S. L. Viehl - Do or Die

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DO OR DIE

By S. L. Viehl

Introduction

If years were wars, I think I would have earned a couple of purple hearts for

2002. The last twelve months brought a succession of publisher snafus which

had major, negative impact on me and my career. As usual, there wasn't much I

could do about it. By the end of the summer, I was ready to toss in the author

towel and go get a regular day job. I even went and got one for a couple of

weeks, when things turned really bleak.

And things got very bleak indeed. At one point I had to gamble every last cent I

possessed in order to stay home and write. While I was writing, there was

always this little voice in the back of my head telling me that if I failed, I'd have to

go and get two jobs to keep me and the kids afloat.

The stories published on my web site over the past year often reflected the

turbulent times with which I was coping. The May/June story, "Skin Deep" had to

be split as I was dealing with an editor quitting, and "A Personal Injustice" came

right after I nearly quit writing myself. They're all here, along with one that never

made it to the web site, "La Matanza."

Writing these stories for the web site helped to remind me that I'm not just in this

for the money. I'm in this for you - my family, friends, and readers. What you

wrote to me helped me through that bad stretch of 2002. Your e-mails and

letters encouraged me, made me to laugh, and kept me writing no matter what.

I don't gamble, so maybe it was beginner's luck that has since landed me two

new contracts, moved me into a whole new genre and promise enough income to

keep me home and writing full time for the next five or six years.

Or not. Personally, I blame you guys. Thanks.

Sheila

November 2002

Night Trauma

If working the graveyard shift wasn't bad enough, now I was stuck working New

Year's Eve with a rookie. While bartenders and waitresses drank leftover

champagne and crowed over their tips, I'd be pumping stomachs and pulling

bodies out of MVAs. I didn't mind that as much as the presence of a new partner.

New guys were always a pain.

As I turned off the interstate, I glanced sideways at the silent hulk riding shotgun.

"Where you from, Malone?" His first name was Rory, but I'd learned to stick to

surnames on the job.

He stopped looking out the windshield for a minute to meet my gaze. "Why?"

So I can avoid going there. "No reason, just making conversation." The radio

buzzed, and I reached over to answer it. "Dispatch, this is Charlie Fourteen, go

ahead."

"Fourteen, we've got multiple GSW at seven-oh-one Taylor. Eight-three and

seventy-six en route. What's your ETA, over?"

I checked the nearest street sign. "Three minutes, dispatch. Blues on scene?"

"They called it in, Fourteen."

"Copy. On the way." I hung up the mike before I switched on the lights and hit the

accelerator. "You're not fresh out of school, are you?"

"I got my certification last month."

Half the crew had called in sick so they could party -- they'd probably put him on

shift out of desperation. "Look, they called for three units so this isn't going to be

pretty. If you need to vomit, walk away. Last thing I want is to clean that out of an

open chest wound."

"I won't puke."

Famous last words. Every rookie I rode with threw up on the messy calls.

Seven-oh-one Taylor was located in Crackhead Heaven, a section of abandoned

warehouses occupied by the homeless addicts. I didn't bother to look at the

building numbers but followed the flashes of blue cop lights. Two rescue units

and three black and whites were parked around a huddled group. In the center I

spotted four bodies still on the ground, one clutching a sawed-off, another with a

.45.

"Welcome to the Ok Corral," I muttered as I parked, grabbed my bag and jerked

open my door. "Get the stretcher, Malone."

I recognized two of the cops who were working CPR on one of the victims. The

other three bodies had no faces. Blood and brains were splattered everywhere.

Hell hath no fury like a night in Crackhead Heaven. I still checked for pulses

before kneeling down beside the cop to take over on the fourth, a scrawny white

male who hadn't bathed or changed his ragged clothes since the new millennium.

Blood streamed from a gruesome right lateral chest wound, and I felt a couple of

snapped ribs beneath it.

"How's your patient, Teddy?" I opened my bag.

"Still got a pulse," Ted Jones, the cop on the other side of the body, said. "But he

ain't breathing, Erin."

Both the cops backed off. I used my laryngoscope to check the throat, then tubed

and bagged him to force air into his lungs. I felt under the right shoulder for the

exit wound, which was bigger than my hand. Malone appeared with the stretcher

as I checked the chest for positive airway sounds. "I'm in. Let's load him."

