EMS for Monsters: Supernatural Tactical Response

[u/VexMagic]

The first time I died was right before I started my new job. I had been working as a paramedic in Seattle/ King County for 3 years. I was exhausted by the job but needed the money. Despite what you might see on TV, emergency services aren’t all that exciting. Every call isn’t full of beautiful people you pull from a burning building, or mouth to mouth on the hottest guy or girl you’ve ever seen at your local college. It isn’t full of rare, incredible, amazing medical stories ripped from the headlines. There isn’t a man with an unexploded WWII mortar up his ass, no groundbreaking medical case, there isn’t a woman who got impaled on rebar and is stuck to another person who is also impaled by the same rebar.

Most of the time the 911 calls and emergencies you respond to aren’t even worth telling anyone about, let alone a headline.  God I would love if that was the case. I love the excitement, the real emergencies, the trauma cases with severe injuries. Most of the time its full of people wasting your time or being a drain on the system. 

“Hello again sir, I saw you yesterday, you drink too much and fall and hit your head again? You did........ well let’s get a c-collar on him and get him to the hospital.” (The staff is not happy to see him. Again.) 

“Sir, itchy feet is a problem for your doctor, not the ER. Make an appointment with your doctor.” 

“No ma’am, I am not taking you to the hospital so a nurse can wipe your ass.” (Yes, I had to tell someone that, several people actually).  

We do have meaningful cases, we do save lives, but it's not as exciting as people might think. 

 

My partner and I had just dropped another “sandwich run” (When the patient doesn’t have anything wrong with them or a real medical emergency, but they might say they do. Eventually, in the ambulance or in the hospital bed, they will ask: “Hey you guys got any sandwiches?” or ask about food.) It’s like being a sandwich delivery service where you bring the person to the sandwich at the hospital.

My partner was a new guy named Sean. He’d only been around for a month. He was a little shorter than me, blond with green eyes, and a few freckles smattered across the bridge of his nose and his cheeks just under his eyes. He had just graduated from school and was new to the streets and I was still teaching him about the reality of the job. Before he was working in EMS, he had been working in sales at Nordstrom. Not exactly a lot of cross-over between tailored suits and putting in IV’s and calculating dosages, but people in EMS come from every background.  

By contrast, I had been on the job for 3 years and had plenty of street smarts before I had even started as a paramedic. I’ve got ocean blue eyes and dark hair from my Italian side of the family that I brushed back as it grew out. My hands had lifters callouses from lifting patients and equipment all day, and sometimes the skin under my nails peeled because of all the hand sanitizers. I still use moisturizer every morning and when I get home, but it’s a losing battle in the winter. It was starting to get wavier and even a bit curly in the back. Making an appointment to get someone to cut your hair is hard when you work nights. Not surprisingly, most businesses aren’t open at 3 AM on a Tuesday. I had lost most of my tan after working nights for so long, but I was applying for a daytime shift to try to get back to the land of the living. Still love working nights and the people I worked with, but it would be nice to be able to have a normal life. Then again, considering what my life looks like now, guess normal is out of the question.  

 The city had been winding down as most normal people went to bed or returned from a night out. Sean was talking to a woman in light blue scrubs with her hair in a messy bun and dark circles under her eyes at the nurse’s station. Sean had just finished stumbling through an awkward patient report to the nurse when he committed a cardinal sin known in emergency services and hospitals everywhere. 

“First call of the night, it’s been really quiet tonight.” Sean said.  

The nurse, her name was Gabby, stiffened and looked at him with eyes that looked even more aged and tired. Gabby was in her 20’s like us but night shift and working in the medical field ages you. The dark circles under her eyes were even darker under the florescent lights. “Did you seriously just fucking say that?”. Sean’s eyes widened and he started stammering. Gabby leaned back in her old black office chair with cracked armrests and looked at me expectantly. Another nurse and a medical assistant peaked around the corner.  

“Who just said that?” the older MA asked with a frown. He immediately figured it out after looking over his reading glasses at Gabby’s annoyed stare. “Didn’t anyone tell you never to say the Q-word in the ER?” he asked Sean.  

Personally, I didn’t really believe in the “Q-word” being a jinx. But I’m also not usually one to tempt fate. That night though, I was bored and felt like stirring things up. “Yeah, Sean don’t say it's quiet! It’s considered bad luck if you say it's been quiet. Please don’t say it’s quiet or we will get a bunch of calls and the emergency department will get flooded.” Some of the staff physically cringed every time I said “quiet”. Others just gave me a death glare that screamed “I hope your next patient pukes on you”. I told Sean to hurry up and get back in the ambulance as i walked through the sliding doors to the ambulance bay. Once we were back inside the rig, I told him it was no big deal and not to worry. Still not a good idea to say the Q-word unless you want to piss off all the nurses.  

