Z Ward

by Jay Mouton

  *****

  “When she stopped screaming, I knew that lady was dead for sure, Robey!”

  “Didn’t anybody try to stop the guy? He just, just, tried to eat a woman alive, and nobody jumped into to try and stop him?” Robey asked, now, feeling adrenaline pumping through his body like crazy. If he had injured himself when he’d hit his head, he sure wasn’t feeling any the worse for it now. In fact, he was thinking that he was ready to jump up out of that bed and, with Buddy, just find their way out of the hospital. He wanted to escape the hospital jail, and get on back to the scene of the real crime.

  “Try! Hell, yeah, they tried!” Buddy said. The volume of his voice notched up, again. This time it was so loud that Robey had to motion for him to keep it down. The last thing the boy wanted was for Dr. Huddleston to walk through the door and tell them to shut it down. No, Robey thought, I need to hear the rest of this story.

  “Out of nowhere comes some fella with a baseball bat in his hands! I think he worked in the drugstore, but I’m not sure,” Buddy said.

  “Baseball bat, huh?” Robey offered.

  “Yep. And even with that guy from the Honda chomping away at her, that poor lady just kept screaming. So,” Buddy went on, suddenly remembering where he is in his storyline, “the guy swings that bat harder than anybody I’ve ever seen!”

  Buddy paused, and his face took on a puzzled look, but he went on.

  “WHAM! That bat hits that bat shit crazy right across the side of his cheek!”

  “Wow! I’ll bet that ended his meal, huh?”

  Buddy’s head was shaking from side to side.

  “Not even, Robey. The guy’s head jerked a little, and it knocked his teeth away from the woman’s body for just a second. But, it didn’t stop him. He just shook it off and went back to chewing her up,” Buddy stopped, sighed, and, almost as afterthought, added “by then I wasn’t hearing any more screaming.”

  “He kept at her? Guy nearly gets his skull batted off his neck, and he’s still going back for more?

  “Uh-huh. And the guy swinging that bat, well, he rears back, and, WHAM! There’s another one that would have sailed a pitch right out of the park,” Buddy said. His eyes wide with the vision of such an attempt of what, he was positive, was the equivalent of a home run hitter taking his best swing in the bottom of the ninth.

  “So, the crazy guy keeps going?”

  “Doesn’t miss beat. It was as if he didn’t even know somebody took a Louisville Slugger to his cranium. Go figure, right?”

  “What about the guy in the store? The one with the bat? Did he get any help at all?”

  “The guy with the bat takes another swing, and another. But he’s getting tired. Looks like he’s running out of steam. Like he was running out of swings. And the guy on top of that poor lady is still just ripping into what’s left of her body,” Buddy stopped. For just a moment, he looked like he was going to puke. He rallied, and kept the upper hand to his composure.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to throw up,” Buddy said, as if he had just read Robey’s mind.

  Robey motioned for Buddy to keep going with what had happened all the while he was out cold.

  “Come to think of it, Robey. I didn’t throw up at all when I was watching that guy.”

  “You were saying that the guy was running out of steam, right?”

  “Oh, yeah, he sure was. He kept swinging, but now the swings are slower. And, he kept missing that fucker’s head. I don’t know, he must have taken at least a dozen swings before the police showed up,” Buddy said.

  Robey could feel himself tense up just at the sound of the word, police.

  It wasn’t that either of the boys was a juvenile delinquent, but Robey, being honest, at least with himself, had to admit they were damn close to it.

  As if he were, once more, lost within the maze of his own story, Buddy looked confused again.

  “What it is?” Robey asked. He was, silently, hoping that the police involvement in the whole event had nothing at all to do with Buddy or him.

  “Honestly Robey, I didn’t hear any police sirens at all. It was like they just appeared, out of nowhere. They were just there. Truthfully, I think all I really heard, well, at least after I didn’t hear her scream anymore was him. That guy. All I remember hearing was the sound of that crazy guy chewing away at that dead lady, and the sound that bat made every time it made contact with the guy’s head. It sounded. Shit, Robey, it just sounded—wet!”

