From last time:
She looked directly at Luc but didn’t move. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes. “Please,” he whispered hoarsely. He watched a tremor shudder through her body as she stepped out of the jeep. The men surrounded Luc and led him to the back of the cargo truck. He looked back at Ingrid where she stood, suddenly looking so small. He was pushed unceremoniously into the truck and joined by the half dozen armed men who formed his unwanted entourage.
“You have a beautiful woman,” one of the rebels said suggestively, causing the others to laugh. “It’s too bad the captain didn’t let us have her. We could have had some fun.” Luc felt his blood slowly begin to boil and his skin grow hot. He wanted to throw himself at the mindless thug, to beat him until he was bloodied for daring to look at Ingrid, for thinking of her as an object to be had, for all the vile and repulsive thoughts he knew were going through the minds of every one of the men in the truck with him. But he knew it was probably their misogyny and their ignorance that kept them from thinking to kidnap Ingrid instead of him if they needed a doctor. He kept his head down and said nothing as the truck pulled away on the bumpy road. It wasn’t that far to the camp, he reminded himself as he looked down at his still grease covered hands. She would be okay.
********
New Stuff:
Ingrid watched in abject horror as the truck pulled away and eventually disappeared. She wiped savagely at the tears blurring her vision as she struggled to draw in a shaky breath. This was the second time they’d come for him. They obviously knew Luc was a doctor. So long as they needed him, he would be okay. She hoped that would give her enough time to get help. She turned back to the dirt road that led to the refugee camp and began to run.
Sweat mingled with tears and stung her eyes. The late morning’s sun baked the land and turned the air into an oppressive blanket of heat. Her feet pounded on the uneven road, her heart thundered in her chest. She ran harder than she ever had before, her legs aching, her lungs burning. But she didn’t dare slow down.
An eternity later, the camp came into view. Sankoh, one of her local aid workers, ran to meet her.
“What happened?” he asked. “Where’s Dr. Arnault?”
“Rebels. They took him,” she said between labored breaths. “I need the radio.” He nodded and ran with her to the mobile trailer office she shared with Luc.
Inside the trailer, Sankoh tuned the radio to the proper channel and handed her the receiver. The UN forces always picked up the traffic on this channel, but what she was really hoping for was that Ultrawoman was listening in, as she sometimes seemed to. “This is Dr. Ingrid Heller at the MSF camp in Galani,” she began, her throat so dry she could scarcely form the words. “Dr. Arnault has been kidnapped, I’m in need of immediate help.” She repeated the message in French before ending the transmission. Sankoh handed her a bottle of water, which she took gratefully. She pressed the cool plastic bottle against her forehead for a moment before opening it to take a long sip. Her body still trembled and she couldn’t suppress the shiver that ran through her. A staticky voice came through over the radio and she nearly dropped the bottle of water in her rush to pick up the receiver.
“Hello?” she demanded. Agitation began to build up within her as she listened to the man on the other end, explaining that peacekeepers would be sent, but it would take some time. Time Luc didn’t have.
“Do you know where Ultrawoman is?” she asked anxiously.
“I don’t know. We’ll try to contact her for you,” he promised. She hung up the receiver, feeling the despair she’d been trying so hard to outrun finally catch up with her. The weight of it was unbearable. What was she supposed to do now?
The thunder of a sonic boom overhead caused both her and Sankoh to leap up. They rushed out of the trailer to find Ultrawoman descending toward them.
“What happened?” the superhero asked immediately.
“Our jeep broke down a few miles outside the camp. The rebels showed up in a truck. They took Luc.” The last three words caught in her throat and escaped in a strangled breath. She swallowed roughly around the hard lump that had formed in her windpipe.
“I’ll find him,” Ultrawoman replied, the promise implicit in her words. With that, she took off as quickly as she’d arrived.
********
After what seemed like ages of rattling around in the back of the truck as it bumped along the unpaved roads and then no road at all, they came to a stop. Immediately, two of the men grabbed Luc’s arms and pulled him out of the truck. He looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings. From the squat, drab looking buildings scattered around and firing ranges, he surmised that it was a training camp. He was led into one of the simple, one room buildings. Inside the darkened room, a middle aged man lay barely conscious on a cot. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he muttered incoherently, his glassy eyes unfocused.
The ringleader looked at Luc and dropped the medical bags at his feet. “You will help him,” he commanded. Wordlessly, Luc picked up his bags and approached the bed.
