Stretch of Faith
by Robert Barlow

The shuttle brought him directly to the assembly area. During the descent he saw the remains of what had been, twenty minutes prior, an intact Biomute facility. It had been ground zero for the quake and ground zero for the experiments that changed him into what he was now. What remained of the facility didn’t look anything like he remembered it. The sprawling research complex had more or less collapsed from the outer walls inward. What was left formed an A-frame of steel, concrete, and broken glass. A pinch, deep down, twisted him at the same moment the shuttle reached the ingress point. He still felt good enough to go in, but he wasn’t sure if this time he’d make it out.

"Final check, Paul," said Kali greeting him.

She seemed as cheerful as ever despite the stress of her job. Kali performed tests on his white body suit non-stop until satisfied. Last of all she hooked the optic cable to a node on his right inner thigh. There was nothing quite like having a two-kilometer tail trailing between his legs. The other end, buried at the core of the rolling spool, jacked into Kali’s tripod. Amongst all the rubble they’d visited on the western seaboard in the last two years, he’d seen her tripod unfolded in some peculiar settings. Whenever he re-emerged she was a welcome sight sitting on the fold out seat attached to a tray of flat monitors. Maybe under other circumstances they could’ve had something together. But he could never get his mind off of Charity and the girls long enough to really consider it.

"Kali, I’m ready to go in."

"I know you are, but I’m not so sure." Her hands checked digital camera points arrayed across the surface of his suit. When she adjusted the cams on his hood cap she bent closer to his right ear. "Recorders are off, Paul," she whispered. "Your vascular is too thin. I don’t know if you’ll survive another crawl."

"We both know what can happen. What will eventually happen. Don’t pull the plug on this one, Kali. I still know people in there."

She nodded her chin, brushing something from the corner of one eye and mouthing a silent okay. Kali lifted one corner of his thin breather and kissed the fraction of skin not covered by the head wrap. Then she sealed the breather again.

"Bye Paul. If this is your last crawl, you’ll be missed." Her voice broke for a moment. The back of her hand swiped at both edges of her face and then her volume returned to normal, even if the tone was still shaky. "Recording functional again. All check points nominal. Ready for entry." She sat on the tripod while he turned to face the disaster that no man should’ve been able to enter.

The entry point was about the width of his size eleven slippers when held side by side. He knew that the ground radar showed bigger pockets farther in, but that wouldn’t compensate for the immediate pain. This might have been the main entrance. He wasn’t sure. Despite the tenting composition at the center of the A-frame, the metal support beams had twisted. Paul lowered to the irregular aperture, no higher than knee level. He leaned in, feeling the steel on the edges of his skullcap. Paul pushed inward with his legs. Every centimeter he felt the circumference of his skull indent and then mold to the rough contour. Brain fluid displaced, and he sensed the now familiar pressure at the back of his eyes. If he took too long the brain damage would begin. Finally, his head passed, and the skull reformed. His neck was no problem until the shoulders. Those he dislocated and bent downward. The series of movements were part wiggle, part ooze. The whole process went a little faster near the end when he reached a place with room for his arms to pull.

"Five meters to your left." Kali was in his ear. "You’re still in good shape except for the cam above your right ear. I’m reading some internal bleed, but it’s not bad."

As long as it wasn’t his aorta he didn’t care. As long as he completed his mission first he would be satisfied.

There was suddenly no room to crawl. He slithered over and under to reach the area Kali monitored by radar. The few crisscrossing sunbeams provided just enough ambient light. The momentary fragrance of leaking gas wafted by and then was gone. The building shifted slightly to a cacophony of structural groans, crackles and sputtering pops.

Jagged edges raked his contour from all sides. The bleeding would be secondary to the fraying if the suit failed. He decided that speed was more important than caution. And at last there was a hole. Not much bigger than the ingress point. He squeezed into a collapse of computers and shattered data cards. The victim lay between a roll away chair and an overturned desk. Paul was relieved to see that she was still breathing, though with a serious bleed.

"I’m a rescue medic and my name is Paul." He felt her jerk at his touch. "Stay calm. I’m sealing your injuries."

"I can’t see you." Her voice was small.

"It’s all right, because I can see you. I’ll activate a glow chip when I’m finished gluing. What’s your name?"

"Natalie. I don’t feel well."

"The worst is over, Natalie." He remembered seeing her smiling face every time he passed through reception.

Paul glued a ninth gash and stuck the glow chip to the front of her shirt. In the claustrophobic space it blazed like a halogen. He paused for a second to allow the thermal to resolve. "Natalie, you’re going to be fine. But you might have to wait a while. I have this office digitally mapped so they know just where to find you. They have to go slow so that nothing else falls on you. Here comes a slight sting on your right arm for the IV. I’m putting another flat pack near your head. Open your jaw a little so that I can insert the straw. It will only let you suck every three seconds. It’ll sting your throat a little, but that’s the warming nutrient you need. Now I’m covering you as best I can with a thermal sheet. There you go. Now tell me that you’re going to be all right, because I have to find more of your co-workers to care for."

