Cyborg Nation (27 page)

She thought she’d rather die.

It was stupid, of course. The chances were they wouldn’t think anything at all about it, but it was how
she
felt about it that was bothering her. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, she watched until she managed to catch Gabriel’s eye and motioned him over.

“I have to go,” she said uncomfortably when he knelt beside her.

He looked at her curiously for a moment and finally lifted his hand to her forehead. It took her a moment to figure out he thought she might be delirious. “We will go soon,” he said finally, almost soothingly.

She must have a fever, but she was certainly not
that
feverish. “No. I mean … I have to relieve myself,” she said urgently, embarrassed to even have to ask for help.

Comprehension hit him and he looked around. “I will find something.”

Bronte grabbed his wrist before he could rise. “Take me into the woods just a little ways,” she said pleadingly. “I can manage.”

He frowned. “No, you can not.”

“Please?”

He looked torn. “Gideon would lob my head from my shoulders if I were to do anything that foolish, risked harming you for no reason at all. And I would let him because I would deserve it.”

Her chin wobbled. “Well, I don’t need to go then.”

“You should not be embarrassed....”

“Maybe I shouldn’t, but I am!” she said testily. “Never mind. I’m fine. Really.”

He didn’t look convinced but he rose and left.

She should’ve known he’d rat on her, she thought angrily when she saw him stop to speak to Gideon. Gideon lifted his head, stared at her a long moment and then strode purposefully across the clearing. She pulled the blanket over her head.

He snatched it down and looked at her. He did not look amused. “You are not being at all reasonable.”

She set her jaw, but it occurred to her after a moment that he’d said they would leave near dark anyway. “We’re leaving soon anyway, aren’t we? I don’t see that it’s all that unreasonable to ask for a little privacy to … uh … you know, when we’d be going soon anyway. And then we could just go ahead and leave. And that would be better, right? To go a little sooner?”

He frowned, but thoughtfully.

“I feel up to it,” she added.

He gave her a look that told her he didn’t believe that for a moment. Finally, he nodded, though—a clear indication of how anxious he was to move, she thought, not that she’d so easily talked him in to it. “We will gather up what we mean to take, and then I will allow them to go a little ahead and help you.”

Bronte stared at his back in dismay as he rose decisively and left. Irritation quickly replaced it. The thick skulled thing! As if she wanted
him
to watch her any more than the other two, she fumed! She was
not
going to be able to perform with an audience!

Her anger lasted until he picked her up. As carefully as he’d positioned his arms before he lifted her, she nearly passed out. In fact, the pain that went through her was such that for several moments she wasn’t certain if she would throw up or pass out first and she was still in the grips of both when they cleared their campsite and Gideon stopped, lowering her carefully to the ground. She fought a round with the pain, nausea and dizziness.

“I need to sit up,” she managed to say when she finally caught her breath.

“You can not do that now.”

She struggled for breath. “I can’t … do what I need to without using my stomach muscles either.” She looked up at him pleadingly. “Please, Gideon.”

He stared down at her angrily for several moments but finally knelt and helped her to sit far enough upright to brace herself on her elbows. She had to leave it at that. She couldn’t sit up any straighter and she felt like she was going to pass out as it was. “Now, go away,” she said when she’d fought off the faint.

“No,” he said implacably and resolutely turned his back, folding his arms over his chest.

She glared at the back of his head for a moment but discovered she just didn’t have the energy to fight him any more. Holding her blanket up as a shield, she coaxed her bladder into cooperating. Fortunately, she was able to escape the run off, but the entire incident was humiliating and exhausting besides. By the time Gideon had wrapped her in her blanket again and picked her up, she was nauseated, faint, embarrassed, and tearful.

He glanced at her in frowning inquiry several times when she kept sniffing and finally, she looped her arms around his neck and dropped her head onto his hard shoulder to hide her face. “I hate being sick,” she muttered childishly.

His arms tightened around her fractionally. “You will be well soon.”

She doubted that. She felt like she’d have to die to feel better.

