Chapter 4: Fire

A thousand times I've fallen

Night had nearly fallen by the time they returned to the Dead Horses camp, slogging their way through the Eastern Virgin. Joan had been without Med-X since the day before and she was sweating with the pain searing her finger, clutching her hand against her chest and trying to keep her breathing steady. She nearly fell into Joshua as he paused to wring out his pants legs, surprising him. The rain was coming down steadily and the Dead Horses were bunked up in their lean-tos to stay dry.

"What's wrong?" he asked sharply. She was staring down at her finger; her arm trembled and she bit her lip. He ushered her to the Angel Cave.

"Come inside. We need to look at that," he said, marching her through the entrance of the cave. She complied without resistance. The cave was empty despite the storm. Joan thought to ask him why they didn't sleep inside but he was already whisking her up to the chamber he had made his own, sitting her down at his work table once again. Joan didn't look at the oil lamp.

Joshua seated himself opposite her and seized her hand without asking.

"I'm sorry but this is going to hurt," he said, unwrapping the bandages without pausing. And hurt it did—Joan gripped the table with her free hand until her knuckles were as pale as Randall Clark's bones and ground her teeth together with enough force to make her vision pulse.

The burn looked bad. There was no plasma now, the bubble of flesh hanging deflated and dead. The skin around it looked like the pages of a burned book, curling, gnarled and blackened. She couldn't feel the center of the burn anymore; all the pain radiated from the outside of the bullseye. Joshua turned her hand in his, inspected it from every angle, his brows creeping closer and closer together with each passing second.

"What is it?" she bit out, her breath ragged. Joshua placed her hand on the table.

"It's not good," he confessed. "The flesh is dead. It needs to be cut away."

Joan's eyes flew wide open and she snatched her hand back to her chest.

"What does that mean?"

"It means what it sounds like. I'm going to need to cut away the dead flesh so that the living flesh can heal, so that it doesn't become infected," Joshua explained as he stood up and rummaged in one of the crates in the room. He fished out a small metal pot and lid. Joan sighed with relief and chuckled nervously.

"That's it? Dead skin doesn't feel anything. That's not so bad," she said. Joshua gave her a look of pity.

"I think you misunderstand what this is going to entail for you," he said. "The only way to know if I've cut away enough of the dead flesh is to take a tithing of living flesh with it. It's the only way."

Joan's fingertips turned to chips of ice, ice that cracked and spread up her arms and into her core. Her heartbeat sped up and she found it difficult to swallow.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. I'm going to go boil some water," he said, walking briskly down out of the chamber and into the entrance of the cave below them. Joan sat and tried to stop her heart from jumping out of her chest. In Joshua's absence she felt a strange false and shaky calm cast a shadow over her—as though he had not merely stepped from the cave but into another dimension altogether, one where her finger was not burned, where she wasn't in excruciating pain, where he hadn't just told her that he'd have to cut off parts of her finger. Her eyes leapt to the mouth of the chamber and she slipped her hand inside her jacket for her slim metal case, popping it open. She still had a couple syringes of Med-X prepared for fast and easy use and was just drawing one out when Joshua re-entered the chamber.

"Fuck."

She shoved her hand back inside her jacket but it was too late. Joshua's brows had already lowered and he was charging at her. In an instant he thrust his hand inside her suit jacket, yanking the metal case out and snatching it from her. She scrambled to close her jacket again, feeling violated.

"That's mine," she said tensely, staring up at him through her tinted glasses. Joshua strode to the other side of the cave and slid the case on top of one of the tall cabinets that encircled them.

"It is, and fortunately for you God commands that I don't take it from you," he said, turning to face her. He seemed to swell again. "You can have it back when you leave Zion."

"You've got to be kidding me," Joan narrowed her eyes, the pain in her finger temporarily forgotten. "You're about to cut off part of my goddamn finger! No doctor in Vegas would have an issue with this, it's not like I'm taking it for fun. I'm in fucking pain." Joshua stared at her hard for a moment before calming himself.

