Extreme Medical Services Box Set Vol 4--6

by Jamie Davis

  Brook climbed out of the driver’s side and reached back inside for her jacket. She looked tired. So did Tammy.

  “Hey, ladies. Go on in and get your paperwork finished, I’ll go over the bags and restock for you.”

  Tammy waved him off. “Let us do it, Dean. If last night and the early morning was any indication, you and Barry are going to have a hell of a day ahead of you. Eat your breakfast. We’ll be in soon enough.”

  Dean shrugged and went back into the squad room just as Freddy was setting his plated omelet down at his seat. He went over and added a cinnamon roll from the platter at the center of the table to his plate. Sitting down, he dug into the food in front of him the way he always did. It was a necessary skill to learn to eat fast whenever the opportunity presented itself since you never knew when the next dispatch alert could come in.

  Brook and Tammy came in after restocking the ambulance. Tammy sat down at the computer and started working on her report on the most recent patient. While she did that, Brook went over to Dean.

  “You guys should have Freddy pack a bagged lunch to take on the unit with you. If you end up running as much as we did, you might not make it back to the station to eat.”

  “What kind of things did you run into last night?”

  “There was another zombie attack, this time at a bar downtown. A recently buried guy showed up and started biting and clawing at folks. We had the usual bites, along with more than a few twisted ankles and bumps and bruises from people trying to get away while drunk.” She gave a chuckle. “It probably would have been funny if it weren’t so deadly serious.”

  Dean fished his phone out of his pocket and pulled up a photo of Felicity and Artur to show Brook.

  “Did you see these guys on the scene by any chance. They might have been lurking on the periphery.”

  Brook looked the pictures of the missing woman and Artur Torrence over and shook her head. “I didn’t see them if they were there. Who are they?”

  “We had a breakthrough last night while we had a meet up at James’ apartment. Jaz had some software running and discovered a link between them and the attacks. The guy in the photo is Artur Torrence.”

  Brook shot him a look of alarm. “The vampire who caused all our problems from before?”

  Dean nodded. “If you see him, be very careful. He’s ancient and quite powerful. Call the police and maybe drop me and Jaz a line, too. Artur needs special handling, and there are a few of us who have some personal scores to settle with him.”

  Dean filled Brook and Tammy in on Jaz’s family history with the vampire lord as well as his own issues with the guy from Ashley’s kidnapping. He wanted this guy almost as badly as Jaz did. Whatever they did, though, it had to be done carefully since he had eluded their efforts to capture him before.

  The conversation turned to more mundane topics, and Dean listened while he pondered the circumstances that brought Artur back into his life again and again. He wanted to end this cycle of madness and seek some sort of normal life where he could have a chance at getting Jaz to pay attention to him as more than just another partner in her efforts to hunt down Unusuals who attacked humans.

  Brook and Tammy ate breakfast and soon left while Dean and Barry started the routine beginning-of-shift chores around the station. In the meantime, Freddy cleaned up from breakfast. Despite the flurry of calls for the shift before theirs, the early hours of their shift went by without incident, and they were able to get all their regular chores finished as well as a few other things that just needed doing around the station.

  Their first ambulance call didn’t come until almost noon, which was unusual, but Dean wasn’t complaining. Having the downtime was good. He even had time to grab a catnap. He was dozing in one of the recliners when the tones sounded on the overhead speakers. It startled him, but he shot up, ready to go as soon as he heard the radio.

  “Ambulance U-191, respond for a subject with a headache. 61 Trenton Drive.”

  The dispatchers always sounded so calm, cool, and collected on the radio. He knew that was the point. They had to be the voice of calm in the chaos of an emergency for everyone involved. He also knew they were often just as stressed out as he was because they were stuck in a call center trying to help someone, with nothing but a phone line between them to lend a hand.

  Barry’s voice cut through his thoughts.

  “You coming, partner? The patient’s waiting.”

