Angel Of Mercy

Chapter 27

Even in her deep sleep, Karin heard Maurice calling to her. Once she realized it was not a dream, she leaped out of bed, and rushed towards the front of the house, nearly crashing into the big orangutan's back in her haste. "Maurice! What's wrong?" she gasped.

The big ape shifted to one side, and it was her turn to gasp.

"Collin!" she cried, flinging herself down beside the boy. "Oh my god! Collin! What happened?"

The boy she called Collin, soaked to the skin and covered in dirt almost from head to toe, did not stir at the sounds of her anxious cries, and her stomach clenched with dread for him. Karin knew what it was like to be in that situation. He looked the way that she looked just after burying her daughter, Lisa.

"Where'd he come from? Lord, he's half frozen. Maurice, help me get him inside. We gotta get him to the fire."

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Maurice carried the boy as Karin ran ahead to get things ready. Soon they had him stripped of his wet clothes, wrapped in a warm dry blanket and lying next to the fire, and Maurice propped him up as Karin began carefully spooning warm broth down his throat.

"A brother's son?" Maurice asked, still trying to work out the boy's relationship with Karin.

Karin shook her head. "He's a neighbor. she explained. "Or the closest thing we had to having neighbors. He lives miles away with his grandpa, I haven't heard from them in years. I figured either their radio died, or they packed up and moved on."

She rubbed the boy's hands and arms and patted his cheeks, but still, he did not respond.

"Maurice, take a flashlight. You know that little outbuilding that's collapsed on the corner of the property? Go there and bring back a couple arm loads of those bricks."

He stared at her.

"Please, Maurice, hurry up," she pleaded. "Don't worry about me. He's in such bad shape, he couldn't swat a mosquito right now."

He was reluctant to go, but Maurice did as she asked and carried in the bricks. Then, she helped him to tear an old flannel sheet into strips, and he watched with fascination as she wrapped those bricks in the strips of flannel and placed them around the boy's cold body. Before he could ask why, the big orangutan felt the heat that now radiated from the flannel-wrapped bricks all around the boy, and he marveled at how clever humans were, and how much they knew that apes did not know.

"We had to do this to my middle brother Noah once. The big idiot fell asleep while he was out pretending to hunt and nearly froze to death," Karin explained.

Maurice wondered why her brother would pretend to hunt, but that question could wait. The worried orang also forgot that he should have been more than halfway back to the village by now, but it came back to him when, a short time later, a flurry of knocks sounded on the back door.

"I bet that's Caesar and company," Karin teased him. A short grunting bark sound, and Karin's eyes widened. "Was that Luca?"

Maurice nodded. He got up and rushed to the back door. It took him a second to work his way through all the locks, but when he opened the door, he found Caesar, Luca nd young Winter standing on the back porch.

"Come in," Maurice signed to them. "Caesar, Luca, we need to talk. Winter, go there," and he pointed to the door of Karin's room. "And stay with Karin. Help her if she asks for it."

Slightly bewildered, Winter glanced at Caesar and Luca. They both nodded. "Do as Maurice says, Winter," Caesar directed the young gorilla.

The albino gorilla shrugged and timidly opened the door.