The Paramedic's Doom Page 9

  Instead, some random guy, no, an arch-angel appears and ruins everything leaving Dean struggling with a wide range of conflicting emotions about his ruined proposal and the revelation of his father’s identity.

  His fingers tightened further in his already clenched fist. He pounded his fist down on his knee with a grunt.

  Jaz broke the uneasy silence.

  “Dean, talk to me. You can tell me what you’re feeling. It’s alright to be angry or confused or whatever you have going on in your head. But don’t close up. Don’t shut me out. We can get through this together.”

  Dean turned towards the driver’s seat. Jaz stole a glance in his direction while she drove. She smiled a little when she saw him looking her way.

  “That’s better,” she said. “I don’t want to ruin our date night. I thought it was going well up to that point. Don’t you?”

  “Yeah, right up until the moment my supposed father came and crashed the party. I still don’t know if I believe him, I don’t care what he is.”

  “He was telling the truth, Dean. The Eldara cannot lie. You know that. Oh, I’m sure he was hiding something about his motives and what he really wants from you, but he is your father. That much has to be true.”

  Dean pounded his fist down on his knee again.

  Jaz reached out and took his left hand in hers, wriggling her fingers until he relaxed his fist and grasped her warm, soft hand in his.

  “Do you remember him at all from when you were younger?”

  Dean nodded. “There was something — I don’t know — something familiar about him. Something about his walk and his voice that I’d seen or heard before stuck way back in the deepest corners of my mind. It’s kind of hard to pin it down. I think I was so little the last time I saw him I didn’t understand who he was or what was going on.”

  “Maybe if you called your mother and asked her…”

  “No,” Dean said. “Telling her about this will only upset her. She’ll either worry about how I’m taking it, or it will dredge up old memories she doesn’t want to recall.”

  “But she could answer your questions, Dean.”

  “It’ll also start a fight between us, Jaz. My mother and I haven’t talked in a long time. She didn’t want me to move away and come here. Calling her now with this news is only going to open old wounds between us. It’s better to leave her out of it for now.”

  “You know best, Dean. You do need to talk to someone about it, though. Don’t close me out of things regarding this. I’m here for you.”

  “I know you are, Jaz, but I don’t know if I’m the talking type when it comes to stuff like this.”

  “If you expect me to stick around for the long haul, you’d better be, Dean Flynn. You’d better be.”

  The SUV stopped moving and Dean was startled to see they were parked in the lot at Station U. The ambulance station for their unit was located in an industrial park on the outskirts of town.

  Jaz slid the gear lever into park and leaned over the center console until she was very close to Dean. Once again, he caught a whiff of her perfume. She didn’t wear it often and a twinge of anger roiled in his gut at the way the Eldara's unforeseen arrival ruined the night's planned activities.

  “Dean, look at me.”

  She waited until he complied and his eyes met hers.

  “We’ll get through this. We’ll do it together, alright?”

  “I guess so.”

  “No, that’s not good enough. We will do it. We have a lot to look forward to in this world, Dean. Don’t forget; we already know we have a daughter together sometime in the future. Let’s not let anything get in the way of us going down the path that lets us meet up with Joanna again. I’m looking forward to watching her grow up into the total badass she becomes.”

  Dean felt a hint of smile crease his lips. That time-traveling teen witch who was the daughter they were yet to have certainly had turned their lives upside down. Jaz was right. He wanted to see her again, too.

  “Alright,” Dean whispered.

  “Alright, what?”

  “Alright, I’ll keep you in the loop on what’s going on with me.”

  “Good, that’s all I wanted to hear.” She leaned closer and kissed him. “Now get in there before you’re late. I’m sure Bill wants to go home to his family.”

  Dean climbed out of the SUV and waved as Jaz backed out of the parking spot and drove away. He turned and walked towards the building.

  Stepping into the squad room via the parking lot door, Dean found himself amidst pandemonium. Barry and Bill were carrying the extra go bags from the closet to the ambulance.

  Barry spotted him as he came in.

  “Hurry up and grab your uniform. You can get dressed in the back on our way there. There’s been an explosion of some sort and we have reports of multiple injuries inside a collapsed building over near the Wiccan coven’s house on the other side of town. Fire units are already en route.”

  Dean nodded and ran back to the bunk room to get his uniform out of the locker where he’d left it.

  The ambulance was already running and the garage bay door was rolling up as Dean jumped into the back, pulling the door shut behind him.

  “Go. I’m in,” he called to the front of the unit.

  Bill sat in the driver’s seat and he gunned the engine, slowing only long enough to verify the garage door closed behind them. Then he headed into the night, lights blazing and the siren’s wail preceding them down the city’s streets.

  Dean was just tying the laces on his boots as the ambulance came to a halt along the curb in front of the address for their call. Dean looked out, recognizing the old Victorian house which was the central meeting place of the local Wiccan coven.

  Or, Dean corrected himself as he looked on the chaotic emergency scene laid out before him, what used to be an old Victorian house.

