VACCINATION
by
Phillip Tomasso
Copyright 2013 by Phillip Tomaso
www.philliptomasso.com
[email protected]
This one is for my family at 911;
to the Telecomunicators who take calls;
to the Fire, EMS and Police Dispatchers who tell responders where to go!
Love All of You.
Thank you for the inspiration!
Prologue
Chris Danson stared at the male who stood motionless more than halfway down the liquor store’s first aisle. The guy’s disheveled hair looked wet and matted down against his scalp; the black suit, wrinkled.
“Anything I can help you with?” Behind the counter Danson leaned on the heel of his hands.
The guy looked up. First thing Danson noticed were bloodshot eyes—must have been on an all-morning bender.
“Buddy, something I can give you a hand with?”
The guy turned with his whole body, faced Danson. The knot on the black necktie hung low against his chest and the un-tucked white dress shirt appeared as if a red pen exploded in the breast pocket.
“You’re going to have to get out of here.” Danson shook his head. “I’m not going to be able to sell you anything. And man, buddy, you’re drooling all over the floor.”
The slow staggered steps only reassured Danson the right decision had been made. “You’re gonna have to leave. I want you out of my store. Okay?”
Danson worked alone most days from open until roughly six or seven. Aside from the handful of customers who religiously kept to liquid lunch diets, the low volume didn’t warrant anyone else on the clock. It was early evenings when things became hectic. Like, people left work and needed a bottle more than dinner, and for whatever reasons, had to have it before heading home. That’s when it made sense to have extra help on hand. But not now. Not at eleven in the morning.
“Sir, I don’t want trouble, okay? But I’m thinking, if you don’t just leave, I’m going to have to call the police. Look, it’s not something I want to do, all right? So, what’d ya say? Don’t make me do that.” Danson held up his cell phone, if only to show the threat of meaning business.
The guy’s expression did not change—at all. But neither did he look right. Not right at all. Danson shook his head, shrugged, and walked around to the front of the counter, then with long strides toward the first aisle, mentally preparing to throw the drunk out physically, if warranted.
When he rounded the front of the aisle, he stopped short. “Shit!”
The guy stood there, face-to-face. The bloodshot eyes were nothing compared to the pulsing blue veins that appeared almost neon under dead-gray flesh. Danson jumped back a step, and thought, Maybe he was just going to leave.
“Okay, sir. I do appreciate your business. Normally. Tell you what, you come back when you are a little more sober. I’ll give you a special on whatever you pick out. How’s that sound?”
Then Danson did something, and knew the moment that he did, he shouldn’t have. He turned his back on the oddball customer, with the intent of opening the front door and hoping the messed up guy would leave.
He wouldn’t have said he’d expected hands to grab his shoulders, but when it happened, he wasn’t surprised. What shocked him most was the bite.
Teeth dug into the nape of his neck, scraped across what felt like his spine, and tore out chunks of meat from his shoulder. Screaming and attempting to reach up and over his shoulder to pull the guy’s head off his neck, was as futile as reaching around to remove a knife from the center of one’s own back.
# # #
“Hey, man, you got like, what, five bucks?” Josh shut the engine off and the car stopped alongside the pump.
“Six.” David moved his hand around the seat belt, and dug fingertips into pants pockets and spider-walked out crumpled bills. “Ah, um, four. I have four dollars.”
Josh rolled his eyes. “Four? Seriously? Four?”
“I thought I had six,” he said.
Josh climbed out of the car, but not before tossing over a ten. “Go pay. All fourteen. Got it?”
With the cap unscrewed, the nozzle buried in the tank, Josh watched for the gas pump to switch on. While waiting, he saw the woman in the jean skirt and tank top across the street from the gas station. Long legs. Blonde hair. With his back to his car, he could stare all he wanted. It only looked like he was watching gauges on a pump.
“Damn,” he said.
“You’re good, dude, you’re good. Go ahead and pump.”