  Buddy felt himself shudder, yet again. And, visibly, Robey could see his friend fighting another urge to throw up.

  Buddy steadied himself, and began the last part of his story. Their story, Robey thought. The story he’d slept completely through.

  “By the time I noticed the cop cars pulling up to the wall. Well, where the Honda had crashed through the wall of the drug store. Another guy, with what looked like a folded-up umbrella, shows up. And he starts trying to get the guy off the woman, along with the batter. It really didn’t seem to make any sense to me. Like I told you, that poor woman was dead, Robey. She was, totally, dead.”

  Suddenly, a wave of sadness seemed to sweep over Buddy. It looked as if he were about to cry once more. Then, like a riptide moving faster than the breakers above, the look was gone.

  “I finally heard something other than the sound of the guy making a meal out of that woman. It was one of the cops. He was yelling at bat shit crazy,” Buddy smirked, then let out an abrupt laugh. The laughter, soaked with the cynicism some tough, young boys developed in order deal with the hands they were dealt in life.

  “Fuckin’ nutcase didn’t hear a fuckin’ thing as far as I could see. Just kept up his feast!”

  Buddy’s face, which had gone through a dozen manifestations over the duration of his narrative, now seemed masked with regret as he told Robey what he clearly did not want to tell his friend at all.

  “Robey, I’m just gonna tell y’all up front. Truth is. All that while that, that guy—that monster was killing that lady. Well, I, friend, I gotta admit to you that I spaced you out,” he said, again the taint of guilt staining his tone.

  Robey started to shake his head, rapidly, from side-to-side.

  “Uh-uh! Don’t even go there, Buddy!”

  Buddy’s facial expression, now, wore yet another mask. One of surprise.

  “Don’t even dare to say you’re sorry you forgot about me laying over there. Dude! Buddy, truth is, if I’d been dead, you couldn’t have done nothing at all to change that. As it was, I was, I think, kind of sleeping like a baby. You, Buddy, you had to see all that shit happen,” he blurted out to his friend. It was Robey, now, the one who seemed on the verge of shedding a few tears of his own now, as he thought about the plight of his best friend.

  How terrible it must have been to have witnessed a living being torn apart and dying right before ones’ eyes. To know, somehow, that you were helpless to stop any of it. And if there was one thing Robey Paquette understood, it was just how helpless one could be, sometimes, to not be able to stop something from hurting another person. How, sometimes, that person one could not help turns out to be the person they love most dearly?

  “I’m sorry, pal,” Buddy whispered.

  Robey just shook his head, again. Forced a grin, and asked Buddy to finish telling him what happened.

  “It must have been the sound of those guns that snapped me out of it.”

  Robey stopped him, “they shot him, huh?”

  Buddy’s head bobbed up and down several times.

  “I think I counted six, maybe seven shots. Truth is, I think every shot hit the guy. It was so unreal, Robey. I heard the shots, I saw the guy flinch a few times, but he kept digging into her body. I swear,” Buddy said. His voice now held a solemnity. It was as if, suddenly, he found himself inside a church. As if he were sitting at a table, just as someone was saying grace.

  “Like I said. It was like I just came out of being hypnotized or something. But, I did manage to glance over at
you. And you were moving your arms a little. So, I was pretty sure you were still alive. Then I heard some more yelling. And then another shot. So, I turned back to the wrecked car, and the building, and body of that woman. Just that whole fuckin’ mess, Robey! I turned back just in time to see that monster’s face just explode away from his body!”

  Buddy sucked in one more deep breath. Then he finished the ugly aural painting he’d been a party to by simply adding, “it just disappeared into the sunlight, and all I could see was a red mist above his neck where his head had just been. It was like a small rainbow. Only a rainbow with just that one, intense color—red.”

  Buddy ended his story.

  He gave Robey just the hint of a smile, lowered his chin into his chest, and was quiet.

  Buddy’s story ended, like so many tales of mayhem ended. There wasn’t much of a bang to it. There weren’t any fireworks. There wasn’t any touching music playing, like at the end of a movie while the credits rolled by. It wasn’t really like any of that stuff at all. It wasn’t, not really, like a movie, or novel, or a song. It didn’t end like that at all.

