Extinction Level Event (Book 1): Extinction Level Event

by Jones, K. J.

  Peter came in, carrying both duffel bags. Behind him, a disheveled cop closed and locked the door, then remained there as if guarding it.

  Phebe and Mullen stood at the center of the living room. It had once been decorated in country style, equipped with farm themed curtains. But degenerated into a man cave, dominated by a huge flat screen and a well-worn recliner in front of it.

  The two civilians didn’t know what to do with themselves. They stood within a foot of each other, watching with wide eyes. Phebe hugged herself. Her hands rubbing her arms for comfort. Mullen’s gaze followed Peter, but he received no instruction. Two lost twenty-something-year-olds, the youngest people there. Their worlds had turned upside down. They had nothing. Not even the safety of the predictability of life.

  Phebe decided she should check on Syanna and made her way down the hall. Chris came out of the last room on the right.

  “Bathroom’s there,” he said as he went to another bedroom.

  She nudged open the bedroom’s door. Syanna lay on the bed. The bedside lamp shade was cockeyed to shine a flashlight tethered to it on her. Matt cut the jeans leg.

  “Pheebs, see if you can find something for her to bite down on.” Matt gestured to Chris’s closet. “A leather belt would do fine.”

  She rolled the closet door open. Barely anything hung on hangers. Piles of clothes atop shoes on the floor. Hanging on the pole to the side, an army dress uniform in a protective plastic bag. A tan beret hung in front of a dark green coat. Colorful ribbons shown through the plastic. A belt was easy enough to find, hanging alone on a wire hanger.

  “Will this work?”

  “Perfect. I’m going to need you to sit up at her head. When I say so, you’ll put that belt into her mouth and you’ll hold it there until I tell you to take it out. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  Chris came back with things in his arms. “Any of this work?”

  Matt looked through them. “That hockey stick. Break it into foot and half lengths. Just the straight part. And why would you have a hockey stick in the South?”

  “I dunno. I have kids. Weird shit shows up all the time.”

  “Go get me Conway and Mazy. I’m gonna need people to hold her down.”

  “Why can’t I?”

  “Because you are huge and she’s tiny and if you apply body weight to her, I’ll have more broken bones to treat.”

  “Sounds stupid.” Chris did as he was told.

  Matt examined the wound as he talked to Phebe. “Think I hurt his feelings there?”

  “He doesn’t seem sensitive.”

  The ugly wound filled with blood, which he washed away with water from a bottle.

  “You never know with him.”

  “Is that the infamous Chris Higgins you and Syanna talk about?”

  “Yup. That’s the mighty redneck himself. Did he offend you?”

  “No. We had some kind of weird bonding. He called me ‘baby girl’ before we were about to die.”

  “Hmm. Near death always brought out the best in him.” His pale green eyes looked at her. “You’re in for some fun with this crew. They’re some characters.”

  “I’m getting that.”

  He studied her for a moment. “Once done here, I’ll check you out.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You have dried blood down your face. Must have come from somewhere. Were you bitten?”

  “No. Nearly, but no.”

  “I believe the virus spreads by bite.”

  “Explains a lot in their behavior.”

  “Was Sye bitten?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Now, assuming she recovers from the head injury, if I only had an x-ray machine, she may walk again.”

  “She won’t walk?”

  “Femur breaks are hard to mend, especially if you can’t see the bone.”

  Two uniformed cops came in, one a white man and the other a black woman. They nodded to Phebe.

  “Chris said you need us,” the man said.

  “Yeah,” said Matt. “Oh, this is Phebe. Syanna’s roommate. Phebe, this is Jimbo Conway and Mazy Baptiste.”

  Jimbo said, “Yeah, I was to your house the other night. Saw Syanna Lynn, but you weren’t there. Just Rebecca. Sorry, by the way, about her. But, uhm, good to meet you.”

  Mazy gave a polite small smile to her.

  “What do you need us to do?” Mazy asked Matt.

  “One of you will hold down her leg and hips while the other holds down her shoulders. She will wake up from the pain.”

  “You got pain shots, right?” asked Jimbo.

