“There’s no point. I have a gun.”
Everything changed. The call just became serious, more than checking on a caller’s welfare. “Sir, why do you have a gun?”
I entered the location strictly from mapping, and put that fact on the text line. Police then know I don’t have an exact, verifiable location. I add: M WITH GUN—POSS SUICIDAL. “Sir, why do you have a gun?”
“Because. I don’t want to die that way.”
“What way?”
“They’re not dead though. They look it. But they’re not. Their bodies will continue to decay, but they’ll keep going, keep coming after you, keep eating until they just can’t do it anymore. They get all dumb, and forget how to do things, but not how to eat. They remember that. And how to run. My God, they’re fast. So, so fast.”
“Who forgets things?”
“Who?” he laughed. “All of them. Everyone who got the vaccination.”
“What vaccination?” I asked.
“For the flu. Aren’t you listening to me?”
“Sir, I’m trying to understand what you’re telling me. But I first need to know where the gun is?”
“Here. It’s right here. In my hand. The barrel is under my chin.”
I added that, and sent the job. “Sir, why don’t you put the gun down while we talk about this?”
He laughed, again. “Are you thick, son? There is nothing to talk about. There is no cure. There is no healing them. We should have let the stupid flu run its course. Someone suggested that. I don’t know who it was. They were right. But no. The government wanted the vaccination mass produced to cover up their man-made flu in the first place. With the flu and the vaccination combined—what have we done? I mean, what have we done?”
“Sir, sometimes things look bad, hopeless even, but after a good night’s sleep—”
“You don’t want to be around tomorrow,” he said. “The lucky ones, the smart ones, will do what I’m doing—and end it.”
“I don’t know you, sir. But I am sure you have plenty to live for.” I talked out of my ass. King Bullshit. What did I know? Maybe he had nothing to live for. “Friends, family…”
Silence.
“Sir?” I paused a beat. “Sir?”
“I just wanted to call as a way of apologizing.”
“Apologizing to whom?” I asked. I didn’t ask ‘for what.’ He thought he already told me. Too many questions in the wrong direction, and I risked angering him further. I wanted him calm, and thinking that I was helping him.
“Everyone. It won’t make a difference. To me, it’s at least something.”
It sounded like he was wrapping up, getting ready to take action. Most suicidal callers call 9-1-1 because they aren’t ready to die, and the call is an actual cry for help. This guy, he sounded different. Serious. I believed him.
“Sir, put the gun down.” One of my hands went to my stomach. I winced as I sucked in a deep breath.
“You can stop them. It’s futile really, but you can stop them.”
He had my attention. I wanted to understand. I wanted to help. The job might be full of political shit, but helping people every night was rewarding. Gave me purpose, something I’d been running thin on since the divorce. “Stop who?”
“You have to destroy the head. The brain. It’s the only way really. You take off their arms, and they’ll run at you, remove their legs, and they’ll use their arms to drag themselves at you. They’re relentless. Fucking relentless.”
This is too much. I checked the job. Police have been dispatched, but no squad cars were assigned to the job yet. I glanced at the electronic job board. It flashed in purples, yellows, and greens. There are hundreds of jobs waiting for available responders. Hundreds. Never have I seen anything like this. Never. “Sir,” I said.
“The vaccinations—they were infected, a broken vial. A contaminant was released during production. No one knew. No one understood. We were under the gun. And once we did realize it. . .the government demanded a cure for the public—a prevention. We didn’t have time to remake it, any of it. So we didn’t stop. We just, ah God, we just kept plugging away. It was only later, you’ve got to believe me, it was only after that when we truly realized, really understood we’d made a huge error—that the antibody had horribly mutated. By then, what could we do? What could we do?”
I tried to put all of his nonsensical ranting into some kind of order. I couldn’t. This guy was either an overworked scientist, or a nut. I’d of gone with nut at the beginning of the call. Still leaned toward nut, but . . . either way, I felt kind of sorry for him. His words made my stomach muscles tense, and ache. I couldn’t seem to detach myself from his nightmare.
“Sir, what is your name?” I hoped I sounded friendly. Not like a cold call taker just doing a job.
The sound of a gunshot boomed in my headset.
I pushed back in my chair, away from the keyboards, and stared at the woods on the mapping monitor, as if I saw him. A lone man in the woods, surrounded by trees and darkness, leaning on the trunk of a Volvo or Lexus before blowing out his brains. “Sir? Sir?”
I add info: GUN SHOT. POSS D.O.A. Sent it.
I needed a break, time off the floor.
Chapter Five
“Supervisor,” I yelled. Waited. Looked around. Everyone was still busy. We had over a hundred calls in Que.
I sent a message to the supervisors’ pagers to look at the job. Nothing more I could do. Nothing they’d be able to do. At least I’d alerted them for when authorities called with questions.
Permission or not, it’s break time. I needed a couple of minutes to get my head back together. I needed a cigarette. As far behind as we were, breaks would get skipped. I set my headset down, inactivated my terminal and walked off the floor. I wanted to look back, see how Allison was doing in the police pod, but didn’t want to risk eye contact with a supervisor--didn’t want to get questioned about why I was up and walking off the floor with so many calls waiting to be answered.
I patted my pocket to ensure my smokes were there, headed off the floor, through the halls, and toward the back door. The rain had stopped. The night had cleared. No need for a coat. Moon’s out in a cloudless sky. Looked peacefully deceiving.
The perimeter was fenced-in. Secure within its confines. I figured I had fifteen minutes and wasn’t wasting them thinking about work.
I thought about Kenya. And the scientist.
I lit my cigarette.
“They’re saying they’re like monsters.”
I looked up. Laforce is standing there. “What?”
“On the news. The city’s full of these monsters. They’re attacking people. Eating them.”
“Eating them? What, eating people?” I thought of the suicidal guy, what he’d said. I almost smiled. It sounded foolish. It was foolish. Best I knew, George Romero wasn’t shooting a new film in Rochester.
“Yeah. It’s becoming, I don’t know, like an overnight epidemic.”
“What, like all of Rochester?”
“I heard New York. Chicago. Pennsylvania.” LaForce took my cigarette. “You mind?”
I eyed him curiously, as I lit another. “You don’t smoke.”
“Right now I do.” LaForce took calls, dispatched both fire-EMS and police, and when needed, acted as a supervisor. He had access to more information than a schmuck like me did.
“What do you mean ‘it is’?”
Laforce took a long drag. I waited. Almost counted down from five out loud. He went into an expected coughing jag. Smoke escaped from parted lips and nostrils. The big guy looked like a mildly retarded dragon.
“Give me that.” I took the cigarette from him. Dropped it. Crushed the lit head with my heel.
“Guy on the news said something about scientists here at the hospital breaking some vial, and covering up the mistake. Had something to do with that flu.”