Extinction Level Event Combo Pack | Books 1-2, page 2
part #1 of Extinction Level Event Combo Pack Series
Sirens sang in the distance.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Matt said to the girl. “I’m here to help you.” He stepped forward towards her.
The girl charged him. He stepped aside and knocked her to the ground, seeming instinctual rather than something he intended. “Stay down.”
On the ground, she went for his leg with her mouth.
“Look out, Matt,” Phebe yelled.
He whipped his jean-clad leg away and jumped back with his fists raised. “I do not want to hurt you, sweetheart.”
Campus police patrol cars rolled up on the curb and onto the Commons. Behind them, Wilmington city police cars and a fire department ambulance. Their chorus of sirens bounced against the surrounding buildings. People flooded out to see what was going on. Faces peered in groups through windows. Students pressed against the glass wall of the Student Center.
A female voice yelled, “Matty. You always gotta be the hero.” Phebe spotted her roommate, Syanna Lynn Claiborne, pushing her way through onlookers. “Get outta there, Matty. It’s dangerous.” Syanna was Matt’s girlfriend.
The girl charged at Matt again. He stepped aside like a matador side-stepping the bull’s horns.
Uniformed police poured out of their cars, and ran toward the girl. The youngest, most agile of the city cops tackled the girl in a manner that normally would garner them abuse charges. She fought them like an enraged animal. The police, followed by paramedics, struggled to contain her.
Phebe and Syanna waited for Matt. He scooped up his bag and approached them. His face pink and sweaty. Behind him, paramedics strapped the girl down on a gurney.
Faculty and staff corralled student spectators.
“Everyone back to your classes,” a faculty member ordered.
Matt shrugged. “Did the best I could.”
“Always the hero.” Syanna’s hands on her hips. Her yellow-brown eyes slit.
Miss Syanna Lynn Claiborne of Deep South Savannah, Georgia reminded Phebe of a biracial Scarlett O’Hara in tight jeans and a push-up bra. Her beauty exceeded only by her drama.
Corkscrew blond curls fluttered in the breeze, annoying the tiny spitfire, who swiped at the tresses.
Matt tried to hug her, but she slapped his chest.
“You’re an idiot, Matthew Gleason. That was too dangerous.” Syanna Lynn stormed off, platform high heels stomping and butt wiggling.
“Where are you going now?” Matt asked Phebe, used to Syanna’s tirades.
“I originally intended to go to the library for research.
“I should get to my next class now.”
They stood there for an awkward few seconds.
Phebe blurted out, “What the hell was that, Matt?”
“What?”
“That!” She raised her arms toward the site of the recent event.
The girl had been taken away by ambulance. Campus police talked with members of faculty and staff, the proper adults who witnessed the event.
“That would be the effects of drugs,” Matt answered.
“That … was drugs? You’re full of it.”
He chuckled. “No, I’m not.”
“That looked like rabies in a person.”
“Sort of does, doesn’t it?”
His backpack heavy with textbooks lay on the cement walkway. He rested his hands on narrow hips. His body language open and receptive to her.
“Do you see this a lot?” she asked.
“Recently, every shift.”
He was a paramedic, on top of going to college for a nursing degree. He had been a war medic in Iraq and Afghanistan. Very little unnerved him.
“What do you do with them?” she asked.
“Tranquilize them and bring them to the hospital.”
“Tranq’d, ah, yes. Then what?”
He shrugged. “I guess they go through withdrawal.”
“Drugs? Really?”
“Why is it so hard for you to believe, Pheebs?”
“That looked awfully extreme for mere drugs.”
“How many stoned outta their minds people have you actually seen?”
“Okay, you got me there.” She crossed her arms and shifted her weight to the other foot. “It’s not exactly social circles I travel in.”
“Not many meth head doctoral candidates?” He smiled.
“No. Though sometimes you wonder. But nothing like that.” Her arms gestured again.
“It’ll be okay. The government will find the drug and outlaw it. It’ll decline like bath salts did. And flakka in the Middle East. Those drugs make people go crazy like that girl, too. It’s just the next version of it.”