********
Trourey took a drag from his cigarette and glanced up at his compatriots from where he reclined against the hood of the jeep. “She was a very beautiful woman,” he said as he exhaled a stream of gray smoke. The other two men laughed and smiled in agreement. “The doctor is already treating the general,” he continued. “He thinks she’s safe.”
“And we know where her camp is,” Tabo agreed with a broad grin as he fished the jeep’s keys out of his pocket.
********
Lois scanned the valley below her. The rebels had almost half an hour’s head start on her and she had no idea where they were going. She headed back to the dead jeep, sitting forlornly off the side of the dirt road, and continued the search in a different direction. She x-rayed every village along the road, searching for signs of Luc or the truckload of men who’d taken him. This was the second time in a week the doctor had been the target of a kidnapping attempt. Lois wasn’t certain what the rebels wanted with him, but she didn’t trust them to leave him unharmed. She’d asked General Rapin to spare more troops to protect the doctors, but they were stretched so thin as it was and they couldn’t provide round the clock protection. The country was becoming so dangerous the aid organizations were all considering pulling out. But she knew that Ingrid and Luc would stay until they were forcibly removed.
********
Luc dug through his bag, finding the small plastic bottle in question buried underneath bandages and dressings. He turned to his captor, who had slung his weapon over his shoulder. “He needs to take one of these, three times a day until they’re gone,” he explained. Luc tried to ignore the fact that he was wasting precious antibiotics saving the life of a known war criminal. A man who had caused more misery than Luc had previously imagined possible. But as much as this man deserved a slow, painful death, it was not Luc’s job to provide it. He had a duty to save lives, no matter how despicable his patients were. The man with the gun took the bottle and stuck it in his pocket. “One pill, three times a day,” Luc repeated. The man nodded in understanding.
“He will be okay?” the guard asked.
“He’ll be fine, so long as he takes the medicine,” Luc replied. He zipped up the medical bags and picked them up. “Now I’ve done what you asked. Let me go.”
“We’ll talk to the boss,” the gunman replied as he held the door open. Luc’s heart sank like a stone in his chest. At this point it was clear that they were either going to kill him or keep him hostage until he proved to no longer be useful to them. He briefly thought about making a run for it, but given the number of armed men wandering the camp who wouldn’t give a second thought to killing a man in cold blood, he wouldn’t get ten feet before being shot. It wasn’t pusillanimity, but common sense that kept him doing what he was told. If he could convince them that having a doctor around could be useful to them, he might manage to stay alive long enough to escape. The thought that these thugs would go after Ingrid now that they’d gotten what they wanted crept unbidden into his mind and he suppressed a violent shudder. They certainly weren’t men of their word. He clung not to their promises, but to Ingrid’s resourcefulness for hope. She would have called for help. She would have gone to the UN.
The guard brought him across the camp to another plain looking building. Under the flickering lights inside, the ringleader sat at a table, a pistol, a bottle of cheap Russian vodka, and a glass in front of him. “You have caused us a lot of trouble, my friend,” the ringleader said. “But they tell me you saved the general, so I like you.”
The ringleader, who’d obviously been rendered in charge by the general’s ill health, splashed a bit of vodka into the spotted, film covered glass. “Tell me, why did you come all the way to this country to get involved in our problems?” Luc remained silent. The guard who’d brought him in gave him a hard shove from behind with the butt of his rifle.
“I came here to help the people you and your men shoot and stab and rape,” Luc practically spat.
“And now you will also help my men, who are shot and stabbed by the government forces,” his captor said coolly before drinking the vodka.
“I won’t help you unless you agree to leave the Galani camp off limits,” Luc said boldly. There was a cold edge to his voice he didn’t recognize, but he hoped it would convince the other man that he was deadly serious.
Across the table, the rebel leader merely chuckled. “My friend, you are hardly in a position to be making demands.” He nodded to the guard who grabbed Luc’s arm and dragged him back out of the building.
********
Ingrid sat on the edge of the small bed she and her lover shared. She closed her eyes and bit her trembling lip. It had been less than an hour since Ultrawoman had left, but it had seemed like a thousand lifetimes. First one tear and then another and another fell from her eyes. A sob escaped her lips and she shuddered. Her hands fisted themselves in the light blanket spread over the bed. She wept bitter tears, frustrated that there was nothing she could do for Luc, angry with herself for letting him go, for standing idly by while they took him.
