*peeks around corner* Umm... hi guys. Gosh, I feel terrible for keeping you waiting for such a long time. Writing was going so well and then out of nowhere, I got stuck on a simple scene transition and didn't get anywhere for weeks. I'm so sorry.
On that note: The next chapter will not be up before mid-December. November is always a really busy month for me and even more so this year, so I have no idea how much time I will have for writing. I'm really sorry. I will update as soon as I can, but please please be patient. I hope you understand.
Alright, PSA over. Big shoutout to BrightShadowWolf31 over on Wattpad for introducing me to Maori songs and providing me with lyrics and translations.
And as always a massive thank you to all of you for reading and reviewing, I am thrilled that you enjoy the story and I love reading your thoughts about the plot, the characters and my writing.
Returning from town after running some errands, Audrey whistled a slow tune as she steered the jeep along the dark road. The mild night air tickled her nose, the wind tangled in her hair and even with the glare of the headlights, she could see the stars twinkling through the foliage.
"That's a pretty tune", Ana María spoke up from the passenger seat. "A song from New Zealand?"
She smiled. "Yeah. It's called Pō atarau. A farewell song for the Māori soldiers that fought in the last war."
"Oh yeah? Huh, I didn't even…" Ana María trailed off as the headlights illuminated a solitary figure on the road.
Audrey slowed down and the two women traded a puzzled, clueless glance. The paratrooper – his uniform identified him as one of theirs, likely from a sister battalion since he didn't look familiar – came towards them, weaving on unsteady feet.
Her eyes catching on the object the man held in his hand, Ana María stiffened. Instincts honed from a full year of combat and three years of living amidst a huge crowd of men put her on alert.
"Ray", she murmured from the corner of her mouth. "He's got his pistol out."
The minute nod she received was all the confirmation she needed.
.
They got out, Audrey's hand brushing casually past the holster of her own service pistol. "You alright, man?", she asked. "You lost?"
Wide, glazed eyes blinked at them. The man swayed as he looked from one woman to the other and back. Slowly, his lips stretched into a smile that raised the hairs on the back of Ana María's neck and arms.
"You gonna give me a ride?", he asked, shuffling closer. "My jeep's outta gas."
"What's your unit, Private?"
He didn't respond to Audrey's question, gaze flicking between them. "Didn't know we had nurses 'round here", he mumbled, more to himself, before he asked again, hand tightening on the gun: "You gonna give me a ride?"
Ana María tensed.
Audrey's hand came to rest on the grip of her pistol and her tone took on a firm edge. "Secure your weapon, Private", she spoke.
Tilting his head, he frowned at her.
She repeated the command calmly. "We don't want anyone to get hurt, that's all."
The drunk man fumbled the gun back into its holster and took another few staggering steps. "I gotta get my jeep." He was now close enough that Audrey could smell the sharp tang of alcohol on his breath.
"You can get it tomorrow", she told him placatingly, sending a telling look to Ana María, who returned to the passenger side, her expression echoing her own unease.
Then her friend's eyes snapped to the left, widening in alarm. Instinctively turning towards the perceived threat, the warning shout of "Look out!" came too late for Audrey. Something hard slammed into her face, pain flaring across her cheek and forehead. She went down, her awareness narrowing to blinding agony in her head, the rough asphalt underneath her and the noise around her.
"Hey! What the hell are you– put the gun d–"
BANG!
Ana María's yell cut off abruptly and a body hit the ground.
NO! ANA!
Nausea roiled in Audrey's stomach and only some of it was from the blow she'd received. Stubbornly clinging to consciousness, she tried to open her eyes, tried to get up. Her body refused to cooperate. Over the rumble of the idling jeep and the whistling and ringing inside her head, she heard snatches of their assailant's slurred mutterings. "…my jeep now… st'pid broads… no nurses..." Like a broken radio, his voice faded in and out.
The gear box creaked and the engine roared. Audrey flinched, the noise feeling like someone was driving an ice pick through her skull.
.
As the jeep drove off, she pried her lids open. Blinking blood out of her eyes, she gingerly turned her head. "Ana?" Rolling over, she moaned as the world pitched and wobbled violently. Through her blurred vision, she could make out a lump at the side of the road.
"Ana?!", she called again, worry pooling in her gut and clearing some of the fuzziness still encroaching on her consciousness.
She heard a strangled gasp, followed by garbled Spanish cursing. Half-crawling, half-dragging herself over to the Puerto Rican, Audrey fought down the bile in her throat. Ana María was struggling to sit up when she reached her.
