Ex-Communication, Peter Clines [ebook reader online free txt] 📗

splashed onto the wooden planks that made up the back of the truck. She pulled a second bottle from her pack, hydrogen peroxide, and the wound sizzled. Jarvis hissed and twisted his face.

Bee tore his jeans open more, felt her way up his leg, and pushed her fingers into his inner thigh. The salt-and-pepper man grunted and set his jaw. “Sorry,” she said. “Got to slow the blood flow.”

“Cheer up,” said Hector. “Least they’re not cutting limbs off anymore.”

“Yeah,” said Bee. “Now first aid just means I grope you for the ride home.”

Jarvis forced a grim smile. “It too late to request the amputation?”

“Watch it,” she shot back. She slapped a wad of gauze over the bite with her free hand and pressed down hard. The gauze turned red under her fingers.

The truck rolled past a grocery-store parking lot. A few exes between the dusty cars turned their heads to follow the vehicle. They took staggering steps to chase it but it had already driven on before they covered a few feet.

St. George’s eyes went from the older man’s grimace to the puddle of blood. Drops rained into it. It was the size of a dinner platter and still growing.

Cerberus loomed over the operation like a statue, held steady in the swaying truck by her gyros. “It’s going to take us at least an hour to get back,” she told St. George.

“I know.”

“You’re going to have to fly him.”

“I know.” He set a hand on Lady Bee’s shoulder. “Tie it off,” he said.

She nodded and let go of the gauze. In a moment she’d pulled a rubber tube from her kit and wrapped it around the wounded man’s thigh. She pulled it tight and knotted it. The bloody gauze sloughed off and splatted into the puddle.

St. George bent down and gathered the wounded man into his arms like a child. Bee pressed two fresh pads against the bite and wrapped them with a bandage. It took a little longer for them to turn red. They all knew that could be good or bad.

“Jesus, this is embarrassing,” said Jarvis. He sounded drunk.

“Could be worse,” said St. George. “You ever ride a motorcycle?”

“Not since I was a dumb kid.”

“Just keep your eyes closed. It’s going to be cold up there but it’ll only take us a few minutes. We’ll be moving fast, so the wind’ll be the worst part.” He glanced up at Cerberus and back to the scavengers. “You guys going to be okay?”

“We’ll be fine,” said Ilya.

St. George shot up into the sky. He carried Jarvis up above the buildings, until they were higher than the hills and could see Hollywood proper on the other side. He took a moment to orient himself off the larger landmarks, found the Cinerama Dome, and followed the street another block to the corner of the Big Wall.

The same corner he’d beat Legion back from a few nights earlier.

“Damn,” said Jarvis. He shivered in the chill air. “Forgot to tell you I’m scared of heights.”

“Yeah,” said St. George, “you should’ve brought that up. Hang on.”

He focused between his shoulders and the Valley rushed below them like a speeding river. Jarvis tensed in his arms, and the older man’s white-streaked beard flattened against his face. His skin looked pale, but St. George wasn’t sure if it was from the flight or the wound.

He raced past the NBC Universal building, over the Bowl to Hollywood and Highland, and then dove toward the Wall. He caught a quick glimpse of the sentries and then he sank through the air to the Hollywood Community Hospital.

Churches and apartments weren’t the only thing the people of the Mount had gained when the Big Wall went up. They had a real hospital now, a six-story white building with full facilities and offices. It was another symbolic structure, even if it was undersupplied and understaffed.

The guards looked up when they heard his jacket rustle above them and focused on Jarvis in his arms. After the outer walls, the hospital was the most guarded place in the Mount. Armed men and women stood ready for when a patient died. It was their job to put a bullet between the eyes of each dead body before the ex-virus reanimated it.

“Wounded man,” called St. George. “Make a path.” His boots touched the pavement and the guards stepped aside, pulling the doors open as they did. He marched past them.

The lobby was dominated by the large warning sign they’d brought from the old Zukor building, listing potential symptoms of infection. Another symbol. St. George shouted for a doctor while he headed for the emergency rooms.

Jarvis looked up at him. “Boss,” he said, “you got to promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You know what.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. You’re going to be fine.”

“I don’t come back. Don’t let it happen.”

“Nobody comes back. You know that.”

“I don’t want my body stumbling around drunk, embarrassing me. Hurting anyone. Y’all make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“It won’t happen if you don’t get drunk next weekend.”

“I ain’t joking.”

“Neither am I,” said St. George. “Nobody comes back.”

SERGEANT EDDIE FRANKLIN, sometimes called Doc Ed despite all his protests, took in the ragged jeans with a glance and peeled the gauze pads away from Jarvis’s leg. The skin around the bite was pale and clammy. “How long ago?”

“Maybe ten minutes,” said St. George.

“Did he hook onto you, sir,” the doctor asked Jarvis, “or’d you get him off quick?” Like most of the former soldiers, Franklin was still formally polite with most people. He’d been a combat medic with the 456th Unbreakables, which made him close enough to a doctor for most people at the Mount.

“Not even two seconds,” said St. George. “He kicked it right off.”

“And then shot it,” added Jarvis.

Franklin had two fingers against the salt-and-pepper man’s throat and a palm on his forehead. “You’re cold.”

“I was just a thousand feet up in the air doing a hundred miles an hour. Damn right I’m cold.”

Franklin nodded and pushed the gurney down