Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

On the morning of their third day at the hot springs, two things happened.

The first was that John surfaced from a deep, exhausted, and dreamless sleep to a metallic clatter, a low murmur, a scent of coffee, and then another aroma vaguely like stew. His initial, groggy thought: Dad? For a few precious seconds, he was eleven and swaddled in a sleeping bag in the top bunk of a hunting cabin. That clatter was his father stirring up a pot of something on the cabin stove while his brother got down bowls and spoons because his father believed that, to bag a deer, you started early with a meal that stuck to your?—

“Nyuh!” His eyes jammed open. Still cocooned in the sleeping bag, he tried sitting up at the same time and nearly fell backward. “Davila?” Heart hammering, he battled his way free of his bag. “Davila, are you… ”

“Hey, easy, easy.” Cradling a mug in both hands, Davila perched on a chair John had retrieved from the adjoining office. To his right, Matvey was frozen in mid-stir, dripping spoon in hand, over something bubbling and steaming in a pot centered on a paraffin heater’s aluminum cook plate. “Our little Mowgli here is just heating some breakfast. We got water for coffee already boiled,” Davila said. “Thought you could use the sleep.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” His mouth tasted like the bottom of an old shoe. He scrubbed grit from his eyes—and then blinked. “You’re sitting up. You’re moving around.”

“You noticed.” Davila’s mouth wobbled into a half-grin. Combined with his shiners, both of which had turned a mottled yellow and green, he looked a bit like something out of a low-budget remake of a George Romano zombie movie. “Kinda clammy from living in the bag for so long but a thousand times better than yesterday. I just…slept.”

Clammy got his attention. Was it his imagination, or was Davila flushed? “And you didn’t wake up because you couldn’t breathe?”

“Nope. Arm hurts more than my head or chest.”

“How long?”

“Hours? The last time I fiddled with this thing…” Davila gestured at the catheter’s stopcock. “I think it was around two. Only woke up because I had to take a leak. That’s also when I noticed that the snow had st opped. Sat phone’s still broadcasting our SOS, which is good.”

“Not that anyone’s come charging to the rescue.” His own watch said it was nine in the morning. He’d last checked on Davila at midnight. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“You’ve been babysitting me for days. I wasn’t in trouble.”

“The whole point of getting better, Davila, is to stay out of trouble. Moving around might put you right back where you were. Let me listen.” After Davila breathed in and out a few times, he unhooked his stethoscope’s earpieces. “Well, I’ll be damned. Everything sounds…clear.”

“I’m telling you, I feel better.”

“What about that headache?”

“Not so bad. Really, I’m better.”

“Uh-huh.” Now that he was closer, though, he saw a tiny line of perspiration along Davila’s upper lip. Might be the sleeping bag; might be because he’s close to the heater. Or infection. He’d have to check Davila’s temperature. He made a let’s roll motion with a finger. “Let me check your arm.”

“So, we can take out this thing in my chest?” Davila asked as John worked at unwrapping the bandage around Davila’s left biceps. “The catheter?”

“Mmmm.”

“Was that yes ?” Then Davila must’ve read his expression. “What? ”

“Cellulitis.”

“English.”

“This.” Using a pinky, he outlined a long, diffusely pink streak that led from the mucky, burgundy eye of the bullet wound into Davila’s left armpit. “Early sign of infection.”

“That’s why I’m hot.”

“And perspiring.” He took a sniff and got a faint odor of decay. “Yeah. The oral antibiotics just aren’t cutting it.”

“Meaning…you cut me ?” When John didn’t reply right away, he said, “You got to let it drain, right?”

“Might not be anything to drain.” His mind leapfrogged over the various steps: the sterilization, the cutting, stuffing in surgical wick. He didn’t like any of it. “Even I did, I have to leave the wound open and hope the infection gets kinda sucked up along the wick instead of working its way deeper into muscle.”

“I heard a big but .”

“Doesn’t work great in the field.”

“So, what do we do?” Davila asked.

“We get cleaned up. Then I drink some coffee and then, when I’m in the right frame of mind, we’ll see.” John dug out his dopp kit from his duffel. “I hate making decisions in the throes of caffeine withdrawal.”