Fall of the Seven Cities Saga (Book 1) (2 page)

“What time do you want me?” the person texted a moment later.

Matt squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, he texted “Can you do 7:00 tonight?” Seven was when they were supposed to meet for the hockey game.

“Yeah that’s fine with me.” Then she told him where to meet her—a seedy little motel in the bad part of town.

Two minutes later Matt’s phone rang. It was Jen.

“I’m sorry, babe. I’m just not feeling well,” she’d said.

“It’s no big deal,” Matt said. He couldn’t believe how calm his voice was. Why wasn’t he screaming? “A guy from work wanted to go anyway. I can call him up and see if he still wants to meet us.”

“Thanks for understanding. I love you.”

“Love you too. Feel better.”

Jen had opened the motel door wearing the lingerie he’d bought her. Her jaw nearly hit the floor when she saw it was Matt, but she recovered fast.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to see that post on Craigslist. Isn’t this hot?”

“Fuck you, Jen.” He flicked 75 dollars at her and walked out.

“Matt, I’m sorry. I have a problem. It’s an addiction, a sickness. I don’t love you any less than I did before,” Jen said. Her voice was pleading.

Matt didn’t even acknowledge her. He just got in the car with Ryan and went to the hockey game. That had been almost a year ago and his life had literally fallen to pieces since that night. It’s not even that he was all that upset about losing his fiancé. It was so fucked up that it was hard not to laugh about it a little bit. Maybe it was the shock of it all. It was more like he’d lost faith in humanity. He only continued to live and provide for himself out of habit.

He still went to work, but people had a sixth sense for the broken and despairing; it poisoned everything he did. Suddenly people who would have selected him as their Realtor went elsewhere. When he showed a house to buyers they didn’t respond to him in the same way. No one took his advice. His buyers bid at the wrong price and the sellers he represented ignored credible offers. His ability to make a deal seemed to evaporate overnight.

Maybe it was all bad timing; maybe he was reading into things too much. What did normal people do in these situations? Suicide? He didn’t have any family; his parents had died a few years ago. No girlfriend either, not even a cat to eat part of his body before the neighbors realized he was missing. Nobody would even care if he vanished.

For one, brief moment he contemplated suicide and then, just as quickly, rejected it. Of course he had people who cared. Suicide was preposterous, silly to even think about. He was instantly ashamed for having allowed the possibility to enter his mind. At worst, his house was foreclosed on, he declared bankruptcy, and moved into a smaller place. It would be hard but not the end of the world.

He rounded the corner and saw the hospital at the end of his road. As he took a shortcut through the parking lot, he saw a young child with a bandaged arm sprint out of the emergency room. A woman came running after him. They got into an old Dodge Caravan with fake wood paneling, backed into a parked car and sped out of the parking lot.

Matt made a mental note of the license plate and walked toward the emergency room doors to report what he’d just seen. Why would someone be in such a hurry to
leave
the emergency room? Had she just kidnapped that child?

As he neared the emergency room doors he heard screaming. A man and a woman burst through the doors and ran toward the street. Blood streamed down the woman’s face, her chest was heaving in long racking sobs. Matt paused, then ran toward the doors. Something bad must have happened inside. Maybe he could help. If there was a shooting or some other kind of attack happening he couldn’t sit by and do nothing.

The glass doors slid open as he reached them.

Matt barely had time to take in his surroundings—a few desks on his left for patient check-in, a long hallway in front of him, its locking doors swung wide—then he saw a man attacking a male nurse. The nurse lay on the floor, screaming and trying to push the man away. The man bit the nurse’s nose, clenching his teeth and pulling back, like a wolf tearing meat off a caribou.

No one moved to help. People spilled toward the exit or stood watching, transfixed in horror. In two strides, Matt had reached the struggling pair. He lifted his foot and planted it in the side of the attacking man’s head. The man reeled back, his head smashing into the corner of a wooden coffee table.

Matt’s thoughts were sharp, focused on the scene in front of him and his desire to act; everything else fell into the hazy background. Blood surged in his veins; his breaths were rapid but even. Looking back, Matt would identify this as the moment everything changed. For the first time in months, he felt alive.

At first Matt thought he might have killed the man. Or at least fractured his skull. But the man didn’t flinch or cry out, just pushed himself to his knees and lunged toward Matt’s leg. Matt jumped back, kicking the man’s head a second time, sending the man back into the table and twisting his neck at an odd angle. This time the man stayed down.

More screams were coming from the hall at the end of the emergency room. A thin man wearing a pair of blue board shorts ran from the hall into the waiting room. An older woman was making her way toward the exit when Board Shorts tackled her from behind and bit off a piece of her ear as easily as a deer would pluck a berry from a bush. He leaped off of her and launched himself at a group of people standing nearby, first biting a woman’s arm, then latching onto a man’s face. It was a frenzied attack, much different from the way the man had attacked and bitten the nurse’s nose.

Matt didn’t stop to wonder where Board Shorts had come from. He didn’t contemplate whether the man was in his right mind or if he was in control of his actions. Matt picked up a wooden chair and ran at the man in board shorts. The man locked eyes with Matt and charged.

Matt and the man in board shorts collided; Board Shorts lost and went flying into the check-in desk, striking his head on the way down. The chair landed on top of him. Another man jumped on Board Shorts, trying to help Matt restrain him, but Board Shorts flailed and grabbed onto the man’s leg, sinking his teeth into his calf.

The man went down with a scream. At the same time, Matt pulled the keyboard from the desk and wrapped the cord around Board Shorts’ neck. He pulled back with all of his strength, until the cord tore into Board Shorts’ throat. Blood went everywhere, cascading over Board Short’s chest and onto the man’s calf. Board Shorts still clenched the man’s calf in his teeth, but eventually the attacker’s jaw relaxed and his body went limp.