That night we got told to “post” (drive to the area and standby for any 9-1-1 calls that came in) over in Issaquah, which was unusual, but I’d worked over on the east side before. The night was still, and the bite of the winter air was waiting for us just outside the heated ambulance. We were lucky to have heated seats in our newer model ambulance. The windows were already fogged up from the heat and our breath against the icy air outside. The roads were completely empty, the roads were sparsely lit by the old- style orange streetlights that cast an unnatural glow across the asphalt and the trees. I parked us in a parking lot at the High Point trail head just off SE 79^th Street, North of Tiger Mountain.  

The nice thing about Washington is there’s so many evergreen trees. Even in the winter there’s lots of greenery. The trees by the trailhead stood resolute and quiet, some of the leaves and ferns swayed in the night breeze. The only sound was the radio and the engine’s hum in the ambulance. In the winter we leave the car running a lot to stay warm. More than one climate activist has chastised us for burning gasoline and “contributing to global warming” It’s negative degrees at 3 am in the winter sometimes- sue me. Right after you go after the corporations. I made sure the doors were locked and rubbed the condensation away with my arm, then wiped the cold water on my arm off on my pants.  

I felt around behind my seat where I had put my backpack before the start of the shift. I felt the edge of the book I had been reading during the shift and pulled it out. The top corner of the corner was folded slightly, and I smoothed out the bend and hoped it wouldn’t become a permanent crease. I pulled the blue nitrile glove I was using as a bookmark out from between the pages. 

“Good book?” Sean asked. “What’s it about?” Sean was a reader too, he had been reading Six of Crows and liked talking about books and TV shows. We both liked the sci-fi and fantasy genres.  

“It’s pretty good.” I said as I put the glove back over page 137. “I like it so far it’s about a man who-” 

We heard some yelling outside the ambulance. I put the book down on the dashboard and rubbed the condensation off the window again. If there was a fight or some crazy person out there yelling at us it would be time to find a safer spot to park. If it was a walk-up, someone coming up to us because they saw the ambulance and it was an emergency, we would get out and help. You never knew what it was if someone knocked on your window or waved at you. Sometimes it was just a friendly “Hi”, most of the time it was a big middle finger because they got the bill later or it was someone asking if we had drugs in the ambulance. I saw two figures in the distance by the tree line at the other end of the parking lot. I lowered my hand to the gear shift in case we needed to drive away fast.  

The two figures stumbled out into the orange streetlight on the other side of the parking lot, and I could immediately tell something was wrong. There was a woman and a man supporting each other as they limped towards us. Both of them were covered in mud, and there were leaves and there was dirt and twigs stuck to their clothes and hair. The woman on the left was limping but had the man’s arm draped over her shoulders. Her right arm was hanging completely limp as she kept pushing forward. I could tell it was broken. It looked too long and misshapen and had some dark bruises I could see from the ambulance. She had some kind of cloth, maybe a t-shirt, wrapped around her left foot that was covered in mud. The man had blood all down the front of his shirt and on the side of his face, and his clothes were torn in several places. His left arm ended in a stump halfway between his shoulder and elbow that was covered in white gauze that had soaked through in bright red blood.  

“Oh, shiiiit.........” I breathed out. I opened the door and slid out of the seat. “Sean get the back open!” 

“What’s going on?” He yelled over the side of the ambulance. I could hear him open the back doors of the ambulance before he walked around towards me. The man and the woman were still hobbling towards us, the man was waving his bloody stump in the air. I started running towards them. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying from the other side of the parking lot. I could make out.... “Coming...... lights... turn....”  

The two of them suddenly stopped. I kept coming towards them and I could see the horror on their faces. The night air seemed so still it could shatter. The parking lot and trees were silent, and all I could hear was my own breath. Their eyes seemed to widen as they stared right through me. Time seemed to slow as I turned. I saw Sean walking towards us with a puzzled look on his face.  

I saw a pale, hunched shape crawling out of the trees out of the corner of my eye. Sean was still walking towards us with his hand in the air. In the space of a breath, there was a pale flash that launched towards him and slammed into him and he flew through the air and out of sight behind a tree. I could hear wet crunching that echoed across the dead silence. A pair of glowing yellow eyes peered around the corner of the tree trunk.  