  The whole front half of the building had collapsed inward leaving the second and third floors of the home’s rear half exposed to the responders pulling up out front. Dean climbed out and grabbed the rescue helmet from the side compartment on the passenger side of the ambulance. He grabbed the other two helmets in there and handed one to Barry as he stepped out, holding the other for Bill, who came around from the driver’s side.

  They were going to have to get in there if rescue operations were to begin and with a collapsed building like this, helmets were a must. The kevlar woven into the fabric of their duty pants and jackets would help with exposed nails and splintered wood.

  Deputy Chief Compton waved in their direction summoning the three of them over. Officer O’Malley from the police’s Unusual unit was there, too.

  Dean also recognized Asha, the coven leader. Dirt and debris from the house covered her, matted in her hair and all over her face. She’d either been inside when the building collapsed or had tried to go in and rescue her coven sisters on her own before help arrived.

  The three station U paramedics headed over to the chief’s command unit, an SUV with its rear liftgate open to reveal a slide-out workstation complete with a laptop computer and radio equipment so he could communicate and manage the various units on scene to deal with the situation.

  “Good, I’m glad you three are here,” the Chief said. “The High Priestess here says some sort of spell a group of junior witches were casting went wrong somehow.”

  Asha nodded. “It was a harmless practice spell. Then I felt the tenor of the spell change. Unfortunately, things progressed so fast I never had the chance to get there in time and stop them from continuing.”

  “What sort of spell was it?” Dean asked. “If it caused all of this, will there be residual effects inside the collapsed area?”

  “I’m not sure,” Asha said shaking her head. “All they were doing was attempting a basic scrying spell. They hoped to determine the source of some negative plane energy we’d detected recently. It was such a simple spell; I left it to the younger sisters. I figured I’d get a report from them when I woke in the morning.”

  Barry pointed at the collapsed building. “A simple scrying spell didn’t cause that. What did they cast if it wasn’t the spell you expected? I have to wonder if one of them sabotaged it on purpose.”

  Asha shook her head. “It started out correctly. I watched them start just to be sure before I went up to bed. What I felt later when I awakened was an intensification of the negative plane energy we’d detected earlier, only now it was centered here. That was just before the explosion and collapse. Something on the other side sensed their scrying and used it to break open a portal from the other side.”

  “A portal?” Dean said. “Your sisters opened a doorway to the netherworld? Did anything come through?”

  Officer O’Malley spoke up.

  “We were first on the scene. Neighbors who came to offer help reported seeing a tall, pale man, wearing an all-black business suit leaving the rubble. He was last seen walking towards the center of town. I have units watching for someone matching that description but so far we’ve heard nothing.”

  “Asha,” Dean said. “How many of your coven aren’t accounted for. How many are injured and how many do you think are still trapped inside?”

  “Most of us were upstairs in our rooms. That shielded us from the explosion. We got all of them out via the back kitchen stairs and those with minor injuries are being tended to in the neighbor’s houses. I don’t believe there are any serious injuries there. That leaves just the five junior sisters who engaged in the scrying spell. No one’s seen them and we fear they are trapped inside the wreckage.”

  “The heavy rescue truck is on the way with the gear we’ll need to stabilize the collapsed walls,” Chief Compton said. “In the meantime, can you three see if you can localize any survivors without going too
far inside?”

  The three paramedics nodded.

  “Chief, I’ll take over medical control,” Bill said, assuming the medical command function in the incident command system. “I recommend having the next two ambulances arriving check on the neighboring houses where those who were evacuated are located. They can double check the injuries there while Dean and Barry try and see who we’ve got inside the collapse.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Report back to me when you find out from them what we’re dealing with. I’ll assign channel two on the radio to EMS units so we don’t talk over top each other. I’ll also send a fire engine crew of four over with you in case you need help extricating anyone in a position you can get to safely.”

  Dean fished his tactical gloves from his pocket. They would protect his hands while he started searching through the safer portions of the collapsed building. The old, three-story home was large and this was going to take some time.

  The frame of the front door and entryway was still partially intact. They decided to stage their med and trauma bags there in the foyer area and start spreading out towards the front of the home to either side. That way they stayed away from the places where the broken beams of the upper floors still hung dangling from the rear of the structure.

  Dean moved right while Barry went left. He’d been here a few times before and this was the parlor area to the right of the entry hall. It led to the room where the scribed casting circle had been built into the floor with a mosaic of tile and wood. Based on what Asha said, this would be the center of the blast.

  Dean stepped carefully around parts of the roof and upper floors collapsed down. He stopped and listened for any sounds coming from the rubble around him.

  “This is a job for an experienced urban search and rescue team, Dean,” Barry called out across the wreckage.

  “We can turn it over to the USAR team when they get here. Until then, let’s keep searching, just take your time and be careful.”

  Dean picked his way around a portion of the roof propped at an angle against a fallen section of wall studs still jutting upward. He spotted the hand and forearm right away. It stuck out from under the rear of the collapsed roof section.

  He reached out and touched the wrist with two fingers, feeling for a pulse. The hand twitched and grabbed his fingers.

