Let it burn

"So, first ambulance job?" Harry Harden asked, letting the cigarette smoke waft out of his mouth as he spoke. I hesitated to answer. Harry was an intimidating presence, a permanent five o' clock shadow burned onto the smoothed block that was his head, running up into somehow unkempt short salt-and-pepper hair. Harry's rock solid gaze peered out over black bags that extended so far down, I wasn't entirely sure they weren't bruises. Harry's uniform told a different story, neatly fitted to his cube-like body frame without a single wrinkle or stain, his ideally displayed ID badge showing off a better rested version of himself flashing a cripplingly neutral gaze. I wondered if he would think less of me if I told him that this was my first ambulance work, and for a moment, I thought of lying.
"Yeah," I said, breaking my gaze from Harry's to look at his partner, Boris. I didn't want to know what Harry thought of this, because it already felt disgraceful, doing Paramedic work without having been an EMT first. It felt like applying to fly Air Force One after just being cleared to fly. Boris was easier to look at anyhow, with a happy-go-lucky smirk plastered across his skinny, clean-shaven face. He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, patiently daydreaming and holding the gurney from rolling away while Harry enjoyed a smoke. I drew in a long breath of the smoke-tinged air and held it.
Harry scoffed. "And you're a medic. That shit just ain't right," Harry said, pausing to take a drag on his cigarette. "I mean, it's really useful to get the experience as an EMT, instead of as the medic. You learn the same lessons, but you learn them a whole hell of a lot harder when you're the Indian in charge." I think that was meant as a message of compassion, but it only made my heart climb up in my throat. I liked everyone here, but I felt like an imposter, like I didn't belong, and it would've saved everyone a lot of trouble if I just called it quits now. I'd come too far, though, and I knew I liked the work too much from my time as an intern. "Don't worry, we'll get you situated," Harry said, tapping me on the shoulder.
"Hey!" Boris suddenly chimed in, his eyes alight with a burning hot thought. "If this is his first job on the ambulance, then this might be the first time he's been in a house of the zed," he said, his subtle Russian accent softening his words, allowing him to rattle off his observation almost instantly. Harry cracked a grin and shot me a sly look.
"Is that true?"
"Yeah," I answered, feeling the disability of my naiveté.
Harry took another drag on his cigarette, and exhaled just in time for a gust of dry winter wind to snatch the smoke out of his mouth. "The great zombie plague came and went- turns out it's pretty easy to vaccinate against. The vaccine can't reverse the disease, though. For those of whom the cure came too late, instead of putting them down, we clung to some absurd hope that there's still a person in that rotting shell. We built repositories to keep us safe from them, and them safe from us; called them 'Homes for the Involuntarily Resurrected'" Harry scoffed motioning one hand at the sign on the front door that read 'St. Agnes Home for the Involuntarily Resurrected'. "And now here we are, risking life and limb to take a corpse over to the hospital because its hand rotted off, because, you know, that's not supposed to happen to corpses. I say we ought to finish the job, just shoot 'em in the head, let it burn to the ground," Harry said, sounding incensed. I wasn't sure if he meant it, or if this was just another theatrical soapbox speech for entertainment's sake.
Harry took one last drag and cast his cigarette butt off, sending it tumbling across the pavement. "Let's do this," he said. Harry took the lead, walking in front of Boris, who manned the foot end of the gurney as we rolled it up the ramp.
"So, shouldn't we have personal protective gear?" I asked as Harry pushed the door open. Harry's face contorted and he craned his head back to look at me.
"They've got it on our dedicated unit, but they're not going to shell out the cash for all of us to be carrying protective gear when we all got the shots anyway," Harry answered, holding the door open for us as Boris and I strolled by. "Besides, it's not like they ever let them out of their holding cells. Whatever rosy imagery you might be familiar with, this is nothing like that. Zeds get doped or strapped to their beds until they rot down enough to be too weak to get anywhere. Family members- if they exist- don't come and visit. Why would you visit a sack of rotting flesh and bones that doesn't know it's dead yet? Easier to just stay home and keep everybody numbed up on TV and internet than to see grandparent, parent, sibling, spouse, or child's corpse eyeing you."
