by Jones, K. J.
He was getting tired of being in this position with wild thing under him. “Come on.”
Finally, a voice came on, “9-1-1, what is your emergency?”
“About dang time.”
“What is your emergency, sir?”
He quickly rattled off the address and who and where he was. “I got some crazy wild thing here that's foaming at the mouth and on some crazy drugs that made her gone violent.”
“Were you bitten, sir?”
“Bitten?”
“Was anyone bitten, sir?”
“Ah, no.” His face screwed up at the strange questions. “When a car gonna get out here, ma'am? I can't keep her this way for long.”
“Response units are on their way.”
“Got an E-T-A on that?”
“Within the next hour, sir.”
He scoffed as he ended the call. Up to an hour like this would not be fun.
Phone put away, he began to think of how he could cuff her to the metal railing around the cement patio. He reckoned he'd do that before calling the office and reporting the incident—he needed to do his incident paperwork too.
With a plan in mind, he reached down to her throat while he lifted his knee.
Bad move.
In a flash, she whipped around and sunk her teeth hard into his hand. Knee back down on her back, he pressed his other hand against her face while he pulled his hand from her mouth.
“Shit, woman.”
The imprint in the glove, her teeth at least hadn't broken through the leather.
He decided he'd now treat her as a hostile enemy combatant. Grabbing her by the back of the neck and, with his other hand seizing the cuffs themselves, he pulled off and roughly yanked her to her feet. She went wildcat frenzy. But a wildcat tries to get away from its captor, while she was trying to get at him. His longer reach kept her at bay, and he used his boot to knock her away when she got too close.
She was not cooperating one bit to get over to the patio. He didn't want to let her get in any position that could give her access to biting him again. To get bit was just nasty, and she bit hard. Strong jaws. He did not doubt she could break the skin. That was just nasty.
He looked around at the doors in the courtyard, visible in three different sections of the hotel, then looked up at the windows to see if anyone was looking down. He didn't want this to be witnessed, as it would look real bad. He saw no one, so he dragged her backwards by the cuffs themselves. Her bare heels dragged on the cement, when they weren't kicking and swinging around.
Once on the patio and to the railing, he shoved her forward over the bar with her ass in the air, something else that would look real bad if seen. She was kicking and trying to move forward, which would cause her to land on her face if she succeeded. His hand worked on the key in the cuffs, which wasn't easy with someone squirming and moving like she did. Her face came around, and she growled and snapped her jaws with foam spitting everywhere. He had seen nothing like it in his life, except for maybe camels in Iraq. As soon as her wrist was free, the hand was going like an epileptic bird. He had to fetch it again. Then came the struggle to rotate the shoulder. He thought he really did pop, tear, or break something this time to get it to go backwards, because his patients had run thin with this whole situation. He had her one wrist with the cuff on the other side of the railing and brought the second wrist down to it. He was now sure the arm was out of the socket from the way it moved. Both wrists cuffed securely, he released her and quickly backed away.
A snarling, spitting wild creature turned at him. She tried repeatedly to come forward at him, as if she wasn't cuffed. Teeth bared and jaws snapping, foam dripping off her chin, eyes dark and insane, whole body moving and struggling. He took out a piece of gum and chewed on it while watching her. Then he took out his phone and began videoing her.
“Sully gonna love this shit.”
The door to the patio opened. A fourteen-year-old chubby black kid Chris talked with dozens of times came out in his pajamas and coat with moccasin slippers. He looked groggy. “Chris, what's all the noi –” He stopped, eyes big when he saw the cuffed lady on the railing. He pushed his glasses further up on his nose with his index finger. “What the hell is that?”
“The quality of the guests going real downhill here.” Chris chuckled.
“What is she? It? What? What's wrong with her?”
“Beats the hell outta me. Cops on they way.”
“What's wrong with her?” The kid took out his cell phone and began videoing her too. “My friends will not believe this. We got one.”
“One what?”
“A zombie.”
Chris paused in chewing. “A what?”
“You know. A zombie.”
He chuckled. “I got a buddy who'd say that too. This woman ain't dead. I can tell you that.” He examined the teeth marks in his glove again.
“Infected zombies aren't dead. They have a virus.”
Chris raised his brows. “Yeah, but this here is real life.”
“Did she try to bite you?”
He stiffened at the question. “Why?”
“That's how the virus spreads. That's if they can just bite you and don't eat you.”
“Boy, you still half asleep.”
“What's wrong with her then?”
“Don't know. Do I look like a doctor that I can tell you that?”
Once they were content with their video footage and sent it to friends and social media, they watched her in silence. He gave the kid a stick of gum.
She pulled hard against the cuffs. They saw blood dripping from her wrists onto the cement floor beneath.
“I don't get why she ain't feeling no pain,” Chris said.
“Zombies don't.”
“Would you cut that out with your fooling, boy. There ain't no such thing as zombies.”
“What if she pulls out of the handcuffs?”