That was when my patient decided to sit up, grab me by the throat, and shove a

bloodstained knife in my face. I clamped my hands on his arm, trying to force the

blade away. His face contorted as he began to choke on the tube, but whatever

he'd smoked or snorted had lent him the strength of ten men. His grip tightened,

then I began to choke.

"Rory . . . " I wheezed, wrestling for control of the knife.

There was a blur, then someone yanked me back and dropped down on my

patient. Malone. As I landed on my backside, he swiftly straddled the patient,

pinned the hand holding the knife, and nodded to Teddy, who disarmed the man.

I rubbed my throat. "Watch the chest," I said, my voice harsh and cracking. My

partner gave me a wild sideways look. "His ribs are broken."

The cops helped Malone transfer the victim onto the stretcher and strap him

down, and then the scrawny man went limp. I starting bagging again with one

hand and popped the IV pack with the other. I trotted alongside the stretcher,

prepping his neck as the men carried him to the unit.

"Call ahead to Holy Cross," I said to Malone as I wiped blood from my hand on

my jacket. "GSW right lateral chest, in and out, traumatic arrest." I hesitated, then

patted his arm. "Rory, thanks for the save back there."

He nodded. "No problem."

Malone drove fast and smooth as I worked on the victim in the back. My throat-

grabbing knife wielder had a prominent external jugular, which made it easy to

stick him, but every time I stopped CPR, he stopped breathing. After watching

the agonal rhythm on the heart monitor, I popped him with epinephrine and

atropine and kept two bags running wide open.

"You okay?" I heard my partner call through the partition.

"I'm fine. He's gonna arrest, any minute," I said as I packed a temporary dressing

on both sides of the chest wound. "Report our stats to dispatch and drive faster."

A full team was waiting as Malone and I unloaded the patient, and one of the

nurses took over bagging for me as they rushed him in.

"Found him over on Taylor," I told the attending doc before stopping outside the

treatment room. "Better keep him strapped down, he nailed me pretty good."

"Catch you on the neck there?" The physician took a moment to check my throat.

"Skin's not broken. Gargle with a little warm salt water when you get a chance,

you'll be okay."

Okay would take more than a little gargling. "Will do, doc."

In they went, leaving me and Malone out in the hallway. It was always a wrench

to stop and let the pros take over, and I was jittery with nerves. If the crackhead

had broken the skin . . . "C'mon, Malone, I'll call us in and you can buy me a cup

of coffee."

* * *

"How long have you been an EMT?" Malone asked me as I pushed his quarters

into the vending machine.

"Seven years. You want cream or sugar?"

"No, thanks." He took the styrofoam cup I handed him and followed me to the tiny

table by the window. "You must like it."

If he only knew. "It's a job." Holy Cross had a nice view of the beach from this

side, and I liked watching the waves roll in -- reminded me a little of home. As I

pulled off my jacket, I noticed the dark red lines under my fingernails and made a

mental note to scrub before we went back on duty. "What made you decide to

save the world?"

"It's a job."

The deadpan humor startled me -- maybe there was some hope for Malone yet.

The harsh white hospital lights tended to be unkind to anyone exposed to them,

but he wasn't a bad-looking guy. A little on the big side for my taste, but solid-big,

not scary-big. Unlike the other guys I worked with, he kept his light brown hair cut

short and his broad face clean shaven. He wasn't handsome or ordinary, but

somewhere in the middle. The wariness in his narrow dark eyes made me

wonder what he'd seen before tonight.

Right now he was looking at my neck. "You should knock off early."

"You heard the doc." I produced a raspy chuckle. "Besides, the boss doesn't let

us off unless we cough up blood or sever an artery."

I knew what else he saw when he looked at me. A too-tall, too-skinny, too-pale

woman with big ears. My orangey hair was particular great camouflage,

rendering me invisible to most men. Except I had the feeling Malone wasn't most

men.

I checked my watch. "Two hours to midnight. Got any New Year's resolutions?"

"I don't drink, and I already quit smoking."

"Me either." I'd never liked the odor of alcohol or tobacco, but thankfully I'd never

been required to do more than smell it second-hand. "I'm think I'm going to do a

bit of travelling this summer. Maybe move out of the area permanently."

His brows lifted. "Why?"

"I get restless." My handheld buzzed and I down the rest of my coffee before I

switched on the radio. "Charlie Fourteen, over."

