It took Ryan only half a minute to find the tortured, dying man.
Chapter Fifteen
Dean and Abe had built up the fire, blowing on the almost-dead ashes until they flickered into reluctant life, the flames catching at the dry twigs, spreading to the thicker branches until the camp was brightly lighted. It was risky, as the crackling flames could easily attract attention. A bright fire was visible for twenty miles at night.
Ryan had gone back immediately, after a cursory examination of the man, seeing that there was nothing he could do in the pitch-dark undergrowth. He figured that moving the victim to the camp was unlikely to do him much more damage.
Enough had already been done.
Jak, Trader and J.B. had accompanied him back into the steep ravine, working together to haul the moaning man up the slope, laying him by the growing fire, where Mildred could look him over.
Faced with a medical problem, she immediately slipped into doctor mode.
“Male, Caucasian, possibly with Native American blood a generation back. Five feet eight inches tall. Weighsoh, around one-thirty. Naked. Been walking in the backcountry for several hours, mebbe days. Based on the condition of his feet. Very blistered. Multiple abrasions, cuts, bites, bruises and stings. None of those look serious, though some of them have, I think, become infected.”
“Like saying that a bastard who’s exploded a frag gren in his own mouth also had a fucking pimple on his ass. Not the bruises and stings that are chilling him.”
Mildred turned to Trader, her eyes cold. “My definition of a fool is someone who talks first and thinks afterward. I’m doing this so’s all of us have an ace on the line about the poor devil’s precise condition.”
“Go on, love,” J.B. said quietly. “Don’t take any notice of Trader.”
The older man turned away in anger and walked across the clearing to sit again by the side of the pool, presenting them with his hunched shoulders.
“Shaved head. Also shaved body. Complete depilation.” Seeing the question rising to Dean’s lips, she added, “I don’t know why, son. Almost like he’s been readied for a surgical operation, back in predark times.”
“That would correlate with the way he has been so sorely injured. Maimed, one might say. To my inexperienced eye, Dr. Wyeth, I would have said that the wounds had been inflicted with an almost-surgical skill.”
She nodded. “Can’t argue with you on that, Doc. Scalpel or a straight razor’s been used on some of those incisions around his chest and throat. Tracheotomy’s been done by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. Tell the truth, I’m quite surprised to see this degree of clinical professionalism here in Deathlands. Thought that had all died out and all you had now were the butchers and the medicine-show quacks, the leeches and the tooth drawers. This was a surgeon.”
“What’s a trackon?” Abe asked.
“The hole in his throat. This doesn’t make sense, friends. There’s needle tracks in his arms and small, partly healed sores where he’s spent time in bed. Look at his elbows, heels and around his buttocks.”
“Those marks on his wrists and ankles look more like he’d been cuffed,” J.R observed.
“Agreed, love.”
The man had been placed gently on his back. He seemed to have sunk into a coma, though he kept making the tiny mewling sounds that had first attracted Ryan’s attention. He had twice opened his eyes, but it looked as if they were fixed far off on someplace else. His breathing was ragged, bubbles of pale blood fluttering at the corner of his mouth.
“How longs he got?” Krysty asked.
“Hour. Might live to see the dawn.”
“You didn’t tell us about all the other wounds, Mildred,” Dean said.
“Holes in his guts and chest. Look to me like what we called a laparotomy. Kind of like keyhole surgery. You go in and take a look at whats in there, decide whether it’s remedial or whether it might be inoperable or terminal. But, I don’t see why the poor son of a bitch would possibly have needed three. Like they did them just for the sake of doing them. I can’t understand the ethics of all this.”