Canyon: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (The Traveler Book 2) (22 page)

They stared at each other without saying anything. She could call out at any second. Help would come. It would rain lead. He’d be done.

She glanced at the gun. Her son couldn’t take his eyes from it. The girl kept tugging on her mother’s arm as if she had something important to say.

Battle knew enough about Islam and Sharia law to understand the delicacy of her situation. It wasn’t outright illegal, but it was certainly questionable for a woman to be alone, outside, at night without her husband. Even with two children at her side, she could face serious consequences if the wrong jihadis came to her defense.

Their eyes collectively transfixed, Battle greeted her in Arabic with a customary Islamic greeting,
“As-Salaam Alaykum.”
Peace be unto you
.

The woman blinked for the first time. Because of the hijab, Battle couldn’t read her reaction, if there was one. She looked down at her son and then at her daughter. The girl was still squeezing her mother’s hand and yanking on her arm. The boy had his gaze locked on the Type 56.

Battle tried to smile and he repeated himself but looked at the boy.
“As-Salaam Alaykum,”
he said and grunted from another seizure in his lower back. He tried again to shift his weight from the nerve pain in his right leg.

The woman bowed her head and replied,
“Wa-Alaykum.”
She looked up again and her eyes shifted from Battle’s to over his left shoulder and grew wide with panic.

“Afifah,” a man’s voice called from behind Battle. It was gruff and insistent, demanding she come to him.
“Afifah, tueal ’iilaa huna.”

The woman bowed her head again and pulled her children past Battle, scurrying toward the voice. Battle’s muscles tensed. He squeezed his eyes shut and stood as motionless as he could with Buck draped over his shoulders.

“You are American?” the man asked. “You are American Army?”

“Yes,” Battle said, turning only slightly to address the man.

“What happen your friend soldier?” The voice was louder and accompanied by deliberate footsteps. The man said something to the woman, Afifah, and she responded. Battle couldn’t understand the exchange. “What happen?” the man repeated.

“He’s badly hurt,” said Battle. “He was shot in his leg. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

The man stepped to face Battle. He was average height and build. His wiry, short black hair was gray at the temples. His face was peppered with at least a couple of days’ worth of stubble. He was wearing jeans and a dark-colored shirt, its collar curled at the ends.

He had a pistol in his hands. Battle guessed it was a GSh-18. It looked Russian and was a pretty common find on Syrian civilians. It could hold nine shots. Battle concluded, without thought, that one was enough given the current circumstances.

The man stood directly in front of Battle and waved the handgun as he spoke. “You talk my daughter?”

Battle stopped himself from reflexively turning around to look at the woman. “Yes. I wished her peace.”

“She say that,” said the man. He eyed the rifle, his eyes narrowed, and he looked back to Battle. “That gun. Not American Army.”

“No,” Battle said. “I found it.”

The man suppressed a laugh. “Find it? I don’t think so, American Army soldier. I hear shoot. I hear lots of shoot.”

Battle sighed and flexed his neck and adjusted Buck on his shoulders. The tension sent another jolt of electricity running down his back and through his right leg.

“I no like these men,” he said. “I like American Army soldier. I help.”

Battle’s muscles involuntarily relaxed. “Thank you.”

The man motioned to Buck. “You put down. I help. We go my house.”

Battle shook his head. “I need to get across the bridge. There’s a checkpoint.”

The man wagged his finger and pursed his lips. “No. No. Bridge no good. You come my house.” He reached again for Buck.

Battle dropped to a knee, and the man helped lower Buck from his shoulders. Together the two of them carried Buck. They quickly followed his daughter and the children west, away from the bridge, and to a three-story building on a dark street.

Battle considered the danger of letting the man help him. He didn’t know him. It could be a trap. He might be leading them to nasty, tortuous deaths. Then again, he could have shot them in the street. He hadn’t.

This was worth the risk, especially if the bridge was as heavily guarded as the man suggested it was. They reached the battered door to the building, and the woman held it open for her father and Battle to rush Buck inside. The children led them up a narrow set of stairs to a landing on the second floor. They turned down a hallway, sconces lighting their way to its end. The woman rushed past Battle, Buck, and her father to the door, a waft of an organic, earthy, musky scent breezing behind her. She hurriedly jammed a key into the lock and turned it. She shouldered the door open and disappeared inside the apartment, waving the children to join her.

