Virdon squinted at the sky - by the looks of it, some serious weather was gearing up. They'd have to seek shelter and wait out the storm, even if their horses weren't breaking down. He turned the horse around, and tried to estimate the distance to the city. The skyline was still visible.

Too close.

Burke followed his gaze. "You think they'll come after us?"

Virdon thought about that for a moment, glad to have something to think about beside Zana's condition. "I doubt it. These creatures seemed to be organized like... ants, or termites. They'll likely have their own... farms and cattle underground, and were just, just not averse to some fresh meat wandering into their territory."

Burke shifted on his feet. "But don't ants swarm out and, y'know, hunt in the neighbourhood? Like those leafcutter ants? What?" he said indignantly, when Virdon frowned. "I watched the nature channel, back home."

"Let's just hope the similarity ends there," Virdon muttered. They had two grenades left. And their knives. If these things did follow them, the odds weren't good.

Virdon turned his attention to Zana to stop thinking about bloodthirsty mutants wiggling their way towards them. It was... not really a relief. "We've got no other choice but to stop - the horses can't go on, and we need to have a look at Zana." She hadn't moved since Galen had come running out of the gate with her in his arms. Virdon hadn't dared to ask him if she was still breathing.

Right now, Galen was brushing away some strange, white substance covering her chest and face, and rubbing water from the creek over her face, but it didn't seem to help. Blood was drenching her robe, but then, blood was drenching all their clothes, not all of it their own. Virdon hoped that it was mutant blood that soaked the fabric; it made the robe cling to her body, exposing her rounded belly for the first time. Virdon averted his eyes; the sight made him self-conscious, as if he wasn't supposed to look at the evidence of her pregnancy.

His gaze fell on a little hollow surrounded by a grove of pine trees, sheltered by big blocks of rock, and after a moment's hesitation, he pointed it out to the others.

The wind wasn't as fierce inside the grove, but the rain would still drench them once the storm broke loose. They needed to build a shelter quickly, for Zana's sake if not their own. Virdon slid down from Apache's back, hobbled the horses, and sighed a breath of relief when he found the hatchet in one of the saddlebags. He hadn't been sure if Zana had thought of adding it when she had scrambled to pack their things during their escape, stumbling around in the shuddering wagon while bullets were whipping past her head. But Zana could keep her wits together in a battle. For a city girl who had never been in more distressing situations than budget meetings, she was...

Zana was...

Galen lowered Zana to the ground; he had encased himself in a stony silence that made Virdon hesitate a moment, before he took a step towards him. "A storm is coming," he said, "Pete and I will build a shelter. It won't take long."

Galen didn't acknowledge him; his attention was focused on his fiancée. Virdon glanced once again at her shredded and blood-soaked robe, and quickly looked away. She looked as if these things had tried to burrow through her belly. Galen hadn't succeeded at removing all of the spiderweb-like covering, and the white substance made the bloodstains stand out even more.

They worked mostly in silence, carrying a pole back to wedge it between the trees, then Burke began to cut down branches as thick as his wrist for the ribs of their hut, while Virdon cut pine boughs for the thatching. It was easy not to talk; the gale was roaring in the tree crowns above them, adding ominous creaking and crunching sounds to its repertoire.

"You really think it was such a good idea to stop here?" Burke finally asked. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard over the storm. "I'm waiting for one of these damn trees to fall on my head any moment."

"You'd rather have faced that storm out there?" Virdon asked. "Without any shelter against the wind and rain, with already spooked horses and an injured ape?"

"No, I'd rather have faced it with two exhausted horses and an uninjured ape, an' the rest of us don't look so good, either," Burke snapped.

Virdon turned away and put some trees between himself and Burke, and cut down more pine boughs.

It took them roughly an hour to finish the hut, and another hour went by with building a rough screen for the horses. Virdon lingered there for a bit, giving them water and the last of their oats, and checking on their wounds, before he dragged his feet over to their own shelter. The hut wasn't high enough to stand upright. He crouched down at the entrance, not really eager to crawl under the screen.

"How is she?" he finally dared to ask.

For a long moment, only silence greeted him. Then Burke appeared in the entrance, grabbed his arm, and half-dragged, half-pushed him back to the horses' shelter. Tala and Apache were pressed against each other, heads hooked over each other's croup, seeking reassurance from each other's presence.

