Growing Pains
“…Huff, huff.”
Standing over the butchered corpses, Angela kept blowing out hard breaths into the cold. Drop by drop, blood fell and melted the snow piled on the ground.
“Ghk—urgh—mph…”
One cultist still sprawled on the floor, his breath not yet fully cut off, fingers twitching in tiny spasms. I pulled the dagger from my belt and went to drive it straight into his throat—
Crunch.
Somehow it wouldn’t sink in deep the way James’s or Angela’s blades had. At the tip of the knife I only felt the edge grate and catch against bone again and again.
“Khhek—ek—”
“Damn it…”
Until now I’d thought killing people who meant me harm wouldn’t leave much of a mark. Even when I watched them die it was only in passing—I’d always used weapons that made such a mess of the spectacle that I never had to care much about watching something that had been human change into something else.
But right now—
“Uegh—ek—kuh—phuh…”
Those useless little gestures of resistance, thrashing while he poured blood. A windpipe that only suffered and refused to part cleanly under the knife.
“Please, just die already…!”
It made me wonder if a gun would’ve been kinder.
Angela stared at me blankly for a moment, then reached out.
Thud.
She carefully pushed me aside—me, who’d already spent every ounce of strength just trying to press the blade down—then set the point of her knife just inside the collarbone and drove her full weight onto it in one motion.
A sound like a balloon bursting. Then the blade rose and fell twice more into the chest. The body that had been flailing a second ago went still as if the struggle had never happened.
“…Hhh… hhh.”
Her back rose and fell, rose and fell. Angela climbed carefully off the body, flung the knife away, and leaned against the car. The trembling in her blood-soaked hands showed no sign of stopping.
“…Angela?”
James came back covered in blood of his own, hastily set his gun down, and started toward her—only for her to turn her head toward him in a daze, gas-mask already painted red. That alone was enough to make cold sweat run down my spine.
“Hooo… hooo…”
She cupped the mask with those blood-slick hands. When she still couldn’t master the shaking she wrapped her arms around herself, slowly staining the white of her clothes a darker and darker crimson. Her mental state had clearly bottomed out.
I walked over slowly and sat beside her, then carefully took hold of her shoulder.
“…You did good.”
In the middle of the wreckage an alarm suddenly blared. I dug through my pocket and pulled out a spare air filter.
“Hold your breath for a second?”
She didn’t answer, but the white vapor stopped coming out of the mask; I took that as my cue. With the spent filter in my left hand and a fresh one in my right, I locked the new one firmly into place.
Once we reached these Rangers’ base camp we could wash the protective suits and masks or swap them out. Covered in blood like this, mental fortitude would keep sliding—so we had to move fast.
Crunch, crunch.
“…Hoo.”
A few more footsteps, and a man with four green eyes appeared. He raised whatever he was carrying, holstered his pistol at his hip, then wiped the blood off his knife on a corpse’s black robe—swish, swish—and sheathed that too.
“Anyone hurt?”
“No.”
“At least none of the blood on me is mine.”
“….”
“What about the one over there?”
“She’s shaken, but she’ll be all right. She needs rest, though.”
“I heard a doctor was coming with you—where’s…”
“That’s her.”
Angela lifted her head in a blank daze. Carlos flinched hard for a second, then nodded.
“Radio.”
“…Here.”
I picked up the handset she’d thrown on the ground and gave it back. She blinked a few times, then pressed the button hard.
“Cole, respond.”
“Bringing the people up now. Drop the barricade.”
Carlos clipped the radio back where it belonged and waved us on.
“Come on. At least in Hartwell’s room and ours you can take the masks off.”
“Hartwell’s the wounded one?”
“That’s right.”
As Carlos moved ahead I held out a hand to Angela. Her blood-red glove closed around my arm, but the grip was far too weak. Her boots scraped uselessly against the ground; her legs had given out. In the end James stepped in and offered his own hands.
“…On three!”
Feeling the nauseating chill of blood that was already going cold, we got Angela—who could barely take a step—inside the building.
A doctor who was supposed to save people—a veterinarian, sure, but still. Pulling the trigger without hesitation, drawing a knife and finishing a life cleanly. When all of this was over… what kind of person would the idealist become?
“…With this, the water in the tank is usable.”
“Jesus Christ, that’s insane.”
I had hastily jury-rigged a water filter out of four air filters, hooked it into the rooftop tank, and come back down to the sound of pure excitement.
“It’s actually clean water? Holy shit, we can actually drink—hah, hahah! Carlos!”
“E-excuse me a second—”
Someone bolted into the bathroom; the sound of gulping water as hard as humanly possible followed. …Were they really that thrilled?
While the two soldiers quenched their thirst I slipped into another bathroom. I turned the shower on and scrubbed every corner of myself without even taking the protective suit off. I still couldn’t afford to feel the exhaustion.
