Chapter
4
I reached for the radio microphone. “Shots fired, repeat shots fired. The suspect is down and medical personnel are on scene.” I was feeling the effects of the stress. I could feel my heart beating away inside my chest, like a little man with a big sledge hammer was trying to bash his way out through my ribs. My hands were shaking and I could feel them beginning to moisten. My peripheral vision was gone. At least I hadn’t wet myself. A lot of people do. In the fight or flight response, the body dumps adrenaline into the system.
The immediate result is pinpoint tunnel vision. The heart begins beating like drums at a rock concert in an effort to get lots of blood where it is needed. Fine motor skills vanish as blood is shunted from the small muscles to the core muscles. The brain shuts down except for the portions controlling instinctual responses. The body perceives that death is imminent and in a matter of seconds, it moves all available resources to where they can most effectively be used in the fight to stay alive. Anything not vital to that fight is turned off.
The sphincter muscles on the urethra fall into the category of wasted energy and the brain tells them to relax and the urine begins to flow. There is nothing you can do about it.
My training took over. I looked over my left shoulder and then my right, visually clearing the room. There were no other threats. My brain was definitely not working at its full potential. It was time to be methodical. My magazine was now short three rounds. I needed to replace it with a fresh one. My left hand reached for the bottom pouch on my magazine carrier. I unsnapped it with the blade of my hand and drew the fresh magazine out of the pouch. I instinctively moved my index finger in search of the nose of the bullet protruding from the top of the magazine to assure the magazine was oriented properly. It wouldn’t do to place it in the gun backwards.
Once I felt the bullet, I pressed the magazine release button and the magazine in the gun dropped out. Rather than let it drop on the ground, I caught it in the palm of my waiting hand. I now had two magazines in my hand. I pushed the full magazine into the magazine well and slapped it to make sure it was locked into place. The partial magazine was slipped into the empty pouch in the carrier and I refastened the snap. In the unlikely event I shot the two full magazines, I still had one more minus three bullets. With a full load of bullets in the gun, I was ready to get back into the fight.
I began to advance toward the insane woman who was now full of bullet holes. I took small steps with my knees bent. The small steps kept me from tripping since the tunnel vision prevented me from seeing what was at my feet. Bent knees acted like shock absorbers and helped keep my gun from bouncing. I wanted my gun steady on target in case she got back up. At this point, nothing would surprise me.
She was still flat on her back where she should be. I walked to her right side and rolled her onto her stomach with the toe of my boot. I repositioned so that I was standing just above her collarbone. Her head was next to my right foot. I knelt down, placing my right knee in her spine to make sure she couldn’t move and holstered my gun. With both hands free, I grabbed both of her hands simultaneously and pulled them into the small of her back with the backs of her palms touching. My left hand held them in that position while my right hand reached for my handcuffs. Once her hands were secured with the cuffs, I rolled her over onto her back to provide medical care.
I was pretty sure the medical care was a waste of time, but it is what I was trained to do. I felt for a pulse. There was nothing. I placed my hand in front of her nose and mouth and couldn’t feel any air coming from either. Her eyes were unblinking and her pupils were dilated. She was dead for the second time this afternoon.
Suddenly, I heard screaming behind me. I looked back and saw Mary with her hands over her mouth. Her hands didn’t seem to be dampening the sound coming out of her in the slightest. I don’t know if she had just started screaming or if my brain had decided that hearing was suddenly important again and had turned my ears back on. Whatever the case, the screaming wasn’t going to help my ears stop ringing.
Bertha was next to her at the edge of the counter. She was squatted down with her butt nearly touching the floor. She was crying hysterically.
Steve was the only one at the counter who appeared to be in control of himself. “I thought you were a goner.” He walked away from me toward the corner of the diner as he spoke. “I wanted to help you,” he said, looking over his shoulder, “but I couldn’t move. I was standing there totally paralyzed, watching everything happen.” He interlaced his fingers behind his head and bowed it toward the floor, then pulled his elbows together until they touched in front of his face. Shame for not having tried to help was plastered all over his countenance as he raised his head up and looked back at me from across the room.
In the face of adversity, some men rise to the top like cream in milk. These are the men who are born for action. They are the ones who win medals in war for acts of valor. When the action gets hot, their own well being is thrust to the side. Their only real concern is for the buddy next to them and the success of the mission.
Steve wanted to be one of these rugged men and probably thought he was; however, when danger presented itself, he had frozen. It didn’t mean he was a bad person. He had probably envisioned himself as the one percent of the population who were the shepherds, the ones who kept the wolves at bay. In those short few moments, he realized he wasn’t a shepherd. He realized he was one of the sheep. Seeing himself in a true light had crushed him. It was not how he had pictured himself.
