911: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  As the pack settled into position on his back, he was thankful he’d spent the extra money and bought a quality pack. The padded shoulders and hip belt were a huge asset. Some of his survivalist friends had laughed at him when he’d insisted on a pack with a hip belt for his lightweight vehicle bag. Guess who’s laughing now? It wasn’t the weight that was an issue, it was the maneuverability. Walking along a flat, perfectly paved sidewalk after the apocalypse had happened wasn’t likely. He knew he had to be prepared to dodge and weave, climb and run, and the last thing he wanted to deal with was a pack sliding all over and possibly getting hung up on something or throwing him off balance. He felt light on his feet and ready to haul ass if needed.

  He walked out of the sub-station parking lot and onto Gilding Street, the major thoroughfare that ran in front of the building. He was again struck by how dark it was, and thankful for the light on his head. His eyes were adjusted, but he hadn’t seen a night this dark since he’d last gone camping, more than a decade ago. The line of buildings across the street was dark, which wasn’t surprising since they were all businesses with daytime only service hours, but the streetlights on the sidewalks in front of them were also utterly dark, and it was this that gave the area a surprisingly spooky quality.

  Down a block, a single car, a Dodge Caravan, stood motionless and quiet in the middle of the street. It’d obviously died while being driven, but now lay abandoned. He turned the other way and jogged across the street, then realized there was no need to get across so fast and slowed to a walk.

  He moved down the street, walking quickly but still conserving his energy. He wasn’t in the shape he’d once been in, and he kept his pace prudent. He’d gone three blocks when he abruptly saw black smoke roiling out from a cross street ahead. The flickering, uncertain light of the flames cast shadows onto the pavement before him and ran up the sides of buildings in flickering images.

  Obviously, there was some sort of a fire around the corner. He heard no telltale siren wails to indicate fire rescue was arriving on scene, though. Nor was he likely to, he realized. He walked around the corner and found the burning wreck.

  A Toyota 4Runner had rammed head-on into a Yugo. The driver of the Toyota had gone through the safety glass and lay unmoving on the hood of the car. Dark blood ran off the hood and dripped down the grill of the vehicle. The man’s head was matted with blood and hung loose, the neck twisted at an unnatural angle.

  The Yugo was burning from its engine block. The flames, fed by all the flammable liquids in the car, steadily grew in intensity. Parker edged closer, looking for any signs of life from the female driver he saw slumped down over the steering wheel.

  “Are you okay?” he asked in a loud voice.

  He got no response, but in the next instant things shifted beneath his feet and his universe upended.

  The man on the hood of the vehicle gasped for air. Parker turned towards him in surprise and saw for the first time the line of fluids trailing out from beneath the smoldering car, and running between both vehicles. As he looked on, a piece of melting rubber began peeling free from the ruined frame and dripping towards the flammable liquid. From the Yugo, a baby in the back seat of the woman’s car began crying.

  He couldn’t save everyone.

  Making his decision, he sprang into action, dropping his pack and sprinting to the Yugo. As far as he knew, the man on the hood of the car was as good as dead. It was an unpleasant triage decision, but one that needed to be made immediately.

  He couldn’t see the crying baby from his angle, but the woman suddenly lifted her head and looked at him with the dull, pained eyes of a wounded animal. He leaped forward. This was a devil’s choice with nothing good or fair or balanced about it. Not everyone could be saved, and he had to choose now or everyone would die.

  Reaching the rear door, he yanked at the handle. He saw a now shrieking toddler in a babyseat, her pink Disney Frozen-themed onesie red with blood. Under the car, the pooling liquids went up with a whoosh that momentarily froze Parker’s blood.

  He looked over, and a line of fire shot between the two closely entwined vehicles—the undercarriage of the 4Runner erupted into flames. Heat waves undulated into him and he threw his arm up against the sudden glare. In the next moment, the engine compartment of the 4Runner went up like a bonfire.

