Leopard Dreaming (55 page)

‘Since when do you take painkillers?’ asked Maddy.

‘Exactly.’ Slamming the door behind her, Mira paused in an empty corridor to check her bearings. Plenty of footprints on the dusty floor in every direction. Shuffled clean enough in the middle to hide hers as well as any tracks laid by the gurneys’ narrow wheels. Piles of packing crates at various intervals too, each adjacent to a door. Mira scanned both ways, hunting for a means of bolting the one she’d just come through.

The side rail on Ben’s gurney had the shape of a small ladder, and unclipped the same as Mira’s old bed at Serenity. She hooked it over the upturned L-shaped door handles, effectively barring them. Other doors provided Kitching and his men the means for breaking out either side and surrounding her, but she bet they’d try that door first, inadvertently buying her vital seconds.

Closing her eyes, she found the map that she’d built in her mind and knew she had to go left first. Turning to grab the gurneys, she also found Maddy had climbed off hers and was hobbling back towards Mira — aiming roughly for the bolted door handles. Teetering on her one short leg, she grabbed for support each step along Ben’s body, causing him to stir too.

‘Invincible,’ he cheered croakily, and poked a weak fist in the air. ‘Let me at them.’

‘He’s out of it,’ Maddy mumbled and drooled. She paused to test for his pulse and temperature. ‘And he’s ill.’

‘He’s not the only one.’ Mira tried to usher the matron to turn around, but she wouldn’t budge. Instead, she caught Mira’s hand and laid it down on Ben’s.

‘You take him. I’ll get Freddie.’

‘You’re out of it too,’ Mira argued. ‘Trust me, that stage lasts for ages.’ Otherwise, she’d be all business, and would have escaped by now. Instead, Mira’s vision had only just begun to blur back to ‘normal’ for her, and her pain levels were rising nearer to the level she could handle during bursts of adrenaline.

Maddy grinned dopily, swaggering and nearly falling as she took one more step, wagging her finger at Mira. ‘We each have our own hell to conquer,’ she chuckled and hiccupped. ‘Mine is letting others treat me as a cripple.’

‘You can’t go back. You’re unarmed!’

‘Forewarned is forearmed. I’m just a shepherdess, Mira, and I’m going for my little lost sheep.’

‘Maddy, please. Don’t fight me on this. I came to get you and Ben out of here. We don’t have much time.’

Maddy glanced both ways, still dribbling saliva. ‘Looks safe to me. Mission accomplished.’

‘Not yet it isn’t. Listen to me, you’re not yourself.’

‘Oh, really?’ She hiccupped, which blew a bubble and startled her enough to try wiping it away. ‘Okay, so who am I?’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Do I have to take down all my credential plaques …’ hiccup, ‘in humanistic psychology and … Can’t remember the others. I’ll tell you later.’

‘Now, there, see? You’d never try to joke at a time like this.’ Mira tried to push her backwards gently, but the matron reacted unexpectedly, albeit sluggishly. She caught Mira’s hand in midair, using Mira’s own momentum against her to turn her around and twist her arm up alongside her spine — a manoeuvre that asylum staff had often used to immobilise her in the past, but since Mira had never seen it done before she’d never been able to counter it, or even figure out how they did it, exactly.

Maddy laughed. ‘You’re not the only who grew up fighting medical staff. I had polio, remember? Pushy bloody physios. Took me a year to get over the disease and a decade to get over the therapists. They weren’t so good back then, you know. Paedophiles, half of them, and … what was I saying?’

‘The drugs are messing with your head, Maddy. Please. We’re so close to the exit.’

‘Oh, goodie! Ahem. I mean, excellent work.’ She coughed, and made a more obvious effort to hide her natural cheerfulness behind a more serious mask of professionalism. ‘Which way?’

Mira sighed in relief. And admiration. Before that moment, she’d never realised how much Maddy had hidden of herself in order to rise to the top of her field.

‘That way,’ Mira said as she pointed to the nearest intersection.

‘Now please, we have to go! I don’t know how much longer Freddie can keep them all busy.’

More gunshots on the other side of the door sounded like lead debating teams with rival machine guns. Yet Maddy stood her ground, shaking her head. ‘They won’t expect anything from me. Or you, for that matter. We should work together.’

‘We
are
. Freddie and I worked it all out already.’

