Between - By Kerry Schafer Page 0,3

slapped pads on the boy’s bare chest and hooked up the EKG. Vivian stopped compressions and they all stared at the monitor, waiting for some kind of a rhythm.

Flatline.

“Damn it,” Vivian ground out. She’d been hoping for something that could be shocked, a convertible rhythm. Asystole was ominous. She resumed compressions, the heat radiating through her hands and body. Sweat trickled down between her shoulder blades, itching.

“Get some fluids in him.”

“I can’t find a decent vein,” Roxie said. “Going for an IO line.”

The respiratory tech arrived and stepped up beside Vivian, breathing hard. She knew him slightly, a stocky Hispanic guy named Tony. Quiet, competent.

“I’ll tube him.”

Vivian nodded consent, keeping up the chest compressions while Tony inserted an airway. Shaking the sweat out of her eyes, she saw Roxie cut off the blue jeans and toss them aside, then deftly insert an IO line into the right tibia. “Got it,” she said, hooking up a bag.

“Tube in,” Tony said. Vivian paused compressions while he checked placement. Her hands smarted and stung; she turned her palms up to see that the latex had melted away over her palms, which were an angry red. This can’t be happening, it’s not possible…

“Epinephrine, one milligram,” Max said, injecting it into the IO line.

A lab tech trotted in with a tray of supplies.

“You’ll have to draw from the line,” Vivian said.

She stepped away to grab a new pair of gloves while Tony hooked up the ambu bag and began squeezing air into the lungs. He frowned. “Too much resistance; something’s not right.”

“Are you sure the tube is in the right place?”

“Positive.”

“Keep going.”

Alarms continued to blare. Max checked the leads. Still flatline.

Vivian positioned her hands to resume compressions and hesitated. During the time taken to pull on new gloves, the skin on the kid’s chest had turned brown. As she stared, it cracked in a dozen places and began to ooze a pinkish fluid.

Roxie wrinkled her nose. “What is that smell?”

Hamburger. The skin on his cheeks looked like his chest—for all the world like well barbecued chicken, crispy skin and all.

Vivian began compressions again, but the skin and flesh slid away beneath her hands, revealing the ivory curve of ribs.

Max stepped back, making the sign of the cross. “We’ve lost him, Viv. You need to stop.”

Brown eyes stared sightless up at the ceiling out of a face stiff and masklike. The flesh had sloughed off his ribs and his right arm. Bare feet splayed to the sides.

All eyes in the room were fixed on her, with the exception of the one pair that would never see anything ever again.

Vivian stopped. She drew an arm across her forehead to wipe away the sweat. “Fuck. Time of death—one forty-five A.M.”

She swallowed, hard. Twenty minutes ago the boy had been moving, speaking, fully conscious. Now his body looked like something out of a horror show. Behind the fragile barrier in her brain, Dreamworld surged. As always, she fought it with logic.

“What the hell happened? Ideas?”

“Spontaneous combustion.”

“Be serious, Rox—”

“I am serious. What if he goes up in flames or something? Tony, you should turn the oxygen off.”

Tony snorted but complied.

“There has to be a scientific explanation.”

“Up to the M.E. now. Weirdest damned thing I’ve ever seen.” Max drew a sheet up over the wreck of flesh and bone that had been a sixteen-year-old boy.

“We’ve got this, Viv,” Roxie said. “Go do your report or whatever.”

“It was a good code,” Max said.

Vivian nodded, not trusting her voice. She shed her gown and gloves and exited the scene of carnage. Once in motion, her body wanted to keep moving. Down the hall, out the door, into the clear sweet Krebston air.

But she was still on duty, and Deputy Flynne stood propped against the nurse’s desk. He was not smiling.

“Not a social call, I gather.” She lifted her hair from the back of her neck to feel the cool air, took a deep breath. Waited.

“Something ugly went down at Finger Beach. Heard you had a burned kid up here.”

She just looked at him.

“Small town. News travels quick.”

“He’s dead, Brett.”

He ran one hand over his buzz-cut hair. “Shit. What happened?”

“He—burned. From the inside out. Came in walking and talking and then, just—” She choked on the words. Come on, Vivian. It’s not the first patient you’ve lost. “Your turn.”

“Someone reported seeing a fire down there. Kids drinking, we figured. Me and Brody swung by, just to check it out. Found a body, charred down to the bones.”

“God.” Vivian closed her eyes.

A shimmer in the