Free A Cold Black Wave by Timothy H. Scott

pulling off his coat and tossing it away.  Josh   cried out as the smell of burned   flesh, cordite, and metal filled the air.   Leah turned pale at the sight of his bloodied flesh.  She desperately pulled at the little projectiles that were embedded in his skin, but they were white hot and blistered her fingers.   She kept at it though as Josh shrieked and writhed, forcing her to press him down with one arm to stable his body enough to extract the projectiles.  She burned her fingers with each one she removed.   By the time she finished Josh had passed out, and his torso bubbled blood from his fresh wounds.
     
    Leah placed the back of her bloody hand against her head as she tried to calm herself with pleas to a higher power, "Oh God, oh God, Oh God!  Help me!"
     
    Then she ran into the supply room and grabbed the medical kit and did her best to ignore the pain in her fingers, sitting down next to him and fumbling with everything she grabbed as her body shook.   Blood trickled out of Josh's   wounds like tears.   Leah used alcoholic wipes for his wounds but the blood kept coming.  She found the coagulant and spread the jelly-like substance over his body and the bleeding quickly stopped.  The holes were small enough that they could close easily, and she checked his back to make sure there had been no penetration.
     
    The projectiles she removed were only about an inch in length and cooled on the floor next to her.  Leah unraveled a bandage roll, gently propped him up and wrapped it around his torso four times to ensure a tight fit.  It was all she could do.
     
    The cold was becoming unbearable now and she left his side to go close the door.   As she stood at the threshold of the shuttle door she glanced at the inert machine lying in the snow, but only long enough to ensure it wasn’t getting back up.  She slammed the door shut and turned her attention back to Josh, but she wasn’t sure what else to do now.  As she collected herself for a moment, the pain in her fingers became more apparent and intolerable.  There were second degree burns all over them that required attention.   She found some ointment from the med kit and smoothed the substance over the pink and blistered skin before carefully wrapping them in bandages.
     
    When she was done, Leah took blankets from her bed and bundled Josh up as best she could.   He lay unconscious and pale white and far too heavy to move.   The thermal wrap would help warm the inside   of the shuttle,   but it would take awhile now that most of the heat had been sucked out.
     
    She fired up a few portable burners used to heat their food and let them run for awhile.   Then she put her own coat on and sat on the floor a few feet away from Josh and watched his breathing like a mother.   His rapid chest movements gave way to slow heaves as his idle mind allowed the flow of adrenaline to subside and normal breathing to return.
     
    Leah’s thoughts of her father added to her newfound misery, and her lip quivered with sadness.  The prospect of Josh’s death, and the consequences of which, created an unnatural sense of despair that broke through the firmament of her faith and scratched at the heart of her being. 
     
    She pulled her knees close to her chest, buried her face in her arms and wept as she let her memory draw forth with pleasant thoughts of her father.  “Daddy ...” she cried, saying it softly over and over as if the words would summon him from the other room, to scoop her up in his arms in his smiling, funny way, and to make everything okay.  It deepened her loneliness each time she heard herself, as it refreshed anew the painful kno wledge that she could never see him again and the arresting awareness that she was now completely and utterly alone.

Chapter 6
     
     

 
    The next morning she shot up out of a deep sleep, convinced something was banging on the shuttle door.  She looked to Josh, but he was still unconscious on the floor.  It