“I’m hearing a lot about these bath salts lately.” Her arms resumed crossing.
“It’s comparable to this drug-usage outbreak.”
“Guess I missed twenty-twelve’s fun. That’s when it happened, right?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t in the country during it. I had my own fun.”
“Yeah. I hear wars are ecstatically fun.”
“I felt so.”
He smiled at her. His green-eyed gaze looked at her too long, increasing her discomfort.
“Well,” she said. “I need to get to that research. Thesis calling.”
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll see you later then?” It sounded more like a question than a statement.
“See ya,” she said.
She walked away, glanced back and caught him watching her.
“Crap.”
Matt often lingered in the kitchen at night at their house to talk with her. She hadn’t thought anything of it until Syanna started lobbing jealous insults.
It didn’t matter to Phebe other than awkwardness. She’d dedicated her life to completing her thesis and getting her PhD. Without a doctorate, her anthropology master’s degree was worthless. Just another liberal arts educated person with a mountain of student loans who couldn’t get a good job. There was no time for anything else. She had the focus worthy of a ninja. Never one to be driven into mistakes based on emotions, decisions had to be logic-based. Affairs and whatnot were not logical.
Instead of heading to the library, she veered off. Logic dictated that after a traumatizing event, one should seek counseling.
The student health center overflowed with sick students. She pulled a face mask from her bag. Then wove through everyone to reach the computer bay, where she logged in for a therapy counseling appointment. Once done, she sanitized her hands. And waited as far from the sick kids as she could get.
3.
Peter Sullivan lined up the shot. His vivid blue eyes looked at the target. He raised back the golf club, twisting at the waist, bending a leg, and hit.
A Christmas tree ornament shattered into a zillion glistening pieces as it launched over dark water.
A gray cat braced herself to pursue the movement but then thought better and relaxed. Year-old Dock Cat looked at Peter on the upper boat deck.
They both turned at the sound of footsteps on the floating dock leading to the boat. The footfalls came up wooden steps to the boat’s port-side walkway.
Peter leaned against the golf club and watched Matt Gleason.
“What’s up?”
“Pissed, dude.” Matt carried a brown paper bag. “I brought beer.”
“Then you can stay.”
Matt gave the dark-haired Bostonian the finger.
“How does a guy who’s a double A personality type have any time off?” Peter asked.
“I do get some time off.”
Matt went to the hang-out deck at stern. He sat on a worn-out leather seat plundered from an old model pickup and opened a microfridge where he inserted the beer. Dock Cat investigated his smells. Approving, she rubbed against his legs.
“How much do you think it would cost to put a hit out on a girlfriend?” asked Matt.
Peter came down the ladder and dropped himself into a chair. Despite the chilly temperature, he wore cut-off cargo pants and a T-shirt, and his feet were bare.
Matt handed him a microbrew.
“A normal girlfriend,” said Peter. “Probably not much. But Miss Syanna Lynn Claiborne, a Marine general’s daughter, probably more than you can afford. At least with the people we know.”
“How did I get myself into this relationship?”
Both men swigged off their beer bottles. Dock Cat watched them.
“Honestly?” asked Peter.
“Not too honest. I wasn’t out to get laid when I met her.”
“Too bad. Okay then. You’re an insane adrenaline junky and she’s beautiful. A former pageant princess, c’mon, dude. That’s too much for a Texas cowboy like you.”
“I’m from Wyoming, Sully. Jimbo’s from Texas.”
“Whatever. Horses. Cowboys. It’s all the same.”
“Not really, since they’re no where near each other,” said Matt. “Is it still Chicago, New Orleans, Texas, Las Vegas, and California, that’s the rest of the country for you?”
“Yes. That’s all that matters. There’s that Washington state, Oregon thing, but no one knows which is under BC.”
“You Eastern seaboard people. You know from New Hampshire to Florida and that’s it.”
“That would be Maine to Florida. Maine is under Canada.”
“Whatever.” Matt grinned. “Maine, New Hampshire, it’s all the same.
