No Crossing Without Permission (2)
The man I'd treated was handed off to a rookie rescue worker. My teammates and I pushed deeper into the crash site. Weaving between twisted vehicles, we saw more orange uniforms moving frantically in every direction. Rescue workers dragged people from cars, performed CPR on the injured, and shouted into radios—all of them working at full speed.
"We haven't heard anything about the monsters yet, so go help out. We can't perform medical procedures, so just follow the rescue workers' instructions."
"Yes, sir!"
The team echoed the reply and scattered, each rushing toward a rescue worker in need. One lifted an entire crumpled car body, while another tore a warped door off like it was a can lid. Civilians would have gaped, but there was no time for that now. The faster we moved, the more lives we could save.
I grabbed my shield and sprinted toward the rescue workers treating the wounded. Several of them were busy wrapping bandages, applying pressure, and performing emergency care. I pushed through the group and spoke up.
"Mobile Rescue Team. Leave anyone who can still talk and bring me the critically injured first."
The moment the words left my mouth, the rescue workers' faces lit up. They immediately started carrying patients over. They all looked exhausted, but my arrival seemed to give them a second wind.
Well, of course. I'm here now.
"W-wait... I'm fine! Really, I'm fine!"
One man with a makeshift splint went pale and started inching backward. I couldn't help but chuckle. That reaction meant he knew exactly who I was.
"You recognize me?"
"Y-yes! The National Intelligence Service's torture specialist!"
Torture specialist, huh. This guy's got a sense of humor.
I slowly nodded and looked him over. Aside from the splinted arm, he didn't seem badly hurt, and his color was decent. If he could still crack jokes like that, he was fine.
"Since you're well enough to talk nonsense, you can walk on your own..."
"Ah, yes! Yes! Thank you!"
The man who had narrowly avoided getting beaten by Charon's oar let out a huge sigh of relief and walked past me with a rescue worker's support. Now it was time to greet the ones ready to board the ferry across the Styx.
Charon usually took payment to ferry souls to the underworld, but I didn't collect coins. Instead, I raised my oar and cracked it across their heads while shouting, "Back to the land of the living!" Forced repatriation? Reverse import? Either way, my job was dragging people who were heading for the underworld right back to this side.
Paying the ferryman means the pain is bad enough that they'd rather cross, right?
Thinking about people's lives in terms of ferry fares or rewards wasn't something a rescue worker should do, but sometimes a little dark humor was the only way to keep my head straight when everything around me threatened to shut my brain down. Otherwise, I really would go insane.
The screams, the groans, the desperate shouts of rescue workers, and the metallic tang of the blue fog hanging over it all—if it all hit me at once, my mind would fog over completely.
"Over here! There are critical patients near the bus!"
The team leader came running with a radio in hand. I followed him to the bus, which had come to a stop tilted on its side in the middle of the bridge. Rescue workers swarmed around it, climbing ladders to pull people out through the upward-facing side door. Below, more workers desperately tried to stop the bleeding of a patient lying on a silver emergency blanket.
"If there's anything weird stuck in them, I can't help."
"It's a penetrating wound, so there shouldn't be any problem with healing!"
As long as there's no foreign object left inside, I can treat it.
I ran to the rescue workers trying to staunch the bleeding, deployed my shield, and approached the patient. He was a young man, blood still pouring from his abdomen. Without bothering to pull out a gag, I reached out and placed my hand directly on the wound.
"Has he been unconscious since the rescue?"
"Yes. He was still breathing, though faintly..."
"That's a relief."
It really was. Among the critically injured, the unlucky ones who stayed fully conscious sometimes couldn't endure the pain of my "treatment" and ended up boarding the ferry anyway.
"Beginning treatment."
The familiar sensation of healing a critical patient flowed through my fingertips, and I could feel his condition in my mind. The locations of torn blood vessels, the state of punctured organs, the amount of blood loss—it was as if I could see inside his body.
The worse someone's condition is, the stranger this feeling gets...
Feeling torn vessels reconnect, organs realign, and torn flesh seal itself under my hands. The pain never reached me, but that eerie sensation always did—the subtle feeling of a life flickering out and then flaring back to life. It was hard to describe, and no matter how many times I felt it, I never got used to it.
