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There are men out there who want to kill us. Men with guns and God knows what else. Maybe even the same men who beat Doctor Susan so that she died.
If he stopped to think about it any longer he knew his legs would collapse beneath him, but there was a flame of anger burning now, too. Jeremiah put a hand against Joseph's chest and, returning the older man's wide-eyed stare of outrage with the most purposeful look he could muster, slid past him to the turning of the corridor. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled forward until he could see Del Ray's feet, one of them only wearing a sock, the shoe lying half a meter away. It made Jeremiah feel quietly sick.
Go on, man. Nothing else to be done. Go on.
Certain that any moment someone was going to step out of the shadows—which would somehow be worse, he could not help thinking, than someone simply shooting him—Jeremiah crept toward Del Ray . . . or at least toward his legs. . . .
Oh, my God, what if he has been shot in half by one of those machine guns?
He slid another few meters forward over industrial carpet so old and threadbare he could feel exposed patches of cold concrete pass beneath his belly, until at last he was close enough to reach out and touch Del Ray's unshod foot. It felt warm and alive, but that meant little—everything had happened only a few minutes earlier. Eyes closed, even more frightened now, he let his hand travel up the outside of Del Ray's leg until, to his great relief, he felt the bunched fabric of the man's shirt, then his arm, shoulder, and even the base of his chin. He was in one piece, anyway.
Jeremiah had just lifted up his hand to beckon Joseph forward when someone hissed in his ear. "Where they shoot him? In the belly? Between the eyes?"
When Jeremiah's heart had slid back down from his mouth into its normal spot, he turned and glared. "Just shut up! We have to get him out of here."
"Tell you one problem," Joseph whispered. "There is a big pipe on his arm, over here."
Jeremiah, feeling a little braver now that a minute had gone by out in the open and no one had put a bullet in his spine, rose until he could kneel beside Del Ray. He touched the young man's chest, which seemed to be moving, then found a living pulse at the base of his jaw. His relief suddenly turned sour when he brought back his hand and found it covered with something dark and sticky.
"Oh, Christ! He's bleeding from the head."
"Then he is dead," said Joseph, not unkindly. "Nobody gets a shot in the head, then they go back to work on Monday."
"Shut up and help me move him. We have to get him back where I can have a better look at him."
Joseph had been right—there was indeed a long piece of heavy pipe, about the thickness of a wine bottle, lying across Del Ray's arm. They pushed it off, not without effort, and although Jeremiah flinched when it clanked to the floor, he also began to feel a little relief. Perhaps Del Ray hadn't been shot. Perhaps this thing had fallen on him, clubbing him down in the dark.
Jeremiah looked up and his heart threatened to stop again. A jackstraw clutter of the heavy iron pipes hung down from the ceiling above their heads, all at strange angles, most only co
At the last moment Jeremiah remembered the gun. He hesitated, fearful of spending another second out in the open, of letting Del Ray's wounds go untended any longer. What good would a single pistol and a few bullets do them? Joseph made impatient noises. Jeremiah hesitated, then turned and crept back, moving as quietly as he could beneath the Damoclean assortment of broken pipes. Del Ray's jacket was lying almost hidden in shadow. Jeremiah tugged it toward him, patted the pockets until he felt the telltale chunk of smooth, heavy metal, then sprinted away from the treacherous spot.
While Joseph checked the vital signs on the V-tanks, Jeremiah stretched Del Ray full length on a blanket laid out on a conference table in one of the side rooms. He could feel a distinct swelling on the left side of the young man's head, a bump underneath a long but seemingly shallow laceration. His fingers came away slick with blood. Jeremiah would have liked to believe that was the only injury, but much of Del Ray's shirt around the collar and behind his shoulders was dark and damp as well. He hoped it was only that, the young man had been lying in the blood of his own head wound, but he could not be sure.
Might have been shot first, then grabbed at a loose pipe on his way down.
Satisfied that Del Ray was at least breathing, Jeremiah began to cut the shirt away with his pocketknife. Long Joseph came in from the main room and watched, his expression hard to read, but he stepped forward when Jeremiah asked, helping to turn Del Ray's wiry body over so that Jeremiah could investigate his back.
Jeremiah splashed water from a squeeze bottle on a ragged strip of shirt and began wiping away the blood, grateful that they still had the overhead fluorescents—the idea of doing this by flashlight and perhaps missing a vital wound chilled him. He was relieved to find no evidence of another injury. He took a small bottle from the first-aid kit and splashed it on a comparatively clean piece of Del Ray's shirt, then began cleaning the head wound.
"What is that stuff you putting on there?" Joseph asked.
"Alcohol. Not the kind you can drink."
"I know that," said Joseph, disgusted.
Probably from experience, Jeremiah thought, but kept it to himself. The edge of the cut was ragged, but gentle probing with his fingers revealed no deep hole, nothing that might be an entrance wound. Feeling better than he had in the last hour, he made a pad of wet shirt and used one of the severed sleeves to tie it in place, then with Joseph's help turned Del Ray back over.
The younger man's groan was so pitiful that for a moment Jeremiah froze in horror, positive he had done something terribly wrong. Then Del Ray's eyes fluttered open. The pupils wandered for a moment, unfixed, confused by the bright bank of fluorescents.
"Is . . . is that you?" Del Ray said at last. He could have meant anyone, but Jeremiah was not going to split hairs.
"Yes, it's us. We brought you back safe. You seem to have been hit on the head. What happened?"
He groaned again, but this time it was more a sound of frustration than pain. "I'm . . . I'm not sure. I was just coming back from the elevator when something up on the ceiling went boom!" He squinted and tried to turn away from the lights, but the pad kept his head from rolling. Jeremiah leaned forward to shade his eyes. "I think . . . I think maybe they're using some kind of explosives up there. Trying to blast through to our part of the base." He winced and slowly brought a hand up to his head, his eyes widening slightly as he felt the bandages. "What . . . how bad is it?"
"Not bad," Jeremiah said. "A pipe fell down, I think. If they set something off upstairs, that would make sense. I heard loud noises, three of them. I think—bang, hang, bang!"
"What, so they are trying to bomb us out now?" Joseph said. "Foolish. They not going to get me out so easy. They blow a hole, I come out of it and knock in some heads."
Jeremiah rolled his eyes. "He's right about one thing, though," he told Del Ray. "I don't think they'll get through that concrete or that heavy door on the elevator—not right away, anyway."
Del Ray murmured something, then tried to sit up. Jeremiah leaned forward to restrain him but the younger man would not be stopped. His skin had paled and he was shaking, but he seemed otherwise almost normal.