Chapter 17: Blood on Snow
The escape shaft was a vertical pipe of sheer, slick metal, more a desperate crawl space than a passage. It smelled of damp earth and rust. Dominic went last, lowering himself with a sheer agony of will, his boots scraping for purchase on the cold rungs. Every movement was a white-hot knife driven between his ribs. Above, Tej pulled the hidden panel closed, plunging them into a blackness so complete it felt like a physical substance.
“Keep moving,” Letty’s voice floated up from below, tight with strain. She was ahead, carrying Stella bundled against her chest, a backpack of supplies on her shoulders. Catalina followed, one arm cradling Leo, the other bracing herself against the curved wall. Her body screamed with the aftermath of birth, a deep, rending ache that competed with the primal need to flee. Mina was a silent, wide-eyed weight on Tej’s back, secured with a length of webbing.
They moved downward for what felt like an eternity, the only sounds their ragged breathing, the scuff of fabric on metal, and the occasional whimper from a baby. The air grew colder, damper. Finally, Letty’s voice came again, muffled. “End of the line. It’s a grate.”
A sliver of grey light appeared below, illuminating the fear on their faces. Tej descended past Catalina, his muscles straining as he braced against the sides of the shaft. He shoved at the rusted grate; it gave with a shriek of protest, swinging open into a shallow, freezing creek. Icy water instantly soaked his legs.
The shock of the freezing water punched the air from his lungs. "Clear," Tej hissed, his voice a strained rasp against the burble of the creek. He reached back into the darkness, his hands finding Catalina's.
She passed Leo down, the bundle light and terrifyingly fragile in the grey dawn light. The cold air hit the newborn and he let out a thin, reedy wail that sounded explosively loud in the silent forest. Catalina flinched, clamping a hand over her own mouth as if she could silence the sound by swallowing it.
"Quiet, little man," Tej murmured, tucking the baby inside his own jacket. He turned to take Stella from Letty. Dominic reached the bottom then, his boots splashing into the water. He swayed, bracing a hand against the rocky bank. His face was the color of ash.
"We need to move east," Tej whispered, passing Stella to Letty and reaching for Mina. "Away from the road, towards the higher tree line."
"Dom can't climb," Catalina said, her eyes fixed on her brother. His breathing was shallow, his pupils dilated with pain.
"I can walk," Dominic ground out. He pushed off from the bank, water streaming from his jeans. "Just point."
Letty scanned the ridge above them, the dense wall of pine and rock. "There," she said, nodding towards a scree slope littered with boulders. "Cover. We can rest up there, see if they follow."
The climb was a silent, agonizing trek. They moved through the creek for fifty yards to hide their trail, the icy water numbing their feet and stealing their breath. Catalina’s legs trembled with every step, a fresh, worrying warmth seeping between them. She ignored it, focusing on the next rock, the next root.
They scrambled up the slope, slipping on loose stone. Dominic fell once, his knees buckling. He caught himself on his hands with a choked-off grunt.
Tej was beside him in an instant, hauling him upright with a grunt. "Easy, brother," he muttered, taking Dominic's full weight onto his shoulder. The slope leveled into a dense thicket of pines, their needles shedding a carpet of frozen silence. They staggered into the trees and collapsed behind a fallen log, the world reduced to the rasp of their breath and the soft mewling of the infants.
Catalina sank to the ground, her back against rough bark. She peeled open her coat, checking Leo, then Stella. Their faces were pink with cold, their tiny mouths working silently. "They're freezing," she whispered, her voice cracking.
"Got it," Letty said, shrugging off her backpack. She pulled out two more wool beanies, tucking them clumsily around the babies' heads. "Body heat. Quick, Cat." Letty unzipped Catalina's jacket further and placed both twins against her skin, then re-zipped it around them. Catalina gasped at the sudden chill, then closed her eyes as their small warmth seeped into her.
Dominic watched, propped against the log, his breathing shallow. His hand fumbled at his side, coming away stained a fresh, dark red. The bandages underneath were soaked through. "How's our trail?" he asked Tej, his words slurred.
Tej, who had doubled back to the edge of the thicket, peered down the slope. "Nothing yet. Creek covered us good." He turned b
creek was a good call." He glanced back at the others huddled in the pines, his expression tightening. "But we're not clean. We're leaving a trail of body fluids and baby whispers."
Letty was kneeling beside Catalina, her hands hidden under the open jacket, checking the twins. Her touch was clinical, swift. She pulled her hands back, her fingers smeared with fresh, bright blood. It wasn't postpartum normal; it was too much, too fast. Catalina's face was waxy, her lips pale.
