Dead City - 01 (3 page)

We finally came to a stop after hitting a brick mailbox and the back end of somebody’s parked car.

The last thing I remember was the airbag exploding in my face.

Chapter 2

I don’t think I ever totally passed out, but I don’t remember being put in the EMS unit either. When I finally came to, there was an oxygen mask on my face and an EMS tech was trying to put a blood-pressure cuff on me.

I recognized him from some of the calls we’d made together, but I didn’t remember his name. I think it was Robertson or Robinson or something like that.

I coughed hard and couldn’t stop. It felt like I was being ripped apart inside.

“Take it easy, Hudson.”

I reached for the oxygen mask and tried to pull it off my face. He grabbed my wrist so I couldn’t.

“Leave it there.”

“Let me go,” I said, though it came out muffled and slurred through the mask, all in one syllable.

I struggled weakly to sit up. My neck and shoulder felt stiff and I thought I was going to throw up.

“You stay there. Your sergeant said for you to stay put.”

“I’m gonna throw up.”

I got the mask off my face, and this time he didn’t try to stop me. I turned my head to one side and coughed again. My face and eyes were burning, and I figured I must have gotten some of that pepper spray after all.

“Where’s Tompkins?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, still trying to fit my arm with the blood-pressure cuff. “They were taking him Code Three to Downtown Methodist, last I heard. He looked pretty bad when they pulled him out of the car.”

He raised my arm off the gurney. “Come on, now. I’ve got to get this thing on you.”

“What about the people we shot?”

It was urgent. I had to know. I grabbed his arm and squeezed hard. “Tell me!”

He didn’t want to say anything about it, I could tell. He stammered, and when I pressed him even harder he blurted out, “I don’t know. Let go of my arm.”

“Those people wouldn’t go down!” I was almost yelling it at him and I could see him looking at the straps on the gurney next to my arms, wishing now he had put them on me.

“They were zombies!” I said, urgent to get it out. “Like dead people. We shot them, and they wouldn’t go down. They just kept coming!”

“Settle down.” He pushed my shoulder back down on the gurney and tried to hold me there.

“Let go, damn it! Let me go! Get off!”

He tried to hold my shoulders down but I could tell he didn’t want to have to fight me. Firemen don’t like fighting people with guns.

He finally backed off and let me sit up. “I’m going to get your sergeant,” he said. “You wait here. I’ll get him and he can explain it to you. You wait here.”

He opened the side door and left me alone in the back of the unit. I leaned back and put my hands over my face, completely exhausted. The adrenaline had carried me that far, but now I was crashing.

All I wanted to do was keep my eyes closed and my mind empty. But even as the tension was leaving my body, my mind was turning circles around itself, still trying to comprehend the violence of the last few minutes.

I had experienced the same sort of letdown a few times before, after being involved in car chases and fist-fights and stuff like that, but never had the feeling been so strong, so unshakeable.

When I opened my eyes, I forced myself to pause over my surroundings, hoping that I could stop replaying the incident in my mind by engaging myself with something mundane.

It was completely dark outside now and the only light came from the cheap, city-improvised track lighting along the roof of the ambulance. The halogen glow gave everything a sterile, institutional atmosphere, and the sickening smell of anesthetic and sweat made me feel hostile and unhealthy.

All ambulances are the same.

I’ve been in the back of EMS units hundreds of times before, interviewing people about traffic accidents and shootings and attempted suicides. But that was the first time I had ever really paused to take in the way they made me feel. I knew then that I hated it. I hated it all and all I could do was count the rows upon rows of insulin bottles and saline solution and sterile bandages, and I realized I was getting nowhere sitting there thinking about it. I was closed off and claustrophobic, and I wanted out. I had to get out.

I tried to sit up and just as quickly wished I hadn’t.

My neck and shoulder were throbbing and my eyes and chest still felt like the pepper spray had settled in to stay. All I could do was cough and spit and wait for the burning to go away.

