Bridger: a Dystopian Serial

Out of the Darkness

A blood-streaked face lifted from the snow.

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Char grunted as she and Linc set down the stretcher on the table in the infirmary.

Ice-white bare feet hung off the end of the bed. Char tucked the blankets back around them as Leander bounded through the door.

A soft groan came from within the blankets.

"Where the fuck is the doctor?" Char snapped.

"He's not answering his comm," Leander said.

"Then go to his—" Char cut herself off. "I'll get him. Warm this guy up. Now."

The doctor's room was near hers in the command pod. Char strode down the hall, shedding her heavy gloves and hat as she went.

In the dim hallway, Char pounded her fist on the cool metal of the doctor's bedroom door and leaned up against the wall.

Nothing.

Char lifted her hand to make the door shake, but it swung open.

"Yeah?" the doctor stood in the door panting. He was shirtless and blurry-eyed. His hair hung in a fuzzy braid over his shoulder.

Heat suffused Char's cheeks. "Answer your goddamn comm, Seth!"

"What?" Seth glanced back into the dark room.

"You're needed in the infirmary," Char snapped. "Put some clothes on."

"Oh." The faintest flush came to his cheeks. "I'll be right there."

The door closed.

Char cringed and made a sharp about-face.

Well that's not fair. So the guy had started working out in the last five years. So guy was aging like Italian wine and she was aging like a grape in the sun. She didn't have to light up like a Christmas tree.

This would be so much simpler if you were dead like Leander's ex, Seth.

Char sighed.

"Where did he come from?" Leander asked as Char burst back into the infirmary.

"Beats me," Char sighed. "He was crawling when we picked him up. Scans show nothing, no planes or anything."

Leander had the man covered in several blankets.

The door opened behind them. Seth sidled in beside her, pulled aside the blanket, and revealed the nearly-naked form of a man. Blood was frozen in vermillion rivulets from a circular wound in his concave stomach. His spindly legs spread from a tattered short-like garment. One thigh was splattered with blood. His toes and fingers were grey-white, but the rest of his skin hadn't much more pigment.

The man's head lifted weakly. His teeth bared in a rictus.

"Shh." Seth laid a hand against the man's forehead, pressing back against the stretcher. "Easy, friend."

"Linc, there's a bin of hot-water bottles in that cupboard." Seth pointed with one hand as he swiped a stethoscope from the counter. "Turn the tap as hot as it will go and start filling them, please."

Linc clumped to the sink in his heavy snow boots and pulled off his gloves.

As the water gushed into the sink, Seth already had his stethoscope against the man's chest. He spoke in low soothing words to the man, whose eyes were shut. He put a thermometer in the man's ear for a moment, then glanced at it.

"Boss." Leander shook out her long, black hair and pulled it back with a rubber band. "What do you want me to do?"

"Send another drone up and call Erwell," Char said. "Dr. Thompson," she turned to Seth, "is there a community this man could have walked out of?"