“I will by tomorrow. Anything else?”
“Yeah,” he added softly. “Thanks, I owe you one.”
“Damn right, you do. You kept my Hello Kitty towel and got it blown up!”
###
“Two hours till midnight,” Mathilda groaned to herself.
Ten o’clock in a Houston emergency room can be a madhouse. Especially on a full moon.
Mathilda Ruiz tried not to look at the clock on her little PC monitor, while typing in the insurance info the fat man wheezed at her from across the desk. His wife had come in half an hour ago with chest pains but, from where Mathilda sat, this guy looked like the prime candidate for a full cardiac blowout. Beside her, Alma Armstrong tried to decipher the complaint of a heavyset woman with a headscarf and a Middle Eastern accent. With Angela sick and spending half the night in the ladie’s room, the two of them were left to fend for themselves against the ailing horde.
The fat man finally finished, and she sent him to wait with his wife. Rubbing her temples, she pretended to do paperwork while trying not to listen to Alma ask the woman to repeat herself for the third time. She honestly felt sorry for her coworker, but better Alma than her. There once existed a time when you only needed to know two languages and you were covered. Nowadays, Houston boasted inhabitants from a hundred different countries and cultures, and sooner or later they all tended to end up here. As always, times were hard and budgets were tight, so they made do the best they could.
She heard Alma finally finish up with whatever the lady in the headscarf needed, and gave an inward chuckle at Alma’s sigh at also getting a moment of peace. The two of them had shared this desk for over three years now, and worked together like a flawless machine. They possessed one of those strange, on-the-job friendships that sometimes arise between coworkers. They talked, gossiped, and knew intimate details about each other’s lives, but neither had ever been to the other’s house or met away from the hospital. The arrangement suited both of them, and neither had tried to push it further.
“Check out what just fell off the hay trailer,” Alma mumbled her way.
Mathilda looked up to see the sliding doors part as a tall, big boned young woman entered the waiting area. She must have been at least six feet in height. Her blonde hair parted down the middle, framing an angular face, before hanging down her back in a single long braid. The girl wore high-waisted blue jeans, with a checkered flannel shirt stuffed down into them, and scuffed up work boots that looked like they had seen their fair share of manure. She also carried an enormous canvas duffel bag slung under one arm.
She hesitated a moment, as if getting her bearings, then marched purposefully up to their desk.
“Where can I find Adam Sellars?” she demanded in a flat voice with a thick, rural accent. Even in Houston, it was noticeable. But at the same time Mathilda made note of the girl’s accent, she also mentally placed the name “Adam Sellars.”
It was the name of the man under police protection up in room 307!
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Alma replied beside her in her blandest professional voice, “but visiting hours are over for the evening. If you could come back at eight o’clock in the morning, you could see him then.”
Mathilda held her breath as the young woman first fixed Alma with a glare of barely restrained hostility, then glanced over her way. Her eyes were puffy, unusually red, and a muscle twitched on the side of her face. This woman was obviously not happy. All the instincts Mathilda had built up in her years behind the desk warned of trouble and she braced herself for the impending meltdown.
But it didn’t’ come.
“Fine then,” the girl spat, then wheeled and stalked away from the desk.
The receptionist breathed a sigh of relief. That was close. Judging from the girl’s expression, she had been expecting her to throw a fit right in front of them. Mathilda exhaled as she watched the newcomer stride over to the ladies bathroom, roughly pull open the door, and disappear inside. At least that was over…but there still remained the matter of what business this woman had here in the first place.
“Alma,” she whispered urgently, “that guy she was asking for is the one all those cops are guarding upstairs!”
“I knooow, I knooow,” Alma softly sing-songed back. “She’s probably some bumpkin relative from the boonies, but it won’t hurt to call up to the third floor and have one of those cops come down here and check her out.” She already had the phone to her ear and was pressing buttons. “You also might want to call Angela on her cell phone and let her know what just walked into the bathroom with her.”
