Chapter 1: Tending the Dead

(Note: The second half of the old 1,344-word draft of Chapter 3 has been split off as Chapter 4. I apologize for any confusion...)

Thank God we hadn't arrived a minute sooner because we would've met the armed convoy at the turn-off. As it was, it was far too close a call, and my hands trembled on the wheel as we drove by.

I wasn't happy, of course, but things could have been much worse. At my age I'm not particularly afraid of death, but with Billy with me I had to think of him, and getting caught in the middle of a nasty scrap would have been the last thing anybody needed. In any case, he would know the outcome as soon as the dust settled, and then we'd be able to sort things out.

Once I'd found a safe place to hide the SUV, I prepped a needle for Billy just in case – my son is nearly forty, but he's got the mind of a child, and he can be a handful if he gets too agitated.

As I had feared it would, the gunfire started a few minutes later, the sound of rapid-fire shooting echoing through the hills to our north. It was all I could do to keep Billy composed, but I was able to calm him without requiring the sedative. After a few minutes the blessed silence returned and I decided to take a chance.

"Can you pick her up still?" I asked, and he closed his eyes to focus on the child that I hoped was still alive.

Then somewhere in the distance a single gunshot boomed, and maybe half a minute afterwards Billy began to cry. "Daddy!" he wailed, and I quickly took his hand.

"I'm here, son." I whispered.

But he merely shook his head and sobbed.

"Is it her?" I asked. "Are you picking Laura up? Can you sense her at all?"

Through his tears, Billy nodded.

"Thank God," I breathed, and the tears came to my own eyes. But as relieved as I was to know that the nice little girl had survived, it also pained me that most likely the torn battered soul I had treated in my clinic two days before had not, and my heart ached for the passing of a good man.

And there are so few of our kind left…

I placed a soothing hand on Billy's shoulder. "C'mon, Bill," I said gently. "We've got work to do."

Slowly and cautiously I drove up the hillside trail, praying all the way that the fighting was truly and completely done. We began passing the dead halfway up and even though I've been a physician for many years, it was still a ghastly sight.

But no children that I could see – thank God – none of the children!

At the top of a rise I found the rest of the gunmen, all dead except for one or two that soon would be … for when Adamantium meets flesh and bone the metal always wins, and in the short time left to him the Wolverine had been busy.

The gravesite wasn't hard to find – a shallow affair heaped with water-rounded stones. The kids, however many of them there were, must have been in a hurry. There was something else: a head-shot corpse that appeared to be a younger version of the Wolverine, hatred and rage still frozen upon its face. It seemed that we'd be retrieving two bodies, one to save and the other to deal with as best I could.

As quickly as possible we emptied the grave, carefully placing Logan's mortal remains in the back of the truck and, as much as I hated to bring it, the canvas-wrapped carcass of the triple-clawed horror that must have killed him.

At the bottom of the hill, I pulled over to give Billy the wheel – he might not be able to read or write and he doesn't talk much, but he knows how to drive and I had better things to do just then than merely keeping our vehicle on the road.

Most non-medical folks don't know this, but death is a process. It takes days for the spark of life to completely leave a body and as long as any of that remains, with the right kind of talent, persistence, and luck, even a faint glimmer can be fanned back into full flame.

In Logan's case, my first task would be to preserve as much of that spark as possible, to check the ebbing-away of his life force so that the long difficult process of healing and bringing him back could begin.

Every mutant has his gift, and that is mine…