  “Yeah, I’m coming.”

  Barry drove since it was Dean’s turn to take the lead on patient care. They usually swapped days so that every other day was his turn. He didn’t mind taking his turn. It was why he did this in the first place.

  As they pulled out of the garage and headed onto the street, Barry asked.

  “Headache, huh? I wonder what that could be?”

  “You know the drill. Could be a stroke. Could be a fall with a head injury. Could just be a headache. We’ll see when we get there.”

  Dean operated the siren while his partner drove. It didn’t take long until they were on the scene in a residential neighborhood with small, attached townhouses arranged in neat rows. They figured out which unit it was after driving around the parking lot for a few minutes. Dean spotted the correct house number and notified dispatch they were on scene.

  Dean hopped out and grabbed the trauma and med bag. He knew Barry would get the heart monitor and oxygen bag and follow him inside. Jogging up the concrete steps, he started picking up a buzzing sound from ahead of him. As he got closer, the sound had turned into a head-jarring vibration. It gave him a headache, and he’d only been there a minute.

  He reached up and knocked on the door. A few minutes later a tall, thin man of about thirty came to the door. As soon as he opened it, Dean was hit with a wave of sound. It was a sad, keening cry that nearly knocked him off his feet. He looked at the man who answered the door. He was wearing headphones, with a strip of cloth tied around the ear cups so as to press them more firmly onto his ears. Focusing his mind over the din of the crying, he could begin to understand why.

  Dean was starting to get tunnel vision from the intense waves of sound overwhelming his hearing and pressing in on his mind. Waving the man to come outside, Dean reached up and pulled the door closed. The keening could still be heard in the background, but it was better now that the door was closed.

  “Come with me, sir. I need to back away from the house for a bit,” Dean said.

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t think straight when I called nine-one-one,” the man said. “I couldn’t get her to stop, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

  The man followed Dean back to the ambulance where Barry was just getting ready to come up the sidewalk.

  “What’s up, Dean? Is this our patient?” Barry glanced at the man with a quizzical look, taking in the strange headgear.

  “I think so, but there’s also something else going on here.” Dean turned to his patient, able to focus now that he was farther away from the sound of the crying.

  “Sir, I’m Dean Flynn. I’m a paramedic. Can you tell me your name?”

  The man removed his headphones, settling them down around his neck.

  “I’m Wilson, Will is fine, though. I’m sorry to call you for this. I just didn’t know what else I could do. She won’t stop crying, no matter what I do. At first, I thought it was something I did, but now I’m not so sure. It’s been going on for hours.”

  “She’s been crying, like that for hours?” Dean asked.

  The man nodded.

  Barry, who hadn’t really heard the full brunt of the sound, seemed puzzled about what all the fuss was about.

  “So this is your, uh, wife, girlfriend, what?” Barry asked.

  “It’s my girlfriend. But we’ve been together for six years, so I know what she’s like when the crying starts. It’s never been this bad before or lasted this long, though.”

  Dean was still trying to figure out what they were dealing with.

  “Will, who or w
hat is your girlfriend? I know she’s not technically human, not with a cry like that.”

  “Oh, Wendy, she’s a ban síde, a Banshee in common terms, but she’s not evil or anything.” He held up his hands, palms outward in her defense. “She can sense impending or recent death. Usually, she starts crying when a neighbor or relative is about to die. That usually only lasts a few minutes to an hour, depending on how nearby they are to us. This is something entirely different, though. It’s like she’s predicting the whole neighborhood is dying or something.”

  Dean scratched his head. They had to do something to get her to stop. He could feel the effects of her cry even out here. It was putting him on edge and making him want to lash out. He could imagine what prolonged contact with the sound would produce in an unprepared, normal human over time. He had read where a banshee’s cry could make a whole village kill each other off over time. They didn’t want that here. He had to get her to stop.

