“What about his partner, Alex?”
Ramirez shrugged. “He’s distraught, but not nearly to the same degree. He was still in the cab when Billy had to use the drill.”
“Damn! Billy doesn’t know how lucky he is. He could have been bitten or worse. No offense.”
Ramirez waved the comment away. “I think he does. Billy said she came really close to sinking her teeth in him. That’s part of what is messing with him. He has a kid sister her age.”
Sutter exhaled. “That’s tough. I remember when I had to drill a toddler that was close to my oldest grandson’s age once.” The supervisor shook his head trying to dislodge the unwanted memory.
“Yeah, and teenage boys will always get to me.”
Sutter looked at him. “Leo, I can’t even imagine.”
Ramirez looked back soberly. “Trust me. You really don’t want to.” His eyes went far away for a moment. He pulled himself out of his mind’s eye and looked back at Sutter. “Anyways, I would recommend pulling him from the field for a week; two would be better. Maybe give him a couple of weeks riding third to re-acclimate. If he comes back at all.”
“Agreed. I already have a chaplain and a counsellor en route to headquarters to give both Alex and Billy a debriefing. I’ll schedule Billy to ride with you when he returns.”
“Fair enough.”
Sutter smiled as he asked. “Are you going to warn Sam?”
Ramirez looked back at his ambulance. “No, I find it’s best to let management take the fall for these kinds of decisions.”
“It was your suggestion.”
“Sure it was. But I have to spend twelve hours locked in a cab with that man. I’m not going to let him believe differently.”
Sutter smile broadened. “Fair enough.”
“Hey, Leo!” Drifts called.
“Aw shit, he heard you,” chuckled Sutter.
Ramirez smirked then looked back at his partner. “What’s up, Sam?”
“Those fu-” Drifts caught himself, his eyes flashing toward the field supervisor, “uh . . . guys in dispatch want to know if we can clear the hospital for a call!”
“Put us en route. I’ll be right there.” Ramirez turned back to Sutter, “See you, John. Good luck.”
Sutter clapped him on the shoulder. “You too. Stay safe out there.”
“Will do. You do the same.”
As Ramirez stepped up into the cab, dispatch was already in the middle of giving Drifts the call, “. . . en route to King Highway just past the Sixty-Seventh Street exit on a motor vehicle collision.”
Drifts keyed the mic. “King Highway and Sixty-Seventh on a crash!”
He gunned the engine and they shot of State Hospital’s driveway. Moments later when they were a block out of the Hospital’s territory, he hit the lights and sirens.
“So Leo?”
“What’s up?”
“How hard was it for you not to slap the living shit out of that stupid bitch?”
Ramirez shrugged. “Not really that hard, Sam.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well Sam, when I have my fleeting WWSDD moments I-”
Justin interrupted. “Excuse me? WWSDD? What’s that?”
“Kid, what the hell have I told you about interrupting the grownups in the front?” Drifts barked. “Surely you can recognize the acronym ‘What Would Sam Drifts Do?” He shook his head. “I tell you kids today, they don’t have any fucking respect. Please Leo, excuse the interruption from our unlearned protégé and enlightened us with your valiant self-control tips.”
“Well, I stop myself from going through with my ‘What Would Sam Drifts Do’ whims by simply reminding myself that to slap the . . .”
“Shit out of her,” Drifts supplied.
“Yes. To do that would be, well, illegal and immoral. I then remind myself of all the possible consequences: getting fired, going to jail . . . then that starts a whole litany of other follow-up consequences that I’d rather not discuss in great detail. So that, my friend, is why I do not act on such whims.”
Drifts sighed. “Well, that was pretty fucking vanilla, even for you.”
“I also remember,” Ramirez added with a small smile, “that she will one day die, and maybe I will be the one to get to put a hole in her head.”
Drifts laughed. “And that’s why you’re my fucking partner!”
“That and no one else wanted to work with you,” Ramirez responded.
