Primal Threat by Earl Emerson Read Free Book Online Page A

the Medic One Foundation, but she looked like she’d just flunked a midterm. “Does that C-collar hurt your neck?”
    “None of it hurts. I just want to be myself again.”
    “I know what you mean. I’ve had some injuries over the years, and they’re never very pleasant.” And then, with a twinkle in his deep brown eyes, he added, “Want to look around the station?”
    “What’s in there?” she asked, pointing to the bunkroom door.
    “It’s where we sleep.”
    “You’re sure it’s okay?”
    “It’s not okay at all, but I’ll make an exception for you.” While he held the door, she hobbled into the bunkroom, handling her crutches with the skill of an athlete. “As I said, this is where we sleep. Where we change clothes. This is also where we hide out when the station’s full of people.” The bunkroom was a long, narrow affair built onto the old station during the remodel twenty years earlier. It had a men’s washroom at one end, a women’s at the other, and a long corridor off which were small cubicles formed from tall banks of lockers enclosing each bunk. Firefighters assigned to the station kept their uniforms, sleeping gear, and assorted personal effects in the lockers. “This is mine.”
    She worked her way into his cubicle, glanced at the narrow bunk, saw the book he’d been reading atop a pillow, then turned to his open locker door and scrutinized the photos taped inside the door. “Do you mind if I ask who these people are?”
    “That’s me alongside my two sisters, my mother, and my father. I think I was about ten.”
    “You were a cute little guy. What are they all doing now? I mean, you’re a fireman, of course, but how about the others?”
    It wasn’t something Zak had often been asked, or else he would have taken the photo down. A year ago one of the men on the other shift wondered why he didn’t have pictures of girlfriends on his locker instead of ancient family photos, but Muldaur, who had been nearby, replied for him. “Modern-day shutter speeds aren’t that fast. Zak doesn’t keep a girlfriend long enough for anybody to get a picture.” Recognizing the essential truth behind the joke, everybody had laughed, Zak included.
    He hadn’t shared any stories about his family with anyone at the station and was mildly intrigued that he felt like telling a stranger. “The one on the end is Charlene. She was the oldest. Six years older than me.”
    “She’s pretty.”
    “Yes.” Even after all these years, Zak was amazed at how much it hurt to tell somebody about it.
    “You put that in the past tense.”
    “She’s dead.”
    “Really? How did it happen?”
    “She was driving me and my other sister somewhere, and we got hit head-on by some zoned-out woman in a pickup truck. It’s a long story and one I’d rather not go into.”
    “I’m sorry.” Nadine pointed to his other sister in the photo. “And this is…?”
    “Stacy. She’s three years older. She’s staying with me for a while.”
    “With you and your wife?”
    “I’m not married.”
    “And your mother and father, how are they doing?”
    “I can tell family’s important to you, isn’t it?”
    “Family is
everything
. Family and Jesus.”
    Zak remembered how her mother had watched over her in the beanery, how her brother and the family friend had fetched cake for her and made sure she had a place to sit, how they’d tried to include her in their conversations even though she’d been a reluctant participant, and now she’d given them all the slip.
    “My father’s living with me, too, but only until he gets his own place.”
    “And your mother?”
    “My mother died the year before I got into the department.”
    “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I would do without my mother.”
    “Mine had breast cancer. She beat it back the first time, but we didn’t have any insurance, so she was facing these huge bills—and then it came a second time, and she didn’t take any treatment. We weren’t as close