The man led Buck and Battle through the door into a large, warmly lit open room. He guided Battle through the room, along a short hall, and into a sparsely decorated bedroom. The bed wasn’t much more than a thin mattress and some sheets. A bedside table held a lamp and a dog-eared copy of the Koran.

The man helped Battle lay Buck on the mattress. Buck was still unconscious and unaffected by the movement of his arms and legs into the bed.

The daughter appeared in the doorway of the room. She stood silently, her hands on the frame as she leaned against it.

The man looked at Buck’s wound and his lips curled. He swallowed hard and looked at Battle. “We clean,” he said. Then he poked at Battle’s left arm, eliciting a wince. “We clean too.”

The man turned to his daughter, pointed at her and motioned for her to leave. She disappeared toward the main living area of the apartment. He was speaking with his hands, searching for words in English. “I tell daughter,” he said, his eyes turned to the ceiling, “I tell her to get medicine. Clean. Yes?”

Battle nodded. “I’m Captain Battle,” he said, offering his hand to the stranger. “Thank you.”

The man took Battle’s hands with both of his, shaking them vigorously. “Battle is your name?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Nizar,” he said. “My daughter is Afifah.”

Nizar braced himself against the side of the bed and lowered himself to his knees. He hooked his fingers inside the edges of the ragged hole in Buck’s pant leg. He pulled the hole wider, ripping the fabric and exposing the wound.

Battle swallowed the bile rising in his throat when he got a clear look at the damage to Buck’s leg since they’d evacuated the IED blast site. It was varying shades of red and black, except for the torn pinkish meat climbing angrily outward from inside his leg.

Nizar looked up at Battle, seemingly unfazed by the depth and condition of the filthy wound. “I was doctor,” he said. “Before war.”

Afifah returned with her arms full. She was carrying a veritable first aid kit of supplies. She sidled up to the bed and dropped the bounty onto the floor next to her father.

Nizar first took a pair of scissors and cut away Buck’s pant leg at the groin. He also cut free the tourniquet fashioned above Buck’s knee. The wound pooled with blood, and he picked up a clear bottle labeled in Arabic and unscrewed the cap. He held the bottle directly over the leg and then squeezed it, spraying the liquid into and around the wound. The flesh immediately sizzled white, bubbles expanding beyond its edge, draining from Buck’s leg onto the sheets.

Buck’s eyes popped wide for an instant, and he eked out a semblance of a groan. He tried sitting up.

Nizar looked at Battle. “Help him.”

Battle moved to Buck’s head and pressed gently on his shoulder, forcing him to lie flat. Buck mumbled something and a stray tear ran from his eye along his cheek.

Nizar then took a pair of large tweezers in one hand and a lighter in the other. He flicked the lighter and ran the tweezer through the flame. He blew on the wound to lessen the still-percolating peroxide and picked through the wound with the tweezers.

His eyes tightened and his jaw set as he pulled out a bullet fragment. He dropped it on the floor and plucked two more pieces from the mess of Buck’s lower leg.

Battle turned his attention from the surgery and focused on Buck as Nizar poured sugar into the wound. Battle knew from anecdotal battlefield chatter that sugar liquefied when mixed with any fluid, including blood. If poured into a wound, it pulled the moisture from tissue exposed to bacteria, killing or lessening the chance for infection.

Nizar sprinkled granules around the edges of the injury. “The bone is broken. I cannot fix. I can stop bleeding. It will hurt.”

He gave instructions to Afifah. A minute later she returned with what looked like a short-handled branding iron. It was glowing red.

Nizar put his hand on Battle’s shoulder and then hugged himself tightly. “You hold him,” he told Battle. “Hold him.”

Battle’s eyes danced between the doctor and the red-hot iron. He laid his torso on top of Buck’s to press him into the mattress and turned his head away from Nizar as the doctor pressed the iron onto the wound.

Battle squeezed his eyes shut, hoping to block the sound of skin sizzling, the smell of it burning. With a delayed nervous response, Buck seized and then jerked against Battle’s body. A guttural moan crescendoed into a curdled scream. Buck was thrashing in the bed, violently resisting the pain.

