“Everyone was in a blind panic. I tried to hold onto Lucille’s hand, but a surge of people swept her out of my grip. I tried to get to her, Daddy tried to help me. We were both punching and shoving our way after her. If people retaliated, I didn’t notice.
“By the time we reached her, she had been trampled to death. I wanted to scream! But something crashed into me. Daddy was wrestling a runner. The dead were inside the stadium. I started to kick at it, but then I saw one chasing Mother.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what happened next. I just remember holding Mother, and we both were very bloody. I looked over and saw Daddy lying on the ground being devoured by three of those things.”
Mrs. Browning burst into tears.
“Then I saw my Lucille. I wish I hadn’t. Her body was broken, but her head was intact, and she was trying to rise.” A sob escaped him. “I wish I had taken the time help her rest in peace. But more of those damned things came. I learned later that somebody in a blind panic had opened the stadium gates and the dead swarmed in.”
He looked at Ramirez. “To this day, I don’t know how Mother and I escaped. I know in the days that followed, I did so many things I’m not proud of.”
Ramirez nodded. “I know you have. I know the pain of watching someone you love die before your eyes. It leaves its mark, one that you will never shake. Don’t do this.” He pointed at the gun. “Don’t let this be another regret.”
“I can appreciate your desire to not let her be one of those things. I think, however, that the shotgun is a bit premature. We can still help your mother if you let us do our jobs.”
“You can?”
Ramirez nodded, “Yes, now can I have the gun, please?”
For a tense, silent moment, Louis looked down at the gun in his hands. He then relaxed his grip and relinquished the shotgun to Ramirez.
Ramirez took the gun and passed it back to his partner. Drifts’s hand grabbed the weapon hungrily and pumped it furiously until all the shells clattered to the ground.
“It’s empty.” Drifts said with entirely too much control in his voice.
“Good,” said Ramirez. “Sam, Justin, why don’t the two of you load Mrs. Browning into the ambulance and finish getting her set up to transport.”
Obviously reluctant to leave his partner behind, the tattooed EMT asked, “Are you sure?”
“I believe that we’ll be okay.” Ramirez placed an amiable arm on Louis’s shoulder, “Mr. Browning, I am going to call in another ambulance for you. I believe we need to get you some help with your stress and coping trouble.”
Louis looked at him genuinely perplexed. “You really think I have trouble coping?”
Chapter Six
The Trouble with Transfers
Unfortunately for them, there wasn’t another unit available to pawn Louis Browning off on, so they agreed to transport him in the back of their rig where he sat in the captain’s chair. They did, however, get a police escort along the way in case their second patient decided to try to do anything en route. Louis remained calm, even nodding sheepishly as Mrs. Browning regaled them with childhood tales of his bedwetting and his aversion to beef.
At the hospital Louis watched, in handcuffs provided by the escorting cops, as the emergency room crew swarmed over his mother and prepared her for emergent cardiac catheterization. He started to get anxious again, but immediately calmed down when the cardiologist showed him the Cath lab’s emergency hot-drill. The doctor assured him that he was quite adept at using the device. He watched in silence as they rushed his mother down the hall, after which he went placidly with the crew as they checked him into the emergency room’s locked down psychiatric ward. The accompanying officer took off his handcuffs, and before anyone could respond, Louis hugged Drifts and broke down crying on the EMT’s shoulder. Once they finally pried him off of Drifts, he waved goodbye and thanked them for all their help.
In the hospital’s ambulance bay Drifts lit his fourth cigarette in a row. “I swear to God, Leo, if you had let that crazy momma’s boy shoot you over some gray head that’ll probably kick the bucket in the next day or two, I would have shot you again myself. Just to make myself feel better.”
Ramirez didn’t look up from the third supplemental sheet of his Patient-Care-Report. “Thank you for caring, Sam.”
“Caring nothing! If that crazy bastard had pulled the trigger, I would have gotten your blood all over my best boots!”
“That would have been a shame,” Ramirez agreed.
Drifts looked over at Justin, who was nursing his own cigarette. “How are you holding up, kid?”
The student shook his head. “That was crazy.”
Drifts took another drag off his cancer stick. “It caught my attention, too.”
“Is it always like this?” asked Justin.
Drifts shook his head. “Nah! Some nights are busy.” Justin snorted. “So, how are you holding up okay? We don’t need to call you a therapist or anything, do we?”
“No, I think I’m okay,” said Justin.
“No that proves it. You don’t decide to learn a profession like this and be okay,” said Drifts. “Hey Leo, I think should go back in and get the kid a cot next to Louis the momma’s boy.”
“You mean the guy you were a little spoon to a few minutes back?” Ramirez asked dryly. “I didn’t think you were that anxious to see him again.”
Drifts’s expression sobered. “Fuck you, Leo.”
“No Sam. You have Louis for that now. I won’t be party to your carousing.”
“We’re getting off this subject.” Drifts pointed at him. “No getting-off jokes! How are you, partner? You, after all, were the one staring down the barrel of a gun. And you mentioned David?” Drifts asked quietly. “You never do that?”
Ramirez looked at his partner with hard eyes for a moment. To his credit, Drifts looked back unflinching. “He mentioned the stadium.”
Drifts nodded. “Yeah, I know. That was pretty intense.”
“It was. Just like I remember it.”
Drifts coughed. “You!” He choked out his words. “You were at the stadium? I never knew that!”
Ramirez said, “I don’t like to talk about it.”
“What happened?” asked Justin.
