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“No,” she said faintly. “No, I don’t think we’re going to catch that kind of a break.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? It doesn’t look that bad.”
“You ain’t seein’ it from t’other side. Skin around the wound looks funny. It’s turning black, and there are some crooked dark lines creeping out from it.”
“God,” said Chong, feeling panic leap up in his chest. “That’s blood poisoning! You’re telling me I have blood poisoning?”
After a long pause, Riot said, “I don’t think that’s what we got here. The lines are black, not red.”
“But—”
“You’re running a fever . . . but the skin back here’s cool to the touch.”
“Then we need to treat me for shock. Do you have anything we can use as a blanket or—”
“No,” she said. “Ain’t shock, neither. I think we got ourselves somethin’ else. Something we maybe can’t fix.”
“What’s that mean?”
“That black goo on the tips?” Riot held one of the arrows under his nose. “Tell me what it smells like to you.”
Chong studied her eyes for a long moment. There was a bleak, defeated look in them that made him hesitate before he took an arrow from her. Even then he didn’t immediately raise the arrow to his nose.
“You already know what it is,” he asked quietly, “don’t you?”
Riot nodded.
Chong closed his eyes for a moment. Instead of it being dark behind his eyelids, he saw twisted threads of bright red forking like lightning inside his personal darkness.
Then he opened his eyes and took a tentative sniff. He smelled what she had smelled.
“No,” he said, and his denial matched frequency with hers. This wasn’t something you just could refuse to accept.
Riot said nothing.
“Why . . . why would anyone do something like that?” demanded Chong.
“Why do you think?”
The answer was obvious, but it took all his courage to say it. “So . . . even if he just wounded someone . . . they’d . . . they’d . . .”
Words failed him.
Riot sighed and sat down on the floor, placing the arrows well away from Eve.
However, the smell lingered in Chong’s nose. He knew exactly what it was, and why it smelled like cadaverine.
The archer had dipped his arrows in the infected flesh of the living dead.
And now that infection was burning its way through Chong’s flesh.
62
“HONORED ONE!” CRIED SISTER AMY AS SHE DASHED OUT OF THE WOODS.
The saint and Brother Peter turned and waited for her to catch up with them. Amy was badly winded, and she dropped to her knees before them, bending to kiss the red tassels on their legs.
When she could speak without panting, Sister Amy told them about finding the ranger named Joe, and watching as he rescued a white-haired girl, tended to her wounds, and spoke with her. She told the saint everything and saved the choicest bit for last.