Josh spun around.
David stepped out from between the pumps, toward the car.
“What’s that?” Josh hated that he usually had to ask everything twice, and even then, twice rarely seemed to sink in with David.
“A Slim Jim.”
“You had four dollars for me, but enough for a Slim Jim,” Josh asked.
“Actually, I used our money. Just a dollar for the Slim Jim.”
“Do you not understand, we’re broke and need gas?”
He pulled a second Slim Jim out of his back pocket, and held it out like a magic wand. “Ah, but Bro—I got one for you, too!”
Josh moaned. David didn’t get it. Just could not comprehend the concept of broke. “Get in the car. You know what, just get in the car.”
“Whoa! What she doing?”
The blonde in the short skirt walked into traffic. Not at the crosswalk, and with no regard for vehicles headed at her from both directions. Rubber bled like black white-out across the pavement, as tires screamed in protest; horns like sirens from the Ginna Nuclear Power Plant, blared in long, relentless blasts.
“Hey! Hey, watch out!” Josh called.
The woman slowly crossed the lanes, walked with a limp, and seemed more focused on Josh and David than her personal safety.
“She crippled, or what?”
“No idea,” Josh said. “Hurt, maybe. She looks hurt.”
“And mental. It’s like, what could she be thinking?”
Josh took a step toward the woman and shook off the hand that reached for his arm. “She don’t look well. Maybe call nine-one-one.”
“You think?”
The closer Josh got, the more he thought she wasn’t looking at him, but that she might be blind. Both eyes looked milky, grayish, and white. Not the pupil. No eye color at all, just a milky grayish-white. It explained her walking across lanes of traffic without looking in any direction first, or during. She’d have to be deaf, too. The screech of tires, honking horns. “Ma’am? Ah, Miss?”
“Call? Should I call, Josh?”
“I think we’re going to need an ambulance. Something messed up happened to this woman,” Josh said. He whispered, thinking she couldn’t hear him, but just in case. “Look at her foot. She’s walking on a broken ankle.”
“So call?”
“Yeah, man. Call.”
“What do I tell them?”
Josh was less than ten feet from the woman. He saw scratch marks that started at her neck and seemed to slide down to between her breasts. There were more on her thighs. The ankle wasn’t just broken. The foot merely hung on by threads of flesh and meat. She walked on the compound fracture without wincing. “Tell them to get an ambulance and the police here. Both, she needs both. Someone fucked her up, bad. I mean, she’s all fucked up.”
Josh grabbed the woman gently by the shoulders. She stared right at him, as if she could see him, but like she saw right through him. Vision had to be impossible. It looked like congealed fat on a piece of chuck roast left in the fridge overnight and had hardened over her eyeballs.
When she tried to bite him, arms flailed, he did not take it personal. “It’s going to be all right. W
e’ve got help on the way, ma’am. Okay? An ambulance is coming.”
As gently as possible, Josh got alongside the woman and lowered her to the pavement. She fought him, but without much effort. She may have been walking for miles. Her skin was cold, no fever, but shock could be infecting her. “Get me a blanket from the trunk. David? A blanket. Get one from the trunk.”
“I’m on the line with nine-one-one,” he said.
“Do two things at once, asshole!” Josh loved his kid brother, but damn him sometimes. Damn him.
The woman bucked, arching her back. She coughed, gagged. Josh rolled her onto her side, so she faced away from him. He didn’t want her to choke on vomit or her tongue, or anything, but neither did he want to watch her if she did. She blows chunks; he’s going to be blowing chunkier chunks right along with her.
“I got the blanket.”
“Cover her legs.”
“What about the blood?”
“Seriously? Cover her legs, please!” Josh grunted. He would have yanked the blanket away and covered the woman himself, but she still twisted, tried rolling over, or getting up. Josh had no idea what she was trying to do. He didn’t want to let go of her shoulders and risk letting her cause more damage. “They sending an ambulance?”
