Unholy Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

his arms and hands were smeared with blood. With his soiled white apron, he looked like one of our island fishermen after they had finished gutting a day’s catch.
    â€œI do not mean to sound harsh,” he said, wearily shaking his head, “but this man may just as well be dead. In fact, it would be a blessing for him. His stomach was raked with buck and ball. The wound is mortal. I might add that he is also exsanguinated. Look at his skin.”
    â€œHe is what?” said Sergeant Colfax.
    â€œExsanguinated … drained of blood,” the surgeon said.
    I felt another feeble wave of anger course through me. It gave me just enough strength to say, “I’m still alive, damn you, and if you would help me instead of talking and shaking your head, I might survive.”
    A sardonic smile creased his weary face as he stared down at me on the litter. Glancing at the gore covering my stomach, he said, “You have more than one kind of grit inside you, I think.”
    â€œThat he does,” said Harlan Colfax, his voice husky.
    â€œI will clean the wound and stitch it up. The rest is up to a higher power than mine.”
    They placed me on one of the tables in the kitchen. It was the same one that Colonel Baker had pounded his fist on the night before when he had called on us to deliver our lightning blow for freedom.
    As a surgeon’s assistant began to cut my uniform away, I looked over at the soldier who was lying on the other table. A doctor had been sawing at his leg a few minutes earlier, but now they had left him in peace. He was no more than a boy, and he had a sweet, puzzled grin on his face. His eyes were fixed on something I could not see. Then the surgeon was standing over me again. He held a moist sponge close to my nose that was soaked in ether.
    â€œI don’t know whether you will thank me or curse me for what I am about to do,” he said.
    A few moments later, I didn’t care.

C HAPTER T WO
    I came back into the world to find myself on a wooden pallet in the back of a quartermaster’s freight wagon. The teamsters would slap the reins, we would roll along for a minute or so, and then the wagon would come to a jolting stop. With each dip and furrow in the road surface, a new chorus of pitiful moans would issue from the wounded men crammed in alongside me. Our combined stench floated around me like a miasma.
    I heard someone yell an order, and the canvas flap covering the back of the wagon was suddenly pulled away. My eyes recoiled at the blinding sunlight. Two men scrambled up onto the freight bed and gently lifted up the man on the pallet beside me. He was handed down to two more men standing at the rear of the wagon. Then the first two came back for me.
    As they transferred me to a canvas litter, I could see a long stream of wagons stretching far down the road behind us, all waiting to deposit the same horrendous cargo. They carried me toward the double-door entrance of what appeared to be a massive livestock barn. A sign was stenciled above the doors. It read: U.S. SANITARY COMMISSION — FIELD HOSPITAL TWELVE .
    One of the wounded men began screaming at the elderly doctor who was supervising the arrival of new patients. The doctor’s face was weary and haggard, and he was clearly overwhelmed by the number of men arriving all at once. The wounded man was wearing lieutenant’s bars just like mine. He was missing his right arm.
    â€œThis isn’t a hospital!” he shouted. “Take me to a hospital!”
    â€œI’m sorry,” the doctor kept repeating. “I’m very sorry.”
    â€œI gave my arm for this country,” the lieutenant shouted back, his voice breaking into a sob.
    The man on the gurney next to me had been shot through both legs. He gazed toward the surrounding buildings with a calm, appraising eye. “Poultry farm from the look of it,” he said, in a philosophical tone. “Big one, too.”
    Mercifully,