"Are you okay? Where're you hit?"
"Aaargh... s-side", Ana María hissed out through gritted teeth, hands already clamped over the wound, blood spilling over her fingers. "Bullet went right through. What about you? He hit you so hard, I…" She looked up and exclaimed: "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" at the sight of Audrey's blood-coated face. "Dios mio, did he split your head open?!"
Audrey grimaced, breathed through another bout of nausea. "Feels like it."
She lost the battle against her stomach as soon as they had finished bandaging Ana María's wounds. Unfortunately, the vomiting only aggravated the vicious pounding in her head, which made her sick all over again.
"Ay bendito", Ana María cooed, rubbing circles on her back.
When the dry heaves finally abated, Audrey collapsed into a shaky heap, wiping tears and blood from her face. "We need to get moving", she said breathlessly. "We can't stay here."
Ana María nodded. "We should get off the road, too. If that hijo de puta comes back…"
"Yeah."
Leaning on the other as much as they supported them, the wounded pair stumbled into the forest. The cover of darkness and the trees hiding them from view, they still kept the road in eyesight to their left for ease of navigation. For a while, their uneven, limping footsteps and panting breaths were the only sounds disturbing the ambient noises of a forest at night.
"How's your head?"
"… pounding. Your side?"
"Burning."
"Still bleeding?"
There was a slight pause as Ana María gingerly felt the bandages around her midsection. "Slowed down, I think. You?"
"Uh… I don't know, I–" Audrey threw up again, retching bile onto the forest floor.
Ana María steadied her, crying out when the shift in weight sent fire searing across her flank.
"Sorry, 'm sorry", Audrey mumbled. She straightened carefully, red and purple flashes disrupting her already blurry vision. "You okay?"
Not enough air in her lungs to give a clear verbal response, Ana María just made a dismissive noise and shrugged the shoulder on her uninjured side.
"Can you walk?"
"I got shot in the side", she wheezed out, trying not to lean too much against Audrey. "My legs work fine."
Huffing a soft, airy chuckle, the Fox Company machine gunner looped her arm around her again and they resumed their slow, miserable trek towards help and safety.
.
Audrey had lost all sense of time and distance. Ana María was flagging, blood loss and pain taking its toll, but still walking out of sheer stubbornness. They had nearly fallen a couple of times when one of them tripped or their knees gave out. So far, they'd been able to keep one another upright.
But she knew it wouldn't last. Their injuries would eventually trump any reserves of strength and tenacity. Until they reached that point, however, she simply focused on making step after shuffling step. She was carrying most of Ana María's weight now and it didn't help the hammering inside her head.
"'drey?"
A wordless grunt signalled that she was listening.
"Think som- someone will come looking for us?"
She hated how small Ana María's voice sounded. "Of course. Just like…" She had to break off to catch her breath. "Just like when Bull and Mia… were missing… in Holland."
"We knew where they were then."
"They'll find us."
They fell silent again. Audrey's head felt like it was about to explode. Rainbow-coloured sparks and flashes danced in front of her eyes. Her teeth ached, even her eyebrows hurt.
Keep walking, she told herself. Just keep walking.
.
Lost in the single-minded zone of putting one foot in front of the other, she was completely taken by surprise when Ana María passed out. The sudden dead weight jerked her off balance and her legs buckled. She was only somewhat successful in trying to break their fall, but the abrupt motion wrought havoc on her head – vertigo returned in full force. The world spun lazily around her and abstractly, she wondered if this was what clothes experienced inside the washing machine.
Scolding herself under her breath, she dragged herself onto her knees and checked on Ana María. The radio operator was out cold and in the sparse moonlight filtering through the trees, her tan skin looked ghostly pale. The bandages were saturated, but it appeared that the bleeding had slowed.
Audrey wasn't taking any chances, though, so she shrugged off her OD shirt and tied it around Ana María's midriff, eliciting a small moan but nothing more. Breathing through a bout of dizziness, she looked around and tried to take stock of their situation to the best of her addled brain's ability.
"How far were we? Maybe halfway? And it's a… 20, maybe 25-minute drive, so… uh…"
She cradled her head, even such a simple mental calculation seeming an unreasonably strenuous task. Thinking out loud, the New Zealander eventually guesstimated that they had been 5 or 6 miles from home when they'd encountered the drunk soldier and that they had managed a little over 2 miles since then.
Getting up already felt like an enormous challenge at the moment, so the prospect of walking for another 2 hours, with the added strain of an unconscious friend, was daunting. But that wasn't going to stop her; after all, she had jumped out of moving planes, had been shot at and blown up more times than she could count.