Dominic’s head lolled against the log. The red bloom on his side had widened, a stark stain against the damp grey of his sweater. His eyes were half-closed, his breathing a shallow, rasping flutter. "Just... need a minute," he slurred, but the minute was leaking out of him onto the frozen ground.
Letty looked from Dominic's slackening face to Catalina's bleeding, then to the two tiny lives against her skin. A cold calculation, sharper than the mountain air, clicked into place. She caught Tej’s eye as he moved back to them, his boots crunching on the frost.
She leaned close to him, her voice a bare, frantic breath meant only for his ear. "They're both bleeding out, Tej. He's got internal written all over him. She's not clotting." Her eyes flicked to the bundled shapes against Catalina's chest. "If we can't get them to a hospital in one hour, their children will be orphans."
The words hung in the air between them, crystallizing in the cold. Tej’s usually impassive face fractured. He looked at Dominic, then at Catalina, who was now shivering uncontrollably. He scanned the endless, imprisoning vista of rock and pine. "There's nothing out here," he muttered, his voice hollow. "The nearest real town is forty klicks. Roads are being watched."
"Then we don't use roads," Letty said, her mind racing. She looked up at the sky, a uniform sheet of leaden grey. "We go down. Off the ridge. Find a house, a farm, anything with a vehicle."
"The clinic," Catalina whispered. Her eyes were closed, but she was listening. A memory surfaced through the haze of pain. "The priest... when he gave us the key. He said the old stone clinic on the south ridge. For pilgrims. It's closer."
Dominic forced his eyes open. "How... do you know?" Each word cost him.
"He told me while you were sleeping," she breathed. "In case... in case the babies came. Said it was... staffed."
Tej was already pulling a tattered topographic map from his inside pocket. He spread it on the ground, his finger tracing the contour lines. "South ridge. That's back across the creek. Down through the ravine." He looked up, assessing Dominic. "You can't make that climb, brother."
"I'll make it," Dominic said. He tried to push himself up, his arms trembling violently. He collapsed back, a dark streak of blood now visible on the bark behind him. His defiance was a ghost.
Letty made a decision. It was brutal and simple. "Tej, you carry Dom. Fireman's lift. I've got Cat and the twins. Mina walks with me." She didn't wait for agreement. She started repacking the bag with ruthless efficiency, leaving behind anything non-essential. Food, extra clothes, tools. All that remained were medical supplies, diapers, and a single water bottle.
"We can't—" Tej began.
"We are," Letty cut him off, her voice iron. "Or we bury them here. Your choice." She fastened the pack, her movements sharp with a fear she couldn't afford to feel.
Tej stared at her for a beat, then gave a single, sharp nod. He moved to Dominic. "This is gonna hurt," he warned, his voice soft.
"Everything... hurts," Dominic grated out.
Tej hooked Dominic's good arm over his shoulder, leveraged his weight, and in one powerful, gut-wrenching heave, got him upright and then over his shoulders in a clumsy carry. Dominic bit down on a cry, his face pressed into Tej's back, his body a dead weight. Fresh blood quickly soaked through Tej's jacket.
"Go," Letty said. She helped Catalina to her feet. Catalina stood, swaying, the twins now secured in a makeshift sling across her front made from a torn sheet. She held them close, her arms a fragile cradle. Her legs were slick and warm.
Letty took Mina's hand. "Come on, brave girl. We're going on another walk." Mina, sensing the absolute terror in the adults, just nodded, her small hand clinging to Letty's fingers.
They descended the slope they had just climbed, a sickening reversal. The creek, when they reached it, was a barrier of pure agony. The water wasn't just cold now; it was a cutting, elemental force. Tej waded in first, staggering under Dominic's weight, the water rising to his thighs. Catalina followed, a low moan escaping her as the icy current hit her. She stumbled, and Letty caught her, holding her up with an arm around her waist, dragging Mina through the surging flow.
On the other side, they collapsed onto the rocky bank, gasping, their bodies wracked with shivers. The twins, disturbed by the jostling and cold, began a thin, syncopated crying. The sound was a beacon in the silent woods.
"We have to move," Tej hissed, already staggering to his feet, adjusting Dominic's limp form. "The sound..."
They pushed into the ravine, a deep cut of shadow between two granite shoulders. The ground was treacherous, a mix of icy rock and half-frozen mud. Time lost meaning. It was measured in steps, in the rhythm of Dominic's pained breaths against Tej's neck, in the increasing slowness of Catalina's shuffling gait.
