Free The Zombie Game by Glenn Shepard Page A

Bondye made me a zombie.”
    Out of respect for his religion, I didn’t reply.
    “ Mesye Doktè , you a good man, but you don’t know nothin’ about my religion.”
    “Maybe, but I do know a lot about modern medicine.”
    I leaned forward and looked at his chest. The half-inch entry wounds were surrounded by powder burns. I put my finger on the wound and palpated deep under the skin. I felt the shattered bone spikes of the sternum. Then I smiled. “And the bullet’s still there. It didn’t hit your heart at all.”
    Jakjak put his finger beside mine. “Yes. I can feel it. But what ’bout the other one? There’s no bullet there.”
    I looked at the other wound, three inches to the left of the sternum, and pressed deeply.
    “Ow! That hurt!”
    A five-inch segment of a rib was depressed two inches. I felt sharp edges on the ends and the center of the broken bone. “Fractured ribs always hurt badly. The bullet hit and broke the rib and then ricocheted off it. Probably went out under your arm.” I examined the shirt and coat. “There it is: a third bullet hole in your clothes, where the bullet came out.”
    “Then, why did I die? Mesye Baccus thought I was dead. That’s why he didn’t shoot me again.”
    I opened the shirt widely. “Look at the huge bruise on your side. Somebody smacked you with a baseball bat or something. It bruised your lung, and you lost a lot of blood inside your chest. That’s serious enough to kill you,” I said. “Please let me really examine you.”
    Jakjak nodded his head but still looked doubtful.
    I thumped his chest. There was no resonance on the bruise over the lower lobe of his right lung. The logical conclusion was that there was no air in the lower lobe. Without a stethoscope, I did what the ancient physicians did: I placed my ear on his chest. I heard rattling breath sounds over his upper lobe. But over his right lower lobe, I heard no air movement at all. Then, I listened to the left side. There were sounds, but they were muffled by rales and ronchi. It sounded like pneumonia.
    I placed my hand over his forehead. He was hot. Jakjak had a high fever. There was an accumulation of fluid, probably from blunt trauma to his right chest. And the broken rib on the left had partially collapsed the thoracic cavity on that side. He needed to have that fluid removed and the depressed rib pulled out, or even someone as strong as Jakjak would be dead within a week.
    Jakjak continued to talk as I completed my exam. “ Minis Duran and his son, Doktè Tomas, were just handcuffed and taken away in a patrol car.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what’s happening. They never did nothin’ wrong in their lives. Neither one of them.”
    I told him the police were after me as well.
    “ Mesye Doktè , they’ll put all of you in jail and nobody will never see any of you again. I seen it happen before with some of our friends, so stay out of sight.”
    Jakjak went on to tell the story about the meeting with Baccus, his being shot, the kidnapping, and his escape from the stack of corpses. “ Bondye rolled the stone away so I could escape.”
    I looked at Jakjak. “They thought you were dead, so there was no need to keep the cave sealed. Bondye didn’t move the stone; the guards did.”
    Jakjak looked at me and muttered under his breath, “I know Bondye set me free.”
    I saw the pained look on Jakjak’s face and regretted my words. I tried to backtrack. “Either way, you need medical attention now. I’m going to drive you to a hospital, no matter what the consequences.”
    “ Mesye Doktè , we can’t go to just any hospital. Tomas Duran’s assistant at his hospital in L é ogâne is Doktè Christophe Roupe. We can trust him.”
    “Then I’ll call him now.”
    I called the young doctor and told him about Jakjak. “I need to drain a large hematoma from Jakjak’s right chest and pull out a depressed rib fracture on the left. He also needs IV antibiotics, and some oral antibiotic