“Don’t worry,” Pandora said, “you’re going to pass out before I get through the bone.”

The hunter didn’t seem reassured; if anything, his panic appeared to be mounting. But there was no other option here. The leg was crushed, and if it didn’t come off he wasn’t going to make it home.

“Did you bring any… any pain pills? Any—”

“I brought whiskey and a leather strap,” Pandora said. “I’m going to cut away the edges of your pant leg now so I can see how far up the damage goes. Okay? If there’s a chance I can save the knee, I’ll take it. Jack, your belt. Once I know where to cut, we’ll need a tourniquet a bit higher up than that. Do you understand? It’s going to be very slick but you’re going to need to make sure it’s tight.”

“H-how come I can’t have no a-anas… no anash… fuckin’ medicine, huh, doc? How come?”

She laid a hand upon his sweat-slicked brow in a gesture that was almost compassionate, but the terse tone and the hard look were anything but.

“I can spare something when we’re back at the Dam. Probably. But I’m not wasting that shit on you if you’re just gonna scream and pull the lesser down on our heads. You know you’re the first to go if that happens, right? You got nowhere to go. So you best keep it down.” She offered the leather strap. “You want this or not?” He nodded, and she sloshed the whiskey in her flask. “And this? You want this, or don’t you?” He nodded more vigorously.

Jack Harper, his belt at the ready for the tourniquet, knelt beside the trapped hunter and took hold of his hand. “I got him, Dora.”

She didn’t answer; she just peeled back the blood and viscera caking the hunter’s lower left leg and cut away as much of his pant leg as she could. She frowned.

“This is pretty bad, Jack. We get him back, he’ll be lucky if we can find a prosthetic that’ll let him walk again. And that’s if he does all the physical therapy.” After a pause, she added, “If we can find enough books about physical therapy to even know the right exercises for recovering from something like this.”

“I don’t care. Take the leg off, Dora. We’re taking him home.”

Jack’s gaze was intense, blue, unyielding, and insufferable. He really wasn’t used to people disagreeing with him.

“He’ll scream,” she said. “At first, he’s going to scream, until the shock sets in. Then we have a very limited window to get him back to the clinic for treatment and an infusion. It’ll be tight.”

“We’re ready. Right?” Jack asked the injured hunter, who shook his head aggressively. “Right?” Jack asked, louder, to the rest of his team waiting at the windows.

Their responses were more subdued, but positive. They just wanted to get home. It would be dark soon, and the creatures would be coming out in force.

“Can we make it quick, Doc?” one of them said, and Pandora shrugged in response.

“I’ll do my best.” She pointed to a spot just above the hunter’s knee. “Tourniquet here. Tight. So tight he’ll want to scream. Cover his mouth, stuff a rag in there, I don’t care. I have just enough room between the damage and the knee that I think I can save it. But it’s getting dark and we have to go now.”

Jack nodded. The hunter moaned, his eyes wide and wild, his sweaty hands scrabbling for some kind of support. He managed to keep himself to whimpers of agony when Jack tightened the belt around his mangled leg, and immediately grabbed one of Jack’s free, blood-slick hands.

“Y-you’ll stay with me, won’t you brother?”

“Of course. We’re getting you home.”

“Cover his mouth,” Pandora said again, and then took her saw to his leg.

It was horrible to watch, but worse to listen to. The grind of sawing through flesh was bad enough, but through bone was another hell entirely. She had been right about the patient losing consciousness pretty much as soon as the blade touched the bone, but she hadn’t predicted the squeamishness of the other hunters. There were five of them, and two ran to vomit while their friend’s blood oozed across the floor and soaked into Pandora’s clothing.

These guys hunted for a living! They’d gutted deer and rabbit and wolves and whatever the hell else had managed to stay alive out here long enough to get unlucky. Why was it different with one crummy leg?

She wiped her forehead—smearing herself with blood and barely registering—and bent to the task of wrapping and bandaging as best she could. The arteries she’d tried to sew up, but she would have better equipment and the ability to cauterize and truly clean the wound only when they had returned to her clinic on the Dam. She left the rest of the leg there to rot, beneath a crumbled mess of girders and concrete. Honestly, they were lucky it was just the calf. This hunter could have been caught up to the waist, and then what?

Doc Dora, please, amputate everything below the ribs!

Like she was some kind of fucking miracle worker. She was barely even a doctor.

“Get him on the stretcher,” Jack growled, dragging the slightly lighter hunter under his arms. “We gotta get out of here before they smell the blood.”

Pandora glanced down at her own body. Hm. Potentially problematic.

She was soaked and flecked and smeared with a hell of a lot of blood.

Surely it would be fine. Surely six hunters could keep her safe.

A low, distant howl began to echo in the streets outside, joined one by one with the voices of at least a dozen distinct creatures.

“So much for that,” murmured Pandora, and the hunters surged into action.

“You two, you’re on the stretcher. You two, scout us a safe path. I’ve got the doctor. Get back to the boat, and if we’re not there within five minutes, get back to Dam.”

