the body shop by himself. The last he saw of Mickey Jones, the coward had cut a b-line back to the hospital. Taking him out on runs at all had been a mistake.

Would he ever tell them what he did to the little ship’s mate Doty?

Reagan and Ricky had found the others back in a neighborhood with lights. Idiots! They went to a block with power, like moths drawn to a flame, and even Louis hadn’t considered that this creature might follow. But then, in all fairness, he hadn’t seen it.

Reagan had tried to get them out, but it was too late. It found them.

They were crossing a street, going from car to car for cover. Reagan had been first, but this one was too smart to go for the first. He cut into the middle of the line, when Louis and Doty were both visible, and shot both of them center mass. Louis managed to get out of the street, but Doty collapsed like someone had flipped an off-switch.

Derrick had started to get out, but Reagan convinced him to stop and lay down cover fire instead.

He pictured the scene: streetlights, only a few small trees, a muzzle flash from the corner of a single-store brick residence three houses down. Reagan had pointed and yelled, “There, there!”

Derrick carried a bolt-action single shot rifle, but he’d practiced and could pull a bullet from the chest strap, reload, and fire in four seconds.

Reagan ran out to get Doty, and the boy screamed in pain. He was hit in the back. When Reagan lifted Doty, he could see that Doty’s legs were like Jell-O. The shot had severed his spinal cord. Behind him, he could hear Louis yelling Ricky’s name, and there was the boy, unarmed, back pack on his back. Reagan had shouted a useless curse, then backpedalled and carried Doty out of the street behind the car they were using for cover.

Reagan took Louis’s 9mm Smith and Wesson and fired it dry while Derrick sprinted across the street. They ran low to the ground, keeping the car as cover, and made it to the alley. They moved as fast as they could, with Reagan holding Doty and Louis holding his own chest.

Derrick cried and shouted that it—the creature—was going to pay.

They lost their bearings and had to stop between two houses. Reagan peeked his head out, and a bullet tore out a chunk of brick just below his chin.

It was stalking them... hunting them... and it had them.

A few more streets and they would have been up against the water. They needed to get past it. They had to go through it. They went through back yards, and Reagan stopped when he saw the swimming pool.

“Derrick, take your father and Ricky and get back to the hospital.”

“Shit, Reagan!”

“Doty and I will hold him here.”

Doty was almost delirious as Reagan set him down on the cement beside the pool. “I’m shot, Reagan. Oh, Jesus. Oh, sweet Jesus.”

“I’m shot too,” Reagan had snarled. “None of us are going to make it unless we slow this thing down.” He gave Doty the .357.

Doty stared at it, crying.

Reagan carried over a round, pool-side table, and laid it down in front of the crippled boy. “Quiet.” Then he took off his shoes, his shirt, and his jeans, stripping down to the swimming trunks he’d taken to wearing beneath the denims ever since the temperatures had turned hot.

Until he lowered himself into the pool, he hadn’t felt the wound on his hip. It barely even bled. When he got in the water, though, it pulsed suddenly alive with agonizing pain, and Reagan had to raise his head out of the leaves covering the top of the pool to take a breath and gather himself. He could hear Doty still mewling his last cries.

Reagan stayed under when the shot was fired, when the thing executed Doty. The back yard’s flood lamp shone brightly enough for him to make out the leaves on the surface of the pool, bobbing on the waves he’d made. Then he heard the table being moved.

Reagan jumped out of the water.

He’d never done it before, but he once saw a professional fighter do it on YouTube, and for Reagan Castaneda, the intensity of his workouts had given him the belief that his body could do almost anything. Now it propelled him out of four feet of pool water, a torpedo breaking the surface and driving into the infected thing that stood over the body of his dead partner. A pistol went flying. Reagan drove him back into the trunk of a palm tree and struck with a knee. He clinched for a split second in order to wipe his eyes against his shoulder.

That was all the thing needed. It knew martial arts, and it was good—Karate, Kenpo, a little Wing Chun maybe. It cleared from the tree and caught Reagan with one, two, three quick, sharp punches. Even without any wind-up, its last blow to Reagan’s stomach was strong enough to lift him off of the ground. A right cross spun him around, but Reagan moved with it, whipping three-sixty to throw a spinning back fist that caught the thing square on the cheek—to no effect.

He delivered a teep kick next, driving his heel into the other’s solar plexus. Again, no effect. When he tried a low-high angle kick, it absorbed the first and ducked the second.

It went to the ground, rolled backwards, reached down to a boot, and suddenly sprang up with a knife, as if plucked out of the air. It moved too fast to follow.

Stand still and die!

Reagan skipped and drove in a sidekick, and his leg came back bloody. He lifted the leg again, this time a feint, and another line of red formed on his leg. He swiveled, and retracted a jab out of pure instinct, the knife now sticking though the palm. Searing pain hit him, but no time to react. Reagan jumped, up and in, brought his other arm high and dropped it, elbow down, like an axe blade onto the monster’s face.

It fell back.

Reagan pulled the knife free.

For half a second, their eyes met. The thing’s eyes were red in its rage and the light of the flood lamp. It winced, and blood poured out of its broken nose it gave Reagan a look—pure evil and all resolve.

I’ll peel the skin off of you, it said. Not tonight, but soon.

Then it ran off.

The next day, Mary never came.

Chris Papp said she wanted to, but was busy because an inventory of the food storage had turned up some supplies missing. Reagan asked about Ricky, and Papp said he was up and around, but still not quite himself.

Dr. Dave White changed Reagan’s bandages, and they talked about the new threat.

“So now we have to fight a SEAL.” Dr. White sighed while examining Reagan’s hip. “And my day is pretty much ruined.”

“At least now we can call 911 again,” said Papp.

Reagan’s head popped up. “What?”

“We had a visit from the police commissioner and the mayor yesterday.”

“Really? Did they have anything useful to say?”

“To say? Not really. They did bring a few thousand more MRE’s that the government graciously donated to our cause. Of course, I did hear them talking about the route they used. They had to reroute around a bunch of neighborhoods. Oh well, they might be afraid of half the streets on Key West, but at least they’re making it across the channel again.”

Reagan sighed. “About time.”

Dr. White took his blood pressure and temperature, and checked the leg for infection.

“How’s our patient looking?” asked Papp.

“How do you think?”

“I think Reagan could survive a direct hit from a missile and just sort of pat it off and walk away.”

Dr. White was listening to his chest. “You’ll live forever with these vitals.” He looked over at Papp, then back at Reagan. “This must be what a doctor at the Olympics feels like. Reagan, I feel unneeded. I’m leaving.”

“What about my hand?”

“What about it?”

“If I squeeze it, it’ll start bleeding.”

“So don’t squeeze it.”

“Well, they’ll kick me off the Olympic team if I don’t start working out again. Soon.”

“I think you’ll be okay.”

“Not if we don’t go after it. I have to get back into the fight. Quick. I can stretch, and the leg moves fine, but I can’t grab anything or even do a pushup.”

“Not much to do but let it heal.”

“I hear a ‘but’.”

“But... I came up with a little something back in ‘Nam. Not exactly medical grade, and it hurts like hell.”

“Do it.”

“And it’s going to leave a mark.”

“Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

“Chris.”

“Yeah.”

“Would you leave us, please?”

Papp’s look of concern lingered along with the rest of him. “You might need me to hold him down.”

“Leave me with my patient, please.”

“All right.” He went to leave, but stopped at the door and turned. “He needs a bath.”

“Chris—”

“Just saying.”