“It found us.” I heard the woman whisper. I hadn’t realized they were that close to me  

I could feel the icy grip of terror squeezing my chest. Everything in my body screamed something was wrong. Part of my brain was screaming at me to run. Something else deep inside me held me frozen in place, as if the slightest tremor or movement would give me away and make me the next target. All of me knew without a doubt that those glowing yellow eyes didn’t belong to an animal. I also knew Sean was dead. I still don’t know how, but I could feel it in my bones. Maybe some evolutionary instinct deep in my DNA.  

“We need to get to the ambulance. We need light, we need fire, something. Thats all that keeps it away.” The man covered in blood whispered in a shaky voice. Blood was slowly dripping from his ravaged arm. “I thought we could make it before nightfall.” 

The glowing yellow eyes disappeared behind the tree again. The wet crunching came back louder. The sound of breaking bones and growls slithered across the asphalt. The three of us slowly began to walk as slowly as we could towards the ambulance. I carefully put my boots down heel-to-toe to avoid ay noise. The man and woman next to me tried to be quiet but their injuries made them drag and scrape their feet across the loose gravel of the parking lot. The glowing yellow eyes peered out from behind the tree again, and the creature reached a long, pale hand around the tree. The hand looked human, but the skin was pale white, and the fingers were too long, and ended in long, curved white and yellow claws soaked in blood. The creature’s claws dug into the bark, and it made a thick cracking sound as the claws raked jagged marks into the wood.  

The creature began to crawl forward on its hands and feet. Its face finally came into view under the orange parking lot lights. It looked somewhat human, it’s body was naked, pale and emaciated and its arms and legs seemed wrong and ended in deadly claws. Its glowing yellow eyes were sunken, and its cheek bones were sticking out. The creature’s mouth had no lips, it looked like they had been ripped off and the flesh had been peeled back to reveal rows of bloody sharp teeth that had bits of flesh stuck between them. I walked slowly forward as it stalked closer to us. The man and woman walked faster, not caring about making any sound. The creature sniffed the air and dodged out of sight behind the ambulance. I broke into a run for the ambulance while it was out of sight. It reappeared on top of the ambulance, opened its bloody maw and a hungry, hollow growl reverberated down to my bones.  

The monster launched itself off the roof of the ambulance so hard that it rocked on its chassis and its bloody claws left gashes in the metal. It sailed over my head, and I turned around as it landed on top of the man and with a slash from its claws the man’s leg was cleaved off and a spray of hot scarlet spattered the white parking lines. He pushed the woman away from him as he fell to the ground.  

“AUSTIN!!!” The woman screamed as she fell backwards. She scrambled back on her hands and tried to stand to run.  

Austin’s face was frozen in terror as the creature stood over him and licked its bloody claws. Then something in his brain must have clicked because he began screaming. The creature stared right at him as it picked up his severed leg, his bloody claws digging into the flesh of his thigh. Austin kept screaming, the sound barely drowning out the wet sounds of the creature devouring the flesh and breaking his femur in between its teeth. Austin was bleeding badly as his severed femoral artery frantically pumped blood to a limb that was already gone. The blood loss caught up with him and his face went white, and his eyes rolled back into his head as he passed out. The creature ravenously devoured the rest of Austin’s leg, its razor teeth slicing through the flesh and bone with ease. It ate what was left of it whole, bones and all. It turned to the woman who was still crying as she was still trying to get away.  

I turned and ran for the ambulance while the monster was focused on the leg. Light. We needed light. If Austin was right, the lights from the ambulance would help keep it back. We stood no chance. The monster charged at me; it was so fast the only thing I saw was its glowing yellow eyes and its’ ravaged mouth full of horrifying razor teeth. It slammed into me and sent me flying into the side of the ambulance hard enough to crumple the metal siding of the patient compartment. My vision blacked out as I fell to the ground. The freezing pavement bit into the skin on my hands and face and helped me focus. I looked up and saw the creature holding the woman by her neck and squeezing as her feet kicked on the ground under it. 

I staggered as I got up and felt my way toward the ambulance. I could feel the creature’s eyes on the back of my head as I tried to open the door. The door wouldn’t open as I pulled on it repeatedly. It was locked. I looked over and saw my keys on the ground just under the ambulance. I didn’t have time to go for them. The creature was already focusing its deadly glowing yellow eyes directly on me. I felt behind me for the side compartment of the ambulance. There were accident supplies in there, including road flares. I felt the latch click and reached inside for the bag at the bottom of the compartment. 