Burke's face was anything but reassuring. "She's in bad shape, Al. She's lost a lot of blood, and she's got some bad concussions on her head. These things weren't strong enough to carry her, so they just dragged her along, and in that other hole, they just pushed her down on some platform... she must've fallen about six or seven feet, an' at the time, she'd already been unconscious, so she couldn't cushion her fall. It's a miracle she didn't break her neck then..." He paused, and Virdon saw him swallow in the dim light.

"But it's possible that she broke her skull," Burke finally continued. "Galen can't tell in this light. But she's still not woken up. An' it's been a pretty long time now, with us building two shelters, an' all."

He turned his head towards the black entrance of the shelter. Virdon followed his gaze. Nothing moved over there.

Both men stared at it for long minutes.

"This is my fault," Virdon murmured.

Burke didn't answer.

"Yeah," he said finally. "It is."

They listened to the storm howling in the trees.

Burke abruptly turned his head. "I think it'd be better if you didn't show your face over there until we know what... what's what with Zana. I'll... see if I can do anything to help Galen." He turned to go, hesitated, then turned back.

"Just in case... an' just in case I'm not fast enough to warn you..." He nodded at the hatchet leaning against the tree.

"Keep that thing in reach."

The wind was howling outside, but not even a breeze moved Zana's fur, so thick was the layer of boughs the humans had piled on. But it also shut out the last bit of light that filtered through the clouds and the trees to the ground, and that meant that the contours of her body were barely visible, and Galen couldn't see if she was still breathing.

He fought against the feeling that he had laid her to rest in a grave, piling grass and leaves upon her body to let it go back to the Mothers.

Galen tried to let his fingers do the looking, brushing away the last strands of the strange, brittle substance that was still clinging her body, to feel for a heartbeat, a movement of her ribcage, her flanks. But all he could feel was how cool she was, how still, and how the blood still coated her fur, and his hands.

While the humans had built the shelters, he had cleaned Zana's wounds, stitched up the deeper ones, bandaged them... focused on the things he could do for now. He hadn't had the time yet to get the blood out of her fur, or to do anything about the blood-soaked robes... neither of which was relevant for her recovery. He should tell the humans to collect more water, Galen thought absently, and to heat it up, so that he could properly clean her up later, get the blood out of her hair.

So much blood.

He knew he was bleeding, too, and that superficial cuts could bleed profusely without being life-threatening. In his mind, a part of him was rattling down medical facts, she was unconscious because of a blunt trauma to her head, several, in fact, and not from the blood loss, but the bigger part of him couldn't listen to those facts, because he was too horrified to understand them. They were like water running in the distance.

No, that was the rain. It was pounding on the roof of this low, dark tunnel, a steady, soothing whisper of the outside world, and for a moment, Galen allowed it to draw him into a thoughtless awareness of it, focusing on the sound instead of his own stumbling heart.

He drew a sharp breath. "Peet."

"'m here." The human's voice was low, as if he was trying not to wake Zana, and Galen smiled faintly at that irrational reaction.

"I need more light," he said. "I can't see a thing in here. Can you somehow make an opening without letting the rain soak her?"

"Can do." He heard Peet crawl out, and a moment later, the boughs were lifted above him and supported with branches so that they were still shielding them against the weather. It wasn't much more light than before, but it was enough to see that Zana was still breathing.

She was still alive.

But she wasn't waking up.

"Do you think you can make a fire?" He hadn't thought of examining the bumps of her skull, he had been too horrified to think about that.

I'm such a fine doctor. But if Zana had broken her skull, there was nothing he could do for her, here in the wilderness. Maybe he just hadn't dared to find out. But there was no use putting it off any longer. He dug his fingers into her skull, probing the bones underneath for movement, for crepitation.

Mothers, you know Zana - this woman has the thickest skull of all apes I've ever met, and I've met many... once she's determined to do something, nothing and nobody can persuade her to let it go... So please, please, let it be thick enough to be whole now...

"No, but Al can, you know he's our Davy Crockett out here." Dry leaves rustled as Peet crawled out of the shelter.

Galen didn't really listen - nothing had moved under his fingers, but maybe he had been too squeamish the first time. He had to be sure. He started again, digging his fingers deeper into the lumps.

Zana moaned and cracked her eyes open a tiny bit. One of her hands came up and fell on his like a wet bag, limp and too weak to grab his probing fingers and drag them away from the sore spot he was abusing.