“Steve, don’t worry about it. It happened too fast for you to respond,” I replied, trying to assuage his guilt.
“Connor, are you okay?” Lawrence said as he hurried to my side.
“I’m fine. Half a second slower and I wouldn’t have been, but I’m okay.”
“What was that?” he yelled. “She was dead! I examined her myself. How did she get up? Then you beat the snot out of her and it didn’t even slow her down!” he exclaimed.
“I don’t know, Lawrence. She looked dead to me, too. I’ve never heard of anything like it, either. There is no way a woman her size should have the strength she had.”
“Oh, thank goodness. Doc Baker’s here,” Mary blubbered as she stopped screaming and started for the door.
“Mary, stop,” I said. She continued to the door. “STOP!” I yelled sternly. “We can’t go out there. We have all been exposed to whatever they have.” I rushed to the door and blocked her way because I didn’t trust her to heed my command. She tried to push through me, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“He’s right.” Bertha said in a broken voice. “If you run home to Tim, you’ll expose him to whatever they have. His immune system won’t be able to handle it.”
Tim was Mary’s husband. Fifteen years ago he had worked for the highway department. He was on a crew that was doing shoulder work when he was hit by an intoxicated driver. The car propelled him forward into an excavator that was parked thirty or forty feet down the road. His back hit the excavator and his spine was shattered, leaving him a paraplegic.
Tim took the whole thing pretty well, all things considered. He was the sort of guy who never sat still. He was always doing something. Losing the use of his legs was a hard knock, but he didn’t complain. He took up wood working as a form of therapy, but ended up being really good at it and was able to bring in a pretty good income selling the stuff he made on the internet.
The problem was, he had been left with a weak immune system after the accident. The doctors couldn’t explain it. Before the accident he never got sick. Afterwards, he caught everything he was exposed to.
Mary sighed in resignation, realizing that Bertha and I were right. It wasn’t worth exposing Tim to whatever was causing the sickness. If she couldn’t run into Tim’s arms, she might as well stay here with us.
Mary kept the key to the front door on a purple slinky bracelet around her left wrist. I took the bracelet off her wrist and used the key to lock the deadbolt, disregarding the order on the door that stated, “This door to remain unlocked during business hours.”
The bolt snapped into place. I pulled the key from the lock and placed the purple slinky around my wrist as Doc Baker was reaching for the handle. “What do you think you’re doing? I need to get in there and help these people!” Doc shouted to be heard through the closed door.
“Doc, look through the window. There is nothing you can do. There are only four who are still conscious. Twelve of the others are already dead,” I yelled back.
“Make it sixteen dead now,” Lawrence interrupted from across the room, where he was checking on the bodies strewn across the floor.
“There’s no point in you coming in here. There’s nothing you can do and it’s foolish for you to expose yourself right now.” I briefed him on what had happened, including the woman we thought was dead coming back to life with unnatural strength in an unnatural rage.
Doc Baker shook his head and asserted, “I’ve never heard of any sickness like this. Go talk to the four who are still conscious and try to find out when the whole group was first assembled. Beginning from that point, find out where they went and what they did. Ask if they came in contact with any animals or insects. They must have all been exposed at the same time for them to all get sick at the same time.”
“That makes sense. I’ll talk with them and see what I can find out.”
“Good luck, keep me posted,” Doc shouted and turned back to his car.
The conscious tourists had all moved to the same table. Three of them looked really bad. The fourth appeared to be fine. Lawrence was halfway to them when he excitedly yelled, “We have another dead one moving!”
Chapter
5
I immediately turned my gaze to where Lawrence was standing. The second to die was trying to sit up twenty feet away from him. “Lawrence, get behind me,” I hissed excitedly. “We don’t know if this one is going to be like the last one.”
Within five seconds, the sixty year old man was sitting up. He had the same lost look in his eyes that the woman had. His gaze seemed to penetrate right through me. His head cocked to the right and then to the left in a jerky, bird-like motion. Then he turned back to me and our eyes locked. Apparently, he could see me after all.
He leaned forward and pushed himself upright. His feet were solid on the ground and he was sitting on his haunches with his arms hugging his knees like I imagined a Neanderthal would do while looking quizzically at something on the ground. The only difference was there was nothing quizzical in his face. His lips retracted as he barred his teeth at me. He tilted his head slightly to the left, still in jerky fashion, and snapped his teeth together twice.
Click click.
He looked past me to the left and focused his gaze briefly on the ladies and then jerked his attention back to me and snarled. Other than his appearance, there was nothing human about him. Everything I was seeing and hearing screamed, “Wild animal.”
