Page 67 of Freak
He had no idea if the brawl was the cause of the chaos, or something else had caused both the chaos and the brawl.
Another shot. Two more. Mel, Dom, and Thumper all ducked reflexively. Mel tried to discern where the shots were coming from, but the visibility sucked.
“Holy shit!” Thumper yelled.
“What the fuck!” was Dom’s guttural growl.
Mel didn’t shout; he veered toward the fire, where Jonesy, Nacto, and Bobby, a SoCal patch, clustered around the patch who’d fallen in. It was the one clear thing he could see. They were trying to beat the flames down with blankets. But they were fanning the flames more than anything.
“Roll him!” Mel shouted as he ran. “Rollhim in the blankets, don’t flap ‘em like that!” Arriving, he yanked a smoking blanket out of Jonesy’s hands and dropped to his knees, falling over the body with the blanket spread in his hands. He could feel fire licking at his hands, his face, but he kept going, rolling the patch—he still had no idea who it was—over and over until his was packed in the blanket like a sausage.
When the flames were out, Mel pushed back to his knees. When the patch groaned, the sound weak and agonized, Mel said, “Easy, brother, easy. We gotcha.”
He drew the charred blanket from his face.
It was Maniac Weathers. His face was bright red, wetly shiny across his forehead. Most of his hair was gone. One ear was nearly black. He blinked smoke-smeared eyes and tried to form words through blistered lips.
“My ...” he forced out in a whispered croak. “... My ...back.”
Nacto dropped to his knees beside Mel. Jonesy and Bobby were gone; they must have run back into the melee to do what they could. Mel couldn’t say whether they meant to add heat or cool to the situation.
“He went in backward—he needs off his back,” Nacto said and reached over Maniac’s body to grab at his arm.
Understanding, Mel pulled Nacto away and moved to Maniac’s other side, where he could push rather than pull.
“You gotta be able to turn your head if we do this, Mane. Can you do it?”
Maniac thought about that for a moment before he creakily turned his head to left. The skin on the right side his neck split as he did it, but he didn’t make another sound of pain. When Mel and Nacto got him onto his belly, however, getting his weight off his ruined back, Maniac screamed.
Another shot went off. Mel whipped his head to glare over his shoulder. Who the fuck was shooting in all this mess, and why wasn’t anybody dropping that asshole?
“Oh!”
At that sweetly shocked cry, Mel’s head whipped back around. Abigail stood above him, her brow creased with worry and her eyes wide with fear. Her chest heaved with her wildly panting breath.
“Abs! Get the fuck outta here!”
“I can help!” She hefted the big old leather bag she called a handbag and reminded him more of a mail bag. “I can help! I have some supplies that can help!”
Every instinct in his body demanded that he leave Maniac, grab Abigail, and get her the fuck out of danger. Somebody was fucking shooting out here! But what medical help was here? Tasha was at some big deal medical conference in Boston, and the other doctor in her clinic didn’t attend town events like this. They had nurses on staff at the clinic, of course, and some or all of them might be here, but where?
Only Abigail was here, standing above a badly burned Night Horde patch.
“What can you do?” Nacto asked her. “What supplies?”
Dropping to her knees, Abigail opened her bag and pulled out a medium-sized Mason jar full of what appeared in the strange light to be opalescent goo. “It’s aloe vera. I always bring it to festivals because there’s so much open-fire cooking. I have gauze, too. And this. Maybe it’ll help for pain.” She drew a corked bottle out, and Mel smiled a little. Her cider.
Looking down at the side of Maniac’s boiled face, he tried to make eye contact. “It’s her cider. It’ll drop a full-grown man in about four big swallows. Think you can get some down?”
“Yeah,” Maniac gasped. “Nac, help.”
They got him up enough to get the mouth of the bottle to his lips, and he swallowed down about half of it.
“S’good shit,” Manic mumbled and then belched.
Abigail was already fully at work. Arrayed on top of her bag was a small bottle of her homemade hand sanitizer and a sizable roll of wide gauze. She pushed Mel out of the way and asked Nacto to help her get to Maniac’s back so she could cover it with aloe and at least protect it from further infection.
Another shot was fired—and this one whizzed by them, close enough to be heard in the air.
