“Where are you hit?
Just the foot?”
“Ankle…”
“All right, take the rag off.
Let’s see.”
“The wound’s in back.”
“All right, lie down on your stomach, and keep your hands under your head.”
She stretched out weakly, and he shone the light over her leg, to make certain its skin was clear of neuroderm.
Then he looked at the ankle, and said nothing for a time.
The bullet had missed the joint, but had neatly severed the Achilles’ tendon just above the heel.
“You’re a plucky kid,” he grunted, wondering how she had endured the self-torture of getting the shoe off and clothing herself.
“It was cold back here—without clothes,” she muttered.
Paul opened the first aid packet and found an envelope of sulfa powder.
Without touching her, he emptied it into the wound, which was beginning to bleed again. There was nothing else he could do.
The tendon had pulled apart and would require surgical stitching to bring it together until it could heal.
Such attention was out of the question.
She broke the silence.
“I… I’m going to be crippled, aren’t I?”
“Oh, not crippled,” he heard himself telling her.
“If we can get you to a doctor, anyway. Tendons can be sutured with wire.
He’ll probably put your foot in a cast, and you might get a stiff ankle from it.”
She lay breathing quietly, denying his hopeful words by her silence.
“Here!” he said. “Here’s a gauze pad and some tape.
Can you manage it yourself?”
She started to sit up. He placed the first aid pack beside her, and backed to the door.
She fumbled in the kit, and whimpered while she taped the pad in place.
“There’s a tourniquet in there, too.
Use it if the bleeding’s worse.”
She looked up to watch his silhouette against the darkening evening sky.
“Thanks… thanks a lot, mister.
I’m grateful.
I promise not to touch you. Not if you don’t want me to.”
Shivering, he moved back to the cab.
Why did they always get that insane idea that they were doing their victims a favor by giving them the neural plague?
Not if you don’t want me to.
He shuddered as he drove away.
She felt that way now, while the pain robbed her of the craving, but later—unless he got rid of her quickly—she would come to feel that she owed it to him—as a favor.
The disease perpetuated itself by arousing such strange delusions in its bearer.
The microorganisms’ methods of survival were indeed highly specialized.
Paul felt certain that such animalicules had not evolved on Earth.
A light gleamed here and there along the Alvin-Galveston highway—oil lamps, shining from lonely cottages whose occupants had not felt the pressing urgency of the crowded city.
But he had no doubt that to approach one of the farmhouses would bring a rifle bullet as a welcome.
Where could he find help for the girl?
No one would touch her but another dermie.
Perhaps he could unhitch the trailer and leave her in downtown Galveston, with a sign hung on the back—“Wounded dermie inside.”
The plague victims would care for their own—if they found her.
He chided himself again for worrying about her.
Saving her life didn’t make him responsible for her… did it?
After all, if she lived, and the leg healed, she would only prowl in search of healthy victims again.
She would never be rid of the disease, nor would she ever die of it—so far as anyone knew.