The dining room was a disaster. Chairs were knocked over and tables had been flipped by people desperately grabbing them for support as they fell. Silverware and glasses were spread across the floor. Some had broken on the hard tile, others were still intact. All had spilled their contents, leaving puddles of water and soda littered with cubes of glittering ice. Table cloths had been pulled from upright tables, leaving crumbled piles of checkered linen amongst the rest of the disarray.
Lawrence clambered over a chair while navigating the obstacle course between himself and me. I could tell from his stiff movements he was trying not to make any noise. The beast’s eyes were still locked on me with laser beam intensity. Lawrence had crossed nearly half the distance between us when he kicked a glass. The glass rolled and bounced across the floor. Its octagonal sides made a racket as it thumped across ten feet, coming to rest against a corpse. The noise drew the beast’s attention. He instantly raised himself upright as he turned to face Lawrence and then sprinted toward him, bounding over the tables and chairs in his path.
I have always heard that a man with a knife could easily cross twenty feet and cut your throat before you could draw your gun and shoot him. I had even seen demonstrations. I had no doubt it was true. Yet, I was still awed by how fast he moved. When he came up on his haunches, I had drawn my gun. When I saw him start toward Lawrence, I realized Lawrence was in trouble. The creature had crossed half the distance before I could get a shot off. By the time he had nearly reached Lawrence, I got three shots off. The first shot tore through his side just below his arm pit. There was no way it could have missed his vitals. The second shot was a complete miss. The third shot hit him in the right arm. He didn’t seem to register either of them. After that, I couldn’t shoot anymore because he was too close to Lawrence. Lawrence was running as fast as his large frame would carry him. It wasn’t nearly fast enough. The beast was approaching from forty-five degrees behind Lawrence’s right side. Lawrence was ten feet from me. A couple steps more and I would have another clear shot. The beast tensed as it prepared to leap at Lawrence’s back.
Just before the beast unleashed its death launch, I caught Steve on an intercept course out of the corner of my eye. He lowered his shoulders and plowed into the raging animal, catching it in the left side. The impact resulted in both of them slamming into the floor. It was a perfect hit, one that Steve had never topped during the four years he started as a college linebacker forty years earlier. It was the kind of hit that left a scrambling quarterback in an unmoving heap on the field. It had the power behind it that could stall a blossoming career at its inception, leaving the quivering offensive player with permanent injuries. If it had happened on the grid iron, it would have been replayed endlessly on the highlights for years.
But this monstrous hit didn’t happen on the grid iron. It happened in the cramped confines of Mary’s Diner and it was against an unfeeling fiend rather than a vulnerable quarterback. Before they even hit the ground, the monster was already twisting for position. He was reaching for Steve’s head, seemingly oblivious to the pain of two bullets from me, and the broken ribs and whiplash he received at Steve’s hand. It was able to cavort its body out of Steve’s iron grip in mid-air. Steve landed on his stomach and the creature landed beside him with the fingers of its right hand tightly intertwined in Steve’s dark hair.
Before their bodies had come to rest, the beast was able to maneuver itself onto Steve’s back with its legs straddled on either side of him. Steve attempted to roll off his stomach as the creature used the handful of Steve’s hair to pull his head backwards. As Steve rolled onto his side, the creature’s head went down to his neck. Its head shook violently back and forth and then came back up. Its face was crimson as blood dripped from its mouth. It looked at me and snarled for the second time in five seconds.
My Glock barked back in response as I squeezed the trigger. The bullet ripped a hole through the forehead and tore an orange sized hole out the back. He crumpled in a heap, partially on Steve and partially on the floor. I reached for my magazine pouch and pulled the full magazine from the top pouch and swapped it with the one in the gun.
Back in the fight.
Two individual scarlet pools grew together to form a figure eight which then morphed into various nebulous shapes. The pool seemed almost alive as it moved in one direction and then the flow shifted to another direction. As the edge expanded away from the two bodies, the speed of its growth slowed as there was more area to fill with each outward inch.
I rolled the beast off Steve and gave it a cursory glance. I could see where the first bullet entered the side of its chest and exited the opposite side. The straight line would have obliterated the heart and both lungs. It was a lucky shot, but it wasn’t enough. In what I guessed was an adrenaline fueled rage, it had still been able to exact its fury on Steve, to whom I now turned my attention.
I rolled Steve onto his back and picked up one of the discarded dishtowels. I placed the towel firmly against his shredded neck, trying to staunch the flow of blood. It was a futile effort. We both knew it was too late.
In a gurgling, raspy voice, he wheezed, “I didn’t freeze up that time.” And then he was gone. Steve wasn’t a sheep after all. When it counted, he had pulled himself together and acted. His action had more than likely saved Lawrence. The cost of Lawrence’s life was high and Steve had not hesitated to pay the price.