Vanessa charged through the entrance and silently gestured for two to split off to the left and two others to go down the right corridor. The sounds indicated that the real action was directly before her, and, careless of all else, she headed for the noise. Hunter could be heard, and that was her homing beacon.
Deeper into the cliff she ran, barely registering the lack of doctors, nurses, or patients. The evacuation had been fairly complete, and a tiny portion of her mind acknowledged the lack of corpses.
Finally, she jogged to her left at a juncture, the sound drawing her closer. But as she made the turn, she skidded to a stop. Directly before her was the Ursa, its gray hide and three-legged form obscured with drying blood and viscera.
The Ursa’s stink assaulted her senses, but she blinked it away, trying to see past it. As it shifted to lunge forward, she could see Hunter, a bloody mess, trying to wave the cutlass with one arm. The other arm was missing.
“Hunter!” she called, trying to alert her brother and distract the Ursa in one word.
The beast was not dissuaded, making its leap and landing atop her brother, who cried out on impact. There was one leg pinning him to the ground; the other foreleg was raised to deliver a killing blow. The rear limb allowed it to balance with an odd grace.
Vanessa charged forward, her cutlass rearing back, and then it swung around, slicing the air before it met the rear leg joint. The blade bit deeply through the hide, and a black liquid—its blood, she hoped—seeped out. All the human sounds were drowned out by the wounded yell coming from the creature. The unearthly sound made her wince and squeeze her eyes shut. It whirled about, struggling with its balance, and opened its sharp-toothed maw wide.
The Ranger stood her ground, keeping her mind focused on the beast while her heart switched signals. She knew the Ursa had mortally wounded Hunter and she could feel his suffering, but she had to ignore it. Instead, she had to kill the Ursa, the only way she could reach Hunter and try to save him.
Vanessa suspected an injured Ursa was worse than a healthy one, and so she wanted to make this kill a quick one. The width of the corridor meant the Rangers behind her could not come to her aid; instead they watched, a silent Greek chorus.
The Ursa righted itself, bellowing all the way, hurting her ears. As it positioned itself, she saw Hunter sprawled in his own blood. A red tide of anger swept over her, and she gripped the cutlass with both hands, pulling it back. Then she charged and lunged with the cutlass. For its part, the Ursa roared and tried to swat her with its right foreleg. Instead, it faltered and dipped low, letting her thrust go right behind its head, cutting deep into the body. She felt it easing through skin and veins into bone.
Bodily fluids gushed from the wound, and the Ursa dropped dead before Vanessa.
The Rangers behind her let out a singular whoop and then began moving toward her. Vanessa, though, leaped over her kill and dropped to her knees before Hunter’s body.
She was too late. Her brother had stopped breathing some time before, and his eyes were fixed; his expression was one of unimaginable pain.
Hot tears fell from her face, rolling down her cheeks and dripping onto his body, merging with the blood that covered the Ranger emblem. Before she could decide what to do next, she caught a fresh sound. It was weak, more a whimper than anything else, and was detectable only because all the other screaming finally had ceased. She held up a hand, putting her fellow Rangers on hold as she concentrated. It came from beyond her brother’s body, in one of the patient rooms: someone who had not been evacuated.
Once again, her body told her what she feared to know.
Hunter was here for Jennipher.
She rushed forward and walked into the first room on the left to find a mess. Jennipher, still linked to various monitors, was on the floor, covered in blood and other fluids. She arched her back as a contraction convulsed her body.
She was alive!
Labor meant the baby was also still alive and ready to enter the world. Part of Vanessa wished the baby would stay in the womb, where it would be safe and warm, protected and loved.
The baby, though, had other ideas and was coming. As Vanessa moved toward the feet, she could see the baby’s shape, well into the birth canal.
“Jennipher, it’s Vanessa! Talk to me!”
Jennipher didn’t respond. At best, she was unconscious. At worst, the Ursa had gotten to her and she was dying.
A Ranger’s field training did not include anything about delivering babies, and so Vanessa had to go with whatever she had learned from her mother, Paige. Looking about frantically, she spotted some blankets and what looked like the remains of a towel. They would have to do.
“Hey, you!” she shouted at the first Ranger looming awkwardly in the doorway. “Go find me clean blankets or cloths or something sterile.”
At the man behind him she shouted, “And you, go find a doctor or a nurse or both. Now!”
She turned her attention to Jennipher, who was having another contraction already. They were coming fast, which meant the birth, already in progress, could not be delayed. Carefully, she spread the blanket under Jennipher’s head, then took the cleanest towel to try to rub her hands clean of blood and gore.
“Push, Jennipher,” she called. There was no response. Without the mother intentionally pushing, the birth was going to be more complicated.
“Come on, baby; come to your aunt Vanessa,” she cooed, regardless of how silly she sounded to herself. “Keep pushing, Jennipher. If you can hear me at all, keep pushing and let’s get your son into the world.”
There has to be a doctor nearby. Where is he?
A shrill sound alerted her to a new problem. She glanced over her shoulder, and her eyes went wide as she saw the mother’s respiration rate and blood pressure dropping with every beep. Jennipher was dying.
A secondary system monitoring the baby also had shifted from green to red, indicating that the baby was now in distress.
Without proper medical training she had no choice but to try to save the baby any way possible. Her head swiveled around the small, blood-spattered room to try to see where there might be tools. Panic was welling up within her as the enormity of the situation was becoming evident. Hunter dead. Jennipher dead. The Ursa dead. She’d be damned if the baby joined the list.
Just then, a hand reached over her shoulder and gave her a blade. She looked up and saw one of the remaining Rangers, a woman she didn’t know. Vanessa nodded and took a deep breath.
“There’s a holographic display over the bed. Turn it on,” she commanded.
The other Ranger complied, and then Vanessa called out, “Display cesarian section protocols.” Obediently, the hologram appeared over her sister-in-law’s body and step by step showed Vanessa where to cut and how to deliver the baby. The first Ranger returned with a meter’s worth of towels and blankets. The female Ranger grabbed a few and went to work, assisting Vanessa.
No one said a word, and so the only sounds were from the displays and the gentle, slightly accented voice of the computer.
With every centimeter, Vanessa kept waiting for a doctor or nurse to walk in and take over. Instead, she had to keep raising her eyes to follow the holographic tutorial. This was no way to bring new life into the world, but she continued as cautiously as she could. It felt horribly disrespectful to be slicing into her sister-in-law and then reaching into the body, but really, what choice did she have? Her nephew needed to be saved, and she’d be damned if she’d fail again.