Never a Good Day... 3/6

[cj2017]

Part 3 in which things get worse… before they get better…

 

Never a Good Day… 3/6

Rating: Hard PG-13: copious amounts of bad language, discussion of adult themes, violence and broken bones.

Word Count: This part 5,000.

Disclaimer: Don’t own them. Wish I did.

 

              

Sarah didn’t know how long it had been. Her world had shrunk down to the basic necessities of breathing and remaining on her feet. When she stumbled, he slapped or kicked her, and it was getting progressively harder for her to get back up. They didn’t seem to be moving higher, just putting distance between themselves and Derek, and she suspected that the man would then attempt to use her to draw Derek out. Same old fucking story, and she was so very tired of it.

               The man was in good shape: lean, athletic and six-foot plus, but they had all had a long night, and he finally stopped to rest, pushing her down to the ground. He kept his gun pointed at her while he searched in a bag and withdrew a length of rope, and she realized, with growing horror, that he was going to bind her. She said nothing as he unknotted the sling, determined not to give him the satisfaction of hearing her plead. There was no reason to restrain her; she wasn’t going anywhere and her injuries left her unlikely to fight. Such logic didn’t seem to be troubling him, though, and if he intended it as a punishment for killing his companion, Sarah knew that it was going to be extremely effective. For a second, she was able to cradle her splinted arm, but he looped the rope around it then dragged it behind her to secure her wrists together. It didn’t hurt immediately, some protective part of her brain kicking in just to shut it all out, but the respite was fleeting. She heard herself whimpering and briefly hated herself for it, before everything faded to gray.

~ ~ ~

               “Oh fucking-, no.”

               Derek looked around their shelter in disbelief. Ten minutes. It had taken him ten minutes to dispose of the body and get back. Ten fucking minutes for everything to go to hell. The second man must have been watching them, waiting for his opportunity, and the bastard had made no attempt to save the life of his colleague, a fact that troubled Derek more than anything. He scooped up their weapons and his jacket, grateful that the man had had his hands so full with Sarah that he’d not been able to carry off anything else. The direction they had travelled in was obvious, meaning that hide and seek was probably the aim of the game. He afforded fleeting consideration to granting Sarah’s request to leave her behind, and just as quickly dismissed the idea as untenable. Sarah might be a pain in his ass a lot of the time, but John needed her, and, although he would never admit it to anyone, life was more interesting with her around.

He slung the bag over his shoulder. Coming, ready or not.

~ ~ ~

               Sarah opened her eyes slowly and found herself instantly craving unconsciousness. She was still lying on the ground, and the pain in her arm had moved beyond terrible and settled somewhere around horrendous. She felt tape across her mouth and knew then that there wasn’t going to be an interrogation, that she was bait, and her immediate future was likely to involve more pain, followed by death.

The man sat three feet away from her, slowly peeling an apple with a paring knife, cutting it into chunks, and ignoring her completely. Tears of exhaustion leaked down her cheeks but she couldn’t wipe them away, and she was about to close her eyes again when he realized that she was watching him.

               “Shouldn’t be much longer. Then I’ll give you a reason to fucking cry.”

               The tape prevented her from telling him what a futile gesture that would be. That she had never screamed, or cried, or begged, and wasn’t about to start now. She just raised an eyebrow at him, which made him choke a little on his apple. Watching him go red in the face and splutter made her feel slightly better, and she closed her eyes, desperate to rest while she had the chance.

~ ~ ~

               As a child, Derek had spent his days hiding himself and his brother from the machines. They had quickly learned how to be silent, how to tell which pile of rubble was stable enough to shelter beneath and what sounds the metal made as they approached. The ones who failed to master these basics were rounded up for the camps or died within the first few weeks. Derek and Kyle had been experts by then.

