The taller teen stops laughing, serious now, and says softly to his friend, “Hey, guy. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“Fuck you! Fuck this!” He wipes his face on his sleeves.
The elderly man rolls over onto his back. A gash has opened on his wide forehead. Hands flutter at his eyes and they smear the blood around, turning his face red. His breaths are watery and hiss like a tire leaking air. Mixed in are heartbreakingly clear ows and whimpers. He attempts to get up, putting weight on his lower leg, which is bent at an unnatural angle at the knee. He screams and melts back to the pavement.
The taller teen asks Ramola, “Hey, um, can I have my staff back?”
The shorter teen stomps toward the old man, bat cocked. He’s still crying but he’s also grunting and breathing heavy like a bodybuilder gearing up for the big lift.
Ramola, staff in her hands, intercepts him. “Stop. Slow down, wait. Hey, what’s your name? You can keep calling me Doctor Who if you like, but my name is Ramola.” She hopes to calm him down with an exchange of names, a reminder of their humanity.
The teen pauses his advance. His bat is still cocked but his snarl is gone. He says, “Luis.”
“Hello, Luis. And your friend’s name?”
“Josh,” answers the other teen. He retrieves his helmet and holds it in the crook of an arm.
Luis lunges forward. He says, “We need to do this. We have to—”
Ramola fully steps into and blocks his path. “Look at his leg.”
Josh says, “Oh, that’s nasty.” He half covers his face with a hand, groans, and makes assorted that-is-so-gross noises.
Ramola continues, speaking in pointed and short sentences, as though she is delivering difficult news to a parent of one of her sick patients. “He’s not getting up. He will not come after us. You don’t need to hit him again.”
Luis flutters looks between Ramola and Josh. He says, “He’s a zombie. We need to kill him.”
“No. He is not a zombie. He is a man. You would be killing a sick man. You’re not a killer, Luis. You and your friend Josh aren’t killers.”
Luis shakes his head. “We killed someone before—”
“Hey, guy, hey, no . . .” Josh says, and puts the helmet on. His head sinks between his shoulders and he pulls the helmet’s crown over his eyes, as though he can’t bear to watch.
Luis says, “He was old.” He isn’t looking at Ramola, but he isn’t looking at the old man either. “Wasn’t all our fault. We didn’t know what we were doing.” The defeated tone of his voice belies the boast or threat inherent within the we-killed-a-guy confession regardless as to whether it is the truth or a lie. Is he saying they killed another infected old man?
She says, “This would be different, Luis. You know what you are doing because I’m telling you. You’d be choosing to kill a man now. There wouldn’t be any doubt or question.”
“We’d be helping him. Putting him out of his misery. There’s no cure,” Josh says.
It’s clear to Ramola this is empty posturing on Josh’s part. Or maybe it’s what she wants to believe. Ramola unleashes her most withering look, and Josh dries up, shrinks, and suddenly discovers the tops of his sneakers to be fascinating.
The moment of potential further violence has passed. Ramola feels it, like an easing of barometric pressure. She says, “You don’t get to decide that.” Ramola tosses the staff into Josh’s chest.
He catches it and mumbles, an admonished child, “Neither do you,” but again, doesn’t dare return her glare.
The old man has stopped moving. His breathing is labored and arrhythmic. His eyes are closed.
The bat sags in Luis’s hands, a flag gone limp. He nods at Ramola and walks over to his friend. Josh pats him on the back, mumbles belated commentary about Luis “pillaging the zombie’s cut” with one swing.
Ramola walks past the huddled, whispering teens (their annoying bro lingo all but indecipherable) to the ambulance door and opens it. She begins to ask if Natalie was able to get through to 911 or communicate directly with Dr. Awolesi, but stops. Natalie isn’t in her seat.
Ramola climbs into and inspects the empty cab as though she might find Natalie crouching or hiding on the cab floor, folded neatly into the center console. She throws a panicked look into the rear of the ambulance, but she isn’t there either. Ramola shouts Natalie’s name as she slides out of the ambulance, landing awkwardly onto Bay Road. She slams the driver’s door shut.
“Rams. Hey, Rams!” Natalie is in the street, standing adjacent to the ambulance’s front grille. She says, “I’m right here,” as if to say, Where else should I be? As raggedy as a child’s favorite hand-sewn doll her arms are drawstrings dangling loosely at her sides. The unzipped halves of the too-small yellow sweatshirt are an open curtain for her protruding belly. Most of her hair has fallen out of her ponytail but not all, the stubborn elastic not willing to surrender when all is about lost.
Apoplectic with fear, worry, and exasperation, three questions crowd in and issue out of Ramola all at once. “Why did you—Did you climb—What are you doing out here?”
She says, “Sorry. I really had to pee. I almost didn’t make it. Or, I mostly made it.”
Ramola sighs. The teens go quiet. The old man has stopped breathing.
Natalie asks, “So how did the zombie fight go?”
Nats
Psst, hey, kid. I tried calling 911 like Auntie Rams said, but it’s not picking up. Same for Dr. Awolesi’s phone. I sent her a text, and I think it went through but she hasn’t answered back, which is a problem because we need a new ride. There’s heavy shit going down out there. I can’t really turn around in my seat to see without less-than-mildly excruciating pain. Oh don’t worry, it’s not you, it’s me.
I hear Rams talking to