Still, it took some time before Audrey had worked up the energy to move. Steeling herself, she climbed to her feet. She took a moment to make sure she didn't fall right back on her butt; her sense of balance was precarious at best.
"Some strange luck, hm?", she mused breathlessly despite her only companion being unable to hear her. "We come through all these battles with barely a scratch and then get attacked by a man from our own side."
With a whimper and a half-choked curse, she hoisted Ana María's limp form up and over her shoulder, sending up a quiet prayer for strength to whatever higher powers were listening.
"Hold on, Ana… almost there…"
Unbeknownst to her, the soldier who had attacked them had a run-in with another jeep on his way back to base. Said jeep carried three men, a German Wehrmacht soldier behind the wheel and two passengers: Major Martin R. G. Watkins of the British Army and Hauptmann Eduard Altacher of the 6th Mountain Division of the German Wehrmacht. In a fit of drunk irrationality, the U.S. paratrooper killed them.
Easy Company's Chuck Grant – on his way to the check point with two replacements –, confronted him only a handful of minutes later. Speaking calmly to the inebriated man as he tried to piece together what had led to the ugly scene they'd come across, the Staff Sergeant had raised his voice slightly to stop him from leaving. Feeling threatened by the urgent call, the agitated soldier had spun around and fired his pistol once more. Chuck had collapsed on the spot, shot in the head.
The two replacements, while shocked and horrified, had had the presence of mind to apply a bandage and keep pressure on the wound. Carrying him as carefully and quickly as possible back into the jeep, they had raced back the way they had come.
Easy Company's CP was relatively quiet, not surprising considering the late hour and the fact that most excitement nowadays stemmed from drunk soldiers, bored soldiers or careless drivers causing mayhem, mischief or accidents.
In one room, however, Captain Speirs and First Sergeant Talbert were in a serious discussion with Fox Company's First Sergeant Melrin Shennum and Corporal Cassandra Jessup, as well as two of Easy's four remaining female members. Two Toccoa veterans hadn't come back from town and were now several hours overdue. The paratroopers in question? Ana María Hernandez and Audrey Maynard, the only other two women in the battalion.
Cassandra had alerted First Sergeant Shennum when Audrey hadn't returned more than an hour after she'd been expected back. A few quick radio calls had told them that Audrey and Ana María had not made it past any of the road-side check points. Worried, because the war might be over in Europe, but there were still plenty of things that could have gone wrong and caused the two women harm, the pair had made their way over to their sister company.
They had only been moderately surprised when they entered the office and found Theresa and Louise there, reporting Ana María missing.
.
"They could have stayed in town a little longer, lost track of time", Talbert pointed out, even though they all knew he didn't believe it himself.
Theresa shook her head. "Ana María was supposed to relieve Heffron and Garcia at one of the checkpoints at 2200. There's no way she'd forget that." With a glance to Shennum and Cassandra, she added: "And we know she didn't decide to go on duty straight from town without coming back to grab her gear."
Speirs nodded. "Alright. Nolan, get a squad together. First Sergeant Shennum, F Company's welcome to join the search, we'll cover more ground that way."
"Yessir."
"Of course. I'll have–"
"MEDIC!"
They were moving before the first scream had faded. They knew that tone. Someone was dying.
In the hallway, boots pounded against the hardwood floors.
"MEDIC!"
.
Racing outside, they were met with a scene that was both shocking and depressingly familiar. Two replacements scrambled out of the way in a hurried effort to make room for Easy's Toccoa medics, who jumped into action without a moment's hesitation.
Gene shouted for a stretcher.
"It's Sergeant Grant", the man tumbling out of the driver's seat blurted.
Mia leapt into the back of the jeep in one fluid move and squeezed in next to the second replacement, who was pressing a wad of bloodied gauze to an already soaked bandage around Grant's head. "Keep pressure on that."
"What happened?", Speirs demanded.
The story spilled out in a semi-structured rush while Gene set up a plasma drip and Mia switched the soiled bandages for fresh ones.
Louise swore fervently.
Taking a measured breath to tamp down on the rage roaring to life inside him, Speirs took charge, snapping out orders with calculated precision. "You" – he pointed at the driver – "go wake the surgeon, on the double."
The man muttered a quick "Yes sir" and tore off towards the aid station.
"Nolan, find Hernandez and Maynard, coordinate with First Sergeant Shennum. Talbert, Fields, find the shooter; I want him alive. You" – this was aimed at the second replacement – "tell them everything you remember."