  To do that, though, he and Barry had to get inside and deal with her. He thought about what he had on the unit and decided to look in the emergency kit in the compartment behind the driver’s door for a solution. That was where they kept the magical and non-magical workarounds for dealing with this sort of thing.

  “Wait here. I’ll be right back,” Dean told his partner and Will.

  Soon he was back with the large black Pelican case and had flipped it open. Inside, nestled in little foam cutouts were a number of vials and containers. There was also a collection of various holy symbols and a large flask of holy water that was re-blessed by their resident chaplain on a regular basis. Looking through the supplies, Dean finally found what he was looking for. Picking up a small plastic case, he opened it and pulled out a small pale, yellow-brown brick.

  “What’s that?” Barry asked.

  “Beeswax,” Dean replied. “It’s got a mild enchantment on it, either because it came from magic bees or because it’s got a spell on it. I’m not sure which it is. It doesn’t matter to us. What does matter is this will allow us to get closer to Wendy in there. The wax holds the residual buzzing of the entire hive. Supposedly, it drowns out magical sounds so we can talk normally inside without going insane from the crying. I know from personal experience it works against sirens. I don’t know why it wouldn’t work here, too.”

  “Wow,” Will said. “I need to find me some of that.”

  “I’ll hook you up with some after we get this resolved. It’s available from the local Wiccan coven, I think.”

  Dean pinched off two pieces of the soft wax and handed the block to Barry.

  “Twist the wax into a small cone and push the cone into your ear canal.”

  Barry did as he was told and extended the wax block to Will who did the same before handing it back to Dean. Dean replaced the remaining wax in its container and closed the emergency kit. He hoped this worked. He knew it should work in theory, but that was different than testing something you had never done before in real life.

  Dean picked up his two bags again and started up the steps to the townhouse’s front door. He noticed as soon as he put the wax in his ears that the annoying sound disappeared. Time would tell if it would work close up, though. This time he didn’t hear anything at all until he opened the door. Then the crying came through. It was different this time, though. It was muted, and he could think and coordinate his thoughts. He didn’t feel like he was shutting down. Taking that as a good sign, Dean stepped inside and tried to locate the source of the crying.

  In the living room on the first floor, he found a woman of about thirty years of age with long red hair. She was dressed in a white cotton nightgown, and she was sitting on the sofa with her knees pulled up and her arms wrapped around her legs. The woman was rocking back and forth while she cried out as if in agony or severe grief. Dean approached her carefully, trying to remember his lore on Banshees. He didn’t think they had any other magic that might make them dangerous, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious.

  “Wendy,” Dean said, trying to use a soothing, even tone. “I’m Dean Flynn, a paramedic with the Elk City Fire Department. I’d like to see if I can help you, okay?”

  He was startled and almost fell over backward when she looked up at him with red, glowing irises in the center of her eyes. She opened her mouth and let out a cry even louder than the rest. This one began to penetrate his beeswax earplugs. He had to do something to calm her down so he could try and get to the root of her problem. He could sense Barry behind him, struggling to reach him in the midst of the renewed assault of sound.

  Dean unzipped the med bag and started digging around, trying to find the drug he was looking for in the midst of his shrinking tunnel vision. He found it, the Haldol, which should help her calm down if he could manage to inject her with it. He fumbled with assembling a syringe and needle, something he’d done hundreds of times before. This was not good. He needed to hurry. Drawing up a dose of the drug, he lurched forward and quickly swabbed and then injected Wendy in the thigh. She looked at him in shock and this time screamed at him.

  The last thing Dean remembered before he blacked out was staring at the syringe in his hand and feeling like he should be putting it somewhere. Then there was nothing.

  Chapter 10

  Dean awoke to someone putting a cold compress on his forehead. He had a massive headache, and the cooling cloth helped soothe it, for which he was glad. He opened his eyes and saw a familiar redheaded woman, now with green eyes, looking down at him with a smile. Turning his head, Dean saw he was lying on the sofa in the townhouse owned by Will and Wendy. Barry sat slumped on a chair nearby, holding a bag of what looked like frozen peas to his forehead. He saw Dean watching him and gave his partner a half a smile.

