There was a time he wouldn’t have hesitated. He’d done them before. But then he’d had help. A Cricothyrotomy kit. Intubation tubes. Oxygen. A backup plan if it failed. Hell, he’d had a doctor only a radio call away.
And they didn’t die with him. As a paramedic, the best thing he could do for his patient was get them to the hospital. They were either dead or in his care temporarily.
Now there was no one. Only him.
Again.
Struggling to breathe, he barely noticed when their shouting had attracted attention. Alvarez and Beaumont came running into the room, their eyes widening when they saw what was going on. Alvarez said something, but Blake couldn’t hear him over the blood rushing in his ears.
He’d failed so many times. The bloody axe slipping through his fingers. That Grandma choking on her final breaths. The bodies they couldn’t bury because the ground was frozen. They’d all died under Blake’s hands.
Blake lifted a shaking hand. “Knife.”
Alvarez pulled a pocketknife from his pocket. Just before he handed it to Blake, he frowned down at it. “It’s not clean.”
He almost laughed. “You think anything here is sterilized?”
The knife was heavier than it looked. He flicked out the blade. It was slender and barely longer than a pair of nail clippers. Graves' lips were blue, his breaths tapering off from a squeaking wheeze to nothing. Tightening his grip on the knife, he adjusted himself beside Graves’ neck.
Blake didn’t know if this would work. His entire trachea could be swollen shut. But he had to try.
With his left hand, he palpated Graves’ distended throat. The skin was tight and warm under his fingers. For a hysterical moment, Blake thought it felt good against his frozen fingers. Finding the telltale depression between the thyroid and cricoid cartilage, he brought the blade up in his right hand. Steadier than he thought possible as he made a small vertical incision. The skin began to bleed, but not enough to obscure what he was doing.
Pressing the tips of his fingers on either side of the incision, he pulled the skin apart and cut a second incision, this one horizontal through the cricothyroid membrane. The membrane was fibrous, harder to cut through than the skin, but Blake knew how much pressure to use, and Alvarez maintained his blade.
Tommy appeared beside him, holding a syringe he’d cut the top off. Blake hadn’t even noticed him doing that. Dropping the knife, he took the syringe and tried to advance it through Graves’ trachea.
He’d read so many books with heroes. The kind that grit their teeth in the face of the impossible and dug deeper. Finding something within themselves, something stronger than their body, stronger than anything they fought against. They battled the odds to find another gear. To win.
But Blake wasn’t the hero here. Not when there wasn’t anything left of him to give. He could dig, and dig. But this wasn’t about strength. This wasn’t about the will to fight. This wasn’t about winning.
This was survival.
And Graves wouldn’t.
Blake tried. He tried until Graves went limp. Even then, he started chest compressions, but without a patent airway, it was pointless.
Graves died. Not from blood loss or infection. Not from his leg at all. But because Blake gave him medication he was allergic to.
Tommy was crying. Beaumont was patting him on the back, his face twisted. Blake blinked down at his bloody hands. He’d gotten used to seeing them like that. Sometimes he wondered if he should even bother to wash them at all.
Numbly, he pushed himself to his feet, picking up Alvarez’s knife. He shut the blade with a click, handing it back. The man took it, his face blank.
“We need to move the body,” he heard himself say, before turning to stumble toward the door. His feet felt disconnected. He tripped and caught himself on the doorway, hand smearing blood across the old paint. Blake didn’t notice, stepping out into the cold. It was like a slap to the face.
Behind him, Tommy said something around his tears. He could still cry. Blake couldn’t. He couldn’t remember when he’d stopped. Maybe when he realized he had no way to contact his parents, or that he might never see them again. Or whenGabriel’s side of the bed was cold more than it wasn’t. Or maybe when he had to leave another body in the woods, wrapped up in a blanket like that was enough.
He stared across the parking lot to the river. It was gray, the surface placid. It looked different than the day they first sailed on it—with the sherbert sunset and tentative hope in the air. They had a plan. They had each other. It had been nice.
Now, Blake was standing here with blood drying on his hands, wondering why he’d been stupid enough to think surviving DC was the end.
CHAPTER
TWO
It was dark by the time the old truck rolled into the parking lot of the Potomac View Motel. Judd hit a curb before parking, making a face as the truck rocked back. Phin grumbled as he unfolded himself from the back seat, but really, it was a miracle they hadn’t hit anything else. The headlights on the truck weren’t working—either the bulbs had died out, or the EMP had fried them, Gabriel wasn’t sure. Headlights were optional.
The engine clicked as Judd tossed the keys onto the dash. Gabriel was almost too tired to move. His muscles had stiffened on the long drive. The cab was clammy and stuffy. They couldn’t open a window, and it felt like he’d been breathing in everyone else’s breath.
