Riotfish, Inc.: In Debt: Chapter 49

Fleer’s consciousness spiraled back in a little, but it was a loose, delicate thing. He felt he would slip away with the slightest exertion.

“I can get these guys,” he tried to say, but it came out “c’n get thzzzguys,” fuzzy and weak, as though his lips and tongue were only reluctantly taking orders. “I juzz needaminnit.”

“What’s dat you say?” Daugereaux’ face hovered into his vision.

“I’ll gettem… carry the team again…”

“Shah, you been shot good. You ain’t doin’ nothin’ but takin’ a rest.”

“Get Oliver. He’ll figger… a way…”

“He been shot, too.”

“O’vr?” Fleer tried to sit up, but Daugereaux gently pressed him back down. “How’d shoo Ovr?” Real panic started to rise in Fleer and he started babbling. “We nee sody guiteam!” He started trying to work through plans, defensive positions, overlapping fields of fire, but his thoughts kept sliding out of his grasp. He was trying to come up with a strategy when he realized he couldn’t even remember the layout of Daugereaux’s cabin. He was in the cabin, right? He tried to bear down and focus.

“Jus’ don’t you worry about dat none. Dey ain’t nothin’ you can do at dis point. We gon’ figure dis out.”

“Buteam? Team?” His consciousness began to flicker. “Wha they?” Fleer wasn’t even sure how many of his words were getting out. But he had to save the Riotfish. Somebody had to.

“You got to stop thrashing aroun’, you gon’ bleed out if you don’t calm down.”

Fleer strained to pull his thoughts together, but they drained away, along with the little that was left of his vision, and his world went black and silent again.

The gunfire was sporadic, just enough to keep everybody in the cabin under cover.

“What we need is a mir’cale, us.” Daugereaux crossed himself. “Ma, I think we need to dig us up de rosary.”

The gunfire eased up long enough for Daugereaux to risk peeking out of the window. Thick billows of smoke were rising in front of the cabin. More smoke grenades bounced forward, adding their smoke to the growing cloud.

“Oh, shah, dey fixin’ to come in, says me,” Daugereaux moaned. “An’ I left Ma’s shotgun out on de porch.”

Roger shrugged, showing his empty hands.

“No, you keep dat pressure on de chief.” Daugereaux waved dismissively at Roger. “We gon’ figure somethin’ out.” With careful consideration, Daugereaux reached forward and locked the front door.

More smoke grenades sailed into the yard, adding to the thick billows rising in front of the house. The entire front yard was obscured– the black ops could be approaching from any direction. The seconds stretched out.

Daugereaux strained his ears, but he couldn’t hear anything over the hissing grenades. He briefly considered hopping back out onto the porch to grab a gun, but there was no telling where the black ops were by this point.

Fleer’s radio squealed and crackled to life, carrying D’khara’s panicked voice and scaring the skin off everyone in the room.

“Fleer, do you read me? Fleer! Fleer!”

Daugereaux snagged the radio out of Fleer’s pocket and keyed it.

“Hey! Dis is Daugereaux! We is pinned right down in de cabin here.”

“They’re about to breach!” D’khara yelled back through squealing radio static. “They’re heading for the door!”

Heavy clumping footsteps rattled the stairs out front.

“Yah, well we know all dat, but we ain’t got no guns in here!”

There was a tearing, shredding sound of the screen door being fully ripped away and thrown into the front yard.

“I lost them in the smoke!” D’khara called. “Can you see where they are?”

The front door boomed as one of the black ops slammed into it.

“Dey knockin’ on de door is where dey at,” shot back Daugereaux.

The door creaked as another heavy blow landed.

“Okay, I need everybody in there to get on the floor! Get down now!”

Roger slapped himself flat down, and Daugereaux motioned to his wife, who carefully got on her knees and laid down on the floor.

Another hollow boom. The door frame cracked.

Daugereaux laid down and covered his head.

Boom. The frame splintered.

Boom. Jagged shards poked out around the jamb.

And then a roar filled the world.

The front door vanished. The wall around it vanished. The black ops who had been busily knocking in the door also vanished.

The whole mess evaporated into an expanding cloud of splinters, glass, lead shot, and viscera. Bone, blood, and debris whirled overhead with whistling, deadly speed, impacting and leaving an incredibly unpleasant pattern embedded across the back wall of the room.

For a long second, nobody moved. The woods around the cabin lay still and silent; even the animals dared not move.

Daugereaux cautiously lifted his head and looked through what had once been the front wall of his home.

Out in the yard, with expressions of mixed elation and horror, stood D’khara and Dr. Navarre, propping Daugereaux’ giant, smoking punt gun between them.

“Seven in one blow,” breathed D’khara.

“Did I say you boys could mess wit’ my gun?” Daugereaux yelled.

They dropped it in the dirt guiltily.

“Get in here! We got wounded!”

Dr. Navarre rushed in and crouched over Fleer. He checked Fleer’s breathing and felt for a pulse.

“D’khara, I’ll need some things out of my medkit. I have some hemostatic gauze and statpacks of synthblood, grab those and two trauma plugs. Roger, get his legs up and hold them, and Mrs. Daugereaux, can we use some of those blankets to cover him? Mr. Fleer? Can you hear me?”

