Morgan McClure sprang at me from the ambulance. Her hand latched onto my hair. Her other arm encircled my neck. Her body hung from mine. The attack was sudden and I hadn’t been ready for it. I stumbled backwards, trying to keep my balance as she wrapped her legs around me.
Her teeth suddenly sank into my face. The calm washed over me. Her movements appeared in slow motion. My eyes searched for a weapon.
I grabbed at her, found her hair and started pulling. I needed to put some separation between us. I swiveled and rammed her body into the grill of her truck. Officers were drawing weapons. Xavier was shouting orders for them to hold their fire.
I slammed her into the grill again. Her legs unwrapped this time and she lost her grip. I took the moment to grab her. My leg took her feet out from under her, as we landed together in a heap, with me on top. She attempted to get up. Her body moved in an effort to buck me off.
My knee found her spine and held her to the ground. Still, she squirmed and twisted. I pulled my Taser. The cartridge spot was still empty. I hadn’t replaced it. I could use it as a stun gun, but the truth was, I didn’t feel much like getting Tasered. The output was high enough that it would travel through both our bodies and I was still healing. Being Tasered would put me at a disadvantage.
She twisted and hit my leg with something. The pain was immediate. Blood blossomed through my jeans. It dripped from her hand. A chunk of glass was sticking out of the wound.
My anger spilled over, turning into rage. I let her roll, let her think she had the upper hand. Once she was on her back, I grabbed hold of her shirt. My hand twisted the fabric around itself. She punched the glass shard with her stump. The sound of bone hitting glass seemed very loud. Her heart was racing. I could feel it jackhammering against my hand, even through the knotted fabric. I wanted to break her neck. The urge was so strong, it took every ounce of control not to do it. I stood up, bringing her with me using the shirt.
“Do something with her,” I told an officer standing close to me. He slipped a handcuff over the wrist with a hand, but like me, he wasn’t sure what else to do. There should have been a manual or something about cuffing handless suspects.
I let go. Her momentum carried both her and the officer to the ground. I turned to see Xavier. His eyes were wide. His mouth opened. There was a muffled popping noise. Someone screamed. Weapons were being raised. I turned back around. She was getting to her feet. I charged her, catching her in the stomach. She scrambled backwards to stay upright as my body shoved her backwards. The butt of the gun hit my shoulder. It didn’t hurt. My brain ignored it.
She didn’t hit me a second time, she shot me. The bullet entered near my shoulder and exited near my collarbone. It hit the pavement, leaving a mark. I stood up and pulled her into me, twisting her arm as I did. The bones snapped, the sound echoed.
My hand grabbed the knife on my shoulder holster. The blade dug deep into her flesh. I pulled it out and stabbed her a second time. The blade hit bone. I jerked it out. The tip was missing. I stabbed her again, this time lower. Instead of jerking it out, I pressed hard and used my body to pull it along the soft flesh of her abdomen.
“Holy shit!” Someone shouted.
I yanked the knife out. Morgan McClure looked shocked. Her eyes were wide. Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. Her face paled. I stepped back, kicking stuff off my shoe as I did.
Her face turned downwards. She stared at her eviscerated abdomen. Her hand tried to hold stuff in the gaping wound. Slowly, she sank to her knees. I stood a few feet away and watched. Someone stepped in and tried to help her. Xavier grabbed hold of me, turning me away from the scene.
“Well, I think you might be physically normal again,” he said. I wanted to sit down and he wouldn’t let me. He kept me standing. “You are going to need a hospital bed in a quarantined room.”
“Why?” I snapped at him.
“She might have been in the early stages of infection. Her blood could have infected you,” he told me. “I’ll make sure they give you your tablet and phone.”
“I hate hospitals.”
“I know,” Xavier told me. “The stitches in your backside need to be redone. That glass shard is in an artery, we can’t pull it out. Your side is bleeding, and you don’t care about any of it, do you? Do you even feel it?”
“Not really,” I looked at my leg. My jeans were soaked. Blood dripped from the hem. My shoes were also covered, but that wasn’t mine.
“When that goes away, you are going to be in some serious pain,” Xavier warned me.
“If it doesn’t go away?” I asked.
“We’ll have to deal with that.” Xavier looked at me. “You do know what you did, right?”
“Her intestines are on my shoes. I wanted to break her neck, but I didn’t. I think that should win me some points.”
“Jesus Christ,” Gabriel’s voice drifted on the night air.
“She shot a cop, she shot me, and I was defending myself,” I immediately started defending myself.
“Yeah, I got that from the officers that let me in. Are you okay?” Gabriel asked.
I shrugged.
“Are you okay?” He spoke slowly and loudly, as though I was deaf.
“I have been shot, stabbed twice, and beaten with my own baton all in the space of three days. We have two dead killers. We have questions with no answers, and there is yucky stuff on my shoes,” I also spoke slowly and loudly. “What part of this am I supposed to be okay with?”
The calm was retreating. I was starting to feel queasy. My stomach churned. It was the stuff on my shoes. I started pushing on the heel with my other shoe, determined to get them off.
“Let’s get you to the hospital,” a paramedic told me. He looked at my feet. “I’ll take them off inside.”
The paramedic did indeed take off my shoes and shove them in a HAZMAT bag. I got all my old stitches taken out and new stitches put in. My face didn’t need any. I was kind of thankful for that. My face had a few scars, but not like the rest of me, and then I was shoved in a hospital room with an air lock and too many windows.
For six days, I sat in my air locked room with its own special ventilation system. There was a TV. There was a chair. There was a table. My meals were given to me by people in HAZMAT suits. The doctor that visited wore a HAZMAT suit. The nurses wore suits. No one was allowed to visit.
I read just over a hundred books in six days, none of them about crime, which was surprising. All of them were about the paranormal or clinical lycanthropy. On the fifth day, I got a text from Green. My tip about the full moon had worked out. Since I had killed Morgan McClure, they had returned to Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan to search for their serial killer. On the second night of the full moon, they had caught some idiot in a suit made entirely from wolf pelts stalking some girl. He was already claiming insanity.
The CDC had found almost two miles of tubes in Morgan McClure’s outbuilding. It was an enclosed carport that looked like a normal shed. They also found more rats. Inside the tubes, running around like crazy, as well as in Dallas and San Antonio. There were no reported cases of plague yet in those cities, but they were watching.
The strain of plague turned out not to be as antibiotic resistant as originally thought. A mixture of doxycycline and ciprofloxacin was effective. However, both were required and it didn’t hurt to add some streptomycin in the first twenty-four hours.
Not a single person had died. The cities with the infected fleas had called in the National Guard to help them exterminate the vermin. All stray dogs and cats were being rounded up. Emergency flea dip centers were opened by the Humane Society of Texas where people could get their pets dipped for free. Even the wildlife was receiving treatment.
After six days, I was still symptom free. I had not caught the plague. This made me feel pretty good about the outcome. I still had questions without answers, but there was always going to be that possibility.