Fic - Breaking Point 6/8

[cj2017]

Title: Breaking Point (6/8)

Rating: Hard R: violence, sex, harsh language, you probably know the drill by now.

Word Count: 35,000 all told. This part 5,000.

 

 

~ ~ ~

Breaking Point 6/8

~ ~ ~

 

When she looked up into the sky, embers were drifting amongst the snowflakes like wayward fireflies, and Sarah squinted with confusion before realizing she was lying on her back.

               “Oh fuck…”

               Her hands reached down, grappling to pinpoint the source of the shearing pain in her thigh.

               “Sarah, stay still.”

               She turned her head sharply. Derek was kneeling beside her and unwinding his scarf from around his neck.

               “What?” Pushing herself up, she took in the wreckage that remained of Deacon Research and Development, a twisted shell of metal and concrete with small explosions still popping in its centre. “Oh.” She fell back and then tried to get up again. “Jenkins?”

               “I think that’s him.” Derek pointed to a blackened lump at the outer edges of the area of singed earth. “He’s gone, anyway. You’ve been out for about ten minutes and there’s nothing moving back there.”

               “You okay?” Sarah looked towards Derek. He seemed relatively unscathed, but he was moving clumsily and his breathing was erratic.

               “Yeah. Well, no worse, anyway.” He shuffled closer. “You took some shrapnel.”

               “Yeah, I figured.” She could feel the shard of metal sticking out of the back of her left thigh. Moving the leg experimentally, she consoled herself with the fact that this time her femur seemed to be intact.

               “And you were on fire,” he added as an afterthought.

               “I was?”

               “Just the outer layer of your coat and pants. The snow put you out pretty quickly when I rolled you over.” He moved her hands from her leg, and turned her onto her side slightly. “Ready?”

               She raised an eyebrow at him, but nodded once, and without giving her the opportunity to tense up he took hold of the metal and pulled hard.

               “Jesus.” Spots danced across her vision, snowflakes and fire colliding with the rush of darkness. Reaching out sluggishly, she grabbed a handful of snow and rubbed it onto her face. The shock of the cold had the desired effect and the threat of fainting gradually faded. With awareness came the full force of the pain; she moaned softly, willing the freezing temperature to numb it to a bearable level. She could feel his hand pressing on the cavity he had made and the steady flow of blood that escaped his fingers.

               “Bend your knee.”

               She slowly did as he asked, clenching her fists as he wrapped his scarf around her leg and pulled it tight.

               “That feel okay?”

               “Mm.” It didn’t, but the cold was seeping in and that was helping. Without being prompted, she held her hand out to him and struggled to stand. Her leg threatened to give way, but she pushed down firmly and managed to stay on her feet. When she took a cautious step and didn’t fall flat on her face, she let out a relieved breath. They had to keep moving. Her priority was finding somewhere to shelter, but they needed to put some distance between themselves and the wreckage before any of the authorities worked out what had happened.

               “Think John’s on his way?” she asked quietly.

               Derek answered without hesitation. “If he’s picking up a signal then he’s on his way. There’s no-one left but us, Sarah. He’ll be okay.”

               The sound she made in response to that was a desperate one, and she couldn’t meet his eyes. She had intended them to cut out the implants, rest, and then carry on hiking down the logging track, but she realized now how completely unrealistic that plan was.

Derek tipped her chin with his hand. “We kill the signal, John’s going to search blindly till he finds you.”

She knew Derek was right. The last thing she wanted was John out there for any longer than he needed to be. Nodding slowly, she tried to order her thoughts. “The implants will still need to be removed.”

“Yes.”

“As soon as they find us.” She didn’t need to elaborate, didn’t need to tell him that they would probably be unconscious or dead by then. Lowering herself to her knees again, she struggled to unzip the bag, and then ran her hands around the base of it. Her fingers finally closed around a marker pen. She quickly tore a page from the map book they had brought.

Implant – right thigh. It was difficult to write, her hand only able to hold the pen loosely. Derek had gotten her idea and was occupied with cutting lengths of duct tape. He wasn’t watching her. Her hand shook, her fingers cramping with the effort. I love you.

