It was over. Carl dragged in a breath and lurched to his feet, his eyes closing briefly before he registered something new, now that the immediate adrenaline of the fight was draining away. There was no quip or curse at his shoulder, no answering bullets, no lanky frame ducking in and out of the light in the rough and tumble of the kill. No RC.
Panic slammed Carl, his mind replaying the first few minutes after they had entered the cellar, the monster's brutal bulk bodily slamming RC head on, his own moment of hesitation for fear of firing on his friend. Then nothing.
He stumbled back to the door, wondering where the hell the flashlight was, before the narrow beam answered him, discarded on the floor of the basement. Carl thundered gracelessly down the ramp to snatch it up, angling the light toward the spot where he guessed RC had impacted the monster - there, the dark shape of a man. Carl skidded to his knees for the second time, but now, it was RC's inert form that provided his focus. He angled the light up to RC's face instinctually - the small beam meeting eyes wide with panic in a face white as milk. Carl angled the light down - saw the blood that covered RC from neck to hips, saw the slashed denim jacket. His friend's chest was rising and falling rapidly in panic, his hands clenched into bloody fists against his ribs.
"Carl …"
It was so unusual to actually hear his own name from RC that the word alone would have been enough to send Carl reeling, but it was something else, too - there was panic and pain, as one would expect of physical injury worthy of that much blood loss, but awfully interwoven was sorrow, pleading, and in some capacity, apology. It was a reluctant and regretful goodbye, wordlessly encompassing all the things that, for whatever justification, had never been said. It was the look of a dying man - and worse. Carl's body broke out in the hot-cold of shock, his heart clenching painfully, as looking up at him from the basement floor was RC - the real RC, all his bullshit stripped away. The man behind the mask was suddenly there in the darkness with him, placing nothing between them. This was RC, his friend, his partner, hell his next door neighbour, the man he had spent almost every day of the past ten years with. This was the guy that had looked out at him from behind RC's smart mouth and cocky attitude, the guy Carl had often caught a glimpse of and wondered, before RC would slam his walls back up, grin crookedly and offer some wisecrack or sarcasm. The real man who had been underneath RC's affectations all along, a man that for some reason, had created a character of himself to present to the world, and somewhere along the line, had forgotten how not to be.
"Oh no, no no, hey come on now, you're getting out of this," Carl coached mindlessly, his hands ghosting to touch on RC in nothing more helpful than instinct. He was a hunter - darkness and blood were his natural habitat. He forced himself into the vicinity of a grip.
"RC? Listen. The monster's down, okay? We're done. We're getting out of here."
RC's body was ceaselessly and convulsively spasming in response to pain and shock, tremors running through the flesh beneath Carl's hands like water. The instincts of a man's physical body, attempting to shift, move away from the source of the pain and protect itself, much the same reaction as gooseflesh fighting against losing heat. His friend's breath caught and stuttered unevenly, punctuated by soft grunts and chokes, gasps of pain - but he was breathing. Carl braced himself and drew a breath heavy with the metallic sting of his friend's blood now covering his hands - he didn't want to do it, and knew he had no choice. He peeled the slick, heavy material of RC's blood-soaked shirt away from his body, and found both what he feared, and what he needed to know. It was the monster's method of attack - all the victims had been eviscerated, slashed deeply through the body cavity. RC had been at the mercy of those claws mere moments, but under the stinging eye of the little flashlight, Carl could make out two scratches, one from RC's right collar bone to the bottom of his ribcage - bleeding heavily but not too severe - to a second reaching from his friend's sternum stretching to his left hip - and even through the blood pooling in the hollow beneath his ribs and inside his hips, Carl could see things one was certainly not meant to see when looking at the outside of a living man. He kept himself from cursing with difficulty, instead focusing on his friend's ashen face, ripping off his jacket and bundling it into a ball.
"RC? We've got blood loss. You know what comes next."
Carl grasped the blood-slicked fists and coaxed RC's hands open. Even close to clinical shock, some recognition still fired through RC's synapses, and he complied under Carl's direction.
"Bite down," the older man suggested, and before he had time to hesitate, he rolled his jacket into RC's hands and pressed down hard against the open gash. RC gave a harsh yell of pain, his boots kicking blindly against the basement floor, his body naturally seeking escape. Closing his eyes, Carl stayed where he was until he was reasonably sure RC wasn't going to lessen the pressure the moment he let go, and looked up into his friend's face.
"Keep the pressure down. We're getting you out of here, hear me?"
