THE MAN NAMED AXEL KNOX

A STREET DOWNTOWN

In Bonneville without power you are nothing, without money you're considered a limitation and without a name, you're good for nothing.

“Inject him and let's get the fuck out of here!”

“But we've got to see if it actually works, that's the rule.”

“Fuck the rules man! Do you want to go to prison?” He paused, looking at his partner waiting for a response. “That's what I thought, so inject him and let's get the fuck out of here, they don't pay us enough for this shit!”

The police sirens grew louder as it drew closer to the downtown vicinity, the place where the two accomplices and their victim currently were, as he was slowly losing his life.

“Fine,” he grumbled, crouching down to the ground, injecting a blue liquid substance into the arm of a young skinny boy that lay helplessly on the ground on the brink of death.

“Let's go!” They both skedaddled away running for their lives. The police stopped at the alleyway where Axel Knox lay on the ground as he gasped for air.

The alley on 12th Street was dark, the little light from the streetlight streamed into the alley in Little amount. Officer Monroe’s flashlight shined through the dark alley reflecting on the wet brick and overflowing dumpsters until it landed on the boy laying helplessly on the ground.

“Jesus,” he breathed.

The kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen, he was skinny, pale as paper, his arm twisted at a wrong angle against the ground. His chest rising and falling asleep he struggled to breathe, each breath he took sounding like broken glass rattling in his throat. A fresh puncture wound glistened on his arm, the surrounding skin stained with an unnatural cobalt blue.

Officer Monroe dropped to one knee, mud soaking through his trousers. He pressed two fingers to the boy’s neck, a tiny pulse which was fading fast. The kid’s eyes were half-open, staring at nothing.

“Hey, can you hear me?” Monroe leaned closer. The boy’s lips moved, but no sound came out. “Stay with me. An ambulance is on the way.”

He thumbed his radio again, voice steadier than he felt. “Dispatch, confirm ETA on that bus. The victim's crashing.”

“Three minutes, 12th and Rivertown.”

Three minutes. Monroe looked at the boy…..Axel Knox, the witness had said, though he didn’t know how they’d gotten the name. Axel Knox. He repeated it under his breath, like a prayer. Axel. Stay, Axel. He took off his own jacket, folded it, and pressed it under the kid’s head. The gesture felt ridiculous, a jacket wouldn’t stop whatever that blue poison was doing inside him but doing anything to make him feel comfortable was the least that he could do.

The boy stopped breathing.

Monroe’s hand froze on his chest. No rise, no fall. Just the terrible stillness. “Come on,” Monroe muttered, shaking his shoulder gently, then harder. “Come on.”

The ambulance screamed into the alley entrance, red and white light flashing all over the scene. Two paramedics jumped out before the wheels stopped rolling—a woman with gray hair and a man so young he could’ve been in high school last year.

“What do we have?” the woman barked, already kneeling, ripping open the boy’s shirt.

“Male, maybe fifteen or sixteen. Unresponsive. Possible drug overdose…..blue residue at injection site,” Monroe said, backing away to give them room. “He stopped breathing about forty seconds ago.”

The young paramedic slapped a pulse ox on the boy’s finger. It read nothing. No waveform. “He’s in PEA. Let’s move him….now.”

They loaded Axel onto the stretcher, Monroe watched as they strapped him down, the boy’s head lolling to the side, mouth slightly open, eyes empty as two drowned coins. The gray-haired paramedic climbed into the back and started compressions before the doors even shut. One and two and three and four……

The sirens of the ambulance wailed back to life. The ambulance tore out of the alley, fishtailing slightly on the wet road before gaining traction and screaming toward the hospital.

“I’ve got no pulse,” the young paramedic said, though they both already knew. He cut open Axel’s shirt the rest of the way, slapping defibrillator pads onto a chest that was too still, too pale. The boy’s ribs cracked under the gray-haired woman’s palms—a sound it was like stepping on frozen branches. She didn’t flinch.

“Charging. Clear.”

The body jolted. The monitor beeped once, it was a flat, meaningless line….then went back to nothing.

“Again. Clear.”

Another jolt. The boy arched off the stretcher, then fell back. The monitor showed the same lifeless track.

“Epi,” the woman said. The young paramedic drew up a syringe, found a vein in the crook of Axel’s arm, it was the same arm, the same spot where the blue liquid had entered. He pushed the medication. They both waited. Five seconds. Ten.

There was nothing other than silence and the loud siren.

“He’s gone,” the young one said quietly. His voice cracked on the last word. He looked at his partner, looking for permission to stop.

The gray-haired woman shook her head. “One more round. Push another epi. And bag him harder….. I don’t care if you rupture a lung. If he’s dead, then he won’t feel it.”

They both worked together, through the compressions, ventilation and administration of drugs.

The monitor still remained flat despite their efforts.

“Time of death…..” the woman began.

And in that moment the boy’s back arched.

He didn't wake up from the use of the defilibrator, it was like something had woken up from deep inside him. His mouth snapped wide open and he dragged in a breath, it wasn't a gentle rise of waking, but a violent, full-body gasp, as if he was drowning and had just broken through the surface. His eyes flew wide, wild and unseeing, and for one horrible moment they glowed not with reflection, but from within, a bright cobalt blue across his irises before fading.

The monitor beeped, followed by more series of beeping, there was a pulse, irregular, but it's there.

“He’s back!” the young paramedic yelled, taking off the blood pressure cuff. “He’s got a pulse, weak, but it’s there!”

The gray-haired woman stared at Axel Knox’s face. At his eyes, that were already closing again, gradually slipping into unconsciousness… but still alive. Breathing. The blue stain around the injection site had spread, fine tendrils crawling up his arm like veins of lightning frozen just beneath the skin.

She reached for the radio to call ahead to the ER.

“Tell them we’re coming in hot,” she said. “And tell them to have the toxicology team ready. Something weird is happening to this kid.”

Behind her, Axel Knox gasped again…. a much more smaller breath this time, quieter, almost human. The first breath of whatever he was about to become.