by Gibb, Lew
THE JOURNEY HOME
THE WILSONS' SAGA BOOK ONE
LEW GIBB
Copyright © 2020 Lew Gibb
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contact author at
[email protected]
Chapter One
“Hold him!” Dr. Oliveira yelled. “Hold him!”
Nurse Rosa Santiago rose up on her toes, trying to get more of her body weight onto the chest and shoulder of the patient writhing beneath her. The man’s filthy, dirt-encrusted sleeves were almost indistinguishable from his bare hands and arms. The once-white gauze bandages—one on his face and another on his neck—needed to be changed, but they couldn’t do anything until the man was sedated.
Oliveira crossed his arms and took a step back. “How the hell can I examine him if you let him thrash around like that?”
Rosa looked at Maria Vargas, the charge nurse was standing behind the first year resident. She met Rosa’s eyes and rolled her own theatrically. The baby-docs were always long on ego and short on practical experience. Everyone had known the patient needed to be chemically restrained from the moment they’d rolled him into the room. Maria had even suggested it, tactfully of course, but doctors always thought they knew better—especially the new residents. If the patient’s appearance hadn’t been enough of an indication, the sight of the flight paramedic’s shredded arm—caused by this very patient—should have clued the doctor in. The poor paramedic was in the next room having the his tricep cleaned and stitched up. The good doctors eventually overcame their egos and learned to trust people with more experience even if they didn’t have “MD” after their names.
This eventual trust wasn’t helping anyone now, though. The six of them—three nurses, two CNAs, plus the unhelpful Dr. Oliveira—were struggling to keep the guy from hurting himself or anyone else.
Rosa returned Maria’s eye roll with a grimace. “No way was this some kind of animal attack like they said.” The man’s eyes were so inflamed Rosa imagined if she touched one, it would melt right through her latex glove and burn her hand.
“That’s what the army said.” Maria’s voice was heavy with cynicism. “Some kind of jungle expedition to find a lost tribe or something. Nineteen went in, only four made it out.”
Dr. Oliveira leaned in and fixed his gaze on the patient’s red-rimmed eyes. Calling them bloodshot would have been an understatement. The irises looked like a pair of blue life rings adrift in lakes of blood.
“Careful, doctor,” Rosa said, feeling the patient’s muscles tensing beneath her as he strained to raise his torso off the bed. She wished they had full-body restraints like the ones in the psych ward—likely where this guy would be going as soon as the baby-doc finished his assessment. Maybe he was on some kind of psychedelic his expedition had found in the jungle.
“Shit!” Filipe Diaz said. The big RN was on the other side of the bed, controlling the patient’s other arm—well, he had been controlling it.
Rosa barely had time to register the patient’s arm reaching for her before his hand clamped her left wrist.
Filipe lunged for the patient’s arm while Dr. Oliveira recoiled, a look of revulsion on his face. He probably should have gone into something less messy. Like dermatology.
The patient levered himself off the bed, and his head twisted at an impossible angle before he sunk his teeth into Rosa’s arm. A bolt of pain lanced up her arm, crowding out all rational thought.
Dr. Oliveira yelled for ketamine to sedate the patient—finally—but his voice barely registered to Rosa over the high-pitched wail in her ears. She realized the sound was her own screaming just as her vision greyed and her knees went weak. The pain flared for a moment, then faded. And the world went dark.
The next thing Rosa knew, she was on her side looking up at the patient’s face, which seemed stuck to the doctor’s shoulder. Doctor Oliveira was punching the side of the patient’s head and screaming obscenities.
Rosa raised her arm to try and help. Her eyes were drawn to pair of opposing half-circles in the flesh just below her elbow, their ends were only a centimeter from coming together. A steady stream of viscous red coursed down her arm and dripped off her elbow. Rosa watched the droplets spatter the white linoleum tile, forming a zig-zag pattern until the lines of the blood started to overlap and expand into a puddle that grew as she watched. Rosa had seen a lot of blood in her six years as a nurse, but for some reason, the sight of her own was making her light-headed. She was wondering if the wound was deep enough to reach her ulnar artery when the world went dark again.
***
Rosa finally made it home six hours later—after receiving twenty stitches and a liter of fluid, not to mention flushing her wound for half an hour because the human mouth was a breeding ground for bacteria. The only thing she could think of when she pushed through the front door of the apartment she shared with her fiancé Caio was the Percocet leftover from her wisdom-tooth extraction she hoped would be waiting for her in the medicine cabinet. She couldn’t remember if she’d thrown it out. The Tylenol with codeine, which the other idiot resident had given her at the hospital—the bastard acted like she was some kind of drug seeker—hadn’t been strong enough to begin with. And now, after a nightmare commute through Brazília’s notorious rush-hour traffic, Tylenol wasn’t even close to getting the job done. The pain seemed to be increasing with each throb.