‘You did?’ Maddy clamped a hand over her own mouth. ‘I mean, that’s great progress for you. Both, I mean. But understand: he’s like family to me, Mira. I can’t let him sacrifice himself for us. I’d never sleep again.’

‘Maddy,
please
. It’s not a sacrifice. Honestly. They won’t hurt him. He’s family to me now, too, and he’s too valuable to them. He’ll just shut down and quit cooperating — until we can come back for him with a million troops from General Garland.’

Maddy hesitated a moment longer; not like her at all, wasting vital seconds. Or maybe her brain didn’t function the same way as Mira’s when pumped with adrenaline.

The door banged, and bulged against the gurney rail, while Freddie wailed from the other side, as if he’d slammed against it, blocking it.

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Maddy conceded finally. ‘You think of him as family now too?’

‘Like a grandfather, I swear.’

The door banged again, bending the gurney rail.

Maddy’s grip released from Mira’s arm slowly, in time with the common sense sinking in. ‘My girl’s all grown up.’ She smiled and reached to pat Mira’s shoulder. ‘Lead the way.’

Mira grabbed Benny’s gurney and headed for the corner — getting halfway before it dawned on her that the matron’s naked feet made nearly no sound on the concrete behind her.

When they did, the distance from her seemed to be
in
creasing.

Glancing over her shoulder, Mira saw Maddy running the other way to lift the makeshift barricade off the door.

‘Noooo!’ she screamed.

Too late.

The door kicked out from the other side, knocking down the matron as four wiry fighters burst out into the corridor.

More gunshots from behind them winged two, dropping them, and sent the other two scuttling out into the hall and behind the nearest crates for shelter.

Mira rubbed her eyes as the pain soared to agony — the stress of it all eating her like acid from the inside out and devouring the last of the sedative. She tried using her hips to keep Ben’s gurney moving, but she had to stop. Had to bend double with both eyes clamped shut, rubbing circles into her temples. Either that or change hues back a few days to try processing the less painful light frequencies.

Torn by her loyalties to Ben and Maddy, she could either throw all her efforts into racing Ben out first, or go back for Maddy now and risk losing them both.

Maddy sat upright on the ground and blinked with a grin as if she’d just won the lottery. Bullets pinged the wall behind her, but she seemed oblivious.
Odds are lower now,
she shouted to Mira with silent hands. She patted the head of the writhing soldier who’d fallen beside her, and used his chest as a bench to help herself scramble back onto her bare feet.

‘Are you hearing this?’ Mira shouted with both voice and hands. ‘You’re talking crazy!’

Maddy laughed. ‘Oh, my dear Mira. What a dull, sad world it would be if we were all totally sane. Haven’t you learned yet? Be proud of who you are. It’s our little insanities that make us all so colourfully unique.’

At the same time, with her hands:
Take Benny and go.

‘Maddy!’ Mira screamed. ‘Come back!’

She took a step to go after her, but the matron disappeared inside the room.

For barely a second.

Freddie rushed out with her, shielding her under his metal turtle shell. As he turned, she saw Lockman under there too.

Mira squealed in relief, swept up with a wisp of euphoria that put a smile on her face and cleared her vision. A new kind of drug, far better than any other. It had to be love. For all of them. Or a new appreciation, at least, for her grandfather.

‘Go!’ Lockman shouted. He thrust Maddy into Mira’s arms, adding bloody hand prints to her filthy uniform. ‘Get around the corner, ladies. And take Ben.’

Mira saw his left arm and chest, crimson with blood. She wanted to run to him, to care for him and make him come too, but as the rest of the battle spilled out into the corridor, she knew the best way to help him right now was to comply with his orders.

She didn’t hesitate.

Rolling Ben ahead of her with one hand, while tugging Maddy to follow, she turned them both around the corner to safety with the exit marked at the furthest end of the new hall. She knew she’d have to cross that scary freight elevator that turned her legs to jelly on the way in, but seeing it this time would hopefully make it easier.

Behind her, she heard Freddie and Lockman make it to the intersection, just as Lockman’s machine gun chattered, cycling on empty.

‘Come on, old mate,’ she heard Lockman say as he switched to his Glock. ‘You’re coming with us.’

‘Gonna die here. Must die here!’ Freddie ranted over
and over. He tore at his ears as if all the echoes from the future had liquefied to acid, burning him.

