AN - The character of Grace Mason of course belongs to Jem, and you can read Grace on it Jem's fic, Heartbeat Away From Death. Story ID: /10691430/
Chapter 24: People Help The People
Driving back into camp with a skitter tied up in the back of the truck resulted in pretty much the reaction from the 2nd Mass that Casey had expected. Screams, gasps, and a handful of brave people clamouring to get a look at the thing. Casey wished she'd stood her ground back at the underground parking lot, and refused to let them bring the skitter back to camp. But once Tom had convinced Weaver that it would be worth them keeping the skitter as a prisoner; there was really no arguing with them. And with Rick and Ben protecting the skitter like a territorial canine, Casey's reservations would likely been met with growls through bared teeth.
So eager Casey was to get away from the alien, she jumped off the truck before Lyle had completely pulled it to a stop at camp. Whatever Tom wanted to do with that thing, Casey didn't give crap and wanted nothing to do with it. Just having the thing at the camp made her want to grab Etta and sprint for the horizon.
After dropping her unused rounds at the ammunition tent and grabbing a bowl of whatever soup was for dinner, Casey went to relieve Matt from babysitting duty. The youngest Mason wasn't at the medbus, so Casey traversed to her tent. But it wasn't Matt she saw with Etta; it was Grace. She was sitting on Lee's bed bouncing Etta in her lap.
"Hey," Casey greeted her as she pushed through her tent door.
"Hey, check this out," Grace lowered Etta to the floor like she was going to let her try and walk. Grace didn't let her go, but Etta kicked her legs around like a dog running in its sleep. "If we put her in the water, she'd take off like a motorboat."
Casey set her bowl of soup on the ground beside her bed and shrugged off her damp jacket. "Is Lee back yet?"
"No," Grace shook her head. Etta gurgled and stamped her feet so Grace lifted her back onto her lap. "But Hal said they might stay out there for the night if they found somewhere worth staying."
Casey draped her jacket out over the thin wire Lee had fixed to the sides of the tent for a washing line. "How's our intergalactic guest?" Casey asked. She hadn't had any contact with the red-eyed skitter since she'd had to sit beside it on the ride back to camp, but she'd seen Grace chatting to Ben and their father so she assumed they'd discussed Red Eye.
"I don't know," Grace said. "He's still going on about how he wants us to work together."
"He?"
"Ben calls him a 'he'." Grace said. "And Ben keeps saying the skitters think an alliance with the 2nd Mass is the best chance they have."
"A skitter rebellion?" Casey didn't even try to hide the scepticism in her voice.
"The skitters were harnessed," Grace said. "Is it so crazy to think that maybe they're resisting just like we are?"
"Resisting who, the overlords? Another alien?" Casey sunk heavily onto her bed and flopped sideways onto her pillow. "We have harnesses and skitters and mechs and beamers and eyeworms, and now overlords?"
Grace was quiet for a moment. "Hey," she cleared her throat. "I overheard Lyle saying the skitter… talked…through Rick?"
Casey rolled onto her side and rested against her elbow. "Yeh," she said. "Well, we always knew the spikes connected the harness kids to the skitters. I guess this is just part of that."
Grace stared at a spot on the floor for a few seconds. "Say we believe this skitter," she said carefully. "Say we believe that the overlords harnessed the skitters, controlled them. Then couldn't it also be true that the skitters are doing the same thing to Ben? Couldn't he just be saying what they want him to say to convince us?"
Casey didn't know how to answer her. The girl wanted reassurance, and Casey couldn't give it to her - because she'd been thinking the exact same thing about Ben. There was nothing Grace or Tom or anyone could do to figure out if Ben was speaking for himself or as a skitter representative. For all Casey knew, the skitters were in charge of everything alien and this whole spiel about overlords was just a persuasive technique. What better way to get access to a human resistance movement than to preach rebellion through one of the leaders' sons? Well, maybe it wasn't such a simple idea, but if that was their idea then it had certainly proven effective.
But Casey couldn't say any of this to Grace. The girl was already extra protective of her brother because of his spikes. Casey didn't want to strengthen her suspicions and further ostracise Ben. So Casey sat up on her bed, took what her father would have called "the coward's way out" and told Grace what she wanted to hear. "Ben's fine," Casey said. "And everything's gonna work out."
Grace smiled at her, though she didn't look totally convinced. Casey reached down for her bowl of cold soup when an explosive pew-pew-pew-pew sound shocked her so suddenly she dropped the bowl to the floor. Then there was a sound like a stormy gust of wind blasted through camp, then there was a shuddering boom that vibrated under Casey's feet. Mech fire. The 2nd Mass was being attacked.
Casey and Grace sprang to their feet and burst out of Casey's tent, almost running right into Weaver.
