Eric Flint - Time spike

The three of them reloaded and fired again. Now the men inside the building began screaming. "Fuckin' pigs! Don't shoot, you cocksucking monkeys! We're comin' out! Fuck! Don't shoot!" Four black men stumbled through the door, their hands clasped behind their heads. Once through the door they spread out, coughing and hacking and cussing. "Fuckin' hacks, you had no right. No right. We were comin' out." The prisoner doing the talking slid to his knees, his hands clasped behind his head, coughing louder and longer than the others. Frank moved toward him. Andy watched, fear rising inside him. The man dressed in prison gray wasacting. His coughing was too extreme, his breaths too regular for the distress his actions implied. The chemical released by the C.N. canisters, designed to irritate skin, eyes, mucous membranes and lung tissue, did not affect all people the same. Andy took a deep breath to shout a warning. "No!" It was too late. The prisoner jerked up, burying a shank made from an old toothbrush into the soft tissue beneath Frank's vest. "Fuckin' wood sucker!" he hissed, glaring at the guard-whose skin was several shades darker than his own. Race didn't really matter much compared to the gap between guards and prisoners.

"Fuckin wood lover!" Frank gasped, blood running from the wound. The prisoner twisted the toothbrush that had been sharpened to a fine point. He was looking for the artery leading to the leg. Andy didn't think. He aimed his shotgun, fired, and the prisoner collapsed, knocking Frank over, falling on top of him. The other three prisoners ran. Someone yelled, "Halt!" The men continued running. Rod fired from the rooftop. Crack! Crack! Crack! Two of the three prisoners were dead. The third was on the ground and would be gone within minutes.

His gurgling, rasping breaths could be heard in the now silent exercise yard. Rod's bullet had ripped through both lungs. With each breath, he sprayed a pink froth across the road. "Shit, oh shit, ohshit!" Heather was close to hysterical. She was a good guard, had worked for the state for over ten years and seen a little of almost everything, but this was too much. First the quake, and now this. She had never watched that many die that way. And Frank was a kid, just twenty-three years old, who looked a lot like her own son. He was bleeding on her lap now. She had sat down and was holding him, trying to help, to comfort him. "Shit, oh shit, ohshit!" she repeated, finally getting hold of herself. Andy was on the radio. He needed medical and he needed them now. The nurses were coming, but the three to four minutes it would take for them to arrive would be too long if Frank's artery had been nicked. Or his bladder. He remembered Brown.

Still in the infirmary, unable to be moved because there was nowhere to move her. He checked the man lying on Heather's lap. Heather was applying pressure, trying to slow the bleeding. He then took off at a jog to check the two dead prisoners. He recognized their faces, but couldn't recall either of their names or why they were incarcerated.

He then knelt next to the third one, the one who was still alive. The man was fighting for each breath. There was nothing Andy could do for him. The man's eyes went wide and wet. His breaths came quicker. He'd be dead within a minute, with that wound. Andy heard the nurses coming with their carts. It was still shift change, which meant there were three of them inside the prison. Two afternoon nurses and the one and only night shift nurse. Caldwell, Ray and the new one, Jennifer Radford. He knew one of the three would stay behind to care for Brown.

So that left only two nurses available for cleanup in the yard. He turned around, planning to ask what he could do to help, but stopped and stared. Nothing came out of his mouth. Jennifer Radford was all business, taking care of her only patient with a chance at survival.

She didn't see him, but he saw her. And was momentary frozen. He recognized the sensation, although he'd only had it a few times in his life. Rare as it might be, it was quite unmistakable. And, as before, he was struck by how little the sensation had to do with anything popular culture or certainly the girlie magazines ever talked about.

It was never a woman's figure, or really even her face. Just…

Something. In this case, perhaps, the calm seriousness in a pair of intent dark eyes. Who the hell knew? Justsomething that told him he really, really, really wanted to get to know this woman better. Really better. Of all the times!

Chapter 7 The summons for medical caught the nurses off guard.

They were locked inside the nurse's station, with their guard outside the door, and were completely absorbed in their own problems. The three of them were in the middle of report, trying to take care of Brown, the injured guard, and do the paperwork for Greg Lowry. Two of the nurses were in a hurry, wanting to go home and get some sleep.

"Looks like baptism by fire for you, Jenny," Lylah Caldwell said. The sixty-one year old R.N. smiled half-apologetically. "You're going to have to go. My legs are killing me. They're too old and I've been on them for eighteen hours." Jennifer Radford nodded and shot Barbara Ray a worried look. Ray was an LPN who looked to be in her early forties.

"Don't panic, I'm coming along." Ray pulled a large red leather bag from the bottom shelf of a metal cabinet. "Grab the portable O2 tank."

She nodded toward the back room, then snatched up a radio and grabbed another bag from the cabinet, loading it onto a gurney. "Brown is stable, she should be able to get by with just one of us for awhile."

The woman on the examining table moaned and reached for the I.V. tubing attached to her left arm. The saline solution was infusing at a keep open rate. Nothing more than a drop every three seconds, a precaution. If she started to hemorrhage or go into shock, her veins would close up fast, and then an I.V. could become impossible to insert. None of the three nurses were willing to risk that situation.

The I.V. had to stay. "Oh, God. Please. It hurts. Please."The guard coughed, moaned and then tried to reach the tubing once more. The bandage on her abdomen was fresh, but already streaked with blood.

Lylah Caldwell pulled a couple of sheep skin straps from a drawer and began strapping Elaine Brown's arms down. "There's no sense hanging around. Everyone's short staffed; you won't get an escort. Get going.

A guard is down." Jenny moved toward the back room where the O2 tanks were stored. Things were moving too fast for her to understand what was happening inside the prison grounds, but ten years of working under pressure-everything from crash sites to emergency rooms-kept her grounded. She scooped up a small, portable tank and then grabbed a mask and a nasal cannula. There was no way of knowing which would be needed, so it was best to take one of each. When she entered the examination area, Lylah handed her a Sat. Unit. The small device was designed to slip over a patient's finger and read the amount of oxygen in the person's circulatory system. "Now get moving. And don't worry.

The prisoners are on lock down and the guards have everything under control. The two of you will be safe." Jenny placed the tank on the gurney next to the bags Barbara had stacked in its center. She then took a clipboard filled with forms and the keys Lylah was holding out to her. The call for medical had caused her stomach to tie into a knot. The three of them had just finished counting everything in the room. Keys, pills, injectables, bandages, scissors, ink pens.

Everything and anything that could be considered contraband inside the walls. Twenty minutes straight. One thing right after another. She had been briefed on the deceased heart attack victim, Greg Lowry, being held down the hall in a small room with bars. Brown's status had been assessed, and they were just beginning to go through the calls for the 3-11 shift when the radio announced a guard was down. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to relax. Gunshot and knife wounds were not new to her, just something she hated seeing. So much for moving out of the city and slowing things down. She could hear Lylah, the R.N., talking on the two-way. She was telling someone they were leaving the building. Jenny took another deep breath. This was real. It was what the month-long self-defense classes taught to state employees had been geared toward. She was on her own. And if something went wrong she had just one job. She had to survive long enough for the guards to rescue her. The average length of time for their arrival-after they knew you were in trouble-was three minutes. That was one hundred and eighty impossibly long seconds. She gave the gurney a shove. The familiar feel of the cart's wheels wanting to turn right while she wanted to go straight helped calm her nerves. "We better hurry," Barbara whispered.