Drifts said, “No one else has your taste in quality work.”
“You are an acquired taste that is to be sure.”
Justin chuckled.
“Shut up, kid!”
They pulled onto the highway several minutes later and parked between a ladder truck and a fire engine that were already on scene. The firetruck was parked catty cornered blocking three lanes of traffic. As they surveyed the scene, Drifts let out a low whistle.
Strewn across the road were three heavily-damaged vehicles and a couple of minor ones that were parked in a line ahead of them. Firefighters and highway patrol officers scurried around the scene from one vehicle to the next. A few people ambled around by the line of parked cars. In the epicenter was a mangled minivan on its side, a four-door sedan with its front end crunched in against the driver’s cab, and a half-ton pickup truck almost encasing the guard rail.
Drifts reached for the mic but Ramirez’s hand was already on it, “Triple-Three on scene. Go ahead and send me two additional units, code two please.”
“On scene,” Dispatch cracked, “Three-Fourteen and Three-Eighty-Six respond to King and Sixty-Seventh on a crash!”
“Sam, you and Justin get ready to set up for the worst patients. I’m going to do a quick scene survey. Justin, do your best, but don’t leave his side for a minute.”
Justin looked back nervously and Drifts said, “You got it. Come, on kid, let’s get ready to play!”
Ramirez stepped out, grabbed the trauma bag from the side compartment, and was met by a highway patrol officer.
“What happened?” Ramirez asked without preamble.
The officer thumbed at the minivan. “Apparently there was a bike going somewhere around a hundred twenty mile per hour that crashed into the back of a minivan that was changing lanes. Struck the van like a missile. The minvan’s rear tires popped and the whole thing flipped at highway speed. We have severely injured people in the minivan and the truck. The rest are fairly minor. Walking wounded mostly.
“What about the bike?”
The patrolman pointed at a couple of officers directing strobe lights over the side guard rail into the densely-forested area down the embankment. “Witnesses say the motorcycle went over the railing. I have my men keeping an eye out. I also sent for a K-9 unit to track down any potential deaders.”
Ramirez nodded. “Let me know if you find anything. I have more units on the way.”
With that he headed over to the minivan. A senior firefighter with a helmet marking him as a lieutenant turned to face him. “Hey, Leo. Damn am I glad you’re here.”
“Mark,” Ramirez acknowledged him. “What do we have?”
Lieutenant Mark Tarantino shook his head. “It doesn’t look good.”
“We have a restrained zombie in the back seat with two criticals in the front. The driver is the worst of the pair. We’ll have them extricated in maybe five minutes.”
Behind him, his crew had cleared through the glass and was already using the hydraulic cutter on the door frame.
“What about the active zombie?” Ramirez asked.
Lieutenant Tarantino averted his eyes. “He keeps reaching and moaning, but he won’t be getting out of his carseat anytime soon.”
Ramirez peeked through the second row window and saw the little figure reaching for them in the shadows. He shook his head. “Okay just be careful.”
“Always am.”
“I’m going to check the other vehicles. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Sure thing,” the Lieutenant said his attention already back on his crew’s progress.
Ramirez looked inside the demolished interior of the sedan where one victim lay sprawled in the trapped wreckage, a manicured hand extended out of the wreck. The woman wasn’t breathing, but with the front of her face caved in she wasn’t going to turn, either. Ramirez moved on to the next vehicle where four firefighters worked on the people inside a truck.
As he approached, he saw that they were rapidly extricating a woman with a severely battered face. A senior fighter saw him coming and shouted, “Hey, give us a hand!”
Ramirez stepped up and helped them slide her onto a backboard that two of the firefighters had wedged into the passenger seat.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
The senior firefighter nodded to the injured figure slumped behind the wheel. “The driver just died a few minutes ago, and he’s not strapped in by a seatbelt.”