"Captain, we're under attack?" Grace asked him. She was holding Etta over her shoulder.
"They're coming at us from the east," Weaver said.. "That cockroach led 'em here." Weaver turned to Grace. His jaw was rigid and his eyes were full of fury. "Grace," he said. "Take the baby and Matt to the medbus and tell Dr. Glass to have her patients prepared to move."
"Move?" Casey repeated.
"The skitters know we're here. This place ain't safe." Weaver growled. "We're leaving." He waited until Grace had run off before he directed Casey towards the ammunition tent. "Right after we kill that sonuvabitch."
xxx
With her rifle in her hands, Casey marched alongside Dai, Lyle and Boon behind Weaver down to where they were keeping the skitter. The room had once been a basement office, but Jamil had fixed up a huge section of gating and turned the room into containment cell. As Casey tailed Weaver into the room, she saw Rick and Ben standing in front of the bars protecting the skitter secured behind it. Rick's spikes were glowing. Tom was standing opposite to the boys, eyes narrowed and face firm.
"Get away from it, Tom." Weaver ordered as he marched them into the room. "The bastard has led them directly to us."
"No!" Ben moved to completely block the skitter from harm. "No, that's not it!"
Casey kept her gun low; she had no intention of shooting Ben or Rick to get to the skitter. She doubted that was the mindset she was supposed to have; but it was the one she had. But Weaver didn't have his gun out either.
"Wait!" Tom stood in front of his son. "Dan, wait!"
"Lyle, Dai," Weaver said. "Get those kids away from the cage."
"Dan, there's something you need to hear." Tom said.
"You stand down, Tom." Weaver ordered.
A quick thrum of Mech fire shot through the air above them and shook dust from the rafters, but it didn't break the argument. "This isn't the way!" Tom snapped.
"I'm giving you an order." Weaver said with a brief glint of wetness in his eyes.
Tom squared his stance. "No."
"You stand DOWN!" Weaver bellowed. "Now, damn it!"
The skitter suddenly let out a wild screech and threw itself against the gate of the cage. The gate crashed open and the skitter scuttled up the wall out of the way of gunfire. Casey tried to aim her rifle at Red Eye's body but Ben grabbed the barrel and directed it away from the skitter. She tried to pull the gun back from him but he was too strong and seemed to just pluck it out of her hands. Boon pumped his shotgun and fired but the shell completely missed the skitter.
"No! Don't shoot!" Rick jumped in the way of Boon's shotgun just as Boon pulled back on the trigger for a second time. The blast hit Rick directly in the chest and the boy was launched onto his back.
"Rick!" Ben dropped to his knees by his friend as blood began pooling underneath his body.
Casey felt a gasp catch in her throat, and her brain started firing thoughts at her. The hole in Rick's chest was pouring blood out from his body. He was dying, Casey knew it. A hole that big couldn't be fixed. All that blood, how where they going to get it back into his body? As she watched the life fade out of Rick, Casey looked up and saw an expression on Boon's face that made her want to hug him; he looked completely shattered and confused.
"Kill that thing!" Weave cried as the skitter darted across the roof and out through the door to the outside.
Casey, Lyle, Boon and Dai sprinted up the stairs after the alien. But when Casey breached out into the camp, she couldn't see the skitter anywhere – and it literally could be anywhere. Maybe skitters had a special eject button or a way to make themselves invisible. It wouldn't be the weirdest thing Casey had seen post-invasion. Dai took off to the left and Lyle and Boon jogged off to the right, Casey was about to follow Dai when she saw Lee dismounting from her quad bike.
"Hey!" Casey ran up to Lee.
"Dammit," Lee looked around at the chaos of camp. "We thought we beat the bugs back!"
"We're leaving," Casey told her. "I'll get our stuff from our tent, go find Dai. He's tailing the skitter we brought back."
Lee looked confused. "The skitter we-? What?"
"Just go!"
Casey took off for her tent with the sound of Lee's quad engine revving up in her ears. She slapped her tent door out of the way and grabbed her jacket off the line. She roughly packed up her shoulder bag and Lee's pack and piled both her and Lee's blankets into Etta's basket. With the basket on her hip and bags over her shoulder, Casey bustled awkwardly out of her tent towards the medbus.
The bus door creaked open and Casey was surprised to see Hal behind the wheel. His face was covered in sweat and he was panting, and there was blood over his clothes. As she climbed aboard, Casey noticed Anne, Lourdes and Grace were huddled over someone on Anne's surgical table.
"What happened?" Casey asked Hal.
"Maggie," Hal kind of just shrugged and looked worriedly over his shoulder. "Maggie."
