QUIET LIKE FIRE By Cameron Cooper
A Standalone SF Novella
Alternative history.
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In a fractured near-future, the United States has crossed the northern border—and nothing will ever be the same.
Evan Cano is a medic in occupied Alberta, treating wounds on both sides of a war she never chose: Homies, Maplebacks, and everyone caught in between.
When her wife disappears and the Dominion Defense Network offers protection at a cost, Evan is forced to flee. Across mountains. Across borders. Across the line between survival and resistance.
Science Fiction Novella
Other standalone fiction by Cameron Cooper
And We Danced All Night
A Place for Everyone
A Room of Her Own
Resilience
Space Opera Firsts
Galactic Reflections
He Really Meant It
Quiet Like Fire
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The standalone fiction Special Bundle
Cameron Cooper’s Super-Bundle
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Excerpt
EXCERPT FROM QUIET LIKE FIRE
COPYRIGHT © CAMERON COOPER 2025
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I knew the homie was dying. Only saying so would earn me a bullet in the right temporal lobe from the Glock—or maybe it was a Smith & Wesson—the DC dog waved around every time I looked up. The officer’s grubby name tape told me he was BRAND.
I didn’t know the name. He was a newcomer to Crowsnest Pass. Probably because the DDN had taken out the 91st’s C.O. last week.
I didn’t need signage to tell me Brand was upset, even though he was the quietest one in the room.
There were five others in full combat gear, standing around with their camouflage-painted M18+ assault rifles in both hands. They were shouting at each other, while their comrade on the table in front of me groaned and writhed. I wasn’t paying much attention to the shouting. The bits I picked up were about who was going to take it in the face for the fuck-up that had led directly to their mate taking a bullet in the thigh.
They should rightfully be out in the waiting room, not dirtying up my treatment room, but I wasn’t going to tell them that. I valued a pain-free existence.
I focused on securing the tourniquet around my patient’s leg. I reefed on the strap and locked it down.
“Bleeding’s slowing,” Brand observed.
I held my teeth together. The bleeding was slowing because the homie was running out of blood. He’d lost liters of it before they’d plunked him on the table. The bleeding they couldn’t stop was the reason they’d diverted to the clinic here in Blairmore, instead of heading back to their base lower down the valley.
“Now, the bullet, woman,” Brand added.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
I moved over to the cabinets and pulled out one of the last sterile kits in the cupboard, pulled over a rolling table, opened the packet and spread the equipment. I hesitated to use the sterile gloves. The patient wasn’t going to live long enough to incubate an infection, and the clinic was short on gloves…
Brand watched me with narrowed eyes, the Glock—yeah, pretty sure it was a Glock—nestled in the crook of his arm, which coincidentally meant it was still pointing at me.
I put the gloves on. “Turn him over so I can get at the back of his leg,” I told the homies. I spoke loudly enough to be heard, which meant I was yelling.
They gaped at me.
“Do it,” Brand said softly.
They let their rifles hang while they carefully turned their comrade over. He stopped groaning and screamed, instead.
I moved the trolley around the table and positioned myself over the wounded leg. I leaned in, visualizing where I thought the bullet was. The x-ray machine wasn’t working, but since the war broke out twenty months ago, I’d got very good at figuring out the path of a bullet through the human body.
“Wait,” Brand said in the same soft voice.
I looked up.
Brand had pale blue eyes, narrowed suspiciously. I put him at early forties, not much younger than me, but with silver grey hair that had probably been black, not so long ago. “You haven’t applied a local,” Brand pointed out.
I lowered the scalpel. “I don’t have any.” We were expecting a care package from the Middle Kingdom any day now that might have local anesthetic in it, but delivery was always uncertain, given the obstacle course the packages went through. That Canadians got regular care packages smuggled in from our unofficial Chinese allies wasn’t something I was going to tell a captain of the Homeland Force—North Command of the United States. So I just looked at him, waiting for permission to continue. I was in no hurry.
The corners of his jaw flexed hard. “Pain killers, then.”
I opened my mouth to protest. Shut it again. Then I found a different argument. “It’ll take forty minutes for the pain killers to kick in. You want me to wait that long?”
“Fentanyl is instant.” Brand’s tone was confident.
The fentanyl the homies’ medics used did kick in instantly, for it had been souped up and tweaked. The dogs did not hand them out to anyone else. “All I have is Dilaudid.” I raised my brow at Brand.
His jaw flexed overtime for a moment. “Fine. Use that.”
I worked hard to not swear, not even in my head, because Jenny has told me more than once that I have an expressive face. I didn’t want Brand to know how much I resented giving the very last of my Dilaudid to a man who would be dead in a few hours.
I stripped off the sterile gloves, headed out into the corridor and the drug cabinet, and shook the last two hydromorphone tablets into my palm. We’d run out of paper drug cups months ago and care packages ran to essentials only.
I had to hold the homie’s jaw to help him drink a mouthful of water to wash them down. Then I stripped off my sodden coat and stuffed it in the over-full laundry bag. I’d have to get someone to run the washing machine today or tomorrow. “I’ll be back in forty minutes.”
“Where are you going?” Brand demanded.
“I have other patients,” I pointed out. The waiting room was full of them, but Sarah, who was on triage, had assured me that they were all level 5s. Not even a single level 4 among them.
“Gomez, go with her,” Brand said.
“No.” The flat tone came out of my mouth without thought.
Brand looked at me steadily. His jaw was flexing again.
“You’re all filthy and none of you are wearing a mask.” I pointed through the glass door. “You’ve got two men guarding the front doors. I’m not going anywhere except the next treatment room. And I will be back in forty minutes.” To emphasize that, I looked at the wall clock, taking in the time, even though I had automatically checked my watch when I’d given the homie the Dilaudid.
Finally, Brand nodded.
I didn’t thank him.
