Death's Nemesis: The Apocalypse Doctor Who Refused to Die

The Rustjaws

They came at dawn, because scavengers always did. It was the one hour when everything that hunted at night had gone to ground and everything that hunted by day hadn't woken up yet.

Tamsin had the watch. Ethan woke to the sound of her boots on the tile, quick and quiet, and the click of the empty shotgun's action as she racked it for show.

"Six," she whispered. "Maybe seven. They're spreading around the back. Rustjaws."

"Who?"

"Raiders. They work the highway east of Outpost 9. They don't take prisoners, they take whatever's on you and whatever's inside you." Her mouth was a hard line. "Kidneys are worth more than ammo out here."

Ethan sat up, and the room swung. His ribs ground. But beneath the pain was a new steadiness, a solidity in his legs and back that he hadn't had two days ago. He flexed his fingers. The grip felt strange, a little stronger than it ought to be, as if he were wearing someone else's hands.

Voss was already awake, propped against the counter, a heavy black pistol resting on his thigh. He was gray in the face and the barrel wobbled when he lifted it, but his eyes were calm.

"I've got two good shots in me, Doc," he said. "Maybe three. After that I'm a fat man with a gun."

"Then don't waste them."

"What do you plan to do?"

Ethan thought about it. About the Diagnostic Eye, and the way it had shown him a path through the Stalker. About his borrowed strength. About the thing Voss had said in the doorway, three days ago, in another life: Everybody dies the same way. The trick is knowing where.

"I'm going to go talk to them," he said.

"You're what?"

"Keep the pistol on the back door. If I'm not back in a minute, shoot anyone who isn't me."

He went out the front, alone, with the scalpel loose in his right hand and his left arm still taped to his ribs. It was a stupid idea. He knew it was a stupid idea. It had one point in its favor: they would not expect it.

The street was gray with early light. Seven men stood in a loose arc in front of the pharmacy, in mismatched scrap armor stitched together from car doors and hockey pads, and at their center, a thick-necked man with a rust-colored beard held an axe made from a railway spike. They stopped when they saw him. Several of them laughed.

"Look at this," the bearded one said. "The doctor came out to say hello."

"How'd you know I was a doctor?"

"Smell of antiseptic on you from fifty yards." The man grinned. His teeth were filed. "We want the big man. And the woman. And your bag."

"And me?"

"Nah. You we'll just kill."

Ethan nodded slowly, like a man hearing a price he'd expected. "That's what I figured," he said, and looked at the bearded man.

The Eye bloomed.

[Target: Raider (Rustjaw captain). Vulnerabilities: left peroneal nerve at fibular head. Right elbow ulnar groove. Chronic infection, lower left molar. Hepatic strain.]

He liked the last two best.

"You've got an abscess," Ethan said. "Lower left. It's been bothering you for weeks. It's tracking into your jaw, and if you don't have it drained in the next ten days, you'll lose the bone."

The bearded man's grin faltered. His tongue touched the side of his mouth.

"And your liver's bad. You drink too much, and you've been eating nothing but canned meat." Ethan took a step forward. "I can fix both. Right now, if you leave."

"Kill him," somebody muttered, and the man on the right surged forward with a hatchet.

Ethan moved.

He had expected to be slow. He wasn't. The borrowed strength sat in his legs like a spring, and when he sidestepped, the hatchet whistled past his ear, and his right hand shot out and drove the scalpel into the hollow behind the man's knee. The man dropped as though someone had cut his strings, screaming. Ethan hadn't killed him. He'd severed a nerve. That was a different thing, a cleaner thing.

The second man came in low. Ethan caught his wrist in his bad hand, pain lancing through his forearm, and flipped him bodily into the third. They went down in a heap. He had not known he could do that. He had not known a man his size could do that.

Ten percent, he thought, with a dizzy kind of awe. Of a man who carried bridges.

The rest of the Rustjaws broke. Two ran. One threw down his knife and held up his hands. Only the bearded one stood his ground, axe raised, face purple, and when Ethan stepped toward him he swung.

It was a good swing. It would have split Ethan's skull.

It never landed. A gunshot cracked from the pharmacy doorway, one clean report, and the bearded man's axe-hand blew apart in a spray of red. He howled and went to his knees, clutching what was left.

Voss lowered the pistol, wheezing. "That's one," he said.

Ethan walked over, crouched, and looked at the screaming man.

"I told you I could fix your tooth," he said, almost kindly. "I didn't say I would."