They tumbled like an avalanche at the back of Alphonse’s van and Ivan hit his butt hard against one of the metal boxes on the side. He was only twenty years old but sometimes, waking up from a day of action, he could easily imagine what an aged man could feel after living some long years. Eugenie White brutally dropped Barry in the middle of the robotics equipment and all the tools Daphne kept there for her cooking lessons, and Alphonse took a turn so sharp that the back doors opened. Some spoons and plates flew out, a fishing stick, the very expensive radio antenna that Robortor had fetched from an abandoned Soviet site. “Where the fuck is Uberwoman?” Darlene yelled at the top of her lungs. She seized the doors that were swinging in the wind and closed them sharply, as it was a well known fact that she had the strongest arms of the group. After Marlene, of course.


    “Slowing them down” Ivan nodded at her


    She looked down at Barry completely compressed on the floor of the vehicle. Ivan had never seen so much blood in his life, “why are we not FLYING” Darlene asked, mesmerized


    “The sky isn’t safe now” Alphonse replied. Just to punctuate his words, a small mushroom cloud of yellow and orange hues materialized in the close horizon. Ivan shivered.


    “IVAN” Eugenie White tugged at his sleeve, then she snapped her fingers at Darlene, “Darlene, Ivan, help me”


    That was the moment Robortor slammed violently into the van from the right side, sending a quake through the small crowd of passengers in the back, “hold onto something”! Darlene urged. Clinging to the same pipe from the ceiling as Eugenie did, Ivan watched her tighten her knees tight around Barry’s shoulders, her free hand hooked on the collar of his jumper. Barry’s arms went upward following the strength of the bump and his body twitched. He didn’t look well at all.


    “Sorry!” George exclaimed, taking a cautious seat next to Alphonse, “what’s happening IS THAT BARRY”


    “Barry was gunned down” Eugenie said while unzipping the hoodie he was wearing. The dark color underplayed the quantity of blood that Ivan’s friend had already shed. Once the tee shirt he had on underneath was exposed, he repressed a squeal, “we need to stop this car so I can help him, there is too much blood everywhere, I cannot see a thing” Barry’s sleepy eyes were following all the movements of her fluttering hands as if they were floating rings in the stormy sea.


    “We cannot park, Ms White” Alphonse replied calmly, keeping his eyes on the road, “there is actually lava on our tracks”


    “Barry!” George jumped from the passenger seat to crouch next to Eugenie, grabbed his friend by the shoulders “you’re okay Barry?”


    “No” Barry shook his head


    “Come on come on don’t shake him” Darlene swatted George’s huge hand away, “he’s been shot like three times”


    “THREE TIMES YOU FOOLS WHAT DID YOU DO”


    “Listen Ivan” Eugenie always addressed him as if he was the smartest of the band, after Marlene of course. She certainly had a way to communicate with him that made him feel like she valued his role more than Hobbes or than Robortor’s, who was the other adrenaline junkie of the team, “take this rag” she produced a large towel stained with grease and black grease out of nowhere “and all of us” she eyed Darlene and George, “we’re going to lift Barry and you will slide it under his back”


    “No please” Barry frowned


    Eugenie totally ignored him, like she had merged into a new persona, “Then we will lie him back down very very flat against the fabric”


    “Noo please it h—”


    In very fast and precise movements, Eugenie rolled off Barry’s long sleeves and discarded his sweat shirt when Darlene and Robortor pulled Barry up, “are those bullet holes mate?” George asked, “why is that one so big?”


    “You can handle it, Barry” Eugenie said to him. He held on through the motion, closed his eyes and swallowed something that seemed to be chunky peanut butter inside his mouth while his feet kicked feebly at the end of his legs. “Because the hit came from the back and exited through his front” Eugenie explained. She looked super focused, hyper focused, something else that Ivan had never seen before. Barry’s eyes met his from down below as he was pushing his friend back against the floor. “Talk to him, keep him awake” Eugenie ordered Robortor, then handed another rag to Darlene, “Darlene, wrap this thing around Barry’s arm, the other arm, NOT this arm, the other one”


    “There is blood all over this arm too”


    “I know I know” Eugenie was speaking patiently, Ivan guessed, because she was accustomed to large populations of students expressing all sorts of things at the same time


