End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3) - Stephen King Page 0,1
four.
‘Location is City Center on Marlborough Street, repeat City Center on Marlborough. Once again, this is an MCI with multiple deaths likely. Use caution.’
Rob Martin’s stomach tightened. No one told you to use caution when heading to a crash site or gas explosion. That left an act of terrorism, and it might still be in progress.
Dispatch was going into her spiel again. Jason hit the lights and siren while Rob cranked the wheel and pulled the Freightliner ambo into the lane that skirted the restaurant, clipping the bumper of the car ahead of him. They were just nine blocks from City Center, but if Al-Qaeda was shooting the place up with Kalashnikovs, the only thing they had to fire back with was their trusty external defibrillator.
Jason grabbed the mike. ‘Copy, Dispatch, this is 23 out of Firehouse 3, ETA just about six minutes.’
Other sirens were rising from other parts of the city, but judging from the sound, Rob guessed their ambo was closest to the scene. A cast iron light had begun creeping into the air, and as they wheeled out of McDonald’s and onto Upper Marlborough, a gray car knitted itself out of the gray fog, a big sedan with a dented hood and badly rusted grille. For a moment the HD headlights, on high beam, were pointed straight at them. Rob hit the dual air-horns and swerved. The car – it looked like a Mercedes, although he couldn’t be sure – slewed back into its own lane and was then nothing but taillights dwindling into the fog.
‘Jesus Christ, that was close,’ Jason said. ‘Don’t suppose you got the license plate?’
‘No.’ Rob’s heart was beating so hard he could feel it pulsing on both sides of his throat. ‘I was busy saving our lives. Listen, how can there be multiple casualties at City Center? God isn’t even up yet. It’s gotta be closed.’
‘Could’ve been a bus crash.’
‘Try again. They don’t start running until six.’
Sirens. Sirens everywhere, beginning to converge like blips on a radar screen. A police car went bolting past them, but so far as Rob could tell, they were still ahead of the other ambos and fire trucks.
Which gives us a chance to be the first to get shot or blown up by a mad Arab shouting allahu akbar, he thought. How nice for us.
But the job was the job, so he swung onto the steep drive leading up to the main city administration buildings and the butt-ugly auditorium where he’d voted until moving out to the suburbs.
‘Brake!’ Jason screamed. ‘Jesus-fuck, Robbie, BRAKE!’
Scores of people were coming at them from the fog, a few sprinting nearly out of control because of the incline. Some were screaming. One guy fell down, rolled, picked himself up, and ran on with his torn shirttail flapping beneath his jacket. Rob saw a woman with shredded hose, bloody shins, and only one shoe. He came to a panic stop, the nose of the ambo dipping, unsecured shit flying. Meds, IV bottles, and needle packs from a cabinet left unsecured – a violation of protocol – became projectiles. The stretcher they hadn’t had to use for Mr Galen bounced off one wall. A stethoscope found the pass-through, smacked the windshield, and fell onto the center console.
‘Creep along,’ Jason said. ‘Just creep, okay? Let’s not make it worse.’
Rob feathered the gas and continued up the slope, now at walking pace. Still they came, hundreds, it seemed, some bleeding, most not visibly hurt, all of them terrified. Jason unrolled the passenger window and leaned out.
‘What’s going on? Somebody tell me what’s going on!’
A man pulled up, red-faced and gasping. ‘It was a car. Tore through the crowd like a mowing machine. Fucking maniac just missed me. I don’t know how many he hit. We were penned in like hogs because of the posts they set up to keep people in line. He did it on purpose and they’re laying around up there like … like … oh man, dolls filled with blood. I saw at least four dead. There’s gotta be more.’
The guy started to move on, plodding now instead of running as the adrenaline faded. Jason unhooked his seatbelt and leaned out to call after him. ‘Did you see what color it was? The car that did it?’
The man turned back, pale and haggard. ‘Gray. Great big gray car.’
Jason sat back down and looked at Rob. Neither of them had to say it out loud: it was the one they had swerved to avoid