She folded the note as tightly as she could and gave it to Derek. He taped it to her chest, covering it with enough strips to keep it protected from the snow. The black of the tape stood out plainly against her gray jacket.

He wrapped his hand around hers and set off walking as soon as she did.

~ ~ ~

               It had taken too long. Sarah’s fingers had been next to useless, fumbling with the wire cutters, dropping them frequently and forcing her to dig them out of the snow. By the time she had cut an adequate hole in both layers of the fence, Derek was barely conscious, his lips blue and his eyes unfocused.

               “C’mon.” She tugged at his jacket, both of her hands wrapped in the fabric. Halfway up, he fell back down again. In an instant, she saw his brother – Kyle’s body ruined and unmoving as fires blazed all around them. “No.” She shook him, pulling at him again. “Derek, get up. C’mon.” He made a half-hearted attempt to push her away. She shook him harder. “Derek Reese, get the fuck up with me, now!”

               Her voice strained and cracked as she shouted over the howl of the wind, but he was moving, his hands clutching at her, and together they managed to get him sitting up. He didn’t seem to understand fully why he then had to crawl through two jagged wire holes, but he followed her instructions regardless. By the time she had pushed her bag and then herself through to the other side, he was still standing, his expression blank as he stared at the trees.

               “Just a little further,” she said, wrapping her arm around him.

               She had set the treeline as some sort of goal, a destination to aim for. The only problem was that she had no idea what she would do when they reached it.

~ ~ ~

The Jeep’s wheels spun, snow flicking up in a blur, as John struggled to reverse it. He felt the tires slip and then unexpectedly gain the slightest hint of traction, and he eased the steering wheel to the left in accordance with Cameron’s hand signals. When she gave him a thumbs-up, he let the engine idle, wiping his sweaty palms onto his pants and trying not to look at the clock on the dash. Without the slightest effort, Cameron lifted the ice-encrusted rock they had run aground on, and cleared it from their path. When she opened the driver’s door and waited for him to clamber over into the passenger seat, the wind whistled into the truck. He took his seat, feeling slightly useless, but the debris on the track was usually too heavy for him to shift, and her ability to detect it in advance meant that they were avoiding more than they were hitting.

Their progress had been achingly slow but they were making progress, and he forced himself to try to relax. On the screen of the PDA, the two dots had reached the outskirts of the forest. He glanced at the dash again and chewed nervously on his bottom lip. The thermometer at the side of the clock was giving a reading of 2°F. 

~ ~ ~

               “Okay, easy. You can sit down now.”

With both arms around Derek, Sarah lowered him to the ground. He didn’t even seem to notice that they had stopped. His eyes closed immediately, fluid gurgling in his throat, and with a sudden twist of fear she realized he was no longer shivering. The extensive list of hypothermia symptoms that she had read on Wilderness Bob’s website was hazy now, but she remembered that particular one being highlighted as a late and ominous development.

She turned around slowly, trying to gauge the territory and the depth of the snow. Away to the right, a stunted fir with low branches stood beside a large boulder. She limped over to it and dropped to her knees. Beneath the tree, the snow had gathered thickly, the prevailing wind causing it to drift around the trunk. The powder moved easily when she scooped her hands into it, and she began to dig out a hollow that was wide enough for them to sit in and deep enough to create a wind-break. Low branches gave some protection from the snow that had begun to fall heavily again.

By the time she went back for Derek, the activity had made her warmer and her head was clearer. She didn’t try to rouse him. Taking hold of his arms, she dragged him over to the shelter and tucked him inside.

There were matches in the duffel bag, but after her third failed attempt to light sodden twigs she gave up and resigned herself to sharing body heat for warmth. Emptying the matches from their plastic bag, she filled the bag with snow. Then she opened her coat, tucked the bag inside it and maneuvered herself behind Derek.