“They said they were and they asked me a million questions. I didn’t know how to answer any of them. Felt stupid. Had to keep saying, ‘I don’t know.’”
Yeah. That’s what made you feel stupid. “The police?”
“I guess they’re coming, too.”
“They say how long?” Josh made sure the blanket covered her legs. He stretched it as far up to her lower chest as he could without leaving bare skin exposed. It was October. Not freezing out, but too cold to be in a short skirt and tank top. “Give me your coat, David.”
“My coat, Josh?”
“Your coat. I want to cover her shoulders.”
“What about your coat?”
“I’m wearing mine,” Josh said.
David hugged himself; his fingers ran over his arms. “It’s in the car.”
Distant sirens.
“Okay. Can you get it, David? Can you, please, just fucking go and get it?”
David stared off into the distance. “Could be them?”
“Could be. She still needs your coat.” Josh looked up and down the main road. He thought the sirens got closer, but couldn’t yet see the responders. “I have a feeling she’s not going to make it.”
“Dude, she looks dead already.”
Josh could only nod. No argument. She did indeed look dead.
Chapter One
“Chase, you know it’s not your Halloween this year. It’s mine.”
Just the sound of her voice ate through me. Thank God, we were on phones, not talking in person. The urge to clock her made my bicep muscle twitch instinctively. “Look, Julie. Charlene is fourteen. Cash is nine. They aren’t going to want to go trick or treating much longer. All I am saying is, let me go around with them. A couple of houses. You and Douglas—”
“Donald.”
“—can stay home and hand out candy. You don’t want to leave a mini mansion like that unattended on a night like that anyway.” That was thoughtful of me. Worrying about the safety of Dougla—Donald’s—possessions, expensive possessions. At least I thought so.
“Chase, we’re not doing this. You had them last year. I didn’t do this to you. I didn’t call and beg to impose. I will send you pictures of them in their costumes.”
“They’re my kids, Julie. I’m not imposing if I want to spend time with my kids.” I lit a cigarette. My morning cup of coffee forgotten, gone cold, sat next to the butt-full ashtray.
“I’m hanging up now.”
“I hate that. You know I hate that.”
“Can you guess what’s great about being divorced from you? I don’t care what you hate.”
“See, you can’t do that. You can’t ask me to guess and then just give the answer. I need a chance actually to guess.”
“Fine. You know what, from now on, to make it easier for you, I won’t tell you when I—”
The line disconnected.
“You hang up on me? Jules? Julie?” I threw my phone, pissed off enough to aim for a wall, but broke enough to ensure it slammed into a couch cushion instead. I leaned back in the wood chair, but not so far that the legs might snap. Because they might. The square card table was dressed up with a kitchen-like tablecloth and surrounded with a mismatch of chairs. Curb side furniture.
Smoke billowed up from the end of my cigarette, hit the yellow stained ceiling paint and burst like a silent exploding cloud. I shook my head. Thirty-five, divorced, not where I saw myself.
Work and beer when not working. Killing days until my every-other-weekend, and one day a week with my kids. She cheated. She forced me out. She got the kids. Courts favored mothers.
I fought. At first.
Whole time we were together I promised her, if anything ever happened to us, I was taking the kids. Her boyfriend at the time hired an expensive firm. The only way I’d win in court was airing laundry in front of a judge, and dragging my kids through the stink.
That didn’t help them. The kids. I made it about them. She made it about winning. Rough enough having their parents split. They didn’t need to testify and choose sides. She was prepared to put them through that. Not me. I walked away.
One day, I told myself, they‘d know I didn’t give up. I sacrificed . . . for them. It’s always been for them.
The phone chirped; it was a text. I turned and parted the kitchen curtain and watched the rain as it fell. Not heavy. Gray clouds covered any sunlight. It was the end of October and I might not see sunlight until March. I worked from four in the afternoon, until midnight. Got home. Got drunk. Passed out. Woke up, usually around now—which was what? Two? Showered and headed back into work.
