Jessica Meigs - The Becoming (4 page)

“Me either,” Theo admitted. “He’s definitely AMS. Probably the most far-gone AMS I’ve ever seen.” They loaded the stretcher into the ambulance, and both of them climbed into the back. “Grab that pulse-ox; get a reading on his rate while I get the EKG going,” he instructed. He snagged the leads from the bag on the side of the monitor and began to stick them to the man’s chest. Jonathan obeyed, slipping the sensor connected to the reader on the man’s finger and turning it on.

“I don’t get how this man is still alive,” Jonathan said. The man on the stretcher wiggled and thrashed as best as his strapped-down position would allow. “I’ve never seen somebody survive with these kinds of injuries and be so…active.” He looked at the pulse-ox’s display and frowned, switching it off and on, and then checking the cable running from the sensor to the device. “I’m not getting a reading on O2 or heart rate,” he said, switching the sensor to a different finger.

“Basics have been having problems with theirs,” Theo said. He wrapped the blood-pressure cuff from the monitor around the patient’s forearm, avoiding the wounds on the man’s biceps. “Maybe they swapped their crappy one for ours when nobody was looking.”

“Maybe,” Jonathan said doubtfully. He tried the pulse-ox one more time as Theo leaned across the patient and flipped the EKG machine on. There was a pause as the machine powered on. Then the display lit up, and a straight line began to trail across the screen. He leaned closer to it, unsure if he was even seeing correctly, and then sat back, utterly confused.

“Huh,” Theo said out loud. He climbed over to the other side of the truck and checked the machine over, then double-checked his placement of the leads before he shook his head. “Nothing here either. This isn’t right.”

“You’re telling me.” Jonathan pulled a bright-orange bag out of one of the cabinets as Theo dug his stethoscope from his supply bag and plugged it into his ears. He leaned as close to the patient as he dared and pressed the cup to the man’s chest, listening intently as he watched for the patient’s breaths. He swallowed hard as he realized that he was, in fact, hearing what he thought he was hearing. Or
not
hearing, in this particular case.

Jonathan was across from him; he had pulled the monitor’s blood-pressure cuff from the man’s forearm and replaced it with the one from the orange bag, his own stethoscope in his ears as he inflated the cuff and then slowly let the air out. His face took on a startled expression, and he looked suddenly up at Theo, his eyes wide. Theo was sure his own face mirrored Jonathan’s.

“I know,” Theo said. His voice was hoarse and scratchy, and he cleared his throat, trying to dislodge whatever was wedged in there. A heavy sense of ominous doom settled over him as he uttered his next words. “He’s got the vitals of a dead man, but he’s kicking like he’s still alive.”

“What the hell do we do in a case like this?” Jonathan asked.

“Honestly? I’m not sure,” Theo admitted. He checked his watch and looked out the back doors to where several of the first responders were lurking and watching as if the two men in the ambulance were putting on a stage show. Then he sighed. “Go on and get in the front. I’m going to splint his legs and arm and see what else I can do for him. I predict it won’t be much.”

Jonathan nodded and stripped off his gloves, tossing them in the biohazard bin before jumping from the back of the truck. He stared at the patient in front of him as his driver shut the back doors, wondering what in the hell to do. He’d never seen anything like this. No breathing, no pulse, no blood pressure, nothing. By all logic, he should have been calling in for the coroner. But the patient still appeared to be alive. Theo blew out a breath and, as the ambulance started rolling, he stood, opened a cabinet, and pulled out trauma dressings, gauze, tape, and splints to at least cover the wounds and shore up the damage that he could do something about. It wasn’t far to the hospital, and after that, this strange man and his lack of vitals would be someone else’s problem.

“Hey, Jon, do me a favor and call ahead to the ER. Let ‘em know what we’ve got,” he called as he moved up to the patient’s head again, intending to work his way down from his head to his toes to catalogue every injury the man had. The man glared at him, snapping his teeth in much the same manner as he had at Jonathan. Theo tried to shrug off the creepy feeling it gave him and took out his penlight to check the man’s pupils. Fixed and dilated, just like he’d figured they would be. The man’s corneas were even starting to cloud over a little. Theo shuddered and reached for his stethoscope again.