  “She’s significantly concussed. Normally, we try to keep them awake so they don’t slip into a coma. Ideally, I could keep her awake until her brain reduces swelling and she’s out of danger.”

  “That’s a painful break.”

  “I said ideally. Her ulna is broken as well. I’m hoping a clean break, from the way it looks and moves.”

  “All right,” said Mazy. “Let’s get to this. Want arms or leg?”

  Jimbo shrugged. “Lady’s choice.”

  “Take her leg.”

  Phebe lifted Syanna’s head and sat it on her lap. She wrapped the leather belt around her hands and waited.

  With everyone in place, Matt said, “Now.”

  She opened Syanna’s mouth and slid the leather between her teeth. Everyone held down their stations.

  Matt’s hands grasped Syanna’s lower leg. “Jimbo, push down on her upper thigh of this leg too. I’m going to pull hard to snap the bone in place. On three. One, two, three.” He pulled.

  It looked horrible.

  Syanna’s eyelids popped open. Phebe held down the belt. Syanna powerfully screamed. Even her eyes seemed to scream out the pain.

  With one fierce pull, the bone snapped back in. Phebe looked away in disgust.

  Syanna’s eyelids fluttered. She fainted.

  “Good,” said Chris from the doorway, munching on a sandwich. “She’ll stay quiet that way. Girl got some lungs on her. She scream when you’re fucking her, kid?”

  Matt rolled his eyes. “I don’t know which part of that was more offensive, Chris.”

  “What do ya mean?” Crumbs fell on his shirt and he swept them on the floor.

  “Can’t believe you call me ‘kid.’ The rest of it, that’s just you. I’m over thirty.”

  “Really? When did that happen?”

  Matt stood. “You’re an old man, Chris. Sorry to tell you.”

  Chris shrugged. “Feel like it. Muscles hurt. Ain’t run that much since Rangers. Good to know I still can, though. That’s good.”

  “Do you have flour?”

  “What?”

  “Flour? The thing people make cakes and shit out of.”

  “I don’t know what’s in there.”

  “Good. Helpful.”

  “You baking a cake?” An impish grin formed. “Huh, murse.” A murse was a male nurse.

  “Yeah, to celebrate that you may have lost a pound of fat today and may possibly see your dick again.”

  Chris snorted a laugh. “That a good one, kid.” He rubbed his belly. “Yeah, maybe this end of days shit can make me lose weight. Really haven’t seen my cock in a while.”

  “TMI,” Mazy wailed.

  “What?”

  “Too much information, Chris. I know I, for one, do not want to know anything about your dick.” Mazy turned to Phebe. “Do you?”

  Phebe looked deer in headlights. She shook her head.

  “See, Chris?”

  “You just jealous, homegirl. You can’t have this big cock. I don’t fuck black girls.”

  “Oh, my world is shattered. Climbing on top of your heaping whale mass was my life’s dream.”

  “Well, darlin,’ you’re just gonna have to cry and move on.” He looked at Phebe. “I don’t fuck skinny girls neither.”

  Mazy and Jimbo busted out laughing. Phebe blushed. Matt tried his hardest to stifle his chuckle.

  “Man,
” said Jimbo. “You really think you’re God’s gift, don’t you?”

  Matt placed the broken pieces of hockey stick to either side of Syanna’s thigh and wrapped gauze around to stabilize the break. He looked at Phebe. “Ignore Chris. We do.”

  Mazy looked at Phebe’s reddening face. She leaned closer. “Girl, better get used to it. Sully’ll make people uncomfortable for his own amusement, too. He just uses bigger words.”

  “Nuh,” said Jimbo. “You didn’t hear him on HAM earlier. He was flirting with her.”

  Matt’s hand slipped at tying. He looked at them. “He did what?”

  “Yeah, he was flirting with her. Not an asshole once to her. He was even ‘Peter’”

  “Huh,” Mazy said. “Well, doesn’t he like smart girls? Didn’t he once have that girlfriend?”

  “Yeah,” said Chris. “That would be ‘that once.’”

  “Sully had a girlfriend?” asked Matt.

