CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

INJURED

 

 

“GET... THIS... DAMNED... thing... out... of... me,” growled Dorothy Barker, between gasps, holding the Them’s curving forelimb in her hands where it entered her body. She tried to pull it out of her flesh.

Oscar so Wild had hacked the limb free of the blazing Them and carried Dorothy clear at the end of the scrap.

He stood over her. One of the dams walked towards them, tugging a flask out of her waistband and pulling the stopper out.

“Drink or pour?” she asked Dorothy, holding the flask close to the injured Aux’s body.

Dorothy growled at the dam and grabbed the flask from her. She took a long slug of the filthy tasting alcohol, coughed and then poured a generous quantity over the entrance and exit wounds in her side and stomach.

“Good,” said the dam.

“Now,” said Dorothy.

The dam, Gertrude Harms, reached for Dorothy’s hand, but Dorothy slapped her away. Oscar so Wild was holding the chitin limb in both hands, ready to pull.

“You,” said Dorothy, “brace. Put a boot against my ribs.”

Oscar so Wild did as he was told.

Dorothy wrapped both her hands around Wild’s ankle so that her body was firm when he removed the thing that was sticking out of her. It was barbed, and her flesh would tear.

She took two long breaths. She could already feel the alcohol taking hold of her.

“Now,” she said again.

Dorothy Barker did not scream. She was unconscious before the blade was all the way out of her. She remained unconscious while the wounds were cleaned and dressed.

“You, leave me,” she said when she came round.

“Us, we are in the middle of a tunnel,” said Holeman Hunt. “Us, we will leave you outside at Westhafen, safer and safer.”

“And cold,” said Dorothy Barker.

She tried to stand, but her injuries and the alcohol she had drunk made her unsteady on her legs.

Oscar so Wild put a shoulder under one arm, Gertrude Harms put a shoulder under the other, and together they lifted Dorothy to her feet.

“Me, I hear something,” said a voice from the gathered war band.

“Leave me,” said Dorothy again.

“An echo of an echo,” said Holeman Hunt. “Us, we have time.”

While Dorothy was being tended to, the rest of the war band had gathered its dead into a service tunnel twenty metres back down the track. The Them would not have them.

One of the Aux, a younger beta male, brought back a felt jacket that one of the dead had been wearing. It was miraculously free of blood. He tossed it to Wild with a nod. They would look after their own, and Dorothy Barker would need the extra warmth.

They moved on, as before, slowed down by Dorothy Barker. They had lost a total of half a dozen Aux scrappers. It was only half what they had lost to the first Them. It was a small victory.

The whistle echoed through the tunnels, but never seemed to grow closer. It was unnerving. It sounded nothing like the shrieks that the Them made at close range, not the battle cry, nor the death throes.

Holeman Hunt led the band from the front, his face bloodied from his encounter with the Them.

Ten minutes later they reached Westhafen. Eight of the Aux scouted the station and the platform. Then Dorothy Barker, helped by Gertrude Harms, made her way outside.

The dam had been assigned to look after her, regardless of the fact that Dorothy couldn’t stand her. She was determined to make it back to Friedrichstrasse alive. She was dammed if she was going to die with only this odious Aux for company.

The station complex at Westhafen was dotted with what looked like little flags. It was an almost comical sight. Rags had been torn and tied to stakes driven into the ground to mark the pools of gasoline set by the veterans. They formed a misshapen ring covering several hundred square metres of rough ground, with pools dotted where the terrain allowed.

Gertrude Harms half-carried Dorothy Barker, cold and pale, to one of the derelict buildings. They found an internal room on the ground floor that was almost intact, with four walls and a ceiling.

Dorothy huddled in a corner of it, drawing her knees as close to her chest as her injury would allow. She covered herself in the big felt jacket. It was as much as she could do to keep as warm as possible.

“Hey!” she said as Gertrude pulled off her cap. She’d wanted to cry out, but the word was little more than a whisper and barely a protest. Gertrude Harms rearranged Dorothy’s head cloth before swapping headgear with her, giving the injured Aux her own fur cap instead of the leather one she’d been wearing. It would be much warmer.

Dorothy Barker did not have the energy to thank her. She was tired, terribly tired. Someone had already put on her eyeshades against the bright blue light of the day, and she closed her eyes behind them onto blackness. She would sleep or she would die; she didn’t care which.

Gertrude Harms left Dorothy Barker to scout the area and check the gasoline pools. Two had drained off. The ice was too porous or too wet in places to sustain the pools.

Everything was wet. The pings and plashes that they had all become used to had given way to the sounds of moving water.

Gertrude Harms stopped to listen to the gentle gurgling of narrow streams forming and running away, and to the whisper of thaw water pouring down the stone and brick faces of buildings.

They were not unlike the sounds that water made being poured for drinking or washing, but they were constant and not made by Aux hands.

She turned back to her task of surveying the puddles of gasoline. Most of them were still intact. She bent to remove the flags where there was no gasoline on the surface. She stood up to survey the landscape. The circle looked good. The plan just might work.

Gertrude returned to Dorothy Barker once her task was complete. She sat close to her, wrapping her arms around the injured dam. It was cold, and she could do nothing but try to maintain their warmth until someone came for them. She didn’t know how long that would be. She wondered if anyone would ever come, as she listened to the odd gurgle and whisper of flowing water.