"Maggie's hurt!" Matt sprang out of his seat when he saw Casey board. He was struggling to keep hold of Etta squirming in his arms. "Bad!"
Casey tossed her bags, her rifle and Etta's basket into the bench behind the driver's seat and took Etta from Matt. Lourdes moved to get something from one of the medical cabinets and Casey saw Maggie lying unconscious on Anne's table. Her hair was blackened with soot and her face smudged with dirt. The bottom half of her shirt was ripped open and a gaping wound spilled blood across her abdomen. Grace pressed a thick piece of gauze against the wound while Anne flashed her penlight into Maggie's eyes.
"Is she awake?" Matt manoeuvred around Casey's hip to get a closer look.
"Weaver's signalling!" Hal called from the driver's seat. "Take a seat, we gotta go!"
Casey tugged Matt back by the back of his sweatshirt to keep him away from Maggie and sort of shoved him into a seat near the front. Casey slid in beside him but faced backwards so she could keep an eye on Maggie.
xxx
It was only when Hal pulled the medbus to a stop out the front of William Harrison General Hospital that it really hit Casey how much everything had changed within just a couple of hours. During the drive, Hal had told her where they were headed. William Harrison General was a hospital that Hal, Maggie, Lee and Tector had found on their scouting mission. It was a small, county hospital that seemed untouched by the invasion. From Casey's perspective, the only damage to the building seemed to be from bad weather. The brick walls were clear of scorching from Mech blasts or beamer attacks. There were some broken windows on one side of the building as though a rough storm had hit that side of the hospital, but that was about it. As soon as Hal parked the bus in the ambulance bay, Casey realised it was certainly one of the cleanest buildings she had seen since she'd joined up with the 2nd Mass.
Casey waited for Anne, Lourdes and Hal to rush inside with Maggie. Grace took off with Matt to clean up and find their father, so Casey was left to wander the hospital on her own. Casey set Etta in her basket and loaded her bag and Lee's pack onto each shoulder. She left her rifle and Etta's basket on the bus, but scooped the baby out and slowly made her way into the hospital.
William Harrison General Hospital was a very strange place to be. It was busy, as hospitals should be, but Casey knew all the people. It wasn't as though she was walking into a foreign building full of nurses and doctors and patients all moving from room to room. This hospital was filling with the 2nd Mass, everyone pretty much recognised each other by face if not by name. It was like they had taken over a college dorm decorated with IV poles and gurneys.
The people of the 2nd Mass were a mix of wary and excited. As Casey waded through the halls among the people, she caught snippets of their conversations. Word was that Anne thought Maggie was going to be fine; apparently the hospital had generators that Jamil said he could get working; there was a huge supply of medication that hadn't even been touched; the beds were clean and, in most cases, still made; and there was running water. Plus the cafeteria had stockpiles of food and – as a woman who grabbed Casey's arm when she was passing to tell her - a mountain of baby formula.
A place this good was definitely one they couldn't stay in forever; it was too dangerous. In most of the cities the 2nd Mass had travelled through, places like hospitals and supermarkets had been set with skitter traps. It was as though the aliens were taunting humans to try and scavenge for supplies. To find William Harrison General Hospital intact was a miracle. And though Casey knew they couldn't stay, it would certainly do the 2nd Mass well as a stopover on the way to Charleston.
The hospital had three levels as well as a basement. The bulk of the 2nd Mass were wandering in and out of the cafeteria on the first level. Casey could already smell something cooking, but she wanted to give Lee her stuff before she set it down and forgot where she left it. Casey clomped up the fire escape stairs and was huffing by the time she reached level two. She made her way along the hall and noticed the rooms were already filling with residents, she even thought she spotted Tom sitting by Weaver's bedside. Weaver! Asleep!
Casey didn't have to walk much further, Lee was only two rooms away from Weaver. She was setting blue blankets into a glass newborn cot when Casey bustled in. "Help me," Casey greeted her. Her arms were stinging from the bag straps cutting into her skin, and she was afraid she'd drop Etta. Lee plucked Etta from Casey arms just before Casey let the packs fall to the floor.
"Ow," Casey whined to herself. Her muscles burned and her wrist randomly started hurting again. She'd broken it in Fitchburg, Anne said it had healed but she still got shooting pains in it if she used too much weight on it. Casey massaged her wrist and looked around the room. It had three hospital beds all separated by a medical curtain. There was a comfy chair next to each bed and what Casey assumed was a bathroom just next to the door. Pretty fine set up.
"I got this from upstairs for MB," Lee said as she set Etta down into the cot. "There was a whole mess of pink blankets, had to dig around to find some blue."
Casey rubbed at the back of her neck. Oh, there'd be a hell of a knot there in the morning. "She can't have pink blankets?"
