The Collective Protocol

by Brian Parker

  ME: Ok. Thank you.

  She thought about it for a moment and then pulled up the internet on her phone’s web browser. A quick search brought up a few paragraphs about the incident, but it was so new that there wasn’t much meat to the story.

  Las Vegas—(AP) Yet another strange and tragic occurrence happened in Las Vegas today. Preliminary reports indicate that several on-duty Las Vegas police officers were involved in incidents at the same time. Three police cruisers crashed into separate casinos along the Vegas Strip, killing four and injuring dozens. There are also reports of police officers simply falling asleep as they walked, rode patrol bikes and even in the middle of arrests.

  There are reports that many of the city’s police officers also fired their weapons indiscriminately into crowds of bystanders, but those reports have not been confirmed. A spokesman for the Las Vegas Police Department said that the incidents are under investigation.

  What was happening? The internet article stated that it was another strange occurrence. That was an understatement. Vegas had devolved from Sin City into the proverbial Pandora’s Box. Once the lid was taken off, all of the crazies who normally hid in the shadows wanted to come out and have fun.

  The poop-throwing crackhead was only the latest in a long list of strange perpetrators and arrests that she’d had since her close call with the intruder at her home. It had gotten so bad on the streets that the department didn’t even care if officers fired shots in the city. As long as the tourists continued to flock to the town and spend money, then the officers were authorized every level of force imaginable to protect them. Maybe the doc was right. A paid vacation sounded better and better.

  She finished using the restroom and the lights went out. The hospital went completely black inside for a few seconds and then the emergency generators kicked in. The restroom was filled with a watery half-light that constituted the emergency lighting in the desert hospital.

  Pam hiked up her pants and winced when the material rubbed against the bandages on her leg. It would take some getting used to and she may have to buy a few pairs of loose-fitting jeans to make it through the healing months. She finally buckled the pants and settled her duty belt into place on her hips. Then she hobbled her way to the sink to wash her hands.

  The door to the bathroom exploded inwards, startling her. A female patient in a gown stood staring dumbly into the restroom and Pam began to laugh at the absurdity of getting startled in the emergency lighting by someone who’d inadvertently pushed the door too hard. The sound never left her lips as the patient screeched at her and dove across the short distance between the door and the sink.

  She hit Pam dead center and she crumpled in on herself. The crutches slid wide under the added pressure and the two of them flew backwards. Pam landed hard on her backside and the woman flipped around like someone possessed. In seconds she was straddling the injured police officer and punching down onto the side of her head.

  Pam wasn’t ready for the blow and her head snapped backwards, hitting the tile floor behind her hard enough to make her vision swim. The psychopath leaned down close to her face and spit into it. “Hi, Pammie! Remember me?”

  The officer’s mind raced, Who the hell was this woman? No one had called me ‘Pammie’ since I was a kid out in New York. What did she want with me? “You’re mistaken lady. I’m a cop, get off of me. Now!”

  “I know exactly who you are and what you did. Who you really are,” she drooled. “I was there.”

  Pam tried to struggle, but there was no escaping the woman’s weight and her arms were trapped at her side by her attacker’s legs. “Let’s make this fun, Pammie!” the patient laughed as she produced a scalpel from somewhere. The blood that dripped freely from it made Pam think that she’d just pulled it from her own side, but that was impossible.

  “Please, don’t do this!” the officer pleaded and continued to squirm.

  “That’s what I used to say every time he came into my bedroom, remember?”

  Pam stopped struggling and tried to focus on her attacker. “P… Paige, is that you?”

  “You’re a quick one, aren’t you, Pammie?” she said sarcastically and plunged the scalpel into Pam’s breast.

  She cried out in pain and screamed for help. Paige pulled the blade free and casually replied, “No one will help you. Poor Pammie. I used to beg for your help, but you always hid to save yourself from him.”

  “Please don’t do this, Paige. We were children. I was scared that he’d attack me again.”

  “Oh, he didn’t touch you anymore once I was around for him to touch.”

  Pam’s hand grasped the handle of her pistol and she pulled it out, firing up into the woman as she did so. She must have hit her in the head because blood fountained against the mirror and she slumped over on top of the startled officer.

  It took a considerable effort to push the dead weight off of her upper body. She finally managed it and screamed for help. What the hell is happening? she asked herself for the hundredth time. She sat up and felt for a pulse in Paige’s neck, but she was dead.

  How had Paige found her? They’d been kids together in a foster home in New York. Pam had been there for about a year when the agency awarded the “loving family” a second child. Once Paige arrived, he’d left her alone and focused his attentions on the smaller, less violent newcomer. The only way that they’d been saved was by a federal investigation into the man’s online activities. She’d never seen Paige again until today; and now she’d just killed her former foster sister.

  Pam used the sink to pull herself to her feet. She pulled the scalpel from her breast and unbuttoned the top three buttons on her heavy polyester work shirt to expose the injury. The blade had sliced a two-inch long cut and it appeared to go almost an inch deep. The pain meds they gave me for my leg must still be working, her mind hypothesized as she stared at the wound with a detached interest.

