Extreme Medical Services Box Set Vol 4--6

by Jamie Davis

  Each of the doors were open. Each patient room contained a body in the same condition as the nurse. The same was true for the left-hand hallway except for the last door on the right. It was locked closed and Dean looked in through the window set in the door so the nurses could check on their patients. He saw a figure on the bed, curled up and rocking back and forth.

  Dean checked the door’s number and went back to the nurse’s station, pressing the corresponding button there. It unlocked the door with a click and he went back to the room. Opening the door, Gibbie entered first and then jumped back with a frightened shriek as the figure turned over revealing the canine face and hairy arms of a werewolf.

  “Back, stay back, vampire. I will not let you turn me into one of your minions,” the werewolf said.

  “I don’t want to change you into anything. I can’t. You’re already a Lycan. We came up here and found everyone dead except for you.”

  Dean came forward and stood between Gibbie and the werewolf. “Calm down, take some deep breaths.” Dean kept eye contact with the werewolf and hoped his smile would help calm the partially shifted werewolf down. “That’s it. Keep taking deep breaths, in and out, slowly breathing until you feel more in control.”

  It took a few minutes, but the shift to werewolf reversed and soon Dean was sitting on the side of the bed talking to a normal-looking man.

  “We came up here to take a newly turned vampire from the ward to a safe place. This is what we found. What is your name?”

  “I’m Ronald. I’ve been depressed lately and my wife suggested I come in and get my meds situated here before I came back home to her.”

  “Do you know what happened up here?” Dean asked.

  “About two hours ago, there was some commotion outside of the room. I had gone to bed early. I didn’t feel well. My door was locked and I couldn’t see much, but I could hear the screaming. Then I saw him. He was covered in blood and he just looked in at me. He smiled. It was a horrible, awful smile with fresh blood dripping from his fangs.”

  Dean laid a hand on the man’s shoulder and urged him to continue.

  “He said, ‘I can’t feed on you. You smell different.’ Like he didn’t know what a Lycan was. Then he tuned and ripped the door open across the hall and fed on the girl in there while I watched. Before he was finished, he forced her to feed on a wound he made in his wrist. Then he drained her, leaving her on the floor like some sort of trash and came out smiling at me. Then he left back down the hallway.”

  “Okay, Ronald. You stay here. You’re safe for now. We’ll have someone come and check on you in a little bit.” Dean led Gibbie from the room and down the hallway back towards the nurse’s station.

  Dean looked at Gibbie. “Is he still up here, maybe hiding somewhere?”

  The vampire shook his head. “I would have detected him right away. He has left the immediate vicinity. I don’t think he can feed anymore, or change any other vampires. He only has so much blood to give and he has tried to turn about eighteen people up here so far. He has to find someplace to hide out. He’ll seek out some familiar surroundings in which to make a lair.”

  Gibbie looked back out to the hallway and shook his head. “I haven’t seen anything this bad since back in the old country. There were a few rogue vampires around that would do things like this. The rest of us would work together to catch them. It was always a messy business.”

  “Well, we need more help up here,” Dean said. “We are going to have eighteen new, hungry vampires in a few hours. They are going to have a whole hospital on which to feed if we’re not careful.”

  Gibbie nodded. “James needs to send us some help or there is going to be some major carnage up here.”

  “You don’t think this is major carnage?” Dean asked. He had never seen anything this bad before, not even when a trio of demons had ripped apart a family of dryads.

  “You think this is bad, Dean? Imagine what this hospital is going to look like when each one of those eighteen bodies out there turn and start feeding their way through the building.”

  “So we’ve got two problems. We’ve got patient zero loose in the building, or maybe the city at large and we’ve got to stop the eighteen new vampires up here from going rogue and killing or turning more people. Great.”

  Dean’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out and looked at it. It was a text from Jo. “Dad, we have a problem. Get down here.”

  “Gibbie, I’ve got to go down and check on the girls in the van. You call James and Celeste and get what help you need to manage these new vampires as they start to turn.”

