Outbreak Page 3
The woman screamed as the older of the two men loomed over her prostrate body, mouth opened wide as though a lover who might hungrily cover her in an open-mouth kiss. But instead, he clamped his visibly crooked teeth over her pert, little nose. The other man moved in and fell on her body and began groping her midriff. She flailed and kicked at her attackers, determined that she was not going down without a fight. Burns and Flanagan, who had been momentarily stunned by the struggle, snapped out of their trance and sprang into action.
Roy reached the heap of writhing humanity first and yanked the closest man away from her. He pushed him face down on the concrete walkway and held him there. The woman emitted a strangled, wet scream as blood gushed like a fountain from the place where her nose had been just a minute ago. Daniel moved in on the second man and pulled him away from her by jerking hard on the hood of his blood-soaked sweatshirt. The action rolled the man up onto his knees. At first, he fell forward on his hands, then he staggered unsteadily to his feet again. To Daniel’s horror the man was chewing on the gristle and flesh that had been the woman’s nose and before he could mentally process what he was witnessing, the man lunged for him.
Daniel laid into him with a roundhouse punch to the jaw and reached for his sidearm with a single, fluid motion. The man went down, but only long enough to regain his footing. He bounced back to his feet like a child’s punching bag with a sand-weighted bottom, impossible to keep down. Daniel had knocked more than a few men into oblivion with a punch like that, but this man was coming for him again.
Daniel raised his service revolver, pointing the muzzle at the attacker. “Stop. Get down now. I mean what I say when I tell you I’ll put ya down for good.”
The man staggered forward and reached for Daniel who promptly squeezed two rounds into his chest at point-blank range. The force of the impact spun him away and he fell forward, off the curb and onto the pavement between two parked police cruisers.
Before Daniel could move to check him, the woman, whose face was a gruesome mask of the macabre, grabbed him by the cuff of his trousers. Her eyes had rolled back in their sockets and she seemed to be in the throes of some kind of seizure as she emitted the most mournful wail he had ever heard. Like the legendary Banshee her scream rose again to a glass-shattering pitch. “Holy Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Daniel swore, staring in disbelief at the apparition.
In that moment, he caught movement in his peripheral vision as he felt the impact. With a grunting rush of air from his lungs Daniel sidestepped and turned.
The man had somehow managed to regain his footing and charge the big cop. Daniel only had a split second to process what was happening, but it was enough time for him to react.
With a sweeping motion, he took the legs out from under the fiend and fell on him, pinning him face down on the concrete.
Daniel pulled the man’s thrashing arms behind his back. It was a practiced motion that he had used to restrain literally thousands of other criminals in his thirty years on the job. He quickly managed the task and clicked on the cuffs. He was virtually standing on his prisoner, pinning him to the ground by placing his big foot from the man’s shoulder to the small of his back. “Can’t get me there can you, you fucking asshole?” Daniel was screaming now, and hot flashes of adrenaline were coursing through his veins, causing him to breathe heavy and fast.
The scene that had just played out had momentarily distracted Roy Burns, allowing the gray-toothed attacker he was holding onto to grab at him. He spun his prisoner around as two officers came barreling through the station entrance. They quickly lent their combined strength and subdued the man, slamming him hard against the brick wall of the precinct house.
“Jesus Christ—what the hell is going on?” Burns said as the man continued to reach for him from where the two officers had pinned him. And Daniel, where was Daniel? Roy scanned the crowd that had gathered around the ruckus. Daniel was standing over the other man, flexing his hand.
“You okay, Danny?”
Daniel took his foot off the man’s back as he jerked him roughly to his feet and handed him off to the young rookie who had just appeared to lend assistance.
“Be careful Laddie, he’s a biter, and possessed by Satan himself. Shot him twice, I did, and he acts as though I’ve given him heartburn.” Turning to Roy, Daniel said. “Aye. I’m okay, but she’s a goner for sure.” He looked toward the woman who had stumbled back against the wall of the building, continuing to jerk and seize. She suddenly heaved violently and slid down the brick wall to a heap on the walkway.