Letty watched the color drain from Catalina's face, saw her steps become more uncoordinated. "Talk to me, Cat."
"Just... tired," Catalina mumbled, her words slurring. "So cold."
Ahead, Tej stopped suddenly. "There." He pointed with his chin.
Through a break in the trees, on the opposite side of the ravine, a structure emerged. It was a hulking shape of ancient, dark timber and stone, clinging to the mountainside like a lichen. A single, yellow light glowed in a downstairs window. A thin wisp of smoke rose from a chimney into the grey sky.
"The clinic," Catalina breathed, a flicker of hope in her glazed eyes.
The sight gave them a final burst of desperate energy. They scrambled down the steep side of the ravine, slipping, falling, tearing skin on rocks. They forded a smaller, faster stream, the water numbing them to the bone. Then the brutal climb up the other side began.
Dominic was unconscious now, a silent burden. Tej's muscles screamed, his lungs burning. Letty half-carried, half-dragged Catalina, whose legs were barely responding. Mina cried silently, fat tears cutting paths through the dirt on her cheeks.
They reached a worn footpath that switchbacked up to the clinic. The last hundred yards were a blur of sheer will. Letty hammered on the heavy oak door with the side of her fist. The sound was swallowed by the vast, indifferent landscape.
After an eternity, the door creaked open. A woman in her sixties stood there, dressed in a thick wool cardigan over practical nurse's scrubs. Her hair was a stern grey bun, her eyes a faded blue behind wire-rimmed glasses. They took in the scene: the bleeding man slung over a Black man's shoulders, the woman shivering and pale with newborns at her breast, the terrified toddler, the wild-eyed young woman covered in mud and blood.
The nurse’s eyes narrowed, not in judgment, but in swift, professional assessment. She didn't ask questions. She stepped back, pulling the door wide.
"Bring them in," she said, her voice accented but clear. "Now."
The clinic door thudded shut behind them, sealing out the wind and locking in the smell of antiseptic, old wood, and simmering soup. The sudden warmth was a shock to their frozen skin. They stood dripping on a worn stone floor, a ragged island in the calm eye of a storm.
The main room was low-ceilinged, lit by a single, bright overhead bulb and the flickering orange light from a cast-iron stove. Wood-paneled walls were lined with shelves of linen and supplies; a simple crucifix hung beside a detailed anatomical chart. The nurse, her name tag reading ‘ELSA’, assessed them with a speed that was both disconcerting and reassuring.
“Put him there,” Elsa commanded, pointing to a high, narrow bed against the far wall. Its crisp white sheets were a stark contrast to the mud and blood they carried.
Tej staggered forward, his muscles trembling from the strain. He lowered Dominic onto the bed with a grunt. Dominic’s head lolled to the side, his breathing a wet, shallow rattle. The dark stain on his sweater had spread to the size of a dinner plate.
Elsa was already pulling back the fabric, her lips pressing into a thin line at the sight of the soaked, makeshift bandages. “Knife?” she asked, her hands moving to a cabinet.
“Bullet,” Letty corrected, her voice hoarse. She was gently guiding Catalina to a second bed. “Two days ago. He was patched up, but we’ve been running. Climbing. He took a fall.”
Catalina sank onto the mattress, a soft cry escaping her as her body settled. She instinctively curled around the bundles at her chest. Elsa’s sharp eyes flicked to her, noting the pallor, the tremors, the bloody dampness soaking through her pants.
“And her?” Elsa asked, her tone leaving no room for evasion.
Letty stepped closer, lowering her voice though they were the only people in the room. She positioned herself between the nurse and where Mina stood quietly clutching Tej’s leg. “She gave birth. Two hours ago. In a bunker. Leo and Stella.” She gestured to the tiny shapes. “The placentas delivered, but she’s bleeding. A lot. It hasn’t slowed.”
Elsa’s professional mask didn’t slip, but a new intensity hardened her gaze. She looked from Catalina’s waxy face to Dominic’s unconscious form. “Twins born in the field, and a gunshot wound refusing to clot,” she summarized, the words clinical and cold. “You have brought me two critical patients.”
“We had nowhere else,” Catalina whispered, her eyes fixed on Dominic.
“Clearly,” Elsa said, but there was no judgment in it, only fact. She turned, raising her voice slightly. “Klara! I need you now!”
A younger woman, perhaps twenty, with two long blonde braids and the same practical scrubs, appeared from a back room. Her eyes widened at the scene. Elsa issued orders in rapid, sharp German. “Sterile packs. Sutures. IV stands. Lactated Ringer’s, two bags. Oxytocin. And the portable ultrasound. Schnell.”
