Bloodlands Read Online Free

wasn’t possible. I’d trashed anything—the computer, the phone, the personal devices—that could possibly allow criminals access to my life. There wouldn’t have been good reception out here in the nowheres, anyway.
    When I came back and sat down next to the stranger, I realized that Chaplin had licked off the blood, giving the man’s features clean definition. Unhindered by crimson, there was something stoic and haunted, his nose slightly crooked, his barely opened eyes gray, his skin pale, just like everyone else’s since day-walking without a heat suit was dumb business.
    Looking at him did something, curling me from the inside out until I felt twisted up. Heat surged through me, but I couldn’t stop, even though I knew I should.
    It was just that . . . Well, in what looked to be all the clothing he owned—a long, battered coat that matched the misery of his trousers, a frayed bag slung over his chest, plus three shirts layered and weather-beaten—he seemed like one of those storied cowboys who used to wander the landscape of mid-twentieth-century cinema. I’d seen a few of those old movies Before, previous to the world’s degradation. Hell, most all New Badlanders dressed in this kind of gear, but . . . it wasn’t the same. Maybe it was the silver-star color of the man’s eyes or his civil way of asking for help that’d done it. Maybe I was a right fool, too. But there was something about him that brought back a link to the comfortable, the soothing fiction of myth.
    The stranger watched me just as well. Something seemed to tweak the front of my mind again, calming me down, making me think it was okay for him to be here.
    When Chaplin tilted his head at me, I blinked, pushing the stranger’s influence out of me. I was real good at pushing.
    Feeling oddly unburdened now, I straightened up, then busied myself by pressing the antiseptic-dipped linen to the stranger’s head wounds.
    Weird, though. He didn’t seem to be breathing. But he was alive all the same.
    I glanced at Chaplin. “Does he ring familiar to you? I’ve never seen him wandering round on any of the visz screens before.”
    Chaplin shook his head, and I continued to apply pressure. The quicker I nursed him, the quicker he’d be out of my hair.
    “Just because he doesn’t register,” I added, “it doesn’t mean he isn’t a part of Stamp’s crew.”
    Now, it seemed as if the stranger had fallen into a light stupor after expending enough energy to get himself past the trapdoor. He closed his eyes, his muscles relaxing. His lips opened slightly, and I found my gaze on the cuts and bruises that were making his mouth swell.
    That weird heat started making me uncomfortable again, so I pushed it back. “How do you think he got himself hurt, boy?” I asked Chaplin.
    My dog growled out an answer. Beat up by one of Stamp’s guys.
    “Makes sense, I suppose.” I grabbed another cloth, dipped it in the gel, then kept right on nursing. “One of them could’ve gotten blazed on turtlegrape and found a distraction in this unfortunate.”
    Although Stamp and his men had been more aggressively exploring the area very recently, none of my neighbors were willing to fully reveal themselves so Stamp could be shooed off. They were still hoping to stay unidentified.
    But it looked like we’d been discovered anyhow.
    I used a corner of linen to wipe down the stranger’s face, then paused. Hadn’t there been a scratch round his cheekbone?
    Chaplin wagged his tail faster, enthused about my willingness to nurse. Darn the dog.
    “Bag,” the stranger whispered, his voice raw. “In my bag . . .”
    I touched the leathered carryall strapped over his chest, and he grunted in the positive.
    “Unguent,” he added before going silent again.
    I searched the contents of his bag, taking care not to discomfort him. A comb, a scrap of fragrant pink cotton, a flask that seemed cool to the touch, a jar . . .
    I grabbed it, screwed off the porcelain lid to find a