  It just ended.

  It, truly, ended, with a mere murmur of whispers that, ultimately, just became softer, then softer. And then, imperceptivity, the sound simply dissipated into silence.

  *****

  The door that Susann Beckett had, quietly, closed, when she’d left the two boys less than thirty minutes earlier, swung wide open. It slammed against the wall.

  As quickly as the door latch caught, Susann threw the weight of her body up against it hard!

  “Help me! We’ve got to keep him out!” Susann, nearly hysterical, yelled out. Her voice, earlier so very soft and comforting, now powerful and loud. It was filled with what both boys recognized as sheer terror.

  Buddy, only moments before lost in the fading visions of the horrific morning he’d just lived through, jumped up from the chair in the corner. He threw his body up against the door alongside nurse Beckett.

  Robey, forgetting all about the possibility of the concussion that he may have just incurred, jumped out of the bed. He ran across the room, and slid his small frame between his angel of a nurse, and that of his best friend.

  A fraction of a second later, something slammed up against the other side of the door. Whatever it was, it was powerful enough to shake the heavy door inside its frame. Even the walls seem to shudder a little.

  “Don’t let him in!” Susann yelled, her body straining against the continuing vibrations of the shaking door.

  “What is it!” Robey yelled. He, too, was now pushing up against the thickness of the door to his room for all he was worth.

  “It’s Dr. Huddleston! He! He’s,” the terrified nurse searched for words to explain what was happening on the other side of the door, but she was coming up short.

  “He! Dr. Huddleston has, he’s gone crazy! Something! I don’t know!” she cried. Then, after another thunderous slam up against the opposite side of the door, she screamed out, “just don’t let it in!”

  Buddy, strong for his age and size, his own body still pressed up against the door with the other two, seemed to snap out of his reverie. A vision of the man from the little, red Honda ripping the throat out of an innocent woman only an hour before, jumped to the forefront of his mind. Madly, another image pushed its way in front of the carnage he’d just witnessed. Mrs. Benning, their English teacher, was giving examples of one of their vocab words

  Epiphany.

  If Buddy Whetherby had never had an epiphany before, he was, sure as hell, having one now.

  “It’s a monster!” Buddy screamed out, the image of a woman being gutted by the hungry jaws of a crazed man-beast took over the main frame of his mind once again.

  Buddy’s frantic claim gave them all another dose of adrenaline. They found more strength to push even harder against the vibrating door.

  The three of them were, momentarily, quiet. Only the sound of their labored breathing could be heard. That, and the maniacal poundings of a body slamming against the other side of the door over and over.

  Finally, the constant throb of the poundings lessoned. They became fewer, and fewer. And, finally, they seemed to come to an end. Still, the three souls trapped inside Robey’s hospital room were not about to take any chances. They were all, now, leaning with their backs against the door.

  As their labored breathing lessoned, Susann spoke up.

  “Buddy?” she whispered, “what did you mean by monster?”

  Buddy glanced over at the nurse. They were at eye level, since both were all of five feet three at best. The boy attempted to speak, swallowed hard for some reason, then managed to find his voice, again.

  “You told us that Dr. Huddleston is crazy?” Buddy asked.

  “Honestly, I, just, I,” Susann was struggling to describe something that she didn’t really know how to describe. She tried her best.

  “Buddy. Robey. I don’t really know. We were down the hall, not ten minutes ago. Dr. Huddleston was checking with a patient about a specific complaint,” Susann said. Her voice faltered a moment, and she went on.

  “Dr. Huddleston seemed, well, slightly disoriented as he was performing a physical exam on the patient. It was as if he had forgotten how to speak. Like he’d suddenly, forgotten how to get the words out.”

  Buddy nodded, his suspicion of Dr. Huddleston growing.

  Robey still had his back still hard against the door which, for the moment, was no longer vibrating inside its frame behind him.

  “He, Dr. Huddleston had his fingers on Mr. Sawyer’s neck. He was looking for something that might explain some pains the man was experiencing, and—,” she stopped. It was her turn to take in a lungful of air.

