Free Flamethrower by Maggie Estep

sort of metal device that was pulling the skin over the stump like a sausage casing.
    “Now, could we get a car service and go to a hospital, please?” Tobias asked.
    “My doctor works out of New York Hospital. Will that do?” Ruby asked.
    “That’s fine.”
    Ruby felt for her phone in her pocket then realized she’d put it in the little tool pouch attached to her bike seat.
    “Do you have a phone in here?”
    “No. Miller took my cell, and there isn’t a working phone in the house.”
    “I’ll go get mine,” Ruby said.
    “Probably won’t get a signal. But try it.”
    Ruby slowly got to her feet and took a few steps forward. She could feel the blood drying near her left temple. Her vision was slightly blurred, and she had the worst headache of her life. She walked into the living room, where her bike leaned against the wall. She took her cell phone out, flipped it open, and punched in Jody’s number. No signal. She moved around the dining room. Nothing. She peered out between the filthy curtains, saw that the street was deserted, and stepped outside. The sleepy sounds of the dead-end street seemed loud, the water lapping violently at the shore, the gulls squawking like chickens. She still couldn’t get a signal.
    Ruby went back in and turned all the lights on in the kitchen, illuminating the little room where Tobias lay. It was her first good look at him. He was wearing a dirty white button-down shirt and striped boxer shorts. There was a black sock on his lone foot. Ruby wondered where the second sock had gone. It hadn’t been on the foot in Jody’s fish tank.
    Tobias was looking at Ruby apologetically, trying to pull his shirttail down over his boxers.
    “Don’t worry about it,” Ruby murmured. She couldn’t help but stare at the horrid stump of a leg. For a second, Rubythought of her friend Cathy, who had dated a long line of men with missing parts. There was a one-armed guy, a guy with one testicle, and an elderly gentleman with only one kidney. Last Ruby had heard, Cathy had settled with a one-eyed man.
    “Ugly, huh?”
    “That doesn’t look good,” Ruby conceded. “I can’t get a phone signal. Any suggestions?”
    “There’s a car service not too far away. You could walk over and ask them to come.”
    “Where?”
    Tobias told her. His speech was strained, and as he spoke, he fumbled for something at his side, eventually producing a container of pills.
    “Hurts.” He put a tablet in his mouth.
    “You want some water for that?”
    “No,” he said. “Don’t leave me here too long,” he added, seeming weak and needy for the first time.
    “I won’t,” Ruby said. “I’m going to clean up a little,” she motioned to her forehead.
    “Bathroom’s just off the living room.”
    As Ruby ran water in the sink, she looked at herself in the mirror. There was blood drying around a gash on her forehead, her hair was matted, and the skin around her left eye was beginning to swell and turn blue. She dabbed water onto the wound and saw that it wasn’t particularly deep, just tender. She opened the medicine cabinet. Nothing there but a dead roach and a nasty old toothbrush. Ruby wet her fingers and ran them through her hair. She looked like an extra from thezombie movie
28 Days Later
. She flicked off the bathroom light, went to the door, and walked outside.
    An old Puerto Rican man was standing in front of the tire shop a few doors down. He stared at Ruby, and she realized she still looked like she’d had an argument with a hammer. She smiled at the man. He didn’t smile back.
    As she walked, Ruby passed by the pair of kids she’d seen on the way to Tobias’s shack. They were still sitting on the stoop, their moon faces blank.
    The car service was in a tiny hole-in-the-wall on a deserted side street. The front office was barely bigger than a phone booth. An old man sat hunched behind a bulletproof partition reading a magazine. His head was tilted down, showing a luminous bald spot with a