Ramirez was silent for a long moment. At first they thought he wasn’t going to respond at all. Then he started to talk as though some internal floodgate had opened. “Mr. Browning wasn’t wrong. It was hell. It wasn’t supposed to be. When there was still a government structure, there was a detail of us first responders set to guard and take care of the people at the stadium. By that time our ranks were so depleted. It was a random mix of soldiers, police officers, firefighters, and EMS personnel like me. We did close the doors and we were going to keep the people fed and safe, but then the deliveries stopped coming almost immediately.”
“What did you guys do then?” asked Drifts.
“Our families lived with us at the stadium, so we had a vested interest in its success. We went back out into the wasteland and scrounge for food and supplies. It wasn’t easy, and many of our volunteers never made it back. They’d leave in the morning and just disappear.”
“Do you think any of them deserted?” asked Drifts.
Ramirez shook his head. “Maybe a couple, but no not really. Many of those missing were devoted family men and women.”
“Despite the cost of our excursions we found some pretty significant stores in a few untouched warehouses, but with as many mouths as we had to feed, it simply didn’t last. We all knew we were only delaying the inevitable. Louis was right, we couldn’t keep up with the rising sick and deaths. The stadium was a powder keg in a house full of candles.”
“I remember the day it all blew up, although thankfully I didn’t have the Brownings’ front row seat. I had just returned from a scavenger run when the riot broke out. Then one of us shouted zombies. Someone, it had to have been one of us, panicked and opened the main gate. The zombies just poured in. At that point, it became every man for himself.”
“Whoa.” Whispered Drifts.
“I was lucky I was able to find my family in only a few minutes. If it had been longer we wouldn’t have made it.” Ramirez looked far off into the distance of his memory. “There were a hundred and seventy-two of us first responders at the stadium. Only sixteen of us made it out alive. Most of us without our full families.”
“Is that where you lost David?” Drifts asked.
Ramirez shook his head. “No. I was able to save my David then.”
“How did-”
Drifts stopped his question as Ramirez held up a hand without looking at him. “Please don’t ask me that, Sam.”
“Okay, Leo. I’m sorry.”
Ramirez nodded without looking at him.
They were spared any further uncomfortable silence when their pagers went off. Drifts, who was never gladder to hear the alarm than he was in that moment, checked it first. “It looks like we have a patient transfer out of the ER.”
“Why don’t you take Justin in with the stretcher? I’ll be along in a few minutes,” Ramirez said still not looking at them.
“Sure, buddy. Take as long as you want.”
Silently, Justin and Drifts grabbed the stretcher and walked inside. Once they passed through the doors, Drifts cursed. “Dammit, I knew better!”
“What did you know better? What was that?” Justin asked.
“Listen, Justin, Leo rarely talks about his son, and he never mentions what happened to him in the outbreak, because David never made it out. Whatever happened to his boy is an off-limits topic. The people from his last call must have really struck a nerve for him to bring it up at all.”
“If it’s off limits, then how do you know about it at all?”
“You can’t be the same guy’s partner for five fucking years without being pretty intimate with each other’s details. He talks about David occasionally, but nothing outbreak-related. These days, it’s a subject that’s not far from anyone’s mind.” Drifts shook his head. “Come on kid this subject is a real downer. Let’s go sexually harass some nurses. That always perks me up!”
The ride from the hospital to the nursing home would have been a quiet one if it not for two things. Drifts had partially closed the sliding door between the cab and the box before he blasted the radio. The second factor that kept the ride from being peaceful was their patient, Beula Carter.
“Help!”
While Ramirez remained stoically silent as he filled out the Patient Care Report from the captain’s chair, he left the patient care to Justin.
“Mrs. Carter, I’m not . . . trying . . . hey don’t do that!” Justin dodged a swipe from her yellow-tinged fingernails. Unperturbed he continued. “Mrs. Carter, I’m trying to take care-”
“Somebody help! Assault! Wilbur! Where are you, you useless bastard?”
“Mrs. Carter, Wilbur is not here. My name is Justin, remember? May I get your blood pressure real quick?”
“Help!”
Justin leaned back from another swipe of her claws. He gave Ramirez a silent plea for help.
“Just leave her alone,” said the medic.
“Shouldn’t we get at least one set of vitals on her?” asked Justin. Ramirez shrugged and motioned him to continue.
Music blasted into the box as Drifts slid open the compartment door and said, “You’re doing great, kid! You’re truly an inspiration to us all!” He then gave him a cheesy thumbs up.
Justin shook his head. “Mrs. Carter, will you please let me help you?”
Beula looked at him with fevered eyes. “You come any closer and I will claw out your pecker and feed it to the chickens!”
“Do you hear that Leo?” Drifts called. “She wants to let her chicken peck on the kid’s pecker! Well Justin, I knew you’d get some action today, I just didn’t expect it to be that!”
Ramirez smirked.
“Help!” Beula screamed.
Justin spent the remainder of the ride on the far end of the bench, well out of range of Beula’s gnarled claws. Drifts closed the door and turned up the music.
Several loud minutes later the ambulance pulled off of Reynolds Street into the winding driveway of a compound converted into a nursing home. A sign showing an idealized picture of elderly residents standing arm-in-arm named the Open Arms Nursing Residence.
“Triple-Three on scene.” Drifts told dispatch.
“On scene,” the radio confirmed.
Moments later, he opened the back door. “Well, I trust that everyone had a pleasant ride to our esteemed destination.”
“Help!” screamed Beula.
“Sure, sweetie,” Drifts said. “We’ll help you into bed real soon. Isn’t that right, Justin?” Justin shot him a scathing look. Drifts smiled back. “What’s the matter, puppy dog? Do you need to yip at me or something?”
“Leave him be, Sam. He showed Mrs. Carter here more patience than most people I’ve worked with.”