Текст книги "Vaccination"

Автор книги: Phillip Tomasso

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Chapter Three

 

 

My shift started at four. I checked out the schedule thumbtacked to the cork. I’m normally a dispatcher, sending fire trucks and ambulances to emergency calls. Police dispatchers worked the opposite side of the room. Between the two sets of dispatchers, sat telecommunications. The call takers. The 9-1-1 Operators. These are the unsung heroes of the place. The hub of the operation. They take call after call after belligerent call. I don’t know how they do it. Night after night. God bless them.

Tonight, I had phones. It’s a blessing and a curse. As a dispatcher, I am required to answer phones once every five to six days. I’d rather answer phone calls tonight, in the middle of the week, than on a weekend. Luckily, this year, I had Halloween off. Phones on a holiday, any holiday, were the definition of a nightmare. Families spending time together never ended well. Families hated each other, I’ve learned. However, tradition forced them to break bread umpteen times a year.

The curse, anyway, being that regardless of when, I sucked on phones. You never know what’s waiting on the other end of each ring. We’re trained to be ready. Graded on it, and disciplined from it.

I rounded the corner. Allison Little. She sat at one of the four round tables in the break room. Flat screen TV was on, volume low.

She was an all right girlfriend, seemed to love me. Which was cool. No complaint with that. For the most part, I tolerated her. Wish it could be more. After six months, should be more, I guess. Wasn’t though.

Her shoulder length blonde hair looked cute when she wore it pulled back in a tight ponytail–as she wore it tonight. Her bright, blue eyes always looked happy. Can’t think of a better word. They Sparkled? They shined? The girl was twenty-seven. Never married. Still thought life was some peach, a glorified bed of roses, and she acted as if she’d just seductively wait in it for her knight to show up and validate some fabled fairytale story of her life.

Nearly impossible at times not to grab and shake her by the shoulders, and yell, “Wake the fuck up!”

“Got your tea.” I set the cup down in front of her.

I kissed the top of her head and sat down next to her.

“Thank you,” she said. I guess I liked the way she smiled, too. Coupled with those eyes, yeah, I’d say she was very attractive. Think what I hated most was talking to her on the phone. Took a while to get her to understand that. I had no problem texting and shit. I just didn’t want to talk. It’s a simple concept. Women just seem flustered by it. Thing was, I was single more than in a relationship since my divorce. So maybe it was me. Don’t know if that’s a question though. Might be more of a statement. Maybe it was me.

I pulled the lid off my coffee. I picked up the sugar dispenser and dumped more into my cup, took a sip and smacked my lips. “That’s good.”

“See the schedule?”

“Phones.”

“Me, too,” she said. “We’re in different pods, though.”

“On purpose, no doubt,” I shrugged. We were used to it. Could make an unbearable night more bearable working in pods where you didn’t absolutely hate the people around you. See, that might improve morale, cause employees to feel valued. Just another way management was fucking with you. Everyone knew Allison and I were together. Some thought it was cool. Some simply displayed childish forms of jealousy. Dating co-workers wasn’t prohibited as much as it was frowned upon. Thing was, we spent long, often difficult hours together. Relationships formed. Couldn’t really be helped. Lot of people here were married. Many more dated, and it ended horribly. And, of course, there’s the large handful of married (to non-employees) who dated peers, or just slept with them. I couldn’t keep all the webs that linked everyone to everyone else straight. At some point, it just felt like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, anyway. I mean, who didn’t love Bacon?

I needed another cigarette or two. Allison didn’t smoke. Like talking on the phone, it took her a few weeks to learn not to give me shit about smoking. I smoked. She knew it when she met me. Magazines might give tips about how to change your man, but you know what? We don’t change.

“I’ll be back,” I said, standing up. She smiled. Said nothing. Yeah, Allison was an all right girlfriend. I gave her a wink. “Did you see if we at least have breaks together or anything?”

“I’ll check,” she said.

“I got it. Look on my way out,” I said.

Chapter Four

 

The floor is set up in pods. About thirty-five people work per shift. There are four different telecommunication pods, with four to five phone stations in each, a fire and ambulance dispatch pod with six stations, and lastly, two police dispatch pods for nine employees. There are people for breaks and lunch reliefs, and in the center of it all, three to four supervisors per shift oversee the night.

I logged on to the three terminals at my station, and plugged in my headset-jack. We’re several calls in queue.

Allison stopped at the pod. “Putting me on the police side,” she said.

“Lucky you.” She sauntered away. I shook my head. Lucky her.

I made it through a handful of calls and sipped some water before answering the next.

“Nine-one-one Center,” I said.

“Send an ambulance, please. Send an ambulance.” It’s a female voice.

I checked the left monitor. A landline. I have a name, address, and the number she’s calling from. I still have to ask and verify. “What’s your address, ma’am?”

