by Jamie Davis
Jo had cast the spell just in time. Two police officers came around the corner of the unit with their hands on their guns. They looked around at the room, took in the condition of Jill’s body at the back of the unit, and Sam’s unconscious body on the floor, and told Dean, Jaz and Jo to remain where they were.
Jaz already had her special U.S. Marshal’s badge out, explaining that she was tracking a dangerous cult. They had attacked this man and killed his wife. She indicated Sam on the floor. The perpetrators attacked the three of them, injuring her before they fled. The officers were dubious, but accepted the badge as an excuse to let another higher authority take the lead. Dean relaxed once they took their hands off their guns.
They would be here for a few more hours at least, answering questions from the detectives and crime scene investigators. The good news, if you could call it that, was they had recovered the idols. Dean decided to check on Sam and see if there was anything he could do for him while they waited for an ambulance to pick him up. Jaz seemed to think that he would remember very little of his time possessed by the demon. That was merciful, at least. Dean wished he could forget, too.
As the first detective arrived, Dean was giving a report to the recently arrived paramedics. It was Tammy and Brook. He told them, in a roundabout way, what had occurred to Sam and helped them load Jaz on the stretcher. She needed help first. Tammy called for a second unit to transport Sam. If he didn’t wake up before they arrived, they could take him to the hospital. Maybe Doc Spirelli at the ER had some sort of med for the recently possessed.
Dean walked beside the stretcher with Jo until they loaded Jaz up to take her in to the orthopedic surgeons at the trauma center. She was going to need surgery to set the bones in her leg and maybe her arm, too. Jo climbed in with her mom, handing Dean back the keys to the SUV. He’d bring it along after the police were done here.
It was dawn before he was able to leave, having answered all the police questions and making sure Sam got sent to the hospital for evaluation. As he headed back to their SUV, Dean picked up the box of idols from the table without a word. None of the police paid any attention. He left the scene of the night’s carnage behind him, looking forward to a brighter future as part of a new family.
Epilogue
Dean looked at the large circular pattern on the floor of the Coven’s main room, then at the two women nearby who were so important to him. One was the daughter he only recently discovered. The other was the woman he now knew for sure he’d marry someday. They had spent the last three weeks getting to know each other better than ever before. Jaz was in her wheelchair. She was confined to it until she could put weight on the leg extended out in front of her with all the pins sticking out of it. He and Jo had spent the week in the apartment with her, helping her recover from the surgery and getting her strength back. Dean had already decided he’d take some leave time and tend to her until she was on her feet again.
Now the time had come, though, when Anya and the sisters of the Wiccan coven announced the planets were once again aligned. It was time to return Joanna to her own time and place in the world.
He saw his daughter from the future standing talking with her mother, his future wife. He shook his head. It wasn’t a mistake to think of Jaz that way. There was something between the two of them. It had already started to develop. The last few months had caused the relationship’s spark to come to life.
Jaz and Jo both looked his way and caught him looking at them. They both burst out laughing and he wondered what they were talking about. He would probably never know.
“It is time,” Anya, the high priestess of the coven announced.
The women of the coven took their seats around the circle of thirteen. Jo pushed Jaz in her chair over to him and Jo wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him close.
“Bye, Daddy,” the teen said. “You’ll see me again. I’m born just about five years from today.”
“See you, kiddo,” Dean said. He struggled with unfamiliar emotions as he said his goodbye. “Try to stay out of trouble when you get back home. I know my future self will be perturbed with you if you don’t listen.”
Jo laughed a little at that and pulled away from him, looking one more time at Jaz before walking to the center of the casting circle. Dean pulled Jaz back behind the circle of chairs so they were behind Anya’s high-backed chair. The high priestess began the incantation with a low droning murmur of words. The chant was taken up by the others in the circle and Jo smiled at him once more. There was a flash of white light and she was gone.
Dean looked around and stepped forward to stand next to Anya’s chair. “Did it work? Is she okay?”
“It is done, Paramedic Dean. She has returned home.”
He felt a hand and arm slip through the crook of his elbow and he looked down to see Jaz sidling up next to him. He was shocked by how right it felt all of the sudden. Looking back to the center of the casting circle, he was sure now that he’d see his daughter again, in about five years.
Read on for a preview of Book 6 - The Paramedic’s Nemesis
The Paramedic’s Nemesis
Chapter 1
Paramedic Dean Flynn walked into work ready for another night on the ambulance at Station U, the team of paramedics that served the creatures of myth and legend making up the Unusual community in Elk City. No sooner had he dropped his backpack on the break room table when the tones sounded from the overhead speakers for the first ambulance call of the night. He sighed. Dean had been a little late getting in today, so there’d be no time for dinner tonight before the shift. It was a shame, but that was the life of the working paramedic. Their live-in zombie chef, Freddy, would keep dinner warm for him until he returned in a few hours. His partner, Barry, had arrived early enough to wolf down what looked like an amazing Pasta Bolognese before their shift started. Dean waved at the departing day shift and headed to the ambulance bay with Barry.
