Born In The Apocalypse (23 page)

CHAPTER 1

As far as alarm clocks go, Joseph’s was top of the line. The soothing beep that gave way to the WAKE YOUR ASS UP NOW sound was less than pleasing. Unless, of course, the ample sized SNOOZE button was hit, giving him another ten (not the industry standard nine) minutes of sleep. He always hit the snooze button at least once. Not this morning, however. What woke him up was not his time-defying ten-minute snooze tap, but a message on his cell phone from his supervisor, Larry. It read:

Need u here now! Call me ASAP!

Joseph – or Joe to most who knew him – groaned and wondered why he was being awakened early for a shift that did not start until 8 AM. He squinted at the atomic clock by his bed.

It read 5:03 AM.

He wondered what supervisor in their right mind sent a text message on a Friday morning to BE HERE NOW! Blinking away the sleepiness that comes with an unexpected wakeup call at five in the morning, Joe lazily rolled over, set his feet on the cold floor, and rose. He did not have time for a shower the night before. The previous day’s twelve-hour long shift had turned into a fifteen-hour long shift due to some crackhead’s all-you-can-eat drug buffet. That joyous event had gotten him a late shift call that ended up being sent down the road to the better-equipped hospital in Roanoke.

Joe’s work as an EMT had made up most of his adult life and he had loved most every minute of it until recently. He was 31 years old and had just renewed his EMT for the third time wondering if he was going to be able to stay in a career that did not see too many people making to retirement age. Even at his relatively young age, he was starting to wonder if his knees and back were going to survive another five years of caring for people. He worked at an ambulance service, which for the most part doing what he and his co-workers affectionately called “Gomer toting.” Gomer toting amounted to taking the elderly that could not walk or get around in a wheelchair to doctor’s appointments, radiation treatments and other non-emergency transports. Joe had worked 911 calls for neighboring Buchanan County for a few years. After growing tired of the blood, guts, and dying that came with doing emergency calls every day, he had transferred stations to a much easier assignment in nearby Tazewell County.

Joe made himself get up and started digging around for his daily essentials. The black pants and red shirt that made up his work uniform at Star Ambulance was thankfully washed the night before by his wife and laid out on the couch with a note.

“Have a good day! Love, Buffey”

As he was getting dressed, he called Larry to see what all the fuss was. Larry rarely got excited to the point where he was panicked about anything, so an early message of that kind of exclamation probably was not conducive to a good day. Joe dialed Larry and he immediately picked up.

“This had better be good,” Joe said

“Damn straight it is!” Larry replied immediately. “Some kind of big ass mine explosion down in Grundy and we are getting a ton of patients sent our way.”

“How many people?”

“Not sure at this point. One of the mines hit some kind of pocket underground and it's causing all kinds of bad juju with the miners. It happened about an hour ago, but we didn’t realize the scope of all this, so we are just now getting word of everything that is goin’ down. Typical confusion and lack of info is crippling us. The miners have some weird shit goin’ on with ’em and we are fallin’ behind on getting to ‘em.”

“Why what’s up with all of ’em? Seems like just a mass casualty. Is there something you’re not telling me?” Joe asked as he headed out the door.

Larry seemed to pause a noticeably long time before replying. It almost seemed as if Larry was afraid of something, but was just too proud to admit it. “Just get here as soon as you can, I’ve called in everybody that I can get hold of. Even those two dipshit rookies we hired last week are on the way, so I expect you to be here too,” said Larry. He obviously did not want to discuss details.

“Alright, man, calm down I’m on the way. I’ll head across the mountain to save some time, but I will lose cell service for a while. I’ll see you in an hour,” Joe replied and ended the conversation with his agitated supervisor. It was times like these that Joe really hated working in a profession that made him available at someone’s beckon call at such a shitty time of day. He often wanted to go work in computer programming or sucking farts out of old car seats or just some other shit job that did not require him being awake before the sun came up. Nobody calls McDonald’s at three in the morning with a hamburger emergency. Joe finished getting dressed and headed out the door.

As he drove towards Rural Retreat - his hometown of some eight years now - he saw the thick fog and felt the cool September air. Even in the dark, he could tell it was going to be bad weather. There is an old country adage about putting beans in a jar for every time it was foggy in August, and that was how many accumulating snows you would get in the winter. It had been a very foggy August and September, and that did not bode well for the latter seasons.

He also began to wonder why Larry had not discussed the details of his early call-in. He and Larry had worked together some years in Grundy (way down in the heart of coal country) and had their fair share of bad calls. Suicides, motor vehicle crashes, sick kids, and other assorted mayhem had always been their forte and they always came out clean and smiling. Larry had changed now that he was in charge of his own station, for the better obviously. Managing an entire station of different personalities proved to be difficult for him, but not impossible.

The lack of information bothered Joe the most. He liked knowing what was coming in a line of work that was notorious for not having the same thing happen twice regularly. Joe contemplated the possibilities for how his day would go on his drive down Interstate81. After that, the inevitable thirty-plus mile drive across three S-curve filled mountains waited for him. Why did he call in the two green rookies? Why was he calling in everybody? As Joe thought this over, his phone chimed in with a text message from another co-worker, Josh.

ALL HELL BREAKING LOOSE IN GRUNDY, it said boldly.