  Parker staggered backward a couple of steps as the rapidly building heat of the 4Runner’s engine fire intensified enough to pop the crumpled hood free of its ruined moorings. The sound terrified him.

  The man trapped in the ruined windshield went up like a roadside flare, screaming in agony as he died. The woman screamed also, shrieking in terror. The door he gripped was locked—or jammed, he couldn’t tell which. With the electronics fried, there was no way the automated lock would work anyway. Praying it was unlatched and only jammed, he tried forcing it open by hand.

  Frantic, he jerked at the driver side door again just as a secondary pool of oil and lubricant ignited behind him on the pavement. He felt the door give a bit and realized it wasn’t locked. Happy for the potentially huge blessing, he jerked it open with a screeching grate of metal on metal and pulled a Spyderco flick-blade folding knife from where it had ridden clipped into his back pocket.

  Using his thumb, he clicked the blade out while snatching up the woman’s seatbelt.

  “Hold on, I’ll get you out!” he half snarled, half pleaded to the sobbing mother.

  In two easy motions, he cut her free of her restraints and then unceremoniously yanked her out of the car and onto the pavement.

  “My baby!” she cried out.

  Ignoring her, Parker reached for the latch on the lock of the back door as the baby continued wailing. As he worked, his back burned with the intensity of the cooking vehicles’ heat. He heard another ominous whoosh and knew there were barely seconds left to save the child. He pulled open the now unlocked back door and ducked inside, blade held ready.

  In the front of the car, the Yugo’s oil-pan ignited and flames filled the windshield in a burning wall. He winced away from the scorching heat, grunting in pain. The baby still wailed.

  He found the straps of the infant seat as the already damaged glass began cracking and buckling from the heat. As the temperature continued rising, he quickly sliced at the straps securing the seat in place against the vehicle’s fabric. There was no way in hell he was going to try and figure out the Rubik’s cube of all those buckles and snaps surrounding the baby.

  Abruptly, the hood leapt up into the air as the oil pan detonated and the engine exploded. He instinctively lunged forward to cover the baby as glass shattered around them and flames blew in the front.

  His skin scorched painfully as he threw himself backwards and out of the vehicle then, babyseat in his arms. The front seat burst into a bonfire of flames even as he flew back and sprawled out across the warm black asphalt.

  Clutching the babyseat, he half rolled and came to his feet, afraid of the possibility that the gas tank might go up at any second. Thick black smoke roiled and plumed in twisting columns around them, obscuring their immediate surroundings and stealing the oxygen. He coughed hard, trying to breathe. His lungs felt flash seared and heavily polluted all at once, just from inhaling the toxic super-heated fumes. Ominously, the baby was suddenly silent and, as he stumbled forward, he looked over and saw the mother lying collapsed on the sidewalk.

  Under optimal conditions, he never would have dared move a potential spinal injury patient, but things were a hell of a long way from optimal at the moment. As he staggered past, building speed as he moved, he dropped his knife and snatched the limp woman up by her collar, yanking her along behind him as he pushed himself forward.

  She came easily enough, but he felt as if he were wallowing in mud and moving in painfully slow motion. Time seemed to stretch out as he tried to escape before there was another explosion. The heat from the now fully engulfed vehicles was lashing into him with an utter, blistering concentration, and he powered forward under
the weight of the people he was saving.

  From experience, he knew he couldn’t pause; this was hardly his first car fire. He’d witnessed far too many during his years in uniform. He knew how unpredictable they were; how bad they could get. In the next instant, he heard one of the vehicle’s superstructures groan, and though he couldn’t tell which vehicle the noise had come from, he knew what was coming next.

  He heaved the mother in front of him and fell on top of her, flipping the babyseat in front of him so the backrest was towards the flames. He’d hit hard, tearing the skin off of his knees and elbows as he collapsed awkwardly over the pair in a human shield.

  A fire ball of white heat rolled across him and he cried out loud in pain. Beneath him, the woman’s hair product suddenly caught fire and her head went up like a match. Yelling something incoherent as he rose up, he slapped hard at her head, singeing his hands as he tried knocking down the stubborn fire. Finally, he ripped off his jacket and used it to smother the flames.