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Beckett,” Buddy said, trying to calm the woman down. The odds were growing, exponentially, that she’s just witnessed something eerily similar to Buddy’s own recent experience at the CVS.

  “I’m not sure how to put this,” she said. Again, she was at a loss for words to explain what she’d just seen.

  Buddy took a leap of faith, and blurted out what he thought she was trying to say.

  “Did Dr. Huddleston attack that man?” the boy blurted out. His voice filled with a palpable intensity.

  Susann Beckett stared into the boy’s wide eyes. It was all she could do to just nod in agreement with what he’d just asked her.

  “Did he? Did Dr. Huddleston kill his patient!” Buddy said, trying to keep his growing fear under control.

  Nurse Beckett was still nodding. Her back pressed up against the same door the three of them were still nailed upon.

  It was her turn to cry.

  *****

  “It was so horrible. Boys, I don’t understand what just happened,” she was telling them. Robey and Buddy were sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, and Susann was sitting in the chair. They had pushed the bed up against the door, for the time being. The weight of the bed, with the boys both sitting on it, may not have made the room impenetrable, but it did make them all feel just a little safer.

  Susann Becket told them her own horrible story.

  “Dr. Huddleston just seemed to lose it suddenly,” she said, her blue eyes darting from Robey to Buddy. From Robey, to Buddy. Back and forth her eyes danced between them.

  “One moment, he was fine. He was asking Mr. Sawyer if he’d been having his pain very long. He was just asking routine questions. I swear, he was just fine. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then,” she paused, again.

  “And I swear I’m sure this is what happened! Just out of nowhere, Dr. Huddleston starts to babble. I mean, he’s talking, using his clinical vocabulary. But he’s not really saying anything sensible. Like he was just talking gibberish. He’s just saying words as if he was plucking them off a tree. No rhyme, no reason, no sense what-so-ever!”

  Robey nodded, if only to give the woman encouragement to continue.

  Buddy nodded, too. His was a nod of one soldier who’d just shared a
baptism of fire with another.

  Susann, went on. The boys, perched on the edge of the heavy, metal bed, hung on her every word.

  She fought back tears that were, even now, threatening to spill down her cheeks. She described a scene that, unbelievable as it seemed, had happened only minutes before. And, less than thirty feet from where they were, now, huddled together.

  “Dr. Huddleston just kept talking nonsense. Nothing he was saying held any significance other than he was pronouncing the words correctly.”

  Her voice took a perceptible dip in tone, as if she were, now, conspiring against the good Dr. Huddleston.

  “I was just about to ask him if,” she paused. “Well, I was about to ask him if he was feeling alright. I was going to ask him what on earth was wrong,” she stopped, again. She stared hard. First at Robey, then Buddy.

  “I could see Mr. Sawyer’s face from where I was standing next to Dr. Huddleston. He looked as confused as I felt. But then? But then he,” her voice faltered, again, but she was able to continue. “No. I know he was as confused as I was. But, then. My God! The look that fell across his face! My God, that look he had, just before,” she stuttered.

  “What happened to Mr. Sawyer, Susann?” Buddy asked. His voice was softened by his empathy with the frightened woman.

  “Dr. Huddleston just leapt on him,” she said, her voice cracking. One of the welled-up tears slipped out, down her right cheek, and, slowly ran down to rest at the bottom of her chin. There, it hung.

  “He brought his mouth. No, he brought his, teeth down on Mr. Sawyer’s neck and he, he!” she continued struggle for the words to describe the insanity she’d witnessed.

  “He clamped his jaw down on Mr. Sawyer. And he, Dr. Huddleston, just start tearing into the man’s throat. Buddy, he just ripped that man’s throat out! Robey, he used his teeth!”

  She was a fountain of tears, now. She tried to keep speaking, but she was unable to continue.

  Taking the chance that nothing was going to try to push its way through the doorway of his room, at least for the moment, Robey jumped down off the side of the bed and walked the couple of feet over to where Susann was sitting. She was sobbing, now.