Author’s Note:
Four weeks now. It feel nice to be back in a groove.
For those of you who haven’t read any of the Journey Of St. Laurent before: You are now reading an online serial pulp novel. If you didn’t start at the beginning, you may want to do so. Chapter 1: Down By The Bay. This serial is the sequel to my first novel, Oasis. If you want to know just as soon as I’ve posted something new, you can watch the RSS feed or follow me on Twitter.
And in case I’ve never mentioned it to you, I’m always grateful when you tell other people about my little fictions, and I’m always glad to hear from you in the comments.
Chapter 48: Of Pain and Tanks
Pain is a funny thing. You don’t always feel it.
The human body is an amazing instrument and it has a complex built in system of signals and responses. If the conditions are right you can be injured, even seriously injured and you might not feel a thing, at least right away.
I could use at least a dozen EMT and emergency room stories to prove it, but that’d be cheating. Let me just cite one example that’s not from work.
Pretty much everyone since the dawn of the internet has received at least one forwarded email that has an x-ray picture of a skull that has embedded in it a nail or other object that clearly should not be there. Inevitably, the text attached to the email details the story of a carpenter, or maybe a construction worker who’s been having migraines. The worker goes in to get it checked out and one little x-ray later they discover the foreign object. The worker then claims that he didn’t feel a thing until the next day, or week, or whenever.
So, if you are ever in a car wreck, the EMT that gets to you first will make sure that there are no immediate threats to your life. He checks to make sure you are breathing, that your heart is pumping, and that you aren’t bleeding to death.
Once he verifies your life is not in any immediate danger, he’ll move on to secondary things and start asking you questions. Does this hurt? Can you feel that? Are you in any pain? Even if you tell the EMT that you are not in any pain, he is still going to check you over thoroughly. It’s not that he’s ignoring you. He just knows that as a victim not all of your senses can be trusted.
Anyway, there are several reasons people don’t feel pain. One common reason is your body’s fight or flight response. When your body experiences a traumatic or high stress event, it wants to maximize your chances of survival. To help you out, your adrenal glands dump two hormones into your bloodstream – adrenaline and norepinephrine.
When norepinephrine hits your spinal chord, it reduces your perception of pain. Besides setting your heart racing, the adrenaline triggers the morphine receptors in your brain, effectively telling your brain to ignore pain signals for a time.
Like a said, it’s a complex system, and there’s a lot more going on then I’ve just described. I only tell you this so you believe I’m telling the truth when I say I had no idea that I was injured until I heard London say that I was bleeding.
Of course, the fact that she had pointed it out, coupled with the fact that I was no longer actively running for my life, meant that it immediately started hurting.
I reached down and touched underneath my armpit. My hand came back with blood on it.
Dang it.
Yep, the pain was definitely making itself known. Still, this was no time to wallow in it.
Rhett looked over at me for a moment then frowned and turned back to his project. He emptied out the pack I had carried onto the floor and mumbled to himself. “What do we have here?”
If you ask me, it’s easier to keep calm if you don’t see your own injuries. “London, can you roll up my shirt a little bit and take a look?”
“Um, that’s gross.” She shook her head an shrugged. “I mean, sure, why not?”
I pulled up my shirt a bit.
She gently pushed it up past the wound.
“What am I looking for?”
“I think that stupid hover thing shot me. I just want you to see if the round went all the through, or if it’s stuck in there somewhere.”
“And how am I going to know if it’s stuck in there?”
Rhett pulled a piece of fabric from his pack but didn’t look up. “Look for an exit wound.”
I nodded. “What he said.”
“Oh, right.”
London touched the skin above the wound and checked it out.
“Hmmm. Yeah. There’s definitely two holes here. One in front, and one here in the back.”
Rhett looked up and squinted a bit to get a look.
“How much is it bleeding?”
London bit her lip. “Um. A lot, I guess.”
Rhett ripped his piece of cloth and handed it to London. “Not too bad. I think it may have grazed a rib.”
London raised an eyebrow and folded the cloth with one trembling hand. “That’s not bad?”
“Well, I’m not coughing up blood, so I know it missed my lung.” I turned and did my best to smile at London. “Plus, I’m not dead, so it didn’t hit my heart. I guess you’ll have to put up with me for a while yet.”