I put my head back down on the gurney and studied the road map of what the next few hours were going to be like.

I had been at other officer-involved shootings, and I had seen firsthand the crap they had to go through.

The officer at the center of it all was always off in his own little world, with everyone else running around him, trying to be cool about it, but still asking each other what had happened and whispering in those hushed tones that they hoped it was a good shooting—for the officer’s sake.

What they meant was they hoped the officer hadn’t screwed up.

It made me wonder if maybe I had screwed up. Was I going to lose my job? I kept seeing the scene play over and over in my mind and I wondered where I had gone wrong.

I knew the detectives and evidence technicians and the supervisors were already on the way. Some of them were probably already doing their thing.

They would start by walking around the place, taking pictures, knocking on doors, and talking to people that may or may not have seen anything. The position of every last piece of evidence, from the placement of shell casings to the length of skid marks and the damage to both our cars would be mapped out with surgical precision, bundled together in a thick manila folder and presented to the disciplinary board for administrative review.

And while all that was happening, I was going to have to sit in a windowless little room at headquarters, waiting for some detective to take my statement and wondering what everybody else was saying about what I had done. Was I gonna get sued? Was I gonna be looking for a new job?

It was going to be rough for me, but not nearly as bad as what was happening to Chris. He was going to have to do the same thing I was, except he was going to do it from a hospital bed.

It occurred to me that I didn’t even know his wife’s name. But whatever her name, she was going to get that call from the sergeant, saying Chris was hurt and he was at whatever hospital he was at.

Yes, she could come see him as soon as she liked.

No, she wouldn’t be allowed to talk to him until the detectives got his statement.

And then I thought of April and Andrew, sitting at home and going through the whole bedtime routine, totally unaware of what just happened.

April would put Andrew to bed, make herself a sandwich, and turn on the TV to watch the news.

She would learn about everything from some talking head, and because the investigation was still going on, they wouldn’t say the names of the officers involved or how badly the officer at the hospital was hurt.

The news would say something like “His condition is critical” or “He’s in stable, but guarded, condition.”

But those words don’t mean anything when you need to know how your husband is doing. They’re meaningless, too full of ambiguity to answer the desperate questions. They’re sterile and confusing and totally useless and God! Why did I have to beat myself up over this? Why all the doubts?

I just wanted to sit there and rock myself to sleep. As uncoplike as that sounds, that’s all I wanted to do.

I could feel the tears welling up behind my eyes and I thought,
Perfect.

My sergeant was supposed to be on the way. He would open up the door to the EMS unit and find me there crying my eyes out.

I wondered who was going to have to be the one to come in and talk to me. Stevenson was the junior sergeant, so it would probably be him, even though he wasn’t my direct supervisor. They always get the junior man to handle the unpleasant—

Gunfire.

I could hear a roll of pistol shots that sounded like firecrackers through the metal walls of the EMS unit.

They were coming from several different directions at once. Screaming and yelling erupted all over the place, though I couldn’t hear what was being said or recognize any of the voices making the noise.

More gunfire.

The shots were coming so fast and so close together that I couldn’t count them. I recognized the crack of the Glock—lots of them—and the booming authority of the shotgun punctuating the pistol fire like an exclamation point.

I jumped off the gurney, forced my way out of the EMS unit, and into the street.

The EMS techs had parked with the doors of the unit away from the scene, and when I ran around the side of the ambulance I was bathed in red and blue strobes.

There were people everywhere, running, yelling, fighting with each other.

Two EMS guys had a third man down on the ground. They were struggling to keep his shoulders pinned to the pavement, and he was doing everything he could to bite them.

Another man in a firefighter’s uniform was facedown on the running boards of a fire truck. He wasn’t moving.

I saw one of the guys from my shift on his hands and knees, swaying back and forth like he was about to fall over. His hands were soaked in blood.