  Chris said, “Yeah. Back before the wars. He said a girl would have to be crazy to be with a special ops guy always deployed. He didn’t want to be with no crazy girl. Smart man. Wish I listened to him.”

  “Me, too,” said Matt. He moved to setting Syanna’s arm. “I really need flour. I need to make her casts.”

  “See what I got.” Chris left the doorway.

  A few minutes later, Mullen showed up. “Hey, that big guy wants me to ask if biscuit mix would work?”

  “I’m not baking dinner. Tell him no. Something that says ‘flour’ on it. Tell Sully to help him with the spelling.”

  Jimbo laughed. He said to Mazy, “Sully would carry these melting crayons with him and after a brief, he’d draw out the mission in stick figures for Chris and hand the paper to him. Used to piss off Chris so bad.”

  Matt said, “He’d draw the bad guys with these huge turbans. They looked like those big-headed gray aliens.”

  “The bullets always looked like we were pissing on the enemy.”

  “He tried to improve his gun drawings,” said Matt.

  “Never got better.” Jimbo laughed so hard he teared up.

  “Y’all had a better time than me in the sandbox,” said Mazy.

  The two laughed harder.

  Jimbo imitated Peter’s Boston accent, “Men, they call this the sandbox. It’s not the one you played in as kids. It’s the one the cat shits in. The food tastes like cat shit. You’ll be sober and jacked up on caffeine all the time and when you piss, it’ll smell like cat piss, because you’re dehydrated and smell bad. Welcome to Iraq where we fight other people’s fucking problems.”

  It didn’t sound too funny to Phebe, but the two laughed themselves silly.

  The Boston-accented voice yelled down the hall, “You reta’ds done yet? What’s all the laughing?”

  That only made them laugh harder.

  “Y’all are mental,” Mazy said. “Come on, Phebe. We’ll get you cleaned up.”

  “She has a head wound,” said Matt, cheeks blushed and trying to repress his smile.

  “Trained in field first response for bullet wounds. Think I can handle a booboo on the noggin’.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Smart ass.”

  Mazy led her to the bathroom. It bordered on gross. Apparently, the maid died.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Mazy said. “This gunk may actually be alive.” With her foot, she closed the toilet lid. “Sit. Let’s see if we can find a clean washcloth.” She opened the cabinet beneath the sink. “Oh wow. Impressive porn collection. We’ll just close that back up and pretend we never saw it.”

  Phebe was starting to like her.

  “For a man that can’t see his dick, he sure knows how to find it in the loo.”

  Phebe chuckled. “You use the word ‘loo’?”

  “It’s British for bathroom.”

  “I did an undergrad semester in Greater London.”

  “Righteous. I was a POW with British intel girls. I was with military intelligence.”

  Phebe’s face dropped. “POW?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t that bad. No bamboo shoots under the fingernails. The upside of fighting a fundamentalist Islamic enemy is that they want nothing to do with us Western women. We were kept in a big room all the time and only saw women. If anything, we were tortured with boredom, too many hands of poker, and our own body odor. There was no a/c. Not a big deo country. Let me get some gauze from Matt. If I use any of the towels in here, it’ll probably give you hepatitis.”

  She returned quick enough and set about cleaning up Phebe’s face. “We still got water. That’s good. They didn’t turn that off on us.”

  With rubbing alcohol, she dabbed the head wound. Phebe winced at the sting.

  “How long have you known these guys?” Phebe asked.

  “I’m Jim’s girlfriend. So that was my intro.”

  “You didn’t serve in the wars with them?”

  “I was a Marine. We often shared camps. There were plenty of Rangers there. But things are different for a girl, especially for a female officer. You gotta keep your distance from men, if you’re wise.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You get a reputation. It’s like high school with the popular jocks. Men say women gossip a lot. Oh no. Men are ten times worse any day of the week. Military men are the worst. You heard them gabbing about Sully flirting with you.”

  Mazy finished up. She squatted down in front of Phebe.

  “I’ll tell you something, sister to sister, surrounded by men, between you and me.”

  “Okay,” said Phebe.

