Eliot let his head drop back onto the rucksack and closed his eyes. He was deathly tired, hurting, and now this. He knew the possibility of infection setting in was more or less unavoidable, but he had hoped for a little longer before it debilitated him.
"Eliot, man, we gotta do somethin' about this. An' now," Hardison said, worry rife in every syllable.
Parker was busying herself putting on a pot of water to boil on the fire and digging out the Big Damn Medikit. Rummaging through it, she looked desperately – and futilely – for something – anything – that would help with the situation. There was nothing. There were plenty of emergency supplies - bandages, wound dressings, gauze and antiseptic - but not a damned antibiotic in sight.
Eliot turned his head, opened his eyes and watched her, even as she slammed the lid of the medikit shut in frustration. He smiled, knowing what annoyed her.
"Don't carry 'em. Don't wanna even begin to build up resistance to antibiotics by takin' over-the-counter stuff. Not in my job." Eliot sighed. "Anyway, pills wouldn't help much, Parker," he murmured. "This thing's gonna need the crap scrubbed out of it an' then antibiotics via an IV. Which we ain't got. We gotta do this the old-fashioned way."
Hardison looked from Parker to Eliot.
"An' what's that?"
"Exactly what I said," Eliot replied, resignation tempering the irritation in his voice. "Both holes have to be cleaned out, front an' back. We're not gonna get all of the infection, but the cleaner it is, the longer I can maybe stay mobile. Hot water, lots of antiseptic an' spiderwebs."
Hardison gaped.
"Say whaaat? … Spiderwebs? You got a fever? You crazy in that punched-out head of yours?"
"You deaf?" Eliot rasped, now thoroughly annoyed. "Spiderwebs. Natural coagulant … antiseptic an' antibiotic qualities … there'll be lots of 'em 'round here." He allowed the tension to leave his battered frame a little. "An' … an' yeah, I got a fever." He lifted his good hand and made a tiny gap between finger and thumb. "Just a lil' bit."
Hardison thought Eliot almost sounded apologetic. Almost.
Parker had re-opened the Big Damn Medikit and was once more laying out supplies, her face thunderous with anger. Damn Eliot Spencer. Damn his friggin' annoying sense of calm. And damn him for putting himself in the way of hurt and danger and … and … her mental ire sputtered, even as she glanced over at Eliot, seeing the sheen of sweat on his skin, the tremble in his body and the haunted look in his eyes.
"Idiot," she swore under her breath.
Eliot made out he hadn't heard her, but the epithet curved his lips into a tiny smile. That's my girl. He returned to Hardison.
"Spiderwebs. Go. An' make sure they're either new, or clean with no bugs in 'em."
The resulting bluster cheered Eliot up no end.
"Bugs? Man, I don't do bugs! You know that! Parker, c'n you do – "
Parker was having none of it.
"Nope. I'm taking care of Eliot. And I'm the one doing the scrubbing, so you have a choice of either lots of blood and ick or collecting non-buggy spiderwebs. It's your call."
Hardison wiped a big hand over his face and took a deep, deep breath.
He noted Eliot had a very tired but shit-eating grin on his face.
"'kay. I can do this. Spiderwebs." He reached over to Parker and snaffled a pair of nitrile gloves. "How many?"
"As many as you can get. An' roll 'em into balls. We gotta push 'em into the wounds when everything's cleaned out." Eliot's voice was beginning to fade a little.
Hardison's stomach roiled. He thought he might just barf.
"Jeez, Eliot. How the hell do you know this stuff?"
"Yeah, well, they conceal information like that in books." Eliot muttered. "You don't get the chance to check google when you're up to your ass in alligators in a swamp, an' the only entertainment you got in between times is a book."
"About spiders? Seriously?"
"Ya never know when you're gonna end up in a cave full of poisonous spiders, Hardison." Eliot coughed, and continued. "Gotta know how to handle the little bastards."
Hardison shook his head admiringly, despite himself.
"Who'd a-thunk it?" he said. "Eliot Spencer. Renaissance Man."
Eliot laid his head back again, trying to handle the dizziness, and chuckled.
"Well, if the name fits …"
"So does Mister Punchy. Don't get cocky, man." Hardison grimaced. "Anyhoo … spiders." He shuddered. "This is gonna be just all kinds 'a nasty."
And grabbing a torch from his rucksack he began to work his way down the wall of the overhang, muttering to himself.
Eliot hazily watched him go, and then turned his attention to Parker, who was busy pouring boiling water into a plastic bowl and adding a generous dab of topical antiseptic ointment to melt into the fluid.
"You gonna be okay doin' this?" he asked quietly.
Parker's face twisted into sullen anger, hands waving in agitation.
"No! No I'm not! You're really sick, Eliot, and this is all my fault, and it's because you put yourself in the way and got hurt saving me, and … and …"
Eliot caught one of her gesticulating hands in his, and held it gently.