No response.

Dr. Navarre lifted away the towels as D’khara returned with his medkit. He hissed through his teeth as the wound was exposed, and sweat popped out on his brow as Little Timmy tried to scream back to the fore.

Working as quickly as he could, he felt under Fleer for the exit wound. He’d never really tried to hold Little Timmy back before, but Fleer needed him right now. Right now. He couldn’t succumb to the sight of blood that so often sent him scurrying back into the corners of their mind. He held his control over their body as tenuously as though he were holding a water balloon coated in baby oil.

“I don’t need your protection!” he grunted, his voice wavering between Dr. Navarre and Little Timmy. “It’s not her! It’s Fleer and he needs… my… help!”

Dr. Navarre, kneeling next to Fleer on the floor, struggled within himself, tears creeping out with his eyes screwed so tightly shut that it hurt.

“Now please just back off!”

He gasped as Little Timmy suddenly relinquished his hold. He took a moment to re-orient himself on Fleer. The blood was still there, and still pushed him to flee, but he grimly held control for the time being.

“Alright,” he said through gritted teeth, “the good news is that the exit wound isn’t too large. D’khara, hand me that trauma plug.” D’khara handed over a white tube. Dr. Navarre pressed the end over Fleer’s entry wound, and activated a toggle on the side. With a gentle “whumpf”, the tube emptied its contents into Fleer.

“That should stop any internal bleeding for a while. Let’s cover these wounds.”

“Is he gon’ be okay, doc?”

Dr. Navarre paused as he regained control again.

“I can stop the worst of the bleeding for a while. If we can keep him from going into shock and get him to a hospital, his chances are good. How far is the nearest hospital?”

Daugereaux frowned.

“It’s a ways off,” he said. “Mebbe thirty minutes? But we got to get us a ride back here first. Hol’ on, I’ll make us a call.”

Dr. Navarre moved his attention to Oliver, his face calming as he turned away from Fleer’s blood-soaked form.

“What happened here?” Dr. Navarre asked.

“Shot up, I guess,” Daugereaux opined, poking a message into his datapad.

“That shouldn’t be an issue for him. His skin’s basically bulletproof.” Dr. Navarre examined the holes carefully. “Unless they were armor-piercing rounds. That could be the case.” He listened to Oliver’s chest for a moment, then sat back on his haunches.

“Honestly, I don’t know what to do here. I have no idea about the physiology of orcs. I know they’re completely different from us on the inside, but– I can’t hear a heartbeat.”

“Oh, dis big fella ain’t gon’ let a couple little bullets set him down. Hold on a spell.” Daugereaux wandered over to what was left of the stove and started sifting around the wreckage. “Ah, dat’s just de thing,” he said, and shuffled back.

He had filled an old mug partway with some of Ma Daugereaux’ gumbo. He brought it over to Oliver’s recumbent form. He waved the mug under Oliver’s nose and shouted down at him.

“Hey! Big fella! You want some gumbo!?”

“Oh, sorry, just ate, still full,” mumbled Oliver.

Daugereaux gave a huge toothless grin. Ma Daugereaux, sitting splay-legged on the floor nearby, wore an unreadable expression as she watched her cooking being used medicinally.

Oliver groaned, and rolled over. His eyes stared blankly at the ceiling. He drew in a heavy, shuddering breath and let it out in a phlegmy gurgle.

With another raspy gasp, Oliver coughed mightily, and gave out a hoarse, ripping hornk that echoed off the rafters. Coughed again, hornked again.

“Let’s sit him up,” Daugereaux said. He and Roger lifted Oliver’s arms while Dr. Navarre pushed from behind, and they got Oliver to a sitting position.

“How you doin’, big fella?”

“Hooooornk,” said Oliver.

“Oh, I see. You know, I worked wit’ a orc back in de second war. You fellas is some buncha tough, you know dat?”

“Haaaaagh, hooooornk, haaaaaaaugh,” expressed Oliver.

“Y’all might oughta stand back, I think he gon’ spray some,” Daugereaux warned as he helped Oliver sit up.

Oliver gagged, hocked, and spat, and with a final mighty cough, fired a thick, viscous glob of mucus out of his mouth to splat flatly against the wall.

Lodged in the mess was a cluster of slim silver bullets.

“Um. Hi,” he said hoarsely. “Sorry about that.” Roger leapt on him and hugged him, with his arms only reaching partway around the giant orc.

“Are we okay? Did we win? Hi, Roger.” Oliver said, hugging him back.

Daugereaux was busy on his datapad.

“Well we got to get Mr. Fleer here to a hospital. He done gone and got hisself shot, too. Robby is on de way to come drive us. You think Mr. Fleer is goin’ to keep for another hour, doc?”

“I’ve done what I can. He’s stable, but he’s lost a lot of blood. The sooner we can get him there, the better.”

“Okay. You boys need to gear up,” Daugereaux said. “Grab what you need from de camp, but don’t take long. We got to hurry. I think we gon’ have more company before too long.”

Oliver and Roger nodded and ran off to grab what they could.

“If everybody’s okay for the time being,” Dr. Navarre said, “I’m going to let Little Timmy out. It’s… complicated holding him back.”

“You do what you gotta do, shah.”