Joe Victim: A Thriller

“Why don’t you put your head up and find out?”


“If it’s only the one shot then it suggests it’s not us being shot at,” he says, but even so, rather than putting his head up, he leans down and looks under the car. The paramedic is still dragging Joe toward the ambulance. She’s the only one in the open. He can see her feet and legs and her arms and he has a view of the top of her head as she angles down to pull Joe along. He doesn’t know why the hell she would risk her life for Joe, then decides she can’t know who it is she’s trying to save. Or perhaps she’s running on instinct. It’s her nature to save people. Either way, she’s making a huge mistake.

“She’s going to get herself killed,” Schroder says.

“Who?” Kent asks. “The paramedic?”

“Yeah.”

Kent lifts her head and looks through the windows of the car. “What the fuck is she doing?”

“I’ll get her,” Schroder says.

“The hell you will,” Kent says, and grabs his tie and pulls him back down. “You’re a sitting duck if you go out there. I’ll go. At least I’m wearing a vest.”

She starts to get up. Just then Jack runs across the parking lot. He puts his arm around the paramedic to pull her into cover, but she doesn’t let go of Joe, and Jack ends up dragging them both toward the ambulance.

“We need to get into that building,” Schroder says.

“No,” Kent says. “You stay here. Backup is—” The ambulance starts up. The sirens come on. “That’s one fearless paramedic,” Kent says, without looking up. It speeds toward the gate, which is still closed, but doesn’t slow down.

Schroder pokes his head up. Sees the paramedic through the side window. Sees her face. Sees the ambulance heading for the fence. Sees that the people on the street can see what’s about to happen and are diving out of the way.

“Oh fuck,” he says.

“What is it?”

He stands up, but nobody takes a shot at him. That’s because the shooting has stopped.

“That was Melissa,” he says. “The driver, it was Melissa. Come on,” he says, climbing into his car, “let’s go.”





Chapter Sixty-Three


The ambulance crashes through the fence and the impact jars through my body. It’s been a few days of hell, with vomiting and shitting and getting banged-up knees, and now I’ve been shot and now I’m in an ambulance that’s probably going to tip over or crash into a truck.

I roll toward the left wall as Melissa turns right. The pain is the second worst pain I’ve ever felt. It feels like somebody has punched their fist into my chest and clutched their fingers around whatever they could find and yanked it out, then set fire to what was left. The ambulance is swerving all over the road. Stuff is falling off the shelves. I’m lying on the floor in blood and surrounded by all the things that can help me, but I don’t know how to use any of them. There’s a dead woman by my feet. She’s half covered by a sheet, and the half exposed shows she’s wearing the same uniform Melissa is wearing, and the dead woman is actually covering what appears to be another dead person—this one a man, and the man is mostly naked. The woman has one arm and one leg flopping against the floor.

The ambulance straightens and there are thuds as it bounces into people. There’s lots of screaming and yelling and it feels like I’m slap-bang in the middle of an action movie. Melissa is talking to herself, telling people to get the hell out of the way, people who can’t hear her, and she has to keep swerving and tapping her foot on the brake. She has the sirens on, but we’re not traveling that fast.