Walk Through Thorns

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Outside, Howard put me in the back of his patrol car. The two bearded men with him jumped into a pick-up truck and drove away.

Howard got onto his radio and said, "Responding to shots fired from an abandoned home. Address is—"

I was only beginning to realize how badly I was hurt. Blood was dripping down the front of my shirt from where Talmon had stabbed me. The root was gone. My throat felt like sand.

"How'd you find me?" I asked.

"License plate," said Howard, "It was caught up in the backwheel of your bicycle."

I felt my stomach turn over. The root was in my wound, writhing, trying to dig deeper. I tried to reach for it, but my hands were still bound.

"Help, it's inside me," I said.

Howard pulled out a flashlight and pointed it at my pupils. "It looks like they drugged you. Just try to stay calm. You're hallucinating"

"It's going to infect me," I said, "We have to get it out."

"Ah, fuck." Howard got onto his radio again. "Three dead bodies in the house. I have an injured victim, bringing her to the hospital."

The pain was getting worse. It crawled underneath my stomach, moving up towards my lungs. I gritted my teeth, but I couldn't suppress the anguished whimpering coming from my mouth.

"Hey Celeste," Howard said, "Stay with me here. We're almost at the hospital."

"Help me," I said, "I don't want to die like that."

Those people trapped in the Briarheart. I could almost still see them. Like the vision was burned into my memory. Poor Greta was still there. She'd be there forever. Suffering.

Howard was swearing under his breath. The police car squealed as he cut his way through the city. The root was going for my heart. I could feel it like a pressure building in my chest. Like my head was going to pop off my shoulders.

"I'm... I'm..."

"Celeste?" Howard said, looking at me in the mirror. Everything was getting very dark. The pressure in my chest was making my ears ring. I exhaled as darkness took me.

Ragged, pained breathing comes from the front passenger seat. Smoke rises from the dashboard.

Silence from the driver. Somehow the silence is the most painful thing to hear.

"Dad?"

"Get out." Mom's voice. The dashboard is crushing her legs. Smoke is filling the car. Red light cascades as the engine catches fire. I freeze, paralyzed by fear and disbelief. "Run now!" she screams.

I was blinded by the light. I could just make out the silhouette of a man wearing a surgical mask.

The pain was all gone. A blade cut me open. I felt every inch of it, but it didn't hurt. I knew it should, it just didn't.

The man said, "I can't get a hold of it. It keeps getting deeper every time I get the forceps on it."

Auntie said, "It's like a porcupine quill."

"Mhmm, strange though. It's not barbed."

I woke up feeling like I had been run over by a car, and then left out in the sunlight to dry for while. Unfortunately, that was exactly what had happened.

My skin was so sunburnt it felt taut. My arm was a dull ache. I had a dozen bruises, and road rash.

I opened my eyes to the clinical white of a hospital room. The curtain was pulled tight against daylight. My broken arm was in a heavy cast up to my elbow. With my other arm I probed my chest wound with caution.