This wasn’t post-apocalyptic, machine-ridden desolation. This was a dark, slightly damp forest, and without Sarah he made excellent progress. The man had left a trail that an idiot would struggle to miss, which served to make Derek even more wary, but still he knew that he was catching them up. A flattened patch of blood-stained grass indicated that Sarah had been left on the ground for a period of time, and he refused to consider what that might imply. Instead, he preferred to be optimistic about the fact that there were no signs of a fight. And he knew that she would fight; even with her arm snapped in pieces, she would fight. Part of Derek pitied the man who had taken her - he had no idea what he had gotten himself into - but the greater part just wanted him dead.

~ ~ ~

               Sarah was doing her best, but she knew that the man was losing his patience. She wanted to ask him exactly what he expected from a woman covered in blood and suffering from serious injuries, whom he had decided to bind, gag and frog-march through rough terrain in the early hours of the morning. Unfortunately the gag precluded any of that, so she had just taken to glaring at him, a tactic that did at least seem to be making him extremely uncomfortable.

               The last time he had lashed out at her, she had retaliated and kicked him sharply on his shin. It had earned her a punch to the face, and her nose was still bleeding. Breathing was becoming an issue; with her nose clogged and her mouth covered, she was finding it difficult to draw an adequate breath. When he finally stopped, she dropped to her knees, leaning forward and trying not to panic.

               “For fuck’s sake.” He ripped the tape from her lips.

She gulped air in hungrily, unaware of anything other than filling her lungs. She stopped herself from hyperventilating and knelt quietly, waiting for the feeling of slow suffocation to subside. The man was staring at her as he drank from a bottle of water, and she licked her parched lips, trying not to wish a slow death upon him.

               “What’s your boyfriend called?”

               It was the first time that he had formed a sentence without building it around an expletive. She performed a mental double-take before she realized that he meant Derek, and had to stop herself from laughing and antagonizing him.

               “Not my boyfriend.”

               “No?”

               “No.”

               “Seemed awfully close back there.”

               “He was trying to stop me from bleeding to death.”

               “That right?”

               Too tired to start explaining the rather complex Connor family dynamics, she ignored him.

He kicked her knee, forcing her to look at him. “I said, that right?”

               She sighed. “Yes, that’s right.”

               “So, he won’t come running for you?”

               She shook her head. Not running, no, but he probably would come shooting.

               The man must have caught something in her eyes, because he screwed the lid onto his water and hauled her back to her feet by the scruff of her neck, propelling her in front of him with enough force to make her stagger. They seemed to be following a trail, probably the one that he had come down on, and she couldn’t help but wonder exactly what it was that they were heading towards.

~ ~ ~

               Derek hadn’t been able to pick out words, but had heard the voices, and forced himself to slow down. Stumbling blindly into a confrontation and leaving Sarah in the middle of a firefight was not an option. It was the first time that he had been close enough to hear them speak, and he smiled briefly at the defiance in her tone.

               The path that they were following was more obvious now. He decided not to be so predictable as to take the prepared route, and veered off to his right into thicker cover. The height gain providing a decent enough overview of where he was supposed to be. It slowed his progress, and his ankle hated him for it, but he wanted the endgame to be played out using his rules. Gritting his teeth, he persevered, trying not to limp too loudly.

~ ~ ~

               Standing in the clearing, Sarah watched the man as he checked through a cache of weapons. They had reached a destination of sorts, the trail leading to nothing more significant than a stash of equipment he had concealed in the undergrowth.

Holding a shotgun, he walked towards her. “Get on your knees.”

               She shook her head once. “No.” It was a futile protest, but she didn’t want to kneel. Kneeling would make her too vulnerable; there was no way that she could get up quickly without the use of her hands.

               Circling her slowly, he suddenly smashed the stock of the shotgun into the small of her back. She grunted in pain as her knees crumpled from beneath her. It took her a minute to regain her balance, and in that time he had exchanged the gun for a hunting knife. His head cocked on one side, he was listening intently to the creaks and cracks of the forest, trying to distinguish the natural from the unnatural. Apparently he heard something that caught his interest, because he made his way back over to her, a thin smile twisting on his lips.