Klara vanished. Elsa moved to Dominic first, pulling out a pair of shears and cutting his sweater and shirt away. The wound was a swollen, angry purple, the sutures underneath torn and weeping. “Fever’s spiking,” she muttered, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead. “Infection’s set in. The bullet is still inside?”
“We don’t know,” Tej said, his voice flat with exhaustion. “The guy who fixed him… wasn’t a surgeon.”
“I am not a surgeon either,” Elsa said, probing the edges of the wound. Dominic flinched in his unconscious state, a low groan echoing in his throat. “But I am what you have. Klara!”
The younger nurse reappeared, arms laden with supplies. Elsa pointed to Catalina. “Start an IV on her. Large bore. Get fluids into her immediately. Then assess the bleeding. I will deal with him.”
Klara approached Catalina, her movements gentle. “I need to take the babies for a moment, to examine you,” she said in careful English, reaching for the bundles.
“No,” Catalina said, her arms tightening. It was pure instinct, a feral protectiveness.
“It’s okay, Cat,” Letty said, easing forward. “I’ve got them.” Her touch was familiar, trusted. She carefully lifted Leo, then Stella, cradling them awkwardly but securely against her own chest. Their tiny faces, lost in the folds of blanket, were peacefully asleep.
Freed from their weight, Catalina sagged back, her strength finally abandoning her. Klara worked with efficient grace, tying a tourniquet, tapping a vein. The needle slid in, and the clear fluid began to drip. “The bleeding?” Klara asked softly.
Letty answered, her eyes on Dom. “It’s steady. Bright red. No clots we could see.”
On the other bed, Elsa was cleaning Dominic’s wound, the sharp smell of iodine cutting through the air. He jerked, his eyes flying open for a second, blind with pain. “Cat?” he rasped.
“I’m here, Dom,” Catalina called out, turning her head towards him. Her voice was thin, stretched. “I’m right here.”
His hand shifted on the sheet, fingers curling as if reaching for her. Then his eyes rolled back, and he was gone again, lost to the shock and fever. Elsa didn’t pause. She began the meticulous process of removing the failed sutures.
The portable ultrasound machine whirred to life. Klara helped Catalina lie back, pulling up her shirt and pushing down her waistband. She squirted cold gel on her lower abdomen. The transducer moved over her skin, the screen a shifting landscape of grey static that meant nothing to Letty.
Klara’s face was a careful blank. She studied the images, her brow furrowed. After a long minute, she turned her head towards Elsa. “Uterine atony,” she said in German. “There is a clot. It is not contracting properly.”
Elsa didn’t look up from her suturing. “Massage it,” she said, her fingers never stopping their precise work on Dominic. “Get the oxytocin into her IV. Now.”
Klara’s hands moved to Catalina’s abdomen, pressing deep. Catalina cried out, arching off the bed. The pain was sharper than the contractions, a brutal, internal violation. “I’m sorry,” Klara whispered, her face pale. “We must make it clamp down.”
Tears streamed from Catalina’s eyes, silent and fast. She turned her head away from the procedure, her gaze finding Dominic’s still face.
She focused on the steady, ragged sound of his breathing, using it as an anchor against the tearing pain inside her. Klara’s hands worked firmly, relentless, until a sudden, crushing cramp seized Catalina’s lower body. A fresh gush of blood, dark and shocking, soaked the sheets beneath her.
On the other bed, Elsa finished the last suture on Dominic’s wound and pressed a thick bandage over it. She looked at his ashen face, then at the bag of fluids feeding into his arm, then at the rudimentary equipment around her. She wiped her hands on a towel, her movements suddenly still. The quiet beep of Dominic’s borrowed pulse oximizer was the only sound.
“This is insufficient,” Elsa stated, her voice cutting through the room’s focused silence. She looked first at Letty, then at Tej, her expression stripped of all professional detachment. “You must understand. He has a fever of one hundred and four. The bullet fragment is causing sepsis. I have cleaned the wound but I cannot remove it here. He needs a real hospital and a surgeon, now.”
She turned to Catalina, who was shaking from pain and blood loss. “And her uterus is not contracting properly. The bleeding is slowing, but it is not stopped. If it picks up again in the night, she will bleed to death in this bed.” Her gaze landed on the twins in Letty’s arms. “The newborns—they need warmth, they need monitoring for their lungs, they need tests we cannot perform. They need a real hospital now.”
Letty’s arms tightened around the two tiny bundles. The reality of the words settled over the room, heavier than the mountain outside. Tej’s shoulders slumped, the fatigue and helplessness visible for the first time.