CHAPTER THREE

Matt offered a hand to the man who’d helped him, pulling him to a standing position. The other people in the waiting room were looking at them with a mixture of awe and terror.

“Thanks for your help. I’m Matt,” Matt said, panting a little. His mind was reeling, stopping again and again on the insanity that had just played out in the waiting room.

“Don’t mention it. I couldn’t stand by and just watch. The name’s Frank,” said the man, looking around for someone to help him with his bleeding leg.

There was still screaming coming from the ER at the end of the hallway and Matt wondered what was happening back there. Then he realized the screaming was not only coming from deeper inside the building, but also from the male nurse whose nose had been bitten off. Now that the immediate danger was over, a few people had rushed to help the nurse. One man pulled his own shirt off and held it to the nurse’s face to halt the bleeding.

Wondering if he could help, Matt started toward the back of the hospital. Suddenly, a group of police officers entered the ER with their guns drawn, shouting, “Police.” Some had their pistols drawn but others had shotguns and what looked like assault weapons. Matt wasn’t sure about this last part; he’d only seen guns like that on television, usually being held by soldiers or SWAT teams.

Unlike the SWAT teams on TV, these were regular uniformed officers. Aside from the few who had the assault rifles, most of them weren’t decked out in tactical gear. They weren’t wearing fancy armor or throwing flash-bang grenades. They had their city blues and a gun. No more knowledge of what was behind the next door than Matt did. He took a step back, surprised.

The officers assessed the situation, taking in the two dead people and the twelve or so injured. Two officers stayed behind in the waiting area, while five more pushed forward, stacking up outside the doors to the emergency room in a line. Matt backed up out of their way.

Each officer had a hand on the others shoulder. Each officer squeezed the shoulder of the man in front of him, indicating he was ready, until the silent motion reached the first man in line.

The first officer went around the corner, followed by the other four.

As they disappeared around the corner Matt heard shouting.

“Stop and put your hands in the air!”

“Get his other hand.”

“The fucker bit me!”

“Look out!”

Then there was a rapid volley of gunfire. Part of him wanted to see what was happening, but he didn’t dare check around the corner for fear of being shot.

One of the officers who’d been left in the waiting room tried to go into the ER, but the second officer stopped him.

“We don’t want to surprise them,” the second officer said. His head was as bald and as shiny as a cue ball. “They might mistake us for a threat,” Cue Ball added. After a pause, the second officer nodded, but Matt noticed he kept his gun free from the holster and in his hand.

Matt raised an eyebrow. Cue Ball was a thinker, and not someone who would let his emotions get in the way. It made Matt happy to think he had no tactical training and had made the same decision that the police officers made.

The two remaining police officers stayed where they were. “Do you guys need us?” Cue Ball yelled in the direction of the emergency room.

“We’re okay, just hold your position,” someone called back.

Half a minute later, Matt heard four more gunshots. The people in the waiting room flinched each time they heard a gunshot but adrenaline was still coursing through Matt’s body from fighting with the two men. To him, the gunshots sounded like a dull pop.

A short while later the other officers returned to the waiting room with a group of nurses and doctors. Some of the nurses and doctors had injuries of their own, which had already been bandaged. All five of the officers had injuries: cuts, bite marks, and scrapes from the confrontation. The number of injured was much greater than what the emergency room had the ability to handle.

The nurses triaged as best they could, handling the most serious wounds first. The nurse with the missing nose was taken to the back. To the man, the officers declined assistance, opting to let others get treatment first. Instead they took pictures to document their injuries and grabbed some solution for cleaning their wounds. They bandaged their injuries without assistance from the medical staff. Matt heard one officer explaining that they would need to get statements from witnesses; two different people pointed at Matt. He knew he’d need to talk to them and explain what he’d done. He had killed two men. It hit him like a lightning bolt, suddenly and with a force.
He had killed two men
.

Matt saw black at the edge of his vision and suddenly the world went out of focus. He sat down hard in one of the seats.

Sitting seemed to help. He leaned his head back against the wall. Suddenly Officer Cue Ball was by his side, a concerned look on his face. He was an average height and both his arms were covered in tattoos, which Matt found strange. Weren’t police officers supposed to be clean cut? His shirt said “R. Taylor” on it.

“Are you alright, buddy?” Taylor asked.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Matt lied.

The officer said something to a nurse and she came back with a juice box and gave it to Matt. He took it sheepishly, but once he drank it, his vision cleared somewhat. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t eaten anything since last night. He’d been so nerve-racked about showing the huge house that he’d skipped breakfast.

Across the room, an injured officer was speaking with the man who’d helped Matt subdue the second attacker.

“I need to find out what happened and everyone said you were the guy to talk to,” Taylor said, drawing Matt’s attention back to him.

“I guess so.”

“Start from the beginning. Help me understand what started this.”

“I was walking by the hospital when I saw a woman and a kid run out of the hospital and get into a car. They hit a parked car on the way out and I got their license plate number. I thought I should tell someone. On the way inside I heard screaming. I thought maybe I could help. Maybe it was some kind of attack, you know? I didn’t want to run away and leave a bunch of kids and sick people to defend themselves. As soon as I stepped inside I saw that guy”—Matt pointed to the body of the man he’d kicked—“on top of the nurse, biting his nose, tearing at it like an animal. Nobody was helping him. Everyone was standing around watching, like they were too scared to move. So I kicked him.”

“Kicked him how?” Taylor’s voice was calm, non-judgmental.