Gas Mask Girls Issue #10
Emlynn JonesNot good was an understatement, Gamble thought as she looked down on Michael, lying in a hospital bed. It had taken a while to get up to the med room. Doze insisted on helping those in need despite Jay’s attempts to rush them along. He refused to answer Gamble’s questions about the raiders. “They’re gone,” was the most she could get from him, other than his frantic pleas to hurry.
When they had finally arrived at the rooms set aside for a makeshift hospital, barely controlled chaos awaited them. Several volunteers acted as nurses, helping a beleaguered-looking woman working on the wounded defenders. The groans of the wounded drowned out the doctor’s commands to her assistants.
Looking at Michael’s bloodied form, she could now understand why Jay had been pushing them so hard. Michael’s right leg was broken in several places, blood seeping through bandages wrapped around open wounds. His left leg was nonexistent, a ragged stump ending shortly below the hip. His breathing was labored, his skin grey. Michael looked minutes away from death.
“Don’t tire him! I want to medicate him, but he said he had to talk to you first,” the doctor glared at them as if his refusal to be medicated was their fault. She turned back to her work, treating a gunshot wound on another defender. Gamble didn’t know much but wasn’t optimistic about that settler either. The bullet had hit the man’s abdomen and judging by his pallor he had lost a lot of blood.
To Gamble's surprise, Michael opened his eyes as they approached the bed. He looked at them blearily, trying to catch his breath to speak. Either he was even worse than Gamble had thought, or the doctor had given him some medication regardless of his protest.
“Thank…you…” he finally made out. “Wendy mentioned what…how you saved them…saved many.” He gestured vaguely to the group laboring at the other bed. Gamble was unsure if he was referring to the doctor or one of her helpers. Had they met Wendy? She couldn’t remember. She looked over at Doze who simply shrugged.
“I…” Michael paused for a long moment, trying to catch his breath or wait out a spike of pain, or maybe doing both, Gamble was unsure. “I had to be sure you knew.”
Gamble waited, Doze shifted impatiently beside her. “Know what?” Doze finally asked.
“I wasn’t sure if I should tell you,” Michael continued after a pause. “Maybe he was lying. Maybe it wasn’t true. Why cause you pain?”
“Michael,” Gamble finally asked. “What are you talking about? Who is he?”
“Raz…or Brandon…whatever his name was.” Michael waved his hand weakly as if dismissing it as meaningless. The doctor looked over her shoulder from the procedure a concerned frown on her face.
“Don’t stress him!” she hissed. Gamble just shrugged in apology, but the doctor had no time to follow up, attending to her fading patient.
“What did Raz say?” Doze prompted Michael.
“Your sister…he said.”
“What about my sister?” Doze stepped forward, her voice rising. Gamble put a restraining hand on her arm.
“Raz was quite insistent…he, he thought it was funny…even in the end after I broke him…he insisted that part hadn’t been a lie.”
“What are you saying?” Doze had calmed a little but Gamble still kept her hand on her arm, mentally pleading with her to remain in control. “Is my sister okay? Did Akuto kill her?!?!”
“A puppet, he said, he was a puppet.”
Gamble pulled Doze back, sensing her stress. “Michael,” she said calmly. “You’re not making sense. Who is a puppet? What does this have to do with Doze’s sister?”
Michael labored to catch his breath, another spasm of pain wracking his body. “Your sister, Saira, she is running things. This Akuto is her puppet, frontman…lap dog Raz called him.”
Gamble stepped in before Doze was able to rush the bed. “That’s a lie! Raz lied.” Doze screamed in anger, Gamble holding her back.
“He was pretty insistent, that was the one thing he stuck to,” a quiet voice said behind them. Doze whirled around and saw an exhausted Jay leaning against the wall. “Michael worked him over pretty good, he broke, he admitted to all the lies he had told…but he stubbornly clung to that one.”
Doze rushed Jay grabbing the man and slamming him up against the wall. “He lied! That can’t possibly be true! Akuto took her, he kidnapped her.”
Jay remained calm, almost apologetic despite Doze’s violent grip. He waved off a few of the other settlers who approached in concern.
“I’m sorry Doze. Michael told me not to say anything, he wasn’t sure if you would want to know…I guess his wounds…dying makes a person think differently.”
Gamble laid a restraining hand on Doze’s shoulder. “Doze,” she started to say.
“Don’t!” Doze replied. “Don’t!” She did let Jay go, however.
“He said that she’s been leading the gang the entire time. She was using Akuto as the enforcer and face of the gang, but she was the brains, she was the one calling the shots,” Jay continued, his voice still quiet.
Gamble tried to process the new information. Was it possible? They had been trailing them for a while now, but she had to admit they knew little about the group, only that they had Doze’s sister and that they had left a trail of broken bodies in their wake. Doze has spoken little of her sister. Gamble had known her name was Saira and that she and Doze had not always gotten along. Doze had blamed herself for her sister’s abduction, but Gamble had never understood why.
Gamble looked behind her but Michael seemed to have passed out, the labor of talking too much for his frail condition. “I told you not to stress him!” the doctor remonstrated them. “Get out of my room, I can’t take whatever drama is going on here. I have enough to deal with.”
Jay moved out of the room, Gamble pulled Doze who resisted for a second, then slumped her shoulders, bowed her head, and followed Gamble out of the room.
“I’m sorry,” Jay said as they entered the hallway. “For what it’s worth, I think he was telling the truth. I don’t think you need to rescue her at all. Your journey can end. You can stay here with us.”
Doze shook her head, rejecting the idea. “No, either you're wrong, and I still need to help Saira, or you’re right.” She turned around stalking out of the hallway towards the mine lobby.
“And if I’m right? If Raz didn’t lie?” Jay called after her.
“Then I need to put her down,” Doze replied without a pause in her step.