               “He’s close. Call to him.”

               The same fucking phrase, every time. Did these bastards have no imagination at all?

               “Fuck you.”

               It seemed to disconcert him, the fact that although he was waving a knife in front of her face, she was refusing to play the traditional role of victim. For a second, she wondered whether he would actually go through with making a cut, but his indecision was fleeting and he placed the tip of the knife in the hollow of her throat.

               “Last chance. Call to him.”

               She didn’t dignify him with a response, but just closed her eyes as she felt the knife bite in and draw a line along the edge of her clavicle. It hurt, but she had a lot of miserable experiences to draw upon for comparison. Getting shot hurt more. Being pinioned through the shoulder had really hurt, and having Cameron grind her heel into an open abdominal wound had also been extremely unpleasant. Right at the moment, her arm was far more painful than the shallow laceration he was making, and she remained silent, her eyes still closed, and listened for any sign that Derek was making a move.

~ ~ ~

               Crouched above the clearing, Derek had watched the man force Sarah to her knees. He hadn’t been able to hear their exchange, but he had seen the glint of moonlight on the blade, and Sarah’s eyes closing just before it cut into her chest. Raising a hand, he wiped away the sweat stinging into the scrapes on his forehead. Deep, steady breaths helped to use up the excess adrenaline flooding his body. He fought to temper the instinct to charge into the clearing, all guns blazing.

Her eyes were open now, ignoring the man as he slit the sleeve of her sweater to expose her uninjured arm. The man had his back to Derek’s position as he focused on his task, and Derek could see that Sarah was listening, scanning the area to try and pinpoint where help might be coming from. Making a quick decision, Derek shone his flashlight once, noting the subtle movement in her shoulders as she caught the signal. The man, oblivious, cut into the sensitive flesh of her upper arm and failed to realize that the balance of power had just shifted ever so slightly away from him.

~ ~ ~

               The wound he had made in her arm was deeper, blood already running down to her elbow. His breathing was faster now, his nostrils flaring as he reacted to her lack of reaction. Sarah knew that she was playing a dangerous game, but the closer the man came to losing control, the closer he came to making a mistake. With wild eyes, he stared at her blood on the knife and seemed to come to a conclusion.

               “I’ll make you fucking scream for me.”

               The knife flashed down, and for one numbing second she waited for the pain of a stab wound to announce itself, but the pain when it came was in her arm, and she realized that he had cut through the rope on her wrists. A gasp escaped her before she could stifle it, and he grinned, baring his teeth at this first indication of vulnerability. He slapped away her right arm easily as she reached to try and protect the fracture. Pulling her injured arm into an outstretched position, he began to snip away at the bandages around the splint.

               She couldn’t move. Every tiny jerk of the knife shocked agony through her and it was all that she could do to remain conscious. The splint dropped away and he gripped her forearm in both of his hands, a sickening parody of the hold Derek had used earlier to try and help her.

               “Scream for me now?”

               Shaking her head, tears streaming down her face, she looked beyond him and saw a light flash once. For a split-second, she thought that she was fainting, but some detached part of her managed to recognize it for what it was. She forced herself to straighten her back slightly, bracing herself. As the man flicked his wrists, grinding the fractured bones together, Sarah finally granted his wish and screamed. High and deafening, the pain and rage combined to cover the noise Derek made as he approached. Taking advantage of the man’s surprise, she wrenched back on the arm he was holding, and threw a punch with her free arm, catching him a glancing blow on his jaw. It was enough. Enough to knock him off balance. Enough to enable her to throw herself out of harm’s way, and enough to ensure that the single shot Derek fired caught the man in the back of his head and blasted his face away.

~ ~ ~

               Gun held in both hands, his arms outstretched, Derek stalked into the clearing, his eyes fixed on the fallen man. Common sense told him that the man was dead, but instinct forced him to blank out Sarah’s crumpled form and double-check his kill. He kicked the man’s thigh, turning the body onto its back. The overwhelming, fecal smell of sudden death confirmed the extinction of life, even before Derek saw the pulp that remained of his face and skull.

