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“Then do it!”
He gulped another breath and went at her again. I popped the cap on the Epi, put it against her thigh—it looked like corduroy pants but it wasn’t, it was her thigh—and listened for the click. Then I counted to ten. At five she gave a hard jerk.
“Hold on, Lare, hold it!”
“I’m holding it. Do you think I should use the other one?”
“Save it, she’s breathing again. Whatever she is. Christ, the taste of her is so weird. Like one of those see-through slipcovers you put on furniture. Have you got the oxygen?”
“Right here.”
I gave him the mask and bottle. He held the mask over her mouth and nose. I hit the power switch on the controller and saw the green light. “High flow?”
“Yeah, yeah, shoot the works.” I saw a drop of sweat from his forehead hit the plastic mask and run down the side like a tear.
I pushed the slider all the way to HIGH FLOW. Oxygen began to hiss. On high, the oxy would last for no more than five minutes. And while there were backups of almost everything in the kit (there was a reason it was so heavy), this was the only Inogen. We stared at each other across her.
“This is not a human being,” I said. “I don’t know what it is, maybe some top secret cyborg, but it’s not human.”
“It’s not a cyborg.”
He jerked his thumb at the sky.
When the oxy ran out, Butch removed the mask and she—might as well call her that—kept breathing on her own. The rasp quieted. I shone the light on her face and she closed her eyes against the glare.
“Look,” I said. “Look at her face, Butchie.”
He looked, then looked at me. “It’s different now.”
“It’s more human now, is what you mean. And look at her clothes. They look better, too. More… jeepers, more realistic.”
“What do we do with her?”
I snapped off the light. Her eyes opened. I said, “Do you hear me?”
She nodded.
“Who are you?”
She closed her eyes. I shook her shoulder, and my fingers no longer sank in.
“What are you?”
Nothing. I looked at Butch.
“Let’s take her to the cabin,” he said. “I’ll carry her. Keep that other EpiPen ready if she starts to choke and rasp for breath again.”
He got her in his arms. I helped him to his feet, but he carried her easily enough once he was upright. Her dark hair hung down, and when the breeze gusted, it blew the way normal hair does. The clumping was gone.
I had left the cabin door open. He carried her in, put her on the sofa, then bent over with his hands on his knees, getting his breath back. “I want my camera. It’s in my pack. Will you get it?”
I found it wrapped in a couple of tee-shirts and gave it to him. The woman—now she almost did look like a woman—was looking up at him. Her eyes were a washed-out blue, like the knees of old denim pants.
“Smile pretty,” Butch said.
She didn’t smile. He took her picture anyway.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