  “Oh my goddess, is someone there?” A panicked voice called out from below. “Please, help me. It’s so dark and I’m trapped under these beams. I can’t move my legs anymore.”

  “I’m Dean Flynn. I’m a paramedic with the city’s Station U team. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Jessie, Jessie McMann. Hyacinth is somewhere close, too, but she stopped talking to me a while ago. Dean Flynn? Aren’t you the one we helped with returning your daughter back to her future self?”

  “That’s me. Now listen for a second. Besides your legs, is anything else injured on you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Jessie replied. “My legs don’t even hurt so much anymore. The worst part is this infernal itching. It’s like I have a terminal case of poison ivy all of a sudden.”

  Dean filed the itching away for later. He had no idea what was causing it and it wasn’t likely to be life-threatening like the further collapse of the building could be.

  “Alright, Jessie,” Dean said, giving her hand a squeeze. “I’m here and we’ve got more help coming so hold tight. Can you tell me where you heard your friend earlier? Her name was Hyacinth, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, she was closer to the center of the circle than I was. She tried to close the portal when it opened. The pale man who came through it struck her with his hand before he started pulling the house down around us. She flew away from him and bounced against the wall next to the fireplace. She was talking to me until a few minutes ago. Now she won’t answer.”

  “I’m going to head over that way and see if I can find her. You hang tight and I’ll be right back. My partner Barry will be here soon, too.”

  “Please hurry, Dean. I don’t want to be alone. I’m scared.”

  “I understand. Just try and think of something to distract yourself until I get back. Do you have a favorite book or something like that? Focus on the story and try and recall the words from your favorite part.”

  Dean let go of her hand and hoped the distraction would help keep her from panicking until he came back from checking on her friend. Picking his way around the small portion of the interior wall still standing, he headed for the collapsed chimney where the fireplace was located.

  Dean found Hyacinth, her vacant, lifeless eyes staring up from beneath a pile of bricks which had caved in from the chimney next to her. She was trapped underneath the pile, covered with broken and shattered bricks from her shoulders down.

  Something looked strange about her and he shined his flashlight down on her face and gasped. Her skin was covered in what looked like some sort of large round burn blisters, or something like it. The blisters had turned black and some had burst, releasing a milky yellow fluid that ran down her skin to the debris under he head. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen before.

  A thought occurred to him in the back of his mind and he crouched down to examine the woman closer. Burn blisters would have a clear discharge of cellular plasma. The thicker, whitish discharge from these blisters looked like — Dean froze, his hand an inch away from the woman’s face. The fluid draining from the blisters looked like something from an infected wound.

  Dean stood up and looked around then returned to where Jessie’s hand stuck out from the rubble. Shining his flashlight on the exposed skin and examining it closely, Dean noticed something he hadn’t before. There was a raised red rash spreading across her arm. Some of the tiny rash blisters had opened and a similar white liquid seeped from them.

  He stood up and quickly picked his way back to their bags in the empty and intact foyer. He switched his radio to channel two and keyed his mic, clipped to his radio’s leather shoulder strap.

  “U-191 crew chief to medical command.”

  Bill’s voice answered him back immediately.

  “Go ahead, U-191.”

  “Medical command, requesting hazmat units to the scene for suspected unknown biological contamination at this location.”

  “Say again, Dean?” Bill asked, breaking radio protocol by using his name.

  “There some sort of blister agent exposure on the survivor I found and a definite and widespread exposure on the one deceased individual I found. Looks like an infection of some sort but I’m not sure. I recommend we lock down the scene until we have more information. That includes the two neighboring homes holding the survivors who self-extricated.”

  “Received,” Bill replied. “Notifying incident command now. Hold tight and take what precautions you can there.”

  “Already on it. U-191 clear.”

  Dean popped open the side pocket of the med bag and pulled out a pump bottle of hand sanitizer. He carefully peeled off his gloves and pumped out a sizable amount of the sanitizer in his hand. He spread the sanitizer all over his hands and exposed wrists under his coat’s cuffs. It wasn’t much but it was all he could do right now. If the infectious agent was airborne, he was already exposed.

  “Dean, did I hear you right?” Barry asked, picking his way over debris back to the entryway.

  “Yeah, there’s some sort of advanced infection on both patients I saw. We hold out here until more help arrives. Did you find anyone over there?”

  “No, it seems like that area was empty, just crushed furniture there.”

  Dean described in more detail what he’d found to his partner and handed him the sanitizer bottle.

  “If you touched anything, get those gloves off and sanitize all exposed skin. I don’t know if it will help but it’s better than nothing.”

  “What do we do now?” Barry asked as he scrubbed with the sanitizer.

  “We have three more people to account for so we’ll keep searching where it’s safe. Be careful. No physical contact until we have the hazmat team here. We have to wait.”

  Chapter 11

  Dean and Barry managed to locate the other three Wiccan sisters in the collapsed room while they waited for the Hazmat team’s arrival. They were each alive but all three were trapped under the rubble in some way and all three had signs of the strange rash.