What the hell? Josh was not one to panic in times of conflict, either. Joe had run Josh’s first cardiac arrest with him after passing his National Registry Intermediate test and he and Josh had performed like a well-oiled machine without so much as a word between them. A good partner knew what to do and what to expect and knew how to read his partner’s thoughts as what to do next. Joe was at a loss as to what his longtime friend was thinking at this moment. The curiosity got the best of him, and he dialed Josh to find out exactly what the hell was going on, seeing as how there had not been that kind of message from his friend since, well, ever. The phone rang one time and Josh picked up immediately, as Larry had not ten minutes earlier. The conversation that followed was hard to hear and even harder to comprehend as Joe started up the first mountain. From what he could understand, there was an explosion underground at one of the mines in Buchanan County that had released some sort of toxic gas underground. As if that was not bad enough, there had been almost simultaneous explosions at over two dozen mines in the county and reports of similar incidents in McDowell County, West Virginia and Pike County, Kentucky. The symptoms of the affected miners sounded like a combination of anaphylactic shock and febrile seizures. The injured miners acted as if they had allergic reactions as well as spiking a ravenous fever of around 105 degrees. Their airway would nearly close off as they lost brain cells from the brain nearly cooking in their skulls.

Josh had said that there were already at least a hundred patients at Grundy’s hospital alone and more were expected, as there was just not enough help to go around. Grundy was a small town in the far end of Southwestern Virginia and right smack in the heart of coal country. Coal was what kept the town going even in the age of the “carbon footprint”. Miners would risk their lives every day to bring the soft, black gold out of Mother Earth and they were happy to do it, even if it meant that they might not get to see the light of day again should the unthinkable happen. Today, however, it seemed that Mother Earth was fighting back, releasing her own brand of defense to the intrusion of man into her depths. Being a spot on the map on the edge of nowhere also meant that there was not much to go around in the event of a catastrophe. Josh also mentioned that it seemed that death was inevitable for those that were poisoned, as nothing was working at the hospitals. No drug that was available was working right at the moment and it seemed that the doctors were grasping at straws as what to try next.

As Joe listened, he could not help but think that there was something else to the disaster. There was more to it than just some miners hitting a methane pocket a couple thousand feet down. The sheer scale and number of patients and was happening was all too coincidental for something that simple. It was, after all, three counties and three different states involved in all this. He dismissed the theory that it was just bad luck. He tried to come up with some sort of rational explanation as to what was going on when he lost connection with Josh. Cell service at the bottom of the first mountain was spotty at best.

“Shit!” Joe exclaimed as he lost connection. He would not get service back until near the top of the second mountain, nearly fifteen minutes away at best. He thought to himself, hope for the best, and plan for the worst. That was his mantra throughout most of his life. Joe prided himself on being prepared in most everything from weekend cookouts to “Weekend Warrior” training at his Army Reserve unit. In his eleven years as a reservist, he had been in a number of areas around the world that if you were not prepared, you would end up dead, or worse. Captured with no way out and no way to help one’s self was not the way to go out.

Joe began to run through in his head of what he had with him in his car that could be of use in a mass-casualty incident. He had his W.A.L.K. (Warrior Aid and Litter Kit) bag with him as well as his Combat Medic kit that his brother-in-law has snagged for him “off the books” from Ft. Hood. He doubted the W.A.L.K. kit would do much good in this situation because they would already have plenty of backboards and litters available, though it was nice to have in the event of an unmanageable situation.

As Joe drove towards Tazewell, he began to think about his wife, Buffey and his nine-year-old son, Rickey. He had left early in the morning, much earlier than he had planned, without so much as a “see you later” and had headed out the door. He thought of how alone they would be without him there, and it bothered him greatly. Joe and Buffey had been inseparable friends since the day they had met, and they were still that way, nearly ten years later. They had met through a mutual friend at the rescue squad that they were both on and had immediately hit it off. Buffey was eight years older than he was, but she shared the same love of everyday life that he did, and it showed in the fact that Joe had convinced her to try video games. She beat him at Battlefield on a regular basis from that day forth. It tickled him to no end that his girl could kick any dude’s ass at any first-person shooter. Joe decided he would call her in a few hours after all the commotion had died down, and to tell some good “war stories” from the inevitable headline-grabbing incident that was currently going on in Grundy.

As Joe neared the top of the second hill climb towards Tazewell, he regained service on his cell phone and was immediately greeted by three different text messages from as many different people. The first message was from Larry wanting to know what was taking him so long. He would let that one go for the time being, just give Larry a good smack upside the back of his head later, and tell him to chill out; he was going as fast as he could. The second message was from another coworker, Missy, who was Star’s only female employee at the Tazewell station. She was very smart and one of Joe’s favorite partners to work with. Missy had aspirations of taking a career in law enforcement, and definitely had the demeanor for it. She had the patience of a saint. She warned Joe that he was going to be partnered up with David, one of the rookies that had recently started working at Star Ambulance as well as a recent graduate from EMT class.

Great, Joe thought. I’m going to be stuck with the buzzard-looking moron that might as well been the door gunner on the space shuttle.

David was notorious in his short stint with Star Ambulance for telling of all the supposed lives that he had saved in his short time as an EMT and as a combat medic in the Army. Joe and his colleagues had called him out on most of his lies, yet he persisted on what a badass he was. Never mind the fact that he looked like a cartoon buzzard from some 1960‘s Looney Tunes episode. Tall, lanky, and goofy looking were not appealing characteristics, as well as the fact that he was a compulsive liar. In addition, he was stuck with Star’s other resident window-licker, James. Short, fat, and dumb was no way to go through life but that did not seem to stop him from getting a job alongside Joe and his well-trained coworkers. James was blessed (or cursed) with the personality of a wet dishcloth and did not care to lie to anyone to get his way. Joe did not like having him around at all. To him, James seemed like he could be dangerous, given the right circumstances.