“No,” she yells.  “No! Ah, God—he, he—”

“Ma’am, what is your address?” I filled out the electronic job template on the center monitor and brought the caller’s information over with a keystroke. I heard crying, her sucking in gasps, and moaning.  “Ma’am, I need your address.”

It’s the nature of the job. Night after night. No one ever knows where they are. If they do, I can rarely understand a word being said—what with crappy cell phone companies, and piss-poor annunciation. Landline calls were a bonus. There were far less of those calls, as people made cells their primary. I didn’t have a home phone.

“He’s sick. I mean, like really sick.” I think she laughed. One of those nervous, anxious laughs. Not like something was funny, but like she was close to losing it.

“Where are you, ma’am?”

“He told me his toe itched. That it was itchy. And then, he, I—he—with the knife, he just cut it off.”

“The toe?” I asked. I cocked my head to one side, and pressed a finger to my ear. Nothing should surprise me, but I thought, I can’t be hearing this right.

“Where is the knife now?”

I’m closing in on two minutes since the start of the call. With no confirmed address, I’ll need a supervisor’s involvement. I hate that.

“Ma’am—”

She’d hung up.

I clicked on a button to dial her number. On the template I typed: F (for female) STATES M (for male) CUT OFF HIS TOE—M POSS (for possible) INTOX—CLR H/U (for caller hung up). It’s all about short cuts and abbreviations. Get the job in, and the responders en route.

I transferred the address information I did have to the right-hand monitor, used for mapping.

On the third ring back, someone answered.

“This is nine-one-one. We were disconnected,” I said.

Open line. Screaming in the background. Sounded like things being knocked over. Grunts, more groans.

A stifled scream?

I type: OPEN LINE ON C/B—HEAR SCREAMING, AND POSS STRUGGLE.

I had enough. I entered an event type for domestic dispute, and sent the job to the police dispatchers. I combined it with an ambulance job, who’ll stage in the area until police cleared them in to the scene. If the guy cut off his toe, he was going to need medical attention for sure. For all I knew, by now, the female might as well.

The call disconnected. Dial tone hums.

As always, another call to be answered waited. No need to call the female back a second time. Police had the job. Someone would go, sort things out.

That training I told you about, taught us to move from call to call, not get hung up on what might, or might not be happening with the people involved in the last one. Not always easy to do. But after years employed here, it does become robotically automatic.

“Nine-one-one Center,” I said, and looked up. There’s flat screen TVs everywhere with subtitles, but no sound, and the only thing we’re allowed to watch is news. I’m up to here with reality. News was the last thing I wanted to watch. Not to mention, reports mostly revolved around the H7N9 virus, and its vaccinations.

“Hello, this is nine-one-one,” I said, again.

Open line.

Cell phone, this time. I re-bid the number—an attempt to triangulate the caller’s location. Naturally, it’s one of those cell phones you can get without a contract. They rarely work when doing this—trying to pin down the caller’s location. These cell providers basically provide customers with junk phones at an affordable rate and piggyback off the more reputable service providers’ towers.

The pictometry map refreshed, hit off a cell tower. I rebid again, just to be sure, and received the same cell tower. No location revealed.

The phones were useless.

I didn’t hear anything in the background. After another thirty seconds, I release the call and try call back. It went to voice mail, and I disconnected. Nothing I could do. It was more than likely what we called a butt-dial. Happened all the time.

Twenty calls in queue. What the fuck?

#  #  #

“Nine-one-one Center.”

“They’re trying to get into my house!” Another female. On a cell. I rebid the call.

“What is your address ma’am? Ma’am?” I looked at pictometry. I got a street address. I rebid again. Same house. Same street.

“Please, please, send the police,” she whispers.

“I need your address so I know where to send the police,” I explained. Pictometry is helpful, but not a hundred-percent accurate.

She fed me an address. I’m surprised. She spoke slow and clear. I entered it. Verified it. It matched the mapping system. “Okay, tell me exactly what’s going on?”

I filled out the text on the job template as she talked: 4 M’S TRYING TO BREAK INTO COMP’S HOUSE—BREAKING WINDOWS DOWNSTAIRS—COMP HIDING IN UPSTAIRS BEDROOM.

I have enough information. I plugged in a burglary-in-progress event type and sent the job.

Now I can supplement the job with additional information to keep responding police informed. “Do you know these men, ma’am?”

“No.” The whisper is barely audible. “I’m under the bed now.”

I typed that.

“Did you see them?”

“Yes.”

“Were they white, black, or Hispanic?”

“It was too dark. I couldn’t tell.”

“Did you see what they were wearing?”

“They were covered in, I think they, it looked like they were covered in blood,” she said.

“Blood?” I added that. 4 M’S POSS COVERED IN BLOOD. I sent the supplemental information, and got ready to add more. “Can you still hear them?”