The staccato burst of gunfire caused her to freeze. Her head snapped up, her eyes open wide. Her heart leapt up in her throat as she rushed for the trailer door. As she reached for the handle, the door was wrenched open from the outside, causing her to stumble backward. Scrambling back to her feet, she found herself staring down three armed men.
********
Without reason, the guard behind him gave Luc a sharp shove as he walked across the camp. Luc stumbled slightly, but continued walking. His mind raced as he tried to think of the best way to get out of there. He had no idea where they were or how far it was back to a road or a village, or even in which direction. Without bearings, without a plan, he was as good as dead outside the camp.
A sudden blur of color seemed to blind him temporarily and he found himself being forced from his feet, but instead of falling down, he was falling upward. He looked around in a panic and found himself being carried by Ultrawoman. His thundering heart rate slowed a bit as he realized he was safe.
“Thank you,” he breathed, closing his eyes. “Where is Ingrid, is she all right?”
“She called me from Galani,” Ultrawoman explained. “I’ll take you back to her.” Luc let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding in. Within a few minutes they were flying over the familiar road back to the camp.
********
Ingrid stared, wide-eyed, at the gun pointed at her, from the floor of the jeep’s backseat as it rattled along the unpaved road. The rough sandpaper lining her throat made it impossible to swallow and difficult to breathe. She didn’t make eye contact with the thug holding the pistol. It was more than apparent what they wanted with her, the only question was when they’d decide to pull over. She wasn’t sure if it was the vibration of the jeep’s floor, or sheer terror that caused her body to tremble. God, she hoped that they weren’t going to take her wherever Luc was. She knew what was going to become of her, Luc shouldn’t have to.
Dammit, she wasn’t going to give up that easily. When they stopped, she’d make a run for it. Even if she didn’t get away, it was better to die standing than cowering at her captors’ will. Ingrid tried to suppress the violent shudder that ran up and down her spine. The jeep pulled off the road and she felt a terrible knot grow in the pit of her stomach, twisting her insides. The rebel in the backseat beside her grabbed her arm. He smelled of stale cigarettes, cheap alcohol, and sweat. The sharp, pungent scent turned her already uneasy stomach. He pulled her roughly to her feet.
The other two jumped out of the front seat of the jeep. The rebel holding onto her arm started to pull her toward the tall thicket of brush away from the road. Her legs felt like rubber, wobbling with every step. She tried to will her muscles to function and her knees to stop buckling. The hand around her arm tightened painfully. If she survived this, that was going to leave a nasty bruise, she thought darkly to herself. Once clear of the car, she stomped down on her captor’s foot and broke his grip on her arm. Her heart in her throat, she began to run, trying not to stumble. From behind, she felt one of the men slam into her like a sandbag, tackling her to the ground. She kicked and clawed at him, fighting furiously to get away from him as he tore her clothing. Ingrid heard herself screaming for help, knowing full well that no one was around to hear her. Her captor finally clamped a hand over her mouth, but she struggled anyway and managed to bite down. He cursed and jumped back, allowing her to wriggle free. Tears blurring her eyes, she scrambled to start running again. She had no plan. She had nowhere to go, except away from that place and her tormentors.
********
Ultrawoman suddenly stopped in mid-flight, jarring Luc by the abrupt deceleration. “What’s wrong?” he asked nervously.
“Something’s happened at the camp,” the superhero replied ominously.
“What? What’s happened?” he asked, his voice cracking on the words.
Ultrawoman flew them down to edge of the camp and sharply admonished him to stay put until she returned. She darted off in another blur and was back within seconds. “The rebels are gone, but they took Dr. Heller,” she said gravely.
He suddenly felt her hand gripping his arm, helping him stand as his legs gave out underneath him. “No,” he whispered harshly. “No.”
Ultrawoman said something about going after Ingrid, but the words didn’t make any sense to him. They were just sounds. He watched dumbly as she took off.
********
Lois cursed herself for leaving Ingrid at the camp. There was nothing else she could have done, she told herself, but the anger and guilt rose up in her nonetheless. How damned difficult was it to keep two doctors alive and safe? At least this time the rebels didn’t have much of a lead on her. Within moments, she spotted a jeep carrying three men tearing down a dirt road away from the camp. She had no doubt the men were rebels, but Ingrid wasn’t with them. She could deal with them later. After she’d found Dr. Heller.