Before he got his hands on it, Jonathan yelled from the cab, “Theo, hold on!” Theo reflexively grabbed the bar on the ceiling, gripping it tightly with one hand as the ambulance swerved, seemingly dodging around something before weaving back the other way. The top-heavy vehicle skidded and tilted. The last thing Theo heard before he fell across the patient’s legs and crashed into the IV cabinet was Jonathan crying out, “Oh my God!”

Theo’s head struck the metal bar next to the IV cabinet, and his world tumbled into blackness.

Chapter 5

The temperature outside was already cool and quickly dropping, but Gray paid it no mind as he led April out into the parking lot, her hand in his, their fingers laced together. “Did you have any particular places in mind you wanted to go?” he asked, hoping fervently that the several beers in his system wouldn’t interfere with his driving if she decided she wanted to go back to his place.
Theo would
kill
me if he knew I was thinking about driving after drinking,
Gray thought, but he didn’t care. April was there, and he was drunk enough to do whatever she asked him to at that point.

“Just the car is fine,” April said. Her heels clicked and ground on the parking lot’s gravel-strewn pavement. Gray glanced down at them. They were tall red heels, strappy things like the ones he vaguely remembered her once referring to as her “fuck-me pumps.” They made her bare legs look incredibly long and slender. “I just wanted a little privacy so we could talk without me having to yell over that damned music.”

Gray grinned and tightened his grip on her hand. “What were you doing in a country bar, anyway? You hate country.”

“If I recall your obsession with Nine Inch Nails correctly, so do you,” April said pointedly. That elicited a laugh from Gray.

“Hey, Jack likes it, and it’s the best place to go to play pool and drink,” he said. “I can deal with crappy music for a while if I get all the benefits of hanging out with a good friend.” He stopped beside his car—a beat-up old Chevy Cavalier that had been the only thing he could afford at the time—and fumbled his keys out of his pocket. “So where did you want to go again?” he asked. There was no way she wanted to actually hang out in his dirty car, of all places. He slid the key into the door, nearly dropping the keys on the pavement in his drunken clumsiness.

“Right here is fine,” April assured him. Her hand grasped his jacket, and then she pulled him around and stretched up, pressing her mouth to his. He grunted faintly at her sudden attack, but once his brain caught up with April’s actions, he returned the kiss enthusiastically, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her tightly against him. Her lips were soft and tasted like watermelon lip gloss, and her waist felt small, almost fragile, in his hands. As he smoothed his hands up her back to brush them over her thick hair, she smiled against his lips.

“Could have warned me that that was what you had in mind,” Gray mumbled.

“Why would I want to do that?” April replied. Then she kissed him again, sliding her leg up Gray’s to rest her knee against the car behind him. He let go of her waist long enough to fumble behind him for the car’s door handle, and once he’d managed to turn the key, he eased April to the back door and tugged it open.

“Get in,” Gray said. He was surprised at how his voice sounded: low and husky, hoarse with tension and suspense. He resisted the urge to clear his throat. April looked up at him, winked, and then wasted no time obeying his order. Once she was inside, he climbed in behind her and pulled the door shut. Then he tugged her back into his arms and grinned. “So, where were we?”

April giggled and climbed into his lap, resting her knees on either side of his legs. The position made her dark skirt ride up her thighs and show several inches of her gorgeous legs. He grinned and leaned in to kiss her again, even as he smoothed his palms up those legs. Her hands wiggled into his jacket, pushing it back off his shoulders and helping him shrug it off. “Seems like you’ve got some
really
interesting things in mind,” he half-joked as he tossed the jacket into the front seat. Then he started in on the tiny buttons lining the front of April’s blouse.

“Only if you’ve got a—”

A loud thud against the outside of the car made Gray jump. He felt April startle against him. She looked at him with wide eyes. “What was that?”

Gray shook his head and sighed. “Nothing. Probably some drunk guy falling against the car. Don’t worry about it.” He lightly nipped at the side of her neck as he managed to unfasten another one of her blouse’s buttons.

Another thud against the car. This time, it sounded like a fist slapping the fogging glass near Gray’s head. “Fuck,” Gray breathed. The word came out in a soft gasp. He looked to the window as someone outside began hammering against it, beating on the window over and over.