  Her hair was still smoking when it hit him fully that the baby still wasn’t crying, and what that meant. He spun the seat around to look at the toddler and, in the light of the burning vehicles, he clearly saw that the girl had stopped breathing. Her cheeks were a terrifying shade of blue from cyanosis, and she hung limp as a doll.

  Moving to cut her free, he realized he’d dropped his knife somewhere during the process. Knowing precious moments were ticking by, he fumbled around, finally releasing the child from her seat restraints. It had been a long, long time since he’d had to contend with a babyseat, and things had changed since his day.

  “Come on!” he pleaded to nothing and no one in particular.

  Pulling the little girl to him, he placed his lips over the baby’s mouth and tiny nostrils. He forced himself to move with deliberate caution. If he became overly excited, he could potentially exhale too much air into the child’s much smaller lungs and gravely injure them. Keeping one eye cocked on her little chest, he gently breathed, filling her lungs with air.

  He saw her chest rise and then fall as he meticulously performed the rescue breathing. Cradling her tight in against his chest, he pushed her clothes apart and settled the tips of his middle and pointer fingers on her sternum at the nipple line. Using just those points of contact, he began rhythmically pushing the little girl’s chest in and out, forcing the oxygenated blood through her body.

  He worked at a rapid rate, the exertion bringing beads of sweat out on his forehead. The mom was sobbing just behind him—a heart wrenching sound of terror and confusion. Go in an inch and a half on compressions, he told himself. Then two rescue breaths and thirty more compressions.

  Focusing harder, he pushed the noise behind him away and continued working on the baby. His hand began cramping soon enough, and though he knew the bones of pre-pubescent children were much, much more flexible and giving than those of adults, the sensation of her tiny ribcage folding and popping under his hand left him with a sick, uncomfortable feeling low in the pit of his stomach.

  In his arms, though, the little girl gave a small gasp and began crying. Tears burned at the back of Parker’s eyes for a moment as relief flooded through his body. He released a pent up breath and realized he’d been holding it. He turned to present the girl to her mother then, and the woman came up beside him, eager to cradle her child.

  He froze as he gave the mother a good first look that wasn’t framed by the prospect of her burning alive. She was Caucasian, middle thirties, with brown hair and a generous shape. She was also soaked in her own blood. A nasty avulsion lay in an ugly z-pattern on her forehead, and a great gash along her arm pumped blood out with enough force that he could see it ebbing and flowing with the pounding of her heart.

  She had seconds to live if the bleeding wasn’t immediately controlled.

  “Look at me!” he demanded.

  She cradled the crying baby to her, trying to shush and console the wailing little girl. She was in shock, Parker knew, and she wasn’t going to listen to him, but he had to try. He moved in closer to her.

  “Lady, look at me!” he said again, dredging up every last bit of command presence he had left from his years in the department.

  It managed to grab her attention. She looked at him with the unfocused, crazed eyes of a trauma patient. Shit, he thought, she’s gone. He wondered how bad the impact to her head had been. He changed the timbre and volume of his voice, speaking slowly and in a quieter, deeper voice.

  “Listen to me; your arm,” he said. “Your arm is bleeding badly, lady.”

  “Why am I bleeding?” she panicked, “Why am I bleeding?”

  Her blood ran red on the sidewalk, looking scarlet in the bonfire brightness of the burning vehicles. Based on that wound, she was going to die if he didn’t act drastically. It was not a question of if but of how many more moments she had left, and how lucky he was.

  Racing back to where he dropped his pack, he returned and pulling open the medic pack he’d carried, Parker found the field tourniquet and yanked it free. The baby continued shrieking in terror like a siren in response to her mother’s obvious fear. With resignation, Parker realized he had no choice. Or no choice that he could live with. Moving with a resigned decisiveness, he unfolded into motion and, springing forward, he snatched the front of the baby’s now blood-soaked clothing and pulled. The hand holding the tourniquet kit shot out and struck the mother in her chest, and he shoved hard.

