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“The little girl with the broken leg.” Maxwell tilted his head back down the hall he’d come from. “It’s a bad one. She can’t walk the distance, and anyone here who was strong enough to carry her is too emaciated now, no matter what they say.” His gaze tracked to a human man a little older than Garrett, with weeks of scruff on his cheeks and hollow eyes.
Garrett looked away from the man and lowered his voice. “Her father?”
Maxwell nodded minutely. “He’ll want to try, but he can’t.”
“You can shoot a gun?” Garrett unbuckled his holster while Maxwell scowled at him.
“You know I can.”
Yeah, but Garrett also knew how much he hated doing it. He hated to carry one too. It violated some honorable idea of an army medic that Garrett had never thought applied to them, seeing as they weren’t a recognized army. Still, though, he’d seen Maxwell shoot before, and he did it with the same calm, cool, emotional detachment he did everything.
He passed Maxwell the holster. “You take point then, and I’ll carry her.”
Maxwell just nodded and strapped the holster around his narrow hips. “Alright. What’s your situation?”
Garrett moved to the still relatively empty corner where he’d dropped his bag, and Maxwell followed him over. He crouched beside it, and clever Maxwell knelt down to hide his hands from the view of the room while Garrett subtly pulled out his second gun. “There might be more people upstairs.”
Maxwell eyed the gun. “Friendly people?”
Garrett shrugged and turned his back to a wall as he stood and slipped his gun into the waistband of his pants. “Scared people.”
“Do we have time to look for them?” Maxwell glanced around the filling entryway.
The elderly lady Garrett had led over was the last from his wing of the building, and from the looks of it, Nerol was on the last doors of the other wing. So this group of a couple dozen or so was all they had, plus the little girl Garrett had to carry. They could take this group in one run to the ship, and Garrett had budgeted them at least two, meaning if they were willing to risk it, they theoretically had time to sweep through the upper floors.
“I think so.” Garrett nodded.
A smile and something like adoration flashed across Maxwell’s face, and Garrett’s heart warmed. Maxwell trusted him. Well, not with everything. Very clearly, not with everything. But with some things, and that meant a lot to Garrett.
He put his hand on Maxwell’s shoulder as he passed him, close enough to rub his thumb over his collarbone. “I’ll tell Nerol, and we’ll take the stairs on the left.”
Maxwell’s eyes widened, and his eyebrows twitched up in an obvious surprise before he quickly wiped it away and nodded.
But Garrett paused and frowned at him. “What?”
Maxwell shook his head. “Nothing.”
Garrett frowned harder. Even Maxwell couldn’t pretend like he hadn’t just had a reaction to whatever Garrett had just done. Touching his shoulder? Telling him the plan? Garrett did those things all the time.
“I’ll tell you later.” Maxwell gave his head another little shake. “Go talk to Nerol. I’ll meet you at the stairs.”
Garrett watched him go, thinking about everything that could be running through Maxwell’s mind for a few moments before he scolded himself for the futility of that and went to Nerol to inform him of their plan. The older man looked for a second like he might beg them not to, but Garrett gave him a stern look, and he backed down. Garrett had flown all the way down here to rescue people, not to leave them behind. He grilled Nerol on the layout of the building and then returned to Maxwell.
“Two floors above us.” Garrett held up two fingers, then pointed them to the far side of the building and back again. “Hallways just like this one all the way down. Five apartments on each side. Copies of these ones down here. Wide stairwells on both ends. Utility closets in both stairwells on all landings.”
“Locked?” Maxwell leaned over the railing and looked up the stairwell center to the ceiling.
“The closets? Probably, but they only lock from the outside, so if they’re locked, it means there’s no one inside them.”
“Unless they got locked in.” Maxwell leaned back in and gave Garrett a grim look.
Garrett winced and started climbing the stairs. “Let’s hope that didn’t happen. I’ll take point.”
Maxwell fell into step behind him, and they began their sweep. Garrett’s fingers itched to pull his gun from his waistband, and he flexed and wiggled them but resisted the temptation. People driven out of their minds with fear wouldn’t respond well to a big, strange man waving a gun around in their faces.
In fact—
“I should take point.” Maxwell put his hand on Garrett’s elbow, and Garrett stopped.