" … and if I hadn't, sweetheart, it'd be you lyin' here instead of me. Or, more probably, we'd have buried you next to James up there on the mountain. It's better this way."
Hot, angry, teary eyes glared at him.
"No! No, it's not better! Or okay! Or the right thing! Or any of the other excuses you give for always taking the pain!"
"It's my job, Parker." Eliot said softly. "It's what I do." He squeezed her hand in reassurance.
Parker finally exploded, the tension finally tipping her into fury.
"No, Eliot. It's not your job," she ranted, "not anymore. Being part of a family isn't a job. And you are family, no matter how hard you pretend you don't belong. Because you do. We wouldn't be us without you." Parker struggled to find the words. "I like having a little brother who hates falling off tall buildings. I like having Nate an' Sophie there for us when we need them and Nate plotting when he shouldn't and Sophie being all understanding and clever. And I really like having a big brother who growls and sings and hits people who try to hurt us and cooks me food I can actually eat. That is not a job, Eliot. And if we lost you it would hurt more than anything. So let us care about you. Alright?"
She stopped her tirade as suddenly as it began. She shrugged and then wiped tears from her eyes with the heel of her free hand.
"That's all I got."
Eliot, stunned, just nodded.
"Okay. I gotcha. Little sister."
Parker smiled through bleary, red eyes.
"That's more like it, Sparky."
There was a yelp in the distance and then a babble of explanation.
"M'OKAY! JUS' TRIPPED OVER A BRANCH … OR SUMTHIN'… PLENTY OF SPIDERS! JEEZ …"
Parker suddenly broke into shaky laughter, and shook her head. Leaning forward, she kissed Eliot on the forehead and sat back.
"Both of you. Idiots."
There was a loud crash in the undergrowth and a stream of curses.
"M'OKAY! FOUND A HOLE! FELL IN IT!" There was a lot of grunting and muttering and then a triumphant little 'Gotcha!' "GOT ANOTHER ONE!"
Eliot scowled.
"Dammit Hardison!" he grumbled. But for once he couldn't hide the hint of affection in his voice.
What followed was a thoroughly unpleasant hour.
Parker scrubbed and swore and sweated, cleaning filth and blood and foul matter first from the hole in Eliot's back, and doing it all over again with the hole in the front of his shoulder.
Hardison helped as best as he could, with one hand giving Parker swabs and gauze and disposing of the stained material in the fire.
And all the while he held Eliot in his grip, steadying his friend and gauging when the hitter couldn't take the agony anymore and had to take a break for a moment or two.
Eliot just hung on. He lay on his side, wrapped in Hardison's strong grip, and bore the pain. He white-knuckled Hardison's arm with his good hand, and just concentrated on breathing … one agonised, hitching breath after another, and his eyes focused on a tiny recess in the overhang wall where the endless flickering light from the flames of the fire painted moving shadows in the faint hollow.
As Parker dug into the wounds, sweat trickled down his chest and the hollow of his belly, and when she pushed the balled-up spiderwebs into the wounds at the end, he couldn't control a keening groan of pain.
"It's over, El … just relax … it's okay now, it's all done …"
Hardison's chanting string of gentle words echoed in his mind, and his heaving ribcage stuttered as the breath hiked in his lungs. He could feel Parker taping gauze over the wounds and then the warmth of a cloth soaked in hot water washed over his chest, back and side, cleaning up the aftermath of blood and pus. His stomach churned.
"Gonna … gonna puke …"
And Parker held his hair back as he retched into the now-empty plastic bowl, although there was pitifully little in his stomach to bring up. When he had done, Hardison silently washed his face and offered him a cup of water to rinse the bile out of his mouth.
"Better now?" Parker asked solemnly.
Eliot nodded. Jesus, he had a headache.
Parker set about checking the gouge in his side, but Eliot was profoundly pleased when she pronounced it clean and in no danger of infection.
He was done. So done, and he was hurting and feverish and sick, and just how could Parker think he was family when he was such a burden? Yet here both she and Hardison were, cleaning him up, patching up his wounds, carryin' his sorry ass through this wilderness and … and … his eyes closed as Parker wrapped him in a sleeping bag and Hardison lifted his head to cushion it on his shirts. Why? How had this crept up on him in the past six years? What would happen now?
He drifted off into a feverish sleep, nauseous, in pain, and very, very confused.
The rain eased off in the early hours of the morning, and the wind stopped cracking through the supended ground tarp, dropping to a gentle whisper, the fresh scent of recent rain drifting through their little shelter. It was cold, but bearable.
Parker was sound asleep, curled up like a cat next to Eliot, her hand on his good shoulder in case he needed anything through the night.
Hardison slept sitting up, his back flush with the overhang wall.