Two by two, they left, each dragging something behind. The stretcher crew dragged their unconscious friend; the scout crew dragged the trip’s kills; and Jack dragged Pandora, along with the hefty bag of medical supplies now drenched in blood.

The lesser struck just as Jack and Dora were about to clear a corner. They went straight for her, and for her bag, of course.

They were different, each of them. Different bone protrusions, spinal malformations, different animal-like snouts and claws and even stubby tails. Different eyes, but predatory no matter the color or pupil shape. Their teeth were always sharp, but sometimes it was shark-sharp and sometimes it was gator-sharp and sometimes it was even cat-sharp. But always, always, they were recognizable as what they once were. Always, it was impossible not to see that they were, at one time, human.

And they were always, always hungry.

“Doc, run!”

She did. She tossed her medical bag and sprinted into an alleyway, to a tangled mess that was once a fire escape, and scrambled her way up and on to the roof. They weren’t far behind, though. They weren’t exactly at human levels of intelligence, but they displayed similar cleverness to wolf packs, in that they each seemed to have assigned roles and they often attempted to drive their prey to an advantageous location.

Thinking of herself as prey was not helping.

Pandora’s heart hammered in her chest as she scrabbled across the rooftop, staying low, hoping (foolishly) to have lost them. When the growling and the metallic creak of the fire escape grew louder, she cursed and bolted for a makeshift bridge, then down an escape ladder.

They were right on her heels, she was sure of it, snapping, slavering, soon to make a delightful little meal of her, and then—

And then… nothing happened. The sounds died away. The yips and keening cries peeled off, heading instead after the hunters (she supposed). Had she lost them, or…?

In the distance, she heard gunfire. There, too, was the poomph of a flare gun, and the sparkle-pop as the flare went off down by the marina. The creatures would certainly have been drawn to that.

But what in the hell was she supposed to do? She had no weapons, no food, only a little sterilized water, and they would probably assume she was dead.

She slunk down the alleyway, glanced up and down the street, and frowned. It was getting dark for sure now. Where could she hole up for the night, safely, with this much blood on her clothes?

Moving carefully from alley to alley, doorway to doorway, Pandora sought someplace she could feel safe for just one night. But as she started to move away from a small shop she had dismissed, a hand shot out from the alley beside it and aggressively gestured for her to follow.

“Well,” she said, under her breath, “I don’t have a better idea.”

She hurried to follow, and a black-cloaked figure beckoned her further into the alley, to a cut-off that led into a courtyard with a private balcony. A collapsible ladder was dangling from the balcony railing, and the figure urged her to climb.

She supposed she could just cut the ladder down, or detach it, when she got to the top. But she also supposed she wasn’t a complete asshole, and this person was trying to help her.

When they had both made it to the top, the figure drew the ladder up and set it neatly on top of a bit of old patio furniture, then gestured for her to go inside. She still had no better idea, so, why not?

It was probably a very nice apartment, once. Now, the stranger had turned the living room into a nice temporary base, complete with an unnecessary tent indoors, a camp stove, and a solar still purifying water next to the sliding glass door. There was a bunch of food stacked neatly atop the kitchen island, along with some bottles of water that had long lost their labels.

The cloak came off with a dramatic swirl and Pandora raised her eyebrow at the man who stood before her, suddenly far more awkward than mysterious.

He had a sort of gymnast or acrobat frame, olive toned skin, and long fingers like a pianist. His lips were thick, his cheekbones high and pronounced, his hair warm black and shaggy.

Most striking about him, of course, were his eyes. They were an unidentifiable number of shades of green, which shifted and slid without rhyme or reason. They looked like the spiderweb cracks of a broken mirror, or the odd schism created by light refracting in water.

“Thank you,” said Pandora.

He seemed surprised, and didn’t immediately answer.

She indicated herself. “I’m Pandora Destelle. I’m the doctor at Dam. They’ll be very grateful to anyone who helped me get back safely. If you were interested in folks being grateful.”

“I’m… not sure.” He touched the fingertips of one hand to his chest. “I’m Seth. Carridy. I… I’m a…” He gestured to his eyes. “You know.”

“We have other Shatter-Eyes who live in Dam. Can I ask, what do you do?”

He hesitated before answering. “It’s just minor telepathy. Bugs and… small creatures. I’m a… I guess you could call me a pest control guy?”

“Well. If nothing else, having a pest control guy at a medical clinic would be pretty great.”

“Yeah. I guess so. I just, uh… I’ve had some not-so-great experiences with settlements. Lots of folks out there who hate Shatter-Eyes, y’know?”

“I know. But I don’t stand for that at my clinic. I couldn’t promise everybody would play nice, but you saved my life and all I have to offer is a relatively safe place in Dam.”

“Maybe.”

The howls picked up again outside, and Seth flinched.

“Maybe we just… talk for a while,” said Pandora. “And you can decide later.”

“Yeah,” said Seth. “I think maybe we’ll be… here for a while.”

Pandora supposed she ought to get comfortable.