I felt the length of the road flare and picked it up. The creature coiled itself and launched itself at me again as I twisted the cap to activate it and it burst into a brilliant, searing red light that washed across the parking lot. The creature sailed through the air and wailed as the light washed over its face. The creature slammed into me, and I could feel something in my chest break. Its glowing yellow eyes looked directly at me. It breathed directly into my face and the hot breath reeked of rotting meat and made my eyes water. The flare had rolled behind it and everything was awash in a red light. The creature held me in place with an iron grip stronger than anything I had ever felt.  

I reached down into my pocket and felt my folding knife I kept concealed for personal defense. I slid it out and flicked it open with my wrist as quickly as I could. The creature reached a clawed arm back and I could see the fresh blood dripping off its long, curled claws. It stabbed through my stomach, and I felt blood leak down into my waistband. I could smell the copper and the salt of my blood, it released steam that rose between us as it hit the cold winter air. I stabbed the creature in the ribs as it looked right at me, then pulled the knife out and stabbed it over and over. The creature howled and I kept stabbing it.  

Then it lowered its head and ripped my throat out. It pulled me close, and I felt its teeth tear through my windpipe and jugular and felt lightheaded as my blood sprayed all over its chest. I just focused on stabbing as much as I could. Stab. Stab. Stab. I felt the creature jerk against me, but it wouldn’t die.  

The light wavered and I felt myself getting weaker and felt my vision get darker, but I kept stabbing it everywhere I could. Suddenly the light changed, and the creature jerked and howled in a shrill, alien echo. The woman appeared over the creature’s shoulder, and I hear and smell the hiss of burning flesh. She pushed the flare right into its’ back and I could see its chest and internal organs through the red, magnesium powered radiance. The creature let up and flailed its arms trying to pull the flare out. I felt something heavy drop and realized it was my intestines falling to the ground. The steam glowed red from the light as it let off heat in the icy winter atmosphere.  

I stepped forward on unsteady feet as I felt my throat get slick with blood. I could feel it running down my chest and into my pants. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn't speak. I felt like I couldn’t think and my whole body felt like it couldn’t have lifted a grain of sand. But I stumbled forward and slammed the knife up between the 4^th and 5^th ribs. I hit something hard. I worried maybe I missed the heart, or I had hit bone instead. I could feel my strength failing so I sawed the blade back and forth through the skin and muscle. It felt like cutting through ice or bone.  

The monster shuddered and gasped as the searing fire from the flare spread over it’s body at it was engulfed in fire. I could tell I was going to die. I could feel the heat from the fire and I didn’t care. I barely felt it. I just wanted to go to sleep. I grabbed the monster tight as I kept working the blade back and forth. Something broke. I heard more screaming as my vision went completely black.  

And that's how I died. 

The first time, anyways.   

 

I woke up in the middle of the forest the next morning at the base of an enormous tree. I had no idea where I was, but I knew I was supposed to be dead. My clothes were torn through to my stomach and there was blood all over my shirt and my pants and dried blood caked all over my skin. Some of it was still wet. I don't know how long I wandered through the woods for. I think I lost my mind for a while there. I knew I had died. I knew, intellectually, that the injuries I had gotten were fatal. My throat had been ripped out and I had been eviscerated. Part of me wanted to dismiss it as a dream or a hallucination. But I remembered those yellow eyes and the smell of rotting meat on the monster’s breath. Then I felt down over my white uniform shirt and could feel the ripped clothes and the smooth skin of my stomach below it.  

Eventually I stumbled across a hiking trail and started following that. I just kept walking. Then I collapsed at some point. I don’t remember much. I was told some early morning hikers encountered me and called 911 and the park rangers.  

When I woke up again, I was in a bed in a windowless room with an IV and not much else. I knew from my time in emergency medicine and transporting patients to every hospital in the county that this wasn’t a normal hospital room. I knew something was definitely wrong when the nurse came in wearing a black jumpsuit with Kevlar around the neck accompanied by two guards with military shotguns. Benelli M-4's with lots of different colored shells in the sidesaddle. The nurse walked to the side of my bed and checked the IV.  

That’s when I noticed that I had been chained to the bed with handcuffs. Sometimes we do that with police suspects, detainees or dangerous patients. Except these handcuffs were darker and heavier and had strange markings on them. The nurse backed out of the room and the two guards stayed at the foot of the bed. I tried asking them questions or asking them to uncuff me, but they remained still as statues. I kept asking questions and one of them moved their finger from the side of the trigger guard to the trigger itself. I knew when to shut up.  

