Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [0]
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY EARL EMERSON
COPYRIGHT
For Sandy, who keeps me sane.
For practical purposes, we have agreed that sanity consists in sharing the hallucinations of our neighbors.
EVELYN UNDERHILL
Adapt, migrate, or die.
LIEUTENANT JAMES MULDAUR, SFD
1
February
In later years Zak Polanski found it odd that he could divide his life into chapters separated by fatal or near-fatal automobile accidents. The first occurred when he was eleven, and it reflected in the dynamics of his family even today. Wreck number two was the accident that catapulted him into an unexpected summer romance with Nadine Newcastle.
The call had come just after twenty-three hundred hours on a cold night in February. There were only three firefighters riding Engine 6, so after they arrived Zak quickly laid a hose line in the street while the driver put the transmission into pump; the lieutenant scouted the wreck to see how many patients they had, and whether or not any of them would require extrication. Then came the part Zak dreaded, the part where he flopped onto his belly and squirmed into the vehicle to tend the patient.
Everyone on the crew thought Zak exhibited an uncanny bedside manner at wrecks, displaying a sense of calm to patients that helped pull them through the ordeal in a way nobody else in the department could. It was a tribute to his ability to sequester his feelings and get the job done, because around a car accident Zak was actually the most insecure person in the fire department.
Zak wouldn’t get the tremors here in the bowels of the wreck, but he would later at the station when he slipped back into his bunk. It was his practice afterward not to think about any of the auto extrications he’d been involved in, for every one of them terrified him. His auto-crash anxieties were something he would never confess to a buddy, nor to a priest, and probably not to a wife. For all of his adult life and the bulk of his childhood Zak had entertained an abnormal fear of dying in the tight confines of a car wreck, trapped, defenseless, perhaps even bawling. For as long as he could remember, his mental picture of hell was the scrambled interior of a wrecked vehicle, and here he was inside his worst nightmare once again.
It was a Lexus SUV, upside down, a car–pole accident. After Zak had crawled in and turned on his flashlight, he saw his patient’s leg trapped in the crushed door and realized that the weight of her body, as she slowly slid out of the seat, would soon be wrenching her pinned leg. If the pain wasn’t excruciating now, it would be within minutes. He removed his helmet and flung it outside the vehicle, then scooted under her and gave support to her shoulders, easing some of the pressure off her leg while doing his best to keep her spinal column aligned. It wasn’t an elegant position for either of them, but as soon as he had his hands on her, she ceased whimpering.
She was young, and he had the feeling his touch was both a surprise and a novelty. He explained what he was doing and why, and then told her how many more firefighters and machines would be arriving, warning her there was no place noisier than the interior of a vehicle with a crew of firefighters working to cut her free. “You okay with all that?” he asked.
“I guess I’ll have to be.