               Dropping his gun into one hand, Derek turned away from the body and hurried over to where Sarah lay. Her head moved a little as she heard him approach, and the fear that had been clawing at him since he had seen her drop relented slightly.

               “Sarah?”

               “I’m fine. I’m fine.” She sounded anything but. “I just… is he dead?”

               “Yes. Can you get up?”

               “No.”

               “No?”

               “…I need a minute.”

               She was lying on her side, knees pulled up to her chest in a fetal position, sweat and tears and blood soaking her face. Without a word, he sat down beside her, stretched out his legs and cushioned her head on his thigh. He ran his hand through her hair and worried briefly when she didn’t attempt to snap it off at the wrist, but the small smile on her lips suggested she had considered doing just that, and he felt a little more of the tension ebb away.

               “Impressive moves there, Connor.”

               “Mmm. You liked that, huh?”

               “Remind me never to piss you off.”

               “You piss me off all the time.”

               He laughed. “Gonna have to fix your arm again, aren’t I?”

               A faint grimace. “Which will piss me off.”

               “I’ll take the chance. I can run faster than you at the moment.”

               She smiled then, and closed her eyes. “Can you give me a minute?”

               “How about I give you a couple?”

               “Sounds nice.”

               For now, at least, they had earned this short reprieve. They still faced a long trek back up to the road, but he could only worry about one thing at a time, and, for now, that one thing was resting against his thigh, and he didn’t have the heart to disturb her.

~ ~ ~

               “Almost done here. You still with me?”

               “Yeah.” Her voice was slightly stronger this time.

Derek taped down the last portion of bandage covering the laceration on her arm. She had vomited twice while he reset the fracture and her face remained a pasty white, but she was sitting up unassisted now, and had managed to keep down a quarter-bottle of a nasty-colored isotonic drink that he had found stashed with the man’s supplies. He rested his fingers on her wrist. It took him thirty seconds to find her pulse, it was so weak, but it was there, which meant that she had a chance of standing up and staying up.

               “Shall we?”

               He held a hand out to her and she took hold of it, her palm cold and clammy as he pulled her to her feet. Keeping his arm around her waist as she leaned heavily against him, he hefted the duffle-bag onto his shoulder and managed to balance the twin weights.

               “Okay?”

               He felt her nod and knew that it was only sheer stubbornness that was keeping her upright.

               “We take it slow, and stop when we need to.”

               Another nod, but she took one step, then another, and they found an awkward rhythm together. Neither one of them gave the dense patch of undergrowth where Derek had dragged the body a second glance as they left the clearing.

~ ~ ~

               “Any better?” Derek continued to adjust the sling until Sarah nodded, then he re-knotted it securely. He watched as she gingerly allowed it to take over the support of her arm and let out a sigh of relief at the new-found comfort.

               “Much. Thanks.”

               “Here.” He dropped two Tylenol onto her palm. “Hold off on the codeine for now, I think it’ll knock you out.”

               “Think you might be right.” She had almost stumbled straight into a small pond just before he had called a halt and ordered their current rest-break. “You a medic in the future, Derek?”

               He shook his head. “No. We all get basic battlefield med training, but it’s pretty much limited to managing hemorrhage and shock, administering pain relief and knowing when to GLF.”

               “GLF?”

               “Go. Like. Fuck. Slap a clotting pack on, morphine, and move.”

               “Makes sense.”

               “I had a bit of an interest, hung out with the medics sometimes. They showed me how to start IVs, insert chest tubes. One of them gave me a couple of old textbooks to read.” He shrugged. “Maybe in another life…”

               She smiled, understanding all too keenly the concept of maybe in another life. “Y’know, I put my first field dressing on Kyle.”

