The Romero Strain (2 page)

John taught me to recognize the signs, symptoms, and how to treat people who were in shock. He also taught me the procedure for dealing with an emotionally disturbed patient. Obviously, that was something I had forgotten. Not only was he a highly respected and qualified officer, but a highly qualified and respected emergency medical technician.

What, where, how, why, when… had I seen the girl before, had I seen the assailant before… did either of us come in physical contact with our assailant? The charm of his personality was overwhelming. Meanwhile, Marisol was talking to a hot looking Spanish cop named Rodriquez. Just a patrol officer; no medals on her chest, but her uniform was nicely filled anyways.

An ambulance finally arrived. It was a FDNY emergency vehicle. I expected the Beth Israel Hospital ambulance that parked on Avenue B between 13
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and 14
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Street, in front of Brother’s Candy & Grocery—the team I saw every morning as Max and I walked from 13
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Street North on Avenue B to 14
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Street—but it wasn’t.

“Look, Lieutenant. I’m fine,” I repeated for the fourth time. “Can I go now? I have a job I need to go to.”

I lied. I didn’t have to go to work. I was on medical leave for several months due to a job related injury I suffered during a collision when responding to a call. No, I wasn’t a cop. I wasn’t the heroic type. Well, let me rephrase that. I wasn’t heroic enough to constantly put myself in harm’s way, like my father, who had been a patrolman and later worked in the NYPD Ballistics lab. I was an EMT-P for Saint Vincent’s Manhattan.

* * *

I loved working as a paramedic, especially at Saint Vincent’s. I worked the 4 p.m. to midnight shift, drove around in a state-of-the-art paramedic ambulance and helped people. Saint Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan was a member of the EMS Emergency Ambulance Service and responsible for ambulance and emergency services in a four and a half square mile area of the lower Westside. Saint Vincent’s was also a New York State designated Level I Trauma Center, the only trauma center on the lower Westside of Manhattan.

The trauma center was the reason I chose to work at Saint Vincent’s. Seven years ago I ended up in their emergency room. The how and why wasn’t important; just say it was a lack of any kind of judgment in my youth which brought me there via ambulance. After that incident I had a life altering revelation
,
and needed to get my shit together. I tried applying to the Paramedic Education Program at Saint Vincent’s Institute of Emergency Care, just to find out that I could only apply if I was an EMT-B—B for basic. I had my mind set on being a paramedic, so I applied to the EMT-B program and was accepted. Knowing my grades were less than stellar in high school and community college, I was only accepted because of the great recommendations my father’s friends wrote—all cops. As a thank you, I proved my worth by graduating at the top of my class in both EMT-B and EMT-P, a paramedic.

* * *

“No, not yet,” he sternly said. “I need to let the paramedics look you over first.”

Since he helped train me, I wanted to say,
Lieutenant, are you saying a Beth Israel EMT are more qualified to render a diagnosis than me?
I didn’t. Instead, “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine until Beth Israel gives you the clear. Once—”

He stopped speaking when he heard his radio. There was a disturbance a few avenues away.

“10-34… 10-34. 14
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Street and First Avenue in front of the McDonald’s. All available units please respond. Possible—”

He turned his radio down.

A few people had finally gathered around while one ambulance attendant covered the body. Officer Rodriquez commanded the small crowd of onlookers to stand back. God she was hot when she was forceful.

Marisol was getting bandaged, a lot of gauze for such a little scratch. With all the weirdness going on, the Gestapo insisted that I be examined for a non-existent injury. The fact that the lieutenant was more interested in what the perpetrator may have done to us, instead of what I had done to the assailant, should have given me a clue.

I was wasting my time arguing with him. After all, he was a cop and I was the guy who just smashed someone’s head in. If he wanted me examined for an injury I didn’t have, I should have shut up, before getting myself in real trouble… for killing someone.

As I approached the ambulance, I saw what appeared to be a man and woman briskly approaching the scene. I wasn’t sure if the man was chasing the woman or if they were advancing together. They were a block away, moving from the east toward us. Perhaps more gawkers; after all, accidents attract the morbidly curious. I waited for the paramedic to finish with Marisol. Rubber gloves, a mask and eye goggles? That was certainly overkill.

I looked again toward the on-comers. “Oh, fuck,” I said in disbelief. “Hey, hey Johnson,” I yelled and pointed. “Two more!” I grabbed Marisol and pulled her away from the back of the vehicle. Max growled. He could smell them.

“Wait! She has to go—”

They came toward the ambulance. The woman knocked Marisol’s paramedic down like a wolf bringing down its prey. He never had a chance to finish his sentence. She tore at his larynx with wild abandon and voraciousness. He screamed, but his screams quickly turned to muffled gurgles as his throat was ripped away from his neck.

IV. Run Away, Run Away!

The man came at Officer Rodriquez in a frenzy; his eyes were milky and his flesh was pale and blistered. She didn’t have time to reach for her gun. She was on the ground writhing in pain as the man bit into her throat. The crowd and the second EMT ran, but were intercepted by another wild-eyed man coming from the other end of the street. Screams of terror and panic pierced the morning louder than Marisol’s had. Officer Johnson tried to pull Rodriquez’s attacker off her, but he was too late. She laid victim to the predator; her throat ripped open, blood gurgling from a deep hole and the surrounding lacerations.

Johnson didn’t know what he was in for. The crazed man turned from his meal and looked at Johnson with disdain through his clouded eyes. Johnson stepped back, pulled his duty carry pistol as the man stood up, and put four rounds into his chest. The man stepped a foot back, but did not fall. Johnson again aimed, this time for the head, and with another loud report he connected with the kill zone. The man’s head blew apart as the nine-millimeter bullet ripped a path through the frontal bone and out the parietal.