“Oh god, Angela!” Mathilda gasped, and fumbled under the desk for her purse. Pulling her little cell phone out, she hit Angela’s number on the speed dial and chewed her lip as the phone rang.
###
Angela hugged the toilet and promised God she would never, ever, ever go partying while suffering from the flu again.
Her mouth tasted of bile and half digested seafood, and from the way her stomach knotted she knew more waited to come up. The last bout had included the fried shrimp and oysters, preceded by the cheesecake. By that logic, she only had the return of the fried calamari to look forward to and her re-acquaintance with her former dinner should be complete. Then maybe she could go back out there and pull enough of her shift so Mattie and Alma wouldn’t be mad at her.
She couldn’t afford to call in sick, but her performance tonight had been pretty useless, to say the least. She knew she owed her two coworkers big time for covering for her like this, and promised herself she would find a way to pay them back. For now, she would settle for finishing this gastric disaster movie and getting back to work. Taking a series of deep, gulping breaths, Angela leaned back from the toilet and closed the lid. She braced her hands on the rim to push herself up, when she felt her cell phone vibrating in her belt clip.
“Hello?” she tried not to noticeably groan.
“Angie, it’s Mattie.” It sounded like Mathilda was whispering.
“I’ll be right there, Mattie.”
“No!” Mathilda hissed over the phone. “Stay where you are! And talk quietly. Whisper!”
“Huh?”
“Angie, listen.” Mathilda’s voice sounded urgent. “Remember the man upstairs with all the police around him? Well, we had some woman come in asking to see him. Alma put her off by telling her visiting hours are over, and she just went into the bathroom with you. Don’t move, we’re phoning upstairs to get a policeman to come down and check things out.”
They had to be kidding.
Angela stared at the phone for a second and wondered if this was some kind of joke to get even with her for being away from the desk for so long. She wouldn’t put it past the two of them. Then she became aware of the sounds coming from outside her stall. What was that thumping noise?
“Hold on a second,” she murmured into the phone.
Pulling herself to her feet, she turned toward the stall door. Putting her eye to the crack, she could barely make out a leg and a boot up on the bathroom countertop. She frowned in confusion and tried to change her angle to see better. It looked like somebody had crawled up onto the counter running along the bathroom wall across from the stalls. Then she realized the source of the thumping noise. Whoever stood up there was attempting to bump up one of the ceiling tiles.
“Angela, what’s going on?” came the little voice from her phone. Angela covered the speaker with her hand and turned away from the door.
“She’s standing on the counter and doing something with a ceiling tile,” she whispered. “I think she removed it.”
“Oh God, is she placing a bomb?”
A bomb?! The thought nearly caused Angela’s heart to stop, and she whirled back to the door. The possibility of being trapped in a bathroom with a ticking time bomb scared her worse than the threat of discovery. She needed to know what the woman out there was up to, and she needed to know now.
Working with both care and haste, she slid back th
e bolt on her stall door without making a sound. Then gently lifting up on the door by means of the bolt, so it wouldn’t creak when moved, she eased the door open an inch and peeked out.
Her eyes widened at the sight before her.
Stooping on the counter, a tall rural looking young woman had one arm held up into a hole in the ceiling created by a vacant tile. At her feet, a large duffel bag stretched across the countertop. She grasped a long, strange-looking pistol with a wide magazine in her other hand. But the gun barely registered on Angela’s attention. Instead, her gaze locked onto the horror sharing the countertop with the woman. The thing clambered up the woman like a ladder, and disappeared into the ceiling above. It barely fit through the hole.
The monster had only been visible for two or three seconds, but in that brief span of time Angela found everything she thought she knew about the world to be turned upside down. It didn’t matter though…
…because in the next second the woman with the long braid raised that huge pistol and blew Angela’s brains all over the stall behind her.