We were coming up on the weekend, the busiest time at work and it would be ten times worse this weekend, because it was Halloween weekend. Years when the holiday fell on a school night, things were better. There were fewer parties and fewer drunks. Not a lot less. But fewer.
I stood up, pushed in my chair, set the cigarette down in the ashtray, and retrieved my phone.
Allison. Entered my password. Read the message.
As I walked back for my smoke, I spoke my reply. “Reply. Hey, dear. Getting ready for work. You want coffee? See you there. Send.”
I set the phone down and walked toward the bathroom.
The scream came from outside my door. I stopped. Listened. Eyes narrowed, like that helped my ears. It didn’t.
A moan. Loud. Long. I back stepped through the living room, and pressed my ear to the apartment door, straining to listen.
Nothing. Silence.
I waited.
I had been living in this building for close to a year. I said hello and goodbye to the other tenants, but little else. I wasn’t here to make friends. I needed a place to sleep, and drink, and it worked fine for my purposes.
When several minutes passed without another sound from the hallway, I walked past the television. A news journalist reviewed the shortness of H7N9 vaccinations, and the alarmingly large number of U.S. citizens infected with the fast-spreading flu. I would take my chances. Saw no reason to stop for a flu shot. Never got one before, and wasn’t getting one now.
At the table, I crushed out the butt, lit a fresh smoke and went to the bathroom to shower. I’d grab hot coffee at the drive-thru and head into work.
Work was not solace. It was a place that kept me sober eight hours at a time. You might consider 9-1-1 a sanctuary. Unless you worked there. Then you’d know it was more like a detention center. A holding cell for the mentally employed, and moderately deranged. I fit the mold. Explained why I still had a job.
Chapter Two
Allison Little answered on the second ring. “Hello, Chase.”
“Hey,” I said. Idling in line at Tim Horton’s, I fished out my wallet without unf
astening my seat belt. With the windows down, the cigarette smoke mostly escaped in slow billowing plumes. “I’m getting coffee. You didn’t answer. You need anything?”
“Hot tea?”
“Three sugars. No cream.”
“See you at work?”
“Be there in a few.”
“I just walked in. People are ordered.” She sighed. “Four. Four people ordered.”
When someone called in sick, people working on the ending shift were forced to stay. They called it Getting Ordered. It was time and a half, but no one was ever happy about it. A sixteen-hour shift sucked. Though no one admitted it, there had to be liability issues. I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut and cause as few waves as possible, fly as low under the radar as I can, and whatever other clichés fit the situation. “Probably be more orders in the morning, too.”
Unfortunately, calling in sick was sometimes the only way to get time off. No one wanted to see other employees ordered, but mental health days were essential at times. The good thing, once ordered, you moved to the bottom of the list. If you were lucky, you might get ordered four to six times a year. If you were lucky, that is.
“I’m going to stop at the drugstore after work,” she said. I heard the hesitant tone of her voice. She knew I’d not received a shot, and maybe she thought I’d be upset that she planned to. I didn’t give a fuck.
“The shot?”
“I can’t afford to get the flu,” she said, “you know that.”
“That’s cool,” I said, because, really, what else was there to say? I knew she was asking without asking, if I wanted to go. I didn’t. Not interested. “I’ll see you soon.” I ended the call, eased up my car up to the box, stopped, and ordered.
# # #
Headed south on Lake Avenue, I shook my head. It was just after 3 P.M. The streets seemed excessively crowded, not with cars, but people. It was usually on my way home at midnight that I had to be extra cautious. City residents crossed the streets without looking. They walked on the roads as if they owned them. Dressed in dark clothing, they often times looked like the pavement. Blended. It annoyed me. I never slowed. Screw them. Eventually, they hurried across. They’d flip me off, but that didn’t concern me. I’d flip them off right back.
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