Peter laughed. “Fair enough, asshole.”
He had noticed that ever since Matt began attending college, he started using G’s at the end of his -ing words. When Peter first met him, he called milk melk and talked about huntin and coyots. College did that to country people.
“So what happened with the princess of the South this time? Should I pretend to listen?”
“Nuh, man,” said Matt. “We got a drug user, a Zombie-using girl on campus, right. I try to help. Syanna gets pissed at me. Calling me ‘always gotta be a hero.’ Storms off on my dumbass. I’m left there with Phebe, her roommate.”
“I remember you talking about the roommate.”
“She’s like a thousand times better girl than Syanna.”
“Dude, that’s dangerous.”
“I know. That’s why I keep my distance.”
“The PhD roommate, right? From New York?” Peter sounded like he said New Yahk.
His accent always made Matt smile. “Yeah. But they’re roommates. Syanna will kill both of us. Assuming she feels the same way. I don’t know if she does. No way to find out right now.”
“Sucks, man. Back to this Zombie shit … what?”
“Do you not watch the news?”
“You know I’m allergic to the news. If I wanted to be lied to and manipulated, I’d go to a bar and pick up a girl like Syanna.”
Matt chuckled. “That’s just wrong, Sul.”
“I tell it like it is, brother.”
They sat silently for a moment, drinking. Dock Cat jumped onto Peter’s lap. She groomed, contented in her ownership over the man. When he tried to move, her yellow eyes stared up in complaint.
“My leg’s cramping, you she-beast.”
She meowed at him. He rested his left leg on a cushioned stool. Dock Cat readjusted herself. Coastal North Carolina couldn’t throw at Peter Sullivan any cold temp comparable to winter in Boston. But his leg felt every degree below summer balmy.
“You should’ve told me at the start of this relationship,” said Matt.
“Oh, God. Really? You’re blaming me? I did tell you, but you weren’t listening. You were all acting independent from us.”
“I was not.”
“You so were. Don’t lie. You were a fancy college student, pretending you weren’t some variation of redneck where you come from. A nurse raking up awards at school. You didn’t want to hang out with us losers.”
“I never felt that way,” Matt said. “I was just surprised that so many of you came to Wilmington.”
“Why wouldn’t I have? Boston has my family. Definitely don’t want to go there. And it’s too fucking cold. I’d walk like I’m ninety. And Georgia is too hot. Too many bible-beating Baptists. Worse than here. I knew Wilmington from when I was at Bragg.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But,” said Peter, “back to this Zombie thing. That may explain an experience I had on Saturday night.”
“What happened? Sharing’s caring.” Matt chuckled.
Peter laughed. “Go fuck yourself, man.”
“No, really, what happened?”
“I was at Walmart, buying beer. It’s, like, fifteen till midnight. Plenty of time. There’s no one there, which is totally weird for a Saturday night.” He sounded like he said wee-id. “But I figured they were all puking out their brains from the flu, instead of, ya know, booze.”
“Okay,” said Matt.
“This fat chick comes in. She’s barely dressed. Okay, so it’s Saturday night. She’s drunk, whatever. Somebody’s gotta be. I’m just trying to get my beer checked by this cute girl behind the register. This woman starts doing this, like, demoness striptease, right in front of the closed customer service booth. Taking off her clothes. Hissing. There’s fat rolls and giant droopy tits. Not sexy at all, unless you go for fat possessed chicks—not mentioning any guys we know who’d like that. The security guard, armed with, like, a cell phone, comes up to her and starts ma’aming her— ‘ma’am, you can’t do that here. I’ll have to call the police,’ type shit. Suddenly, she goes from demoness stripper to just fucking demon.