Rosa thumped her big purse on the kitchen table and headed for the bathroom. She paused for just a second, and a slight smile managed to force its way onto her lips as her eyes fell on the brochure stuck to the refrigerator door. The brochure was for an apartment building in the northwest corner of Brasília’s federal district, where she and Caio would be living after their wedding. The brand new building’s modern design and curving, white exterior walls contrasted the dark, mirror-like windows and made the building look like a creation by Oscar Niemeyer, the famous Brazilian architect.
Painful throbbing drew her thoughts back to the ER. Rosa couldn’t believe that nut had managed to twist his head so far and bite her. Or that Dr. Oliveira had been dumb enough to get bitten after watching the guy get someone else. Some people just didn’t get it. Still, he hadn’t deserved the pain and suffering. Maria told Rosa he’d gotten over fifty stitches and would need reconstructive surgery.
Leaving the lights off and the curtains closed, Rosa navigated the tiny, cluttered apartment, dodging the battered, mismatched furniture, which had been salvaged from her and Caio’s respective college apartments. They would buy matching furniture when they moved. Rosa made it into the bathroom and located the medicine cabinet mostly by feel in the dim light filtering through the bedroom’s curtained windows. She thought again about the patient’s eyes. They had been so red and inflamed, the thought of them made her shudder.
She and the rest of the staff had been lied to about the man’s condition. The oval hole in his skin was an almost exact match for her own wound. He had obviously been bitten by a human.
Relief flooded through Rosa when she found the partially full bottle of Percocet was still on the top shelf. The label advised her to take only one pill at a time, but she had exceeded the recommended dosage before. She needed to mask the pain enough so she could sleep. She was scheduled for the seven-to-seven sh
ift that night. With the wedding expenses and the move, she couldn’t bear the loss of a single day’s pay.
After curling up in bed and wrapping herself in their threadbare comforter—a house-warming gift from Caio’s grandmother—Rosa fell almost immediately to sleep.
Chapter Two
Paramedic Jerry Wilson smiled and licked his lips theatrically as his wife Rachel approached their kitchen table, sidestepping around the pair of german shepherds keeping pace with her, hoping for something to fall off the two plates loaded with huevos rancheros. “This looks awesome,” He said as she slid a steaming plate in front of him. He plucked a tortilla from the warmer in the center of the table as Rachel sat across the table. “So then Bob says, ‘Dude, those are zombies,’” Jerry continued, then flinched at his wife’s incredulous look.
“Zombies, Jerry?” Rachel said, plucking the tortilla from his fingers. She glared at him as she tore off a piece, scooped a petite dollop of eggs and black beans, and took a small bite. “Why do you listen when he says shit like that? I love the guy, and I know he’s your best friend, but sometimes I think his grip on reality is a little tenuous.”
Jerry frowned, grabbed another tortilla, and started shoveling huevos onto it. He had to admit Bob’s track record on predicting disasters wasn’t great, but Rachel was usually more easy-going about his friend's “antics,” as she called them. He hoped it was just the adjustment to his new schedule. Since they’d switched to forty-eight-hour shifts on the ambulance it was taking them a little longer to get back in sync when he came home.
“This time there might be something to it,” Jerry insisted.
Rachel’s fork clanked against her plate. “Jeasus Jerry, I’m serious. I don’t want you buying into this lunacy. Remember when he thought that insurance company mascot was part of a plan to make us more receptive to lizard-people?” Jerry flinched. He had to admit, that one wasn’t one of Bob’s best ideas. Or his own. “And you spent an ass-load of money on that photo analysis software. ”
“That was years ago.”
“And what did you find out?” Rachel crossed her arms and glared at him across the table. “Now, repeat after me: there’s no such thing as fucking zombies.”
Jerry evaluated his chances of winning the argument and decided to humor her. “There’s no such thing as zombies.” Now was not the time to remind her she was trying to clean up her language.
Rachel nodded. “Thank you.” She gave him a smile and looked at their two drooling German Shepherds. The pair were seated side-by-side next to her and their eyes tracked her hands like missile guidance systems. “Aw. Now you made me upset the dogs.” She grabbed a pair of tortillas from the warmer, folded each one in half, and passed them to the dogs who grabbed the discs gently with their front teeth.
“They do look pretty traumatized.” Jerry smiled as Kodi and Mandy trotted to their respective ends of the couch with their snacks. The dogs were both big, even for shepherds, and the pair took up almost the entire couch. Against his better judgement, he tried again to get Rachel on board. “Did you even see the news? The story about that group that got rescued from the Brazilian rain forest?”
“I heard about that.” Her voice was flat. “They got wiped out by some animal or something. Nothing mysterious there.”
“That’s the one. I didn’t hear anything about an animal though.”
“And I didn’t hear anyone mention zombies.” Rachel forked a dime-sized portion of huevos into her mouth.
“No, not directly, but one of the experts was saying—”
Rachel interrupted him. “Experts?” She made air quotes with her fingers. “You mean the jackasses they get to come on and make up the story before they have the slightest idea what’s going on?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Or, like the story Bob made up about them being zombies?”
“Didn’t you see the footage of the survivors? With those eyes and the way they were trying to bite the people, they could be zombies.”
Rachel took a sip of her coffee and frowned. “You guys watch too many fucking movies.”