He suddenly jolted awake, dark eyes blinking open in a second. He pulled the sleeping bag tighter around his shoulders and placed another branch of fallen wood onto the fire. He took a deep breath, feeling the cold air fill his lungs, and set water to boil for coffee.
"Thirsty …"
Eliot stirred, and then grunted as he eased into consciousness, his voice croaky in the chill air. He shifted uneasily and moaned as his wounds objected.
"Where … " he asked, "still –"
"Yeah," Hardison kept his voice low so as not to wake Parker, "still in the back of beyond. I'm not gonna ask you how you're doin'. Just one look at your pasty, sickly face tells me all I wanna know. Gonna take your temperature though."
Eliot managed a few mouthfuls of water while Hardison stuck the thermometer in Eliot's ear.
God, that sucked bigtime. He hated thermometers.
Hardison waited for the beep and looked at the result.
He winced.
"Hundred an' one point five. You, m'man, have an honest-to-goodness fever."
Eliot nodded groggily.
"Tell me somethin' I don't know."
He shivered.
"Cold."
Hardison nodded.
"Want to get dressed? Parker was goin' to change the dressings again come daylight, an' she didn't want you to have to go through takin' your shirts on an' off. But we can strap your arm up outside your clothes if ya want. Won't be quite as good as right next to your body, but … if that would help …"
Eliot nodded and then carefully lifted Parker's hand from his shoulder so that he could sit up without disturbing her.
He felt better once dressed, and he eased himself upright. The effort knocked the breath out of him, but the pain had become sharper yet easier to bear. The sickly dullness of infection had subsided somewhat. Parker had done a good job.
He cocked an eyebrow at Hardison as he sipped a mug of hot coffee.
"There's a place we need to go," he said finally.
Hardison waited for him to continue.
Eliot gazed out of the shelter to the world beyond, the earthy scent of rain-soaked loam filling his nostrils. Daylight was beginning to tinge the horizon and he closed his eyes for a moment, inhaling the dawn of a new day.
"When we get to the river … there's an ol' derelict logging mill. There's a dirt road an' what's left of a radio tower an' electrical transmission towers runnin' behind it."
Hardison's eyebrows shot up.
"Now that we can do somethin' with!" he said, sitting straight.
Eliot shook his head.
"Nah. It's not operable. But it means one of us could follow the road out to one of the ranger stations."
"One of us?"
Eliot blinked tiredly.
"Yeah, Hardison, one of us. The mill is dry and warm. It's accessible. I'll be safe there until one of you can get help. You two decide which one goes. Me, I'd say both of ya, but seein' as you two don't seem to think that's appropriate, you figure it out."
Hardison had another idea.
"Eliot, you filed our route with the ranger service, right? Why don't we jus' wait for them to miss us an' they'll come for us?
Eliot savoured his mouthful of coffee before swallowing.
"Because I'll be dead by then. Or pretty damn' close to it." He took a painful breath.
Hardison flinched, horrified, but Eliot pressed on regardless.
"They'll wait at least twenty-four hours over the ETA to make sure we're not just runnin' late an' then they have to organise a search an' findin' us will take time. That'll be around three days from now. If not longer."
Hardison was confused.
"But we got flares, El."
Eliot snorted, and then wished he hadn't.
"Yeah, we do. But they gotta be able to see 'em. This way we increase our chances. Simple." He closed his eyes. He really needed to get some more rest. "Gotta sleep, Hardison. Gimme a couple of hours."
Hardison reached out and squeezed Eliot's good shoulder, feeling the heat radiating from beneath the plaid shirt.
"It's gonna be tough, Eliot. You sure?"
Eliot didn't answer. He was sound asleep.
As the sun rose on a rain-drenched world, Parker and Hardison packed up the camp, shouldered their rucksacks and got Eliot to his feet.
He was in pain, sick and unsteady, but he lifted his thumb-stick, wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his good arm, and faced the day.
"You ready?" Hardison asked, doubtful. He had no idea where Eliot got the strength to even stand upright.
Eliot narrowed his eyes against the brightness of the day, coughed and nodded.
"Yeah."
Parker glanced at Hardison, and then shrugged.
"C'mon," she muttered. "Let's go."
And with Parker leading the way along the side of the stream, the trio slowly began to wend their way towards the distant river.
Miles away, by a cave beside a mountain clearing, something moved. Powerful, wickedly-curved claws found a metal spike covered in dried blood and pushed it around, the keen snout scenting the odour of human being. A long tongue licked out, tasting the blood, and a huge, broad head swung around, finding the faint trail of a wounded creature. The enormous, half-starved body rootled about for a moment and then began to slowly follow the trail down the long, broad ridge, the humped, massive shoulders moving easily as the scent of blood wafted almost imperceptibly before it on the air.
The beast was very, very hungry.
To be continued