    “My friend, where the hell were you attacked??” Robortor leaned over Barry and asked him


    “Talk to him about something NICE”


    “Train… station” Barry’s eyelids flickered


    “Ivan, press this towel on his chest, let’s just stop this blood its—” she sniffled loudly, wiped her nose with her sleeve, spreading more blood on her upper lip although the left side of her face was entirely sticky with some older less bright red liquid, “it’s too much”


    “Sorry man”


    “Fuu—” Barry grimaced in pain and his cheeks blew some hot air through a chicken-butt shaped mouth


    “Something nice, something nice” George was still thinking, “Barry, remember when you found that lizard and he wouldn’t leave you? You tried to release him back to the wild and he didn’t want to go”


    “Isn’t that the lizard that Hobbes accidentally ran ov—”


    “Shhh, Ivan, Eugenie gave you a job”Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Eugenie nodded appreciatively, but Barry’s face didn’t seem to register. His body was softly convulsing, like he was trying to unlock some secret portal on the floor of the van and disappear into it “someone has a pen?” she asked


    “I don’t have pockets” Arachnovitch said


    “I have a pencil”


    “Like an ink roller pen” Eugenie specified


    “You’re a teacher and you don’t carry a pen?” Darlene said, “sorry sweetie, I meant—”


    “DO YOU HAVE A PEN OR NOT?”


    “It’s out of ink” Alphonse said without fuss


    “I’m NOT going to write with it, dammit!” Eugenie was frustrated. Under her, Ivan saw Barry’s mouth welcome a small and faint smile, his eyes roll into their orbs and look up at her. His breathing was short and quivering. He anchored himself to Eugenie White’s image as if to hold on to something concretely, with hands instead of eyes, as if to not fall into a crevasse.


    “Sorry little Barry” Darlene said after tying a strong knot on his forearm, “what’s it for, the pen?”


    “We need to find a hospital” Eugenie inspected the pen, her knee still blocking Barry’s legs and her other hand on his left shoulder to prevent him from sliding. Outside, the van barely missed an ablaze tree that collapsed and sent some baby flames licking the sidewalk around the big avenue they were driving


    “Evacuation has been completed” Alphonse exclaimed, avoiding a huge pothole at the last second, “there are no functioning hospitals in the area. FUCK” he cursed at a street pole dropping on an ice cream station right next to them, “it’s like fucking Mario Kart here!”


    “Get Hobbes on the line” Darlene said


    “Barry, remember that lizard? You named him Barry, right? You really don’t have any imagination”


    Ivan watched Eugenie slid her finger under Barry’s tee shirt, push it up to reveal his abdomen and the lower part of his chest. His skin was glistening with brown and red blood, some of it streaming down in thick drops, some of the goo mixing with the now old ugly scar he had above his belly button. Ivan realized that he didn’t know the total of blood liters that a human body contained. The smell was unbearable, it smelled like copper, like sick saliva. It smelled like death.


    “Hobbes is always on the line”


    Barry gasped for air, his face crumpled in pain like a dried olive, “I’m not going to make it” he said


    “BARRY SHUT THE FUCK UP, SHUT THE FUCK UP” Eugenie slapped his face. They all screamed inside the car, even Alphonse.


    “Eugenie White!” Alphonse barked at her reproachfully. Ivan was shocked but Eugenie’s eyes commanded authority, something he had guessed she possessed from her curriculum vitae but that he had never personally witnessed


    “Pen’s for that” Eugenie raised her right arm in the air while the vehicle was beginning a slow turn. She waited, holding her breath, for the manoeuvre to happen, “Barry, think about something nice, something beautiful” And as if he didn’t hold any grudges for the blow she’d just inflicted to him while he was already struggling to stay alive, he nodded at her with some kind of silent understanding. He clenched his jaws and howled low. The air at his mouth was whistling like a basket of snakes.


    “Hobbes is saying there are no staffed hospitals nearby” Alphonse informed


    “Motherfucker wait” Eugenie whispered, then plunged the pen’s plastic case inside Barry’s rib cage. Ivan watched his friend’s back arched and propped up like the one of a ballet dancer. Darlene couldn’t repress a step back and George stared with offense at Eugenie White. Barry’s fingernails dug feebly at the iron floor, the heels inside his shoes hammering it. “Better, better” Eugenie said, holding his chin with a soft hand. She nodded at him, “breathe, Barry” He nodded back and they nodded at each other for a very long series of twenty seconds. Having been the one catching them in an eyelock above the kitchen table at Hobbes’ Lab and starting the wild rumors about it, Ivan felt some new chills climb up his spine, which were very different from the goosebumps he experienced earlier.