  “It’s good to see you awake at last, Dean. I was about to call for another ambulance, but Wendy and Will said you’d wake up soon.”

  Wendy put a gentle hand on his chest.

  “I’m sorely grateful for your help, Mr. Flynn.” Dean heard a hint of an Irish accent in her voice.

  He levered himself up on one elbow and looked around. Will sat on a chair across from Barry. He looked as pale as a ghost. Dean suspected they all did.

  “How long was I out?” He asked Wendy.

  “I think only about ten minutes. Whatever it was you injected me with took the edge off my banshee state, and I was able to switch back and regain control.”

  “It was Haldol, an antipsychotic drug that we use to sedate people,” Dean replied. “I’m surprised you’re up and walking around.”

  Wendy smiled, “I’ll admit, I feel a little woozy, but I was the only one who was awake when I shifted back. Someone had to tend to you three.”

  Dean sat up. He was feeling better, and he wanted to get Wendy to sit down. That was a powerful drug, and she could stumble and fall if the full effect of the Haldol hadn’t hit her yet. He told her as much.

  “I’ll sit once you three are all on your feet. I’m so sorry for what happened. It’s been years since I was overcome by my banshee side like that.”

  “You sense death and impending doom, right?” Dean asked trying to understand what had set her off to begin with.

  Wendy nodded. “I do, but this time was different. I could sense something else. I saw in my mind an artifact controlling the dead nearby and being used to do great evil. It has the potential to be devastating to the community here in Elk City. I know it.”

  Dean could hear how she said the last sentence. She believed it as a statement of fact. He had learned to trust the instincts of Unusuals with predictive powers like this. If Wendy thought there was some sort of artifact affecting the dead in Elk City, Dean was inclined to believe her. He knew that Artur was doing something to control the recently dead. It made sense that he had some sort of magical artifact to help him do it. He couldn’t wait to make a few calls and spread the word to Jaz and James about it. They might be able to come up with some more information now that they had this new clue to go on.

  Rising to his fe
et, Dean paused for a moment to get his bearings. He pointed to the sofa where he’d been lying.

  “Wendy, why don’t you have a seat. You shouldn’t be up and walking around without help until that drug wears off in an hour or so.”

  She sat down, and Dean got out his blood pressure cuff and stethoscope. She was his patient, and he needed to do his job. He looked at Barry.

  “Barry, call in to headquarters and notify them we are going to be on scene for an extended time but that everything is otherwise alright.” He turned his attention back to Wendy and started to take her vital signs. While he did this, Dean decided to try and get more information from her about what she had seen in her vision or whatever it was. If he could get her to localize the artifact she had sensed they might be able to locate Artur.

  “Wendy, can you determine where the thing you detected is located?”

  The woman shook her head. “I don’t think it works that way. I usually only sense death’s presence in those close to me. This was something completely different. I’ve never sensed anything like it before, and when I reach out now, I can’t sense it anymore. Maybe it’s the drug, but I don’t think I can help you find it if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “It was, but that’s okay. I was only asking so we could keep this from happening to you again.” He unwrapped the cuff from her arm and put it back in his bag. Her vitals were normal all the way around. He could leave as long as Will was able to keep an eye on her until the drug wore off.

  “Will, if you’re feeling well enough again to take care of Wendy and make sure she doesn’t fall for the next hour or so, Barry and I can get out of your hair. I think the episode has passed.” He looked at Wendy. “If it feels like it’s coming back, please don’t hesitate to call us back and we’ll see if we can’t do something to stop it again. I’ll let the other paramedics in our station know about what we did so they can be ready to help. You might also want to see your own doctor. They can get you a prescription for Haldol in pill form or something like it to take if this happens again.”