“Oh God.” She shuddered as the chill of the plastic passed through her clothing, but the snow slowly began to melt and she endured the discomfort until they had enough water to drink. Tearing a small hole in the plastic, she dripped the water into his mouth. After choking and spluttering her first offering down his chin, he gradually seemed to get the idea and managed to drink half of the liquid. She drank the rest and forced herself to start all over again, pulling him firmly back against her to compensate for the loss of her own heat.

They shared another bag, but by the time she had finished her portion, she couldn’t remember exactly how she had started the process off. Her arms felt stiff as she struggled to interlock her fingers across his chest, and when she breathed she could feel infection thick and heavy at the bases of her lungs. She thought about John, but he was four years old and chasing through the jungle. Then he was seven, and crying and hating her for not being able to afford summer camp, when the truth was she couldn’t protect him if she let him go. She needed to move so that he wouldn’t come out there, but she couldn’t push up with her legs, and as soon as she tried she forgot exactly why she was making the effort.

The snow rustled gently as it landed on the pine needles, steady and soothing now that they were sheltered from the wind. Closing her eyes, Sarah finally stopped fighting and let it lull her to sleep.

~ ~ ~

               “They’re not moving.”

               John stared at the PDA. Thirty seconds ticked by and the dots were still in the same place. He shook the device carefully and then, fearing for its signal, held it up in different positions around the truck’s interior. Two minutes passed and nothing changed. Until then, one or both of the dots had consistently shifted position at each update.

               “They’re not too far from the track,” Cameron said, diplomatically. She checked the truck’s digital display and decided not to comment any further. From the expression on his face, John was well aware that stopping in such temperatures for any length of time would be incredibly dangerous, and did not need her to point that fact out to him. Accelerating smoothly around a small rock, she felt quite pleased with herself. She had read about tact one night when she was studying the dictionary, but this was the first occasion she had remembered to use any.

~ ~ ~

               “Mom!” John spun around, the beam of his flashlight gliding off the huge trees and throwing back shadows. “Mom! Derek!”

               Beside him, Cameron was turning slowly. Using her thermal imaging, she was scanning for body heat, her face blank as she concentrated. Since leaving the truck, they had hiked for twenty minutes. According to the PDA, they were now practically standing on the origin of its signal.

               John walked further into the dense patch of trees, searching for signs of disturbance, for any indication that someone had passed through the area. There was nothing. He tried to tell himself that the snowfall would have obliterated such signs within minutes, but his breath was coming in huge, shuddering gulps and he could feel tears tracking a cold path down his cheeks.

               “Mom!”

               The wind swirled his cries away, but he continued to call out, not caring that his voice broke more often than not. In the clearing, he could see Cameron shaking her head. He ignored her, walked a little further, and shouted again.

~ ~ ~

               The snow had covered them like a blanket, hiding them from view as it slowly leeched the life from them. Barely conscious and unable to understand what was happening to her, Sarah reacted instinctively to the sound of her son’s voice.

               Her left hand was all that she could move, and it took a desperate effort to lift it from the snow. It fell back immediately, her fingers frozen and useless. Too drowsy to try again, she closed her eyes.

~ ~ ~

               Cameron snapped her head around when she heard the noise. It had been a sound distinct from the muted sounds of the storm, a rustle of fabric followed by the thud of something dropping, and she focused in on the direction. Her imaging program picked out hibernating creatures snug in their burrows before finally centering on two larger shapes. These shapes were colored in blues and greens and the faintest hint of yellow, and they were unmistakably human. When she recognized Sarah’s smaller form, she lowered her gun and called John over. He came at once, stumbling in the undergrowth and shining his flashlight where she pointed.

               He was running before he had time to be afraid. When he reached the boulder, he hurled himself down, shifting the snow away frantically. He didn’t look at the gloved hand that marked their position. If he looked at it, he would have to start wondering why it wasn’t moving.

               “Mom?” The word escaped him in a whisper. Her face now uncovered, Sarah was deathly pale, tiny beads of frost glistening on her eyelashes. He brushed them away as if that was the only thing stopping her from waking.

Behind him, Cameron had taken over the digging. She pulled Derek free from Sarah’s hold and laid him down.

