Norman pushed away a plate of unfinished meatloaf and stood up from his small kitchen table. The view from his tiny kitchen window overlooked a small Echo Park street with third-world parking. Across the way and down the hill slightly was St. Jude’s Hospital and the ambulances would occasionally make his heart leap as they screamed up the Emergency Ward driveway sirens blazing. Not exactly a view to brag about, but it was a hell of a lot better than the constant looking inward.

April 24th, a normal day for Norman just like every other day in his eventless thirty-four years. In fact, it was only mentionable in that it also happened to be his last, but of course he didn’t know that leaning out the window from about 7:35pm until around 8:02. Actually as it turned out April 24th happened to be the last day for a lot of people, but Norman’s particular view of the St. Jude’s Emergency Ward gave him an especially intimate front-row seat to the End of the World.

Even with the sun gone and a light evening breeze, the unexpected heat from the day was still oppressive. It stole Norman’s normally voracious hunger and caused light-headedness as he stood up too quickly. He shook the stars in his head away and then scratched his 'spot' on the very top of his head.

Norman was an IT guy for a legal services company in downtown Los Angeles. He had a tiny windowless closet on the 16th floor, which he shared with the company’s servers and electrical supplies, and he’d sit around most of the day waiting for something to go wrong. So what he’d do most of the day – since he kept a pretty flawless network – was sit around, scratch his spot and daydream. He’d think of all the things he could have done, all the things he might do and all the things that he did or didn’t do. Less of the later of course if he could help it, however more often than he liked, the memories would drown out the fantasy and he’d have to whip up a game of Tetris or solitaire or minesweeper to make everything go grey and turn his consciousness into a general white noise. But when all was well and memories were kept at bay, it was a series of plans and half-plans and “maybe I’ll”s and a day well-spent was a day when he’d take the bus home with a slight distant smile, head full of warm and fuzzy possibilities.

In fact Norman had just succeeded at drumming up a yummy batch of possibilities as the ambulance pulled screamed into the hospital driveway and crashed into the first pillar of the overhang at 7:56pm on the dot.

“Gosh, who’s gonna come get them?” he asked himself with a slight chuckle, still not quite realizing that what he was watching actually happening in front of him. He watched as the driver, who was desperately clutching something that looked like it used to be white to his own neck, tried with one hand to crawl out through the front of the cab where the windshield should have been. He had clumsily managed to get his entire torso onto the hood of the ambulance as somebody or some thing violently yanked him back into the van in a single, quick movement. And then the screaming began. Nobody else came out of the hospital, not for what seemed like an awfully long time but the screaming kept on going.

“No! Please! Stop! Please stop! Nooooo!” Over and over again, but even more often just general unintelligible screams that hinted at terrible, excruciating pain.

Norman looked around after a few stunned moments, but saw no one else witnessing this at all. He saw a few dark shadows in distant hospital windows, but not a single soul who seemed to be seeing and hearing what he was seeing and hearing. At the recognition of this he had the sudden urge to run down to the rescue, but then just as sudden came the realization that he had no idea what was in that truck. What in the hell was happening and why won’t that guy stop screaming?!

“Is he ever gonna stop?” Norman finally asked out loud, and then as if in reply a large, tattooed man in hospital scrubs appeared through the double doors of the Emergency Ward, and finally, mercifully the screaming started to die, fade away. The tattooed man started to run toward the ambulance.

“Hey! Stop!” Norman hollered down, almost involuntarily.

“What?” The tattooed man jerked to a stop and looked around for the source of the voice.

“Stay away from the ambulance! There’s something in there!”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Like an animal! Maybe from the zoo or something!”

Then they both just stared at the ambulance for a few moments. People began to trickle out through the Emergency Ward doors and as they came they brought Norman’s courage back. Now was the moment. Now he could be the Hero.

“Hold on! I’m coming down!” As he finessed his barely obedient bulk out onto the fire escape and lowered the spring-protected ladder he had the distant realization that this was familiar territory. This was how he would feel whenever he was in what he called The Zone. Whenever the network would go down inexplicably in the middle of a busy workday Norman would leap into action and his adrenaline would skyrocket. In The Zone, Norman was elevated, lifted above the masses and he’d be half-in/half-out of his beloved possibilities. He was a confident Hero, ready to save the day for the whole office and all their trusting clients, and he’d be running back and forth among the servers and the individual computers throughout the office seeking, finding and finally eradicating the source of the system’s trouble or stutter or even its failure. Then, when he succeeded, in his head there were whole stadiums cheering for him and later he’d buy himself a six-pack of beer from the liquor store just across Sunset Blvd from his neighborhood bus stop.

And right now, as he grabbed the fire escape ladder, he could already taste the beer that he’d buy himself later, after he saved the day yet again. He slid down the ladder like he imagined a firefighter would and only barely twisted his ankle. Ignoring the pain, he marched right over to the dumpster near his apartment building’s driveway and pulled out a mop handle he had been eyeing since the first urge to come down.

The tattooed guy had come halfway across the street, being sure to give the ambulance plenty of distance. “Hey, do you think it’s that epidemic-thing. That super-rabies or whatever they’re calling it?” he asked Norman, keeping a watchful eye on the ambulance which was finally starting to go silent.

“No way, man,” Norman was pure certainty, “That’s only in Wisconsin and Guam or something. That …” he pointed his trusty broom handle to the ambulance as he approached it confidently, “... is a wild animal.”

“But they’re saying that shit is traveling fast. I heard them on the radio just now. They just reported like half a dozen cases – ”

“Back up, everybody!” Norman was in The Zone now and couldn’t be bothered with doubters or non-believers. “Stay clear of the ambulance! There’s a dangerous animal in there. Does anybody have a cell phone?”

A teenaged boy in a sideways baseball cap and a makeshift pillowcase sling raised his hand.

“Call 911,” Norman commanded.

“But the hospital’s right here, bro!” The tattooed man was starting to get on Norman’s nerves. The boy in the cap was frozen, unsure what to do.

“We don’t need paramedics for this, we need the ASPCA or something. I’m telling you there is a wild animal in that ambulance! Make the call. 9-1-1. They’ll know who to send.” He circled the ambulance as a crowd started to form ...

(to be continued)

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