“What the hell happened to him?” Gabe asked, his voice in my ear as he leaned over to peer out the window.
I glanced back at him, taken off guard by his presence and the fact that he could see anything. It was too dark where they were for me to see much of anything, other than their general shapes.
“I don’t know,” I replied, and opened the door. Since Gideon was here, and Luka appeared to be walking some, I decided it was safe enough for me to venture outside.
As they walked into the campsite, the light from the streetlight finally hit them. Gideon had his shotgun over one shoulder and an arm around Luka, helping to keep him on his feet, and Luka was drenched in blood.
“Oh my god!” Roxie ran over and slipped her arm around his waist. “Are you okay?”
Roxie and Gideon led him over to the picnic table parked right up against his motorhome. He winced as they helped ease him down onto the bench. Roxie sat down beside him, while Gideon, Gabe, and I stood in a semicircle in front of Luka.
Up close, his injuries were still barely visible underneath his tattered, blood-soaked clothing, but I caught a glimpse of a few very nasty gashes. Luka held his arm across his stomach, and I suspected that he was helping to keep the organs inside until his body self-healed all the way.
“Do you need anything?” I asked.
“Just some towels to clean up,” Luka said, brushing off injuries that looked like they would’ve been fatal on anyone else. “I think I’ll be okay.”
“I’ll get some,” Hutch piped up, eager to be doing something besides wringing his hands in the doorway of his own trailer. He was still recuperating from his own injuries, which was probably why he hadn’t run out to lend a hand.
“Do you want me to call an ambulance or something?” Gabe asked in a faraway voice, and Luka looked up at him with a start.
“No, I’ll be fine,” Luka replied, and did his best to mask his pain. Like most everyone else in the camp, Luka tried to keep his extrasensory healing ability a secret from outsiders. It was easier than attempting to explain something that could not be explained.
“It’s worse than it looks,” Luka added with a weak smile, since Gabe didn’t look convinced.
“What happened?” I asked, trying to detract from the fact that Luka looked like he belonged in a morgue or an ER at the very least.
But from where I was standing, I could already see the laceration across his chest starting to heal—the edges of the wound slowly moved toward each other, as if magnetized, and within moments the flesh would all be fused together as if it had never been torn apart.
I moved, trying to block Gabe’s view in case he was looking, but his eyes were darting around everywhere, probably searching the campsite for signs of the creature that had attacked Luka.
“What the hell were you doing out here?” Gideon asked, like the world-weary parent he’d slowly become. “I told you all to stay in at night.”
“Hutch was in the bathroom, and I really had to take a piss,” Luka explained. “I only went out behind our trailer, and then that thing—attacked me.”
Hutch returned just in time to hand Luka a stack of old towels and ask, “Was it a bear?”
“For the hundredth time, Hutch, there are no bears around here,” Roxie reminded him, sounding more matter-of-fact than exasperated.
Luka shook his head as he pressed towels against his more egregious injuries. “I don’t know what it was. I didn’t really get a look at it. It was dark and it happened so fast. It grabbed me and dragged me out into the woods, and it was gonna kill me, until Gideon showed up with his shotgun and chased it off.”
“What about you?” Roxie asked, looking up at Gideon with her wide blue eyes. “Do you still think it was a coyote?”
“No, it wasn’t any animal that I’ve ever seen,” Gideon said with a sigh.
“What about a werewolf?” Hutch suggested. “Or maybe a were-bear?”
Gideon shot an uneasy glance toward Gabe, who was still an outsider. He hadn’t grown up in a world like we had, and to an outsider, we’d seem insane for entertaining the idea of a were-beast.
“Everyone should get inside,” Gideon commanded, his British accent coming out gruff. “Just because the animal is gone doesn’t mean it won’t come back.”
“Luka, why don’t we get you inside so you can rest and get cleaned up?” Roxie suggested.
I offered to help Luka inside, but Roxie had it under control. Luka had already begun healing enough that he didn’t seem to be in as much pain, and it appeared easier for him to move. Of course, he had still lost a lot of blood, so he was weak and leaned on Roxie as she helped him up into his trailer.
“I should, um, I should actually get home,” Gabe said, once Roxie and Hutch had gotten Luka inside his trailer. “My mom will be worried.”