“They broke my windows.”

“Do you think they left?”

“I’m not going down to check!”

“No, ma’am. I don’t want you to do that!” I pulled up the actual job on the bottom-half of the screen. Two police cars are en-route. “I want you to stay where you are. Stay on the phone with me. What’s your name?”

My job now, calm the caller. Reassure her. I don’t want to say police will be there any second. It doesn’t always work that way. “Ma’am, what’s your name?”

“Kenya.”

“Okay, Kenya, did these men have any weapons?”

“I didn’t see them with anything, but I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“That’s fine. That’s okay. I’m just sharing all this information with the police, so they will know what to expect when they get there.”

“Where are they?” She sounded worried. “I think they are inside the house.”

**SHE THINKS THEY ARE IN THE HOUSE NOW** –sent the supplement.

“Does it sound like they’re downstairs?”

“Can you hear them?” she asked.

I heard it. Groaning. Moaning. It’s muffled. “Kenya?”

“They’re outside my door.”

I typed that. Sent it.

“Kenya, I want you to stay very quiet.” I’m talking in a low voice, too. Hope that is calming. “But don’t hang up. Keep the phone on. Okay?”

“Okay.”

We’re both quiet. I refreshed the job. Police on scene.

“Kenya, the police are outside. Don’t move. Stay quiet.”

I heard what had to be her bedroom door bang open. It’s Kenya I heard next, screaming. Giving away her hiding spot. “Let go of me!”

“Kenya!”

I jumped up, faced the police dispatchers. It’s a home invasion. “They have her!”

The line is still open. Screams echoed in my headset. I can’t figure out the sounds. All I pictured is something like . . . pudding stirred in a bowl with a wood spoon, or mayonnaise into mac-salad. Wet, puckering. I have no idea what else describes the sounds I’m hearing.

“Where are they?” I yelled.

“They’re in. They’re in.” Allison had the job and was on her feet, too. “Police are inside the house!”

“Police!” I heard from the headset.

Swearing. Must be the cops.

Kenya’s screaming had stopped.

Gunshots.

“Shots fired,” I yelled.

Allison and I, normally, would have the attention of everyone. I mean everyone if we’d yelled “shots fired” like that across the floor.

Tonight, no one noticed. Other employees had heads down, or were on their feet shouting, too. Only I was just noticing this. All the yelling. I’d been too caught up in Kenya’s call.

Supervisors were in different pods, assisting. The Operations floor was in frenzied disarray.

It’s a Tuesday. Rarely is it this busy unless it’s summertime. Or like I’ve said, a holiday.

More than six hours left to go, I thought. I sit. Listen. Police have the scene. Nothing more I can do from here anyway. Despite being in queue, I am not going to disconnect the call. Not yet.

“Officers down,” Allison yelled.

That did it. There was sudden silence, but it didn’t last. But there it is. For just a moment our job captured every one's attention.

Supervisors had plenty to do when a responder was in trouble. Milzy rushed over to Allison.

Kenya’s house would be swarming with cops.

“Kenya?” I said. “Hello?”

The struggle continued. All calls were recorded. A playback would be used in court. I’d have to testify. No way around it.

We’re forty calls in queue. The number kept climbing. I’d never seen this before. Heard it happened once when a tiny earthquake shook part of the county with little more than patio furniture tipping over during the aftershock.

I logged the job number down on a pad so I could check on Kenya’s situation later. I didn’t want to hang up, but it truly was no longer my concern.

Again, just the way it was.

#  #  #

I took the next call, and thought, it’s going to be one hell of a Happy Halloween. The crazies were getting cranked up and primed early.

“Nine-one-one Center,” I said.

“It’s my fault,” he said.

“What’s your fault, sir?” Another cell. I rebid the call. He’s at a park in Mendon.

“This is. All of it. It’s my fault.”

“Where are you, sir?”

“I’m going to Hell.”

You might be. “Well, where are you now, sir?” I’ve got a pretty solid location. His verifying it would be helpful. It’s a big park. Lots of entrances. Lots of trails.

“We knew what we were doing. We knew it was wrong. At least, I did. I knew it was wrong. But that didn’t stop us. It should have. But it didn’t. It didn’t.”

“What was your fault?” I asked.

“The tests. The H7N9 testing.”

I sighed, knowing I needed to control the call. Incoming ones kept stacking. “Sir, do you need police, the fire department, or an ambulance?”

I could click on a button and this guy is connected to Lifeline, where people are trained to talk with loonies who just needed to be heard, talked out of suicide, and sometimes just given info on how to get fed or where to find shelter for the night.

“There’s no stopping it,” he said.

“Stopping what?”

“Sure. You could try and blame Strong, or the U of R. It was their money. Their labs, but I could have quit. I could have walked away.”

