Page 71 of Fable for the End of the World

“No!” she cries. “Don’t—”

I hurl the kerosene at the Dogs. In the fraction of a second that it’s still airborne, before it can bounce off them and land in the snow, I pull the trigger.

One perfect shot.

Heat. Engulfing me like a cloud of polluted air, heavy and black. Light sears through my eyelids, turning everything a sharp, burning white.

And pain. Pain like I’ve never felt before, crawling up my limbs, scorching every inch of my skin. Caerus has worked hard to prevent this, reaching into our brains and turning off pain receptors, toggling them like switches. Increasing the production of endorphins with injections and pills. But they can’t go too far, because pain is protective, too. It lets you know when your life is in danger. It helps keep you alive.

I can’t move or speak. Every nerve ending in my body is crackling like a fuse. This is the pain that saysRun.Hide.But my muscles won’t obey.

The next thing I feel is pressure under my arms. My legs skid across the ground and it feels like my skin is being scraped off, scraped down to the sinew and bone beneath. I manage to choke out a singular sound, but I can’t tell if she hears me. Inesa. Draggingmy body through the snow.

My vision returns to me in slow, agonizing increments, in brutal stops and starts, sharpening and then blurring again. I’m lying on my back, head tilted upward. I see the threshold of the cabin, dark wood against the white sky. I see smoke curling in the air. There’s a foul, charred odor, and beneath it, something even more putrid. My own skin, burning like meat on a grill.

“Mel? Mel?” Inesa clutches my face in her hands. Her palms are cool and her touch is soft.

I blink, and her features clarify. Her pink-touched cheeks, freckles strewn like stars. Her earth-colored eyes, brimming with tears. Strands of dark hair falling wildly, caught on her lips and her thick lashes.

“Wait here,” she says—as if I have any other choice. Her voice sounds distant, muffled; the pain is holding me at a distance, like I’m trapped underwater.

I blink again, and she’s gone.

As long as I stay still, the pain keeps a sort of equilibrium. Embers and ashes, not blazing blue flame. More of my vision returns. There are the walls of the cabin, wood warped by water stains, and the gashes left by the Dogs that let the light bleed through. Distantly I can hear fire crackling. There’s no room in me for panic, but I don’t have to worry about whether Inesa will return. She will. She does.

Her face hovers above me, her brows knitted with fear. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “It’s going to hurt.”

I can’t really imagine how she could make it worse, but I don’tsay that. Instead, I part my cracked lips and whisper, “Did it work?”

She lets out a breath, almost a laugh, though without humor. “Yeah. It worked. The... the Dogs are dead. Blown to pieces. I don’t think they’re coming back, unless Caerus also dabbles in necromancy. But I guess they were never really alive.”

“No,” I say. The heaviness of exhaustion has settled over me, and I can’t add anything else.

Inesa swallows. “It’s mostly just your legs. It’ll be easier if you can sit up...”

I give a faint nod of permission, and Inesa puts her hands under my arms again, propping me up against the wall. From this vantage, I can finally look down at my body.

I’m surprised to see that from the waist up, there’s little damage. My gloves have burned off, but the flame-retardant material has kept my palms unmarred. Even my thighs aren’t too bad, except the patches where my hunting suit has dissolved, leaving my skin raw and bright pink underneath.

But below the knee, my legs are a mangle of flesh and fabric. Long strips of the material have melted right into my skin. Around it, the flesh is raised and puckered, even blackened in some places. There’s already a line of blisters, bubbling with yellow pus. Feeling the pain was one thing. But seeing the ruin is enough to make my throat fill with bile.

Inesa works fastidiously, as if she’s done this a hundred times before. She’s gathered a bucket of snow and very gently presses it in handfuls against the worst of my burns. Pain shoots from my legs and drills into my temple, making me gasp.

“Sorry!” She grimaces, eyes wavering with unshed tears. “I’ll try to be quick.”

The pain is coming in irregular jolts now, whenever the snow touches my skin. I’m not sure about the effectiveness of this particular method, but I don’t question her. I’m not in the City now. There are no Caerus medics to anesthetize me and graft on new skin.

Inesa takes a knife from the table and slowly begins to work at the pieces of my suit the fire left behind. Even the slightest tug is agony. I inhale sharply.

“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I just need to take the fabric off, or it will get infected...”

“Wait,” I say hoarsely. “There are pills. On the table. Pain medication.”

Inesa rises and sorts through the items on the table—the matches, the candles, the bandages, the meal replacement packets—and returns with a handful of tablets. Crouching down beside me again, she asks, “These?”

I nod. I try to reach out for the pills, but my limbs won’t move the way I want them to. Inesa hesitates. And then, very gently, she puts a hand on the back of my neck. Tips my head back. I open my mouth and she places a tablet on my tongue. With immense difficulty, I swallow.

I close my eyes. Luckily the medication works quickly. If there’s one thing Caerus is good at, it’s making you numb. After a few heavy, shuddering breaths, I can hardly feel the pain at all.

---