Earth Afire (The First Formic War) (36 page)

He ignored the thirst and got back to work. He had built pulley systems out of bamboo before—he and Father had made a small towerlike structure to lift the bags of harvested rice up onto the load trucks last season. But this would be different. Mazer was twice as long as a bag of rice and far more floppy and collapsible. Nor did Bingwen have Father helping him or two good working arms.

It took him hours to prepare everything, chopping down the bamboo, cutting the proper lengths, separating the threads of the rope into twine because he needed more rope than he had. He used scrap from the wreckage as well. There was a winch in the cockpit with cable and D-rings and fasteners. He was aware of charred human remains in the seats, but Bingwen held his breath, averted his eyes, and retrieved the equipment quickly.

Then he started building. He made a series of A-frame structures with a long shaft between them, then slid several thinner bamboo shafts underneath Mazer at his shoulders, lower back, buttocks, and bend of the knee. He made a special pouch for Mazer’s head so that it wouldn’t loll back sharply when Bingwen lifted him. He lashed both ends of the bamboo shafts underneath Mazer to a lifting pole that hovered above Mazer, running the length of his body. Then Bingwen threaded the rope through the three pulleys he had made from narrow cuts of bamboo.

The sun was far in the western part of the sky, dipping toward the horizon, when he finished. He was hungry. His arm ached. His whole body was slick with sweat and covered in dirt and soot.

The structure was elaborate; it looked like a giant bamboo spider standing over Mazer, ready to seize him and wrap him in its webbing.

Bingwen pulled on the ropes, and Mazer’s body lifted gently off the ground, his head holding steady. All that work for so little movement, he thought.

Bingwen tied off the line, slid the travois underneath Mazer, and lowered Mazer onto the stretcher. Then he moved the pulleys up the crossbeam toward Mazer’s head and lifted the front end of the travois high enough to tie it to a harness he had made for the water buffalo. The hardest part proved to be getting the water buffalo to stay still long enough for Bingwen to do the lashings. Finally, though, everything was set.

Bingwen gathered all the supplies from the med kit, including the small, flat digital device that Mazer had used to scan Bingwen’s broken arm. Bingwen examined it, brushing off the mud and grime from the screen. There was a crack across the glass, but the device turned on at Bingwen’s touch. The home screen was bright and colorful and gave him a variety of options:
SURFACE TISSUE SCAN, ULTRASOUND, BLOOD EXAM, SURGERY TUTORIALS, PHARMACY
. Bingwen put it in his saddle pouch then did a final scan of the wreckage for more supplies. He didn’t see anything else worth taking until he spotted the combat vest the female soldier was wearing. It held several cartridges of ammunition like the one currently snapped into the rifle.

Ammunition they could use. Without it the rifle would be useless. But retrieving the cartridges wouldn’t be easy; Bingwen would have to turn the woman more onto her side in order to undo the straps that held the cartridges. And that meant touching a dead person. The idea made Bingwen sick to his stomach; he couldn’t bear to look at the woman, much less touch her.

He was being ridiculous, he told himself. Selfish even. They were dead without a weapon, dead without ammunition.

He ran to the woman, his eyes half shut, his lips pressed together tight, and pushed the woman’s shoulder to rotate her body. She was stiff and bloody and didn’t roll easily with her arm bent back behind her. But Bingwen dug in his heels, and finally the woman’s torso moved enough for him to reach in and pull the cartridges free. They clattered to the ground in front of him, and Bingwen scrambled back a heartbeat later, scurrying away on all fours and hating himself for being such a coward.

His eyes were wet with tears, he realized, and he wiped at them quickly. He got to his feet, collected the cartridges, and dropped them into the tool pouch. Next he tied a rope around Mazer’s chest, securing him to the stretcher; then, after one final look back at the wreckage, he took the lead rope and pulled hard. The water buffalo moaned in opposition and resisted, but after another hard jerk from Bingwen, the animal followed.

Bingwen had heard aircraft all day, most of it far away, but now the skies were quiet. It was dusk, and he figured he wouldn’t reach the farmhouse until well after dark.