Strong? “The hospital?” I asked and cringed, upset with myself for feeding the shitstorm conversation.

“They’re hungry. They’ll just keep eating and eating.”

I closed my eyes. “Sir, I’m going to send an officer out to talk with you. He’ll just be coming by to make sure you are all right. Where are you in the park?”

“There’s no point. I have a gun.”

Everything changed. The call just became serious, more than checking on a caller’s welfare. “Sir, why do you have a gun?”

I entered the location strictly from mapping, and put that fact on the text line. Police then know I don’t have an exact, verifiable location. I add: M WITH GUN—POSS SUICIDAL. “Sir, why do you have a gun?”

“Because. I don’t want to die that way.”

“What way?”

“They’re not dead though. They look it. But they’re not. Their bodies will continue to decay, but they’ll keep going, keep coming after you, keep eating until they just can’t do it anymore. They get all dumb, and forget how to do things, but not how to eat. They remember that. And how to run. My God, they’re fast. So, so fast.”

“Who forgets things?”

“Who?” he laughed. “All of them. Everyone who got the vaccination.”

“What vaccination?” I asked.

“For the flu. Aren’t you listening to me?”

“Sir, I’m trying to understand what you’re telling me. But I first need to know where the gun is?”

“Here. It’s right here. In my hand. The barrel is under my chin.”

I added that, and sent the job. “Sir, why don’t you put the gun down while we talk about this?”

He laughed, again. “Are you thick, son? There is nothing to talk about. There is no cure. There is no healing them. We should have let the stupid flu run its course. Someone suggested that. I don’t know who it was. They were right. But no. The government wanted the vaccination mass produced to cover up their man-made flu in the first place. With the flu and the vaccination combined—what have we done? I mean, what have we done?”

“Sir, sometimes things look bad, hopeless even, but after a good night’s sleep—”

“You don’t want to be around tomorrow,” he said. “The lucky ones, the smart ones, will do what I’m doing—and end it.”

“I don’t know you, sir. But I am sure you have plenty to live for.” I talked out of my ass. King Bullshit. What did I know? Maybe he had nothing to live for. “Friends, family…”

Silence.

“Sir?” I paused a beat. “Sir?”

“I just wanted to call as a way of apologizing.”

“Apologizing to whom?” I asked. I didn’t ask ‘for what.’ He thought he already told me. Too many questions in the wrong direction, and I risked angering him further. I wanted him calm, and thinking that I was helping him.

“Everyone. It won’t make a difference. To me, it’s at least something.”

It sounded like he was wrapping up, getting ready to take action. Most suicidal callers call 9-1-1 because they aren’t ready to die, and the call is an actual cry for help. This guy, he sounded different. Serious. I believed him.

“Sir, put the gun down.” One of my hands went to my stomach. I winced as I sucked in a deep breath.

“You can stop them. It’s futile really, but you can stop them.”

He had my attention. I wanted to understand. I wanted to help. The job might be full of political shit, but helping people every night was rewarding. Gave me purpose, something I’d been running thin on since the divorce. “Stop who?”

“You have to destroy the head. The brain. It’s the only way really. You take off their arms, and they’ll run at you, remove their legs, and they’ll use their arms to drag themselves at you. They’re relentless. Fucking relentless.”

This is too much. I checked the job. Police have been dispatched, but no squad cars were assigned to the job yet. I glanced at the electronic job board. It flashed in purples, yellows, and greens. There are hundreds of jobs waiting for available responders. Hundreds. Never have I seen anything like this. Never. “Sir,” I said.

“The vaccinations—they were infected, a broken vial. A contaminant was released during production. No one knew. No one understood. We were under the gun. And once we did realize it. . .the government demanded a cure for the public—a prevention. We didn’t have time to remake it, any of it. So we didn’t stop. We just, ah God, we just kept plugging away. It was only later, you’ve got to believe me, it was only after that when we truly realized, really understood we’d made a huge error—that the antibody had horribly mutated. By then, what could we do? What could we do?”

I tried to put all of his nonsensical ranting into some kind of order. I couldn’t. This guy was either an overworked scientist, or a nut. I’d of gone with nut at the beginning of the call. Still leaned toward nut, but . . . either way, I felt kind of sorry for him. His words made my stomach muscles tense, and ache. I couldn’t seem to detach myself from his nightmare.

“Sir, what is your name?” I hoped I sounded friendly. Not like a cold call taker just doing a job.

The sound of a gunshot boomed in my headset.

I pushed back in my chair, away from the keyboards, and stared at the woods on the mapping monitor, as if I saw him. A lone man in the woods, surrounded by trees and darkness, leaning on the trunk of a Volvo or Lexus before blowing out his brains. “Sir? Sir?”

I add info: GUN SHOT. POSS D.O.A. Sent it.

I needed a break, time off the floor.