Walter knew he couldn't wait for an ambulance. The town's volunteer squad would take forty minutes to get out here in this weather. She didn't have forty minutes.
With a grunt of supreme effort, Walter slid his arms under hers. He was an old farmer; his muscles were withered, but they possessed a stubborn, deeply ingrained strength. He hauled her upward. She was dead weight, her boots dragging in the mud.
"Up we go," Walter gasped, his heart hammering erratically in his chest. "Come on, now. Help me out."
Step by agonizing step, they fought up the embankment. Twice, Walter slipped, his knees slamming into the rocks, but he refused to let her go. He hauled her to the passenger side of his truck, threw open the door, and pushed her inside. He scrambled around to the driver’s seat, cranked the engine, and blasted the heat.
He stripped off his own dry flannel coat and wrapped it around her shivering legs, leaving himself in nothing but a damp cotton shirt. Throwing the truck into gear, he sped toward the county hospital, driving faster than he had in twenty years, praying to a God he hadn't spoken to since Eleanor's funeral.
When they reached the emergency room doors, Walter laid on the horn. Nurses rushed out with a gurney. As they lifted the girl out of the truck, the heavy leather jacket she had been clinging to slipped from her grasp and fell into a puddle.
Walter picked it up. It was soaking wet and incredibly heavy. As he turned it over to fold it, the hospital lights illuminated the back of the vest. Stitched across the leather was a massive, intricate patch: A grinning skull wrapped in heavy iron chains. Above it, in a rocker, were the words IRON WRAITHS MC.
Walter recognized it instantly. It was the insignia of the most feared outlaw motorcycle club in the Midwest.