The Worlds We Make by Megan Crewe

unusual sound or scent—maybe I should have realized the risk was too high. If that woman had aimed differently, he could have been dead now. For a couple cans of gas.
    Justin gave a little sigh of relief when we reached the house. I helped him into the back of the SUV and jumped in beside him. Leo hopped in the front, jerking his door closed, and Anika jammed her foot on the gas. I glanced up and down the road as she roared toward it, but there was no sign of pursuit. Yet.
    “Backtrack,” I said quickly. “The people from the substation might come down to the road over there to ambush us. You have the atlas, Leo?”
    “Right here,” he said.
    As we veered onto the road, he started giving Anika directions. I leaned over the back of the seat to grab the first-aid kit from the trunk.
    “Let me see your leg,” I said to Justin.
    He leaned back against the door and lifted his injured leg onto the middle seat between us, inhaling sharply at a lurch of the tires. “I guess we have to get the bullet out?” he said, his voice strained.
    “No way,” Leo said before I could answer. “It’s better to leave it in. My dad went over what to do in an accident every time he dragged me out on a hunting trip. You start digging in there, you’ll just get bacteria inside. The most important thing is to stop the bleeding.”
    I pawed through the kit for the scissors, and then cut open the fabric of Justin’s pants so it sagged away from the wound. Blood seeped down Justin’s pale, hair-speckled skin. But the wound was a gash, not a hole—a thick ragged line slicing along his calf. And while it looked painful, it didn’t appear to be very deep.
    “I don’t think the bullet’s in there,” I said, my voice shaky. “It looks like it just caught the side of your leg.”
    “Well, I guess that’s good news,” Justin said, and sucked air through his teeth as I dabbed at the wound with an antiseptic wipe. Our last one, since I’d used the others when Meredith had cut her hand.
    “Sorry,” I said. He grimaced in answer, his lips pressed tight. Holding the wipe against the gash, I fumbled with the roll of gauze, almost losing it as the car swayed around a turn. There was only enough left to wrap it around his leg four times.
    “Pass the scissors,” Justin said. When I handed them over, he cut a swath of fabric from the other leg of his jeans and tied that around his calf over the bandage. “You figure that’ll do it?”
    “It’ll have to,” I said. Sifting through the contents of the kit, I found another roll of gauze, but I thought we’d better save that so we could clean the wound and rebandage it later on. If we could clean it properly, without an antiseptic. I didn’t think the bullet had done any permanent damage to his leg, but even a shallow cut could get infected. We had a couple bars of soap. That was better than nothing.
    And we only had to look after it until we got to the CDC. The doctors there would know what to do for a bullet wound. They’d have antibiotics.
    If we could actually make it there.
    A sudden longing swelled inside me, so intense my eyes went watery. I didn’t know what Gav would have thought of my plan, or its outcome, but I didn’t care. I just knew that if he’d been here right now, he would have pulled me close and told me I was amazing to have gotten us even this far, and maybe I’d have believed him.
    Then my mind flickered back to those last few days, to his complaints about how far I’d dragged him and the way he’d begged to go home. My throat closed up. Some part of him hadn’t believed this journey was worth it.
    But I had to anyway, if I was going to get through this.
    “Have you seen anyone else on the road?” I asked as Anika took another turn.
    “So far, all clear!” she replied.
    Justin shifted back in his seat. “Take it easy, okay?” I told him.
    He rolled his eyes. “I should have been faster.”
    “I shouldn’t have let you take the chance with the dogs