"Hey, Erin." Dispatch sounded a little drunk now. "Sorry to pull your break, but

we've got a 911 call on a single MVA out on twenty-seven, two miles east of

Uncle Joe's. Everyone else's tied up."

"Copy, on our way." I tossed my cup and shrugged back into my jacket. "Let's go

save some more of the world, Malone."

* * *

Twenty-seven was a long, lonely stretch of highway that ran through cattle ranch

and orange grove territory farm, and so far had remained unincorporated by the

surrounding three countries. State troopers rarely even bothered to respond to

calls out here, which like tonight were usually strange, unexplained single MVAs.

Since I wasn't spooked by the isolation, I'd told dispatch to assign me whenever

calls came in from the area while I was on shift.

"Get the flashlights from the utility box under your seat," I told Malone. "There's

no power poles out here, and we'll probably have to wade into a ditch to pull

them out."

I sped past Uncle Joe's, a truck stop we used as a landmark, and put my brights

on to illuminate the blackness ahead. The dashboard lights began to flicker and

dim, and I covered my reaction by hitting the top of the dash with my fist.

"Don't you die on me now, you old bag," I told the steering wheel.

My partner shifted beside me. "You usually have problems with the unit's

electrical?"

"Now and then. The company keeps them until they're ready to fall apart." I

checked the sky, but it was clear. Which did no reassure me. "This one's pretty

new, though. I'll have to write it up after our shift." I picked up twin sets of skid

marks on the asphalt and slowed down. "Look out your side, Malone, this might

be it."

I felt him tense. "Hundred yards ahead, between those pines."

The vague outline of a wreck appeared on the edge of my headlights, and I

pulled alongside it and parked. No smoke or fire, and the utter stillness made me

scan the tree line on both sides.

Malone leaned over. "What's wrong?"

"I hate dead on scene calls, they make me feel so useless." And from the angle

of one of the pines, whoever drove the car into them was probably pancaked.

"Remember what I said about vomiting."

I took a flashlight from Malone, and we approached the wreck. It was a bad one,

engine rammed back into the interior, fenders crumpled like used Kleenex. The

smell of gasoline was strong, and I moved my light around to look for puddles.

There was a huge one under the rear tires.

"Ruptured tank, not good." Any spark could ignite the fuel, so we had to work

fast. "Get the passenger side, but don't move anything metal."

The driver's window had been reduced to a few fragments clinging to the door

frame, so I was able to lean in. The car was an old model, no air bag. The

carburetor and A/C compressor sat in the driver's lap, just beneath the steering

column impaling his chest. An expression of mild surprise still etched his

untouched face. I laid two fingers against his throat out of habit. Rigor mortis had

already begun to set in.

"Erin, over here."

I backed out of the window and circled around the car. Malone was kneeling on

the ground beside the mangled body of a woman. Blood and something white

soaked her clothes. And the white stuff glowed.

I crouched and reached to touch the body, but Malone snatched my hand away.

"What?"

"Don't touch her." He stood up and looked around. "Stay with them."

"Where are you going?" I asked, but he was already gone.

Hopefully he'd gone into the scrub to empty his stomach. I walked back to the

unit to call in. Only the radio didn't work, and the headlights started fading. I

pulled out my hand held and switched it on.

Only it was dead, too.

Have to get him out of here. "Malone?" I walked down toward the smashed

vehicle. "Malone, get up here."

"I'm okay." He sounded too far away. "Stay there."

He's found something. I grabbed the bag and hiked into the scrub, wading

through the kudzu and sawgrass, swinging my flashlight from right to left. "We've

got problems, the battery--" then I saw his silhouette standing over something

glowing in a clear patch of ground.

It looked like a child, covered with more of the glowy white stuff, until I got beside

it and dropped to my knees.

Malone crouched down on the other side of the body. "It's not human."

"No shit." I snapped on some gloves and reached for its neck. "It's got a pulse." It

also had an inhuman face with three eyes, four nostrils and a hinged jaw mouth,

and did not resemble anyone I'd ever seen before. Under my forearm, its narrow

chest moved. How do I call this one? "Um, it's breathing."

"Go back to the unit, Erin."

I watched him pull a gun out of his jacket and put a protective arm across the

body. "You're not killing it. No way, Rory."

"It's a dangerous being."

