Chapter Eight: Walking Out
Gage blinked slowly as he woke, feeling slightly disoriented until he caught sight of Sydney.
"Gage!" she exclaimed, brushing a hand over his forehead. "How are you feeling?"
"Good…hungry." He sniffed appreciatively. "What smells so good?"
"Bear steaks!" Trivette answered from where he and Walker sat crosslegged, eating off two tin plates.
Walker jumped to his feet, grabbing another plate that had been keeping warm by the fire and crossing to Gage's cot. "Doc said to save the liver for you."
"Mm, let me at it," he fairly growled, struggling to push himself up. Walker handed the plate to Sydney, who regarded it with an expression of distaste, and hurried to help his friend. "Easy there…how're the ribs?"
Gage rubbed them experimentally. "Sore…not bad." He accepted the plate Walker handed him and began hungrily eating the tender, iron-rich meat. Partway through, he glanced up to find Sydney watching him with an unreadable expression on her face. "Whatsa matter, Syd?" he asked through a mouthful. "Want some?"
Sydney wrinkled her nose, looking almost as if she might be sick. "No, thanks. How can you even eat that?" she demanded.
Gage raised an eyebrow. "What; you don't like liver?"
Walker chuckled. "The girls are squeamish about eating a man-eating bear."
Gage shrugged. "Seems like payback to me," he remarked around another mouthful.
Alex shuddered. "I'd feel like a cannibal eating a bear that's eaten people!" she protested, and Sydney nodded her agreement.
"Your loss," Walker told them, his eyes twinkling. "There's some jerky in my pack if you're hungry."
"Maybe later," Sydney said vaguely, a little queasy just at the thought of eating the bear.
"You can always eat it on the way," Walker agreed. "How about it, Gage; feel up to trying to walk out of here?"
"Sure, if we take it slow," Gage agreed. He glanced around. "Say, where'd that doctor disappear to?" His voice sounded uncertain, as if he thought he might have dreamed or hallucinated the man.
The others looked at each other, uncertain how to respond. "His friends came to pick him up," Sydney offered.
Gage frowned. "Kinda strange they didn't offer us a ride, isn't it?"
Sydney merely shrugged, unsure how much the doctor had wanted them to reveal even to Gage.
"Here, Gage, why don't you take my shirt?" Walker offered in a change of subject, pulling it off to leave the tee underneath. "It'll be a little snug, but yours was shredded and too gory to save."
"Thanks," Gage responded, wincing as he stretched his arms back to force them into the sleeves.
Leaving it open over his still-tender chest, he reached for his belt and began slowly threading it through the waist of his pants.
"Here, let me," Walker offered when Gage got to the loop at the middle of his back.
"I can dress myself!" Gage growled.
"I'm sure you can," Walker replied mildly, easily pulling the belt through the back loop and the one loop that remained on the right. "But you don't want to risk tearing something open now that the doc's not here to patch you up again. Here." He offered the end of the belt to Gage, who grunted softly in reluctant acknowledgment of Walker's words and quickly fastened the buckle.
There was no fabric over his right hip; what hadn't been shredded by the bear had been cut away by the doctor to gain access to the wound. But the bandage served to cover him, and the belt would suffice to hold up what remained of his pants. Still, after eyeing him and glancing sideways at Sydney and Alex, Trivette pulled off his shirt as well. "Tie this around your waist," he suggested.
"Thanks," Gage accepted the offering, doing as Trivette had suggested and feeing at once more presentable.
"If you think you're up for it, Gage, we should start out now before it gets too late."
"I'm up for anything," Gage insisted, ignoring Walker's offered hand of assistance as he got slowly to his feet and cautiously tested his injured hip. "Well, maybe I'll let Syd do the fighting for a while," he amended, lightly punching her shoulder as she looked up at him with concern. "But I'm more than ready to get out of here."
"Then let's go," Walker agreed, grabbing the pack Gage had been using as a pillow as the others gathered the rest of their belongings. Holding the door, he gestured everyone else out ahead of him and paused for one last look around the cabin before pulling the door shut and latching it against any errant gust of wind.
He set a leisurely pace that normally would have had Gage chafing to move faster, but for once Sydney had no trouble matching her stride to his. She bit her lip as she watched him make a conscious and not altogether successful effort to walk without limping, longing to offer him a supporting shoulder.
But even if he would have accepted the aid, she was too much shorter and he outweighed her by too much.
Glancing back, Walker also noted the tense set of Gage's lips, but said nothing, only detouring into the woods for a moment.
When he returned, he was trimming the end of a sturdy forked stick. "Here, Gage, try the length of this," he told him. "And that isn't a suggestion, it's an order," he added at the look of refusal in the younger Ranger's eyes. "One I'm sure the doc would second if he was still here."