Roy knelt down and made an attempt to stop the bleeding that had formed a deep, red pool around her. He applied pressure to the wound just as he had been taught. “Someone get me a towel or something and call an ambulance.” Roy said, and Holsinger dashed inside, dragging his prisoner along with him.
“I can’t stop the blood—Jesus, I’m going to lose her.”
The blood was flowing between Roy’s fingers and dripping to the sidewalk. The Captain placed one hand over the other and pushed harder. “Hold on, Miss…help’s on the way,” he said soothingly.
Just as the words left his lips, the woman became still and the blood stopped flowing from the bites on her face and neck.
“Miss?—Can you hear me?—Ma’am”
She didn’t respond to his pleas and she had stopped breathing in mid-breath. Roy released the pressure he had been applying to the bite wounds and sat down on his rump beside her lifeless body.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Roy said. “This is crazy. Has everyone gone insane?”
Daniel rubbed his busted and bloody knuckles. “Aye, I’ll not be disagreeing with that.”
Roy watched Daniel as he wiped the blood from his knuckles onto his shirt. “What happened?”
“I scraped them on the bastard’s teeth when I hit him. I think I knocked a few of them out when I did. I hope I hurt the bastard.”
“Is she going to be okay?” A stunned bystander asked.
“She’s dead,” Roy told him. “But the man who did this was shot twice and unfortunately, he’s still quite alive.”
Roy laid the woman’s head down gently on the cold sidewalk and rose, giving Danny a knowing look. “I’ve got half a mind to go in there and beat that son of a bitch to death myself.”
“You’d better go wash your hands first, my friend.”
Roy glanced down and his hands. They were covered in the woman’s blood. As if on cue, Holsinger emerged from the building holding a white towel. When he only stood there with his mouth hung open in shock, and staring at the dead woman, Daniel took the towel from him and handed it to Roy.
Minutes later, the woman was loaded onto a gurney by an ambulance crew. The prisoner had already been restrained and removed to the hospital under armed guard. Roy, who rarely lost his composure, was visibly shaken by the bizarre incident and Daniel knew he needed to shore up his friend. He laid a big, freckled paw on his buddy’s shoulder as the paramedics loaded the body of the woman into the ambulance. They declared her dead and zipped closed the black bag that had become her death cocoon. The stretcher was rolled up to the back of the vehicle and its legs collapsed as she was shoved into the bay. The attendant strapped down the bagged body and pulled the restraints tight. “This will hold her until we can get her to the morgue,” he told Roy, and slammed the door shut.
“Wait a minute,” Roy said, and motioned to open the door again. “She’s not dead. I just saw that bag move. You were shutting the door, and I saw it move. And not a little move, either,” he stated firmly.
“Believe me Ca
ptain, she is dead.” He grinned lopsidedly at Roy and furrowed his brow as though he might be speaking to someone who was slightly touched.
“Look, I saw it. I saw it!” Roy’s voice pitched under the strain of the night’s events. “That damn bag moved. Check it out.”
The radio in the front of the ambulance crackled to life and the medic walked toward the open cab door to listen.
Roy rubbed his eyes, beginning now to doubt it himself. “I am telling you, she is not dead. I saw it. She needs to be checked out,” he insisted, though less adamantly now.
“We have to go. Just got another call…Stat,” the driver said.
“Sorry man, gotta run.” The medic gave Roy a skeptical glance. “What a crazy night. Believe me brother, she is definitely dead,” he said as he ran to the door and jumped inside.
The vehicle sped away into the warm, summer night. Roy and Danny stood side by side, still not fully comprehending what had just occurred.
Roy straightened his bloody and disheveled uniform and headed for the safety of the station house. He turned at the entrance to look down the unusually busy thoroughfare.
“It has to get better from here, Danny. It can’t possibly get worse.”
3
The street was dark and the car was just beyond their line of sight. Chuck Longfellow slipped back into the alley next to his friend Duane and disappeared into the shadows.
