Page 120 of Promises in the Dark

Pyro was beside me again, dragging another soldier who was missing an arm. The stump was a ragged mess, blood pumping out with each heartbeat. We got him to a medic who immediately started working to clamp the artery and stop the bleeding.

“Keep moving!” I shouted, more to myself than anyone else.

Another soldier stumbled toward us, his eye socket a bloody crater, his face a mess of shattered bone.

“Help me,” he gasped, reaching out with a trembling hand.

Pyro and I caught him before he hit the floor, dragging him over to the nurses. His eye socket was a fucking disaster, and I had to swallow the bile rising in my throat as we handed him over.

“Move, move, move!” Pyro yelled, and we were off again.

We grabbed another soldier, his arm a mangled wreck, bones jutting out through the skin like broken branches.

No rest, no fucking mercy. Just another day in hell.

“Pyro, get his other side!” I commanded, and we lifted him together, moving as quickly as we could without dropping him.

“Hang in there, man,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure if he could hear me. “We’re getting you to the doc.”

We dragged the guy over to Red, who was now trying to stabilize a soldier with a massive chest wound. The dude was barely breathing, blood bubbling up from his mouth as he tried to scream. She was fighting to insert a chest tube to relieve the pressure on his lungs.

“Get him here,” she ordered, not looking up. “And start an IV. We need to get fluids in him fast.”

I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me, and moved to help. The floor was slick with blood, making it a bitch to keep my footing. My boots squelched with every step, feeling like I was walking through a fucking swamp.

I grabbed the IV bag, my fingers slipping on the blood-slick plastic, and started to set it up.

Red was still working on the chest wound, blood spurted everywhere, splattering her face and clothes.

“Hold him down,” she instructed. “He’s going into shock.”

I pressed down hard on the guy’s shoulders. He was thrashing around, eyes rolling back, skin pale and clammy as fuck. I could feel the life slipping out of him.

“Come on, come on!” Red yelled, but it was no use. “Don’t you fucking die on me.”

Her face crumpled, tears cutting through the blood on her face as she squeezed his hand.

“No, no, you’re going to be okay,” she whispered, but even she knew it was a lie.

We all did.

But she refused to accept it.

Another life snuffed out in the blink of an eye. Death didn’t give a fuck who you were or what you deserved. It just took. Cold, heartless bastard that it was, it snatched whoever the fuck it wanted, whenever the fuck it wanted.

Whatever. We got back in business.

The heat was oppressive, making every goddamn breath feel like it was filtered through sandpaper. The med bay reeked of blood, sweat, and antiseptic—a cocktail that hit the back of my throat and almost made me gag.

Pyro and I hauled another wounded soldier between us, his dead weight pulling at my already screaming muscles. His leg was mangled, the tourniquet we’d slapped on barely holding the bleeding at bay. He whimpered like a kicked dog, his face pale and twisted in agony.

“Hold on, man. We’re getting you there,” I said, though the words felt fucking useless. He probably wasn’t even hearing me.

Pyro, carrying the guy’s other side, huffed out a bitter laugh. “You’d think these bastards would stop gettingthemselves fucked up. Christ, Simon, I swear we’ve carried half the fucking platoon in here today.”

I didn’t have the energy to reply, my ribs still sore as hell from earlier shit I didn’t want to think about. We dumped the soldier onto a bed, carefully—well, as carefully as two grunts on the verge of collapse could manage.

“Harper!”

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