She zeroed in on the area around the road, between her and the quickly retreating jeep. The sound of a heartbeat, faint and uneven caused her to stop. She found the source of the sound. The blood in her veins turned to ice. She swooped down to the thicket of brush by the road, where Ingrid lay in a pool of blood seeping into the dry, dusty ground.
Lois placed her hands on the wound, trying to stanch the pulsing flow of blood that had created a growing crimson stain on the doctor’s chest. Ingrid coughed weakly as she opened her eyes. It seemed to take her a long moment to focus on Ultrawoman and realize who she was.
“Don’t try to move,” Lois said, her voice wavering.
“Luc?” Ingrid rasped.
“I’m going to take you to him, he’s fine,” Lois assured her, her voice rising an octave.
“He’s okay?” Ingrid placed a trembling hand on Lois’s arm.
“He’s okay,” Lois said, nodding vigorously.
“Good,” Ingrid breathed, a pained smile turning up the corners of her mouth. “Thank you.”
Lois felt a twist of pain in her chest; Dr. Heller’s gratitude stung deeply. “Ingrid, hold on, I’m going to get you help,” Lois pleaded. She felt the hand on her arm go limp and fall away. The heart beating under her hands suddenly stopped as Ingrid’s eyes closed and the smile on her lips died.
Tears blurring her eyes, Lois picked up the doctor’s limp form and flew the short distance back toward the camp. As she landed, Luc and Sankoh ran toward her. Twenty feet from her, Sankoh stopped dead and suddenly grew ashen, but Luc continued toward her.
Lois let him take Ingrid from her arms. His handsome face crumpled as he began to cry. He fell to the ground with his lover’s body still in his arms. He frantically searched for a pulse and bent his head, clearly hoping to feel her breath on his cheek. He laid her flat on the ground, covering the wound in her chest with both hands as he began to perform chest compressions. Lois heard him whisper something in French, something she clearly wasn’t meant to hear.
“Dr. Arnault,” she ventured softly. He ignored her as he covered Ingrid’s lips with his and gave two quick breaths. He began to cycle through the chest compressions again, but stopped suddenly, his body shaking with sobs. Luc took Ingrid’s small, slender hand between both of his, and held it against his face as he continued to cry. He pulled Dr. Heller’s body into his arms and held her close as he wept. He brushed the errant strands of hair from her face as he whispered something over and over again to his beloved.
Lois backed away slowly, completely unnoticed. Her heart had lodged itself in her throat and she couldn’t seem to breathe. She turned away from the excruciating tableau, from the image of utter and complete despair in front of her, and flew off, her body shaking.
********
Martha hurried up the stairs to Jon’s room. The room was still dark, with the curtains drawn over the windows. Jon stood up in his crib, crying loudly for his mother as he held onto the white wooden bars of the crib’s side. Lois must have still been on her patrol, Martha assumed. She picked up her grandson and tried to soothe away his tears. She rubbed a hand gently up and down his little back as she carried him. She turned back toward the door, startled to find Lois sitting mutely in the corner, still dressed in the Ultrawoman costume, slumped down against the wall.
“Goodness, you gave me a fright,” Martha said to the younger woman. Lois didn’t respond or even acknowledge Martha’s presence. “Lois, honey, are you okay?” Martha asked as she walked toward her. She stopped dead. In the darkness, she’d only been able to make out the outline of Lois’s form, but up close, she could see that tears were streaming down Lois’s face.
And her hands and arms, up to her elbows, were covered in blood.
“Jonathan!” Martha called out for her husband, who would have just been sitting down to breakfast after feeding the cows. She heard his heavy footfalls on the steps.
“Is everything all right?” he asked from the hallway. He pushed the door open and walked into the nursery. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Martha handed him his still crying grandson. “Take Jon,” she instructed gently.
“What happened?” Jonathan asked anxiously. “Lois, are you all right?” Lois remained silent and stone still.
Martha knelt beside her daughter-in-law. “Lois, honey, are you okay, are you hurt?” A million thoughts ran through Martha’s head, all of them bad. She touched Lois’s bare shoulder gently. The spell that kept Lois in her trance seemed to finally be broken. She looked up at Martha through tear filled eyes.
“It’s not mine,” she said dully. “It’s the doctor’s.”
“What doctor? Lois, what happened?”
