“Where’s the attacker?”
“At large. I’m surprised you got this far across the bridge, actually. They’ve just told me no crews are coming in until the area is secure.”
Adrenaline was making the policeman talk so fast he was barely coherent, but Rhys collated the useful information: terror attack, lockdown, no other crews on scene.Shit.He’d worked through previous attacks on the city, but never on the ground with no back up.
He shot Tarryn an urgent glance. “Assess any casualties close by, but don’t go far. We need to tag them and move on.”
“Right.”
Tarryn was ashen, reminding Rhys that it was only her second flight shift. Her anxiety laced the air, so thick he could taste it, but he pushed it away, grabbed her arm, and pointed to the next closest body on the ground. “Take the packs. Assess and tag. It’s all we can do with no transport. The crews that come in behind us will scoop and run.”
Five minutes later, they moved off, leaving three patients under the care of the policeman. Eerie silence greeted them in the next street. Restaurants and bars had locked their doors, and the usually bustling pavements were deserted, save the scattered bodies on the ground.
Rhys black tagged two—a young couple who’d fallen close together. The man had long dreads like Jevon’s, and Rhys’s heart tightened, threatening the barricades he’d thrown up when he’d clocked on shift this afternoon. Unease prickled the back of his neck. Logic told him the scene would burst to life at any moment, be flooded with blue lights and boots on the ground, but right now, even with Tarryn at his back, he’d never felt more exposed.
A noise to the left made him jump. In the distance, sirens wailed and car brakes screeched. Someone yelled for help, and the ghostly silence evaporated like it had never been there at all.
Pub doors opened. People streamed out, covered in blood and carrying people who couldn’t carry themselves. A panicked crowd swarmed Rhys, and he had to shout to make himself heard. “Back up. If you need medical attention, find a safe place to wait and we’ll come to you.”
Eventually.As pieces of a grim jigsaw fit together, Rhys couldn’t see how they’d ever get to everyone crying out for help, and another spike of terror reared in his gut. RTCs, fights, and gang wars had brought him a constant workload, day and night, since he’d hit the streets as a rookie technician years ago, but the sinister sense of something “big” unfolding around him was impossible to ignore.
A conveyor belt of truly horrible trauma unfolded. Rhys triaged one side of the street, Tarryn the other, and with each stab wound and trample injury, it became clear that whoever had wielded the weapon had intended to kill anyone who crossed their path. Neck slashes. Chest punctures.
“There were three of them,” a woman gasped. “They had machetes and carving knives.”
“Easy. You’re safe now.” Rhys repeated the mantra to every soul he touched but believed it less and less the longer he and Tarryn were the only crew on the ground. “We need urgent assistance,” he pleaded into the radio. “There’s too many wounded for us to help.”
Again and again, the message came back:Not yet.Standby.
They cleared the first road. A policeman armed with a pepper spray and a thin baton accompanied them into the next. More bodies littered the street. A man was in the gutter, blood pouring from a puncture wound to his stomach. Rhys crouched down as the radio on his shoulder crackled to life, speaking in time with the policeman’s, warning them to take cover.
Gunshots rang out, one after another.Crack, crack, crack. Rhys’s whole body cringed, and the policeman grabbed his arm. “We need to get off the streets. Armed police are moving in.”
Rhys pushed Tarryn towards a cafe that had seen them coming and opened its doors. “In there!” he shouted. “Let’s go!”
He hauled the injured man up and dragged him towards the cafe as more gunshots pierced the air. A helicopter buzzed above them, and police cars screamed into the street. Rhys pushed Tarryn again, knocking her off balance. She grabbed him to steady herself. He tripped up the kerb, rolled his ankle, and whacked his head on the kerb with a sickening crack.
* * *
It’s funny how the concept of time passing can change by the second. One minute, Rhys was stalking the city streets, stuffing stab wounds with gauze, the next he was sitting on a hospital ward with the worst headache in the world, having a meltdown over his misplaced phone.
“Calm down,” Harry said. “We’ll get you another phone.”
Rhys ignored him and rummaged through the flight suit he’d found in a plastic bag by his bed for the hundredth time. Save his ID, his pockets were empty. No wallet, no phone. “Fuck!”
Harry stood and put his hands on Rhys’s shoulders. “Easy. Do you need to call someone? You can use my phone.”
More panic lanced Rhys’s chest. “I don’t have his number. It’s in my phone.”
“Whose number? Jevon’s?”
Rhys nodded, his teeth chattering, even though he wasn’t cold. “I haven’t spoken to him since Friday.”
“It’s barely Sunday now,” Harry said.
“Is it?”
“Yes. You’ve been here all night, and you’ve been awake from a concussion for an hour, so do you think you could lie down and stop losing your shit? I’ll find your phone, or I’ll get you another one, and we’ll find a way of contacting Jevon, okay? Angelo has his number, right?”