Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

into Max’s shoulder near the neck, plunging into the muscle just above her clavicle. The two puncture wounds were dark red, deep, as regular as drill holes, and still wide open, leaking both blood and clear fluid. They were awful wounds, to be sure, but the beastie had not locked down, or Max would most surely be dead. The sabertooth’s first bite was for capture; the second bite would have been for the kill.
    More worrisome even than the bite wounds were the long claw slashes down Max’s back. Buckle carefully shifted her onto her uninjured right side to investigate. There were four separate gashes, each one longer and deeper than the next, ripped downthe flesh of her back from the top of the shoulder blade to the waist. The narrow, ragged wounds had bled badly, though he could not see that any had sunk deep enough to damage the bones or organs beneath.
    Buckle decided to start with the bite wounds. He eased Max onto her back again, and then removed the pot from the fire, so the boiling water would not evaporate away. Taking the surgical knife from the pot, he cut away a section of the gauze roll, dipped it in the water, and began wiping the icy gouts of blood away from Max’s neck. Blood oozed from the bite punctures, flooding the white skin immediately after he wiped it. He used a small handful of the bandages to continue cleaning, but the cloth was soon soaked completely through.
    Buckle filled the syringe with hot water from the pot; he sank the point of the needle into the first bite wound and drove his thumb down on the plunger, expressing the near-boiling water with as much force as he could. He continued pressing the plunger until the water flooded out of the flesh clear and clean, and then repeated the procedure with the second wound. With the veins below freed from the debris and coagulate that had stifled them, new blood flowed from the bite punctures in rivers.
    Buckle unscrewed the Fassbinder’s Penicillin Paste tin and sank two fingers into the pale-green balm, then plugged the fingers into Max’s wounds, stanching the blood flow. He placed a folded gauze bandage on Max’s shoulder and pressed down on it. Max shifted, ever so slightly, uttering a small, plaintive sigh. The sound nearly broke Buckle’s heart. She started shivering. He felt her quivering muscles tighten as if she might be coming around.
    Buckle cautiously turned Max onto her stomach, allowing the weight of her body to maintain the pressure on her shoulderbandage, and immediately set to cleaning the claw wounds. Her thick black hair had become unbound from whatever device she had pinned it with, and he swept it aside. Her flesh continued to shiver, and he worked as fast as he could, a little more roughly than he would have liked, irrigating the length of the cuts with the syringe and wiping the excesses of blood away with the gauze. He used much of the rest of the penicillin paste to seal the wounds before laying strips of bandage along the length of each of them.
    Buckle was going to have to wind the gauze around her body to fasten the bandages tight to the wounds. He leveraged her onto her right side again; the bandages, already half-soaked with blood, remained in place, stuck to the wounds by the combination of coagulate and Fassbinder’s paste.
    “Perhaps it would be best if I were to sit up for you to proceed with your wrappings,” Max said in a hoarse whisper, startling Buckle. Her voice was even but quivering underneath, soaked with pain.
    “Max,” Buckle whispered, overjoyed at the sound of her voice, peering down at her face. “Stay still. I can manage. I am going to give you morphine.”
    Max opened her eyes, the big black orbs shimmering in the orange firelight. “Not yet, Captain. Finish your surgery first.” Max planted her right hand on the floor and pushed with a feeble but determined heave, attempting to sit up.
    “Stay still. Blue blazes!” Buckle cursed. “Damn it, Max. All right.”
    Careful not to disturb any