  Even with her terror-based strength, he was stronger by far, and even though it looked ugly as hell, he was able to separate the baby from the mother with only a moment of effort. Her blood soaked into him in a hot, liquid gush and the sleeve of his jacket ran wet with it.

  The mother launched herself at him, her face twisted wild in confusion and fear. He hunched a shoulder up and ducked his head as she tried clawing at his eyes. He shrugged off several blows before he finally managed to set the screaming child down safely.

  “Hey!” An angry male voice shouted. “What the fuck are you doing? Leave her alone!”

  Flailing on his back, the woman gave a heavy sigh and finally collapsed, sliding backward; Parker spun to catch her and protect her head as she fell.

  “Leave her alone! I said, leave her alone!” the voice shouted again.

  The woman’s head lolled as Parker laid her down. Her eyes rolled, glassy and vacant as she looked at him without seeing. Hands moving quickly, Parker had just begun fitting the tourniquet over her arm when he heard the rush of feet behind him.

  He turned and half stood out of his kneeling crouch. A heavyset Hispanic male charged forward, face red with exertion. Rising up, Parker threw a hard right handed uppercut as the guy reached for him with two outstretched arms. His knuckles struck the lunging man on the point of the chin and the guy’s own momentum increased the impact of the blow.

  The misguided rescuer came up short, like a car slamming into a wall, and Parker felt the force of his blow reverberate back up his own arm. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. There had been a time in his life when he’d lived for that sensation. The man crumpled and Parker struck him a second time with an open handed shove that pushed the falling man away from both the mother and her child.

  Parker turned again as the man flopped down, and immediately reoriented himself to the woman’s arm. The baby continued crying in great angry whoops, but the mother lay listless, obviously confused, though whether it was from the loss of blood or the head blow, Parker couldn’t determine.

  He pushed the tourniquet up past the brachial artery to the junction of the shoulder where he began quickly tightening the device down. The flow of blood was soon slowing to a trickle, and he tightened down even more. A tremendous feeling of relief surged through him as he saw the wound abruptly stop leaking with a final twist of the lever. He grabbed the QuikClot package and ripped it open before he began stuffing the gauze into the open wound on her arm. He would have liked to have worn gloves, but he didn’t have time to pull them out of his med kit. On
ce he had the injury completely packed, he spread the attached gauze pad over the majority of the wound before reaching for the Israeli bandage. He quickly wound it around the woman’s arm, and tightened it and waited.

  He sat it in place and looked at his wristwatch to note the time. Once a few minutes had passed and he knew the hemostatic gauze had had time to work, he carefully removed the tourniquet. He watched to see if the bandage would turn red with the woman’s pumping blood. When it didn’t stain, he breathed a sigh of relief. The tourniquet would have been a last-ditch effort. Cutting off the blood to her arm would have resulted in it dying and needing to be amputated. If it was between life and death, obviously there was no choice, but he wanted to give her a fighting chance. Behind him, the man lying on the ground moaned. Parker scooped up the baby, wincing at the child’s shrill cries. Bouncing her gently on his shoulder, he toed the semi-conscious man.

  “Get up!” he ordered.

  The man did so like a drunk, confused and unsteady. This was no ex-athlete struck with dad bod—this guy was not, and had never been, someone likely to excel in a physical altercation. He had a double chin, and the spare tire, narrow shoulders, and soft-looking hands of a cubicle dweller.

  All this actually served to soften Parker’s view of him. The current situation was going to overwhelm a large portion of citizens—all those people who couldn’t conceive of a situation where a parental-like government wasn’t there to provide for them and ensure their safety.

  In one barbarically quick moment, all of that protection had been stripped, revealing the anarchy and chaos which had always been waiting just below the surface. He could guess how this scene had looked to the already frightened and bewildered man. A larger black man crouched over a screaming, thrashing, and much smaller white woman.