She was almost sorry her determination to have a little privacy had prompted her to bully them into letting her have her way. As carefully as Gideon carried her, every step he took jarred her and caused her more pain. Her leg was splinted and he supported it the best he could, she knew, but even the slight jarring from his stride was agony and that paled by comparison to the pain in her abdomen. She was sorry she hadn’t passed out before.

She began to recite a litany in her head to try to keep from groaning out loud--Just a little further. Just a little further …. Just kill me now. Just kill me now….

The sudden scream that tore through the jungle around them made the hairs all over her body stand on end. Gideon stiffened all over and went perfectly still, twisting his head in first one direction and then another. A volley of similar screams followed closely on the heels of the first.

“Gabriel! Jerico! Behind me!” he ground out, launching into a ground eating stride that instantly diverted Bronte to the only thing in her world that mattered at the moment—pain. Her heart was thumping with terror but she couldn’t think beyond the pain that was burning her alive. She’d begun to think she might have her wish, at long last, and faint when they abruptly burst from the jungle growth onto a wide sandy beach. Crossing it until they neared the water’s edge, Gideon lowered her carefully to the sand. As he straightened and turned, he reached behind his shoulder and Bronte heard the ring of metal as he pulled his sword from it’s sheathe.

Through the gathering darkness of twilight and the descending darkness of loss of consciousness, Bronte looked up to see that Gideon, Gabriel, and Jerico had formed a semi-circle around her, swords drawn, their feet braced in a fighter’s stance.

Chapter Seventeen

“If I give the signal,” Gideon said in a grim voice, “I want you to take Bronte and carry her out into the water, Gabriel.”

Bronte heard his voice as if from a great distance. The darkness had grown so profound, however, she couldn’t see anything. Giving up the fight even to hold her head up, she dropped her head against the sand and closed her eyes.

The screaming that had followed behind them as they rushed from the jungle grew louder. She could feel and hear the thump of feet against the ground as the trogs raced across the beach toward them. Unable to bear the suspense of not knowing what was coming at her, Bronte opened her eyes again. The darkness had lifted a little, just enough to wish it hadn’t.

A horde of horrible gray skinned humanoids was racing from the edge of the forest, their blades lifted as they ran as if they fully intended to hack all four of them to pieces. Almost as one, Gideon, Jerico, and Gabriel advanced
toward
the trogs, putting more distance between her and themselves. Gideon pulled his laser pistol from its holster with his free hand and fired at the oncoming pack of screaming demons, eliciting screams of a different tone altogether as it cut through their chests, or heads, and the stench of burning flesh wafted over the beach. He’d managed to bring down nearly a dozen before they were too close for the pistol to have much effect any longer. Dropping the pistol back into its holster as Gabriel and Jerico met those in the forefront, he swung at the first to reach him and took his arm off at the shoulder.

Bronte squeezed her eyes shut as a stream of dark liquid shot from the wound. She discovered she couldn’t block the sight, however, nor could she bear to lay helpless in the sand and not watch. When she opened her eyes again, a half dozen more trogs were writhing and twitching on the sand, or lying perfectly still. Gideon, Jerico, and Gabriel were all covered in blood but she couldn’t tell if any of it was theirs. They didn’t move as if they were injured. They continued to lay about them with the swords tirelessly, cleaving off whatever part of the body their swords made connection with—heads, arms—sometimes hacking them in two at the waist or cleaving them from shoulder to breast bone.

Slowly, inch by inch, they fell back and Bronte realized then why they’d advanced on their attackers—to give them more room to fight. If they had to drop back much further, though, she feared they were going to stumble and fall over her and it didn’t bear thinking on what the trogs would do if any one of them went down. Bodies already littered the beach in a thick layer and blood soaked into the sand and formed puddles, and they had shown no sign of backing down, apparently under the impression that they were a strong enough force to take down only three cyborgs.

Or they were just that vicious—too insane with blood lust to know or care that the three men had already cut their numbers by more than half.

