Infernal

The woman was resting in the bedroom. Richard sat in the living room leafing through a decade old copy of McGraw Hill’s Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment he’d plucked from the bookshelf in the hallway. A fire warmed his toes while a comforter took care of the rest of his body. The storm raged and railed against the windows like a living thing trying to get inside.

He’d have preferred a more recent edition of the CMDT, or, even better, access to WebMD, but the internet was down. The repeater towers used by his provider had either fallen in the face of the storm, or the wind, sleet, and lightning were disrupting the signal.

Getting the woman into the house had been a chore unto itself. The sleet had come again before they were halfway to the house; hard, tiny spicules that lashed his face as if trying to drive him back into the shelter of the copse. He’d crushed his nose and mouth against the hood of the woman’s parka—her hair smelled of lavender—squinting against the sleet, relying more on the tip of Charlie’s upraised tail ahead to guide him than his own sense of direction. He’d then had to lay her on the ice-covered woodpile beside the back door before he could wrestle it open against the wind driven snow. Maneuvering her through a kitchen in the midst of renovation had been no joy either but at least it had been warmer.

Once in the bedroom he’d laid her on the bed and tried the telephone. It was—not surprisingly—out. His cell phone was dead as well, displaying its moronic ‘no signal’ message as soon as he’d touched the screen. His last hope, an HP Pavilion laptop that was his link to the outside world, was also down. The wireless assistant tried to do its duty, the little ball on the screen bouncing back and forth between the icons for his computer and the Earth for several minutes before the machine informed him no network connections were available.

With no real medical assistance forthcoming, Richard steeled himself against the knowledge that he was the woman’s only chance for survival. Until he could raise the EMT’s, or get her to a hospital—forty miles away, may as well be on the moon in this weather, he thought—he and Charlie were the only hope she had.

Asking God for a little help, and begging the woman’s pardon for what he knew he had to do, Richard returned to her the woman’s side and gently unzipped her parka.

The sweater she wore beneath was lilac; a fisherman’s knit. The right side turned to crimson just below the ribcage. A ragged hole had been torn into it. Blood oozed from a rent in the flesh beneath.

“Sweet Jesus,” Richard said. Charlie, standing sentinel duty close by, wuffed in agreement. Richard had seen this kind of wound before. The woman had been shot.

Richard retrieved the first-aid kit and several towels from the bathroom and set to work. He cut the sweater open from the v at the neck to the waist, and then laid it open to reveal her stomach. The wound was a little over an inch in diameter, a puckered hole, just above the waistline of her jeans. Blood filled the hollow of her stomach and her navel. Richard gently rolled the woman towards him and found its twin somewhat higher on her back. It too was trickling blood, painting the mattress pad red like an artist creating a fresh blooming rose. He lay her back down guessing she’d been hit by a single round, what was called a through and through. From the amount of blood he decided it had to have happened within the last hour. She’d have bled out if it had been much longer.

“Sorry about this,” Richard said, not knowing if the woman could hear him or not. He slit the ruined sweater and parka down the sleeves, removed them and the remaining mitten, then cut first down one leg of her jeans, then the other, sliding the jeans from beneath her. Her panties were sodden with blood so he cut them free as well, averting his eyes and placing a towel over her modesty. He removed her bra in the same fashion, adding it to the pile of bloody clothing on the floor.

Charlie whined from his position at the foot of the bed as Richard covered the woman’s breasts.

“I know, boy,” he told the dog, embarrassed despite his intentions. “I don’t like it either. But there’s nothing else we can do.”

Using saline solution from the first-aid kit, Richard swabbed the woman’s belly free of blood. No fresh blood came from the wound. Richard didn’t know if that meant she had stopped bleeding or if the new position caused it to flow from her back. He swabbed the wound with Chlorhexadine solution—despite centuries of misinformation, he knew that hydrogen peroxide is more useful for removing blood from clothing than for treating injuries—and taped Telfa pads into place over it. He rolled the woman over and repeated the process. There was still some bleeding there, a slow trickle, and he’d had to swab the area clean three times before applying the Chlorhexadine and bandages. He prayed that the bleeding would stop. And that there were no internal injuries sufficient enough to kill her.

He wished for a sphygmomanometer, or one of those neat little electronic blood pressure cuffs, as he checked her pulse—he had some experience with the device and knew how to use them and what the numbers meant. Her pulse was stronger than it had been in the copse but still not as strong as he’d have liked. He then took her temperature. It was one hundred and four. A high number, but he had no idea if that was her body’s natural reaction to the wound itself, or if it signaled impending infection. He decided to check it every hour or so in any event. If her temperature rose any higher he’d have to take some other kind of action.

He dug through his dresser and found an old t-shirt and sleep pants he no longer wore. They were too big for the woman, but sufficient under the circumstances. He carefully dressed her, then added a pair of thick woolen socks that bunched around her ankles. He then made the bed with fresh sheets, removing the soiled mattress pad and rolling the woman gently from side to side as he worked around her. Charlie wuffed his approval as Richard added not one but two comforters.

His task complete for the time being, Richard turned his attention to the clothing the woman had been wearing. A quick search of her pants and parka turned up nothing. No wallet, no identification of any kind. The pockets held nothing but lint and, in the front pocket of the blue jeans, a crumpled cherry Starburst wrapper.

Richard sat on the edge of the bed, running his hand across his crew cut.

“I don’t know what else I can do, boy,” he told the dog.