But Johnson had made a mistake. He momentarily looked at Rodriquez after he made sure the assailant was down for good. In his moment of disbelief, the aberration that had attacked Marisol’s EMT ravenously set upon him. The lieutenant had just begun to turn away from his fallen partner when the she-beast jumped on him, knocking his pistol from his hand. The gun slid along the roadway toward the police cruiser.

The thing bit into his jugular as it held fast to him, clamping its legs around him, frantically trying to keep Johnson from pulling its biting mouth away from his neck. Johnson spun around several times. The attack set him off balance. He fell to the ground as the creature gnawed his neck.

I called Max to follow as I grabbed Marisol. I heard that Monty Python line inside my head about running away. But there was no escape. We were momentarily caught in between two crazies from the east and one from the west, and I had a bad feeling it wouldn’t be long before there would be more. We slunk down in front of the squad car. I corrected Max for growling and told Marisol she needed to be silent and do exactly what I said if she wanted to live. I had no illusions that it was going to be an easy out. I’ve had idiots on the subway try to pick fights with me because they thought they had the right to get on the car before I could get off. I’ve had punk-ass kids try to fuck with me in front of my own doorway, just because there were six of them, they had been drinking, and were looking for trouble. Those situations paled compared to the one I was in then. Idiots and jackasses were one thing; crazed, murdering cannibals were another.

Officer Johnson’s dislodged pistol had slid along the roadway, stopping feet from the front driver’s side tire. It was a Glock 19.

The NYPD Glock 19 had twelve pound NYPD connectors, meaning it had a twelve pound trigger pull for safety, with a magazine capacity of fifteen rounds, not including the one in the chamber. The NYPD issued the Gold Dot hollow-point 9mm cartridge by CCI Speer, because my father found it to be satisfyingly powerful
on the street
. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t stop the creatures unless I knew where to aim, as John had found out.

I knew a few things about a Glock 19, not because I was a weapons’ aficionado, or had ever fired one, but because my father carried one. In my line of duty, I had seen the damage the weapon could do to someone. I needed to get the pistol and get the hell out of there.

Out. But to where? No time to think. Time to run. The things were engaged. I grabbed Marisol’s hand.

“Let’s go.”

We began our departure, stealthy and silent as not to be noticed. We were nearly clear of the car when Marisol let go of my hand. She turned from me and went to the sidewalk where Officer Rodriquez lay.

Two creatures were further down the sidewalk, engorging themselves on several bystanders that had run south along the avenue trying to escape. The other was still feeding on Lieutenant Johnson, several yards from Rodriquez.

Marisol glanced at me.

I gave her a look that said,
What the fuck are you doing?

She bent over the bloody, shredded corpse and unholstered the pistol. The she-beast looked up and spotted fresh meat. Marisol raised the pistol and pointed it, trying to fire. The gun did nothing. The safety was on.

Rodriguez’s weapon was a Smith & Wesson LE Duty Carry pistol finished in satin steel. It used 9mm Parabellum ammunition, but had fully ambidextrous safety levers and an external hammer, unlike a Glock pistol, which employed three internal safety mechanisms, all based on the trigger that prevented the gun from firing if it was dropped or jolted. I doubted Marisol knew the differences, let alone how to aim a pistol.

A shot rang out. Dead bang to the head. It was a lucky shot. I had never fired a pistol before. Marisol wet herself. The urine ran down her leg and onto her sock.

“I think—” she began to say, embarrassed.

“I see,” I said, before she could finish. Lucky that had been the worst thing that happened. “Let’s go.”

The other two looked up, but were too engaged in their dining to give chase.

I took Marisol by the hand, holding it tight, letting the strength of my grip show her that I was not going to allow such recklessness to happen again. “Max,
fuss,”
I whispered, as we picked up our pace and headed toward the Con Edison power station directly up the street.

V. The Electric Company

It was Wonka-esque in the old days. The old, dreary energy factory with its four big smoke stacks looming high into the East River sky. Its old, worn brick exterior walls aged with stains of weathered time now gone, replaced and expanded with a structural steel fabrication, a façade of prefabricated panels of red and black faux brick. It was called the East River Repowering Project; the commercial operation of the renovated facility began in April of 2005, when the second of two state-of-the-art, natural-gas-fired steam generators began providing power to the electricity grid.

Before the project, conEd gave tours of the facility. Post-9/11 they discontinued them. I had toured the facility once, fascinated by the old turbines and the piping that ran out of the facility and under the streets of New York. I often visited unusual, non-tourist type places. It was my love of movies that started my hobby as an urban explorer. I started with underground film locations, then became interested in other places, like the abandoned City Hall Station of the IRT East Side Line, where the 6 Train turns around to go uptown, and the forgotten Atlantic Avenue Subway Tunnel, which led me to the power station tour.

* * *

A car came tearing down the street, honking its horn wildly and weaving erratically. The male driver waved his hand back in forth like he was trying to tell us to get out of his way, but we were on the sidewalk. He continued speeding north up Avenue C, past the main entrance to the facility. Something was amiss as we approached the main gate. I didn’t see anyone walking around inside the enclosed area. It was early Monday morning, but in a busy complex I expected to see someone outside.

The chain-link fence was closed and locked. A blue and white striped Con Edison pickup truck sat across the entranceway near the guard shack to prevent unwanted intruders. As we reached the main gate, I saw the door to the small, dirty white, aluminum-sided guardhouse open, and there appeared to be no one sitting behind the wheel of the pickup truck, which seemed wrong.

I looked down 14
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Street and saw a flurry of activity near Associated Grocery. It appeared to be police and emergency vehicles, but it was too far to walk in the open to take the chance.