The group dispersed to carry out their assignments and Speirs jumped in the driver's seat and threw the jeep in gear. Huddled over their patient in the back, the medics immediately shifted, bracing for the jolts and bumps as the vehicle jerked into motion.
Within minutes of Talbert, Theresa and Louise pounding on the first doors in the hallway, the billets erupted with activity. Soldiers came pouring out of the rooms, falling into the patterns of organised chaos reminiscent of a kicked anthill – with barely contained outrage and thirst for revenge mixed in.
Cobb answered the door wearing his skivvies and underwear, a pinched, pissed-off expression and a narrow-eyed glare. "What the fuck is going on?"
"Grant's been shot, Ana and Audrey are missing", Theresa told him without preamble. "Save your breath, put on your pants and grab the rest of the squad, we leave in ten."
.
Three miles away, a lonely figure staggered through the dark forest, carrying a listless body.
Audrey's legs had long since gone rubbery and the slowly fading whistling in her ears was drowned out by the roar of her own blood. Her shoulders and neck were on fire, muscles overtaxed. The sharp pounding in her skull had escalated into screaming agony. She kept blinking blood, colourful stars and bursts of white fireworks out of her eyes. She tripped and stumbled over roots and fallen branches.
A song floated around in her mind, the melody repeated in an endless loop.
Pō atarau
E moea iho nei
Drying blood itched on the side of her neck, right below her ear. Sweat trailed down her chest and back, soaked into her t-shirt along with the blood from Ana María's wounds.
E haere ana
Koe ki pāmamao
Was Ana María still alive? Audrey paused, leaned against a tree to catch her breath. The unconscious woman hadn't moved nor made a sound since she'd collapsed. The only indication Audrey had that her friend was still among the living were the fluttering puffs of warm air brushing periodically against her arm.
Haere rā
Ka hoki mai anō
With a pained moan, she straightened, readjusted her burden and trudged on. Each wobbly step brought them one step closer to base and help. And a bed. A bed sounded heavenly. She wanted to lie down and not move again until her head had stopped hurting, the world had stopped tilting and her stomach had stopped doing somersaults.
Ki i te tau
E tangi atu nei
Stubbornness, desperation and fear fought for dominance against blood loss, pain, exertion and a definite concussion. Her ribs ached both from vomiting and from her lungs' efforts to pull in enough oxygen.
.
She didn't see the slight depression in the ground and stepped right into it. The jarring lurch sent a bolt of blinding pain through her head and she crashed to her knees, saliva gathering in her mouth. Lowering Ana María to the ground, she crawled a short distance and gave in to the nausea again.
With nothing left in her stomach, she panted through wave after wave of gruelling dry heaves. Tears streamed down her face.
"Please make it stop", she begged.
Nobody answered.
When her stomach finally stopped convulsing, Audrey flopped down next to Ana María, trembling and spent. "Sorry, Ana… I need a minute."
Reaching out a shaking hand, she placed two fingers on Ana María's neck. The Puerto Rican's skin was cool to the touch, but the steady throb of her pulse under her fingertips was reassuring.
"Okay. Okay. Just hang in there, alright? Don't give up."
She closed her eyes, only to immediately wrench them open again. She couldn't risk falling asleep. Pō atarau still cycled in her head, her pulse throbbing double and triple time to its rhythm.
"Move", she mumbled fuzzily. "Gotta keep moving."
Somehow, she got her feet under her. She hauled Ana María up and didn't even bother trying to figure out how much farther they had to go. By now, people had started looking for them. Cassandra would know, would have realised that something was wrong.
Keep moving.
So she kept going.
Eventually, she no longer felt the stabbing pain that spiked through her head with each shuffling step. Nor the burning sensation of abused muscles that spread up her neck, across her shoulders and down her back into her thighs and calves. She noted with dim detachment that her head wound had stopped bleeding at some point. Her laboured breathing sounded overly loud in her ears. Over the faint melody of Pō atarau, her exhaustion-numb mind only had room for two more thoughts:
Please hold on, Ana
and
Keep moving.
The doctor's proclamation that Grant wouldn't make it had struck Mia silent. She'd known his chances weren't good, not with a wound like that, but to hear the rumpled and lacklustre doctor pronounce Chuck as good as dead was as hard a blow as discovering the nature of his injuries in the first place.
Nobody was supposed to get shot anymore. Not on peace-time occupation duty. They were supposed to be safe now. Of course accidents still happened and there were injuries from fights and drunk shenanigans, but the times of bullet wounds were supposed to be over.