“Do you want me to drive?” Barry asked.
“No, I’ll drive. You can have the first run tonight.” As full partners now, Dean and Barry divided the workload for their ambulance calls. They’d alternate who took the lead all night so they’d each get an equal chance to manage individual patients. Even with their unique and Unusual patients at Station U, most 911 calls were routine. Even the creatures of myth and legend got regular chest pain and had trouble breathing after an asthma attack.
The dispatcher’s voice sounded from the speakers as the two paramedics climbed inside the ambulance. “Paramedic U-191, respond to 1327 Central Avenue for multiple victims of an assault. Unknown at this time if the assailant is still on scene or not.”
Barry picked up the mic from the center console and keyed it to answer. “U-191 responding. Confirm if the police are responding as well?”
“Police units are responding but may be delayed due to an additional incident across town,” the female dispatcher’s voice replied.
There were special police units assigned to respond to Unusuals who needed law enforcement assistance as well. If there were some mythical creature rampaging and attacking people, it'd be good to have knowledgeable police officers there to back them up while they took care of any victims. Most of the human residents of Elk City were unaware of the true nature of their Unusual neighbors. Most Unusuals kept a low profile preferring to live quietly among the humans of the city.
Dean pulled the ambulance out of the bay, checking to make sure the garage doors were closing behind him before he pulled out onto the street and headed off to the scene of the incident.
“We need to stay on our toes, Barry. It could be anything.”
“Agreed.”
Dean had been Barry’s training officer until a few months ago, and he still slipped into instructor mode. The new Station U paramedic had lots of experience with human patients, even more time on the street in total than Dean did. But Dean had gained a lot of knowledge about their special class of patients in his short time on the Station U ambulance, and he h
ad worked to bring the more experienced medic up to speed. Barry was a quick study, and he quickly passed his Station U probationary period, graduating to equal status with Dean.
It took them seven minutes to get to the address the dispatcher gave them. Dean pulled the ambulance into the parking lot of a funeral home. People were streaming out through the doors into the lot. Some of them were clutching bleeding wounds. Dean looked around for signs that police had arrived but saw no flashing blue and red lights that signaled law enforcement units were on the scene. He should have checked before they got to the location so they could stage at a safe distance. It was too late now, though. The injured funeral home visitors saw the flashing red and white lights of the ambulance as Dean pulled into the parking lot and started moving in their direction.
“It looks like the assailant is still inside from the way they are all running out of there. Let’s set up here, and we’ll start treating the ones in the parking lot until police arrive,” Dean suggested.
“Sound’s like a plan,” Barry agreed. He unlatched his seatbelt and popped open his door to jump down and start pulling out supplies to treat whatever traumatic wounds the victims had.
Dean knew that often, in the case of an Unusual attack, it would be bite or claw wounds. Usually, they were not too serious as far as wounds went. The problems came from the magical side effects such bites tended to have. Every creature that bit humans could cause different problems. That made it necessary to identify the type of attacker as soon as possible so they could initiate counter-measures. There were herbal extracts and simple vaccinations that could treat most Unusual bites if they caught the victims in time.
Hopping out of the driver’s side, Dean turned and reached back inside the cab and switched on the perimeter floodlights that lit the area all around the ambulance. It was just getting dark outside, and they were going to need the light to assess any significant number of patients tonight. It would also help them spot any potential attacker mixed in with the retreating human victims. On the way to the rear of the ambulance, Dean got out their emergency bites kit from a compartment on his side of the unit which had all the vaccines and herbal extracts he might need for whatever was attacking people. He jogged around to the back of the unit to open the back doors and prep for receiving their first patients. Judging from the people streaming across the parking lot, it wouldn’t take long.
A woman walked up assisting a middle-aged man in his early fifties. They were the first to arrive. Dean smiled at her, all while watching around and behind her for signs of any disturbance that could signal the arrival of the assailant. He wanted to be ready to defend himself if needed. He and Barry had both been inoculated against most of the infectious magics that Unusuals carried. That didn’t matter much if you didn’t survive the initial attack. The woman started talking as soon as she entered the pool of light thrown by the floods on the ambulance.
“Thank God you’re here,” she said in a rush. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Dean raised his hands, palms outward, to calm her down.
“What happened, ma’am. Just go slow and try and tell me what we’re dealing with here,” Dean said in an even voice. He needed to set a tone of calm from the get-go. It might help to manage the crowd that was coming towards the ambulance’s lights. Setting the tone of the response early was important.
“It’s Grandma,” the woman exclaimed, her eyes going wide. “She sat up in the casket and made this horrible groaning noise. Someone screamed, and she turned her head, saw all of us attending her funeral and said ‘fresh brains.’ Then all hell broke loose. It was like something out of a horror movie.”
