Chapter 11 Cora #3
It was the gap.
I could not see the gap from the boiler room.
I could only listen. I listened. I had been listening to fights my whole life.
I had learned to listen to fights by the sound of the rounds.
The rate, the pause, the type. Renn's rifle was the cohort-warrior burst pattern.
Drew's rifle was the half-Vampyren two-shot pattern.
The two patterns were intertwined for thirty seconds.
There was a third pattern under them. Hess's voice, the warrior-Vampyren battle-shout, the deep-resonance call that Vampyren warriors made when they were committed to a kill. I had heard that call twice in my life.
I had not heard it stop.
I heard Hess's call.
I heard Renn's rifle.
I heard Drew's rifle.
I heard a sound I did not recognize. A crack, a meaty thump, and a long exhale.
I waited.
The radio was silent.
I waited.
The radio crackled.
Renn: "Hess down. Confirmed."
I let out a breath I had been holding for what felt like four months.
"Cora." Renn again.
"Yes."
"Drew is hurt."
I did not say anything.
"Cora. Drew took Hess's blade through the side. Through-and-through. The blade missed the kidney by maybe an inch. He is conscious. He is asking for you. Sylvia. Move."
Sylvia was already moving. She was at the door of the boiler room with the field kit in one hand and the SAW-bandolier she had not been issued but had taken from Cruz's stack in the other, and she was at the gap in twelve seconds. I followed.
Drew was at the gap.
He was sitting against the broken corrugated steel. His coat was off. Renn had his hand on Drew's side. The blood was coming through Renn's fingers. The blood was the dark Vampyren-tinged blood that half-Vampyren bled. Not human-red, not Vampyren-black, somewhere in between, a deep wine color.
Drew looked up at me.
He smiled.
He smiled.
He had not smiled in nine months.
He said:
"Cora."
"Drew."
"Ours."
He passed out.
Sylvia was at his side. She had Renn moved off the wound. The field kit was open. She was talking fast. To me, to Renn, to herself. The medic-language, the protocols.
"Cora. Through-and-through. The blade went under the floating rib, through the lateral abdominal, missed the kidney by inches, exited the back.
He is bleeding fast. The half-Vampyren biology means he heals faster than human but his blood volume is human-equivalent.
He is going to need transfusion. He is going to need it in twenty minutes or the heart-rate is going to drop to a level we cannot recover from. "
"Whose blood."
"Yours."
"Mine."
"Yours. You are O-positive. Half-Vampyren takes O-positive cleanly. The transfusion is a standard procedure. Brecca trained me on it. I have the kit. You are going to lie down and we are going to draw a unit and I am going to put it in him. Now."
"Sylvia."
"Cora. Now."
I lay down.
Sylvia did the draw. The needle in my arm. The line. The bag. The pressure on Drew's side, the wound packed, the second needle. I watched her hands. They were steady. They were Brecca's hands. They were the hands Brecca had trained against this exact moment.
The blood went into Drew.
He did not wake up.
He did not need to.
The transfusion was not the hard part. The hard part would be when he woke up and accepted that the blood had been mine.
Right now he was just unconscious. The acceptance would come later.
The acceptance would come when he was awake and the wound was closing and Sylvia would tell him that is Cora's blood in your veins and he would have to hold it.
For now I lay on the ground with the line in my arm and watched my blood go into him.
Sylvia worked.
Renn knelt next to me. He put his hand on my forehead. He said, quiet: "You did the count, Cora. You brought him in. You signed the paper. The count is holding."
I closed my eyes.
The blood went into Drew.
Sylvia closed the wound.
Cruz radioed: "Hess cell perimeter is broken. Two more flanking attempts. Both down. Veron took one. I took one. Field is clear."
Veron, on the radio, his doubled-tonal voice: "Field is clear."
Renn pressed the second needle into the bag. He sealed it. He put pressure on my arm at the draw site.
He held out his other hand.
There was a small leather notebook in his palm.
The notebook had been bound by hand. The cover was the dark brown of cured Vampyren-tannage, the leather their cohorts used for field-bindings.
