VACCINATION

by

Phillip Tomasso

Copyright 2013 by Phillip Tomaso

www.philliptomasso.com

phillip@philliptomasso.com

This one is for my family at 911;

to the Telecomunicators who take calls;

to the Fire, EMS and Police Dispatchers who tell responders where to go!

Love All of You.

Thank you for the inspiration!

Prologue

Chris Danson stared at the male who stood motionless more than halfway down the liquor store’s first aisle. The guy’s disheveled hair looked wet and matted down against his scalp; the black suit, wrinkled.

“Anything I can help you with?” Behind the counter Danson leaned on the heel of his hands.

The guy looked up. First thing Danson noticed were bloodshot eyes—must have been on an all-morning bender.

“Buddy, something I can give you a hand with?”

The guy turned with his whole body, faced Danson. The knot on the black necktie hung low against his chest and the un-tucked white dress shirt appeared as if a red pen exploded in the breast pocket.

“You’re going to have to get out of here.” Danson shook his head. “I’m not going to be able to sell you anything. And man, buddy, you’re drooling all over the floor.”

The slow staggered steps only reassured Danson the right decision had been made. “You’re gonna have to leave. I want you out of my store. Okay?”

Danson worked alone most days from open until roughly six or seven. Aside from the handful of customers who religiously kept to liquid lunch diets, the low volume didn’t warrant anyone else on the clock. It was early evenings when things became hectic. Like, people left work and needed a bottle more than dinner, and for whatever reasons, had to have it before heading home. That’s when it made sense to have extra help on hand. But not now. Not at eleven in the morning.

“Sir, I don’t want trouble, okay? But I’m thinking, if you don’t just leave, I’m going to have to call the police. Look, it’s not something I want to do, all right? So, what’d ya say? Don’t make me do that.” Danson held up his cell phone, if only to show the threat of meaning business.

The guy’s expression did not change—at all. But neither did he look right. Not right at all. Danson shook his head, shrugged, and walked around to the front of the counter, then with long strides toward the first aisle, mentally preparing to throw the drunk out physically, if warranted.

When he rounded the front of the aisle, he stopped short. “Shit!”

The guy stood there, face-to-face. The bloodshot eyes were nothing compared to the pulsing blue veins that appeared almost neon under dead-gray flesh. Danson jumped back a step, and thought, Maybe he was just going to leave.

“Okay, sir. I do appreciate your business. Normally. Tell you what, you come back when you are a little more sober. I’ll give you a special on whatever you pick out. How’s that sound?”

Then Danson did something, and knew the moment that he did, he shouldn’t have. He turned his back on the oddball customer, with the intent of opening the front door and hoping the messed up guy would leave.

He wouldn’t have said he’d expected hands to grab his shoulders, but when it happened, he wasn’t surprised. What shocked him most was the bite.

Teeth dug into the nape of his neck, scraped across what felt like his spine, and tore out chunks of meat from his shoulder. Screaming and attempting to reach up and over his shoulder to pull the guy’s head off his neck, was as futile as reaching around to remove a knife from the center of one’s own back.

#  #  #

“Hey, man, you got like, what, five bucks?” Josh shut the engine off and the car stopped alongside the pump.

“Six.” David moved his hand around the seat belt, and dug fingertips into pants pockets and spider-walked out crumpled bills. “Ah, um, four. I have four dollars.”

Josh rolled his eyes. “Four? Seriously? Four?”

“I thought I had six,” he said.

Josh climbed out of the car, but not before tossing over a ten. “Go pay. All fourteen. Got it?”

With the cap unscrewed, the nozzle buried in the tank, Josh watched for the gas pump to switch on. While waiting, he saw the woman in the jean skirt and tank top across the street from the gas station. Long legs. Blonde hair. With his back to his car, he could stare all he wanted. It only looked like he was watching gauges on a pump.

“Damn,” he said.

“You’re good, dude, you’re good. Go ahead and pump.”

Josh spun around.

David stepped out from between the pumps, toward the car.

“What’s that?” Josh hated that he usually had to ask everything twice, and even then, twice rarely seemed to sink in with David.

“A Slim Jim.”

“You had four dollars for me, but enough for a Slim Jim,” Josh asked.

“Actually, I used our money. Just a dollar for the Slim Jim.”

“Do you not understand, we’re broke and need gas?”

He pulled a second Slim Jim out of his back pocket, and held it out like a magic wand. “Ah, but Bro—I got one for you, too!”

Josh moaned. David didn’t get it. Just could not comprehend the concept of broke. “Get in the car. You know what, just get in the car.”

“Whoa! What she doing?”

The blonde in the short skirt walked into traffic. Not at the crosswalk, and with no regard for vehicles headed at her from both directions. Rubber bled like black white-out across the pavement, as tires screamed in protest; horns like sirens from the Ginna Nuclear Power Plant, blared in long, relentless blasts.

“Hey! Hey, watch out!” Josh called.

The woman slowly crossed the lanes, walked with a limp, and seemed more focused on Josh and David than her personal safety.

“She crippled, or what?”

“No idea,” Josh said. “Hurt, maybe. She looks hurt.”

“And mental. It’s like, what could she be thinking?”

Josh took a step toward the woman and shook off the hand that reached for his arm. “She don’t look well. Maybe call nine-one-one.”

“You think?”

The closer Josh got, the more he thought she wasn’t looking at him, but that she might be blind. Both eyes looked milky, grayish, and white. Not the pupil. No eye color at all, just a milky grayish-white. It explained her walking across lanes of traffic without looking in any direction first, or during. She’d have to be deaf, too. The screech of tires, honking horns. “Ma’am? Ah, Miss?”

“Call? Should I call, Josh?”

“I think we’re going to need an ambulance. Something messed up happened to this woman,” Josh said. He whispered, thinking she couldn’t hear him, but just in case. “Look at her foot. She’s walking on a broken ankle.”

“So call?”

“Yeah, man. Call.”

“What do I tell them?”

Josh was less than ten feet from the woman. He saw scratch marks that started at her neck and seemed to slide down to between her breasts. There were more on her thighs. The ankle wasn’t just broken. The foot merely hung on by threads of flesh and meat. She walked on the compound fracture without wincing. “Tell them to get an ambulance and the police here. Both, she needs both. Someone fucked her up, bad. I mean, she’s all fucked up.”

Josh grabbed the woman gently by the shoulders. She stared right at him, as if she could see him, but like she saw right through him. Vision had to be impossible. It looked like congealed fat on a piece of chuck roast left in the fridge overnight and had hardened over her eyeballs.

When she tried to bite him, arms flailed, he did not take it personal. “It’s going to be all right. We’ve got help on the way, ma’am. Okay? An ambulance is coming.”