Greg Rucka - Critical Space

I kept going forward, twisting the pant legs around the shotgun as he moved to jack the next round into place, pulling left with a spin, and he fired again, this time at where I had been seated on the bed. I yanked, and the pump locked back, preventing him from bringing another round up, and all the while I was shouting that there was a gun in the bathroom, screaming for Bridgett to get the Korth from the drawer and to shoot this son of a bitch and I kept turning, driving from my hips and thighs with the pants now bound tight around the barrel, tearing the weapon free of his grip. I finished spinning, facing him again, the gun in both hands by the barrel; Oxford was trying to step back and pull Bridgett's SIG from behind his back, and I swung the butt of the shotgun into his jaw, heard the bone crack. He staggered and dropped, and I flipped the gun in my hand, and that was the mistake, because it gave him time. He came up as I turned the gun and worked the action, diving forward past the edge of the bed, past the open bathroom door, making for the broken window. I got my finger on the trigger and fired at his head, but the full blast missed him, only a portion of the buckshot raking his face. He screamed but kept going, and before I could fire again he was on the veranda, over the railing, dropping out of sight.

Bridgett came out of the bathroom with the Korth in her hands, and we raced each other to the ledge, reached it in time to see Oxford scrambling to his feet, running for the cover of the woods. The shotgun was useless at this range and in that cover, but Bridgett had faith in the Korth, and she fired three shots at him, but I couldn't tell if any of them had hit.

"Motherfucker I'm gonna kill that motherfucker," she ranted, turning and making for the door.

I spun to follow and stopped like I'd run into a wall.

Blood soaked the bed beneath Alena's lower body in a long inverted teardrop that began beneath her left leg and ended in an expanding point at the end of the sheet, drops seeping from the sodden fabric to form a puddle on the tile floor. I let go of the shotgun and went to her side even as Bridgett was going out the door. My heart was pounding from the exertion and the Viagra and the relief and the new fear, and I called for Bridgett to wait but she didn't, just kept going, her boots echoing as she slammed down the stairs three and four at a time.

I'd laid her head on a pillow, and now I pulled it from beneath her, folding it over and jamming it beneath her knee, trying to elevate it. Oxford had caught her with the second blast, indirectly, along the calf and shin. Her lower leg looked like raw and poorly ground meat, chewed and torn from the buckshot. Alena hadn't moved at all, her expression hadn't changed, and I hoped that meant the etorphine that Oxford had given her stole only her pain and consciousness, nothing more. I swore, tried to apply pressure to the leg, and got blood all over my hands and myself. I readjusted my grip, tried the pressure higher, and the blood flow slowed a bit but didn't stop.

"He's gone now," I told her. "You can wake up."

There was no sign that she'd heard me. I kept the pressure on, hoping the blood would slow, but it didn't. The contact lenses in my eyes were itching, making my vision blur, and I blinked tears out of them. I felt light-headed as I gave up on the direct pressure, went tumbling over the bed to the closet. I yanked the doors open, going through the clothes, pulling them from their hangers, and, not finding what I wanted, went to the bureau, began dumping out the drawers.

There were a couple of belts in the third drawer, and I grabbed the thickest and moved back to Alena, wrapping it around her leg, above the knee. I looped the belt and ran it through the buckle, pulling it tight, and there was no easy way to secure it, so I ended up making a knot. The bleeding slowed further, an ooze from the brutalized muscle rather than a flow.

I couldn't take her to the hospital in Bequia. It would be too risky, it would involve the police. But she needed medical attention, and fast, and there was only one solution I could think of. I wrapped her in the sheet and lifted her off the bed. She was breathing, shallow breaths that hadn't turned rapid yet. It wouldn't be long before she went into shock.

Bridgett came back up the stairs as I was lifting her, much slower than she had descended them. "He got away." She was out of breath. "She dead?"

"I can't get the bleeding to stop. I put a tourniquet on her leg but it's not enough."

"She needs a hospital."

"If I take her to a hospital the police will get involved."

"And that's bad? Chris is dead downstairs…"

"That's not her fault!"

Bridgett stared at me. She was still in the doorway, blocking the path, the Korth in her hand. I started forward, but she didn't budge.

"Where are you going to take her?"

"Are you going to help me?"

"Where are you taking her?"

"Dammit, Bridgett, either help me or get out of the way!"

She looked at the naked woman in my arms, at the blood staining the sheet. She looked at me in my underwear, the look on my face, the ruins of the room.

"Chris had the keys to the Jeep," she said.

I'd pulled on the pants I had in my go-bag while Bridgett was driving us into Port Elizabeth, and when we hit the pier I jumped out of the vehicle and sprinted barefoot along the water until I reached The Lutra, in the process driving a splinter into the sole of my left foot. The gangplank was down and the woman was on the foredeck, in shorts and a tank top, coiling a rope. When she heard me coming she called out something in French, and her partner or lover or husband or whoever he was appeared at the stairs from below. He used the frame to block the right side of his body, and I knew he had a gun in his hand.

"Giselle's been hurt," I said, and when neither of them moved, I repeated it in my atrocious French. "Giselle ete blesse."

The man answered me in English, "Bring her aboard."

"I need help."

He spoke to the woman, coming the rest of the way up the steps and onto the deck. He was wearing shorts and sandals, with an unbuttoned tropical-style shirt. He tucked a Smith Wesson revolver into his waistband, then followed me back down the gangplank to the Jeep. Bridgett kept an eye out while we lifted Alena out of the vehicle, still wrapped in the sheet, and we carried her quickly on board. It was mid-afternoon, and we got a couple of stares, and I hoped that we'd be at sea before someone had the presence of mind to call the police.

Bridgett followed us, carrying the two go-bags, and the man led us from the deck down into the ship, leading us to a cabin where the woman had already pulled down one of the folding bunks. She had a basin of water ready, and an open first-aid kit. As soon as we had laid Alena on the bed, he spoke to the woman in rapid French, then went back out. Bridgett dropped the bags, and I gave her a quick nod, and she followed him up.

"I'm Carrie," the woman told me as she pulled the sheet from around Alena's body, exposing the mutilated leg. She sounded American, maybe West Coast.

"Paul," I said.

She nodded, tearing open a couple packets of gauze. If she cared that the name I'd given her was, in fact, a name she had helped to give me, she showed no sign of it. "When was the last time you released the tourniquet, Paul?"

"Fifteen minutes ago, maybe more."

"Unfasten it."

When I crouched by the bed, my head started spinning again, and I had to catch myself on the side of the bunk. I was still erect, and it hurt, and I tried to not care who knew or saw as I unfastened the tourniquet, allowing some blood to flow back into Alena's leg. The wound began bleeding again. It meant that the leg wasn't a total loss, but it also meant that unless something was done and soon, Alena would bleed out. She was still unconscious but beginning the journey to the surface, and when Carrie prodded the injury, pressing gauze against the torn skin, Alena rolled her head and made an almost inaudible moan.