"Blue goes with her eyes," Lee tucked a thin blanket around Etta's middle.
The baby rubbed her hands across her face like she had something in her eyes and then settled with one hand on her forehead. Casey was surprised to see that Etta almost didn't fit into the cot. In Casey's mind, Etta was teeny-tiny. But lying in the cot, Etta was almost the length of it. Her little feet and her head brushed against the glass at each end. Casey hadn't realised the baby had grown so much.
"Huh," Lee scrunched up her face. "I'm sure there's a crib we can steal somewhere around here."
"It'll be fine for tonight," Casey let herself fall onto one of the hospital beds and closed her eyes. The bed was surprisingly comfortable; Casey had almost forgotten the softness of a mattress supporting her back and the comfort of plush pillows beneath her head. She was so used to her plank of a camping bed in that damp tent, it was kind of disconcerting to finally be comfortable again.
"There are single rooms down the hall," Lee wheeled the cot over so it was beside Casey's bed. "Tec, Boon and Lyle are settling in," she made for the door. "I can move my crap down there."
Casey opened her eyes. "You're leaving?"
Lee shrugged and gave her a half a smile. "I figured you'd want to be alone with MB."
"No, no," Casey sat up fast. "No, you stay." Then it occurred to her that Lee might have been being polite and she might really not want to sleep around a crying infant. "I mean, you can stay if you want."
Lee wandered away from the door. "You still wanna be roomies?"
"Well, technically we've never shared a room so we've never actually been roomies."
"Well," Lee crossed the floor and hopped up on the bed next to Casey's. Etta's cot was between them. "Okay, then."
"But, I mean, if you want to crash elsewhere I won't be offended."
"Nah," Lee pulled the too-small cot closer towards her and lifted Etta out. "I'd be more offended crashing away from this thing." She gave Etta a couple of wet kisses on her chubby cheek and made the baby gurgle. "Think we can get her a headband? Her hairs getting a nice curl to it."
Sleep came very easily to both Etta and Lee. Casey had been chatting away to Lee and then realised, when she wasn't responding to her anymore, that Lee had nodded off. Etta was sleeping, too, making little sucking motions with her mouth. It reminded Casey to check out that so-called "mountain" of formula she had been told about.
The building suddenly seemed to surge with a vibration and then above Casey the lights snapped on. There was a rousing cheer from the 2nd Mass that echoed through the hospital halls. Casey flew off her bed and flicked off the switch before the light woke up Lee and Etta. The happy chattering from the 2nd Mass didn't quiet down, so Casey ducked out into the hall and pulled the door almost closed behind her.
Casey leant the wall beside her bedroom door. Her legs suddenly felt very heavy and Casey slid herself down onto the floor. Weird, she hadn't been tired lying in the bed, but now her eyelids felt weighted down. She wasn't sure how long she sat there with her eyes closed, but a familiar voice soon made her open her eyes again.
"Hey," Tom was approaching her. "Claim a room?"
Casey nodded and jabbed her thumb to the door beside her. "Any news on Maggie?"
"Anne says she'll be fine," Tom told her. "She's resting, Hal's with her now."
"How's Ben?" Casey heard that they'd had to leave Rick's body behind at their last camp; there wasn't even time to bury him.
"I don't know," Tom sighed and rested against the wall opposite to Casey. "I mean, I really don't know." He slid himself down on the floor. "I don't know if he's more upset that Rick's dead or that the red-eyed skitter's gone."
Casey had no idea what to say to him. Reassurance wouldn't work with Tom the way she'd hoped it would with Grace. So she opted for the classic and changed the subject instead. "Am I going crazy or did I really see Weaver in a bed down the hall?"
Tom laughed a little. "Yeah, he's actually asleep. Dunno if he's just exhausted or if that bite on his leg is getting worse. Anne said she'll take another run at with antibiotics tomorrow."
"We're lucky Hal found this place," Casey said. "Although I keep not really believing it. It's like in those cartoons where the character's delirious with hunger and starts seeing everything as food."
"Yeh, well, we were due for something to fall our way." Tom stood up. "Got another two weeks of rough road before we get to Charleston. This will give us all a chance to recharge." He gave Casey a look. "That means you, too."
"I'm plenty recharged." Casey muttered.
Tom extended his hand down to her. "Come on," he said. "I have a feeling if I don't get you to bed I'll find you right here in the morning."
Casey let Tom pull her to her feet. "Isn't it morning already?" She said.
"Who knows?" He nudged open the door to her room, walked her over to her bed and set her down.
Casey rolled onto her side as Tom laid a blanket over her. She could see through the glass of the cot and saw Etta still asleep. She noticed the ends of her soft, fine hair, and as she closed her eyes she realised Lee was right. It was starting to curl.
xxx