Justin looked up at him with frantic eyes. He was just in the process of suctioning the blood out of her mouth. “Oh, thank God! She’s not protecting her airway, and I was about to intubate her, but with you here.”
Ramirez interrupted. “You can still intubate, but I’ll stand by as you do it, and help you if you need it.”
“Really?” Justin stared at him wide eyed.
“Really.”
A few feet away, Drifts was tending to the restrained mother.
“No!” She screamed at him.
“Ma’am, I’m an EMT. I’m trying to help you! Do you understand?” Drifts voice boomed.
“No!”
“No, you don’t understand, or you don’t want to talk?”
“She’s confused and scared. I don’t think we’re going to get much out of her tonight,” Ramirez explained.
“What the hell is her deal?”
In a low tone Ramirez said, “Her family isn’t doing so well. Her son had already turned. The driver doesn’t look too well either.”
“Fuck me swinging!” Drifts swore. “This chick has snapped and she’s trying to stop us from putting her kid to rest? Damn! What the hell is it with this fucking night, Leo?” Ramirez could only shrug. The woman screamed again and yanked against her restraints. When they didn’t give into her desperate attempt to free herself, she burst into tears.
“Leo?” Justin called. “I’m about to intubate.”
“I’m here, Justin. Go ahead.”
Justin nodded and inserted the laryngoscope into her throat mouth and squinted inside. “Oh, God, that’s a lot of blood! Give me some-”
Ramirez already began suctioning out the blood with the portable suction.
“Thanks.” Behind his eye protection, Justin squinted. “I think I see her chords. Hand me the tube, please.”
Ramirez placed it in his hand before he finished the request. He steadied his shaking hand inserted the breathing tube down her throat, and inflated the cuff. He pulled free the metal guide-wire, and began to bag her.
Ramirez silently pulled a stethoscope from the airway bag and listened to her abdomen and chest. He nodded to Justin. “It’s in, but don’t bag her that rapidly. Bag on the count of five. Give her time to exhale.” Justin nodded and slowed his pace. “Okay, let’s secure your tube.”
Moments after they finished securing the endotracheal tube with a holding device, ambulance Three-Fourteen arrived with Sutton’s supervisor SUV right behind them. Tracy and Donnagan approached with their stretcher.
“What do we have, boys?”
Justin started, “This . . . um lady was um . . . involved in-”
Tracy held up her hand. “No offense, kid, but maybe your preceptor should give me report while the golden hour is still young.”
“Very well,” Ramirez said. “Unrestrained female passenger, open left tibia fracture, swelling abdomen, unresponsive. Radial pulse is rapid and thready. I would be prepared to hot-drill en route. Two large bore IVs established and the tube is viable.”
Ramirez looked over at Earl. “Are you up for a little ride-along to the hospital?”
The senior firefighter shook his head, “I’ll send Stan with them, I just need to tell L.T. I’ll be right back.” He looked around and called a young firefighter. “Hey, Stan! Go with the pretty medic! I’ll tell the Lieutenant!”
The young firefighter approached Tracy. “I guess I’m going with you?”
“Sure are, handsome. Let’s go,” Tracy said. She, Stan, and Donnagan rushed their patient to their rig. Moments later its sirens blared to life and they tore down the highway.
“What do we have, Leo?”
Ramirez turned as John Sutter strode on scene wearing his neon traffic vest. “Hey, John. We have motorcycle versus three vehicles and multiple minor wrecks. We have two criticals, one just transported off scene by Three-Fourteen. The other is being extricated. One yellow,” he said indicating the screaming passenger from the van, “whom I think has a closed-head injury. Three dead, two of which have turned. The others brain was destroyed during the crash. The first turned is still active but restrained in a carseat in the van. The firetruck lieutenant is keeping an eye on him. The second active dead was disposed of just before it could become a threat. Motorcyclist went over the guard rail; their current condition is unknown. The highway patrol is searching from up here. A K-9 unit has been called in.”
Sutter nodded. “And nothing has tried to come up the embankment yet?”
“No. I’m beginning to wonder if we have a viable patient down there.”
“I think we have something over here!” called one of the patrol officers.
Ramirez looked at Justin and Drifts. “Are you two okay right now?”
“Yeah, Leo, were fine,” said Drifts. “The kid and I have things under control.”
“You have another critical coming out the driver side of the van. The fire crew should extricate him any moment,” Ramirez told them.
Ramirez caught the wide fearful eyes of the van passenger again. “No!” she continued to wail.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her. He followed Sutter to the side rail where the officer had shouted for them.
“What do we have?” he asked.
The officer pointed with his high-powered flashlight to a space just beyond the tree line at the bottom of the embankment. They could see the gleaming chrome of the motorcycle.
“I’ll bet you anything that’s our victim’s bike.”
The officer nodded. “Me too.”
“Any sign of the rider?” asked Sutter.
The officer shook he head. “Not really. At least, nothing obvious.”
Ramirez sighed. “Well until we know any better, we’re going to have to assume whoever is down there is one of two things: dead and not viable enough to turn, like our driver of the car, or alive, but unable to rescue themselves. If they had turned, they should have already made a beeline.”
Sutter nodded. “Makes sense, but what are you proposing to do about it?”
Ramirez fixed his gaze on the area below them and nodded to himself. “I think a small detail of us should go down there and see.”
The officer cringed. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
Sutter held up his hand. “Shouldn’t we call in Fire’s Technical Rescue Team?”
“John, it’s an embankment, not the face of a cliff. I think Fire could supply us a rope and we’ll do just fine. If I was the only medic on scene I wouldn’t consider it, but now that you’re here to assume command, and I’ll go down there with a small group to see what we can find.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go down instead?” asked Sutter. Ramirez just looked at him. Sutter held up his hands. “Sorry, sorry, I forgot who I was talking to. You did stuff like this all the time during the outbreak.”