  Gibbie nodded and pulled out his phone as Dean headed back to the elevator to go down and see what the problem was outside.

  Chapter 10

  After her dad and Gibbie left, Jo moved up to the front passenger seat of the van while Marian moved to the driver’s seat. It was cool to meet another teen for a change. She had left all her friends behind when she came back to the past to help her parents out. It took a conversation with another teen girl like herself to make her realize how much she missed kids her own age.

  They talked about a lot of things while they waited outside the hospital ER. Marian had just broken up with her boyfriend of six months and was pretty vocal about how guys were all pigs. Jo listened and nodded occasionally while her new friend explained how her ex had cheated on her with another girl at school.

  She was still half listening and half looking out the window when she noticed a guy in a hospital gown descending the exterior of the hospital building. Because of her hunter amulet, given to her by her mother years before, Jo could see in the dark nearly as well as most Unusuals and she saw the man clearly despite the darkness of the cloudy night.

  “Hey, Marian,” Jo interrupted her companion. “Didn’t my dad say they were going to the fourth floor?”

  “Yeah. Why?” Marian started looking around at the building through the windshield, craning her neck so she could see better.

  “Oh, no reason. Other than the guy in a hospital gown, covered in blood, climbing down the side of the hospital. It looks like he came from that open window.” Jo pointed. “Should we try and stop him?”

  “I think so,” Marian answered. “I think I’m strong enough when I shift to outlast a vamp. After all, we just need to hold on to him until your dad and Gibbie get back. You stay in the van and call your dad. Tell him we think we found his guy.”

  Jo took out her phone and texted a message to her dad while Marian got out and started walking over to where the guy was climbing down the building. She watched her friend’s hands elongate into claws while she watched and her face changed and shifted to an elongated wolf’s visage.

  The turned teen werewolf had just reached the base of the wall when the man dropped the rest of the way to the ground. When he turned, Jo got her first good look at his face and saw the blood dripping from his fanged mouth. The blood stains on the front of his hospital gown were even worse than those on his back and sides. This guy looked like he’d lay down in a wading pool filled with blood.

  Jo opened the door and stepped down from the passenger side of the van. She called out to warn her friend to be careful. If this guy had been feeding, he would be a lot more powerful than they anticipated. She was too late. The new vampire turned around as Marian walked up to him. She had her hands outstretched in an effort to calm him and get him to stay where he was. The werewolf teen never got the chance to say another word. The vamp charged her and swatted her aside, slamming her into the brick wall of the building. Her head slapped against the concrete wall. Jo watched in shock as Marian crumpled unconscious into a heap on the pavement.

  “Hey, that’s my friend,” Jo shouted, regaining her composure. “Why don’t you come over here and try that on someone who knows how to handle scumbags like you?”

  The vamp snarled at her, showing his fangs and then started laughing. “You smell human, like those others upstairs. I guess I get to eat you, too.”

&n
bsp; “You can try.”

  The vamp charged her with all the power and speed granted by his blood-fueled, supernatural body. Jo stood her ground, reached inside her jeans jacket and drew out the loaded Glock pistol she wore there. Her dad hadn’t seen the shoulder holster rig she had donned with the outfit back at the apartment. With the calmness that comes from long hours of training and muscle memory, she aimed and unloaded the entire clip of fifteen rounds into the charging vampire.

  Normal bullets might not have stopped him, but Jaz had given her daughter silver-lead alloy frangible loads. These broke apart inside the target, causing massive internal damage. They also had the additional benefit of hindering the regeneration capabilities of werewolves and vampires because of the silver content.

  The charging vamp got no closer than ten feet from her before he fell to the pavement, writhing in agony, clawing at his wounds. Jo switched out a new, fully-loaded clip for the empty one, releasing the slide on the semi-automatic pistol, loading another round in the chamber. Then, with her pistol trained on her target, Jo circled the vamp at a distance and made her way over to her injured friend.

