“We’re gonna have to get back in there, aren’t we?” Paul asked after a minute.

Gina nodded and sniffed as she stepped back from him. “Brad’s been hurt and Greg’s keeping Ritza at bay. They could use our help.”

“What about Fen?” Paul asked as they leaned on each other for support and headed for the door.

“I dunno, she’s pretty shaken, but I don’t think she’s hurt too bad.”

Paul nodded and they entered the room. He froze as he took in the sights. Rona was slumped on the floor, Ritza looked more annoyed than anything as Greg was nonchalantly brandishing the gun in her direction, Fenny, face bleeding, was on the floor supporting a decidedly woozy-looking Brad as blood trickled down his chest.

“I told you we’d make it out of this unscathed,” Greg chimed triumphantly.

“Shut the fuck up,” Paul barked. “I’m calling the cops,” he added.

“Shit,” Ritza whined.

Paul took the phone out of his pocket. Before he could dial, Gina put her hand on his shoulder. “Still have that cording from the hotel?”

“Yeah…” He pulled it out and handed it to her.

“Thanks.” She took it over to Ritza. “Sit,” Gina demanded, and Greg waved the gun at her. Begrudgingly and with a stream of mumbled insults, Ritza sat in an old wooden chair and struggled against Gina as she worked to tie her hands to the rungs of the chair back. Ritza kicked Gina as she finished. “Fine,” Gina shrugged, “I can tie your feet too.”

“Yeah, look, I need to get some cops over here like now,” Paul was saying into the phone. “Where am I? God, I don’t know, some ramshackle old house just outside town. There’s a couple big gangster-looking cars full of bullet holes outside, you can’t miss the place. Look, you don’t seem to be listening to me here—we’ve got two women that killed a couple people near Melbourne and I thought that, you know, maybe the police would care before these lunatics decide that other people might need to die! Thank you,” he huffed, glancing over to see Greg and Gina finishing hogtying Rona, who was still unconscious on the floor.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Fenny said, clutching at Brad, cupping his cheek in her hand, trying to smile through the choked back tears. “We’re gonna get you fixed up.”

His eyes wouldn’t focus and his head was beginning to swim as he went weak with the blood loss and the pain.

“Brad?” Fenny gasped, worried that he kept blinking at her. She watched as his eyes rolled back in his head and he flumped backwards. “Guys!” she shrieked. “Brad, he’s passed out.”

“Shut up already, you whiny bitch,” Ritza grumbled. Paul hobbled over and Greg helped him right Brad, leaning him against the armchair. “I should’ve shot you when I had the chance,” Ritza spat at Fenny.

“Look,” Greg began, “we should probably get going. I mean, I don’t wanna have to explain myself to the cops. It’d look pretty bad for those of us who, y’know, have people who know who were are in this country.”

“Let’s go,” Gina said. “You guys’re gonna have to deal with Brad.”

“Great timing dude,” Greg whined, leaning down to grab one of Brad’s arms. “Couldn’t stay conscious for another three minutes till you got in the fucking car.”

“Couldn’t be a couple inches shorter either,” Paul huffed as they managed to get Brad upright. Gina held the door open as the three men struggled to get outside.

“You’re not gonna get away with this,” Ritza huffed. “You’re not gonna win this easy!”

Fenny glared at Ritza’s prone figure in the chair and marched over. She looked her in the eye, their faces inches apart. “You’re the one tied to the chair with the cops closing in. Face it you repulsive bitch. You lose. I hope you rot in hell.” Before she turned to leave the building, Fenny slapped Ritza across the face, the crack of skin against skin echoing through the house.

“Fuck you,” Ritza called after Fenny as she stormed out to the car where Brad was situated in the back seat leaning against the window.

“Finished?” Paul asked. Fenny nodded and shook her hand—she hadn’t realized you could hurt yourself slapping someone.

“Who’s driving?” Gina asked as Fenny crawled into the back seat to check on Brad.

“I’m the only one who seems to have managed to get out of this without getting the shit beat out of me,” Greg chirped.

“Shut up and drive,” Gina grimaced and climbed into the back seat next Fenny.

Paul opened his mouth to protest having to sit next to Greg, then realized the alternative was having Gina sit next to Greg, and slid into the seat and found the map. “I’ll find the nearest hospital.”

As they hit the main road two cop cars went whizzing past towards the house, and they could do nothing but watch them head for Ritza and Rona, each thinking that this was finally the end.

After a twenty minute drive in absolute silence where everyone took inventory of themselves to see what was working and what wasn’t, they stopped before a disappointingly small hospital. They all piled out of the car, and leapt into the air when they heard a shrill cry of “Dammit!” All eyes turned to Greg, who was suddenly sprawled across the ground.

“So much for getting out unscathed, huh?” Paul laughed.

“What did you do to yourself?” Gina demanded.

“Twisted my fucking ankle getting out of the fucking car Paul picked out.”