###
Silence fell everywhere as the roar of the pistol echoed throughout the entire wing of the hospital.
On the third floor, Lieutenant Greg Asprin froze in the process of grouching to Officers Gilbert and Gonzales about the excessiveness of having six police officers guard one unconscious man. He had just sent Vargas and McEntyre down the elevator to the first floor to check out the mystery woman the emergency room desk had called about. Officer Kwan was already downstairs at the lunchroom, grabbing chips and sodas to bring back upstairs.
“Vargas! McEntyre!” He grabbed his mic. “You hear that? You’re heading into gunfire. Kwan! Where are you? Get to the emergency room, NOW!” Turning to Officer Gonzales, he gestured down the hall. “Pete, go down there and cover the stairs. I don’t want anybody using this as a distraction to come up from behind. Gilbert, you stay with me for the moment.”
“Lieutenant, shouldn’t we be heading down there to back them up?”
“I want to, Gilbert,” Asprin gritted in frustration, “but we’re assigned to protect Sellars, and what’s going on downstairs could be a ploy to pull us away from him. So we stay put, look sharp, and call in for backup. McEntyre and Vargas are good men, and Kwan is a combat vet, so they should be okay until help arrives. Now go get all the hospital staff on this floor to take cover, just in case.”
“Yes sir.” Gilbert turned and ran for the nurse’s station.
Asprin drew his sidearm and faced back down the hall.
“Alright guys,” he muttered, half in prayer, “don’t make a liar out of me.”
###
Everyone in the emergency room froze as the reverberations of the gunshot faded.
There were no screams or cries of fear, only wide eyes and stunned silence. Somewhere, a pen and clipboard clattered to the floor…a second shock in the brittle quiet.
Alma and Mathilda stood rooted behind their desk, staring in horror at the door to the women’s bathroom. Mathilda still gripped her cell phone, holding it up to her ear.
“Angie?” she whispered.
Only the sound of receding footsteps came back to her over the phone.
A second later the bathroom door jerked open and the tall blond strode out into the emergency room. She had her jaw set, and an enormous pistol of some kind in her left hand. Her right held the large duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She barely spared the people of the room a glance before turning to her right and stalking past Alma and Mathilda’s desk and down the hall into the hospital. The two women stood rigid while she walked by, barely daring to turn their heads and follow her progress.
Staff in the hallway cowered or pressed against the walls as she approached. The gunwoman’s course took her straight down the middle of the corridor, looking neither right nor left, and heading for the bank of elevators at the intersection ahead. The clump of her boots echoed on the tile floor, magnified by the eerie hush. Two dozen pairs of eyes followed her progress, wide with fear.
Then, without warning, she pointed the large pistol at the elevator door and fired twice. The ear-shattering roar of the big firearm resounded in the passageway, causing the terrified onlookers to cover their heads.
A split second later the little light by the door flashed on and the chime announced the arrival of an elevator car. The door slid open to reveal two police officers, and an elevator sprayed with blood. One officer clutched his chest just below his neck, and slid down the back wall. The other gripped his stomach and staggered forward, pawing at the buttons.
The emergency room and hallway finally erupted in screams, and the deadly Amazon quickened her pace toward the elevators. She narrowed the gap rapidly, and leveled her pistol at the wounded policeman who now feebly tried to close the elevator doors. Nothing but cold fury showed in her eyes as she took aim at his head.
But that was when Officer Harold Kwan burst around the corner behind her and opened fire.
###
On the third floor, Asprin fought the urge to start yelling into his mic as the sound of a gunfight exploded from the floor below.
Experience and training dictated it was best to leave the channel open, and let his men update him as they could. He needed to trust them to take care of themselves. All he would accomplish by calling them would be to possibly distract them while they might be fighting for their lives.
“Pete!” he yelled at Gonzalez. “Keep an eye on those stairs, but stay where I can see you! I don’t want any surprises coming from that direction!”
