M Sellars - Blood Moon

Friday, December 16

12:53 A.M.

University Hospital

Saint Louis, Missouri

… The muffled report of something that sounded far too much like gunshots popped loudly from the speaker of the radio and was followed immediately by panicked screaming.

“ Shots fired!” Agent Book’s voice issued between tinny burps of static. His distressed tone was underscored by the chaotic noise coming from the frightened crowd.

“ Everybody move!” another voice ordered. “Now!”

Seconds later Book’s words were again hemorrhaging from the speaker, devoid of all composure, “SHOTS FIRED! MANDALAY’S HIT! OFFICER DOWN! OFFICER DOWN!”

All we could do was sit there, horrified, and listen to the distant scene unfold. They were inside, and we were out here. Deep in my gut I had known something would go wrong with this operation, I just hadn’t expected it to be this.

I glanced over at my friend, Detective Benjamin Storm. If adrenalin hadn’t been dumping into his system before this point, it definitely was now. He came fully upright in his seat as the frantic chatter continued to burst from the radio.

The device hissed for a second, then we heard Agent Book exclaim, “JESUS CHRIST… JESUS CHRIST… ONE GOT PAST HER VEST! SHE’S BLEEDING BAD! WE NEED PARAMEDICS RIGHT NOW!”

I couldn’t keep the horrible soundtrack from screeching through my head. The nightmare ran in an endless loop, as clear and terrifying as when I had originally heard it a few short hours ago. I could only assume my subconscious was forcing me to relive the event as a by-product of the fear that was now boring a hole in my chest; or maybe it was the guilt that was twisting my gut into a hard knot. The way I felt, I was willing to lay odds both of them were to blame.

However, if forced to pick one over the other I would say the guilt was probably in the lead. Primarily because it wasn’t just the ordinary remorse one feels over being unscathed when someone else is injured. No, this was much worse. It was the sickening sort of transgression that came from being relieved over another’s misfortune.

Special Agent Constance Mandalay was a dear friend, and I certainly had not wished for this to happen. Not to anyone, but especially not to her of all people. What I wanted right now was for my friend to be okay-to come out of this grinning and wondering “why all the fuss.” But, in the same moment, a large part of me was grateful that it was her who was now on the verge of death, and that was the source of my guilt. I didn’t want Constance to die, but if someone had to I was relieved that it was she-because the most likely alternative candidate was patently unthinkable for me.

The reason it was so inconceivable in my mind was because my wife had been the intended target. Moreover, had Felicity in all her stubbornness been allowed the choice, she actually would have been in the line of fire rather than safely distant from the scene. But, to my relief, real life bears little resemblance to melodramatic television, and the FBI wasn’t about to purposely place a civilian in harm’s way. Instead, Constance had taken her place. Risky as even that was, it seemed the only chance at stopping a serial killer who had escalated, was quickly decompensating, and had now set her sights on my wife and me.

Of course, before everything was over, Felicity made that step across the boundary of good sense anyway, but I couldn’t really blame her. She wasn’t exactly herself when it happened.

Still, when all was said and done, my wife was safe, Constance was on an operating table, and the killer had been stopped. But, her capture had come at a steep and still not fully determined cost.

We’d been told the wounded federal agent had gone into cardiac arrest during the ambulance ride, but they had managed to stabilize her quickly. All we had heard since was that she had lost a lot of blood and that she was still in surgery. The phrase “touch and go” and the word “critical” had been stressed, but other than that, nobody was saying much of anything else.

Nobody, that is, except the disembodied voices in my head.

“ Book! What is your exact location?!”

“ Just outside the forest exhibit! Right before the path splits! Hurry!”

“ Found the gun,” Agent Frye’s voice blipped over the air. “But no shooter. The area is clear. She must have dispersed with the crowd.”

“ Washburn, cover southeast,” a voice ordered. “If she didn’t go past Book and Frye, then she has to be heading that way. I’m on the main path coming in toward you.”

“ Acknowledged.”

“ We’re locking down the park,” another voice added. “SWAT will be here in two.”

The device continued to burp and hiss with various voices for a moment, all of them reporting that there was no sign of Annalise Devereaux, the serial killer at the center of this evil. There was a quick burst of silence, then one of the agents came across the speaker, “I’ve got something. Red wig in a trashcan outside the restrooms near the stuffed animal workshop… Be advised the subject may have changed her appearance.”

“ WHERE ARE THOSE PARAMEDICS?!” Book’s frenzied words bled through on the heels of the announcement.

“ Where are those paramedics?!”

“ Where are those paramedics?!”

I struggled to ignore the echo of his fear-stricken voice repeating in my head. The conflicting emotions already had me on the edge of emptying my stomach with extreme prejudice. Constantly reliving the horror was only serving to make the nausea worse.

I tried to think about something else but wasn’t having much luck. Out of desperation I sent my eyes searching for something on which to focus, and my gaze fell across the illuminated elevator control panel in front of me. I locked onto it and struggled to concentrate. After a moment it seemed to work as my mind shifted gears. Of course, I should have known it wouldn’t last. My brain seemed intent on continuing the self-torture and wasn’t about to let a little thing like switching trains of thought stop it from doing so.

With less than ten seconds respite of staring blankly at the glowing lights, my thoughts wandered right back into the darkness. My subconscious was in control, and the luminance in front of me simply triggered another morbid reminder of why we were here. Without warning I now found myself wondering about the light described by many who have come back from the brink of death. Technically, I myself had suffered clinical death on more than one occasion, but all I remembered of it was darkness. My own experience made me think perhaps the proverbial light was just a trick of the synapses. Nothing more than a hazy glare brought about by an oxygen-deprived brain being bombarded with intensely focused illumination, especially in a place like this. I hadn’t been to a hospital yet that wasn’t filled with harsh brilliance, and this one was no different.

Of course, since the myth of the bright light was just another thought about death rolling around in my skull, it really wasn’t helping matters any. If anything, the implications of finality it brought just made the acid churn of guilt eat away at my stomach even more, especially when I found myself wondering what Constance would see if she crossed over.

I simply couldn’t get away from it. No matter how hard I tried to think of something else-anything besides dying-I couldn’t. I was just going to have to let the fixation play itself out. The scary thing is I wasn’t so sure I was ready for the thoughts to end because as long as I feared what may be coming, that meant it hadn’t happened yet. And, just as I had been afraid something would go wrong with the sting operation, another feeling was now making its way up my spine. An unearthly foreboding that made me feel painfully empty, and I couldn’t shake the sensation that the loss of yet another friend was coming far too soon.