Sally's Story: Speak to Me

	It was quiet again, Sally stiff and frozen in place. She didn’t know who to go to, who to check. Should she arrest them? Administer first-aid, or were they dead already? And the lieutenant lying beneath her, what was of him? Evidently the building hadn’t been eviscerated in the rapturous detonation of several hundred pounds of high explosive, but it wouldn’t help to dally, not at all. And there was Vincent, prone, holes poked into his suit jacket that she’d taken the other night. Splayed on the ground, motionless, he pulsed weakly with each sucking breath as his shirt stained red, the carpet following soon after. Shouts called to her, but she could only stare, frozen in the gluey stillness of the air, stuck in the smoky resin forming around her. A breeze came in through the window and ruffled her hair.
	“Sally, come on!” Mitchell was frantically waving her over, kneeling beside her partner and ripping his clothes off. “Sally!” Rifle in one hand he lanced a shot against the far wall, chips of drywall vaporizing in an instant. The crack of the gun snapped her back to attention, dropping her head to spy the man beneath her. Not dead, but certainly dying. His eyes were glassy, frantic- where the previous gush of gunfire at her had missed her legs and body they’d hit him as intended.
	“Mitch we gotta move!”
	“Then help me and let’s go!” Sally ran over to the scene, together flipping the shirtless officer over on his back. She ripped her undershirt off, ripping strips of cloth from the ruined garment to dress the gushing wounds. The man beneath them groaned quietly, coughs erupting little spittles of blood as his head twisted in half-consciousness. He gritted his teeth with each pull of a knot’s end, the tightening pressure around his abdomen leading him to groan louder, gnashing his teeth. “That’s good, pain’s good. Come on, help him up.”
	“Sir!” The robot, referring to standard triage cycles in her head, helped heft the detective onto Mitchell's shoulders, arm pulled across his chest.
	“Grab the gun, we’re probably gonna have to fight our way out of here”
	“Got it!” Slinging her hand down she grabbed the gun, pulling it to attention as she took point again, guiding her partner down the perilous length of the office space. The walk was faster, less careful and certainly less secure. The fires outside were encroaching ever closer to the factory, the air solidifying around them with choking, suffocating soot. She took Mitchell’s opposite hand, guiding the man through the scattered debris and stray body from their previous rampage, eyes inhumanly piercing the dark. Breaking for the abandoned stairwell, mercifully clearer of the invading smoke, they stuttered down step-by-step, the shock of each bounce down eliciting a whimper from the fading officer. Barreling out of the stairwell and into the empty foyer Sally lurched ahead, pressing that last door open.
	Sunlight, if obscured, and fresh air relieved them. Their pace slowed briefly before she tugged Mitchell’s hand again, reminding him of the ticking bomb lying in the building behind them. The wail of sirens battered their already gunfire-stricken ears, the muffled warble closing in. Shouts came from the end of the parking lot as the police called for them to surrender. The building was surrounded, they said, and it was futile to continue the fight. Tired of it Sally sent the rifle clattering to the ground, approaching the police line with Mitchell in tow.
	“Stop right there!” She rolled her exhausted eyes, reaching for her jacket pocket. Her badge had a delightfully neat hole punched through it in two places, eyes staring through them as she held it in the face of the grim little man in front of her. Ushered through the police cordon she sped around, Mitchell behind her, begging for an ambulance. The distinct sinusoidal scream of their sirens was deafened by the mess of noise that assaulted her now, fires roaring in the distance or smashing of glass, scattered, certainly less numerous, pops of gunfire from a distant rooftop. But nowhere in that orchestration of hell could she hear an ambulance. Plunging backwards towards the police captain they’d met previously they returned to the small headquarters he’d established.
	“Captain Bradford,” Sally panted idly, the man turning to her.
	“Who the- oh, Jesus Christ,” he gasped. “The fuck happened in there?”
	“No time Captain, we need a fuckin’ ambulance, *now*.”
	“I’ve set up an aid station back here,” he jumped up, jogging with the two in tow. “We grabbed one to hole up here with us but I can spare it now, if the building’s secure.”
	“Building’s about to blow, sir,” Sally explained, detailing the dead-man’s-switch nearing its unstoppable terminus inside the factory, grimly joining it with the demise of the SWAT team.
	“Christ, move then!” He whipped them along, frantically returning to his radio to call out orders to pull back and clear the area.

	Desperate the duo found the shimmering, boxy ambulance- more like a hearse than anything else. Sally pounded on the back, two paramedics swinging it open and ushering out a mildly burned policeman with his arm bandaged.
	“What’s the injury,” the one asked.
	“No time,” Sally screamed, pulling Mitchell up by the arm into the bay of the ambulance. She snapped her fingers at the two medics, the order to drive given as the car peeled away. Slamming the doors shut behind them the medics set to work, doing their damnedest to return fluid to the increasingly pallid detective. The thump of his heart became slow and laboured, hammering in his chest with greater and greater resistance. The glaring lights in the bay of the ambulance blinded the man, foggy visions around him calling for plasma, if they knew his blood type. He knew it, of course, had he been wiser he’d have it etched somewhere into his skin. But he was not wiser, he realized, wasting his time like he had, never asking the questions he’d wanted to or offering the propositions he’d held in the back of his head. A hand caressed his face, head lolling to the left and right as the ambulance, or whatever finely-lit casket he thought he was in, swung through the cluttered streets. He shivered internally, the gentle iciness of the surrounding world embracing him slowly, beginning in his toes and extremities where it could find more purchase, but marching closer to his core. Cool and wet it gripped his forehead and neck, sweating itself away and around him in its mortal entirety. The ambulance sped faster to the hospital, Sally and Mitchell holding the man steady as the medics desperately forced him to cling, however weak, onto life.