Chuck’s hands shook, betraying his anxiety over the task at hand as he lit another cigarette to soothe his jangling nerves. He inhaled and waited for the smoke to hit his lungs. He needed a moment to collect himself, to mask the fear he was feeling. Not from himself, but from Duane, who was always ready to pounce on him for every little mistake. Something that might be easier to tolerate if Duane actually had an idea of his own other than to give up and go home.
Duane watched as the front of Chuck’s bald head glowed with each drag. His dome was only visible for a second before disappearing again as the oxygen left the tip of the cigarette. Duane coughed and irritably swatted at the foul smelling smoke.
“If you’d quit those nasty things we’d still have enough money for food,” and pointing down the street for emphasis, he added, “and that guy down there could keep his stereo.”
“Nobody twisted your arm and made you come to New York, Duane. You can go back to Virginia anytime you want,” he added with a hint of venom, like a schoolyard bully taunting a weaker kid. It seemed to be the only way to keep Duane’s accusing insults at bay…intimidation. Counter his attacks with some of his own. Only then would he back down and shut his mouth, at least for a while.
Of course Duane had to know that if it were that easy to go back to Virginia, they would have been there by now. But it was easier for him to blame others rather than accept responsibility himself, like using the last of their funds on a common street hooker, or pissing away what little they could come by on a three-day drinking binge. That was always the case with Duane. Blame others to shift attention away from his own slothful, reckless behavior.
“We need to go, Chuck.”
“Be quiet,” Chuck said, glancing back over his shoulder. “I have a plan and I can’t think if you’re making all that noise.”
Chuck had focused all of his attention on a beautiful red muscle car parked on the dimly lit street. With a nervous sigh he slipped out of the shadows and crossed the street, crouching as he slid between the parked vehicles so he could break in from the passenger’s side. The tall buildings offered more cover in their strangely shifting shadows.
Chuck adeptly slid the Slim Jim through the top of the window and fished for the locking mechanism. He hooked it and pulled up. The door unlocked and Chuck grinned like the proverbial Cheshire cat as he reached for the door.
A glimpse of movement made him freeze in place, his hand inches from the chrome handle. Suddenly, his wiry frame was slammed onto the pavement before he had time to react.
Duane slunk unnoticed into the dark cover of an unlit door stoop and watched silently as the blackest man he had ever seen slammed the butt of his pistol against the side of Chuck’s head. “Tryin’ to jack my car you redneck motherfucker?” he said, and then spat on Chuck’s Rebel Flag T-shirt which proudly proclaimed, ‘Fighting Terrorism since 1861’. “How about I take my fuckin’ reparations right here and now,” he growled as he drove the sharp toe of his expensive leather boot into Chuck’s side.
“Dude, wait,” Duane stepped forward from his shadowy hiding place with his hands raised in submission as soon as he registered the familiar, black face. It was Jamal Owens. He recognized him from the many tabloid newspapers that his grandmother kept in the large reading basket in her bathroom, not to mention the endless procession of half hour tabloid entertainment shows that she kept her old RCA television tuned to.
Jamal Owens was the New York gang member, turned rapper, turned underwear model, turned daytime soap-opera star. He had most recently been in the news for a wild night partying with that blonde pop star bimbo who was always getting caught without her panties. In the case in question, Owens’ underwear had not been evident either as a paparazzi had managed to get a shot of Blondie giving him a private oral performance of a different nature, which sold more magazines than her last two CDs combined.
“Dude don’t,” Duane pleaded. “We didn’t know it was your car man—we were just tryin’ to…”
Jamal Owens turned his gaze toward Duane. Chuck scuttled away toward the shadowed stoop on all fours like a cockroach caught foraging in the kitchen when the fluorescent light is switched on.
Suddenly a loud wolf-whistle cut the air.
“Woooo-whoo... Well, if it ain’t our old friend Jamal. Come to take a look at how the other half lives Jam-Man?”