               He stared at her, his stomach lurching automatically at the mention of his brother’s name. She barely ever spoke about Kyle and he had never tried to press her for any details, knowing the pain that dredging up the past inevitably brought with it. Somehow, getting injured seemed to make Sarah vulnerable to the point where she was willing to go one step further and lay herself open emotionally. He suspected it was because – if necessary – she could always blame the drugs, the pain, the blood loss, or some combination of the three.

               “He got shot. Well, he told me it was a flesh wound, but I nearly puked on him anyway.” She shook her head, horrified by her damsel-in-distress incompetence. “We were hiding in a storm drain and I bandaged his arm. I remember it was so fucking cold, and he put his arm around me and told me about John and the future. Your future. I fell asleep and I dreamed of dogs and screaming and fire.” That was the first nightmare. The images had altered slightly over the years, but the terror that they evoked remained the one constant.

               “How did he die?” Derek couldn’t look at her, could barely push the words past the dryness of his throat, but he had been desperate to know for months and he sensed that this was an all or nothing conversation.

She remained silent for a long time, her eyes closed and her fingers pale against the bottle of juice she held. When she answered, her voice was quiet, but unfaltering.

“Instantly.”

She studied him, gauging his reaction, trying to establish what level of detail he needed. Apparently, he needed to hear as much as she was willing to give. “They’d sent back a T-101. We blew it up in the street, but Kyle had been shot in the chest, and the blast...” She hesitated as the words choked her, wishing that the details had faded after seventeen years, but she could still remember how acrid the smoke had felt against her throat, and how hoarse Kyle’s voice had been as he called her name. Licking her chapped lips, she persevered; she owed Derek the truth. “I thought it was over but the fucking thing came at us again. We ended up in a factory full of automated machines.” She let out a harsh gasp of laughter. “Yeah, the irony wasn’t lost on me either. Kyle couldn’t run. He forced me ahead, and tried to fight it with a metal bar. He gave me enough time to get a safe distance, took a pipe bomb, lit the fuse and pushed it into the endo. The explosion killed him.”

               “It killed him?”

               “Yes.”

               “Didn’t kill it?”

               She looked away. John had told Derek that Kyle had died saving her life. It had been true. Kyle had saved her life over and over again in those terrible few hours, but ultimately she had also had to save herself.

               “You killed it, didn’t you?” The whole truth and nothing but the truth.

               “Yes. My leg was broken. A piece of shrapnel, here.” She touched the point on her left thigh where her femur had been snapped. “The machine was blown in half. I crawled, it crawled. I went through some kind of press, it followed but I managed to trap it, and I activated the press while it grabbed for my throat.” A quick shudder that had nothing to do with the chill that dawn was bringing. “I only found out where they’d buried Kyle later, after I got out of the hospital.” Her hand rested unconsciously on her abdomen and slow tears ran down her face. “So much happened, so quickly, it was almost impossible for me to do anything but stay on my feet and survive. But I did love him.” She looked straight at Derek, seeing the similarities that had made his presence hurt so much at first. His smile was barely perceptible, just a tiny change to his face, but there was peace there, and relief, and she leaned into the arm that he wrapped around her shoulders.

               “I miss him.” Her voice was muffled by his jacket. “I barely knew him and I still miss him.”

               He didn’t answer. His own sense of loss didn’t need voicing. He just tightened his arm around her in silent gratitude, as the sun began to dapple the tree canopy with light.

~ ~ ~

               “Not too much further now.”

               Sarah didn’t reply. She didn’t even have the strength to call him on his blatant lie. She was walking independently, keeping her head down, her shoulders heaving as she panted for air. They seemed to have been traveling uphill for hours, the sun rising steadily and beginning to prickle their faces with heat. She couldn’t stop again; if they stopped again, she didn’t think she’d be getting back up. So she continued to walk, feeling the burn in her legs as the gradient became steeper, and the occasional hand that Derek placed on her back to guide her in an easier direction.

