Page 15 of The Last True Hero
"You almost didn't." They shared a bleak smile, and then Mia looked around for McClain.
"He saved you," Jenny said, her hand sliding into Mia's. "Told me he'd go bring you back and he did."
They watched as he barked out orders, snapping the small band into a well-organized unit. Mia and Jenny set up a makeshift infirmary, checking everyone over from top to bottom for any signs of bite marks. They were almost home free when Mia dragged up Joe's left sleeve and saw the bloodied gash there, the teeth marks painted clearly in the boy's flesh and the mottled blackness beneath the skin as the pathogen took hold.
Her gut dropped. Joe was still out of it, his face pale and his eyes wide as he looked around. "W-where's my d-dad?" he kept asking. "Mia, did you see him? We have to get him. W-we have to—"
Her ears were ringing. She couldn't hear him anymore. All she could see were the teeth marks in his skin.
Joe Erris. Her Joe, the boy who made her deliveries every Wednesday when she'd finished with her latest batch at the still. Joe, with his stutter that he'd worked so hard on diminishing, and the secret crush he'd had on Sally Evans at the store.
Boots stepped into her vision and someone grabbed her arm. She had the feeling the newcomer asked her something too. Mia looked up and sound suddenly broke back into her world.
"Mia," McClain repeated. "What's wrong?"
"It's Joe," she said, suddenly feeling like she could move again. Life surged back into focus, and with it came determination. "Jenny!" she yelled. "Get me the tourniquet out of the kit, and the cauterization knife!"
"Shit." McClain saw what she'd seen, and wrenched the kid's arm out.
Joe looked down. "No," he whispered. "N-no!" He started screaming, tearing at his arm.
McClain grabbed him and held him down. "Stop moving. The more you move, the faster the pathogen travels through your bloodstream."
"Jenny, the kit!" Mia bellowed.
McClain's hard eyes met hers, and he gave a little shake of his head. "Mia—"
"Shut up," she said fiercely, undoing her belt and ripping it free from her belt loops with a meaty slap. She knew what his eyes were telling her, and she didn't want to hear the truth of it in his words. Joe wasn't dead, not yet. Mia wound the belt around Joe's arm, up under his shoulder, and wrenched it so tight that his circulation stopped.
"You don't have time for the kit," McClain said.
She just stared at Joe's arm. "I don't have—"
"Here. Swap places with me." McClain dragged a clean machete from his belt. It was a simple tool a lot of Badlanders carried.
Joe saw the machete and lost it. Grabbing the end of her belt, Mia shoved the hard leather between his teeth, forcing him to clench them around the leather. "That's it," she murmured. "Bite down hard."
He shook his head.
"I'm sorry, Joe. This is the only way."
Joe's nostrils flared, his breath coming in harsh pants and a scream building in his lungs.
"I've got you," Mia told him, grabbing hold of his other hand. "Hold my hand, Joe. Look in my eyes. I've got you."
The trust there... it almost flayed her. For she didn't know if she had the answers. A revenant's bite was often fatal, with almost 90 percent of the bitten beginning the transformation. You had to burn the bodies then, make sure there was no chance of them coming back. It was a fate worse than death, and nearly every Badlander had lost someone to the damned plague.
The meteor that caused the Darkening brought with it the revenant pathogen, or so her mom told her when she was a little girl. When a group of miners went searching for precious minerals at the meteor site, they didn't come out again. By the time the rescuers dug the miners out, every single one of them had been dead, though strangely unmarked. Half an hour after they hauled the first body out, it got up and tore out a doctor's throat. Unprepared, almost all of the medical staff were slaughtered before they could escape and fetch help. Too late, though. Three of the revenants escaped, carrying with them the hunger for flesh, which had spread through the heart of the country.
The scientists who were left managed to locate a virulent pathogen in the tissues of three of the bodies that could bring the dead back to life. There'd been a concentrated effort to wipe out the revenant scourge, but then the riots started breaking out again as resources began to grow scarce, a couple of leaking nuclear plants poisoned the earth, and there'd been no time to finish the job.
The machete flashed up in the corner of her vision. Mia didn't dare take her eyes off Joe's. Blood splashed against her sleeve and Joe's eyes widened in shock and pain. The scream pouring from his ravaged throat was the worst thing she'd ever heard. He kept screaming, even as McClain worked swiftly to staunch the blood flow, and then slowly, slowly, his eyes rolled back in his head and he was out of it.
Mia almost threw up. "Jesus," she whispered. The fingers clamped around hers slackened, and she pried them loose.
Jenny appeared with the med kit, panting swiftly. "Shit," she whispered, taking in the scene.
"Heat the knife," McClain instructed, using gauze to staunch the blood.
"Did we get it?" Mia demanded. Joe's severed arm lay at her feet, the veins in his elbow a roadmap of black beneath his pale skin, but the decay didn't seem to have travelled further. "Did we get it in time?"
"Won't know." McClain wouldn't look at her. "Just heat the knife, Mia."