“Hey, I’m just telling you what he said.” Jerry spooned on green chili, rolled his tortilla into a misshapen burrito and mashed the front end into his mouth. A dark green slurry of beans and chili oozed out and ran down his forearm, followed by a blob of egg that rolled free, bounced off the table, and continued to the floor. Kodi launched himself off the couch, snarfed the bit of egg, then started licking Jerry’s arm.
“Jerry,” Rachel pointed with her fork. “That’ll make him sick.”
Jerry pushed halfheartedly at the Kodi’s head while trying to line up for another bite. “The dog has an iron stomach. Remember over at Bob’s when he ate that beer can?”
“He didn’t really eat it.” Rachel had prepared her own pristine burrito which she guided daintily to her mouth. She took a small bite without getting any on herself or the floor.
“All I know is there weren’t nearly enough pieces left when he was finished with it.”
“I still don’t know how he didn’t cut himself,” Rachel said, then took another bite and chewed with a thoughtful look on her face.
“Maybe he has iron lips, too?” Jerry set his deteriorating burrito down and turned to look at Kodi. The brown-and-black shepherd stood passively while Jerry pinched the left side of his black muzzle and peeled back his upper lip to examine it. The exposed fang had a bit of egg stuck to it, but the skin was unblemished.
Rachel smirked. “Well, if the can had been covered in green chili, there would have been a lot more to clean up than pieces of aluminum. Besides, German Shepherds are from Germany, and they’re not used to spicy food.”
“I found him in an alley downtown when he was eight weeks old.”
“It’s hereditary.” Rachel waved a hand, swatting his words away. “Besides the fact that they’re supposed to eat dog food.”
“You just gave them a tortilla.”
“That’s made of grain, which is the same as dog food.”
“You’re killing me.” Jerry gave up trying to eat the burrito by hand, grabbed his fork and started shoveling huevos into his mouth. “By the way,” he said around a mouthful of food, Bob asked if you want to go shooting with us next Tuesday. He has another new gun he wants to try out.”
“What is it? Shit.” Rachel stood up and headed for the kitchen with the dogs on her heels, following the origin of all treats. “I forgot the sauce.”
“Some kind of Czech pistol.” Jerry raised his voice as she entered the kitchen. “I never heard of it, but Bob seems to think it’s pretty special.”
“As far as I can tell—” Rachel’s voice was only muffled a little since the kitchen had no door “—he thinks every gun he doesn’t have is pretty special.” Rachel emerged from the kitchen with a bowl of something bright green and returned to her seat. “Try some of this.” She handed Jerry the bowl across the table. “It’s a basil-jalapeño thing I’m working on for the dinner I’m catering later this week.”
Jerry spooned some sauce on the pile of food covering his plate. “Mike wants you to come, too. He said to tell you he wants another bet.”
“Really? Is he still mad about me beating him so bad at that triathlon?”
“I wouldn’t say he was mad.” Jerry tore off a section of tortilla dripping with green sauce and popped it in his mouth. “He’s just really competitive.”
“Probably didn’t like having to wash my car for a month either. Especially since he talked shit for weeks before the race.”
“I probably should tell him some time that you almost made the Olympic team for biathlon.”
Rachel’s eyes got big. “Jerry, you have to tell him.”
“I will.” Jerry laughed and reached across the table for a fist bump. “After this weekend. See if you can get him to do our laundry this time.”
“No, thank you. I know you guys are close, but I’m barely comfortable with you touching my dirty underwear.”
“All right,
but we have to think of something good. I also didn’t tell him we’ve been practicing a couple times a week, and you’re almost as good a shot as me.”
“Almost?” Rachel reached across the table and punched him in the arm. “Who had to cook dinner all last week?”
“Ouch!” Jerry smiled and rubbed his arm. “Okay, he doesn’t know that last week you were better than me.”
“There you go. So tell Mike he’s going down. Now, tell me you don’t really believe Bob about the zombies. I don’t need his bat-shit-crazy rubbing off on you.”
“Well, he came right out and said it wasn’t a joke. Said he was stocking up on ammo and food. Said we should do the same and be ready when it comes here.”
“Dammit, Jerry, he’s going to get you in trouble. Just like that time when he convinced you the fucking Wiggles were part of a mind control plot.”
“Why else would anyone watch that show. But this is different.”
“And is it different than the time you spent all that money on a time share in a missile silo?”
“Okay, you made your point.” Jerry grimaced and took another bite of huevos. “But that was a great deal.”
“Only if the end of the world happened during your two weeks in January.”
“No. There were provisions for—”
“We’re not doing this again.” Rachel waved her hands in front of her, swatting the subject aside. “What does Mike think of all this?”
“He sent us off on a tangent about what kind of zombies they were.”
“And what did the brain trust decide?” Rachel deadpanned.
“Mike looked it up. They’re like the ones in Twenty-Eight Days Later.”
Rachel made a face like she just swallowed a bug. “For those of us who don’t obsess over this shit every day, what does that even mean? And how the hell did he look it up?”