               The longer they took, the greater the chance that they would be greeted by Kaliba reinforcements up on the road, and the greater the likelihood that John and Cameron would decide to head out themselves to try and track them down. She checked her watch: 6.22am. Keep moving, a mantra in her head prompted every step. Keep moving.

~ ~ ~

               “No. No hospital.”

               “Sarah, don’t be fucking stupid.”

               She was shaking her head vehemently, propping herself up against a tree and refusing point-blank to follow his advice and sit down.

               “Too many questions. Too complicated.”

               “We crashed our car down a ravine, and it took time for us to get back up to the road. Hell, Sarah, that’s pretty much what did actually happen.”

               “No. The police will get involved. You can fix me up... Done it before.”

               “I can’t. Not this time, not your arm. It needs pinning or it’ll mend badly, you know that. We’re just going to have to take the chance. Our IDs are good, nothing will get red-flagged and I’ll bust you out of there as soon as they’re done with you.”

               “Oh well, that’s easy then.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “What could possibly go wrong?”

               “Knowing our luck, absolutely everything. But you know that I’m right.”

               She did, which was only making her more pissed off. “I fucking hate anesthetics.”

               He laughed, surprised by her sudden capitulation, and she gave him a look that might have scared him had she not been swaying on the spot.

               “I don’t know why you’re laughing. They make me sick as a dog and you’re gonna be the one driving me home.”

               Shrugging, he decided to be optimistic. “At least it won’t be all over my truck this time.” He looked at her, the sunlight serving to emphasize how deathly pale she was. “You good to go?”

               “Yes.” There was no hesitation.

He gave her a go ahead gesture and followed behind her. He knew that she was unlikely to make it to the road under her own steam; he was amazed that she had made it this far. So he stayed close. Not so close that she would pick up on his concern, but close enough to catch her when she finally fell.

~ ~ ~

               The road was in sight when it happened. Sarah barely made a sound, just stopped, turned to face Derek, and shook her head once in a mute apology as her legs buckled. Despite his readiness, despite his expectations, he was still taken by surprise, lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that she had kept going for so long. Dropping his bag and lurching towards her, he caught her as she pitched forward and supported her weight to the ground. She was still conscious, telling him she was “sorry” as she shivered uncontrollably and tried not to let her eyes close. Laying her back on the ground, he draped his jacket over her and fumbled for her wrist. There was no pulse there, and the various degrees of staining on her dressings told him that she was continuing to bleed from all of the wounds he had bandaged. Time, and their limited options, were running out.

               Without the luxury of being able to second-guess himself, he quickly sorted through his bag, discarding most of its contents and taking only the canteen and a spare clip of ammunition. As an after-thought, he stuffed fresh bandages and the painkillers into his pockets. He left everything else in the bag, which he crammed beneath a shattered tree stump; he wasn’t certain that he would ever return for it, but he didn’t want to leave it for anyone else to find.

               He turned back to Sarah, who was still struggling to keep her eyes open, cold sweat beading on her forehead, her face a sickly, corpse-like yellow.

               “I have to get you up.” He expected an argument but instead she nodded once, tears of frustration prickling her eyes as she tried to move and nothing cooperated.

“Easy, easy. Let me.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to a sitting position. She moaned, her eyes rolling back, and he knew then that as soon as he stood her up she would faint. She was gripping weakly onto his shirt and he could see that she was scared, scared of everything being so out of her control, and terrified that she would lose consciousness and not be able to claw her way back out.

               “Sarah?”

               “What?” Little more than a gasp, but she managed to focus on him.

               “I won’t let anything happen to you, okay? But I need you to try not to fight me.”

               His words took a minute to sink in, for her to work out what he meant, what he was asking of her, and she didn’t like it. It was in her nature to fight, and she knew that she couldn’t make him any promises. But in the end, when he finally pulled her to her feet she couldn’t summon the energy to resist, and, for once, let herself sink peacefully into the darkness.

~ ~ ~

 

Uh oh… Sorry about that ;-) Part 4 tomorrow…