It took all Bronte could do to struggle up on her elbows. If she hadn’t had fear driven adrenaline pumping through her she didn’t think she could’ve managed even that much, but the sheer ferocity of the trogs was terrifying. She knew she had to move. None of the men could stop fighting long enough to help her and they had dropped back by now until she knew any moment that one of them was going to stumble over her and lose his footing. Grunting with effort, she dragged herself a few inches, stopped to rest, and clawed at the sand again, heaving backward a few more inches. Every movement was sheer torture, the burning, tearing sensation inside of her reaching a point where she was no longer even conscious of the battle, unaware of anything except the fiery pain and the need to move.

She was too exhausted from the effort even to react when a hand caught her shoulder and stopped her.

“Bronte, stop! You will tear open your wounds!”

Relief flooded her when she realized it was Gideon. “They’re gone?”

“They are gone … for now,” Gideon confirmed, carefully slipping his arms beneath her and lifting her up against his chest. She couldn’t even find the energy to lift her arms around his neck or hold her head up. It fell against his shoulder. He shifted her slightly to support her head as it lolled weakly to one side. “You should not have tried to move,” he ground out angrily as he began to walk briskly along the water’s edge.

“Was afraid,” she gasped tiredly.

“We would not have allowed harm to come to you.”

She frowned, too tired to argue with him. “Afraid for you,” she mumbled.

He stopped, staring down at her face for a long moment before he began walking again. She wanted to ask him if he was hurt, or if Gabriel or Jerico had been hurt, but she yielded to unconsciousness instead.

As welcome as it was, it didn’t last. It was full dark when she became aware again and she thought for a little while that she was still blinded by semi-consciousness until she noticed the stars. They were still moving. The roaring sound in her ears was the ocean crashing upon the beach.

Beneath that sound, though, she could detect the steady, comforting beat of Gideon’s heart. He must have noticed she’d roused. “It is not much further.”

She nodded, then recalled her last thought before she’d passed out. “Are you hurt?”

“The blood is not mine.”

Bronte frowned but supposed that was an answer. “Are Gabriel and Jerico alright?”

He hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Yes.”

“They’re hurt,” she said, instantly noticing the lapse.

“They are wounded, yes, but they are alright.”

She tipped her head, trying to see them. All she could make out, however, was a deeper shadow among the shadows. Gideon slowed and finally stopped.

“What is it?” Jerico asked in a near whisper.

“Bronte wants to know if you are alright.”

There was silence for several moments.

“Yes,” he said finally.

“Gabriel, tell her you are alright.”

“It is no more than a flesh wound. I have had far worse.”

Gideon ground his teeth. “But you are alright,” he prompted.

“Yes. It hurts like a son-of-a-bitch....”

“Shut up, Gabriel!” Gideon hissed, beginning to move again.

Bronte smiled against Gideon’s chest in spite of her abject misery and her certainty that all three of them were wounded and trying to hide it from her. They were walking, she reasoned, and still able to annoy Gideon. That must mean they weren’t hurt too badly.

They left the beach a few minutes later, climbing over rocks Bronte thought, when she noticed what looked like a wall rising up from the beach, though she could still see very little and wondered how
they
could see to move over the rocks. The sound of crashing waves grew near deafening. Sprinkles of water pelted her, raining harder and harder down on her for a time, until the blanket around her was soaked, and then they passed through some sort of opening that dulled the roar of the ocean.

Relief flooded her when Gideon finally settled her on a smooth surface. Almost immediately much of the pain began to dissipate, the pressure on her leg easing now that she could finally settle it on a flat, unmoving surface. It was cool within the cavern, though, made cooler still by the nearly constant wind that gusted into the mouth of the cave and the wet blanket around her.

“Try to keep her warm, Gabriel, while Jerico and I find wood for fire.”

Gabriel settled beside her and shifted close enough to share his warmth. She wanted, desperately, to roll onto her side and cuddle closer, to pull more of his warmth into her, but she couldn’t find the energy or the courage to face the increase in pain she knew that would cause her. Instead, she lay as still as she could hoping she would cease to hurt so much once she’d gotten warm and lain still long enough for the discomfort of being carried so long to ease off.