"I’ll be all right." Natalie didn’t sound at all certain.

"Say it again."

"I’ll be all right." That was a little stronger. The repetition would count.

"Keep saying that to yourself."

"Okay. But I have to tell you about the grade school tour."

"We didn’t know about that. Where are they in the building?" He couldn’t make his stomach hold still.

"I don’t know, but you have to find them."

"I will." God help me, I will. "Keep repeating what I told you." She promised she would, and he slid away. "Did you get all of that, Kali?" he asked once he was in another pocket.

"We’re checking with the schools now, but I don’t know if that will help you find them. At least we’ll know how many. Two meters on your right diagonal. There you go. Shouldn’t be too tight."

That’s what she thought. One of the steel lattice rods layered in a chunk of concrete caught him along a rib slat. He checked his lower right ribs and sure enough they were wet. Paul hated to use the glue on himself. Several of the cams on that side were either dangling or popped free. "I’m okay, Kali," he said before she could ask about his delay.

"They’re from Whitworth Elementary, Paul. Third graders." Faith would’ve been a third grader. "Still no word of the planned tour route. Are you sure you’re okay?"

"Fine. Coming up on two more victims." The once hallway was crowded with light fixtures, drywall and support beams. One of those beams crossed a suited fellow near the face. The other victim, a female in a lab coat, sat impaled by the same beam. He checked the vitals on both. "They’re dead. Moving on."

At every office opening he checked for thermals. There weren’t many. Those he found, he worked quickly on, too quickly really. Each one deserved his undivided attention. But they were adults. And after each one he slithered away with a little less glue, less burn gel, fewer flat packs and morphine patches. There were two men in a conference room who he left alone. They’d seemed familiar--both over fifty, three piece suits. Board members? There were too many injuries with weak life signs. They became the first fatalities of his triage.

He almost slithered past another adult on his way to find the children.

"Is that you, Paul?"

"Who are you?"

"Its Doctor Raven. Don’t you remember me?"

How could he forget? Ten months of injections. The constant monitoring of the flexibility of bone and tissue. The endless questions.

"I’ve mapped your location, Dr. Raven. They’ll know where to find you. I’m searching for the school tour."

"I know. Don’t waste your time on me. I think they were due to pass through sub level three."

Paul paused for a thermal scan. He knew that he should be moving on, but he couldn’t just leave the man who had done so much for him. "Where are you hurt? I don’t see any bleeding."

"It’s my back. I think I’m going into shock."

"I’m going to cover you with an thermal sheet and give you an IV before I move on."

"Paul, I’ve been getting progress reports about you. You could be close to tearing inside. I’ve been working on something to help you."

"I know, but I have to keep going."

"Alright, Paul. I wouldn’t expect anything else from you. But I want you to know that you’ve always been in prayers. And not just about the physical transformation. I still pray that you don’t destroy yourself trying to make up for the loss of your family."

"I have to go."

Paul slithered away before he had time to dwell on Doctor Raven’s words. The images of his collapsed home returned anyway.

"What was that all about?" Kali’s voice barely penetrated. As he crawled lower too much mass interfered with her transmission. That’s when he realized that his tail was gone. A few centimeters of cable hung down to the slash point. Now there was only scratchy wireless to penetrate tons of debris.

"It was nothing. I need some navigation help." There was no answer. Not this time nor during his next several attempts. Paul felt another tingle spread inside him, and he feared that he didn’t have much time.

The next meters came recklessly. Cameras were shorn away, suit lining ruptured, skin stretched, and bled. The guts of the building stabbed at him like knives out of the deep. He slithered onward, over, under, around, and through every barrier until he found them.

They were so precious. Even in their whimpering brokenness Paul saw only Hope and Faith in each face. He knew it was a trick of his mind that each patient he treated was one of his own daughters. Only now did he remember that Whitworth was a girl’s school. He and Charity had even considered it once.

In their midst he planted the emergency beacon. He wanted the extractors to come there first. Paul used everything he had on his last thirty-one patients. He emptied each cargo pocket one by one, always whispering words of comfort; even singing the songs his own girls had loved to hear.

The glue ran dry. There weren’t enough IV’s for all of them. Two went into cardiac arrest, one of which he couldn’t revive. Paul felt stretched too thin both in and out.

When the pain came it stretched down and around so that he knew with a certainty that some major blood vessel had torn, perhaps even the aorta.

The rubber band had finally snapped.

Paul eventually woke, hoping to see Charity and the girls, but instead finding Kali beside him in an intensive care unit.

"They found a way to repair you. Doctor Raven developed a new treatment to restore some of your resiliency."

He had been so certain he would die and be reunited with his family. For the first time, in a long time, he considered the possibility that God wasn’t done using him yet.