“Maybe it’s your friend,” April suggested. Gray could hear a twinge of annoyance in her voice—a sentiment with which he could definitely agree. “Maybe he thinks he’s being funny or something.”

Gray grimaced and reached for the door. “I swear to God, if it’s Jack trying to pull some stupid bullshit, I’m going to tear him a new one,” he said. He slid over the seat and unlocked the door, pushing it open and already speaking as he climbed out. “Jack, you are seriously the most immature—”

Gray realized it wasn’t Jack outside the car only when the man who was there—a tall, dark-haired man who was much larger than he—grabbed him by the front of his shirt and slammed him against the car with enough force to knock most of the air from his lungs. Gray yelped and twisted as he tried to break free, even as he swung a fist out and struck the side of the man’s face. The blow didn’t seem to faze his attacker in the slightest.

The sound of a car door opening drew Gray’s attention for only the barest of seconds. Rather than turn to look, though, he swung another punch at the man still gripping his shirt.

“What the hell is going on?” April’s voice rang out behind him.

“April, no! Get back in the car!” Gray yelled. He hammered his fist right into his attacker’s throat. It was a move Theo had taught him in middle school to use against the bullies who’d bothered him, and it
should
have put the man down. But the man didn’t seem affected by anything Gray threw at him. If anything, the look in his eyes grew angrier, more hateful. That, more than the lack of effect Gray’s blows were having, told him there was something horribly wrong.

Before he could break free from the man, before his brain could even finish processing the thought, April let out an ungodly shriek, a sound of fear and pain personified. Gray’s stomach tightened, and a surge of adrenaline rushed into him. He slammed his fists down as hard as he could on the man’s wrists. The move dislodged the grasping hands, and, finally free, Gray ran around the car to help April, heedless of his own safety, of what he could be walking into. He circled the front of the car, his heart racing, and stopped short as he beheld the scene before him.

For the rest of his life, Gray would remember the events that unfolded beside his beat-up Cavalier that night as a series of snapshots, snippets of memory that flashed into his brain when he least expected it, taking his breath away and leaving him shaking. The sound of April’s screams as she tried to fight off her own attacker. The man hanging onto April’s upper arms with a bruising grip so tight his knuckles had blanched. The way the man’s face was buried against April’s neck, and the way he shook his head back and forth, like a dog worrying at a piece of meat on a bone. And the sickening splatter of blood across the hood of the car as the man jerked his head back from April’s neck.

Gray froze for only the barest of seconds as the horror rushed over him, long enough for the sight to truly register. Then he leaped forward with a yell, colliding with April’s attacker, even as April slid to the ground in a heap, motionless. He tackled the man to the pavement and slammed his fist into the man’s face. Just as quickly, he jerked back as the man took a swipe at him, his fingers hooked like claws, as if he were trying to gouge them into Gray’s face. Before he could retaliate with another strike, someone grabbed Gray from behind, and he nearly fell forward onto the man underneath him as fingers dug into his shoulders. In a panic, Gray threw his arm out, trying to hit whoever was behind him, even as he fell to the side against the car.

Shouts rang out behind him. Then Jack was beside him, swinging a pool cue like a baseball bat against the head of the man underneath him. Gray collapsed fully against the car, panting, as the bar’s bouncer pulled the first man who’d attacked Gray to the ground. In the frantic scramble to help April, Gray hadn’t realized how open he’d left himself for attack from behind. An odd shudder of fear ran through him as he wondered what would have happened if the first man had gotten his hands on Gray like the second one had April.

The thought of April slammed hard against Gray’s brain, spinning him back around, and he scrambled forward on his hands and knees to her side. Blood flowed freely from the wound in the side of her neck, spilling onto the pavement in a rapidly growing puddle and soaking into her red blouse. Gray pressed his hands to the wound and looked up at his friend. “Jack, help me,” he begged.

Jack slammed the pool cue into the second man’s head again before he turned to Gray. “Jesus, what happened?” he asked. He knelt to scoop April into his arms as Gray kept both hands against the wound. Despite his efforts to stanch the bleeding, Gray could feel her blood pulsing out between his fingers with every heartbeat.