"You can't operate on him?", she heard Gene ask, his Louisiana accent soft with stunned disbelief.
"Not me", the doctor said with an apologetic shake of his head and Mia could almost forgive his bored, almost annoyed countenance from before. The cigarette in his mouth while he examined Chuck? Not so much.
"You'd need a brain surgeon", he added. "And even if you had one, I don't think there's any hope."
Heavy silence stretched, filled the gymnasium that had been converted into an aid station.
There's hope as long as Chuck continues breathing, Mia thought, stubborn defiance replacing bleak despair. She turned to Speirs. He was still holding on to Grant's limp hand, patting it almost absent-mindedly.
He returned her gaze and there was a fiery determination in his expression. With a sharp, jerky nod, he broke out of his stillness. Chuck was still fighting, so they would too.
"C'mon", he said, letting go of Grant's hand in favour of grabbing one end of the stretcher. "Help me."
Gene moved to the foot end and they lifted their comrade off the examination table. Mia fell into step with them, bottle of plasma in hand.
"What are you doing?", the doctor called after them as they hurried towards the exit.
Speirs shouted back without breaking his stride: "Going to find a brain surgeon!"
.
Loading Chuck back onto the jeep, Speirs said: "Mia, join the search party. Hernandez and Maynard might need a medic."
He didn't say 'a female medic', but she heard it all the same. The nauseating implications trapped her voice. She nodded and passed the plasma drip and one of the two additional bottles she'd snatched on the way out to Gene after he'd jumped into the back of the jeep to crouch beside Chuck. She traded a look with her fellow medic and gave Chuck's limp hand a squeeze, silently willing him to hold on.
Then Speirs started the engine and she backed away, sucking in a breath before she broke into a run. As she sprinted down the streets, she prayed to a God she wasn't sure existed, prayed for Chuck's life.
Lass ihn leben. Bitte lass ihn leben. Es sind schon zu viele gestorben. Bitte lass ihn leben. Let him live. Please let him live. Too many have died already. Please let him live.
Rounding a corner, she encountered Bull and Johnny, who were heading out with their squads. A coordinated manhunt was on and Easy would find the shooter, even if they had to tear Zell am See apart. The soldiers parted to let her through and a cacophony of voices asked about Grant.
She didn't slow down, but tossed over her shoulder: "Still fighting!"
.
A minute later, she reached the square in front of the CP. Theresa was there with her squad, as was Cassandra with a group of Fox Company soldiers, clustered around a jeep that would serve as a strong light source and transport.
Skidding to a stop, she narrowly avoided crashing into Babe and Rhodes.
"Whoa!" Babe quickly grabbed her shoulder to steady her before she could fall.
Eyes wide, Theresa looked at her. "Grant?"
Mia was suddenly extremely conscious of the blood coating her hands, drying on her sleeves and trousers. She fought the urge to rub her hands. "Still alive when I left."
It wasn't reassuring by any stretch and it did little to ease the slump of concern and tension in their shoulders, but it was better than telling them the surgeon had taken one look at Chuck and decided he was beyond saving.
"Alright, let's move out", First Sergeant Shennum decided, folding up the map he'd been consulting. "Hernandez and Maynard have been missing for over 3 hours."
"Third squad on me", Theresa called. "No dawdling."
The jeep rumbled to life and rolled down the cobble-stone street, the soldiers following it at a brisk pace. Once they had left the buildings behind them, they fanned out into a line, flashlights bobbing in the dark like overgrown fireflies.
Levinson to her left and Mia to her right, with Cobb on Mia's other side, Theresa scanned their surroundings. After turning it over in her head, she had come to the conclusion that at least one, if not both, of their missing women had to be injured.
If they'd just had car trouble, they would have walked to the nearest check point and hitched a ride back to base.
If they'd been chased, they would have headed for the check point as well – there was safety in numbers, after all. And even if for some reason they couldn't go to the check point, they should have made it back to base within two hours or so.
The radio squawked and a report came through from the pair of Fox soldiers who had driven ahead in a second jeep to search the road for clues. They had found blood and signs of two people stumbling off into the woods, moving in the general direction of the base and keeping the road in eyesight.
"Looks like at least one of them is bleeding", PFC Mario Patruno elaborated. "It's hard to tell in the dark."
Theresa grimaced and smothered a sigh. Calculating distances and estimating the walking speed of two injured paratroopers, she said: "Assuming they kept walking the entire time, we should see them soon, so eyes sharp."