‘Over
their
dead bodies!’ Kitching shouted. ‘Come back to me, brother, and I’ll let them all go. You have my word on it.’

‘Liar!’ Freddie screamed, spinning circles. ‘You’re killing us!
Have
killed us.
Will
kill us. Should have, would have, could have let us go in peace, but never did! Can’t you hear all the other futures you’ve lost, and still have yet to lose? Death is knelling for you too, Colonel. In all of them. And in some you’ll even beg for it.’

‘Let me … talk to him,’ Ben called from his gurney. Barely strong enough to raise his trembling hand again. ‘I can … negoti … ate.’

He rolled, trying to get up, but the moment his fractured ankles took part of his weight, he crumpled. Yowling, he struck the floor, hit his head and blacked out.

Mira ran back to him, making sure he seemed okay. Temperature the same, and breathing still as raspy. ‘We need to get him away,’ she shouted.

‘Working on it.’ Lockman had other discussions in progress, all on the subject of lead poisoning. ‘You go on ahead. Get topside, out in the open somewhere, and look up.’

Mira turned in time to see her grandfather straighten up defiantly. She caught sight of his ears, what was left of them, and screamed in horror.

Still wailing himself, Freddie shuttled Lockman sideways to the corner, then shoved the younger man to safety and spun back to challenge the colonel alone — also blocking all his men and their lines of fire.

‘Shoot me! Just me!’ Freddie challenged them. ‘Get it over with.’ He spread his arms wide and turned, exposing his turtle’s softer underbelly.

‘Freddie, no!’ shouted the matron. Adrenaline sparkled in her eye, as well as her step. She bolted
away from Mira and lunged to the corner, where many things seemed to happen at once.

Lockman reached around, firing at the thunder of angry boots, forcing them to baulk and hold back. Men screamed and fell against walls and crates. Unseen around the corner, yet their cries betrayed their panic. Freddie wailed, and Matron Sanchez leapt past Lockman to grab hold of her lost sheep.

She swung his back to the battle, but mid-turn he tried to push her to safety. Her weaker leg failed. She tripped, taking him down with her sideways.

Her neck exploded with the impact of an enemy bullet, travelling low. A herding shot, intended to miss.

‘Hold fire!’ Kitching shouted. ‘Oh, hell. Hold
all
fire! Both sides. Truce and cease fire.’

Lockman complied, but only after their last man did.

Staring at the fallen at the intersection, Mira couldn’t believe her eyes. She screamed, but never heard her own voice. Didn’t hear anything else until she ran to Maddy’s side, where Freddie had also dropped to his knees, fallen silent in horror.

Not this way. Not this way,
he sobbed over and over, but Mira had to read it from his lips. In shock so bad, he couldn’t utter a sound if his own life depended on it. His hands trembled as they closed around Maddy’s neck, seemingly strangling but trying desperately to stem the flow of her blood. Mira tried to help too, but they only succeeded in choking off the gurgling air, while the matron’s big heart continued to empty out all over their hands.

Each pulse ticked off the seconds.

Mira knew the facts of life off by heart already. No spurting meant not an artery, but so much blood so fast meant unconscious in two minutes and dead by six to ten.

‘Get this under her shoulders,’ Lockman called from the corner. ‘Get the wound higher than her
heart.’ He shrugged off his backpack, switched off the signal jammer and slid the whole thing with the med kit across to Mira. Down the hall lurked his own problems; a cluster of Kitching’s men who kept back in the shadows, taking shelter behind metal crates — plus two who’d made it through a side door, into the maze of rooms, where they could approach the intersection from a second direction.

‘Med kit, top pocket first,’ he called, unable to take his eyes off the hall for long in any of the four directions. ‘Try crumpling a clot-fast bandage into a wad and pushing it into her open vein.’

Mira tried, her fingers fumbling, but she could see that she needed far more bandage than he had in his kit. She only lifted one finger away from Freddie’s hold on the wound and a flood became a dam burst. Freddie kept his hands in place, sobbing and cycling through all seven of his personalities, all panicking but somehow holding himself together for Maddy’s sake. When he blew, she knew he’d blow big.

‘You have to move your hands now,’ she pleaded. ‘Freddie, I can’t clot the wound until I can get to it.’

He did, she did, and the wad of cloth soaked red within seconds, barely able to stem the tide, which soon managed to seep and flow through it.