His mind spinning, Carl forced himself to leave RC where he lay, and sprinted back to the alley. They didn't have much time, not with those injuries, not with that much blood lost. Certainly no time to wait for an ambulance - RC would either bleed out or die from shock before they arrived. And there was clean-up to be done. Usually, perhaps due to their day job, they were meticulous on that score, but this time, Carl didn't have the luxury. He pelted down the alley half-blindly, his eyes on the street-lit sidewalk beyond, scattering rubbish from the toppled bins, and risked his life in a straight sprint across the road. He crashed painfully into the side of the truck, but barely registered the pain. In the back were supplies - he rummaged for the slim container of lighter fluid - the lighter strapped to it - and dodged two cars heading back, his mind resolutely on the task, on what to do next, to carefully keep it from tumbling into the dangerous abyss that it edged. He had a bad feeling about this from the start, he'd known something was going to go horrifically wrong, and not allowing RC to call in other hunters on the job may well have cost his friend his life.
Carl ran back down the alley, hefted the still unresponsive woman into his arms, and laid her against the wall at the mouth of the alley. Ordinarily, they would have taken care of her, too. Taken her home, or to a hospital. But this was no ordinary hunt, and moving her a safe distance away from the body of the monster before he lit it up was the best he could do under the circumstances. Besides, he reasoned, if anyone reported the fire, the LAFD would have to access the alley, and were likely to find her. It would have to do. He ran to the basement door, dousing the monster's inert body liberally in the fluid, before ducking back into the darkness.
The little flashlight illuminated only a thin corridor of RC's body - eerily, his bloody torso - as Carl again crashed to his knees beside the fallen hunter.
"RC? Hey."
His friend's eyes were clenched closed, but opened at Carl's voice.
"Time to go, okay? Come on."
He picked up the flashlight, lifting RC's arm across his shoulder, angling his arm under his friend's neck. RC was lanky sure, but he was a grown man, tall and deceptively heavy, and Carl didn't have the strength to carry him bodily, as he had the woman. He was not going to enjoy this.
"Keep the pressure on, okay? Brace yourself, this is going to hurt, I'm sorry."
Carl eased his arm as carefully as he could behind RC's shoulders, drawing his friend's arm across his shoulders to grasp his blood-slicked wrist, braced his feet, and pulled RC's weight up off the floor. At his friend's jagged scream Carl thought for a horrible instant that he was going to be sick, though luckily he kept it down, his jaw clenched. Instinct worked in his favour, as RC reflexively clamped Carl's bundled jacket against his gut, Carl trying very hard not to consider that it was likely the only thing keeping RC's insides insides.
RC was panting at his side, shudders running through his body against Carl, though whether he was shaking due to the pain, crying or slipping toward shock, Carl couldn't tell. Not that it really mattered, he thought as they stumbled toward the pale rectangle of the basement door, RC's feet tripping and dragging across the concrete, likely leaving a snake's trail of blood behind them. It all added up to the same thing. His friend was hunched over his middle and curled in toward Carl, his body complying as much as possible with him out of instinctual animal autopilot. Ironic, that very same base drive had been the predilection of the monster he had just killed. The ramp almost drove Carl to his knees, the only thing keeping him up was the knowledge of how much hitting the ground right now would hurt RC. He tightened his arm around his friend's waist, putting RC's habitual belt to good use for a change, hooking his fingers around it. No one had come poking their noses in yet, which surprised a distracted Carl. Maybe no one reported multiple gunshots in LA anymore. Whatever the reason, his strained luck was holding, and Carl let go of RC's wrist only long enough to flick the lighter to life and drop it on the monster's corpse. Flames licked up instantly, helpfully providing some light at least to save stumbling and jarring RC, and Carl made it to the mouth of the alley.
Now the hard part. If no one had reported the gunshots, they were likely to call the cops on two guys staggering around covered in this much blood. If cops turned up, things could get very complicated very quickly. Carl was under no illusion that he could patch this kind of wound up himself to avoid questions at a hospital, but if some of the local uniforms turned up, recognized them from the clean-up crews and associated them with the previous murders and the body of the supernatural creature burning in the alley, Carl couldn't for the life of him imagine how he would talk his way out of any of it. No, he thought as he craned his neck around the brickwork of the building to check the coast was clear. If he took RC to the hospital without the interference of the cops and their knowledge of the murders, he could site a mugging, some asshole with a knife collecting wallets. By the time Jacobson or Hughes or any of them found out (if at all) RC would be sewn and bandaged, the similarity of his injuries to the victims' obscured. As far as deniability was concerned, it was still salvageable.
Carl licked his lips, hefting RC closer, flexing his hand around the blood-slicked belt. Sweat was running into his eyes and soaking the back of his shirt, and he was shaking almost as hard as RC, whether from panic or simple muscle fatigue he couldn't have guessed and didn't care. If he could just get the younger man to the truck, his inner monologue babbled frantically in his head, then he'd be okay, they'd get to the hospital and RC would be taken into surgery and he'd be okay, they'd be okay. He just had to focus, just get him to the truck, get him to the hospital as fast as humanly possible. Flashes of the alternative intruded into Carl's thoughts, and it was not something he could abide. A flash of RC laid out on a gurney, his face grey and still, a flash of his blood draining out of his body to soak into the truck's cracked upholstery, until there was nothing left in his body. No. It couldn't happen. Carl wasn't going to let that happen.
