The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist #2)(26)

“He is Outiko’s now,” the brave said in English. “We take him.”

“Dear God, how much of this superstitious folderol must I bear?” Warthrop cried. He flung his rifle to the ground, grabbed the gun from my hand, and slung it toward the trees. Then, before Hawk could react, Warthrop ripped his rifle away and threw that down too. He opened his long arms wide and thrust out his chest, offering himself to their bullets.

“Go on and do it, then, damn you! Shoot us all in cold blood and take your precious Outiko!”

For an agonized moment I believed they would do just that. Their rifles remained unwaveringly upon us. I heard Hawk mutter, “Warthrop, I would have liked to have been included in this decision.” Otherwise, all was quiet—that awful pregnant stillness before the clang and clatter of battle.

Their leader spoke, and his men slowly lowered their weapons. He said something to Warthrop.

“Well?” the doctor asked Hawk.

“He said, ‘You are a fool.’” The sergeant took a deep breath. “And I think I agree with him.”

Hawk’s opinion mattered to the doctor as much as anyone else’s—that is, hardly at all. He waited until our pursuers had turned their boats around and the mist had swallowed them up, before he hurried to the side of his fallen friend, snapping his fingers at me to grab his rucksack and join him. The sergeant lingered between the line of trees and the shore, standing watch in case the Iyiniwok changed their minds.

Warthrop knelt beside the unconscious victim and pulled back his eyelids to examine his eyes. They were bloodshot and slightly yellow, restless in their sockets, the pupils contracting and expanding in a pulsating rhythm, like tiny black hearts. In the gray forest light his face seemed devoid of all pigmentation, as white as paper and just as thin, stretched taut over his cheeks and forehead, the bones of his jaw protruding like large knuckles pushing insistently against the flesh. The lips were swollen and bright red, an obscenely comical juxtaposition against his pale skin, and they were laced with hairline cracks that oozed milky yellow pus.

The doctor ran his fingers through the thick sandy-blond hair. Fluffy tufts of it pulled free at his touch. The breeze caught some errant strands and sent them twirling like dandelion seeds into the deep forest gloom.

Grunting with effort, the monstrumologist freed the man from the cocoon of the old blanket. He had been stripped to his underclothes; they hung limply about his emaciated frame, but I could clearly see the ribs poking into the material. Warthrop lifted one bony arm and pressed his fingers against the wrist. The impressions from the pressure remained after the doctor removed his fingers, like footprints in wet sand.

“Severe dehydration,” he observed quietly. “Fetch the canteen—but first I’ll take the stethoscope.”

He pushed the thin undershirt to the man’s chin and listened for several minutes to the heartbeat. I could actually see its exhilarated pumping beneath the attenuated skin. When I returned with the water, the doctor was running his hands up and down the man’s bony-kneed stork-thin legs, and then up to the torso, where he pressed gently. Everywhere he touched, his fingers left indentations in the pale skin.

He pressed the mouth of the canteen to the bloated lips, and rivulets of that life-giving liquid rolled out from either side of the gurgling mouth. Warthrop heaved the man’s head onto his lap and bent low, cradling him like a child, one hand cupping his chin while he poured a thin stream through the half-opened lips. His oversize Adam’s apple jerked as each swallow was forced down. The doctor breathed a sigh, and said softly, “John. John.”

And then louder, his voice ringing in the trees, “John! John Chanler! Can you hear me?”

Sergeant Hawk appeared, his rifle resting in the crook of his arm. He regarded this tableau for a moment, and said, “So, this is Chanler?”

“No, Sergeant, this is Grover Cleveland,” the doctor answered sardonically. With uncharacteristic gentleness the monstrumologist pulled the blanket back over Chanler.

“He’s severely dehydrated and malnourished,” Warthrop told Hawk. “And jaundiced; his liver may be shutting down. I can’t find any external injuries beyond bedsores, which is to be expected, and internally there are no abnormalities or injuries, though it’s difficult under these conditions to tell for certain. He has a mild fever but doesn’t seem to be suffering from dysentery or anything else that might kill him before we can get him back.”

Hawk glanced nervously around us, stroking the rifle’s trigger, as if he expected marauders to burst from the bush at any second.

“Well, I’m all for that now that we’ve got him!”

“Me too, Sergeant. We’ve only to wait until he’s ambulatory—”

“What do you mean ‘ambulatory’? You mean wait till he can walk?” He squinted down at the comatose man at his feet. “How long?”

“Hard to say. His muscles are atrophied, his vigor sapped by the ordeal. It could be as long as a week or two.”

“A week or two! No. No.” Hawk was shaking his head violently. “That won’t do, Doctor. We can’t spend two weeks in the bush. There’s our supplies, and then there’s the weather. We’ll get the first real snow of the season before two weeks are out.”

“I am open to suggestions, Sergeant. You have eyes as well as I. You can observe the poor man’s condition for yourself.”