Return of the Wolf Man by Jeff Rovin

Author:Jeff Rovin [Rovin, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 0425165760
Publisher: Berkley Books
Published: 1998-10-12T07:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

The LifeSaver helicopter knifed through the dark skies. Onboard were three people who had devoted their lives to saving the sick and the injured: not one of them had ever seen anyone like the patient they were carrying. He was extraordinary not just in terms of his size and weight but also his wounds. Many of the burns and cuts were new, but many of them were extremely old and very poorly healed. The medics couldn’t begin to imagine how he’d acquired them—or how he’d survived.

On the flight deck, sitting beside pilot Lew Kelly, copilot and emergency medical technician Mary Stewart had radioed ahead to LaMirada Memorial Hospital to inform the emergency room staff of their ETA. The medic also told them they’d need a bed with an extension for the nearly eight-foot-tall victim, one who was suffering from extensive third-degree burns, virtually nonexistent vital signs, and the most extreme hypothermia she’d ever seen in a living human.

“I really don’t know how the big guy’s still alive,” the blond-haired Mary added, “but he is. At least, Junior moves a hand now and then. Right, Emma?”

“He surely does,” elderly paramedic Emma Dunn replied into the mouthpiece of her headset. The white-haired woman was sitting on a fold-down seat in the closed-off medical bay behind the flight deck. She looked down at the patient. He was too big for either of the cots and was lying on green blankets that had been spread on the floor between them. “His eyes flutter open a little now and then too,” Emma said. “LaMirada, I’ve got to tell you—this man defies every scrap of medical science I was ever taught. His chest expansion is virtually nil, diastolic and systolic pressure aren’t registering at all, and if he’s got any veins in his big body for an IV, I couldn’t find them. He’s also got flesh as tough as elephant hide. The patient’s temperature is eighty-eight point three. By all rights he should be a corpse. But like Mary says, he surely—wait.” The paramedic leaned close to the body. “Hold on, LaMirada. It looks like he may be trying to speak.”

“Put your mouthpiece near his mouth,” Stewart said. She reached for a button on the control panel. “I’ll record it. The fire chief might want it.”

“I can’t tell if he’s trying to say something or if he’s trembling,” Emma said. She watched intently for a few seconds more. Then the lips stopped moving. The giant body was still again.

Emma put her fingers to his wrist for a moment, then sat back. She shook her head. “I just don’t get it at all. It’s like that Edgar Allan Poe story ‘The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.’ A man’s body was dead but his soul was trapped in limbo, keeping the body alive. Rotting, but alive.”

“I think I’ll stick to Tom Clancy,” Lew Kelly said.

“Are you sure what you just saw wasn’t a death rattle?” Mary asked. “Muscles can tense in pretty misleading ways when people die.

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