Rise From The Ashes: The Rebirth of San Antonio (Countdown to Armageddon Book 3) by Darrell Maloney

Author:Darrell Maloney
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2014-04-19T04:00:00+00:00

-26-

After he rode with John for three weeks and learned the ropes, Scott had been given his own squad car and a new partner of sorts.

The SAPD had long before recognized that many of its calls after the blackout would be for medical emergencies. After all, only three ambulances were operational now for a city that encompassed four hundred square miles.

In addition, the SAPD was way understaffed. It had made sense to combine the two functions – the policemen and the paramedics, so they could work together to help each other out.

At least it worked well in theory. Over time, the SAPD became discouraged that some of the paramedics were unwilling to get their hands dirty and help with things like body collection and burning.

The fire chief, on the other hand, was constantly complaining about police officers who were too timid to be of much use in emergency medical situations. Although trained in the basics of lifesaving techniques, many of the officers simply panicked and froze in place, leaving the paramedics to do everything themselves.

Still, it was the best option they had to deal with in an extremely difficult situation, so they tried their best to make it work.

Scott wasn’t an officer who panicked easily. He had no qualms about giving an old man mouth to mouth resuscitation when there was a chance of saving his life. And he wasn’t so squeamish that it bothered him to get another human’s blood all over him while he worked to stop a badly bleeding bullet wound.

He was a team player, above all, and was willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.

Scott’s biggest problem was that his partner, Randy Rhodes, lacked a similar gung-ho attitude.

Laid back to an almost impossible degree, Randy’s philosophy in life was that most things will take care of themselves when left alone.

When Scott did his house to house searches looking for decaying bodies to drag out to the street and burn, Randy typically sat in the patrol car, leaned back, and took a nap.

“Just leave them where they are. Mother Nature has been taking care of corpses for millions of years. They’ll eventually get picked clean by the insects, or they’ll rot away to bones. And even the bones will turn to dust in time. All you’re doing by gathering them up and burning them is speeding up a process that Mother Nature already has a handle on.”

“Randy, we have a civic duty to clean up the city as best we can so it can get back to normal again.”

“Hey, that’s an SAPD policy that has you guys gathering bodies between calls. I don’t work for the SAPD. I work for the fire department. And we have no such policy. So if you want to fulfill that particular ‘civic duty,’ I admire you for it. But I want no part of it. I’ll save my energy for saving lives.”

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive, Randy. You can do both, you know.”

“I suppose. But ‘can’ represents an option, not a directive.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.