Dean nodded as he started examining the bite marks on the man’s arm. Grandma had torn all the way through his coat and broken the skin underneath. He was bleeding a bit and would need a stitch or two to close the wound. Dean slapped a four by four gauze pad over it and had the gentleman hold it in place applying some pressure while he thought about what the woman said. Zombies, in his experience, were just normal people except for the fact they were dead and slowly decaying. This case, though, seemed to match up with the more classical Romero “Night of the Living Dead” style zombie. He scratched his head in thought. Maybe there were different varieties. He’d have to ask his Zombie expert, Freddy, when he got back to the station.
One thing he was sure of, all these zombie bite victims would need to get a shot from his emergency bite kit. He called out to Barry as he opened up the black pelican case he’d grabbed from the side compartment behind the driver’s door.
“Barry, I’m not sure what this is, but everyone here with even a nick of a bite gets a shot of Sodium Benzoate dilution.” It was a common preservative used in milk and other dairy products that also sometimes interfered with digestive enzymes. The docs that backed up Station U had also discovered it was pretty good at counteracting zombie bites or other undead exposures, even as rare as they were.
Barry looked at the people crowding in around them seeking medical attention. Grandma sure did get around the crowd at her funeral. “So you’re thinking Z-bite?”
Dean nodded, appreciating the abbreviation of zombie. No need to alarm all these folks that their family’s matriarch had been turned into some sort of raving undead creature. He was still trying to understand her strange behavior. He wished he could contact Freddy back at the station for some zombie lore, but he’d have to wait. Freddy never answered the phones since he wasn’t technically supposed to be staying there. That station U had a professional chef in residence was the best-kept secret in the department.
“Are you going to try and help our grandma, too?” Another woman asked. “She’s still in there. I think she stopped biting people when her dentures fell out.”
“I can’t believe we all thought she was dead,” said a teenaged boy of about seventeen.
“She can put the dentures back in,” a girl of twelve or so beside the boy mentioned. “I saw them fall out more than once. She would just scoop them off the floor and then pop them back in before she kept chomping. It was totally bizarre.”
Dean tried to reassure the people. “We’ll go and check on her once the police get here to give us a hand. In the meantime, I want everyone to line up behind the ambulance if you’ve been bitten. Even a small bite or nick should be tended to so it doesn’t get infected. We’ll check you all out and give you a shot for the infection, and you’ll be good to go.”
He watched as the folks started to sort themselves out while he and Barry herded them into a manageable group. Dean kept looking back up at the doors to the funeral home for signs of Granny, but apparently, she was either still occupied inside or couldn’t open the heavy glass doors. She could have some more victims trapped inside with her, though. Turning away from the group of patients and onlookers, he keyed his lapel mic and called headquarters.
“U-191 to dispatch. Expedite PD en route and notify the health department of a possible Z-bite incident.”
“Received, U-191. Can you repeat and confirm Z-bite scenario?”
“I have not laid eyes on the assailant yet, but based on crowd accounts, I think it’s accurate. The health department should send follow-up units to track all attendees for possible infection.”
“Received. We will advise.” There was a pause then the dispatcher came on again. “We have PD about two minutes out.”
Dean acknowledged the dispatcher’s update and went back to helping Barry treat the patients. “The police will be here soon, folks. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
It took a while for the police to gather enough force to go inside and check on grandma’s whereabouts. In the intervening half-hour, Dean and Barry were able to give diluted Sodium Benzoate shots to all the folks who’d been scratched or bitten by the rampaging corpse. They were able to deflect questions about the shots by telling them it was a broad-spectrum antibiotic for those nasty human bites. Both paramedics avoided answering questions about how a corpse could get up in the firs
t place. They said things about how the docs might have pronounced her dead too soon. It seemed to keep them from asking too much more.
By the time they were finished giving all the shots, the health department team had shown up and taken over getting information from all the folks who’d been involved. With that taken care of, Dean walked over to the police officer in charge. It was one of the police’s Station U type officers.
“Hey, O’Malley. What’s up inside? I assume you guys managed to subdue the old lady responsible for all of this.”
“We got her cornered in a utility closet. It took three of us with riot shields to keep her off us. We pushed her back until she was in the room and then we shut the door. I was kind of hoping you and Barry would know what to do with her.”
Barry laughed and then stopped. “Wait. You’re serious.”
“Sure I’m serious. We can’t take her to jail. She’ll just turn all the jailbirds to zombies,” O’Malley said.
Dean considered the situation for a moment. “I don’t understand why she’s so different from other zombies we’ve encountered. Usually, a zombie bite is an accidental thing or a self-defense reaction. Plus, how did she turn anyway? You’d need a voodoo priestess or some other magical source if there’s not a bite involved to begin with.”
“That’s above my pay grade,” O’Malley said. “You paramedic types are the ones who know how all the biology stuff works, not me.”