As we rolled down the hall, a sudden, loud thud, followed by a raspy howl forced me to look over to my right. A dead face, with sunken eyes, sunken cheeks, withered skin and hair stared out at me, one hand pressed firmly against the glass porthole. The gleam of light that I could see in its eyes pulled a pit in my stomach. It could have just as easily but hungering for freedom, or pining what it once was,  as it could be starving for flesh. I tore my gaze away and kept moving down the hall.
Up ahead, I could see a nurse peeking over the top of a computer screen at us, her blonde hair pulled taut into a ponytail. She was alone at the desk, which appeared to be made of polished granite slabs lined with gold trim. Harry muttered something and shot Boris a look. Then, the nurse stood up and placed a plastic puck on the countertop. "It's room 23, he's going over to for a dislocated hip," she said, then sat down and went back to her computer. Harry frowned at her and leaned on the desk while I reached out and grabbed the puck. I had some experience with these in my internship, they were basically encrypted hard disks with a weak wi-fi modem embedded. The puck would 'listen' for a request broadcast from an authorized healthcare computer, and then share all of the patient's known medical history with that computer- every chart from every hospital visit or ambulance trip, vaccine records, x-rays, EKGs, microbiology data, everything anyone could want to know. From a quick glance at the table of contents displayed by date on the tablet, it looked like this patient had been to the hospital no less than ten times in the last five days.
"How can you tell he has a dislocated hip when you keep him strapped down all the time?" Harry asked. The nurse glared up at him, the images of snoopy printed on her scrubs accenting her show of annoyance. "No, seriously. We've been taking him to the ER and back every day for two weeks for a supposedly dislocated hip. How can you tell?"
The nurse folded her hands and leaned back in her chair. "We have a mobile X-Ray service check him," she said.
"Yes, but why? On what basis?" Harry asked, seeming to push the issue on purpose.
The nurse leaned forward, laid both hands on the countertop, palms down, and set her feet flat on the floor. I recognized this as aggressive body language; Harry was getting on her nerves.
"Because he's prone to hip dislocations, and maybe if you guys would be more careful moving him, we wouldn't need to send him back so much," she said. Harry cracked a huge, toothy grin as his face flushed red. I felt something nudge my hip, which turned out to be Boris pushing the gurney into me to get my attention. He motioned down the hall with one hand, a sense of urgency now plainly displayed on his face. I got the hint. I nodded at Boris, grabbed my end of the gurney, and started walking down the hall.
"Oh! Okay, let's assume this is our fault, not that he's dead and rotting and his connective tissues aren't holding his body together anymore. Please, tell me what he's going to use his hip for once it's reduced," Harry said, leaning over the counter at the nurse, balancing on his fingertips. I couldn't see her but I could only imagine her face glowing red hot.
"That's not what it's about, he's still a person, and he deserves good medica-" she started, her speech now firm and staccato.
"Let me just stop you there," Harry said, interjecting. "These things are not people. People feel things, like fear, happiness, compassion, regret. People don't try to eat other people alive. People don't move around in asystole with no pulse or blood pressure- which, why do you even bother taking vital signs? Let's get real about this, they are rotting apart, nature is taking its course, and there is no going back. What these things were is gone, and meanwhile, we're milking their corpses for tax dollars to keep them locked up instead of taking out their brains and having done."
We reached the room and Boris stepped up to the porthole window on the door and sighed. "I was hoping someone would be here to unlock the door, but we're waiting for her," he explained. We exchanged glances, and then looked back at the nurse, who was now on the phone. We heard her call Harry insensitive, tell him that these people deserved a chance at rehabilitation, which sent Harry into loud belly laughter. Boris looked back at me. "This isn't how you're supposed to do things. Harry slides on a lot because he's been around, seen a lot, has a lot of old friends," Boris said.
"So, does he do this a lot?" I asked.
Boris clicked his tongue and seemed to think about it. "You know, this isn't the worst I've ever seen him, but it's up there. I think the thing that's bothering him is that room 23," Boris jerked his head at the port hole, "used to be one of us. He got bit just before the vaccine made its rounds. His name was Pat."
I looked in through the porthole and saw a shriveled, bruised husk staring at me with a fixed gaze, chewing busily on nothing and reaching out at the window with one hand. "Do you think he's right?" I asked, staring at the moving human body. The zombie let out a soft, longing cry that drifted through the door.
"Yes," Boris answered, leaning over the gurney and poking me in the chest with an index finger. "If I ever get like that, it is your responsibility to me as a human being to put me down. Then, have a drink in my honor."