The taunt had come from a gaunt, wiry man, judging by his accent, a Latino. He wore a black and yellow bandanna tied around his long, unruly hair. Four other young Latinos followed in his wake, each wearing the same adornment on their heads and clearly looking to him for their cues as to how this might play out. The wiry man tapped a miniature ball bat against his palm as he strolled nonchalantly toward Jamal.
Duane slunk deeper into the shadowed doorway and Chuck flattened himself against the wall, eyes darting back and forth between Owens and his antagonist.
“Best back the fuck up Pablo.” Jamal narrowed his eyes at the ringleader. “I’m in no mood for your shit tonight. Consider yourself warned.” Jamal flipped the revolver around in his grasp and wiped away the blood left by Chuck’s head.
“Looks like that rich white pussy has caused more than your little dick to go soft.” The ringleader laughed, and glanced back at his buddies who laughed on cue. Before he could finish laughing at his own joke, he saw the blur of Jamal’s big foot as it drove his knee backward with a well-placed kick. The kick was followed by the sickening snap of bone. Pablo went down in a screaming heap on the pavement. His friends reacted by moving out of range of his long, well-muscled legs.
“Oh Man…that was fucked up,” cried a little nervous, mousy looking follower. “Fuck. Man. That was unnecessary.”
Duane could see something in Jamal’s countenance that clearly said this guy was not stable. He was a man on the edge and like a cornered animal it made him dangerous. If what he had heard in the tabloids was correct, Jamal Owens was dangerous on a good day. Tonight he looked deadly.
As if taking an acting cue, and making sure to hit his mark, Jamal drew down on one of the gang members who had pulled a pistol from behind his back where it had been snugly tucked into his belt. In the split second it took for all this to unfold, the gun in Jamal’s hand went off. With a sound like a clap of thunder the weapon blew a hole in his attacker’s chest. As the guy spun away, Duane could see that the exit wound was larger. He fell dead in the street as Jamal turned the gun on the others.
“Chingada madre!” another one swore at Jamal, hysteria edging his voice as he clicked off an empty chamber “Carajo!”
Jamal squeezed off a ro
und into the gang member’s crotch, sending his bloody form tumbling onto the broken, dirty, asphalt pavement. “Press ONE for English, Motherfucker!” Jamal screamed down at the writhing gang-banger who spewed another string of Spanish expletives.
Jamal was in a rage, and he failed to notice that one of Pablo’s cohorts had slipped around behind him, close enough to get off a wild shot that had it hit its target, would surely have ended all of Jamal’s aspirations of further stardom.
The shot rang out and missed its mark as the bullet whizzed past his long braids of hair causing the glass beads that were woven into them to rattle together. It slid with a quiet thu-wauk into the the throat of the cursing gang member who was up again and dancing around in front of Jamal.
Jamal spun like an Old West gunfighter and with catlike reflexes, fired off a shot at his would-be assassin. The shot hit its target with the precision of a professional marksman as Jamal crouched low, poised to dispense more attackers.
“Shit the bed Fred,” Duane whispered to Chuck “We’d better stay down and out of this one. This ain’t our fight. What the hell have you gotten us in the middle of?”
“Yeah,” Chuck whispered, slinking further back into the shadows and well out of sight as three more black men stolled onto the scene.
One of them fired a shot into the back of the last fleeing Latino gang member. The shooter stalked up to Jamal and stood face to face with him, staring unblinking, as his two accomplices rummaged through the pockets of the dead and dying Latinos. They hastily removed items of value, including a large wad of cash, a plastic baggie full of coarse, brownish, crystaline powder and a baggie containing three prescription bottles.
As the two black men continued to size each other up, Duane tugged silently on Chuck’s shirttail urging him wordlessly to make a hasty retreat before the whole thing could erupt again. In that moment a huge, gleaming smile spread from ear to ear on Jamal’s face, neutralizing the dangerous animal that had been there only a moment before. The two men bumped chests and embraced, seperating with an exchange of complicated handshakes and gestures that Duane could not see well in the shifting shadows of the dim streetlights.