  Marian moaned as she approached and Jo took a moment to look down at her. Thank the Goddess she was alive. She had shifted back to human form when she was knocked unconscious. A noise from the street caused her to look back up and she caught a glimpse of waving hospital gown as the vamp sprinted away around the corner. Damn, should she try and follow him? Her mind was made up for her when she heard voices coming from the ambulance ramp.

  “I’m telling you, I heard gunshots out here,” the first voice said.

  “I’m not doubting you, I just question your judgement in coming out here without calling the police first. We’re just security guards,” said a second voice.

  Jo holstered her weapon and adjusted her jacket to hide her shoulder-holster rig just as the two security guards turned the corner on the ramp into the ER. The first one pointed to the empty brass cartridges scattered on the ground outside of the van. The other saw her and Marian by the side of the building.

  “I told you I heard gunshots. Look.” He pointed at the scattered shells on the ground.

  The first guard’s partner looked at Jo and saw Marian on the ground. “Is she okay. Is she shot?”

  “Uh, no. A bunch of guys came around the corner chasing another guy. They knocked her down and one of them shot at the other guy, chasing him down the alley and round the corner. That’s all I saw,” Jo said.

  “What are you young ladies doing hanging around out here by the ambulance entrance anyway? It’s not safe out here at night alone.”

  “Now you tell me,” Jo said rolling her eyes at him. “We were waiting for our friends to come back down. They’re paramedics and stopped in to pick something up.”

  “Oh, you’re with Dean and Gibbie?”

  “Uh, yeah. You know them?”

  “Yeah, Dean just went with Gibbie upstairs to pick up a psych patient to take him somewhere. I don’t know why they would bring teenaged girls along with them on this type of thing, though.”

  Marian was starting to come around. Jo knew that her regeneration capabilities would have her back on her feet in just a few minutes. She had to stall and keep these guys from calling for help until her Dad came back down and got the situation straightened out.

  “We are high school students on a career day ride along. We thought we might want to be paramedics one day.”

  “Well, you got an eyeful already tonight, haven’t you. How’s your friend? Does she need a nurse or a wheelchair to go inside?”

  Marian sat up, rubbing her head. “No, thank you. I’m fine. Just a little scared.”

  “We’ll be alright, you two should go and see if those guys are hanging out around the front of the hospital. We will stay here,” Jo suggested.

  “Hey, she’s right, Ed,” the closest security guard said. “Come on, we should look and see if we can still catch up to these guys and then call the police.”

  “Yeah, but we should be careful. They’ve got a nine millimeter pistol with them.”

  Jo waited until their attention was turned away from her and focused down the alley to the front of the hospital before she waived her hands in the air and muttered the words of the spell. The two men froze in place, staring down the end of the alley in the position they had taken just a moment before.

  “Hey, what did you do to them?” Marian asked.

  “It’s just a stasis field. We need to keep them here until Dad and Gibbie get back and decide what we should do.”

  “What we should do about what?” she heard her dad’s voice coming down the ramp from the ER. “Hey, what is wrong with those guards?”

  “I had to put them in stasis, Dad. I think your vampire escaped and he attacked Marian and me.”

  “Are you both alright?” Gibbie said as he came around the ramp and followed Dean down to the street. He saw the werewolf teen getting to her feet. “Marian, honey, what happened?”

  “We saw this guy, covered in blood, climbing down the outside of the hospital,” Marian said. “I thought I could stop him, but he overpowered me and knocked me out. I’m okay now. Jo managed to fight him off, somehow, and distracted the guards while I healed up.”

  “You’re lucky this guy didn’t tear your heads off,” Dean said. “He killed eighteen people upstairs and Gibbie thinks he turned each of them into vampires. They are going to wake up soon. I have already called James and he is sending over every vampire he can contact to contain the new vamps until he can smuggle them out of the facility and to a safe house to complete the transformation. This is going to cause all kinds of trouble. Now the guy is loose in the city and will do this all over again if we don’t stop him.”

