Page 68 of Freak
Close to Abigail.
Focused on her work, she didn’t register the near miss, but Mel shot to his feet.
“Keep her safe!” he shouted at Nacto as he redrew his Glock and stormed into the continuing battle. He was going to find the fucker shooting that gun when women and children were around.
His fucking woman chief among them.
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~oOo~
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He arrived at the heartof the chaos, and tried to take a beat to find the shooter or at least a place where he could do some good, but it was a scene straight out of a Cecil B. DeMille epic. Brother fighting brother. Knives, fists, logs, chairs, anything they got their hands on. Civilians in the mix as well, giving as good as they got. Few innocents, as far as he could tell, remained here, in the thick of it all, but those few were in full frenzy, too panicked to find their way out.
Nearby, he saw Showdown battling it out with Gravy and another Montana patch. The old man was losing, and Gravy had a pig sticker in his hand. He had to help Show before Gravy fucking killed him.
It was the last thought Mel had that night.
Chapter Twenty
Fully aware that pandemoniumchurned all around her, fully aware she was in danger, possibly mortal danger, Abigail tuned it out. She forced even the occasional gunshots to the far reaches of her attention. If she paid it any heed at all, fear might get both hands around her neck. Before her was someone who needed help, help she could provide in some measure, so she turned her whole focus on him and let the world around her do what it would.
The man before her had fallen into the bonfire, had caught fire himself before he’d been pulled free, and was very badly burned. At first, after he gulped down some of her cider, he’d been quiet, lying still and silent, but when she and the man who’d stayed to help—his name was Nacto, she remembered—peeled the burned shreds of his clothes from his back, he began to moan. The night was noisy with trouble, but Abigail heard the plaintive sound rumbling under the riot, and she felt the vibration of it each time she touched him.
His injuries were beyond traditional healing methods, she knew that the instant she saw him, and smelled the tang of cooked meat hovering over him. But she also knew there was no one else around who could do more right now than her. Tasha Westby was out of town. David Draper, the other doctor at the clinic, lived close to Rolla since his divorce and didn’t spend much time in Signal Bend when he wasn’t working.
Elizabeth Morrow, the clinic nurse, had left the festival with her four littles before dinnertime. Abigail hadn’t seen Jill Sharpe, the clinic receptionist and med tech, all day. Jill had had a bad cough earlier in the week, at the last festival planning meeting; she’d likely stayed home today.
Signal Bend was bigger and more prosperous these days than Abigail had ever known it to be, but it was still a very small town. There were no other medical professionals anywhere nearby. They didn’t even have a vet in town anymore. Doc Carver and his staff of six junior vets covered Phelps and Crawford counties and took care of everybody’s animals, from pets to livestock—including Abigail’s—but Doc ran Carver Mobile Veterinary Services and was based in Cuba.
What this man needed was an ambulance to the trauma center in Springfield. Lying on the ground in the middle of a sudden war, most of the skin of his back burned away, infection vectors were everywhere. But even if somebody had already called 911, it would be up to an hour before an ambulance arrived on the scene.
She and Nacto got the last of his kutte and shirt off, and she gently eased aloe, cooling and antibacterial, over the crisped meat of his back and neck, his shoulders and arms. The man gasped and quivered at the first few touches, then sighed. His wheezing moans quieted.
She coated the gauze in aloe, too, and Nacto helped her lay wide strips of it on his back. It might hurt him greatly to remove those in the hospital, aloe could become sticky when it dried, but she was sure that was better than keeping his tissues exposed to the dirt and ash and smoke around them.