Not yet.
Knock, knock, knock…
I sloshed through the puddles, walked to the innermost door, and knocked twice. The door opened quietly. Angela stared up at me with dead eyes—could you even call that a welcome?
“Come in.”
The person named Hartwell turned out to be a woman. A solid, powerful build that reminded me of Sarah. Eyes sharper than Sarah’s. But those eyes were bone-weary, and her hair was brown. Dirty bandages wound around her shoulder, arm, and leg told the whole story of how bad things had gotten.
“I installed a filtration unit on the water tank.”
“The wounds… you know how to disinfect, right?”
She looked ready to collapse any second. Maybe it would be better to put the treatment off.
“—The wounds are infected, but I already started them on the antibiotics I brought… That doesn’t mean we can wait, though. Even antibiotics won’t be enough if we drag our feet.”
As if she’d read my mind, she explained it in a low voice that was already fading, then simply pointed at the rubber gloves.
I took off the gas mask, put on a surgical mask, stripped the gloves I’d worn outside, and pulled on a pair of surgical gloves.
“…Let’s begin.”
The moment she confirmed I was ready, Angela wordlessly took the scissors and sliced straight through bandage and clothing alike—even though the patient was fully conscious.
“!?!?!?—”
“If you thrash around you’ll only hurt yourself worse. Hold still.”
“Even so, in front of a man I’ve never even—”
“I.”
Angela crushed the protest that was about to pour out with a quiet, heavy voice. Her eyes were exhausted. No—colder than that. Almost frigid.
“…I swore I would use what I know to save animals first. Then people.”
She peeled the contaminated clothes off Hartwell, dropped them into a bin, and casually tossed every blood-soaked bandage away.
“Today I broke that oath.”
She uncapped the bottle of alcohol, soaked a wad of cotton, and scrubbed it hard across Hartwell’s wounds.
“—————!!!!!”
A soundless scream rang through the room, yet Angela’s hands never wasted a single motion. The moment the cotton blackened she soaked the next one, scrubbed again…
“Killing one person to save another. At first I thought nothing could be more contradictory. Turns out the walking contradiction was me.”
“What the hell are you even trying to—”
“You want to live, right?”
She tossed the spent cotton into the bin, threaded a needle, and asked the question like a whisper. There was not a trace of a smile on her face.
“….”
“Then shut up and cooperate with the person trying to keep you alive.”
It was like she had become someone else entirely. And not by a little.
“….”
Hartwell lay on the bed in a much cleaner state, already asleep under morphine. While I finished tidying the room, a cold hand closed around mine. It belonged to Angela—she had scrubbed her hands over and over in water so frigid it left them red.
“…Today really—”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
“…No. I have to say it to James too. And to everyone when we get back.”
Her roughly pushed-back hair only made the face that looked ready to burst into tears even more wretched. She bit her lower lip hard, shoulders hitching with quiet sobs. I gently wiped away the tears welling in those blue eyes.
“Everyone else has been fighting things like that all this time. And I’ve just been off on my own spouting stupid nonsense.”
“Stupid and stubborn aren’t the same thing.”
“….”
“Though I guess you can be both.”
I handed her the cup of water I’d set aside. She grabbed it and drank too fast, then choked.
“Cough—cough…!”
“You see them?”
Guns and gear laid out neatly around the room. Most eye-catching of all were the ammo boxes full of unassembled rifle rounds.
“If you want peace, prepare for war.”
“….”
“These people will fight that war better than almost anyone. I’m not sure there even are people who could do it better.”
As the coughing settled, Angela looked at me. The tears sliding down her cheeks still showed no sign of stopping.
“…You almost—died—because of me. Because I said something stupid, all of you…”
“And everyone lived. Me, them—all of us. Because of the choice you made.”
If she’d kept acting like a coward to the end it would have been a problem. But she had pulled the trigger to save me, drawn the knife.
“The process was a little… messy in places. But if the result is good, isn’t that what matters?”
“….”
“A little late, but… thank you, Angela.”
I closed both hands around hers, then carefully drew her into an embrace.
“…Hic—uh—khhk—uh—khhuh…!”
Tonight everyone would sleep deep and rest, recovering from the fatigue and the mental toll of back-to-back fights. Of course, I’d still have to assemble those bullets for them.
Whoooosh—
As my clothes grew damp, a vicious knife-wind tore through the air outside. In weather like this other predators probably wouldn’t be roaming the streets.
But… the smell of blood. The gunshots we had scattered everywhere. Would any of that be all right?
“Haa—uh—hic—nnn…”
The hands that clung to me refused to let go. I kept stroking Angela’s back.
…For now, focus on this. Her mental strength had hit rock bottom, after all.