               “Are they alive?” John was staring, terrified, at his mother. She hadn’t moved, her eyes were still closed, and he couldn’t see her breathing.

               “Derek is.” Holding her bare hand above Derek’s nose and mouth, Cameron could detect the faintest movement of air as he breathed.

               John followed her lead. It seemed to take forever before he felt Sarah take a breath, and when she did his face crumpled. “We need to get them out of here.” He didn’t care that he was crying. “We need…” It was only when he pulled her forward into his arms that he noticed the tape on her jacket. “…Cameron?”

               The machine’s dexterity was unaffected by the cold. She efficiently dispensed with the tape and then hesitated with the paper in her hand. Without unfolding it, she passed it to John and took a step back. The paper crinkled and rustled. When he spoke again, she could hear the effort it was taking for him to keep his voice level.

               “Right thigh. That’s where the implants are.”

               Cameron had already flicked open a knife and was holding the fabric of Derek’s pants taut to make them easier to cut through. 

               John’s eyes widened as he watched her. He shook his head. “No. Not now. We need to get them out of here.” Sarah’s face was ice-cold where it rested against his, and her lips were purple.

               “If we take them to the cabin, Kaliba has our location.” Resolute, Cameron placed the tip of the knife to the fabric.

               “Not to the cabin, to the truck. We can do it there. We have the full kit there and we can start getting them warmer.”

               Recognizing that it was a more practical course of action, Cameron closed her knife and placed it back in her pocket. Without giving her the opportunity to reconsider, John stood up, cradling Sarah in his arms. He waited for Cameron to lift Derek and then followed her footsteps through the trees. He managed to keep her within sight, even though his muscles burned and his breath came in gasps. For every four breaths he took, his mother took one, the tiny movement of air cool but reassuring against his cheek. He lowered his head against the wind and kept walking.

~ ~ ~

               The sun was just beginning to rise when they reached the truck. Thin streams of winter light crept between the trees as the storm clouds blew over in a strengthening wind. The forest, glistening with fresh snowfall, was picture-perfect, and under any other circumstances John would have been awed by the sight. As he laid Sarah beside Derek on the back seat, the only things he noticed in the increasing light were the bruises on her face, the matted blood in Derek’s hair, and the deeply-stained scarf knotted around her thigh.

               “What do we do first?” He looked to Cameron. The machines always had detailed files on human anatomy. His mother had hated that; hated the fact that the knowledge was only there to make them more efficient as killers. John was fervently hoping it would make Cameron more effective as a healer.

She had already started the engine and turned the heat up high. “Place these under their arms, around the neck and over the groin. Don’t put them directly onto the skin.” She spoke as if she were reading aloud and he realized that was exactly what she was doing. Her eyes were fixed on him but focused elsewhere at the same time.

               Taking the chemical heat pads from her, he began to activate them and tuck them in where she had instructed. Running her hands over her two patients, she decided their clothing was waterproof enough to stay on them until they got to the cabin. When John was finished, she covered them with blankets and used her own jacket to prop Derek up slightly.

               “I need antiseptic wipes, the scalpel and the artery forceps.” She folded the blanket back to expose Derek’s leg and used her knife to cut through his pants. There was a small reddened area in the center of his thigh; she pressed hard over it, her eyes narrowed with concentration. “They’ve injected it deep into the muscle.”

               “Can you get it out?”

               “Yes.”

 John passed her the wipes, and unfolded a pad of gauze in readiness. He looked away as she cut, but when the blood ran sluggishly across Derek’s thigh, he soaked it up with the gauze, and took the bloodied scalpel back when she handed it to him. The forceps disappeared into the incision, working their way down gradually before finally opening as she located the tiny piece of metal. It came away with the slightest of twists. He pressed down hard on the wound to stem the bleeding.

“Keep the pressure on it.” Cameron placed the implant to one side and began to wipe her instruments clean. “A simple dressing should suffice.”

Her attempts to distract him were quite transparent, but he appreciated them anyway as she cut away Sarah’s clothing.