Galen clenched his jaw and carefully didn't blink, but his eyes were blurring, and he had to clear them, he had to see what he was doing, after all. The drops vanished into her robe, mingling with the blood that had drenched the fabric. "Zana," he said roughly. "Zana, can you hear me?"

Her voice was thin, and high, and not really forming any words, but her eyes moved slowly until they focused on him. Galen smiled, although he didn't feel like smiling at all. "We found you, Zana, we're far outside the city, and you're safe now. Do you understand? All is... all will be well. I promise, all will be well." He turned his hand up so that he could grab hers that was still limp on his, and squeezed it gently.

She smiled weakly at him, and squeezed him back, and then, as her eyelids were slowly closing, her hand in his went limp again. Galen watched her for a moment, until he was sure she was still breathing; then he settled down beside her, still holding her hand, and watched the faint movements of her ribs.

When he emerged from the shelter, the rain had stopped; the cloud cover had gaps in it that were big enough to see the sun that was already hanging low in the western sky. The humans had cleaned themselves up in the meantime; they had also kept the fire burning, and Peet handed him a mug with tea, steaming hot and so strong that it glued his tongue to the roof of his mouth for a moment, the way he liked it.

Maybe he'd keep Peet. The human was catching on to how to make tea the right way.

Alan, on the other hand...

Their other human was leaning against the trunk of a pine on the far end of the little clearing, his bad leg stretched out before him; he was staring into his own mug. Galen regarded him for a moment, sipping his tea, before he wandered over to him.

It took another moment before Alan drew a deep breath and looked up to him.

"She's alive," Galen informed him, and the human closed his eyes for a moment. Zana loved their color. Maybe he'd keep him for her sake. "Her skull isn't broken, as far as I could determine," Galen continued, "but she sustained multiple flesh wounds..." He broke off and took another draw from his mug.

When he was sure that he had his voice under control, he continued. "Especially in the abdomen. It looked as if these creatures were... were trying to cut through and get to the baby."

Behind him, Peet cursed. Alan put his hand over his eyes for a moment, rubbing them with thumb and forefinger. Then he met Galen's eyes again. "This was my fault." His voice was rough, but steady. He looked down to where the tea was cooling in his mug, chewing on the inside of his lip for a moment. "I should've known y'all would follow me, even though I said I'd go alone."

Galen grabbed his mug harder and forced himself to breathe evenly. To hear the human out.

Alan drew a long, careful breath. "I'm desperate to go home, Galen. To see my family again. Put yourself in my shoes and ask yourself if you wouldn't do the same if you'd lost Zana the way I lost Sally. But I don't want to pay my way home with your blood. Or Zana's. Or Pete's. I swear..." and now he looked up again, eyes gray and stormy like the sky above them, "as long as we're traveling with you, I won't look for a way back into my time anymore."

For a moment, Galen wanted to hurl his mug against one of the trees, see it explode against the bark. Then he remembered how Alan had done the same after Peet had been captured.

I'm not going to turn into a human.

"I'm relieved to hear that," he said evenly. "Let's hope it will also reassure Zana, once she's strong enough to hear it from you. But it won't undo the damage she already suffered."

Alan had the decency to bow his head then. "I know."

"And I want something from you to show me that you're serious," Galen continued.

The human lifted his head again, alert now. Wary. "What do you mean?"

"The disc you're wearing around your neck," Galen said. "I want you to give it to me. You have my word that you'll get it back the day we do part ways. But right now, I need more than just your word. I need proof."

Alan came slowly to his feet, dragging himself up against the trunk with one hand. He had gone pale, Galen noticed. He also was taller than him, taller by a head.

Then, stiffly, and without another word, the human bowed his head, slipped the pendant over it, and handed it to him. Galen took it, trying not to feel guilty. "I'll take care of it like I take care of my Book," he reassured Alan, but the human just turned around and limped away, to the horses.

Peet said nothing when Galen returned to the fire and slipped the pendant over his own head, only stared at him for a long moment. Galen chose to ignore him. The disc was warm from Alan's body; it felt strange to wear it, as if Alan's hand was resting over his heart.

"I need you and Alan to build something with which to transport Zana," he finally addressed him. "She needs medical treatment, and that means we need to reach the next town as quickly as possible."

"What about Urko?" Peet asked.

Galen shrugged and refilled his mug. "That is a problem I leave to your capable hands, Peet. You take care of Urko - I know you've wanted that for a long time now.

"And I'll take care that Zana survives."