“Could we get Brad into the hospital yet?” Fenny asked.

“Yeah,” Paul sighed as Greg limped over, cursing under his breath.

Greg and Paul managed to get Brad out of the car with the help of Fenny and Gina, and as a group they made it into the lobby. The receptionist at the desk looked horrified at the battered and bloodied group. “Yes?” she peeped.

“Hunting accident,” Paul gasped. “Damn rabbits.”

“Hunting acc—”

“Look, he’s bleeding,” Fenny snapped. “We need a doctor.”

“Right,” she muttered, picking up a phone and muttering into it, something about “transport,” as Paul tried to adjust Brad’s weight so he wasn’t being crushed.

“Do you have any form of insurance, some ID…?” the receptionist asked.

“Look, this is hardly the time,” Greg barked. “They’re bleeding here, they need medical attention.”

“You’re a—” she began, squinting at him.

“Yes, I’m from the States, which means no, I don’t have my insurance card on me, and neither do these two,” he said, gesturing to Fenny and Brad.

A doctor and a nurse appeared from around the corner, spotted Brad amongst the crowd, and flinched. “Take him to the emergency room,” the doctor ordered as Paul and Greg lowered Brad into the wheelchair. “What happened?” he demanded, looking over the other three casualties as Fenny watched Brad go down the hall.

“Hunting accident,” Gina said, looking over at Paul to explain.

“Rabbit hunting,” Paul elaborated. “We were hunting, Brad, he’s not too bright when it comes to hunting, Yank, you know, and he was fiddling with the gun, it went off, hit him in the shoulder.”

“And the rest of you?”

“Damn kangaroos,” Paul said, shaking his head. “And Fenny here tripped,” he said, gesturing to her gashed cheek.

“And you?” the doctor asked Greg.

“He tripped getting out of the car and twisted his ankle,” Paul giggled.

“Well come on, let’s get you lot checked out,” the doctor said, wandering down the corridor Brad had disappeared down.

Each of the four were sent to a separate bed in the emergency room as they waited for someone to pay some attention to them, each secretly glad that the curtains had been closed so they wouldn’t have to converse with each other. There was just nothing to talk about anymore.

“So, what happened to you?” a short, plump, cheery doctor asked Fenny.

“Tripped,” she lied. “Got attacked by a man-eating rock.”

“Woman-eating you mean, of course,” he grinned.

She smiled politely before remembering that was not the best of ideas when your cheek was split open.

“Okay, just lie back, we’ll get that cleaned out and stitched up for you in no time,” he assured her. “Get you reunited with your accident-prone friends.”

“Yeah, that’s us,” Fenny said with a shaky laugh, “accident prone.”

“So, you tripped in the parking lot,” the tall, slender doctor asked as she pulled back the curtain, and Greg blushed at her. “Convenient place to twist your ankle.”

She put her chart down and grabbed his foot. “Yeah, well, I was driving my friends over…OW!” He jerked his foot away.

“Do you want me to fix you or not?” the doctor demanded.

“Not if you’re gonna rip off my fucking foot.”

“I have to find out if it’s sprained.”

“Yeah, if it wasn’t sprained already, it is now, thanks.”

“Did you hit your head when you tripped, or have you always been like this?” she asked with a smile.

“Come on, just give me an Ace bandage and send me out.”

“If you don’t start cooperating, I’ll get the janitor to give you a prostate exam, how’d you like that?” the doctor cooed.

Greg glared at her for a moment, decided she could be serious, and lifted his foot to the bed again.

“They tell me you got into a tangle with a kangaroo,” a young doctor asked Gina. “You’d be amazed how many of these cases we get out here. Either there’s a vicious family of kangaroos in this area, or a lot of drunks falling down stairs that want to sound adventurous.”

“Well, it was more like the running away from the kangaroo that was the problem. Paul, my, um, my husband, he got into the trouble with the kangaroo.”

“So then what happened to you to get this gash on your head?”

“Well, y’know, running away from a kangaroo, you forget to watch out for trees and stuff…ever run full force into a tree?”

“No, but I imagine this is what I’d come away looking like.”

“Something like that,” Gina sighed.

“Anything funny happen, blacking out, anything like that? Be honest with me…”

“Well, yeah, I was out for a while.”

“Okay.” He took out his pen light and checked her eyes. “I’m gonna have to give you a couple sutures after I clean you up a bit, and we’ll run some tests to make sure you don’t have a concussion. You might have to spend the night here.”

Gina sighed. That was really the last thing she wanted to do, but she was stuck at least until Brad was released, which she assumed would be a day or two. She nodded.

“So, what’s your story?” an aged, mustachioed doctor asked Paul. “Heard you came in with a whole slew of injured people.”

“Yeah, there’s some people who just shouldn’t be allowed in the wilderness,” Paul shrugged.

“Like you.”

“Right.”