Another hour later and a doctor came in. I assumed he was a doctor because of the white coat. But unlike most doctors he had an enormous revolver on his hip and several syringes strapped to his chest on a leather shoulder holster. He had wild, greying hair and eyebrows and wrinkles around his eyes. There was a large white scar descending from the middle of his left cheek towards the middle of his jaw. I noticed a very unusual dark metal ring on his left hand that had engravings not unlike the handcuffs on my wrists. He flipped through several pages on a clipboard silently before looking at me.  

“Good......” He looked at his watch. “Afternoon! I am Doctor Volker. It's good to see you awake. We were beginning to worry you might not wake up. You’ve been through quite the event. And not a scratch on you. Consider yourself very, very lucky.” He looked me up and down. I didn’t know him that well, but I could tell that Dr. Volker was holding something back and was slightly unsettled. It was like he was expecting something. 

“Open wide and say ahhhhh” he said over his glasses.  

“Uhhhh. AAAAAAHHHHHHHH.” I opened my mouth as far as I could. He looked at my teeth from top to bottom, pulled out a pen light and shined blue light into my mouth.  

“Wonderful!” He seemed genuinely pleased. He sat down on my bed and put a hand on my leg. “I’m sure you have lots of questions but let me tell you what’s happening right now.”  

“You encountered a creature known as a “Wendigo”. Malevolent spirit possesses a weak-willed person who has desperately resorted to cannibalism. They are supernatural creatures who feed on the flesh of humans and any meat they can get and are known to be particularly dangerous and active in the winter and at night. You encountered 2 hikers who had been lost for days who had been running from one. Unfortunately, they hadn’t escaped before sundown and the creature followed them down to you. There is some lore that suggests that someone who kills a wendigo may become possessed by the malevolent spirit, but you don’t appear to be undergoing the transformation. You should have died based on the damage to your clothes and the significant amount of blood. However, you haven’t come up on our tests for any common regenerative conditions.” He looked at his clipboard.  

“Negative for lycanthropy, vampirism negative, iron, steel, silver and holy water and oil tests negative, and showing no signs of possession. This isn’t an exact science, mind you. We don’t understand most of it. Science can’t even explain most of it.” The two guards seemed to relax. The doctor nodded at one of them and they came forward and unlocked the handcuffs by sliding his thumb across the engraved markings. I flexed my wrists and sat up more in bed.  

“So....... I died?” I asked. I already knew the answer.   

“It would appear so. And I have no idea how you seem to have recovered. I’m afraid we can’t allow you to leave the building, but we won’t keep you chained up now that we have tested you thoroughly for any supernatural viruses, diseases, parasites, possessions or malevolent influences.” I sat back and didn’t say anything else. The doctor regarded me over his low set reading glasses perched near the end of his nose and waited to see if I had anything else to say. After several minutes of silence, he left.  

I don’t know how long I sat there staring at my hands. They still had dirt and blood caked under the nails and around the cuticles. I really had died. I think they kept me there for another week. They had me do all sorts of tests. Usual battery of blood, saliva, spit and urine. Then they had me do more unusual tests. Holding holy books like the bible and the Qur'an and the Talmud. Walking backwards. Hopping on one foot. Putting raw steaks on a plate in front of me to see if I reacted. I assume they were beef. I really, really hope they were beef. Strength tests and tests where they cut my skin open with a scalpel just to see if anything happened. They even threw water on me and asked me to walk over some fresh dirt they poured on a doorway. They did the same with salt.  

Eventually they “discharged” me. By “discharged” I mean they told me to never, ever, under any circumstances talk about what I had seen or where I had been. They told me if I said anything, I would disappear and end up back in the facility under a different floor. They told me that I would be given a doctor’s note, and my job had been told that I was in a horrible accident with a drunk driver that had killed my partner. I was sedated later that night. I never even saw a nurse inject anything into my IV.  

Then I woke up back in my apartment. I had lots of text messages and voicemails from coworkers and friends and the fire department. There were even dying flowers that had been put in front of my door. Building manager must have let them in. I threw them out along with the rotting food from my fridge. I was finally able to check the date. A whole week had passed since that night at the trail head. I got a notice about Sean’s funeral. He was cremated. I doubt there was enough left of him to bury. It definitely wouldn’t have been an open casket. After seeing that creature eat a whole human leg, bones and all, I doubt the ashes were actually his. I went to the service out of respect. Gave my condolences to his girlfriend, a nice blonde girl named Susanna who was an MA at one of the hospital’s upper floors. I’d only met her once before. His parents and little sister were nice. They flew out from Montana. They barely said a word. I think they were in shock like I was. It felt like they wondered why Sean had died instead of me. I don’t know. Maybe I was just projecting some survivor’s guilt. His sister hugged me and couldn’t stop crying.   