"I know you're in pain. I know you think you need the chems, but you don't, I assure you," he said. He spread out his hands. "God doesn't give anything to us that we cannot withstand. I've survived this. I know you can too."

Joan's eyebrows creased together and she felt uncertain. Flattery and indignity warred within her. Joshua swept past her, drawing his pocketknife out of his vest; Joan stared at it transfixed and terrified all over again.

"I'm going to go sterilize this. I'll be back in a few minutes," he said, then paused, glancing at the cabinet the case was perched on top of. He glared at Joan with enough intensity that she shied away from him, her cheeks burning red. He didn't say anything further and left the cavern again.

Joan felt the strange not-calm again. In this happy bubble she could pretend he was never going to come back. If she tapped her heels together she would be in Vegas, having a drink on the balcony overlooking the Strip with Cass. The burning in her finger quickly jerked her back to reality. It's not so bad, she rationalized. She had been shot in the head. This would hurt, but it couldn't last more than a few minutes. And once Joshua was asleep she would absolutely come back and retrieve her Med-X; he could take his stupid Canaanite rules and shove them up his own scarred ass. She wished she could fast forward time, like she had read in a prewar novel, and that this would all be over with. That it could be tomorrow and things would be nice again, sitting next to Joshua at the picnic table with the other Dead Horses, breaking bread and being merry. Hell, maybe Follows-Chalk would show up unexpectedly and everyone would be happy and nothing bad would ever happen again. Might as well shoot for the moon.

"I want you to lie down," Joshua interrupted her thoughts, bringing her crashing back down to the Angel Cave. He was bent, spreading a worn Yao Guai fur on the floor. Joan flushed a deep red.

"Why?" she asked quickly. Her voice was shrill and she hated it.

"I need you to remain as still as possible. That will be easier if you're lying down and not sitting, trust me," he said. "I don't want to cut anything that isn't strictly necessary."

"You're already going to cut away unnecessary skin," Joan spat at him. Joshua inhaled deeply.

"We have to do this," he said, his tone stern. "I'm not doing it to hurt you. You don't want that to become infected. We have some limited means to deal with that if it did happen, but I'll be honest—it's nothing like the care you would receive in the Mojave. You can't afford to lose that finger if it came to it." Joan looked down at her forefinger in horror.

"What about Waking Cloud?" She asked, her voice small. Joshua looked apologetic.

"Not only is she on the other side of Zion right at this moment, but I wouldn't have her do this anyway. I've done this before and she hasn't. Besides," he paused, somber. "Her skills are in bringing life to the world. I'm… better suited to this task." Joan looked down, feeling ashamed of her outburst.

"You're right," she apologized. She still didn't move.

"Lie down," he insisted. She fidgeted with her tie and Joshua let out of groan of exasperation.

"I'm not going to fight you; I want to get this over with." He marched up to her and seized her upper arm, pulling her out off of her cinderblock seat as she yelped. She yanked her arm away from him and hopped down from the ledge, making her way to the furs spread out on the floor.

"Fine, fine," she said bitterly as she kneeled. She procrastinated, patting the furs out smooth before lying neatly down on top of them, smoothing out her suit jacket and skirt, straightening her tie as though she were putting herself in her own coffin. The jagged cave floor poked through the furs and she could feel it against her hips and shoulder blades. She tried to calm the storm within her. She tried to look anywhere other than at Joshua Graham towering above her, feeling self conscious. Her mind was trying to draw an allusion to an entirely different sort of situation and she pushed the thought away as her neck and ears flushed hot and pink.

Joshua sat beside her, hip to hip, with his back facing her. He threaded her arm between his torso and bicep, trapping her hand in front of him where she couldn't see it, her arm circling him in a parody of an embrace. She heard him open his knife with a sharp flik. For a moment she felt as though she would hyperventilate; he paused and looked over his shoulder at her, meeting her eyes.

"We can do this," he said. "I've been forged by the fire and I know that you're strong enough to survive it too." A touch of warmth spread through her at his words and she felt like she might be okay after all. She nodded at him, steeling herself. He turned away from her and she could feel his warm hand wrap around hers, giving her a reassuring squeeze before his grip hardened, holding her fingers in place. He cut into her.