“She gotta break bones in her hands to do that.”
“I think that's what she's doing.”
“Nuh.” He scratched the stubble of his fresh buzz cut. “Oh hell no. She is.” She was freaking him out. “This ain't right. What kind of dang drug causes all this here?”
“Zombies. You have to shoot her in the head.”
He stopped pacing and looked at the boy. “I ain't shooting no unarmed woman in the head that less than five meters from me. How that gonna look?” He gazed out towards the road beyond the driveway of the hotel. “Where those dang cops.”
“That's the only way to stop them. Shoot 'em in the head.”
Chris looked at him and shook his head. “Boy, you wrong. You need to go make some friends. Take up sports or girls or something. You been watching too much shit on the internet and it messed with your head.”
The boy suddenly said, “Did you hear? That old guy on the third floor must have died. Like days ago.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“It reeks like death up there. Makes me want to puke.”
“Management take him out?”
“People just started complaining tonight. An ambulance or something is supposed to be coming. And animal control. There's an animal in there—you can hear movement inside and it hits the door and growls and stuff when you knock. I bet it's started eating him. I've seen that in documentaries.”
Chris shook his head. “Shit getting bizarre.”
In the distance, he heard a siren wail. He hoped it was the response to his emergency call. She was still pulling on the cuffs. If he hadn't locked them as tight as he did, she probably would have pulled loose from them, breaking bones in her hands to do so. He really did not want to shoot this lady. But as far as he saw, if she broke out of the cuffs, whatever he would have to do, it would cause massive injury to stop her.
The sirens grew louder, to his relief. Soon, a single police patrol car turned off the road into the driveway, followed by an ambulance. His brows went up. “Why they send only one car?” He looked at the boy, “Stay here and holler real lo
ud if she starts busting loose. Hear?”
“Yeah.”
“Be right back. Let me direct 'em over here.”
Scuffing the heels of his boots as he walked, he headed towards the front parking lot around the other side of the building. Once taking the corner, he squinted against the strobe lights flashing off the top of the patrol car. He raised his hand to shield the intense pulse from his eyes. The police officer got out. There was only one cop.
“She 'round back in the courtyard,” Chris told him.
The cop looked at Chris's holstered revolver. “She's still alive?”
He didn't know how to take that and felt insulted by it. “Yes, sir.”
The cop looked surprised.
The patrol car and ambulance rolled around the building while he walked back. A pool of blood was now under her hands and more dripping down.
“She's getting close to getting out of the cuffs,” the boy said. His eyes wider than they were before.
“Well, they here now to take her.”
The patrol car, with its intensely pulsing lights continuing, and the ambulance slowly came to a stop in the parking lot next to the courtyard. The ambulance back doors opened and the paramedics—a man and a woman—wheeled out a gurney containing a board with straps. They wore gloves, masks over their mouths and noses, and plastic glasses over their eyes—basic gear during the H1N3 epidemic. What was not typical was the thick newspapers they had duct taped to their forearms. The woman looked to have soccer shin guards on her calves.
Wild Thing switched directions from the boy and tried to get at the people approaching her.
Once the paramedics and police officer were close enough to her, they slowed their pace and cautiously moved like they were stalking an animal. Both paramedics brought out syringes. The cop had a strap of leather in his leather-gloved hands.
They closed in on her back. She pulled at the cuffs and snarled and spat at them. The cop led the way. He seized her and pulled the strap across her mouth as a gag. He buckled it at the back of her head. “Clear!”
The paramedics moved in. Both jabbed her with the syringes.
Chris watched in shock. The boy watched in fascination.
A few more struggles and grunts and growls through the gag, and she went out like a light. Her legs gave out and she fell, exposing her chubby, mangled wrists. Chris handed the cop the key to the handcuffs, while staying as far from her as he could. The cop uncuffed her and placed the cuffs down on the patio floor. The paramedics carried her to the gurney where they strapped down her arms, legs, and chest to the board. Two big straps then came around her body and the gurney to make sure she was secured to it.
The cop said to Chris, “I'd thoroughly disinfect those cuffs in bleach before touching them.”
“I'll do that.”
The paramedics loaded the gurney into the back of the ambulance. The cop began walking to his car.
“Hey,” Chris called to the cop. “I gotta give you my statement.”
“We have these calls all over town. We know what happened.”
“Yeah, but I need a report for my work. My boss may not be too used to this like y'all are.”
The report was brief. She came out and tried to attack the security guard, it mostly said.
Chris sat at the courtyard table, writing his incident report. The boy busily texted the incident out to his network.
Chris's phone showed a missed call. He scowled at the display, wondering why it hadn't rung. Checking who it was from, he scowled harder to see it was from his work office. He hit the Call button to call it back, and nothing happened.
“What the hell.” He checked the bars—full load—and tried again. Nothing. “You got bars over there?”
“Yeah.”
“Anything going wrong with your cell?”
“No. Why?”