“She won’t feel it, John.”

He nodded. His fingers were white where they held the gauze and he eased off slightly when he realized the bleeding was only light. By the time he was smoothing a dressing into place, Cameron had set the second implant next to the first and was gripping Sarah’s leg tightly.

“They should be easy to destroy,” she gestured at the crimson-slicked pieces of metal as she lifted her gauze to check Sarah’s blood loss.

“Yeah,” John said slowly, an idea beginning to take shape. “No. Wait.” He pulled the PDA from his pocket and studied the screen. “They’re still transmitting.”

Cameron was a quick study. “Decoy.”

“Decoy.” He gave her a brief smile. “We can leave them out here for Kaliba to come and chase.” He looked out of the window at the clouds massing again. A light snow was already beginning to fall. “By the time they get anyone to the area, our tracks will be long gone.”

At her nod, he took up the implants, opened the truck’s door and stepped outside. A flower of red blossomed outwards when he dropped them into the snow, but he smothered it quickly, sealing the metal into a tight snowball. Eyeing the clearest path, he aimed towards the facility, trying to give the snowball a realistic trajectory, and pitched it as far into the trees as he could. It dropped beyond his line of sight, but the two red dots continued to blink on the PDA, bright as a beacon and deep in the forest.

“Find that, you bastards,” he whispered.

When he clambered back into the truck, Cameron was rearranging the blankets over Sarah.

 “They okay?”

               “They need fluids, glucose, antibiotics.” Although these were all things they had, it was not feasible to administer any of them immediately. “And I need to drive very carefully.” It wasn’t what John wanted to hear, but her research had placed great emphasis upon this point. “In the severely hypothermic patient,” she intoned, “an unexpected jolt can result in cardiac arrest.”

               Earlier, when she had adjusted the pace of her walking, John had merely assumed she had done so for his benefit, and he stared at her astounded. “Jesus, Cameron. Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

               “You were already being careful. I didn’t want to worry you further.”

               “Next time, worry me, okay?” Settling in the footwell, he placed a protective hand across his mother and his uncle. “I’ll stay in the back with them.”

               Where his hand rested, he could feel the shallow rise and fall when Sarah breathed. Her rate seemed to have increased slightly. He drew in a shaky breath of his own as Cameron pulled the Jeep out onto the track.

~ ~ ~

               She was lying down and she was slightly warmer. Those two facts Sarah was able to discern without opening her eyes. Sleep pulled insistently at her again, but unease was beginning to eat into the lethargy and she knew she needed to get up.

When she tried to move, nothing cooperated. Her limbs were leaden and her fingers barely twitched, their tips completely numb. Which meant that firing a gun was out of the question, holding her gun wouldn’t be possible, and if she couldn’t form her hand into a fist she couldn’t fight. If Kaliba had them again, she wouldn’t be able to fight.

               “Mom?”

               She made a soft noise of distress. If that was a trick, it was a cruel one. But with her son’s voice came the gentlest of touches on her shoulder. Not daring to hope but needing to know, she forced her eyes open and turned her head.

               “Hey.” John’s hand moved to her face and rested on her forehead. There were tears in his eyes when he smiled. “You’re both safe. We got the implants out,” he said simply.

               She licked her dry lips, but the relief at seeing him unharmed was making her dizzy and she couldn’t do any more than that. Cameron spoke from the driver’s seat. Too foggy to hear what had been said, Sarah saw him nod and felt him move away slightly. She was drifting off again when his hand lifted her head and a cup pressed against her lips.

               “Try to drink this.”

               The smell of hot, sweet milk and chocolate turned her stomach, but the steam felt wonderful as it bathed her face and she swallowed obediently just to keep the cup there a little longer. When he took it away, she started to shiver and couldn’t understand why that made him smile at her.

               “I think that’s a good sign, mom.”

               It didn’t feel like a good sign. It made her ache all over and she started to cough.

               “Easy, easy.” He knelt higher and pulled her into his arms. Somehow, against the sway of the truck, he held her steady until the coughing stopped. She felt like a wrung-out rag when she was done and her eyes closed as soon as he laid her back down.

