Out for Blood

Sweat stung my eyes and blurred my sight. Meher stumbled ahead of me, walking backward and straining. My brother hung between us like a bridge, heavy and insensible, as the footsteps grew louder behind.

“Who are they?” Meher gasped. “What do they want with your brother?”

“They don’t want my brother,” I said, wheezing. “To them, he’s just a freak. They’re literally out for his blood; whether it’s hot or cold when they get it is incidental.”

Meher’s terror flashed on his face.

“I do not wish to die,” he said.

“Then let’s get him to the truck.”

Outside, the day was fully blazing. Dust hung thick in the sweltering air, making a muddy orange slush of the sky but doing little to temper the blistering sun; only the shade of an enormous sycamore had spared my rundown Mahindra. Meher and I loaded Paul into the back and climbed in.

Meher spoke between staggered breaths.

“Why—“ he choked. “Why his blood? What does this have to do with his condition?”

I threw the Mahindra into gear.

“Everything,” I replied simply. Behind, men flooded from the low, mud building, Kalashnikov’s raised. “I just don’t know what ‘everything’ means.”

The next instant, the bullets were tearing the truck to shreds, throwing showers of glass and aluminum shards in every direction. The world fell apart, a demonstration of entropy in its most brutal form, but somehow I kept my hand on the wheel, steering blindly around the sycamore and up the ravine.

As we cleared the ridge, my side exploded in pain and I felt the blood run cool and wet down my leg.

“Shit,” I hissed, even as the gunfire faded and the empty desert opened before us. My pant leg was already saturated with blood. “I think that’s the artery, Meher. There’s a kit in the back, do you think you can reach it?”

Meher did not reply. He lay slumped amid shrapnel—some man made, some organic—half his jaw shot away.

This here’s a little response for this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge (this week’s word was freak). Head over to the Trifecta page to read the rest of the stories—these guys come up with some good stuff, I assure you!

This is also a continuation of my earlier series, which you can check out right here:

The Treatment // A Prison of the Mind // Echoes // Out for Blood