"Thanks," Gage gave in, taking the crutch with relief he tried to hide, and not pointing out that Walker's seniority didn't extend to non-Ranger questions.
Though Gage was able to keep up more easily with the aid of the crutch, he sank gratefully onto a fallen log when Walker called a halt after only half an hour.
"How're you feeling?" Walker asked.
"I'm fine," Gage insisted.
Walker frowned. "Maybe I should walk to town by myself and send a chopper back for you."
"And explain it how?" Sydney whispered. "Dr Bashir said…"
"I know," Walker admitted.
"The chopper Sydney and I came on should be just another mile away," Alex reminded them.
"I can walk a mile," Gage insisted.
Walker studied him for a moment, then nodded. "All right. But if for any reason it's not there, I'm going on on my own to call for another one — it doesn't have to be a medivac, Sydney."
Normally any of them could have walked the mile in twenty minutes or less, but they had already stopped for Gage to rest one more time before they reached the place where Alex and Sydney were sure they had left the chopper.
"Where is it?" Alex questioned, looking around in bewilderment.
"Chris wouldn't have just left us," Sydney insisted, referring to the pilot of the helicopter. "Maybe it was a different clearing."
"It was here," Walker confirmed. "There are the marks from the skids." He bent and studied the area. "Three men were here besides Chris," he announced. "And the bear."
"Oh, no," Alex whispered, fearing the worst.
"Well, if he flew off in the chopper, he can't have gotten eaten," Sydney pointed out reasonably.
"Oh, urgh," Trivette exclaimed, exploring a little further from the landing site.
"It looks like someone wasn't so lucky," Walker commented soberly, joining him.
"Is it…?" Sydney whispered, pushing forward; despite her previous words, she knew it wasn't necessarily Chris who had flown the chopper out.
"Stay back, Sydney," Trivette warned, grabbing her arm.
She pulled away angrily, glaring up at him. "I am a Ranger, Trivette!" she protested, all steel now to make up for showing so much emotion earlier.
"No one should have to see that, Syd," Walker said seriously, making Sydney wonder just how clawed up the man was.
"Yeah, he's almost as bad as Gage was," Trivette added. He had to be exaggerating, Gage thought, absently rubbing the barely visible scars on the right side of his chest.
"But — you can tell it's not Chris, right?" Sydney persisted, making no further attempt to see for herself.
Walker squatted and gently rolled the body to its back. "It's Scanlon!" he exclaimed in surprise, under the claw marks recognizing the face of the man he had recently arrested.
Alex gasped, her hands going to her mouth. "He must have followed us up here!" she realized in horror. "His trial was moved up; Sydney and I came to get you to testify, Walker."
"And he came to make sure I never could," Walker finished grimly.
"Surely he didn't come alone?" Sydney suggested, her hand resting on her gun as she glanced around for any sign of the criminal's confederates.
"My guess is anyone he brought with him left with Chris in the chopper," Walker suggested.
"At gunpoint?" Alex asked anxiously before Sydney had a chance.
"Not necessarily," Walker assured her. "He wouldn't have had any idea who they were, and a bear chasing them would be enough threat to keep him from arguing. He'll probably drop them off and come back for us — with enough artillery to face down a monster grizzly!" He smiled wryly at the idea that the high-power rifles would no longer be needed.
"So what'll we tell him did happen to the bear?" Trivette asked.
"The truth," Walker replied, his eyes twinkling. "I shot it through the eyes with Sydney's side arm. That would have been a pretty tricky shot if the bear had still been alive, but it would have killed it." He left unsaid the fact that he was a good enough shot that Chris would believe he could have done it; they all knew it to be true.
Sobering, he looked once more at the body at his feet. "I wouldn't wish that kind of death even on a criminal like Scanlon…but that's probably what kept the bear busy enough to give the doctor time to save Gage."
"Now, see, that's what I don't get!" Gage exclaimed almost angrily, even as they all heard the sound of the returning helicopter in the distance. "You're all talking as if I was at death's door!"
"You were, Gage," Sydney said soberly, biting her lip to keep back tears again. "Dr Bashir said if he hadn't gotten there when he did, you wouldn't have lasted more than half an hour."
"But that's impossible, Syd!" Gage exclaimed, once more fingering the faintly itching scars. "If I'd been as bad off as all that, I should still be in a hospital bed somewhere, not up and walking and feeling perfectly fit!"
Sydney looked at the others, wondering again how much the doctor had meant them to keep secret even from Gage; it was Walker who made the decision. "Dr Bashir claimed he came from the future — and with the advanced treatment he gave you, there's every reason to believe him." He raised his voice as the helicopter drew nearer. "Let us do the talking to Chris; I'll explain everything later, but for now, let's get you home."
Next chapter coming next week!
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