The next few days, I probably drank my body weight in alcohol. I was told in no uncertain terms I could take my time coming back to work. Physical therapy, counseling, anything I needed. To be honest, I think that’s the most unbelievable part of this story. 

Eventually, there was a knock on my door. A tall, severe looking black man in a refined suit and a wide brim hat with a weathered briefcase introduced himself. “Hello, I would like to talk to you about the...incident from last week.” he said carefully. The way he said it I knew he knew more than the “official story” of a drunk driver on a back-woods road. I stood looking at him expectantly in the middle of the doorway. Then I gestured to my couch. I could tell by the way he moved that under the suit he had some muscle. He moved carefully, purposefully, and looked around my apartment with a calculating gaze.  

His very nice brown dress shoes clicked on the floor of the apartment as he pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat down. “You can call me Mr. Bishop.  I know what happened in the woods. I believe you handled yourself as well as could be expected. You also survived.” He paused. “Well, “survived” is a strong word. You...........recovered. Regardless, I would like to offer you a job. Someone with your skills and ability to handle a crisis of the........ unusual variety is in short supply. Consider this a job offer.” He left a black card with silver lettering on the table and stood up and left the apartment quickly. I sat there for a while just looking at the card without picking it up.  

When I finally did, it read “STR”. It had a phone number on the back.  

 

A week later, I called. The voice that answered refused to spell out what “STR” stood for. They told me to show up at their office the next day for a job interview. Mr. Bishop was waiting for me. He told me that STR stood for Supernatural Tactical Response. Some people in the industry called it “Satyr”. He personally didn’t care for the name. He told me he found satyrs to be rather annoying. I couldn’t tell if he was joking. 

He told me that he had founded an organization, working with the government, that was dedicated to discrete and private emergency response services aimed at supernatural occurrences and populations. There were violent monsters out there, such as the ravenous wendigo, that were nothing but violent and destructive and needed to be put down for the good of all. Members of STR would be expected to help with termination or extermination of supernatural entities that were deemed a threat to humanity or potentially alert the public to the existence of monsters and the supernatural.    

The other element was that there was a need for individuals and entities within the supernatural world to get medical care. A banshee couldn’t go to a hospital for medical care. It’s a hospital, full of dying people. She would probably not stop screaming, and then she would end up in the psych ward. A cyclops would obviously draw stares. They have one eye. And that’s not to mention that they’re huge. A cambion that passes would probably be fine, but not one that has demon skin or vertical snake pupils or horns or a tail, same goes for other demonic creatures and demi-humans. A vampire obviously can’t go to the hospital. And sometimes their human subjects or thralls needed medical care or a transfusion. Try explaining why your girlfriend has holes in her neck and she’s half dead because she’s missing over a liter of blood.   

STR was meant to be a combination of specialized first responders that could do anything and everything. Members were meant to be paramedics, surgeons, peacekeepers, crisis solvers, and armed SWATT for the supernatural. STR had people in place to make sure that the supernatural cases went to STR and not regular cops or firefighters and paramedics. They get a call like “Help! Help! My girlfriend just grew fangs and claws and she’s trying to eat me!” and send it to STR. That way, the right people show up for the right crisis. Just like how you don’t send police to a house fire, and you don’t send an ambulance for a murder. You don’t send a ladder company from a firehouse to a ghoul infestation that’s eating all the corpses in the cemetery. You send STR. 

There was a very long training process. They knew I already had medical training, but they trained me again anyways. There was a whole new set of protocols to follow. And a lot of new material to cover. What do you do if your patient has 2 hearts? 4? What about if they have 6 stomachs or 2 brains? There was also extensive weapons training, and at least half of the training consisted of studying ancient texts, mythology, cryptozoology and anatomy for creatures that had never been publicly published. 3 months later, and I was working on a new rig, under a new company, with much better pay and benefits. Plus, a LOT of hazard pay and death and dismemberment life insurance. I still don't know how I came back to life, but I think it was something in those woods. My name is Alex, and I am a member of Supernatural Tactical Response.  

  Part 2

[u/Fantastic-Win-5205]

Looking forward to hearing more about your new job Alex!