               “We’ll be home soon,” he told her. “Go back to sleep.”

               She mumbled her agreement, and took his advice.

~ ~ ~

               It seemed to take hours. Hours of painstakingly slow progress as Cameron avoided every bump, trough and concealed obstacle on the path. Hours of John watching and waiting and wishing he could do something. When they rounded the final bend and he saw the cabin, he laid his head down against his mother’s side and felt a passing sorrow that he had no god to thank.

               Sarah woke as he lifted her from the back seat. She shook her head, struggling weakly, but he tightened his hold.

               “Just this once, mom. Let me.” It wasn’t as if she could’ve walked, had he actually set her down.

               The fire was burning low in the hearth when he carried her into the cabin, the warm air soothing her throat as she breathed. Cameron had already taken Derek into John’s bedroom, and Sarah could hear water running as the bath filled. After sitting her up against the pillows of her own bed, John covered her with blankets and edged towards the door.

               “I’m gonna go get Cameron.”

               She smiled as he left, wondering if she’d imagined the sudden blush coloring his cheeks. If her hands had been working she could have undressed herself, but tearing off her gloves with her teeth had revealed white, nerveless fingertips. Some were already beginning to blister as the frostbite thawed. The friction of the material pulling across her fingers made her eyes tear and she curled onto her side, holding her hands out in front of her to stop them from touching anything else.

               “You should’ve let me do that.” Cameron knelt by the bedside. The machine’s hands were warm and soft as she turned Sarah’s wrists. “You have superficial frostbite.”

               “Yeah,” Sarah gasped. Superficial wouldn’t have been the word she would have chosen. Unable to bear the thought of Cameron doing anything to treat it, she changed the subject abruptly. “Derek okay?”

               Cameron hesitated with her hand on the lid of the first aid kit. “He hasn’t responded as quickly as you. I’ve started an IV and put him in a bath at the recommended temperature for core rewarming. John’s with him.”

She watched Sarah attempt to process the information, which seemed to take a little while. Although Cameron didn’t want to press for a full account of what had happened, she needed to know whether they could afford to remain at the cabin for any length of time. She waited until Sarah looked up at her, and then kept her question simple: “What happened to the facility?”

               “It’s gone. They’re all gone.”

Cameron nodded; she had suspected as much. She had detected the smoke in the forest and there had been no-one in pursuit of them during the drive back, but confirmation was always preferable to supposition.

The warm air that had seemed such a blessing at first was now making all of Sarah’s injuries throb in unison, and she screwed her eyes shut.

Noting her distress, Cameron opened the first aid kit and began to select items from it. “I need to get you undressed, and then I can give you something for the pain.”

Sarah managed to unclench her teeth enough to give her consent. “Okay. Do what you have to do.” And then knock me out, she added silently. There was a snick of scissors and she realized that Cameron was taking the easy option with her clothing. The machine gave a quiet oh of surprise when she cut Sarah’s tank top away.

“What did he use?” Cameron pressed carefully against the linear contusions that covered Sarah’s back. Satisfied there were no fractures, she soaked a cloth and began to clean the dirt from the numerous shallow cuts.

“Rubber baton, scalpel.” Sarah drew her knees up, her body rigid. There was antiseptic in the water.

“Where else?”

“Nowhere,” she said, too quickly. “I’m fine. You should see to Derek.” She didn’t know why she was lying. It made no sense really, but she felt freezing cold and too hot all at once and she just wanted to go back to sleep.

Not at all fooled, Cameron was studying her intently. “Sarah, where else?”

“Leg took some shrapnel.” She hoped that would be enough for Cameron to be getting along with, but when she felt hands beginning to unfasten the laces on her boot she remembered exactly why she was attempting to obstruct the machine’s examination. “No, don’t… I can…”

The boot came off with difficulty and she closed her eyes as the room began to spin. She heard Cameron call her name sharply and felt hands holding her hair back as she vomited. Then she felt nothing.

 

~ ~ ~

TBC…

~ ~ ~