Like the star of Bethlehem, the emergency flare in the sky lit the way for a family on the move.

"Stick close to me," Matt had said as he called the kids in and started into the jungle. They had all obeyed without a word of protest, each of them following him with a white-knuckle grip on their loaded weapons. Dinah took up the rear, Bel was off to the side as a kind of outrider, and Olivia and Lucas were practically barnacles as they followed close behind him.

It had been the roaring sounds that had galvanized him into action. First the deep-basso roar that had sounded like the unholy marriage of a five-car pileup on I-5 and an industrial bandsaw. Then had come the other roar, the one that had sounded like a jet engine that had sucked in fifty pounds of gravel.

He recognized that sound from the YouTube clips he'd watched, after Allie had finished describing her first encounter with an M134 Minigun during her first tour. Except it was deeper in pitch and louder in decibels and it was here.

Where it shouldn't be. Because none of the guns Allie had brought with them on the Dilligaf had been that.

Although if Allie could have figured out a way to bring one, she probably would have. Woman liked her guns.

So when the familiar pop-hiss of the emergency flare reached Matt's ears, he and the kids were already geared up and ready to march towards where the sound of the fight had been coming from. Rationally, he knew that this could be a mistake. That he had no clue the type of danger he was bringing his untrained self and his even-less-trained family towards. But in this case, rationality had taken a back seat to the visceral knowledge that his wife was in trouble. And when the flare had popped… Well.

"Dad!" Bel said as the flare sound reached them. "Did you…?"

"Who's the best climber," he asked immediately, turning to the kids. The jungle canopy over their heads was blocking out most of the sky, but he saw branches that poked out above the treetops.

"I am," Dinah and Olivia said at the same time. The two friends shot each other a look, then squawked in mutual outrage as Lucas, without bothering to answer, sprinted for and began climbing the nearest tree trunk like he was part squirrel.

"Dinah, you too," he said, nodding. "You're a hunter, you probably have the best sense of direction out of all of us. Help Lucas figure out where it is and where it came from."

"Yes sir," Dinah threw a salute and slung her rifle over her shoulder as she ran. The two kids climbed the tree in what Matt had to believe was record time, and then just as quickly were back on the ground.

"That way," they both said, pointing what Matt assumed was a west-northwest direction.

"As fast as we can," he said, moving back into the jungle in the indicated direction. "But keep your eyes open."

They moved in silence, each one concentrating on moving as quickly as they could without tripping over themselves or losing their footing. Matt clenched the shotgun in his hands so hard his palms hurt, and he welcomed the pain as a focusing element in a world gone mad.

The flare had been a backup of backups, to be used only if things went really to hell in a handbasket. It meant 'come quick'. And if she was using it after a battle–and she was, because the gunfire had stopped now and that meant that the battle was over and she was safe to use the flare gun not that she had run out of ammunition and was trying to fight off enemies with her knife while desperately hoping her family made it to her before she was cut down by whatever she was fighting–

Stop it Matt! He raged at himself without making a sound. Thoughts like that would do no one any good. And besides, Allie would never summon the kids if she was still engaged in active combat.

Would she?

"Dad, wait up!" Lucas' breathless voice brought him back to reality, and he realized he was a good thirty feet ahead of the rest of them.

"Sorry," he said, dropping back until he was beside them again. "Sorry. I just–"

"We get it Dad," Olivia said, sounding only slightly less winded than her brother.

He glanced back at the others, and received grim nods in return.

They got it.

And so they ran.

* * *

Almost twenty minutes later they emerged from the treeline into a massive rubble-filled clearing, and the first thing Matt noticed was the smell. Then he saw the bodies.

Then he saw Allie.

His wife was still and silent, seeming crumpled in on herself. She lay with her back against her fallen backpack, her arms splayed out from her body as if they'd fallen there haphazardly.

He was by her side in seconds, his knees acquiring scrapes and bruises from how fast and how hard he landed on them in his haste to get to her. His eyes roved over her still–and thank God breathing–form. He was no medic, but he had trained in first aid after witnessing one too many construction accidents on the job, and what he saw made his heart sink in his chest.

Broken bones by the handful. Her left leg was cut and bleeding, and her other was bent at a wrong angle. Both her arms looked unnaturally elongated, and one of them was broken in at least two places. Dislocation of the shoulder for both of them. Blood pooled from under her as well, from a gash on her thigh. And from the soft wheezing in her breaths, he wouldn't be surprised if a lung had been punctured by what were very obviously some broken ribs.

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Matt felt his heart breaking and shoved it away, deep into some recess of his mind where it could wait for when he didn't need every scrap of his attention to deal with the crisis before him.

"Mom!" The cry came from three young and very scared voices as his children arrived behind him. Three pairs of knees hit the ground next to Allie's unconscious body, and the kids stared at their wounded mother with fear and confusion.

"Don't touch her," Matt's voice was gruff and angry in his own ears. Too much. He was going to scare them more. But hands that had been reaching for Allie flinched back, and he looked up to see fear bloom harder on his children's faces. "She's hurt bad, but she's alive."

He glanced down again and made a decision. Allie had taken one of their first aid kits in her backpack. It was the smaller one, but it had gauze and bandages and antiseptic and painkillers, and he could only hope that whatever magic had transformed the tylenol might have increased the effectiveness of the other medical supplies as well.