  She bent and recovered the crutches and made her way towards the door. The lights flickered rapidly on and off in the hallway, casting everything in eerie shadows and blossoms of light. Up ahead a doctor stood staring towards the ER and she called out. “Help me! I’ve been stabbed.”

  He didn’t react to her calls so she continued hobbling towards him. When she was within a few feet she yelled again, “Hey! Hey, I’ve been stabbed. I need help.”

  Finally the doctor seemed to notice that someone was behind him and he turned slowly towards her. “Oh, thank God, Daniel! Help me, please.”

  He looked at her strangely like he didn’t recognize her and then the light went off in his head. “Oh, hi Pammie,” he said. “Not feeling well today?”

  “What… What did you just call me?” she stammered.

  “Your name. Pammie. Oh wait, you don’t go by that anymore, you’re a mature police officer,” his voice took on a gruff tone as he said the last three words.

  “Daniel, what’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing. I feel amazing. Pammie, you really should see the size of this guy. I bet you would have loved it!”

  Pam scrambled backwards as quickly as she could to add some distance between her and the strange doctor. She drew her pistol and pointed it dead at the center of her chest. “Stay away from me, Daniel.”

  “Now, is that any way to treat your sister,” Daniel asked with his hands on his hips.

  “Paige? Is that you?”

  “How many other sisters have you had? Of course it’s me!”

  “What’s happening? How are you inside of Doctor Daniel?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she said as she turned and skipped down the hallway towards the emergency room.

  Pam turned to look behind her. She hadn’t ever been too far into the hospital besides the emergency room, but she knew that somewhere back that way was another exit. It was a good thing that she’d been stabbed in the fatty tissue of her boob by Paige or else she would have bled a lot more and not been able to move.

  She considered
her options and decided to try to make it to the front entrance. She began the slow, arduous trek down the hallway on the crutches. “Hey, I thought we were playing a game!” Daniel/Paige called from the ER.

  Pam ignored him and continued hobbling towards the interior of the building. “Okay, this will be more fun anyways!” he shouted at her retreating form.

  Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God, Pam’s mind repeated over and over. What was happening? She passed by an empty fire extinguisher bracket and thought it looked weird. Where is the extinguisher? OSHA would have a fit if they saw that. Then she chastised herself for thinking anyone would care about a fire extinguisher under the circumstances.

  A heavyset nurse burst out of the doors leading to the Radiology clinic a few feet in front of her. She danced seductively against a red cylindrical object. Found the fire extinguisher. Pam knew it was useless, but asked anyways, “Hey, can you help me?”

  “Oh yeah, Pammie. I can help you. Hey, remember when we were little and it would snow? We’d go to the park and pretend that we were snow princesses and that the real world was just a dream. Remember that?”

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  The nurse pulled the safety pin and began spraying the flame retardant foam up in the air and then waived the hose all around while the white froth flew everywhere. “It’s snowing, Pammie! The real world is just a dream! I’m the master of my world. I can be anyone or anything I want to be!”

  “Paige! Paige, stop it. You’re scaring me,” Pam pleaded.

  “Fine!” she screamed like a petulant child. “You’re no fun.” She turned to go back into Radiology and thought better of it. She just stood there and stared at Pam with her hands on her hips. The officer glanced nervously at her and then continued past slowly. Paige sprayed a burst from the extinguisher at her backside when she passed.

  Maybe the drugs that they gave me are too powerful and I’m hallucinating. She continued to walk as quickly as she could, but another hospital worker burst from a side hallway holding something awkwardly down low.

  “Hi, Pammie!” this one said.

  “Hello, Paige,” she replied wearily.

  “Hey, remember when we used to play in the fire hydrants when they would let off the pressure from the lines?”

  “Yeah, those were good days too.”

  “Let’s do it again!” Paige said and brought the object that she’d been holding up level with her side. She turned the fire hose on full-blast and the pressure knocked both of them off their feet.

  “Woo hoo!” Paige yelled as the hose flew from her grasp and sprayed water wildly in all directions. “This is so fun!”

  Pam struggled to her feet and pushed past the laughing form. She walked for twenty feet before she risked a glance backwards towards the latest incarnation of her former sibling. The orderly stood there staring at her while the hose continued to spray water everywhere.

  She passed a sign that said the exit was ahead and shivered uncontrollably as she walked towards the lobby. Pam didn’t know if the shock of the day was getting to her or if the air conditioning had been lowered; with her wet clothing the cold was almost debilitating. Pam wasn’t even fazed when another person jumped out from the florist shop. This one held flowers and balloons.

  “Remember when we had a birthday party together, Pammie? That was so fun.”

  “Yeah, it’s one of my favorite childhood memories, Paige,” she lied.

  “Oh, not mine. Daddy trapped me in the bathroom and stuffed a towel in my mouth. Sometimes the need took him at the strangest time. He said that I kept him from hurting all of your friends that day and that I should be proud.”

  Pam jumped as the flower vase shattered across the floor. “Can you believe that? I should be proud that he molested me instead of the other girls at the party. If you hadn’t invited your friends over, I might not have been touched that day. I never got the chance to thank you for that.”