Joan winced, though she had to admit the pain wasn't as bad as she thought it would be. She wondered if she was more afraid of the idea of pain than the reality of it, given that all the major pain she'd ever endured—that she could recall—had come at her swiftly and without warning. She couldn't even feel it really. He was right; the skin at the center of the burn was dead and gone. He sliced into her again and all she felt was pressure.

"I need you to let me know when I've hit anything sensitive," he said over his shoulder. Joan nodded again even though he couldn't see her.

Then he sliced again and this time she could feel it. She cried out and jerked in pain, her back arching off the rocky floor. He clamped down on her arm with his, holding her tight. It hurt like hell and she clenched the muscles in her legs as she tried to hold still. How can a single finger hurt so fucking much, she thought wildly. The knife slipped into her again and it wasn't as bad this time; pressure and a touch of the fiery pain. She felt a small chunk of her finger slide away and bounce off the rest of her curled digits; she squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed.

Another cut and this one was worse than any that had come before it. She jerked around his arm, thrashing her legs and moaning with pain. Joshua was breathing faster as well as he fought to hold her arm still, bearing down on it with enough force to bruise. He leaned backward, pressing his back into her hip to try to force her to remain steady. A horrible keening noise came from Joan's throat, but she was in too much pain to care. Her heartbeat raged in her ears like stampeding brahmin as her free hand scraped at the cave floor. Joshua's fingers were clenched around her own, digging in painfully.

"I'm almost finished." Joshua's voice sounded thick and distant to her. She was gasping, her chest heaving to take in air, desperate for anything to relieve her of the fire searing through her finger, up her arm and into her heart. She panted as he continued to cut into her, taking more of the dead flesh this time, a blessed reprieve. Her lips were cracked and dry.

One more cut, and this time her agony was uncontrollable: she screamed as she thrashed wildly around him, her legs flailing and kicking, pounding his shoulder ineffectually with her free hand. She was hyperventilating now, choking on the dense air in the cave as she wailed, the cords of her neck popping out in sharp relief. Sweat poured down her brow and neck, pooling in the small of her back.

"Stay still!" he commanded, his voice rough and guttural, bearing all the way down on her, pressing his back into her chest and trapping her between his body and the floor of the cave. From his new position she could see her hand over his shoulder, thrust into the air for leverage. She could feel the muscles in Joshua's back tense and she stared in horror as he made one final cut; she saw blood surge from around the blade as it penetrated the wound, spattering onto his vest. She couldn't stop herself from sobbing in terror. Joshua jerked on top of her, his shoulder blades jabbing into her chest painfully. She squeezed her eyes shut, jerking and heaving underneath him as yet more terrible sobs came, her face soaking wet, tears running into her dark hair. Joshua lay on top of her, breathing hard for a moment before pushing himself off. It was done.

He stood; she didn't see the quiver in his legs. He stiffly walked across the room to retrieve the small bucket of water he had brought with him when he returned to the chamber earlier. He held it in front of him as he approached her before sitting with his back to her again. Joan's breathing was hitched and shuddery as she sprawled out limp and spent, too fatigued to even tremble. He took her slack hand gently and washed it, blood swirling in the water before turning it uniformly pale pink. He worked quickly. After a moment he lifted her hand from the water; there were deep red indents where he had been holding on to her, the edges already turning an ugly mottled yellow. The wound was clean at least—there were no traces of the necrotic flesh that had threatened to devour her finger. He pulled gauze out of his vest pocket and set about wrapping her finger yet again, binding it tight this time to combat the blood flow. Joan hissed behind him, wheezing again.

She stared, dazed, at his back as he hauled himself to his feet. The room swam around her, dark at the edges.

"Sleep in the cave tonight," he ordered without turning to look at her before quickly retreating. She stared at the ceiling of the cave for a moment before the room grew even dimmer around her. She gladly let the darkness consume her, falling backward with ease into the welcome nothingness.