Steven Havill - Scavengers

“Highway department ain’t going to like that,” Jones said. He bent down, and Estelle put her arms over the injured man’s face and turned her own head away, grimacing with closed eyes in anticipation as Jones clamped the pliers around the wire. The strand parted with a musical twang, curling back to the first vertical stay. One by one, Jones worked his way up the post until all four wires snaked back in a snarled jumble.

With the wires gone, she could crouch directly beside the victim.

“You’re going to be all right, Eurelio,” she said. The flashlight beam caught the stubble on his face. The cactus spines looked like large, coarse chin whiskers.

She bent down until she was just inches from his ear. “Who did this to you, Eurelio?” But all she got was a whimper in response.

Eurelio Saenz breathed as if each tiny motion drove a pitchfork through his body. The continuous, feeble flexing of his limbs just made matters worse. He could not squirm away from the assault. After a moment, it seemed as if he was responding to Estelle’s voice even though he didn’t open his eyes. His hands stopped their aimless spasms and he lay still.

“Somebody hit him with a car, or what?” Noel Jones asked. He kept his distance, hands balled into tight fists.

Estelle didn’t reply. Keeping the light out of Eurelio’s face, she played the flashlight down the length of his body. His clothing was studded with cactus spines, but even the thousand barbs didn’t explain the mass of blood that soaked his shirt front around a long, ragged hole. The barbs pegged the shirt to his skin as if he’d been transformed into living Velcro. When Estelle touched the fabric of the shirt, she felt his body tense.

“No, no,” he whispered, and she could hear the panic in his voice. One eyelid flickered.

She turned to the first-aid kit and found surgical scissors. “Mr. Jones!” she called. “Come here.” She heard his tentative advance behind her. “Hold the flashlight so I can see.” He gingerly took the big aluminum light. “Closer, please.” He took a step forward and aimed the light as if it were a fire hose, holding it with both hands at arm’s length. Estelle could see that the jagged rip across the left breast of Eurelio’s shirt was more than just a gash from a barbed wire prong. Blood welled up, and she took her hands away. “It’s going to be all right, Eurelio,” she murmured, knowing that it obviously wasn’t going to be all right. She wanted to at least pad the gaping wound until the EMTs arrived, but there was no way to press a gauze pad over the field of heavy cactus spines without driving them farther into his flesh. There was no spurting of arterial blood, no deadly sucking sound of a hole punched through into the lung, and she hesitated to inflict any more damage. She sat back on her haunches.

“Christ,” Jones said. “He took himself a header somewheres.”

In the distance, they heard the wail of a siren. “Just hang in there,” she said. She spread the pad out like a handkerchief and let it drift over the wound with just its own weight.

“Keep the light out of his face,” she said, and Jones twitched the light back, grunting an apology. Crouched by the young man’s side, Estelle waited with her back to the spotlight. Jackie Taber’s unit arrived in the lead, with the ambulance less than a hundred yards behind.

Taber parked ahead of the truck, swinging wide to the left and then turning tightly so that she could catch the area in both headlights and spot. The ambulance stopped on the highway shoulder, and the first EMT out of the ambulance was a young girl who looked to be not much more than a teenager. Estelle stood up to meet them.

Reaching out a hand to take the young woman by the upper arm, Estelle bent close, her voice no more than a whisper. “Somebody’s beaten him with cactus,” she said. “There’s another injury there, too, but I can’t tell what it is yet.”

“Oh my,” the EMT said, and hesitated, turning to her partner.

“Let’s see what we’ve got,” he said. They knelt by the victim’s side for a few minutes. Estelle bent forward until she could read Sam Ortiz’s name tag.

“I don’t think this is a sucking wound,” Estelle said. She removed the light covering and the EMT, a heavyset man with a cleanly shaven bullet head, moved in close.

“Nah,” he said as if he saw people rolled in cactus spines on an hourly basis. “No sign of anything broken?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to touch him. But I don’t think so. Everything is straight and points where it’s supposed to point.”

“Let’s find an open spot and get an IV started.” He examined Eurelio’s left arm, fingers poised. “Well, shit,” he said. “Young fella, you sure got into it, didn’t you.” He bent back and fast-drew scissors out of his belt holster. With deft motions he cut through the shirt sleeve. “No, no, you can’t pull it off,” he said as his partner started to pull the severed sleeve away. A little high-pitched yelp emerged from Eurelio. “Just leave it.”

He glanced up at Jackie Taber. “You might get the gurney,” he said, and Taber nodded. “He ain’t going to want to be rolled over,” Ortiz added, and Eurelio moaned again, stabbed a hundred times just by the thought. “That’s all right, now,” the EMT soothed. He motioned to Jackie as she approached. “We’re enough hands here that we can just levitate him on board,” he said, holding his hands out flat. “Sheriff, you at his head. Jackie, you and me at his shoulders. Emma,” and he stopped, looking around. “There’s another one around, ain’t there?”

Noel Jones had faded back toward his truck, hand at his mouth.

“Sir, we’re going to need your assistance,” the EMT shouted at the trucker.

“His name’s Jones,” Estelle said.

“Mr. Jones, you and Emma are going to be at his hips. One hand on his hip, one hand right at his knees. She’ll show you how. Think you can do that?”

Jones took a deep breath and shrugged. His face was flat white, and despite the cool night air of late February, Estelle could see the sheen of sweat on his forehead in the glare of the lights.

When Sam Ortiz was satisfied with all five sets of hands spaced to his satisfaction, he turned to nod at Estelle. “We want that head to stay real still, sheriff. Don’t know what’s going on inside, you know, or what that neck of his looks like. But he’s studded enough that if I strap on a cervical collar, I’m just as apt to drive barbs right into all the wrong places.” He shot a quick look at the other EMT and Noel Jones. “Now everybody just kind of work your hands in until you’ve got support.”

He nodded, and almost immediately shook his head, making a sharp sucking noise against his teeth. “Easier said than done.” Eurelio jerked once and then was quiet. “All right, he’s passed out, so let’s get it over with,” Ortiz said. “On three.” And on three, they lifted Eurelio Saenz out of the sand and transferred him to the waiting gurney.

“No straps,” Ortiz said when his partner started to stretch one of them out. He shook his head. “Kind of like handling a porcupine,” he said, and actually managed a smile at Estelle. “How’d this happen, you know?”

“No idea,” Estelle said, although she could clearly picture exactly what had happened. “We’ll meet you at the hospital.” She turned to the trucker. His face was puckered up in a grimace, and he was digging at the palm of his hand in the glare of the ambulance headlights. “You all right, sir?”

“I got a spine in my hand,” he said. “Jesus.” He straightened up, sucking on his hand. “Got it, I think.”

“Do you want one of the EMTs to take a look at it?”