“Okay.” Ramirez looked between the dead man and his passenger. She did not look any better. Her breaths were coming in ragged gasps and she was very pale beneath her facial wounds.
“Get her over to my ambulance. My partner and student are there to start care. Please make sure her feet, hands, and head are secured down in case this goes south in a hurry.”
“Okay,” said the senior firefighter. “What about him?” He nodded at the dead driver.
Ramirez pulled out his flashlight and knife. “I’ll handle him.”
He eased forward and placed his gloved hand on the driver’s neck. He was still warm but no longer had a carotid pulse. Ramirez pushed the dead man forward and braced him against the steering wheel. He then half stood up in the truck’s cab, moved forward, and braced his knee in the small of the driver’s back pinning in place.
The driver’s arms started to stir. Suddenly, the head came up and tried to whip around. Its mouth chomped in the air as dead ravenous eyes fastened on him. Ramirez smashed its head forward into the deflated airbag and horn button.
He jammed his knife into the base of its skull clicking against the bone before he severed the spinal cord.
Ramirez pulled his knife free and quickly wiped it clean on the now unanimated man’s sleeve. He stepped out of the cab right as a trio of firefighters came rushing up to them led by the senior who took the first patient to the ambulance. They were all carrying excavation tools.
“Are you okay?” asked the senior firefighter a little breathless.
Ramirez nodded as he squirted some hand sanitizer on his blade and wiped it clean with his spare handkerchief before changing gloves.
“Did you really just go in there by yourself?” asked the older firefighter.
“Yes,” said Ramirez as he looked around the scene.
“What if it tore out your throat?”
Ramirez noted the axe in his hand. “Then I imagine you’d have put that to good use.”
A heart-wrenching scream came from the van. He and the firefighters rushed over to see Lieutenant Tarantino and his crew wrestle a bloody woman from the front passenger seat.
Ramirez jumped into the fray, “What’s going on?”
Lieutenant Tarantino who was restraining her head and left, arm grunted. “She just woke up! She’s trying to get to her son!”
“Does she know about his . . . condition?”
“No!” The woman screamed as she thrashed harder than ever and actually managed to hoist several firefighters off the ground.
Ramirez and the fire crew tightened their grips and eased her onto the ground where one of the firefighters placed a backboard.
She tried to wrestle out of their collective grips, but they all held her fast. They swiftly secured her down with straps around her body as a few of them held her hands and feet down. A firefighter divided up four lengths of rolled gauze from their medical bag. Moments later, Ramirez and the crew deftly hitched her flailing extremities to the board.
“No!” she screamed.
“Whew! She was one hell of a handful,” said Lieutenant Tarantino.
Ramirez nodded as he directed them to take her over to his ambulance. She was still fighting to get free of her restraints as four of the firefighters carried her over to the Triple-Three. Beyond them, Drifts and Justin were furiously working on their first patient. His student had already started a line and was pulling out airway equipment.
“Hey, Mark,” Ramirez asked, “can a couple of guys stay to help mine?”
“Sure thing.” Lieutenant Tarantino looked at his senior firefighter. “Earl, grab Stan and give the EMS crew a hand.”
“Sure L. T.” said Earl.
“No! No! No!” The woman thrashed so hard she almost made them to drop her.
Ramirez shook his head as he took a moment to push back his own inner demons. “That woman is in for a long night.”
Lieutenant Tarantino sighed, “She sure is.”
Ramirez said, “I better go check on my guys. Let me know if you find anything.”
“Sure thing. You do the same.”
Ramirez followed them up to his rig. “How are you doing, Justin?”
In the lights of his ambulance, he could see the woman’s from the truck’s condition was even worse than he had first realized. Her face and hair were a mass of blood. One pants leg was cut open to reveal the fractured end of her tibia protruding through her skin just below the knee. Blood bubbles were forming around the mask as Justin bagged her. Ramirez could almost see her abdomen swell before his eyes from internal bleeding.