Over the radio, she heard Shennum tell Patruno and Markham to start backtracking before adding: "Nolan, we'll join you on your side of the road. With tighter spacing, we can pick up the pace."
She confirmed, glad to have a better idea of where to search.
.
When the dark, bulky shape suddenly appeared in her light beam, Theresa nearly jumped out of her skin. For a second, she stared, frozen in shock at the figure that had seemingly sprung up right out of the ground.
A pair of glazed dark eyes stared back at her.
It was Audrey, hunched under the weight of Ana María's slumped form across her shoulders and listing to the right.
"Oh my God, Audrey." Horror and relief blurred together in her voice as she rushed forward, shouting for a medic, her squad, everyone.
Audrey wavered, then fell to her knees.
"Whoa whoa whoa, easy. I got you."
Mia materialised out of the darkness, Cobb and Levinson hot on her heels. Between the four of them, they quickly manoeuvred Ana María off Audrey's back.
"Get her flat on the ground", Mia directed as the rest of the search party crowded around them. "Cobb hold the light for me."
Eyes and hands assessing the unconscious radio operator with speed and efficiency born from practice, she rattled off more instructions in a display of multitasking the veterans were by now used to from their medics.
"Cassandra, keep Audrey sitting up. Talk to her, ask her questions. Ana María? Hey, can you hear me? Open your eyes. Somebody get a jeep, quick. Babe, help me roll her."
Removing Audrey's shirt that had been tied around Ana María's midsection as a makeshift bandage, Mia checked the wounds and set up a plasma drip, handing the bottle to Barker. The bleeding was sluggish, hardly more than a trickle, but judging by the size of the stains on the jacket, Ana María's ODs and Audrey's t-shirt, the Puerto Rican had lost quite a bit of blood. "Reese, sulfa and bandages. Not too tight."
.
"Oh shit! Ray!"
Mia's head whipped around at the panicked shout, just in time to see Audrey lose her tenuous grasp onto consciousness. The machine gunner's eyes rolled up into her head and she collapsed like a marionette that had its strings cut, sagging in Cassandra's hold.
Telling Theresa to keep pressure on Ana María's wounds, Mia got up to tend to her other patient.
Flashlight between her teeth, she took note of the sallow tint to Audrey's bronzed skin, the ugly bruise spread on her cheekbone and forehead, the deep gash splitting her eyebrow. Carefully probing the injured area, she stifled a sympathetic wince when she felt the bones give ever so slightly.
"How is she?", asked Cassandra.
She offered her a small smile. "Difficult to say with head wounds. But she's strong, she made it all this way."
The sound of several pairs of boots crashing through the undergrowth heralded the return of Levinson, who had gone to flag down the jeep.
Pouring sulfa onto the laceration, Mia unfurled a bandage and deftly wrapped it around Audrey's head.
"We only have one stretcher, Doc", Levinson announced apologetically.
"Ana María needs it", she decided without hesitation. She straightened and said to Cassandra and Pescini: "Careful with Audrey's head. If she wakes up, she might be sick. Make sure she can get it out."
"Got it."
Returning to Ana María's side, she instructed Theresa and Cobb to help her roll the Puerto Rican onto her uninjured side. Levinson slid the stretcher in and they gingerly settled her on it.
Sergeant Franklin picked up the flashlight she'd discarded and handed it back to her. "Ready when you are, Doc."
She nodded. "Ready."
Levinson and Babe lifted the stretcher and with the rest of the men lighting their path, they quickly made their way back to the road where the two unconscious women were loaded onto the jeep. Mia climbed in after them, as did Cassandra, who squeezed in and gathered Audrey into her arms again, dark head pillowed on her lap.
Corporal Simmons stayed in the driver's seat while Private Alvarez gave up his spot for his First Sergeant.
"Step on it, Simmons!", Shennum ordered tightly.
The corporal didn't need to be told twice and in the blink of an eye, the jeep was barrelling down the road at top speed.
.
The remainder of the search party stood in silence as the taillights grew smaller and the growl of the engine faded. More than one prayer was uttered, in the privacy of their minds or under their breaths.
Heaving a sigh and wiping her blood-slick hands on her trousers, Theresa turned to her squad. "C'mon, let's head back."
They started walking, falling into patrol order without conscious thought, Babe taking point.
"Think they'll be alright?", Barker asked softly from behind Theresa.
She pursed her lips, feeling Cobb's gaze on her as well. "I hope so", she responded. "They're in good hands."
Dear God, please let them be okay.