The Quake

Chapter 10

It took a bit of rearranging, some yelling - or as Erin would describe it negotiating- and one painfully hard yank to have the mayor free. Tyler helped her move him out of the rubble. Though all of her training said that moving a body could add to their injuries, they just didn't have a choice. She growled at Tyler to be careful as they carried him to an area off to the side. Tyler had spread a quilt he'd found over the bare dirt.

A sobbing Mary, alerted to their find, scrambled over from where she'd been digging near the broken glass of the kitchen. Tyler held the woman back while Erin crouched beside her patient on the quilt, cracking her knuckles. The mayor was a mess, barely conscious. His skin was graying into the colors of one giant bruise. His shoulder was positioned at an inhuman angle that would have to be shoved back in. Erin fervently hoped that hadn't happened when they'd dislodged him from the rubble. She nudged his lids open to see how dilated his eyes were. Large black pupils stared back at her, meaning he most likely had a concussion. His wounds were oozing lacerations that painted the bare spots on his skin like eclectic tattoos. Erin pressed a hand to his chest to feel how his lungs took in struggling breaths. Not good. But at least he was breathing.

Her brain switched into veterinarian mode. Mayor Sam wasn't the kind elderly man that led the town of Elkton. He was a bull moose that had gotten into a fight with another large aggressive creature. She catalogued the wounds and the treatments in her mind quickly, barking orders at her two helpers as they occurred to her. Tyler found a thin tube and some twine from somewhere. Mary recovered a second blanket Erin snatched from her to use for elevating and blotting. Taking a breath, Erin swiped a hand through her hair, contaminating it with whatever mud she'd come into contact with. She let out a swear word that turned Tyler's ears pink. This rain was making it impossible to see the extent of the wounds or keep them clean. If she didn't want to risk infection, they would have to move him yet again.

By the time they managed to pull together a solid board that could hold the man's weight and some straps, the mayor's body was shivering. Erin's back, by contrast, was covered in sticky sweat from adrenaline. When she stood up from her crouch, she felt the tops of her thighs peel away from her calves.

Mary lowered the back seats of the SUV. The cargo area was only spacious enough for two people to spread out their legs, but it would have to do. Then carefully together, the three of them loaded the body into the hatchback.

Erin never wanted to hear a scream like the mayor's again as she rerouted his shoulder into its socket. That certainly brought him back to consciousness. Awake, his breathing was still a problem. The mayor's eyes rolled frantically in their sockets while he struggled through wheezes of a likely collapsed lung. Erin grabbed a scalpel from her pack, then frowned at it. She needed a way to sterilize it before she could make the incision that would save the mayor's life. What she wouldn't give for an intact liquor cabinet.

Surprisingly, Mary produced a cigarette lighter from the armrest of the car. Erin snatched it from her shaking grasp. She pointed the scalpel to instruct Tyler, crouching by the mayor's head, to hold the mayor down by his trunk. With all of them in here, it was a squeeze. Lighting the scalpel with the tiny flame, Erin gritted her teeth.

With sure fingers, she applied the sterilized scalpel to the mayor's chest, ignoring Mary's hissed intake of breath, and sliced downward. Almost instantly, the whistling of his breath turned into whooping grateful gasps. Purple blood oozed over her uncovered fingers, warm and sticky. Erin's stomach rolled. Intentionally she set the scalpel to the side to grasp a wad of gauze and cover the wound. She wrapped it with tape, then stepped outside of the vehicle to rinse her hands in the rain. There was nothing to dry them with.

She tilted her head back, allowing the cold water to trickle over her closed eyelids and tension shudders to wrack her body. What business had she to cut a human?