“You did?” said the patrol officer.
Ramirez nodded as he glanced at the highway patrol officer’s badge. “Officer Tanner, we’ll be right back with some equipment.”
The officer smiled at him grimly. “I’ll be waiting with baited breath.”
He walked past the ambulance and Drifts gave him a questioning look. “We found the bike. Sutter’s in charge of medical ops now. I’m going down with a few others to see if we can find the victim.”
Drifts shook his head. “You get to have all the fucking fun.”
Ramirez shrugged. “Seniority has to count for something.”
“Yeah, yeah. Go save the world, old-timer. Just don’t break a hip or anything.”
Ramirez approached Lieutenant Tarantino who was supervising his guys peeling the van’s hull away from the driver’s leg.
Without looking at him the Lieutenant asked, “What’s up?”
“We’re going down the embankment to search for the motorcyclist. Do you have any rope we can use?”
This time Lieutenant Tarantino did look at him. “Shit, Leo, you’re as crazy as ever!” He looked past him. “Smitty!”
A grizzled firefighter who was putting down some absorbent granules on the spilt gas on the road looked up. “Yeah, LT?”
“I’ll get someone else throw down the kitty litter. You go tell Carlson to take over for Earl with the ambulance crew. Then the two of you set up the tech rescue bag with this medic. They’re going down the embankment for a search and rescue.”
Smitty’s eyes went wide. “No shit?”
“No shit. Now get going?”
Minutes later, Smitty and Earl secured some rope from their tech rescue bag to an undamaged section of the guard rail. Earl had decided that he would go down while Smitty maintained the ropes from above. Earl, axe in one hand and rope in the other, went down the embankment first. Once he was down, Ramirez followed and then Officer Tanner.
Once his feet were on steadier ground at the bottom of the embankment, Ramirez disentangled himself from his ropes and clicked on his flashlight. Its beam cut swathes of light through the gloom of the forest before them.
“Should we split up and call in case we find anything?” Officer Tanner offered.
“No,” both Ramirez and Earl said in unison.
Ramirez continued, “I think it would be wiser if we stayed together.”
“I thought you said you didn’t think the rider could have turned yet?” asked Tanner.
“If he had we should have seen him already. All that light and noise up there would have attracted any zombie.”
“Yeah, like ringing a dinner bell,” Earl added.
“But that doesn’t mean that our victim couldn’t have turned recently, or now that we’ve gotten down here,” said Ramirez.
“Okay,” said Tanner. The officer released a shuddering breath.
Ramirez looked at the officer in a new light. He realized in that moment that Tanner had probably never pulled his weapon free of his holster in an actual life or death situation. He mentally shrugged. Everyone has a first time sooner or later.
Ramirez pointed. “Let’s start at the bike’s wreckage and go from there.”
The other two men nodded their silent agreement as they shined their flashlights about them. They eased up to the disfigured vehicle wrapped around a tree. Chunks of metal and fiberglass were scattered about the scarred tree. The bike itself was a twisted version of its formerly sleek state.
“What’s that?” Earl shined his flashlight above the biggest scar of the tree. He stepped forward and pried a sliver of fiberglass out of the trunk and showed it to the others. It was at least three inches long. “That must have been one hell of an impact. What do you think about that, guys? Guys?” Earl noticed the grim expressions on the others’ faces. “What is it?” he asked.
Ramirez nodded past him.
Earl jumped back. “The hell!”
There was a bit of torn bloody skin with several tendrils of hair plastered against the bark near the shard Earl recovered.
“What the hell is that?” Officer Tanner demanded.
Ramirez shined his light out from the tree and bike looking deeper into the woods. “It’s a scalp,” he said matter-of-factly. “There’s a trail of blood going this way.”
Earl shook his head. “How could anyone take a crash this hard and still be breathing?”
“They couldn’t have turned, could they?” asked the officer. “They would have gone straight up to King Highway, right?”
Ramirez shook his head. “I don’t know, let’s see if we can find out. It could be that whoever this is, has sustained a head injury and staggered further in. Let’s find out”
Earl nodded.
The three first responders followed the trail of occasional blood splatters farther into the woods. As they progressed, the foliage enfolded them in its darkness, and the light and sound of the nearby highway became muted.
Ramirez swept the beam of his flashlight before him in slow deliberate motions, looking both for the blood trail and possible threats. He spotted droplets of blood here and there, pointing them out to his counterparts.
Earl hissed, “How the hell did you get so good at tracking?”
“I did quite a bit of hunting during the outbreak,” Ramirez told him.
“Whoa!” Earl exclaimed. “You must have . . .”
Earl became very still as Ramirez’s hand shot up, motioning him to silence. As they rounded a group of trees, they encountered their quarry. Kneeling on the ground was a man who had clearly turned, wearing a motorcycle jacket, and missing bits of its face and scalp. The zombie was gorging on the intestines of a woman lying motionless on the ground. She, too, was wearing a motorcycle jacket with a helmet. Her arm was badly fractured.
Ramirez whispered, “She must be his passenger. Somehow she must have survived, and he chased her into the woods.”
Earl said, “Man, that is not how you eat out a girl riding bitch.”
Ramirez looked at the senior firefighter for a moment, trying to figure out if his partner had somehow channeled himself into this man. He mentally waved the thought away. Drifts hardly had exclusive rights to gallows humor in this field. He met Officer Tanner’s eye. He made a gun gesture and the young officer nodded.
Tanner stepped around the other two men, pulling his pistol free of his holsters and taking it off safety. Still walking forward he took careful aim and tripped on a root.