Nazir again touched Battle on his shoulder. “Good,” he said.

Battle, his body still pushing down on Buck’s, turned to see Afifah leaving the room with the iron. Buck’s flailing diminished, and Battle pushed himself to his feet. Buck’s chest was heaving. Sweat pooled on his neck, and his hair was matted flat against his head.

Nazir tore open a square package with his teeth and pulled out what looked like gauze. He separated it into several sheets and, one by one, stuffed them into the gaping, cauterized hole running across Buck’s shin and calf.

Once he’d finished packing the wound, Nazir took a wide strip of fabric and wound it around what was left of Buck’s lower leg. He called something to Afifah, who appeared a moment later with a glass of water and some pills.

“Kill pain,” Nazir said. He cradled Buck’s head and force-fed him the medicine. “He live. Foot no good. He live. Now you.”

Battle nodded and sat on the edge of the bed, ready to be the patient to his newfound doctor friend. “Why are you helping us?”

Nazir shrugged as he cut away Battle’s sleeve. “American Army help me. Help my daughter. Help her children.”

Battle winced and bit the inside of his cheek as the man probed his injury. It was deeper than a graze. “How?”

“My family like America. Like Army. You help Syria. Some people do not like American Army. They do not like me. They kill my son. Almost kill me and my family. American Army stop them.”

“Why not leave?” Battle asked. “If you’re in danger.”

Nazir laughed and stopped working on the injury. He held Battle’s arm with the nimble fingers of a surgeon. His smile faded and his stare intensified. He spoke slowly and clearly. “Syria is my home. A man does not leave his home. I…protect…hide…stay quiet. No people take my home from me. If I die, I die here. My home.”

CHAPTER 29

OCTOBER 16, 2037, 7:53 AM

SCOURGE + 5 YEARS

LUBBOCK, TEXAS

It was a Friday. The sun was low on the flat horizon surrounding Lubbock, Texas. Jones Stadium’s walls climbed steeply toward the clear pale blue morning. High wisps of clouds floated above an otherwise empty sky.

The stadium could hold sixty thousand people. There were maybe five thousand cluttered along the lower levels near what would have been the field’s fifty-yard line.

They were huddled in coats and jackets. Some of them had blankets draped across their shoulders or laps. The collective puffs of breath from the waiting crowd hung in a haze above them.

The field was covered with remnants of artificial turf. It wasn’t the bright cheerful green that had greeted football players before the Scourge. It was more of a brownish color, stained in large splotches from the blood of those who’d been forced into the arena and lost.

Battle was standing inside a holding area at one end of the stadium. He was one of twelve gladiators chosen to fight that day. Each of the men carried their own manifestation of fear on their faces. Some were wide-eyed, others were trembling. A few seemed defiant and brimming with testosterone. The group was ripe with body odor and the smell of urine.

Battle didn’t fear death; however, the idea of pain, of not knowing how much suffering he might endure, was all consuming. He’d learned in the Army that the threat of pain was far more effective a weapon than the pain itself. It was true.

Battle put his hand on Sawyer’s shoulder and whispered into the boy’s ear, “Stay with me. Stay close. Do what I tell you to do. We’ll make it.”

Sawyer nodded and bit his lower lip. He brushed the hair from in front of his eyes. Battle felt the tension in the boy’s shoulder as he gripped it and let go.

The large doors that separated the holding area from the stadium floor swung open, sending in the blinding pinkish light of the dawn and the loud rumble of the awaiting crowd. Three grunts powered through the opening and slammed the door behind them. The loud bang sent a shudder through Battle’s core.

“All right,” one of the grunts announced, “here’s how it’s gonna work. There are twelve of you. All of you are traitors, thieves, or people we don’t like. We could have killed you already.”

One of the testosterone-emitting gladiators snarled, “Why didn’t you?”

“This is more fun,” said the grunt. He licked his teeth. “I mean, I ain’t a history student, but this is good for morale. The Romans did it. They was an empire. If it’s good enough for the Romans, my guess is the generals think it’s good enough for the Cartel.”

The same gladiator snickered. “Killing us is good for morale?”

“Seems to be,” said the grunt. “We always get good crowds. They come from all over the region. Now shut up and listen.”