They arrived at the valley of corpses and found that the aliens had killed all the remaining crops. Without any healthy grass to walk on, Bingwen cut north, looking for another place to cut back toward the mountain. He found one a kilometer later, another wide field of crop without much standing water.

There were more bodies here: people and animals. A family of pigs. Three water buffalo. A group of children.

And Mother and Father.

Bingwen saw them from fifty meters away and stopped dead. They were lying facedown in the mud, Father’s arm draped across Mother’s shoulder, as if comforting her.

Bingwen didn’t move. He couldn’t see their faces, but that was Mother’s shirt and Mother’s back and Mother’s shape. And that was Father’s clothes. And Father’s boots and Father’s hair. And the glint of sunlight was off Father’s watch on his left wrist where he wore it.

Bingwen felt as if his body were made of air. His eyes couldn’t focus. His knees felt flimsy and unstable. He stood there, staring at them, him upright and alive and breathing and them not. Their hearts weren’t beating, their lungs weren’t taking in air, their mouths weren’t moving, telling him how much they loved him and that they would protect him and that he would be safe with them. Their arms weren’t wrapping around him and pulling him close to their chests. Their bodies weren’t doing anything except lying there in the mud and misted grass.

Bingwen stood there for a long time, how long he did not know. An hour perhaps, maybe double that. The water buffalo mooed and pawed at the ground, impatient. Bingwen ignored it. He ignored everything. If aliens were coming, he wouldn’t run from them.

He breathed in and out. No tears came. No wails. No cries of anguish. Everything was broken inside. Everything was empty. He wouldn’t make tears anymore,
couldn’t
make them. He wasn’t going to allow that. Tears belonged to the old, dead version of himself, the previous Bingwen, the boy who sneaked into the library and who worried about tests and going to school and who had a friend with a twisted foot and parents who loved him and sat him by the fire when he was wet and cold. That Bingwen was gone. That Bingwen was lying there in the mud with Mother and Father, his arm draped across Mother’s shoulder just like Father’s was.

He would make Mazer well. Yes, he would make Mazer well, and then Mazer would stop everything. Mazer would end the mists and the fires and the bodies in the fields. And Bingwen would help him. He’d give Mazer the cartridges, and he’d carry Mazer’s water, and he’d do anything to put an end to it, to make it all go away. Then he would allow himself to cry.

It was full dark when he reached the farmhouse. Grandfather ran out to greet him, embracing him, kissing him on the cheek, cursing himself for letting Bingwen go. Only then did Grandfather see that the water buffalo was dragging someone behind it.

The others came outside as well. They saw Mazer and the travois and they stared at it all, as if they couldn’t understand what they were looking at, as if the rational part of their brain were telling them it wasn’t possible. The old woman turned to Bingwen and regarded him with an expression Bingwen couldn’t read. Confusion? Awe?

No one moved. No one jumped to help.

They didn’t know how to respond, Bingwen realized. They didn’t know what to do. “He’s alive,” Bingwen said. “We need to help him.”

Grandfather took charge. “Untie the stretcher. Pull him inside. Quickly now. But gently, do it gently.”

Bingwen stood there and watched as they untied the travois and pulled Mazer into the farmhouse still on it. They laid the whole structure on the floor and surrounded the body.

“I need light,” said the old woman.

“She’s a nurse of sorts,” Grandfather said to Bingwen. “A midwife. Do you know what that means?”

“She helps women deliver babies,” said Bingwen.

“Yes,” said Grandfather. “She knows things about medicine.”

“Not enough,” said Bingwen. He took the digital device from the pouch and approached Mazer. Everyone was crowding around the travois. The old woman’s husband was holding a lantern.

“Back up,” the old woman said. “I need space.” She bent down, pulled the lantern close, and poked around, lifting the corner of the bandage and looking at the many wounds. “This is bad. Very bad. More than I can do. I can’t help him.”

“You have to,” said Bingwen.

“Boy, you did a brave thing to bring this man back, but he is beyond help. He won’t live to see morning. He’s lost too much blood. His wounds are too many.”

“Then we’ll give him a blood transfusion. We’ll find a match among one of us and give him blood.”

The old woman laughed. “And how do you propose we do that?”