“The roads are being watched,” Tej said, his voice hollow. “We heard them on the scanner. They found the car.”
“There are other roads,” Elsa countered. “Older roads. Forest service tracks. I know them.” She studied them, her eyes flicking between their desperate faces. “You are running from someone. This is clear. But if you stay here, you are running only to their graves.”
Dominic groaned, his head shifting on the pillow. His eyelids fluttered. “Cat?” he mumbled, the word thick and dry.
“I’m here,” she whispered back, her own voice weak.
“We move,” he breathed, his eyes still closed. It wasn’t a question. It was an order dragged from the depths of his fading consciousness.
Elsa gave a sharp nod. “Klara will prepare them for transport. You have twenty minutes.” She moved to a locked cabinet and pulled out two small, prefilled syringes. “Morphine. For the journey. It will not fix them, but it will make the pain bearable.”
Letty looked down at the babies in her arms, their perfect faces oblivious to the calculus of survival. “We can’t take them out there in the open. Not like this.”
“You must,” Elsa said. “Or you sign their death certificates here and now. I will give you supplies. I will give you directions. The rest is your choice.” She turned back to her supplies, her posture making it clear the conversation was over. The clinic’s limitations were a wall they had just hit.
Tej walked to the window, peering through the fogged glass into the deepening Alpine dusk. “A vehicle. We need something that isn’t on their list. Something they won’t look for.”
“The old logging road behind the chapel,” Catalina said, her voice a thread of sound. She was staring at the ceiling, remembering. “The priest… he mentioned a caretaker. An old man with a Unimog. For plowing.”
A flicker of hard light returned to Tej’s eyes. A Unimog—a brutal, go-anywhere truck, more tractor than transport. It was slow. It was loud. But it could climb a cliffside. “Can you get us there?” he asked Elsa.
The nurse didn’t look up from filling a bag with syringes and bandages. “I will draw you a map. The route avoids the main valley. It is steep. It is unpleasant. It is your only chance.”
Klara gently finished securing Catalina’s IV line to her arm with a loop of tape. She then took the warmed blankets and began expertly swaddling the twins, making two tight, neat bundles. She handed one to Letty, the other to Tej. “Keep them skin to skin if you can. Their temperature is critical.”
Letty tucked Stella inside her own jacket, the tiny weight a profound responsibility against her heart. Tej did the same with Leo, the baby’s head fitting in the palm of his hand. Dominic was slipping under again, his breathing deepening as the morphine Elsa administered took hold.
“The journey will take over an hour,” Elsa said, handing Tej a hand-drawn map on the back of a pharmaceutical pamphlet. “There is a small public clinic in the next canton. They have a basic surgical suite. It is not a major hospital, but it is more than this.” She looked at Dominic, then at Catalina. “Tell them I said they need a real hospital. They will understand the urgency.”
Tej folded the map, his jaw tight. “Thank you.”
“Do not thank me,” Elsa said, her gaze lingering on Catalina’s pale face. “Just go. Quickly.”
They moved with a grim, coordinated speed. They transferred Dominic to a sturdy wooden chair, using belts to secure his limp torso to the back. They wrapped Catalina in every blanket they could find, layering her against the cold, her IV bag held aloft by Tej like a bizarre beacon. Letty carried Mina on her hip, the little girl now too tired to cry, her thumb stuck silently in her mouth.
Elsa held the door open, a gust of freezing wind whipping into the warm room. “Follow the creek east until you see the lightning-blasted pine. Then head north up the scar on the hill. You will see the lights of the logging camp. The caretaker is named Klaus. Say I sent you. He will ask no questions.”
They stepped back into the dusk, a shattered procession. The world was blue-grey and sinking into shadow. The wind had teeth. Tej led, the map clutched in his free hand, the other supporting Dominic’s chair like a grim stretcher. Letty followed, a child on each hip now, the bag of medical supplies slung over her shoulder. Catalina walked, one slow, painful step at a time, her arm linked through the back of the chair where her brother was tied, as if she could steady him through the bond alone.
They vanished into the tree line, the sound of the chair’s legs scraping over frozen ground fading into the gathering dark. Elsa watched them until the shadows swallowed them whole. She closed the heavy door softly, turning the lock. She leaned her forehead against the cold wood for a single moment, her eyes closed.
Then she turned and began to strip the bloody linens from the beds, her movements efficient, her face a mask of professional resignation. The clinic was empty again, holding only the echo of their panic and the lingering scent of blood and iodine. Outside, the mountains loomed, impassive and vast, as the family disappeared into their gullet.