The spine had been stitched with the heavy thread the Council Vampyren used pre-invasion and that the anti-Council cohorts had taken with them when they had split four years ago.
"Hess carried this on his belt," Renn said. "He had been carrying it for the four years since he turned. I took it off his body before Sylvia got to you. I want you to see it."
I took the notebook. My hand was shaky from the draw. The notebook was small. Pocket-sized. The pages were the cheap paper Vampyren cohorts had been hand-binding for ten years.
I opened it.
The pages were a count.
Down the left margin, in Hess's small Council-formal hand, were tally marks. Pairs of strokes, in groups of seven, each group separated by a horizontal line. After each group of seven there was a date, in the Vampyren year-count, the dates running back four years.
Down the right margin were names.
I read the first page.
The names were the names of the human and Vampyren Hess had killed in the four years since he had turned anti-Council.
I counted the marks on the first page. Seventy-seven.
Eleven groups of seven. The second page had another seventy-seven.
The third had seventy. The pages went back.
The book had two hundred and sixty pages. I did not count to the end.
I closed the notebook.
I held it.
I looked at Renn.
"He counted in sevens."
"He counted in sevens."
"Like me."
"Like you."
"He kept the count on his body."
"Yes. The whole cohort knew. He would read from the notebook before engagements. He believed the count was what authorized him. He believed if he counted, the count was the truth. He believed counting protected him from being one of the counted."
I looked at the notebook.
I looked at Drew, unconscious, with my blood going into him.
I looked at the notebook again.
Hess had been the man who had counted to refuse his count.
I had been the woman who had counted to refuse hers.
Hess had thought the counting was the protection.
I had known the counting was the cost. The two of us had been mirror images, two and a half decades apart, working the same machinery in opposite directions.
The difference was Drew. The difference was that I had let Drew tell me the count was correct. Hess had been alone with his count for four years. The count had eaten him from the inside until the count was the only thing of him left.
"Renn."
"Yes."
"I do not want this notebook."
"I know."
"What do I do with it."
"You leave it here. Hess will be buried with Mara's enemies in the gap. The notebook will go in the dirt with him. The cohort burns the count when the warrior dies. The count is not for the cohort to carry. The count was Hess's. Hess is done. The count is done."
He took the notebook from my hand. He set it on the dirt next to me.
"It is done, Cora."
"Yes."
"You did it."
"We did it."
"Yes."
I lay on the ground at the gap of the Urbana enclave.
Drew was beside me. He was unconscious. He had Hess's blood on his coat.
Mara was in the second truck under a tarp.
Deedee was in the boiler room with the Polaroid on her pillow.
Nina was at the cot. Jet was on his feet with the fever.
Sylvia was packing the field kit. Renn was at my arm.
Cruz was at the highway approach with the SAW.
Veron was on the north dormitory roofline.
The count was holding.
The count was not yet complete.
Patrick was still missing.
Mara was dead.
But the count was holding.
I lay on the ground.
I did not move for ten minutes.
Sylvia let me rest.
After ten minutes I sat up.
I went to the boiler room.
I sat next to Deedee's cot.
I held her hand.
She slept.
Drew slept in a cot next to her.
The Polaroid was on the pillow.
The carving was on the dashboard of the lead truck outside.
The Steinbeck was on the cab shelf.
The chipped diner mug was in the cup-holder.
The stone was in Drew's coat pocket.
Veron was on the roof.
Renn was at the gap.
Cruz was at the highway.
Sylvia was at her field kit.
Nina was at the cot.
Jet was at the door.
Mara was in the second truck.
Patrick was missing.
Hess was dead.
I held Deedee's hand.
The boiler room was warm. The wood stove was burning. The fever in the room had broken. The kids were sleeping.
Crystal was sleeping in Mojave.
The count was holding.
I held Deedee's hand.
I cried for the second time in three years.
It was quiet. Nobody saw.
I did not look up.
The count was holding.
The count was holding.
The count was holding.