    Eugenie seized Ivan’s hand, “Ivan, chouchou, tap your finger up and down on the opening of the pen” He reluctantly grabbed the said pen that was sticking out of Barry’s chest, “in a breathing rhythm”


    “Like how” Darlene asked but she was interrupted by her own gag watching a mix of egg white slime and blood spit out of the pen


    “Darlene, keep the rag on, Robortor, please, get me the phone with Hobbes on the line” Eugenie White was distributing orders now, “Ivan, come on! Use your own breathing as reference!”


    “You ever seen ER?” Darlene said, “Dr Ross used that trick during a spectacular accident, I mean, a bus crash in a thunderstorm. He saved the life of a little kid who had fallen into a sewer”


    “Exactly” Eugenie said


    “That’s a very old TV show” Robortor handed the phone to Eugenie


    “It’s iconic” Darlene opposed


    “Hobbes, I cannot hear you, but I cannot stress it more: we need a hospital”


    “He’s saying that all hospitals have been deserted, and we will treat Masquevert at home” Alphonse carried the communication


    “HOBBES we cannot take care of Barry at home, he’s going to DIE”


    Ivan looked down at Barry, whose eyes grew larger with panic and also the offense that argued that he had just mentioned that possibility himself just before and had gotten slapped in the face for it? “No-ho” Ivan forced himself to chuckle, obsessed with his thumb on the opening of the pen, “I’m sure she’s exaggerating, Barry”


    “I don’t care I don’t need a hospital with a staff in it, I need the tools there, Hobbes, tell him! Alphonse, tell him!”


    “What tools?” Alphonse conveyed. All eyes fell on Eugenie and the right cheek on her face that anger was slowly making redder and redder so as if to match her bloody left one.


    “Instruments! Like… surgical, stick some sponges inside Barry there and stop all the blood gushing, I need some fucking machines that have tubes and bleeps because those machines will tell me— I need a motherfucking blood bank, I need a sowing kit that doesn’t come from a Danish cookie box from Hobbes'' grandma, I need—’


    “GOT IT” Alphonse cut her off abruptly, “looking for the next medical center”


    “Ivan, we need to sit Barry up or his lungs will fill with fluids, come on, slide your hands under his arms and lift. Barry grimaced in agony and shook his head, resisting the move, “sit him up against you in the back, all cozy and? Barry, listen to me” she plunged her eyes onto his, “YOU CAN HANDLE IT”


    “What kind of fluids”


    “The not-good kind” Eugenie added Ivan’s hands to hers and pulled up under Barry’s elbows, “Darlene, can you make sure that the towels in the back don’t fall? Tie a knot”


    “They are fucking drenched”


    “You are shitting me right?”


    “I’ll find some other rags” Darlene said, as she was a very quick learner, “George, can you super-dry this piece of fabric?”


    “Ivan, lift please” Eugenie signaled him and replaced her right hand with her knee, mixing a pull and a push while she held the pen in position on the side of Barry’s chest.


    “Holy sh—” Barry gasped, “it huurts, it really hurts, it rea—”


    “That’s because your ribs have been demolished, some of them are at risk of poking through your lungs, so sit still and stop resisting, Barry”


    “Dem... demol—”


    “There is debris floating in your chest, I will have to open it and tidy everything there”


    “Op… op—” Barry was trying to repeat her words, horrified


    “I will not let you die. George, you are supposed to distract him”


    “We have arrived at a clinic” George said, intensely scrolling on his wrist watch, “I’m gonna bulldoze in there and get a stretcher”


    As the van slowed down, they all lifted their eyes to take in the building. Half of it was on fire, the part that read Emergencies, but the maternity ward was intact, shielded from the flames by a steel wall. “Premature babies are born there, they have everything we need” Eugenie said.


    Alphonse jumped on his butt and finally darted a shocked look at the back of the van, "I"m sorry, premature babies wh what?"