SHIP of the DEAD Chapter 1

SHIP OF THE DEAD Chapter 1 Rosa Escobedo should have stayed with her partner, should have been there to protect her mother. She should have tried harder to report to her unit. She did none of that and instead ran to save her own life. It hung on her as heavy as a cross, one she had carried since that terrible day. That was the night Jimmy Albright punched the siren, blasting a high-pitched WHOOP-WAAH as he hauled the ambulance left, then snapped it hard right again, neatly cutting around a BMW that hadn’t bothered to pull over for the flashing lights. The rig sped after a pair of San Francisco Police Department Crown Vics, slashing through traffic on the Embarcadero. “All I’m saying is something’s gotta give, Rosie.” He was smoking in the rig, a supreme violation for Emergency Medical Service crews, the butt clenched between his teeth as he maneuvered the heavy vehicle like a sports car. His red hair was closely trimmed, and he was tall and rangy, thin but with ropy, muscled arms. “You’re gonna burn yourself out.” The two cruisers split right and left around an Alhambra water truck, and Jimmy came up on its flat back end with sirens blaring, puffing cigarette smoke out the corner of his mouth before he cut right. He cleared the truck’s bumper by six inches at forty-five miles per hour. In the seat beside him, Jimmy’s partner didn’t flinch. After three years together, Rosa was immune to his driving. “I got it under control,” Rosa said. She was twenty-five, dark-haired and attractive, something noticed by every cop, medic, and fireman she encountered. Most of them asked her out. “If it gets to be too much, I’ll quit something.” 1 “Yeah, sure.” He stomped the brakes and flung the ambulance down an exit ramp. Even in mid-August the evening was pleasant enough to let the open windows cool the cab, and Rosa cocked her right arm outside and watched as the city flashed by. “You just want me to quit dancing.” She didn’t look at him. The rig’s tires squealed as he yanked it left, passing under the highway and chasing the two cruisers through the twilight streets. “We’re not going to have one of those conversations, are we?” he asked. “Because that’s not where I was going.” She shot him a look. “That’s exactly where this is going.” Jimmy flicked the butt out the window and made a disgusted noise, the kind people make when they are yet again starting down a much-traveled and worn-out path. “If you’re asking me if I want you to stop stripping for strange men—” “Dancing!” Beneath the pressed white uniform shirt and dark blue cargo pants was a dancer’s body, firm and full-figured, without the silicone enhancements employed by most of the girls at her part-time job. Jimmy knew what was under that uniform, although that was over now, which made this topic even more difficult. “Uh-huh, dancing around a pole and taking your clothes off. You want me to lie? No, I don’t like it.” “See? I told you.” She flashed a triumphant smile and shook a finger at him. “I told you.” “But . .” He braked, slowing as he went through an intersection against the light. “I know you won’t quit because you make too much money at it, and med school is going to be expensive.” 2 “That’s right!” Rosa’s face was burning. She didn’t like talking to Jimmy about that part of her life. He was too close, both on the job and given their brief but pleasant time together, a relationship they had mutually agreed to end because it was making them distracted at work. And yet he was the only one with whom she could talk. It would kill her mother to find out, and her sister out in Sacramento could barely focus on a conversation with five kids constantly howling for her attention. Rosa didn’t have a boyfriend; she had no time for one. Secretly, she doubted that a decent guy—other than Jimmy—would have a stripper as a girlfriend. Dancer, she corrected herself. “That’s right!” Jimmy shouted back, grinning and punching her arm across the cab of the rig, nearly sideswiping a parked car. Rosa laughed and punched him back. “You can be so stupid.” “I know. That’s why I’m dragging my white-trash ass around in this rig. You, however, are not stupid, and you don’t need this job. This is what you should quit.” The cab fell silent as Rosa stared at him, and Jimmy followed the cruisers into a neighborhood of four- and five-story buildings with ground-floor shops and apartments above. In the distance, still blocks away, red lights of the San Francisco Fire Department were sparkling. It was a non-fire call with injuries, their dispatcher had told them. “Jimmy . .” Her voice was softer. “I’m serious. Look at yourself, Rosie. You cranked out a bachelor’s degree with pre- med in record time, you’re about to start med school, and you’ve told me a hundred times what the workload will be like. On top of it you’ve got a Navy Reserve commitment. And dancing to pay for it all? You don’t have time to be out here with me.” 3 She frowned. This certainly wasn’t what she had been expecting. “I get practical experience out here. It keeps me sharp.” Jimmy scowled. “That’s a bullshit answer. You should have your nose in a book, Doc. You shouldn’t be out here scraping bodies off the street, dealing with gunshot wounds, ODs, and abused kids. Up to your ass in human filth,” he finished in a mutter. She couldn’t remember hearing him like this, so passionate and bordering on anger. For a moment her heart acted like it might do a little flip, and then settled. “I like being out here with you.” “Yeah? Maybe you are stupid after all.” They were in the Rincon Hill section, just off Folsom. The rig rolled to a stop behind a squad car just as the officers were sprinting toward a commotion at the front of a building. To the EMS attendants it looked like a crowd of firemen were fighting with a mob of civilians in the street, the white glare of a fire truck’s spotlight making a confusion of shadows dance on a brick wall. “Hold on,” Jimmy said, clamping his right hand on Rosa’s leg just as she was about to jump out. They watched, stunned, as a civilian grabbed a fireman by the head and bit off one of his ears. Someone screamed, and another fireman hurled himself into the fight, swinging an axe. Cops drew their weapons and fired, making three red circles appear in the chest and belly of a fat man in a bloody wife-beater. He didn’t flinch, lumbered right at them and tackled a cop, pinning him with his weight. He bit the cop’s ear off before going for the face. The fireman with the axe split a man’s head open down the middle. The downed cop’s partner executed the fat man with a pistol to the ear, then rolled his bulk to the side, screaming “Medic!” 4 Rosa was out the right door and running to the back. Jimmy met her there and they opened the double doors together, grabbing their bright orange kits. Jimmy suddenly pinned her to one of the doors and moved close, startling her. “You be careful.” She pulled away from him impatiently. “Let’s go,” and then she ran to where one cop was crouched over his fallen partner, holding the man’s head and pressing a hand to where an ear had once been. He was cursing steadily, glancing between his groaning partner and over to where the fireman with the axe, screaming like a mad Viking, had just put down another civilian. Two more people, both Asian women, were clamped to the fireman’s legs, chewing into his knees and thighs. No other cops were in sight, despite the second patrol car. Rosa pulled on heavy purple latex gloves with a snapping noise and dropped beside the two cops, opening her kit. “I got him,” she said, pressing a thick gauze pad against the side of the man’s head and shouldering his partner out of the way. That cop stared at her for a moment, blinked, and started walking toward the raging fireman, raising his service weapon. Jimmy Albright saw the gun coming up and cut left away from it, running toward the stoop of an adjacent building, where another fireman was curled into a fetal position, blood soaking the concrete around him. “I’m coming, buddy.” He dropped his kit and knelt, pulling on his gloves. Rosa’s cop was struggling to sit up, gritting his teeth. “Fucking guy bit my fucking ear off. Marco! Where the fuck did you go?” Marco continued to walk slowly toward the axe-wielding fireman and shot one of the Asian women on his leg through the head at point-blank range. The snarling body 5 collapsed, but the bullet blasted through the skull and shattered the fireman’s knee. With a scream the fireman spun and swung the axe, cutting halfway through the cop’s neck, making the head flop to one side.

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