“With this,” said Bingwen, holding up the device. He turned on the screen and selected
BLOOD EXAM
. It asked him if he wanted instructions. Bingwen selected
YES
. The machine started to talk in English. It startled everyone.

“What is that?” said the old woman.

“A medical device to tell you how to treat someone.”

“That sounds like English,” said the teenage girl.

“It is,” said Bingwen. “I know English. I can walk us through the steps.” He didn’t wait for them to object. He listened to the recorded voice. It was female, calm and soothing, the kind of voice you would want to hear in a traumatic situation. The device told Bingwen to pull certain items from the med kit. Bingwen obeyed. He used the tiny tube he found to extract a drop of blood from Mazer. He put the drop on the corner of the device’s screen where it indicated.

“Type O positive,” the device said. “This blood is only compatible with types O positive and O negative.”

“What is it saying?” asked Grandfather.

“I need to prick my finger,” said Bingwen. He dug through the supplies until he found another thin straw and finger pricker.

“Test mine,” said Grandfather, offering his hand. “You’re too small to give blood.”

“You’re too weak,” said Bingwen.

“I know my strength better than you do, boy. Prick my finger.”

Bingwen wiped Grandfather’s finger with the gauze, pricked it, and tested the blood. When the results came back he said, “It’s a match.”

Grandfather nodded, pleased with himself, as if he had accomplished something. “Then let’s get a move on.”

“We need to stitch him up first and remove the shrapnel,” said the old woman. “But I think it’s a waste of time. This man isn’t going to live. You’ll lose blood for nothing, blood you have no business losing at your age.”

Grandfather frowned. “My grandson risked his life to bring this man to us. And this man risked his life to save us. We are going to save his life and you are going to help.”

The old woman’s husband stepped forward. “Watch your tongue, old man. You don’t command my wife.”

“I’m doing it because you’re not,” said Grandfather. “She’s duty-bound. She owes this man. We all do. And if Bingwen says we can save him, then we can.” He turned to the old woman. “You’ve stitched up women before. This is no different.”

“This is plenty different,” said the old woman. “The shrapnel wounds are simple enough. It’s the man’s stomach that I can’t fix. I don’t know what’s injured inside. His organs could be all cut up. It looks deep. I’m not a doctor.”

“The device will tell us,” said Bingwen, not knowing if it were true. “Let’s at least try.”

The old woman hesitated, looked into the face of her husband, then sighed. “Fine. What do we do first?”

Bingwen wasn’t sure. There was a button for help. He pushed it.

“State the problem,” said the device.

“His stomach is cut and was bleeding a lot. Maybe his organs are cut, too. We’re not sure.”

“Have you stopped the bleeding?” asked the device.

“Yes.”

“Have you washed and sanitized the wound and your hands?”

“No.”

“Let’s do that first. Do you know how?”

Bingwen knew how to wash his hands certainly, but there might be special instructions so he said, “No.”

There
were
special instructions. There were chemicals to use and gloves to wear and sterile gauze to unwrap. Bingwen and the woman did what they were told. They cleaned the wound and stanched the blood. They wiped down and sterilized the device as well.

“Now I need to scan the wound,” said the device.

Bingwen held the device over the wound for several seconds.

“I detect serious trauma,” said the device. “A portion of the small intestines has been severed. This requires immediate surgery. Is there a qualified doctor available who can perform a small bowel resection?”

“No,” said Bingwen.

“What’s it saying?” said the old woman.

“Let the boy listen,” said Grandfather.

“Can you transport the patient to a hospital where a qualified doctor can be found?” the device asked.

“No,” said Bingwen.

“Can you notify a doctor and have one come to you?”

“There are no doctors anywhere. We can’t move him.”

“Is there someone present who is willing to attempt the surgery?”

Bingwen looked into their faces. “What will happen if we don’t?”

“The small intestine is part of the body’s digestive tract. When severed it will release harmful waste into the body. If not repaired immediately, and if the wound isn’t properly cleaned, the patient will not survive.”

“Nobody here has ever done something like this before.”

“I will walk you through the steps. You will need the following items from the med kit.”

A long list of supplies appeared on the screen.

“What will we have to do exactly?” asked Bingwen.