“She lunges at him and bites his face, ripping out a chunk of his cheek. He’s screaming. She’s laughing like the Chucky doll. She takes off running, fat rolls and tits bouncing. I get concerned for the cashier and jump over the counter and protect her as Crazy Tits is running by. The male cashier who looks about twelve and some guy from management chase after her. There’s restocking pallets through the aisles. Finally, a fucking shipment of paper goods, huh? She runs through, still laughing. Boxes go flying. Paper towel rolls scatter across the floor. The two men fall over them. I’m laughing my ass off. Wilmington’s finest charge in then. They chase her, too. I’m like, okay, they’ve got this, so I’ll get my beer and go. The cashier girl says to me, ‘Sir, it’s past midnight.’ I’m like, ‘But I just protected you.’ She says, ‘It’s the state law, sir. You can’t buy alcohol until tomorrow afternoon at one.’”
“Oh, no,” said Matt. “Blue state law.”
“I tell you, never pays to be a gentleman.”
“So you always say. Yeah, that was a Zombie-user.”
“Huh. So Crazy Tits was on drugs. Fits. Why’d she take off her clothes and make me wish I was blind?”
“Tachycardia.”
“Gesundheit.” Peter grinned.
Matt laughed. “No, it means a rapid heartbeat. It makes their body heat rise. They take off their clothes.”
“I guess stripping in public makes sense if you’re fucked up outta your skull.” Peter looked down at Dock Cat. “It makes you dance.” He picked up her front paws and made her dance to silent music. She bit his fingers. He laughed at her effort. “Battle kitten.” Her tail twitched, pupils dilated, and all four knife-bearing paws attacked his arm. “Ow. Ow. Ow.”
Matt laughed at his pain. “You provoked her.”
She raced off his lap and chased her tail, leaping in circles in the air. Peter examined the scratches and drawn blood on his hands. Dock Cat tore into the cabin. Crashing sounds followed.
“Your cat’s insane, dude.”
“Yeah.” Peter shrugged. “I wasn’t going to be out done in mental state by a cat. How’d that look?”
Matt swigged off his beer and shook his head at his former staff sergeant. A highly decorated war hero, Peter had been. But ever since becoming an involuntary civilian via medical discharge, he was a constant source of worry for Matt.
Opiate painkillers could not be taken for years without ramifications. Drinking alcohol on top was a slippery slope. It had been years since Peter was repeatedly shot during his first tour in Afghanistan.
Matt glanced down at Peter’s propped left leg. Scars ran from calf to thigh. The rest hidden by the cargo shorts. Three bullet holes spaced out in accordance to how fast an AK-47 shot at semi-automatic on a man diving out of the way. The rest of the scars were from bolts and sutures. His dark leg hair remained bald in those areas. It looked like a little kid drew on him with a scalpel.
More surgeries than anyone could count, Peter’s leg had been rebuilt with titanium rods and screws in three sections. He was lucky it had not been amputated. Matt did not know the medical details, but he could surmise.
It was sad to see the decline in a man he once greatly admired who seemed to be immortal back in Iraq when they served together. Though always protective and watchful over his men, Peter had been nearly suicidal in his bravery. He’d charge right into live fire without ducking. A scar across his cheek, marring the growth of his beard, showed one too many times of not ducking. The snipers with Delta Force made fun of Peter for a long time over that, since they had witnessed him hit in the face. They said, “Pretty boy ain’t so pretty, huh?” and things of that nature, every time they saw him. It spread, until the pilots of the elite 160th SOAR ‘Night Stalkers’ battalion mocked him too. “Male model got some manly on his face,” Matt recalled one of them saying. Peter took it in stride. He was an interesting combination of cocky and self-effacing humble, which made the cocky easier to deal with and all the more godlike to the brutally young privates and PFCs.
One of them walked up the floating dock with his girlfriend. East Texan Jimbo Conway.
“Cheese it,” Peter yelled. “The coppers are here.”
“Y’all, we’re off duty,” Jimbo yelled back.
They came up the steps and onto the boat’s port side walkway.
“Hello, Corporal.” Peter called Jimbo the rank he had achieved in Afghanistan right before the young man decided not to re-up, or re-enlist, and become a police officer.
“Oh, are we using Army today?”
“I’m preferring it over being called That Asshole Who Lives on the Trawler.”
“Don’t know if it will stop that, Sully.” Jimbo clenched Peter’s hand. “Matt, man, since when are you free to hang out?”