While I focused on that sensation, silently praying—or rather, beating the patient with my oar like Charon—I heard a voice through my headset.
"Mama, I see several in the air."
The speaker was Thetys. So the damn monsters had finally shown up.
"Can you hit them?"
"Yes. I'll do my best to stop them."
Before I could even reply, another voice came through—Cheiron this time.
"I see several small ones that have climbed onto the main road!"
"Haa... Got it."
I let out a long sigh. The penetrating wound on the patient's abdomen had stopped bleeding, and the strange sensation at my fingertips had vanished. Healing complete. Time to get back to my real job.
I folded my shield, pulled out my shotgun, and started loading ammunition. The crisp metallic clicks made the rescue workers stare at me in confusion. Understandable—someone who'd just been saving lives suddenly pulling out a gun would surprise anyone.
"Sorry about this... The best healer is the one who creates a situation where healing isn't needed."
Glancing at the injured being pulled from the bus, I turned and ran toward the monsters. I climbed over wrecked cars and scattered asphalt, nerves on edge, until I slipped into the blue fog. Several small monsters were approaching. Black shapes writhed in the mist—one, two, three... roughly five of them.
"This is your final stop."
Shield in one hand and shotgun braced in the other, I slowly closed the distance. The monsters gradually came into view—dog-sized, crawling on all fours, with spines along their backs.
Spines on the back, green saliva dripping from the mouth... These are annoying bastards.
They shot spines and spat acidic saliva when cornered. I'd fought them plenty of times, and they were always dangerous. Get hit by a spine and poison spread; get hit by saliva and your flesh melted. Charging straight at them was practically suicide, but while my teammates handled the flying ones and rescued civilians, someone had to stop these.
Cheiron and Thetys were busy with their own targets, and the rest of the team was tied up with rescue work. That meant these were my problem.
The strongest one on the team plays healer.
That was our team's motto, and I'd proven it time and again. A healer didn't have to hide in the back trembling. It was better to fight at the front—treat allies when they got hurt and shoot enemies when they appeared.
As I approached, some of the monsters growled warily while others immediately revealed their true nature by shooting spines. The spines missed my shield entirely, embedding themselves in cars or the ground instead. Their aim was as pathetic as their appearance suggested.
Thanks to my shield, probably.
The specially coated shield looked like nothing more than an approaching wall—or a giant maw—to these monsters.
Good thing I paid extra to have it painted the darkest color possible.
It was already so dark that people said they couldn't tell if it was coming or going. For these monster bastards, it must have been even worse.
Two of the more confident ones began charging, green saliva trailing from their mouths. I slowly rested my finger on the trigger and waited until they were well within range.
No need to rush. They're running straight into my sights.
"Hoo..."
I took a deep breath. The moment their eyes became visible, I pulled the trigger.
Bang!
With the first shot and a dull thud, two monsters collapsed right in front of me.
Poor things... That really got lodged in there.
I'd loaded hooked arrow rounds specifically for these monsters, and they worked perfectly. The arrowheads pierced their bodies, the hooks deployed, and tore everything inside to shreds.
Not instant death, but enough to keep them from moving.
Just as I'd thought, the two monsters could only flop helplessly on the ground. I ignored them and slowly swung my gun toward the remaining monsters.
Three left.
The moment they saw my barrel turn their way, they growled, lowered their stances, and began spreading out as if they now saw me as a fellow predator rather than prey. One went behind a car on the left, two on the right. Classic pack-hunting pattern.
Hah. Ugly and they think they're smart?
Spreading out to hunt only worked in mountains or wide fields. On a narrow highway littered with wrecked cars, splitting up was just asking to be picked off one by one.
I pressed the button beside the grip and deployed my shield. The pitch-black shield unfolded with crisp mechanical sounds, expanding in an instant to a size that could fit three or four adult men. In the fog, it would look like a massive black mass.
Like this, it'll look like a predator opening its jaws to them.
With the shield deployed, I couldn't use the shotgun, so I quickly slung it onto my back and drew the pistol from my right thigh holster. Lighter than the shotgun and reliable even while holding a shield.
This little guy should be more than enough for you lot.