David Nickle - Eutopia

Or perhaps , Andrew thought as he first took sight of what was left of the Tavish’s homestead, the Juke hasn’t finished with me yet .

At the opening of the path was a body of a man, his intestines torn from his middle and stretched through the blood-quickened dirt, mingled with pine needles. More corpses were stacked in the middle of the common, in the same place that just a day ago, Andrew had worked his meagre skills to try to save Loo. The table was gone—perhaps locked in the still-smouldering ruins of the house where Loo had been kept in her last weeks.

Andrew knelt down by the first corpse and took a good look at the cut. Nothing had clawed its way out of this one and no creature had torn it either. The cut was crosswise across the gut, and it was neat enough to be from a blade, not neat enough to suggest a sharp one.

Andrew touched the man’s face. He stared with wide milky eyes up into the pines. Blood flecked his beard, and flies buzzed in Andrew’s ear. He let go of the man’s face, and touched his fingertip to the cooling tube of intestine, and drew a deep breath of the smell of this place—and uncertainly at first, he stood up, shaking with the realization: this was no chemical fakery. This was not something that Norma’s tea would drive off.

Andrew left the single corpse and made his way through a thickening cloud of flies to the others. Eyes stinging, he made a count: there were seven here, among them what was left of Hank, his skull split from the side. One eye hung out, its orb crusted with dirt where it touched the ground.

He wanted to cry out, to call for Norma—but he didn’t. The ones who’d done this weren’t in sight, but they mightn’t be far. So Andrew picked up his doctor’s bag, and propelled by the slimmest hope he struggled his way up the hill as quick as he might, to Norma Tavish’s cabin.

He didn’t have to get that far to find her. She was on her back, a great slash across her throat, beside a rain barrel next to the barn. Her hands were still clenched in fists, as though she were still alive, waiting for another fight to come.

Andrew reached down with trembling hands and opened those fists, uncurling each finger. He smoothed her hair back. He tried to lift her but that was beyond him. So he reached down and shut her eyes—the last grace he could give her. He left her there under the trees, and made for her house.

The door hung open when he came upon it. He approached it slowly, under the sensible assumption that whoever had done this could well be still inside. But the cabin was uninhabited. It had been ransacked; blankets tossed onto the floor, furniture overturned.

Just as Andrew had heard the call drawing him away from this place, the killers had heard a call drawing them here.

And they’d found what they’d come for.

The dead infant Juke in its pickle jar. All that was left of it were shards of glass and the now-familiar stink of it. Otherwise, it was as if it had never been there.

Andrew didn’t have to search long for the other thing he sought: the tea that kept the Juke at bay.

Norma kept a bin near the fire, and the killers had missed it. It made sense, as Andrew thought about it. They might not have any idea about what the mixture signified. And once they had the Juke—well, they had what they sought.

But the scent of the herbs was unmistakable—sweet and earthy and fine. He found a cloth, wrapped the concoction into a ball the size of a small roast, and put it into the medical bag. Then he went back outside.

He walked through the village not looking down or to the side, back to the path that had brought him here. He would make for the clearing where he’d fought off the Juke, and then the logging road beyond it back to Eliada.

It took all his will not to look down as he passed the barn—not to wonder whether it really was Norma’s spirit, freed from flesh by a slash across her throat, who had come to him at the conclusion of his battle with the Juke. A man might conclude such a thing; that the visitation coming after a true but yet-unknown demise, was evidence that Andrew Waggoner really had seen Heaven, really had been offered his salvation.

Andrew spat as he entered the woods. He would not entertain such thoughts. He would be no good to anyone—not himself, and certainly not Jason Thistledown, the boy to whom he owed his life and who, Andrew was certain, was in very grave peril indeed.

“It’s not infected,” said Annie Rowe. “Even with a half-working hand, Dr. Waggoner did well by you.”

She pulled the bandage back further, and Jason flinched, though the pain turned out less than he feared. “In a day or two we can take out the stitches,” she said.

Jason peered down at the wound. It was the morning of the third day since he’d sliced his hand in the quarantine, and it was indeed looking better; the flesh was pink and tender where the black stitches held it together. It itched more than it hurt.

“Hold still,” said the nurse, as she dipped a ball of cotton into a jar of alcohol and dabbed it on the wound. Now that stung. Jason looked away, up at the skylight of the operating theatre where Nurse Rowe had brought him to do the work. It was, she said, the cleanest place in Eliada, this operating room. It was also—next, maybe, to the storeroom behind the autopsy—the quietest.

Neither of them wanted to go down to the autopsy. So here they were.

“Thank you,” said Jason, and Nurse Rowe said: “Just doing my work here. Stop moving.”

“I’m not moving,” he protested. “I didn’t mean thank you for looking at my cut. I know that’s your job. I mean—”

“Hush. I know what you meant.” She eyed him over the spectacles she wore for fine work. She set his hand down on the table and reached around for a roll of fresh gauze. “He got away all right?”

“He did,” said Jason. It had been two days since Nurse Rowe had helped Jason gather the doctor’s bag and everything else. Jason had figured he could trust her, owing to their adventure the night of Dr. Waggoner’s escape, and she hadn’t betrayed that trust. But he hadn’t felt safe coming to see her after he saw Dr. Waggoner off. It might tip off Bergstrom, or those fellows who were responsible for breaking into the doctor’s rooms. Sam Green had promised to protect Jason best he could—but he’d given no word as to Annie Rowe’s safety. So Jason decided he wouldn’t talk to her again without an excuse.

That excuse came this morning, when after breakfast in the apartments he shared with Germaine Frost, his aunt suggested he have his hand seen to.

“I would change those bandages myself,” she said, as she straightened a stack of fresh index cards on the roll-top desk she’d been given for her work. “But I’m quite occupied with the catalogue. There are more than a thousand souls here. You should avail yourselves of the facilities.”

“You want me to go see Dr. Bergstrom?” Jason had been avoiding Bergstrom, lest he find some new pretext to toss Jason back into the quarantine.

Aunt Germaine might have been worrying about the same thing. “No,” she said. “Aside from everything else, Dr. Bergstrom has more to do than inspect stitches and change bandages. Go, Nephew. Go find a nurse. And then find some fresh air and exercise.”

So Jason went—and made it a point not to find a nurse until he located Annie Rowe, seeing to a couple of new mothers in the maternity ward on the first floor. They made an appointment to meet in the operating theatre an hour later.

Now, Nurse Rowe listened hungrily as Jason told the story of Andrew’s escape. He told her everything, except how he found out that Andrew might be in trouble. “That’s a promise I made,” said Jason, “and I keep my word.”