"Bel," he said, his voice still hard. "I'm going to raise her up. When I do, take the backpack out from under her and get the first aid kit out." He started stripping out of his shirt and handed it to Lucas. "Lucas, ball this up and get this under her head as I lower her back down. Okay?"

"Okay," came the responses. He took a deep breath, sent a quick prayer heaven-ward that he wasn't about to make things worse, and leaned over. He got his hands under his wife's head and back as gently as he could, tried to ignore the coppery scent of blood that hit his nose as he got close to her, and breathed deep.

"Now," he said, and gently as he could raised Allie's top half off the ground. Bel grabbed the backpack and Lucas was right behind her putting the balled up shirt down as Matt lowered his wife back to the ground. The whole process had taken a handful of seconds, and Allie hadn't stirred once. She still breathed though, and that's what was important.

Matt accepted the first aid kit from his daughter and started grabbing things out of it. Scissors, styptic, dressings, antiseptic spray… And as he grabbed, he started to realize just how small a kit it was. They had a bigger one back on the Dilligaf, but he hadn't thought to grab it before they'd started out. He'd just needed to get to her…

"Dad."

Matt looked up at Lucas. His son's face was stony and serious as he met his dad's eyes.

"Let me do it. You go get the big kit. Mom's gonna need it."

"I'm trained for first aid," Matt said, taking a deep breath. "I'll–"

"So am I Dad," Lucas said, and that made Matt blink.

"You are?"

"Three years in the Boyscouts," Lucas said with a bit of pride in his voice. "Remember?"

He did, vaguely. It was one of the things he'd paid for, and then left for Allie to deal with as he lost himself in his work. He glanced at the girls and saw them nodding in affirmation.

"I got a merit badge and everything," Lucas added. "I can do this. Go get the big kit. Mom's going to need it."

Matt sucked in a breath. "Are you sure?"

Lucas let out a laugh that was about fifty years too old to have come from the boy's throat. "No I'm not! But Mom needs the big kit and you need to go get it fast and that means one of us has to do what we can here and that means me because no one else knows what to do!"

The girls continued to nod, even Bel, who was looking at her younger brother with a considering light in her eyes.

The more I argue, the worse Allie gets.

"Okay," he said, coming to his decision and sticking it. He shoved the kit towards Lucas, who grabbed for it, fumbled, and flushed crimson as he gathered up the dropped items. "Don't try to remove her clothes to bandage her, cut them off with the scissors."

"I know Dad."

"And clean the wound thoroughly before you–"

"I know dad! Go!"

Matt hesitated a second longer, then was up and running.

* * *

The trip back and forth was a blur. Except for one chance run-in with some massive blob-creature with a scorpion tail, he encountered no wildlife and nothing impeded him. Two shotgun blasts at close range had severed the thing's tail from its body and blew a bloody gobbet out of its head-region, after which it had collapsed into a twitching mess.

Matt never broke stride.

He made it back to the clearing in what he was sure would have been a record time back on earth, and he fell to his knees beside Lucas and Allie and allowed himself to gasp great lungfulls of air to combat the darkness that was starting to edge in at the corners of his vision.

The big first aid kit was handed over to Lucas, who was still cleaning Allie's wounds with a trembling hand. The boy's face was white with concentration, and his eyes were bugged and teary, but he was still working.

Matt spared a glance around the clearing. Bel, Liv, and Dinah had taken up guard positions around Allie, guns out and tracking around, waiting for any kind of threat to show itself. The sight should have made him weep for what was surely going to be a childhood cut short, but instead it just made him proud. They'd done exactly what he should have told them to do if he'd been thinking straight.

He turned back to his wife, and with his son examined her injuries as best he could. Lucas had cut away Allie's shirt and her jeans, leaving her bare except for her underwear and bra. No jokes were made this time about Allie's lack of clothing.

She had a massive cut on her leg that was still bleeding. A gash on her thigh that Lucas had put a large adhesive bandage on. There were wounds on her back as well, but those were already wrapped with bandages that were quickly becoming stained pink.

Matt began pulling out the contents of the big kit. It wasn't one of those little zip-up red jobs so readily available on the internet and at drug stores. This one was practically hospital-grade, and had been purchased for the Dilligaf for emergencies at sea when a hospital might not be nearby. It had suture kits, medical staplers, prescription antibiotics, and a dozen other high-grade medications that he'd collected a piece at a time. He and Allie had both trained how to use everything in the kit, but this was the first time he'd ever had to put that training to use.

And he was going to need some help.

"You did good, Luc," he said to his son as the boy watched him ready the instruments. "You up for a little more?"

Lucas's face was already white as a sheet, but the fire in his eyes flared at Matt's question and he nodded once. "Yeah. I'm good. What do you need?"

Matt took a deep breath and let it out. This was going to suck.

The next twenty minutes passed in an ugly, bloody blur. Wounds were disinfected and cleaned with sterile water from the kit. The medical stapler was cracked open. Matt used his larger, stronger hands to force the edges of the wound closed while Lucas used the stapler to seal it shut. The boy's hands shook, but he managed it as Matt gently coached him.

Bandages were applied to the stapled wounds. Splints were made. Broken bones were set. Two IV bags were started to help replace the blood she had lost–and dear God in His heaven she had lost so much blood…

Matt hung the bags on the little frames Lucas made from branches and rocks tied together by long grass. They were surprisingly sturdy.

And through it all she didn't move, barely breathed. A storm of emotions raged at the back of Matt's mind as he treated his wife and prayed, prayed as hard as he had ever prayed in his life, that what he was doing was enough.

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