Charlie came forward and nudged Richard’s hand with his nose. Richard stroked his great furry head, drawing comfort from the act. Animals that choose to spend their lives with humans can at times be their greatest source of strength and succor.

“There’s just so much I don’t know.”

Charlie whined in commiseration and laid his head on Richard’s knee.

“Where did she come from?” he asked. “Who did this to her? Do they know where she is now? Will they be coming for her?”

The dog remained silent save the contented whisking of the floor with his tail.

“Is she going to die?”

Charlie looked up into his eyes and fixed him with solemn regard. The dog seemed to be telling him that that might very well be up to him.

“Coffee,” Richard said, apropos of nothing. “And research,” he added.

He rose from the bed to make the one and approach the other when the woman’s arm lashed out. She grasped his.

“The focal point!” she screamed. “Has it opened?”

Charlie startled, let out a low woof, and rounded the bed to the Richard’s side.

“What?” Richard asked. Her grip was stronger than expected, her hand hot and dry upon his wrist. He shook free from her and placed his hand on her forehead. She was burning up with fever.

“The key,” she told him, lifting her head and locking gazes with him. Her eyes were brown, a lighter shade than most, but clear and bright; not hazy and unfocused with delirium. “We must find the key! We have to stop him!”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he began, but she had already succumbed to exhaustion. Her head rolled back onto the pillow, her jaw slackened. She was asleep, or unconscious, in seconds.

“Well that explains everything,” Richard remarked.

He took the woman’s temperature again, surprised to find that it had dropped a degree despite the heat radiating off her. Charlie looked on; approving of the gentle way his human cared for the new human in his life. Some humans were good, while others were bad. His human was good, though that hadn’t always been the case, and the new human, the female human, was also good. He also knew in the way that dogs know things that she was in great danger. They were all in great danger.

Satisfied that he had done all that could be done and the woman was in no immediate jeopardy, Richard again set off to make his morning coffee. He paused at the door, looking back at Charlie holding firm by the bed.

“You coming?”

Charlie lay down on the floor. A sentry for the wounded.

“Okay,” Richard said. “She probably needs you more than I do right now, anyway.”

The kitchen was by far the coldest room in the house. Three brand new windows looked out on the storm, slick white polyvinyl frames gleaming in the light from the overhead fixture, the brightest surface in a room that had been stripped and gutted of all but a central cooking island. No insulation stood against the creeping fingers of the wind, only exterior wallboard and aluminum siding shielded the two-by-four framing and bare floors from the elements. It was like standing inside the ribcage of some great, long dead beast.

The new flooring, insulation, and wallboard—and a light oak paneling that he thought would look nice in a kitchen—all awaited him in the utility room. Those tasks, he thought as he rummaged in the crowded cabinet beneath the island searching out the coffee and filters, his breath streaming out before him like a banner, would now have to wait. The door between the kitchen and living room was sufficient to keep the worst of the cold from the rest of the house, but he doubted it would provide an adequate barrier against the sound of a saw or hammer. His charge, whoever she was, would doubtless benefit more from peace and quiet than the noise of construction.

His coffee perking cheerily away Richard returned to the living room. He rebuilt last night’s fire, retrieved a steaming mug of the now finished brew—hazlenut, his favorite—and settled in with some texts from the bookshelf. He was asleep in minutes.

A dream of iron bars and angry, caged men dissolved as something cold nudged Richard’s hand. He’d slumped lower in his chair as he slept and now sat up, dislodging the CMDT and a text on practical home remedies from his lap. They fell to the floor with successive thumps. Charlie stood at his side. He issued a thin, anxious whine as his human reasserted himself in the present.

“What is it, boy?”

The dog turned away and padded into the bedroom. Tossing aside the comforter, Richard followed.

He was just inside the door and had noted that the woman still appeared to be resting peacefully, her chest rising and falling slowly beneath the blankets with one fist tucked under her chin in a gesture that Richard found both child-like and charming, when he heard it. A low buzzing, almost subaudible. It seemed to be coming from the pile of ruined clothing at the foot of the bed.

“Damn,” Richard muttered, simultaneously recognizing the sound of a cell phone set to vibrate and berating himself for not checking the woman’s clothes more thoroughly. He’d searched the side pockets of the parka, but had missed a small zippered one on the sleeve. He unzipped it now and found a slim black cell phone.

It was about the size of a credit card though thicker, unmarked, and of a make and model he was unfamiliar with. It slid open under his thumbs, stilling the vibrator and revealing a qwerty style keypad. Once rotated, the top revealed a screen that read: “ENTER CODE:”

Richard thumbed in four nines; the default code for his, and as far as he knew, every cell phone in existence. The screen reset to “ENTER CODE:”

He keyed in four zero’s with the same result.

He tried several four letter combinations and random entries, but nothing coaxed a response from the device. The screen reset each time, mocking white letters on a black background. Richard, sensing the phone held the secret of the woman’s identity and the answers to at least some of his questions, suppressed an urge to throw it into the fireplace. Instead, he closed it and slipped it into his pocket.

He looked at Charlie.

Charlie looked back. If he could have shrugged, Richard thought he would have.

“Crap,” Richard said, his hopes of enlightenment dashed.

He turned to the woman, still sleeping and oblivious to the world around her.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She offered no response. Richard gathered the woman’s clothing from the floor. After searching them to make sure he hadn’t missed anything else, he washed the blood from her underclothes. The jeans, parka, and sweater were beyond repair and he threw them in the trash.

The wind outside caressed the house like a lover as he left the room.

Charlie, still standing sentry, returned to his place at the side of the bed and lay on the floor.