He offered a quick, silent prayer that he wasn’t screwing this up and putting his men in even more danger than they were already in. Although a sixteen-year veteran of the police force, he had never fired his sidearm at another human being…and now he found himself in charge of a full-on gun battle. He knew his men counted on him to keep his head, so he resolved to stay focused on the job at hand, and try to deal with things as they came.
“Lieutenant!” Vargas’ voice gasped over the radio, “We’re both hit. Bad.”
Oh crap!
“Vargas! What’s going on!”
“We’re in the elevator going up. Kwan saved our asses. McEntyre is down, and I’m not much better. It’s a woman! Tall. With some kind of hand cannon. She shot us right through the door. Right through my vest, too. Sorry, Boss, but we’re out of the fight.” His voice weakened toward the end.
Asprin could feel the situation starting to spin out of control. With a deep breath, he reminded himself to stay focused and deal with the now.
“Vargas, get out of there and get yourself and McEntyre to a doctor. We’ll take care of this lunatic.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do my best. Vargas out.”
That meant he had already lost a third of his squad. And it also meant Officer Kwan fought alone down there.
“Gilbert!” he yelled toward the nurses’ station, “Have you heard any response on backup yet?”
“They’re coming! But it will still be about ten minutes!”
Damn.
“Alright, you get the rest of those nurses under cover then get to Sellars. Pete and I are going to go down there and help Kwan.”
“But Lieutenant…”
“Stay with Sellars!”
“Yes, sir,” the young officer replied, obviously unhappy. He ran back toward the nurse’s station.
“Pete!” Asprin turned and yelled to Officer Gonzales down the hall. “We’re going to go help Kwan! I’ll be there in a second, and we’ll take the stairs!”
The thunder of gunfire continued from below. He could easily distinguish the bark of Kwan’s nine millimeter from the booming roar of his opponent’s weapon. It sounded like Kwan was doing the majority of the shooting, but couldn’t silence the other gun.
“Kwan!” Asprin snapped into his mic, “Hang on! Gonzalez and I are on our way.”
He started for Gonzalez and the stairs, but Kwan’s reply brought him up short.
“No, Lieu
tenant! Stay there!” It was easy to tell by Kwan’s voice that he was hurt. “This crazy bitch is unbelievable! It’s going to take SWAT to stop her! I swear, she can see and shoot through walls! And I can’t hit her!”
###
Adam woke, panicked and confused by the sound of gunfire.
The old man must have come back after him!
The grisly image of his attacker’s charred and blasted husk, lumbering down the hallway while shooting anything that moved, rose in Adam’s drugged mind. In his current condition, it didn’t seem such a stretch. And the police certainly had no chance of stopping an armed dead man.
He needed to get out of here.
His body seemed to be moving through air thick as mud as he tried to sit up. The whole atmosphere seemed liquid and unreal. The readout on his IV machine, and a dim recessed bulb above his door, cast the only light in the room. He had no idea how to find his clothes in this murk, but at the moment his challenge would be to simply get out of bed.
Adam gripped the IV in his arm, but then hesitated. For a second he wondered about the dangers of removing the needle himself. Then the muffled sound of gunfire resumed and settled his doubts. Gritting his teeth, he gave a firm jerk. The tape turned out to be sterner stuff than he expected, and he had to jerk again.
It hurt but the thin tube came free. At the same time, the little pulse monitor pulled loose from his finger, causing an alarm to start beeping somewhere in the dark. This only added to the sense of disorientation that wrapped his fogged brain.
“I gotta move,” he slurred to himself, “I’ve gotta get moving.”
The room spun around him as Adam twisted his body and hung his legs over the edge of the bed. He closed his eyes, and tried to stop himself from falling back by sheer force of will. His stomach threatened to rebel, and he could feel his left forearm wet with blood from where he pulled the IV from his vein. Fighting the lightheadedness, he took a deep breath and pushed himself forward.
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