She placed the makeshift bandage so it covered both holes. “That’s not really funny.”
“Well, when you get shot we’ll see if you’re any better at making jokes.”
She narrowed her eyes and frowned then held the bandage while lowering my shirt. “Right, except I’m not getting shot.”
I set down the cutter then put pressure on the wounds with the inside of my left arm and my right hand. “Thanks, London.”
“Sure, now get out of the way.”
I did my best to scoot and switch her places without causing too much damage to myself.
She picked up the cutter, snapped it on, and resumed where I had left off puncturing a hole in the tank.
A few moments later the cutter broke through. Liquid gurgled out and dripped down the side of the tank.
London sat back and looked at the slow drain. “At this rate, the tank will be empty about the time I retire from teaching.”
“It’s airtight. Poke another hole near the top.” I said.
London nodded. “Right.”
I stared through the green tank at the hovering craft.
“Is it just me or has that thing slowed down how fast it’s firing at us.”
Rhett opened up a box of shells for the pistol and dumped a bunch of them into his hand. “Probably just trying to conserve ammo and still keep us here until they can get some kind of crew to clean us out.”
The wounds in my side throbbed. “I wonder how long that’s going to take.”
London shifted and kept up the pressure on the cutter. “More importantly, what are we going to do when it does?”
Rhett smirked and pulled a bottle of Jack Daniels from his sleek pack.
London rolled her eyes. “Really? Your super survival pack includes a glass bottle of whiskey?”
“Yep.”
“I guess when they show up, we’re going to pass the bottle around?” I leaned back against the rock wall. And then once we get them shnockered we can make a break for it.”
“Close, but I was thinking maybe something a little more exciting.” He pushed the half empty box of pistol shells to me. “Hey, dump these into your cargo pocket.”
I held my left arm even tighter against my side and did what Rhett asked.
London made a chirping sound and pushed away from the tank. The second hole had been punched, and now that air could get sucked in it, the first hole had improved from a slow drip to a steady stream.
I shifted from sitting to kneeling. There was plenty of liquid in that tank, and the floor would be covered in no time.
Rhett picked up the pace in his preparations. From our little store of ammo, he counted out ten shotgun shells and told me to put them in my other pocket.
London crawled directly in front of me and started the cutter grinding away near the bottom of the second tank.
“If I wasn’t in so much pain, I’d say something about the much improved view.”
London looked back at me over her shoulder. “I’ll still kick you, you know.”
Rhett pulled a silver tube and a lighter from his pack and put them on his lap. He then pulled out a couple more things but put them inside the other pack with the ammo. He dumped out the rest of the contents of his own pack, then wadded it up and shoved it in with the ammo as well.
I couldn’t help not knowing anymore. “What are you doing, anyway?”
Rhett dumped about a third of the whiskey bottle into and on the pack before zipping it up. “I’m making a couple of distractions.”
He put the pistol shells that he had collected a minute ago into the whiskey bottle. Then he folded, twisted, and wadded the rest of his ripped cloth into the top of the bottle. Once that was done, he reached over and put the backpack and Molotov cocktail by the edge of the tank.
London sat back for a second. “Got it. Just one more.”
Rhett opened up the silver tube and pulled out a fat cigar.
I had to look twice to be sure. “Apparently you and I have different ideas of what constitutes survival gear.”
“Well, it’s my one luxury.”
London looked away from the tank. “And the whiskey?”
“Give me a break. That’s useful stuff.” He lit the cigar and leaned to the side so he could put the lighter in his pocket. “Besides, it’s not really to smoke. It’s to light the cocktail and backpack.”
I pointed toward his pocket. “And that lighter wouldn’t do?”
He shook his head. “Not as dramatic.”
About then London punctured the second hole in the second tank. We all shifted about to avoid getting hit directly by the streams. Our legs were already getting soaked. The liquid didn’t smell bad.
In fact, I couldn’t really smell it at all. I wondered if it was just water, and the spheres in the tanks were lighting everything up like it was glowing.
About a quarter of the liquid had drained out of the first tank. London tapped on it. “I really hope this ruins these.”
Rhett picked up the loaded backpack. “Well, let’s see if we can hold them back until we know.”
We sat in relative silence for another five minutes or so before alien shouting echoed in.
Keep Reading! Chapter 49 is here.