Trigger

18

The scent of burned gunpowder reached his nose, and he glanced at the trees to see Stormy standing with his handgun dangling from her fingers. She had pulled it from the backpack and saved his life. He didn’t realize she even knew the weapon was in the pack. Thank God for strong women.

He gasped, grabbing his side. Blood was still pouring from the wounds, and they burned like a blue flame. As he fell back on the cold, hard rocks, stars spun above him, leaving haunting trails of beautiful, white light. They were paths he could follow all the way home. The only home that was real. The final rest.

And I am so tired.

“Trigg! Trigg?” Stormy screamed. The stones clattered under her feet as she slid to a stop beside him. “Help me, Trigg. I don’t know what to do!”

He raised a hand, and it fluttered uselessly. He touched his side.

“Not … healing,” he muttered. It was hard to get the words out.

“My God, Trigg! You’re bleeding out!”

He gasped, trying to talk. He felt her press something against the wound. That wasn’t going to help, not unless he could start healing in the next five seconds. He could tell that wasn’t going to happen. Something was very wrong.

“Trigg,” Stormy moaned. “Help me, tell me what to do.”

He reached for her, wanting to tell her so many things. He couldn’t get the words out. He touched his side and almost screamed, feeling the pain in the wounds.

“I can’t ...”

“What? Trigg, you can’t what?”

“I can’t heal,” he gasped. “Something … wrong.”

“What do you mean?” she cried, shaking his shoulder. “Tell me.”

He gasped, gathering his strength. He looked up into her eyes, willing her to understand his thoughts as well as his voice.

“I’ve been poisoned. There is something on these bullets.”

STORMY

“Trigg!” Stormy screamed at the man.

He had fallen onto the rocky ground and was panting hard. Stormy felt a rush of panic move through her. She had performed first aid before, but never this serious on a person or an animal.

“I’ve been poisoned. There is something on these bullets.”

“What can I do?” she bellowed. She remembered the first-aid kit in the bag. She could perform some kind of triage on him. He was so beautiful. He had been helping her immensely along the way. Stormy wasn’t giving up on him just.

A whimper came from him. “You have to take out the bullets,” Trigg said.

Stormy felt her heart pick up the pace.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m not healing as fast as normal,” he said. “There’s probably something on them.”

Stormy could only see Trigg from the light of the moon, taking in his lean form and notably attractive frame. She shook away those thoughts and retrieved the backpack, pulling out the flashlight.

She turned it on, blasting the orb in his direction. She approached him and shined the light on his wounds; three penetrated his side, while one was just above his collarbone.

“You survived this before,” Stormy said.

Trigg nodded with a grin. “Shifters can take a lot, but not whatever this is,” he said.

Stormy returned to crouching next to him. Her heart was palpitating hard in her chest, so fast that it felt like it might shoot through her throat. She moved the spotlight over his body, trying to gather her thoughts into one cohesive line.

“In the backpack,” Trigg said, “there are tools in there you can use to dig them out.”

Stormy did as she was told and pulled tweezers and alcohol to sterilize it with from the first-aid kit. She had some basic knowledge of what to do, but she had never needed to use that information before.

She crouched beside him as he lay flat. His body shook with a shiver Stormy didn’t think was from the cold.

“Do you want a blanket?” she asked.

Trigg shook his head.

“It’s just the shock,” he replied. “Once you get them out, I will be fine.”

“Jesus Christ,” Stormy whispered.

She balanced the flashlight on her leg as she peered into the wounds on his side. She tilted the alcohol over the tweezer, cleaning it thoroughly, then went for the simplest, shallowest wound.

“Just go for it,” Trigg said.

His voice was low in the night air. Stormy breathed in deeply, then approached the wound with the tweezers.

She wasn’t fond of the squishy sound that accompanied the metal prongs wandering through this man’s body. But the bullet was easy to find, so she grabbed hold of it and simply pulled.

Trigg grunted, gritted his teeth, and stared up into the darkness.

“Are you okay?” Stormy asked.

Trigg nodded. “Don’t worry about me,” he whispered. “Just get them out.”

Stormy did her best to remove the next bullet without injuring him further. It popped out with a wet smack, and she dropped it into her open hand.

It was pointed with something embedded on its tip. She showed it to Trigg.

“It’s poisoned,” Trigg said. “You need to get the others out, fast.”

Stormy tried to pick up the pace despite her surging anxiety. She tried to think of it as a video game, not like or death situation with real blood and flesh.

She plucked out the remaining bullets embedded in his side and tossed them to the ground. She then moved her body to the top of his torso, where the last bullet was just under his collarbone.

His skin was torn apart roughly, and the bullet had seeped deeper into him than the others. Stormy tried her best not to be rough with him, but he cringed and moaned anyway.

“Almost there,” she whispered.

She finally was able to dig into him to get a hold of the bullet. She feared losing it, so she yanked it out in one desperate motion.

“Ahhh, f**k!” Trigg bellowed.

Stormy felt terrible about hurting him, but it was the only way to get the job done fast and efficiently.