“Such a little wound, just one stupid bullet, and so much blood.” Lois lifted her bloodstained hands to pull the mask away from her face. Martha helped her to her feet, noticing that the front of the younger woman’s entire uniform was covered in dark stains.
Martha held Lois’s shoulders as she guided her to the bathroom. She turned on the shower and led Lois to stand under the warm spray of water as it soaked her uniform and washed away the blood from her hands and arms.
Lois lifted her head up toward the stream of water as she stood with her eyes closed. Martha could see her swallow roughly as she tried not to sob, a look of physical pain on her face. For the moment, it didn’t matter that Martha didn’t know the details of what had happened. She’d heard this story too many times before. People had suffered and died because of human malice and Lois had been unable to stop it. For all her strength, Lois still wasn’t all-powerful. There were horrors in this world she still couldn’t prevent. But that didn’t stop Lois or everyone else from believing it was her responsibility to try.
Martha couldn’t make any sense of this war. Of its viciousness and cruelty. She knew that Lois felt that her powers made it her duty to help, to minimize the suffering and brutality of the fighting, but her daughter-in-law was only physically invulnerable. She had no special ability to bear the agony and despair any more than any ordinary person. There was only so much a person should be asked to shoulder, and Lois’s burdens would have crushed anyone.
********
She stepped out of the bathroom wrapped up in a thick toweling robe. She hugged herself tightly, suddenly feeling very cold. Her body trembled with righteous rage. After Dr. Heller’s death, she’d wanted to lash out at those responsible. To show them what it meant to be afraid. To visit upon them every horror they wrought against those whose only goal was to protect the innocent. She’d gone after the fleeing jeep, wrenching it to a stop and pulling its three passengers out with no degree of caution or care.
Blind, burning fury raced through her veins. She could feel her grip on them tighten as she was filled with a powerful desire to fly a thousand feet in the air and let her passengers tumble toward the ground, their last moments filled with the terror they’d visited upon Dr. Heller. But then the image of the rapist she’d caught months before filled her head. The image of him clutching at her hand wrapped tightly around his throat. The weak, gurgling sound he’d made as he’d struggled to breathe. She remembered what it was like to hold someone dangling above death. And she’d stopped mid-flight, the three murderers flailing in her vise-like grip.
Ultrawoman dropped the men, panic-stricken but unharmed, in the UN’s detention facility. In a dull, disaffected monotone she’d informed the duty captain that these were Dr. Heller’s murderers and she flew off without giving him the opportunity to respond. Just clear of the compound, she felt a sob shudder through her body. Lois knew she should have gone back to the camp, arrested its inhabitants and dismantled it brick by damned brick. Her body shook with the desire to destroy the machinery of death, to rain down upon the murderers who took shelter there all the fury of a god. Her eyes began to burn. With a glance, she could have turned the place into an inferno, consumed by the fires of hell. A fitting end.
Lois turned toward the rebels’ training camp, bent on leveling it to the ground. A tremor ran through her hands. And then her arms. She realized her entire body was trembling. Her gaze wavered, her eyes filled with tears and finally, a strangled cry escaped from her throat. With a burst of speed, she took off, flying faster than she ever had before. Not toward the rebel camp, but away from it. She couldn’t seek revenge, so she ran away instead. Because this time, if she began, if she went after the rebels, she wasn’t certain she would have been able to pull herself back from the precipice. She was afraid she’d run willingly toward it.
And there was already enough blood on her hands today.
The sick, nauseating feeling of looking down at the dark crimson stains, at her friend’s blood, covering her body and clothes, churned her stomach. Lois had stood in the shower under the water, turning the temperature up to scalding for long minutes. Hoping the water would wash away the blood, knowing it never would. She couldn’t close her eyes without seeing Ingrid looking up at her, holding her last breath, and Luc, bent over Ingrid’s lifeless body, holding on to nothing more than a shell because the woman he loved was dead And he couldn’t let go. Not yet. Not ever.
Lois shivered and tried to blot out the images. She tried to forget what it was like to hold her hands vainly against the wound, warm dark blood covering her fingers in an instant. She tried to forget the sounds of Luc’s strangled cries, and the piercing look of agony that haunted his eyes.
She brushed away fresh tears as she walked back to Clark’s room. She crawled into bed, curling up under the covers. She sobbed to the point of exhaustion and finally succumbed to sleep.
********