"Okay, here we go, last leg, we're almost there just hang on, okay?"
Carl wasn't entirely sure if RC could even hear him, but he attempted to sound confident and reassuring for his own sake as much as his partner. With a painful breath, Carl stepped out of the shadows and into the street, now almost dragging RC with him. He staggered to the road, gauged the distance of the oncoming car, gave a fractured plea to whatever may have been listening that they made it through this alive, and ploughed across the street.
The man in the car took a sharp double-take as the beetle slid by them, and Carl prayed he didn't stop. The truck, it was right there. He crashed up against it for the second time that night as two guys on the sidewalk beyond caught sight of Carl.
He wrenched the door open, dropped RC as gently as he was able into the passenger's seat, his heart hitting his throat when RC didn't scream in pain, not so much as opened his eyes.
"Hey," a male voice from his right hailed, and Carl knew exactly who his target was. He had to move. "Hey, what're you doing?"
Carl awkwardly folded all of RC's lanky limbs into the truck and slammed the passenger's door just as the two guys breasted the tray.
"What're you doing?" enquired the same voice as Carl dodged the nose of the truck and headed for the driver's side. He spared the heavyset twenty-something Hispanic guy a glance, gauging his likelihood to be a threat, but didn't answer or stop moving.
"Holy shit, is that blood? What the fuck, man? Hey!"
Carl wrenched the door open and slid in, casting a frantic glance at an unresponsive RC as he gunned the engine. He pulled out without a glance for the traffic, earning him a sharp horn blow from behind, his mind running over the quickest way to the nearest hospital - County General was likely, and Carl focused his attention on getting them to that destination alive and nothing else. At his side, RC was silent and still - passed out, not dead, NOT dead Carl's mind insisted - his hand having fallen away from applying pressure to the bloody ball of Carl's jacket, his blood soaking into the seat.
As the haphazard white shapes of the hospital turned to meet his line of sight, Carl floored the accelerator, cutting off a guy in an SUV who swore something unheard at him.
After what seemed a frustrating age of negotiating tight spaces, Carl pulled up in the ambulance bay. A guy leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette waved him off, as Carl tumbled out the door.
"You can't park here, you gotta go around -"
The guy stopped as he caught sight of Carl's blood-soaked clothing, the bloodied doors of the truck, as Carl wrenched the passenger's side door open to reveal RC.
"Help!" He barked.
The wide-eyed guy flicked the cigarette and ran back inside, Carl on his heels.
Within minutes they had alerted what felt like the entire ER, trauma staff pouring over the truck like water over rock. Carl found himself pushed out of the picture, as a gurney was rolled out, RC lifted onto it, almost immediately painting the white sheeting in blood. Carl was a hunter, he'd had his share of ER calls, but still, the tribe-like language of medical staff and what their flurried actions indicated continued to slide past him. All he knew was that they had made it, he'd got RC to the hospital and the trauma staff were obviously interested in keeping him alive. He'd be okay. It'd be okay.
The medics unsurprisingly shot the gurney toward the OR, their words and all fine details slipping by Carl, who followed out of a lack of anything more sensible to do, beginning to feel slightly dazed.
"Sir?"
He looked down to find a red-haired woman, her hands around his arms, looking up at him as though it was not the first time she had asked.
"Sir were you injured?"
Carl shook at least a measure of reality back into his head.
"No, no it's - it's not my blood," he replied, his voice a scratch.
The woman nodded, whether in acknowledgement or encouragement he wasn't sure.
Her grey eyes were kind, and she wore the less than appealing blue-patterned uniform of a nurse.
"You should be checked out anyway, sometimes people get injured and don't even realize if someone else was worse off."
Carl shook his head again, looking around the ER. People in blue scrubs milled around the space, two doctors in white coats, tired relatives slouched in chairs along the wall, another nurse with a clipboard recording information. The details were bleeding back into him - signs papering the walls on infection control, an occupational health and safety procedure, instructions on information for the triage nurse, reminders about having your insurance details ready, a no-smoking sign above the door.
Carl looked back down at the woman in front of him, who was attempting to guide him toward an exam room. He noted the pencil stabbed through the auburn knot of her hair like a Chinese ornament, the brown mole above her lip, the featureless white sneakers on her small feet.
"No I'm fine, really, it was my friend injured, not me." His voice was stronger, and other sounds were reaching out to him - the chatter of people, the hum of traffic when the automatic doors opened, the sound of rubber soled shoes squeaking against linoleum, the wail of a siren somewhere outside, a toddler in the hall leading out into the hospital screaming. Carl looked down at himself. He suddenly did not want to be covered in far too much of RC's blood.
"Though I think I better clean up. Do you have anything I could change into?"
"Of course," the nurse replied warmly, apparently glad Carl was engaged and responding. He knew enough about shock to realize his checked-out behaviour was likely causing her to consider admitting him as a precaution.
"I'll get you some scrubs, there's a bathroom just down the hall."
