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“How did he get this?” I demanded, eyes on Blagojevic.
“Huh? Oh, alligator.” He offered a strained smile. “It was the damnedest thing. Connor was working a drag line, and out of nowhere this fucking gator comes out of the water and goes for his arm. But my boy’s got good reflexes and snatched his hand back before the fucker could bite down. Got grazed instead of chomped.”
“He’s tough,” I managed to say. Leaning close, I took a good sniff and picked up a whiff of the Douglas Horton shambler smell, confirming my suspicion. Shit shit shit. This couldn’t be happening. Judd and Douglas had both been dead and come back to shambler life. Connor was most definitely alive. A whole new and awful pattern.
The ambulance raced up and stopped with a squeal of tires. Two paramedics leaped out, grabbed their monitor and jump bag, and ran to us. I backed away to give them room.
“Good thing Barney wanted to stop and take pictures of that drawbridge,” the driver said.
“Good thing Howard let me,” Barney replied even as Connor let out a weird moan that lifted the hair on my arms.
“Whatever he has might be contagious.” I wished I could come up with a way to say, “and don’t let him bite you,” without sounding weird as hell.
Barney simply gave me a nod and tugged on gloves. In under a minute, the paramedics had IV access and the cardiac monitor hooked up. Howard took a blood pressure then manually checked Connor’s pulse at the wrist and neck. He let out a low whistle. “Bradycardia. Twenty-four beats per minute. BP fifty over palp. How’s he even conscious?”
“Dunno,” Barney said. “But he is, so let’s roll.”
Without warning, Connor lunged and clawed at the paramedics, teeth clacking unnervingly, eyes wild and cloudy.
“Shit! Restraints,” Howard gritted out.
It took all of us to wrestle the slavering Connor onto the stretcher and restrain him, and then both medics and Hoang to get the stretcher loaded.
Blagojevic strode toward to his car, face filled with distress. “I’m going to follow them to the hospital.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I said. “Keep me posted if anything changes, please?”
“Will do. Thanks, Angel.”
The ambulance took off, lights flashing, with Blagojevic right behind them.
Fuck. I yanked the van door open then felt a hand on my arm. Nick’s.
“I just talked to Allen,” he said. “Take my car and go to the hospital. I’ll take the van and check the body in.” He held the keys out for me.
“Thanks.” I resisted the urge to throw my arms around him in a hug of gratitude. We exchanged keys, then I paused as a stupid little worry leaped out. “Who’s going to drive Connor’s unit?”
“Sheriff’s Office is sending someone out,” Nick said, voice gentle and reassuring. “Hoang has to stick around anyway until the tow truck comes for the Camaro.”
“Okay. Right.” I wanted to stay right here with Nick, worrying about little shit like minor logistics—things I could handle. But I couldn’t. Not with the horking shitstorm stirred up by Connor’s collapse.
I quick-timed it to Nick’s Hyundai. As soon as I was on the road, I called Dr. Nikas. “We have a problem.”
Chapter 14
The call to Dr. Nikas didn’t last long since there wasn’t much to tell: Connor collapsed and started acting shambly a day after being teeth-grazed by a gator. A few minutes after I hung up, Dr. Nikas sent me a text asking me to meet up with Allen at the hospital to obtain samples from Connor. No words of reassurance or hints at a simple explanation.
Over a dozen cop cars lined the street near the emergency room, and I recognized another half dozen unmarked units in the parking lot. Connor was their brother in blue and they were here for him.
I found a spot for the Hyundai on the last row and hiked to the ER. The instant I walked through the waiting room door, worried deputies mobbed me for details of the accident scene events. I related the shambler-free version, then had to repeat it for Connor’s sergeant and lieutenant, then again for the chief deputy and the sheriff himself. With every retelling, the sick feeling in my gut grew. Was Connor even really alive and himself anymore? I clung to hope since he’d never died like both Judd and Douglas Horton. But if he was alive and mentally whole, what then? We had no “cure” for the normal zombie parasite, much less for a mutated version.
I finally slipped away from the sheriff and found Allen scanning the crowd for me.
“This way,” he said tightly. We ducked through the double doors that led to the treatment area. The noise level dropped away, the worried hum receding to background tension.
“How’d you get access when everyone else is stuck out in the waiting room?” I asked.
“Connor’s mom is on her way here from Longville.” He started down the corridor with long strides, and I trotted to keep up. “I know her, and the ER doc’s a friend. Between the two of them, I wrangled my way in.”