  “Sully has a reputation as a player. He’s real fine looking. No doubt about that. Between the blue eyes and that ass, hmm. I’ve seen while hanging out with these guys at bars, girls practically scratch their best friend to get with him. So stupid how they behave. And he doesn’t respect them. What’s to respect? This is coming out wrong. I don’t mean you’ll throw yourself at him. You don’t seem like that at all.”

  “I think I understand.”

  “These guys are filled with stories about him with female soldiers. Gotta take it with a grain of salt. Men love stories of men’s conquest of women and Sully is the alpha male of this wolf pack, so they especially love stories about him. They hero worship him. Just… okay, if he is interested in you, make him work for it. You absolutely do not want to be trapped in this if you give in easily to his charms and he discards you. I’m sorry if that’s harsh, but I have seen a lot in my life of what these swaggering men can do. There’s a poster. A pyramid. It has these types of guys at the top. Everybody else in the military below that. And women at the bottom.”

  She leaned her back against the wall, and continued, “I will warn you, these men are going to tighten into the warrior pack as shit goes on. They’re kind of goofy ex-soldiers right now. But they’ll get it back. Be aware of the hierarchy. You’re smart. You must be to be working on a PhD. Use that brain to assess the situation. Just as I am already thinking of my place in the hierarchy. I am with the omega male as my boyfriend. I must prove myself on my merit, not Jim’s, ‘cause I don’t want to do the grunt work. You are a civilian. You are automatically at the bottom of the pack. And you’re an attractive female. One of three females. The only single one, not with one of their buddies. Hmm-uh.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What I’m trying to say, in my stupid clumsy way, is being the alpha male’s girl is a very good position for a civvie. But that’s in a relationship, with him caring about you. I don’t know what you’re like with guys and all. I heard you are extremely career minded. But keep in the back of your mind a relationship with the alpha male is a good move, if you like him, too. As a civilian female.”

  Mazy was about to stand, but then came down again. “And do not get involved with Matt Gleason. If Sully fancies you, and obviously Matt does, alpha will get the girl. They will fight. Sul may have a bad leg, but he’s still a mean ass fighter.”

  “What, he wins me like a trophy if he fight
s Matt?” Phebe’s offence transparent.

  Mazy’s brows raised. “They’re not academic types. They don’t talk things out. They will throw down on each other. Friends will fight each other and then go drinking together. Weird man world.”

  “I heard that about guys. Some kind of guys, that is.”

  “Not like us, hon. Holding grudges and gotta maneuver through land mines to prevent World War Three. All those feelings. Boys will just beat the snot out of each other and then be back to being best buds, bruises and all. I mean, I don’t hold grudges. I don’t got the time nor patience for that shit. I need to get on with things. Do you? Hold grudges?”

  “No. I’m pretty straight forward.”

  “New Yorkers usually are.”

  “I’ve been called blunt to the point of rudeness.” Phebe shrugged.

  “I can handle some rudeness. But, ah, princess back there?”

  “Oh! I think she writes every slight, real or imagined, in a diary.”

  “Southern belles are known for it.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “New Orleans,” which she pronounced N’Awlins. “The Big Easy, cher. But we’re some hybrid of Southern and Northern. We had immigrants at the turn of the century, like New York did. Got a lot of Irish.” She pointed at Phebe, “And Italians.”

  “I’m only half Italian.”

  “What’s the other half?”

  “Irish.”

  “Oh. Does Sully know that?”

  Phebe shrugged.

  “Be careful with him, honey. If he really is interested in you, you got a tiger by the tail. But be careful. C’mon, hugs.”

  Phebe gladly went into her arms. It was tight hug, reassuring and warm. Mazy’s straight black hair smelled of honeysuckle and jasmine.

  “We girls have to stick together in this,” Mazy whispered into her ear before releasing her.

  “Okay.”

  They shared a smile.

  Big hands banged on the door. “Hey, any lesbian shit going on in there, I want to watch.”

  “Sometimes I have an urge to shoot that man,” said Mazy.

  The Boston voice, “Chris, have I beaten you up lately? I thought I had that on my to-do list.”

  “They hogging the bathroom.”

  “Go piss outside. Maybe a zom will bite you and you’ll get smarter.”

  “It’s my bathroom. My house.”