As the pair struggled past, Lanz saw that the man’s ample right buttock was missing a sizable chunk—mostly fat, but a little of the gluteus was exposed.
Lanz looked around to find Bolton staring at him. “Still want me to wait outside?”
He was about to tell her exactly what she could do when Winslow called from the nurse’s station.
“Doctor Lanz! Sheriff’s on the phone!”
If he turned down an offer of skilled help, fired employee or not, and anyone died, some lawyer would have his ass.
Lanz pointed to the ball players. “Take care of that arm.”
He stripped off his bloody gloves and took the phone from Winslow.
“Sheriff, we’ve got one hell of a problem here.”
“Well, doc, I’ve got one hell of a problem myself. Let’s compare. You first.”
Bet you mine is bigger than yours? Was that how they were going to play this? Fine. He’d lay it on with a trowel. Christ, he hated these hicks.
“We’ve suffered what can only be described as a terrorist attack. I’ve got two dead and three wounded, one of whom has lost an arm. The terrorist is still loose in the hospital wreaking God knows what kind of havoc. I need a SWAT team here.”
The sheriff put on an aw-shucks tone. “Now, doc, I’m sure it ain’t that bad, and you know we ain’t got no SWAT team—”
“Then call in the fucking National Guard! This is no joke!”
“Well, even if I did call in the Guard, no way they could get to you. One of Joe Loveland’s cows wandered onto the tracks and got hit by the four-seventeen freight.”
“Who cares
“Now hold on. You’re not letting me finish. The collision occurred in such a matter of fashion that the train jumped the tracks and came to a stop flat on its side across the highway.”
“Sheriff—”
“Thank the Lord, nobody got hurt, it being a freight train and all, but let me tell you, we’ve got one hell of a mess out here.”
“Just send me some deputies, goddamn it!”
“Well, that’s just it. Dave Howard’s off on vacation to Navajo Lake and Clay Theel’s got the weekend off and he’s on his way to a gun show in Denver. You got security there at BC. I know those boys. They’re good. Turn ’em loose and they’ll keep the lid on till we can get somebody over. Gotta go.”
“But—”
The line clicked dead.
Okay…stabilize these people, get them admitted, then get the hell out of here. First, the softballers.
He turned to Winslow. “What orthopedist and general surgeon are on tap?”
She checked the call list. “Manetti and Schwartz.”
“Get them. Tell Manetti we’ve got a traumatic amputation for him and a major avulsion laceration for Schwartz.”
He walked over to the softballers. Jenny had stabilized the amputee. Bleeding had stopped but the guy was as white as his uniform used to be and looking shocky.
“Want me to start an IV?” she said, nodding to the amputee as she cleaned the butt wound on the other softballer, prone on a gurney.
He wanted her out of here but needed the help.
“D-five in NS. Open it up. Type and cross-match him.” He was going to need a transfusion. “I’ll be sewing up the kid.” He jabbed a finger at her. “Don’t do one goddamn thing without checking with me first. Understood?”
“Loud and clear,” she said with a defiant look. Then it crumbled. “What if Mortimer comes back?”
His worst fear, but he hid it. “We’ll handle it.”
“Oh, like before? Hiding behind the nurse’s station?”
He was about to tear her a new one when three rapid gunshots sounded from somewhere in the hospital. A pause, then two more.
“Oh, God,” Jenny whispered.
And then the doors burst open and two burly security guards backed in, each dragging two bloody bodies.
“What the fuck is going on?” one of the guards screamed, wide eyes showing white all around. “There’s some kind of creature going crazy in the lobby. We walked in and it was behind the snack bar. It ripped Ernie’s head off!”
Sure enough, one of the corpses had been decapitated.
The other guard said, “I shot that fucker five times—I know I had at least three killshots—but they hardly even slowed him!”
Lanz felt his knees go rubbery. He tried to speak but words wouldn’t come.
“We’ve got to evacuate.” Jenny said.
He glared at her as he found his tongue. “Evacuate where? We’re in the American equivalent of Outer Mon- fucking-golia. Plus the highway’s blocked. What do I do? March or carry a hundred and fifty patients out into the woods?”
That shut her up—almost.
“Okay, then. If the patients can’t leave, neither am I. When my ex comes back, we’re going up to pediatrics and make sure nothing happens to those kids.”
“Like hell you—”
And then he saw one of the guards start back into the hospital.
“Where are you going?”
“To get Ernie’s head. I ain’t leaving his head out there!”
Lanz wanted to scream not to leave him and that Ernie didn’t care about the location of his goddamn head at this point, but bit it back. He was the captain of this ship and he had to hold it together, despite the fact that this corner of the world had gone insane.
SHANNA turned away as she saw the prissy doctor poised over Mortimer’s exposed chest, smearing a clear gel on the defibrillator paddles. She’d spent the last two months studying some of history’s worst atrocities. In fact she’d often perused accounts of mass impalings while eating lunch—no problem.
But this? Uh-uh.
She headed into the hospital proper. She’d been here once before, when they’d thought Mortimer had OD’d, and remembered a snack bar in the lobby. A cup of coffee would hit the spot, especially after that Scotch. She wasn’t used to hard liquor.
The short middle-age man with “Ernie” embroidered into his shirt hung by the coffee kiosk at the end of the snack bar.
“Latte?” he said as she approached.
“Just a regular coffee, please. Black.”
She glanced around the nearly deserted lobby. By this time the day’s surgeries were done, the second shift was ensconced, the doctors had left for their offices, the kitchen was readying to serve dinner, the day visitors were gone and the night visitors weren’t home from work yet.
Quiet. Like a morgue.
She grimaced. Probably not the best analogy for a hospital.
She paid Ernie for the coffee and pulled out her cell. She had to call Clay to make sure he’d received the
