Walking Dead: Requiem/Page 2

This is Page 2 of Walking Dead: Requiem.

Page Two: Call
"Wake up cupcake! We gotta call!" Leon shouted from the front. Aaron Hindle checked his watch, the time was eleven thirty-four a.m. He sat up in the back of the EMT, stretching out his stiff bones and muscles after the nap following an exhausting ten hour shift. "What is it this time?" he called back. "Hit and run downtown." Aaron climbed into the cab, shutting the back doors of the vehicle as Leon immediately began to speed out of the hospital parking lot. As they drove past the emergency room section of the lot, Leon noted something about it being crowded which Aaron couldn't quite make out. He began to check the instruments and equipment, hoping that they might have everything they need while listening to Leon and Sherry up front talk about some random bullshit. Aaron knew they had been sleeping together, Sherry being one year ahead of Aaron while Leon was an all-around man whore. However, Aaron loved how the idea that the two would become so awkward while in his presence, as if he didn't know.

"Jesus Christ..." Leon muttered as the EMT arrived in downtown LA shortly before noon, the scene apparently revealing itself to be a nasty one. The street had been barricaded by two police cruisers and the scene was being stared at by your average nosey civilians. Leon and Sherry jumped out quickly as Aaron went back to open the back doors, preparing to help Leon with the gurney while Sherry would talk to the officer first on the scene. As they carried the large grated bed around the truck, Aaron took in what had happened: a car had plowed through four pedestrians crossing the busy downtown intersection before ramming itself into a nearby J-Crews outlet. The injured citizens were moaning in pain, save for two who only layed still. As Sherry talked to the officer who had first arrived, two more were detaining the driver of the car, a man in his late forties who was screaming like an insane person who had known what he was doing. The kind of screaming Jack Ruby must have been shouting after murdering the claimed assassin of John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald. This however, was not a scene of retribution, nor was it one of vengence as the layout had been too prominent and the victims too random. No, this was something far more disturbing.

As Leon checked for vitality on one of the less injured victims on a nearby stoop, Aaron checked a young woman whose injuries were minor, considering she might have taken off the drivers side mirror of the car. Seeing the woman was OK and hearing her account of how the mad man seemingly came out of nowhere, Aaron placed a compressed bandage onto her side where the mirror hit her before running to check on another victim. This one, a man in his mid-fifties and wearing a business suit was not moving and made Aaron fear the worst. He checked the mans pulse to find not the slightest sign of life as he looked about the injuries. He spotted the damage made by the sedan as well as something else on the man's leg, something that appeared to be a gunshot injury. As Aaron began to grow more and more concerned, Sherry approached him after the officer ran to help his commrades with the crazed assailant, "Aaron," she began, "this is TOO weird!" Aaron responded, "Tell me about it, This guy is DEAD! And look at---" Sherry interrupted him, unphased by the revelation of this man's mortality "No Aaron, you don't get it! The driver is the city comissioner!"

Aaron stopped what he was doing as he watched the officers tackle the city-elected official into a nearby cruiser, the sounds of the screaming crowds distracting him from his job. What could have made him do this?! he asked himself, terrified of the possible answers. Recently, Aaron had heard of a few incidents like this involving the users of a drug known as PCP and bath-salts, though in those instances it was the more of the street-level citizens than an all-out judge in training.

Before he could contemplate another thought, a dozen piercing screams all at once placed his mind into a seemingly endless void of confusion and shock. A million thoughts overloading at the hands of a million voices, all screaming and coming from those pointing at him. Only when Sherry screamed in a tone that erupted deep from somewhere beyond her lungs did Aaron finally look down and see what would make him scream as well, the seemingly dead businessman's once lifeless face leeched onto Sherry's forearms and ripping away a solid chunk of her tanning bed clad flesh. Almost immediately, Leon was there, stomping in the man's face as a nearby civilian woman pulled away Sherry. Aaron could only watch in terror before he was jerked up by Leon, screaming words at him that Aaron could not yet hear before turning back to Sherry.

All at once, it seemed like the downtown section of Castro became a cesspool of chaos as the uniformed officers disappeared into the crowd. The ringing of their gunshots brought Aaron out of shock as he turned to see the now lifeless Sherry being helped up by Leon. "COME THE FUCK ON AARON!" he shouted, dragging his most recent lover and coworker back to the EMT. Aaron would finally come around and take Sherry by the other arm, helping them to make it back to their truck through a sea of terrified people. "OH FUCK, AARON! BEHIND YOU!" Aaron turned around just to be tackled by the crazed business man, his bloodied face now chomping for Aarons' when suddenly a fist intercepted the man's jaw, sending him back onto the pavement. Aaron turned to see his savior, the now free city commissioner, who would go onto help the EMT's and the woman who had aided Sherry back into the emergency vehicle.

Inside the truck, the hands from hundreds of panicked citizens would begin rocking it too and fro as the commissioner shout for Leon to get them the hell out of the area. As Leon defied this command, instead helping Aaron to place Sherry across the floor, the commissioner proceeded to withdraw a handgun he must have stolen from one of the officer. The fifth passenger, the woman who had dragged Sherry away when Leon was beating on her assailant pleaded with us to obey him, stating, "The man wasn't alive! I'm telling you, he WASN'T!"
 * End Of Page Two. To Be Continued.