Chris told what happened. “It ain't going through.”
“Text is different from voice.”
“So?”
“If something's going on, like the towers are overloaded with calls, that would happen, but texts would still go through.”
“Why would the towers be overloaded?”
“There was a zombie here, Chris.”
“Stop that.”
“Try the landline.”
Chris went inside to the hotel office, grumbling about the kid saying foolish things about zombies and kids today. He dialed his work office on the hotel manager's desk phone.
The secretary answered on the second ring, stating the company's name. Chris identified himself.
“He's calling everybody in,” she said.
“My shift ain't over.”
“Come in now anyway.”
“Why?”
“His insurance doesn't cover all that's going on.”
“There's nobody covering this here hotel.”
“That's for the police to worry about, not you.”
He sighed. “I'm on my way then.”
As Chris drove to his company's office, he worried about the incident with the lady. He didn't need to lose this job. Jobs were hard to come by, especially for war vets. He didn't like the job, but it was comfortable. Most of his life being in the military was not a good credential in the civilian sector, for reasons he never understood. Having a Ranger as a security guard was like using a panther as a guard dog. But his job paid the bills and child support and put food and beer in his stomach.
His pickup truck's heater cranked to get the chill out of his bones. The handcuffs sat in a plastic grocery bag, with the leather gloves. He didn't know what that lady had, but whatever it was, he sure didn't want to catch it. He intended on following the cop's recommendation of bleach. And throw out the gloves.
He thought about his kids. He had heard nothing from them, from their mother, or from any of the guys at Bragg. He heard nothing from his parents or his brother either, who all lived in his small hometown. His brother was the type that called back unidentified missed calls and wore two cells, as if he was that important. He'd definitely call back. It was like they all disappeared.
With leaving work early, Chris could try to drive to Fayetteville. His kids may be awake. Teenagers stayed up to all kinds of strange hours.
Up ahead, he saw a car wreck. The police's blinding strobe lights made him want to put on his sunglasses. He heard the strobe lights caused seizures. He didn't doubt they could. A police officer directed traffic around an accident scene. The line of vehicles moved slowly, rubber necking to see what happened.
He did too, but what happened was a mystery to him. There was only one car in the wreck. It had no body damage. Instead, a couple of its windows were busted. It looked like they had been busted inwards. There was barely any glass on the blacktop below. There was blood. A lot of it. On the finish below the busted windows and on the road below that. He could not for the life of him re-created this one car accident.
Once passing it, a few minutes and he pulled into the security company's parking lot. Vehicles belonging to security guards parked in front, most of which he recognized from seeing them five days a week. He slid down from the cab of his pickup. Enough heat clung to him to buffer the cold when he hurried to the door. Inside, the heat pumped through the vents. The lobby was crowded with security guards in identical uniforms. Third-shift guards like him, coming in early, looking confused. One man had his head bowed and a troubled look in his eyes. Chris had exchanged some talk with him in the past, but he didn't really know the guy. He didn't really know any of them.
He went to the desk where the secretary looked stressed. She was never pleasant, but today her overly made-up eyes looked downright irritated.
“I had an incident.”
“Who hasn't?” she said sharply. “Fatal shooting?”
“No. I was attacked.”
She looked him over with her hands on the hips of her too tight pants. “Were you injured?”
“No.”
“Were you bit?”
“Why
is everyone talking about biting?”
“Cause everyone's getting bit.”
“What's going on? What is all this?”
She shrugged. “Do I know? No one knows.”
“Somebody gotta know.”
“Well, that somebody ain't in this office. Let me see the police report.” He handed it over to her, and she read it. “Not much happened.”
“Sure seemed like much to me.”
She gave him a look. “Compared to what else been going on, it ain't much. Did you write out your report?”
“Yeah.”
He handed it to her, and she looked it over.
“Go home. He'll call you in for a verbal when he gets his head out from under all this.” Her painted, long nails gestured to the stacks of files on her desk.
“That it?”
“He's going by severity of the incident. Fatal shootings come first.” She looked him over for a second. “You're armed and didn't shoot her?”
“She wasn't armed.”
“This your first?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your first one of these. The crazy people that foam at the mouth. Your first?”
He looked around at the other guards. They looked like their favorite dog ran away and their least favorite woman came back. “Yeah, I guess.”
“I'll note that. He'll probably call you before your next shift.”
“’Cause it's my first?”
“You gotta do what you gotta do to protect yourself and the hotel guests.”
He felt uneasy with that. Shooting unarmed people was always high up on the list of things to try to avoid. “I'll wait for his call. When is my next shift?”
“Don't know. I'll call you about that.”
“Everything gone dang weird.”
“Keep warm.”
“Yeah, you, too.” He wanted out of there. It felt like there was no air.
Outside, for a second the cold air was refreshing. In the distance, he heard the wail of emergency vehicle sirens. In another direction, more emergency vehicle sirens. A creepy sensation inched its way into his heart.