  “Dad, you need to call Mom. She’s the best equipped to track and stop this guy. She is the hunter after all.”

  “I don’t want her going all vigilante on this person. He is not responsible for what happened to him. He can’t control his urges right now, he’s too young in the change.”

  “I hate to say this, Dean,” Gibbie said. “But she’s right. We are only going to find him by following a trail of bodies. The Erringtons have been doing this for centuries. I hate to send a hunter out to go after any vampire, but if she can track him and will let us join her in the hunt, we can find him a lot faster.”

  “So what do we do about the two security guards? I know these guys, they don’t deserve to be frozen like that,” Dean said.

  “All we have to do is clean up the spent shell casings and I can make a post-hypnotic suggestion. They’ll forget, and go back to work as if nothing happened. They will have no lasting effects from the spell, I promise.” Jo met her father’s gaze to reassure him.

  “Wait, what shell casings? Are you armed?” Dean asked

  “Did you shoot at the vampire?” Gibbie said, alarmed.

  Dean and Gibbie both blurted out the questions in a rush of words. Dean looked angry while Gibbie looked a little scared.

  “I had to shoot him. He would have killed me otherwise. And yes, I’m armed. Why did you think Mom left me the Glock if it wasn’t to make sure I could protect myself? I shot the vampire full of silver frangible bullets, so he’s not going to be attacking anyone anytime soon. He can’t heal while the silver is in his body. He’ll have to seek out medical help of some sort. That gives us time to track him down.”

  She could see her father sorting through the options facing him, glancing at the two frozen security guards, noticing the shell casings littering the ground around the van, and looking back to Marian and herself. He was angry, but also stuck with a list of priorities that took precedence. He must have made up his mind as he crouched and started picking up the spent brass shell casings off the pavement by the van.

  “Gibbie, help Marian back to the van and get loaded up, we’ve got to get out of here before an ambulance pulls up and wonders what is going on here. Jo, do what you need to do to these guys and get back in the van. Be ca
reful with them, they are decent guys, okay?”

  “Of course, Dad.”

  “We’ll head over to Jaz’s apartment and see if she has any thoughts about tracking this guy before he harms anyone else.”

  Joanna nodded to her Dad and turned to help Marian walk over to Gibbie. Then she walked up to the two guards and whispered in their ears. She gave them a series of instructions. She told them to go back inside and tell everyone that they were mistaken about gunshots outside. She also suggested it must have been some kids with firecrackers.

  She snapped her fingers as she said the words to release the spell and the two of them turned and walked back inside without even looking at the four companions by the van. Jo turned and smiled at her Dad while she climbed into the back seat with Marian and shut the van door. She knew that this was not going to be the last she heard about it, and she probably should have told him that she was armed when they left the apartment, but she knew he would have told her to leave the gun behind.

  Her father was never comfortable around firearms. He tolerated the extensive training in their use her mother had given her because of the Errington family background and traditions. It was just one of the strange opposing positions between her parents that made their relationship so strange. They were opposites in so many ways, and yet, in the future – her future, they were totally committed to her and each other. At least they would be eventually. She watched as Gibbie and her Dad climbed in the front of the van and they sped off into the night.

  Chapter 11

  Dean thought about what he was going to say to Joanna when they were alone again. He was conflicted in his feelings. He was both angry that she brought the pistol with her, and thankful she had it. It was a weird juxtaposition between his two sides in this issue. He cared about what happened to the girl, his daughter. He also didn’t want her to grow up thinking she could shoot first and ask questions later.

  He glanced back over his shoulder while Gibbie drove across town to Jaz’s apartment. Jo met his eyes and smiled at him. It was like she knew what he was thinking. He turned back to the front and hid a small chuckle. She might know him better than he thought. She had grown up with him in her lifetime. He was the father she had known since her birth and he realized he had to have taught her his feelings about guns and their place in society. He believed in the right to bear arms, but he also didn’t like the way there were so many readily available guns on the street.