“I understand you got in a fight with a kangaroo?”

“Yeah. I lost.”

“I can see that.” The doctor went through the typical doctor things, blood pressure, heart rate, pulse, pupil dilatation. “Anything I should know about other than the bruises and blood? Any blows to the abdomen, head injuries?”

“I dunno, at the time I thought I might’ve lost a rib or two, but I don’t know.”

“Okay, off with the shirt,” the doctor commanded. Paul stripped off his shirt and lay back on the bed as the doctor investigated the bruises on his torso, then prodded at his ribcage until he hit the broken rib when Paul hissed through his teeth.

“Looks like you’re gonna have to take a trip to get an x-ray,” the doctor announced.

“Shit.”

Fenny was leaning back in bed smoothing down the tape on the bandage on her cheek. She was patched up and deemed healthy enough to rejoin the real world, but she couldn’t get herself out of bed. She had been promised by a nurse that as soon as anything was known about Brad, she would be informed.

As she lay there, she worried about Brad. She knew he would be okay ­– what was a little bullet wound to the shoulder? So he’d lost a little blood, but there were no vital organs or anything that she could remember from anatomy class in the shoulder, and he was a real trooper, so he would almost certainly be fine. She couldn’t bare to think what would have happened if Gina hadn’t been so daring…

God, poor Gina. And poor Paul. Greg. She had gotten her friends dragged into this horrific situation, nearly gotten them killed.

Fenny could have been killed. She felt herself beginning to tremble, a weight pressing down on her chest. At any time she could have been shot. Ritza had held a gun to her face. If either of them had moved wrong, she could have been shot. Ritza had shot Brad, and had she been off by another few inches, she could have killed him, and that was the man she claimed to have loved…Fenny didn’t want to think what could have happened to her. It was a miracle, really, that she was still alive, after all those threats which maybe weren’t as empty as they had seemed at the time. Fenny had been kidnapped at gunpoint, dragged across the country, and she and all her friends had nearly been shot full of holes. Now that this was all over, Fenny was finally able to let go of everything. Her reserve dropped, her nerves turned back to jelly, and she dropped the “I am a strong woman capable of handling myself in the worst of circumstances” act and found herself in a fetal position bawling uncontrollably into the sterilized pillow.

Greg hobbled into Gina’s little cubicle on crutches and found Paul sitting on the doctor’s stool with his shirt undone. “…broken but there’s not much to do for it,” he was saying when he looked up at Greg. “So, what’s your prognosis, Proops?”

“Sprained my ankle. Gina?”

“Slight concussion. I’m stuck here overnight.”

“Heard anything about Brad yet?” Greg asked.

“No, not yet,” Gina sighed. “Haven’t seen Fenny either. I hope she’s doing okay.” She craned her neck towards the corner she’d seen Fenny guided to earlier, but couldn’t see anything.

“All I have to say is that I’m glad this is over,” Paul sighed, leaning back to button his shirt. “The sooner I get home the better.”

“Home has never sounded so good,” Greg breathed.

“So, what’re we gonna tell everybody?” Gina asked.

“Tell everybody?” Greg echoed.

“Yeah, y’know, I gotta feed my boss a line on why I’ve been gone since I did your sparkling interview. Paul, I’m sure you’ve got, I dunno, rehearsals or something you were supposed to be doing. Greg, you’ve got a wife at home. And Brad, well, he doesn’t have anyone to explain his whereabouts, I don’t think, but he’s gonna have to explain why his arm was nearly blown off. Didn’t you say tapings are gonna start in a few weeks?”

“I could tell my wife I met up with some friends and decided to stay a couple days,” Greg shrugged. “It’s the truth. Almost. Brad could claim that he was hurt filming an independent film for one of his artsy friends.”

“I don’t know what excuse I’m gonna come up with,” Paul sighed. “I got kidnapped by a tribe of horny Amazonian women and they kept me as their king…”

“Amazons don’t have kings,” Greg announced.

“Oh shut up.”

“Fen’s lucky, she doesn’t have anyone to answer to,” Gina said.

“Is that really lucky though?” Paul asked. “I mean, to not have anyone to answer to?”

“Well she does, just not here,” Gina explained. “All her friends and family back in California, they don’t know what’s going on down here. She came down here because she needed to get away from it all.”

“And now she’s gotta go back home to get away from it all here,” Greg mused.

There was a pained noise from across the room, a strangled sob.

“Was that Fen?” Paul whispered.

“Probably,” Gina sighed.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Shouldn’t we do something? She’s crying.”

“Do you blame her?” Gina asked. “She’s had a rough time.”

“What, you’re just gonna leave her like this?” Paul demanded.

“This is what Fen does,” Greg said. “She bottles everything up until she explodes. That’s when things are thrown and underwear is burned.”

“Excuse me?” Paul demanded.

“Don’t ask,” Gina sighed with a smile.