"It's an unconscious, wounded life form. You're the dangerous one." I tugged

open the top of the odd-looking flightsuit it wore and exposed a set of slits that

gaped and contracted. An aquatic. Beneath the gills, a shallow wound in the

upper abdomen was leaking more glowy whiteness. From the pattern of the

surrounding contusions it looked like it had gotten hit with something heavy --

maybe it had bounced off the car. "We've got to control the bleeding."

Malone knelt beside me. "It's not blood, it's stasis fluid."

Which changed everything I'd assumed about my new partner. I took a deep

breath and opened a sterile bandage pack. "Explain to me how you know that."

"We think they use it to survive FTL travel." He scanned the area. "They always

travel in threes."

I slapped the dressing on and applied direct pressure. "I take it you're not just a

big X-Files fan."

"I work for the government."

The gruffness, the moves, the haircut -- it should have tipped me off.

"Undercover secret agent man?"

"Something like that." He watched me listen to the alien's chest. "You don't seem

too shocked by this."

"I once had to pull the undigested parts of a three month old baby out of a dead

gator's gullet. I'm basically shock-proof." I would have done vitals on the alien,

but I couldn't use human standards. Maybe I could find out more about what he

knew. "Can you give me any hard info on this thing?"

"We don't know much about them. All the others died upon recovery." He pulled

out a hand held -- different from mine -- and spoke quietly into it. Someone else

said a few words in response, too low for me to hear. Then Malone put it away

and whirled around. "The other two are mobile, heading our way. We've got to

move it."

"The unit's out of commission; we're not going anywhere." I tried to inject some

conviction and reassurance in my tone as I added, "If there are others, we should

leave it here for them to take care of. They'll know what to do."

He shook his head. "I've got orders."

I was going to have to do this the hard way. I removed a palm-sized object from

my jacket and stood up. "You want to carry it out?"

"It's two miles back to Uncle Joe's," he said. "We'll take it there and wait for my

people."

His people. I put the object back in my pocket. "All right. Just one thing." That got

his full attention. "If you call me Scully, I am out of here."

The body didn't weigh much -- maybe forty pounds -- so it was no chore to load it

on the gurney and push it down the road toward the truck stop. I covered it with a

thermal blanket and tucked the unit bag beside its two legs. It didn't wear shows

and had weird, clubbed feet. Malone walked beside me, gun back in his hand.

"I'm not letting you shoot anyone," I mentioned as I avoided a pothole. "ET or

otherwise."

"I may not have a choice."

"There's always a choice. You didn't shoot the crackhead who pulled the knife on

me." I tapped the red cross certification badge on his jacket sleeve. "In case you

forgot, this means we do no harm."

He slowly holstered the gun and took control of the gurney. "The crack head

wasn't capable of faster than light speed interstellar travel."

I snorted. "You've obviously never smoked crack."

Something fast and dark shot past the front of the gurney, which Malone jerked

to a stop. "Shit." He shoved me behind him, pulled out the weapon, and did a

three-sixty, then froze. "Run, Erin. Run!"

I would have grabbed his gun, but one of ET's pals appeared in front of me, and I

heard a squeaky sound. Malone fired his gun, then cool white light filled up the

world.

* * *

"Malone?"

I'd woken up in a small, dark, cold place. I couldn't see anything, but I could smell

my partner's aftershave and heard him breathing. A bit of groping around helped

me find him, huddled on the metal floor. I ran my hands over him, feeling for

injuries. He had a bump on his forehead, but no blood leaking out of his ears,

and his pulse and respiration were normal.

I shook him. "Malone. Come on, up and at 'em." He groaned and stirred. Then he

seized me by the arms and dragged me down by his side. "It's Erin, it's okay."

"Where are we?"

"I have no clue, and you're hurting my arms." I released a breath as his grip

eased. "Thanks. What happened?"

He didn't answer for a minute. Then he said, "They shot us. We're on their ship."

I tried to stand, but bumped my head on the low metal ceiling. "Okay. Tell me you

know how to get off their ship."

He did the same thing, and swore. "No one's ever been on board one."

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摘要：

DOORDIEByS.L.ViehlIntroductionIfyearswerewars,IthinkIwouldhaveearnedacoupleofpurpleheartsfor2002.Thelasttwelvemonthsbroughtasuccessionofpublishersnafuswhichhadmajor,negativeimpactonmeandmycareer.Asusual,therewasn'tmuchIcoulddoaboutit.Bytheendofthesummer,Iwasreadytotossintheauthortowelandgogetaregula...

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