A frantic crowd of civilians were running past me, but there were others walking toward the scene with that same staggering walk I had seen earlier.

I saw several small mobs coming down to the street from nearby lawns.

The red and blue strobes cut through the yellow glow of the street lamps, giving everything and everyone they touched a strange, pallid cast.

Off in the distance I could hear more sirens, but they seemed to be heading away from us.

Two other officers from my shift were taking cover behind a police car and firing their handguns into an approaching crowd of people.

Even as I reached for my gun and ran over to join them, I couldn’t believe we were shooting unarmed people. It went against everything I was trained to do and everything I had been brought up to believe was sacred.

But no matter how I felt about it, I still went down right beside them and pointed my weapon at the approaching crowd.

The officer to my right glanced over at me when I crouched down next to him. “What the hell is going on?” he yelled.

“I don’t know.”

“What are those things? I shot one in the chest six times and he still kept coming.”

He didn’t wait for me to respond. He stood up and started firing over the hood of the car. He emptied the entire magazine, ejected it, and dumped in another with such speed I thought there was no way he could be aiming his shots.

The slide dropped back into place on his Glock and then he was firing again. Brass casings went flying through the air, bouncing off the sides of the police car and rolling toward the curb.

“They won’t fucking die.”

And then they broke through our lines.

Through the smoke and strobe lights I saw shadows move. The shadows turned into badly torn and abused bodies, still moving and still walking.

They came through gaps in the cars and attacked a policeman who was firing at them from behind a car door. They collapsed on top of him in a writhing mass of arms and faces. I could hear him screaming for help even though pistols were going off right next to my ears.

An officer named Flores ran into the open to help him.

Several of the people who had overcome the other officer got up and shambled toward him.

Flores was a wiry, tough little guy and a crack shot—I knew that from shooting next to him during in-service. He could empty an entire magazine into a target the size of a dinner plate at twenty-five yards and make it look like anybody should be able to do it.

He aimed at a man in a sport coat and slacks and fired three times.

I could tell he hit the guy because the impact stood him straight up. But the man kept walking toward him, seemingly unafraid and unconcerned by the bullets smashing into his chest.

Flores stood his ground, though. He raised his gun again and fired three more shots.

When the man kept coming, Flores fired a single shot into his forehead, and that dropped him to the ground.

A moment later, Flores was firing single shot after single shot into the crowd, and bodies were dropping with every trigger pull.

It was disgusting to watch, and beautiful, in a way. His speed and accuracy were unbelievable.

But even as he leveled the crowd in front of him, more and more people were approaching through the darkness and smoke. They didn’t make a sound, which was the eeriest thing about them. With the rest of us yelling all around them, the only noise they made came from their shoes dragging on the pavement.

I couldn’t tell how many of them there were or even where they were, because our visibility was next to nothing. And the part of the mob we could see wasn’t giving us a chance to regroup and organize.

I turned and saw more people walking toward us from the rear.

There were already more people than I could count walking between the cars in front of us and to our right. Flores was still firing like mad, and when he fired his last round, he holstered his gun and began to fight with his nightstick.

He had one of the old-style black hickory batons and he was swinging for their heads.

He knocked one of them over and brought the baton down so hard on the back of the guy’s head that the nightstick snapped in half.

He threw away the pieces and reached for his collapsible metal baton.

The crowd closed in around him. There were just too many of them for him to take them all, and they managed to pull him down to the ground.

I didn’t see him die. I couldn’t stand there and watch that happen.

It was no use shooting anymore. There were so many of them and they were so close to each other and to the other officers that I couldn’t fire and be sure I was hitting the right people.

Most of the officers around me had gone to fighting hand-to-hand.

I saw an officer pin a man to the ground and try to handcuff him.

One of the officers who went to help Flores was surrounded by the mob, his back up against a fire truck. He climbed up the side and landed on top of the hoses. The mob reached up to grab him, clawing at the chrome valves and dials just below him, but they couldn’t get at him.