  The florist pulled a pair of scissors out of her apron and charged towards Pam. She unholstered her weapon and fired into the woman’s chest. The scissors went flying and the lady fell back against the glass shop windows. I wondered when she’d get violent again, her mind said.

  The hallway opened up into a large lobby full of people who blocked her path to the exit. As one, they all turned towards her and a chorus of different voices said, “Hi, Pammie!” in unison.

  There was no way that she’d be able to avoid them so she turned to head back down the hallway. Daniel led the heavy nurse and the dripping wet orderly towards her. Behind him all of the former occupants of the ER spread out down the hallway, completely blocking the way back.

  “Drop the weapon, Pammie,” two hundred voices said in unison from either side of her. She looked between the two groups of people and considered her options. She had eight rounds left in her current magazine and another twenty more on her belt. Not nearly enough to shoot her way out of here.

  She set her weapon down and Paige’s proselytes closed in.

  THIRTEEN

  The Acid Rain was incredibly hot. Even though it was early December, they had the heat cranked up so high that clothes were discarded everywhere in the club. The partiers would figure out what belonged to whom later, for now it was all about the experience.

  Reagan stepped up to the bar and ordered bottled water. She watched carefully as the bartender handed her a sealed bottle. “Eight bucks,” he said without even cracking a smile.

  She blanched and yelled over the music, “Eight dollars! Are you sure? The sign says draft beer is only six.”

  “Let me see your hands. Are you old enough for a beer?”

  “No,” she answered.

  “Then the water is eight bucks.”

  “That’s a rip-off and you know it.”

  “I don’t set the prices, I just pour the drinks,” he replied and took an order from another customer while she decided what she was going to do.

  Reagan took a ten dollar bill out of her clutch and slammed it down on the bar. She knew it wasn’t his fault. The clubbing scene in D.C. had taken a major hit after the incident at Justin’s place back in October and the intermittent power grid conspired against everyone in the service industry. They were trying to make a few extra dollars any way that they could. “Fine, keep the change,” she shouted and snatched the bottle off of the alcohol-soaked bar.

  She twisted the cap and took several large gulps of the room-temperature water. The drugs that many of the clubbers took dehydrated them and they would get cotton mouth and needed the fluids. It was actually a smart move to charge more for the water as they did for the beer since most of the crowd was under 21. Reagan shook her head and thought, even in the end times, capitalism prevails.

  That was a sobering thought. Were these the end times? She obviously didn’t believe that flake of a psychology teacher, but things did seem to be out of control lately. In a little over two months, it seemed like all sorts of things had changed. Stray animals and homeless people were now non-existent in the city. The National Guard patrolled the streets day and night. Even the university had added a police presence to keep the students safe.

  The nightly news seemed to broadcast some new type of horror or bizarre occurrence nearly every day. International flights had become extremely scarce as the world community watched the slow degradation of the American society and intercontinental flights were simply cancelled without question. No one knew what was afflicting the North American continent, but they didn’t want it transferring to their countries.

  Reagan sighed as she stared out at the undulating bodies. Her video camera continued to roll on her arm, but she wasn’t feeling it. She didn’t want to be here anymore. This scene, this crowd, she felt as if she’d suddenly grown beyond it. The only reason that she even came tonight was because she needed a few more minutes of footage for her multimedia presentation on the declining Washington, D.C. club scene.

  Her advisor had strongly cautioned her against changing the focus of her term pa
per into a multimedia presentation, this late in the semester, but it was something that she felt needed to be done. She simply couldn’t bring herself to write any more pages about the positive benefits of clubbing for the younger generation. Her view of the world had changed and she was beginning to see it in a different light.

  She didn’t care about the recreational drugs; every generation had that to contend with. Now that she had purposefully made herself an outsider, one of the things she was beginning to see was the sexual assaults that happened in this environment. Sure, she’d changed her clothing choice when she went on “assignment” long ago due to the rampant groping, but she also saw boys and girls being carried to the restrooms or alleyway. On her last club visit she’d done her normal routine of scanning the crowd for interesting people to videotape and interview. As a result of her people-watching, she’d noticed several times when things weren’t right and called the police on three separate occasions. Arrests had been made and her name was once again on the police radar, but in a positive way this time.

  Was this what growing up was like? She still enjoyed the music, but the scene itself seemed ridiculous and she couldn’t believe that she’d ever actually liked to go to these types of places for fun. She raised her bottle to take another drink when it suddenly went flying from her hand.

  “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry!” a cute guy yelled in her ear. “I got pushed from behind. Let me buy you another one.”

  She gave him a quick up and down look. He looked just like everyone else in the room except that he wasn’t covered in sweat. She nodded and turned back to watch the crowd with her camera.

  In a few moments the guy returned with two bottles of water and handed her one. “Did you just get here?” she asked.

  “Not too long ago. How can you tell?”

  “Everyone else out there is drenched in sweat because it’s so damn hot in here!” she yelled and pointed towards the people dancing rhythmically to the beat of the music.