Mercy House

by Adam Cesare

  The man guided her hand down, the same trick her high school boyfriend had tried that first time. It was funny how these men and women had lost so much of their former selves but had still kept that. She gripped it, ready to scream, snap it to a right angle if she could get the leverage but instead she just kept her grip, the man moving, doing all the work. This was probably a man who’d she’d helped in the past. Had cut the crust off his toast or changed the batteries in his remote control. Now he was squirming and wet between her thumb and forefinger.

  “More!” Beatrice yelled, and the man’s arms disentangled from around Sarah, the siren call of Queen Bea turning the young girl into chopped liver. Sarah couldn’t have been more relieved.

  “More!” Beatrice said again, removing something from her mouth with a pop so she could speak clearly. Her words were amplified in the empty room, loud enough that anyone on the second floor would have heard.

  And more she got. The room filled after that, more men and a lone woman. Candice Amato was most definitely B-squad material, but at least the men still preferred her to Sarah. This preference allowed Sarah to slip through the rest of the orgy almost entirely unmolested.

  Although her nickname was Queen Bea, a more accurate analogy for the activities going on might be the mating ball of some snake breeds. The men seemed to twist around Beatrice’s form, a sweat-slick mass of limbs and organs wrapping themselves around the female of the species. Maybe that was it. Maybe the male residents, the drones, considered Sarah a different species, because as she watched, listening and squinting into the darkness, it seemed that some of the men would rather enter each other than waste their time with the human girl.

  That didn’t mean that leaving the room was any easier. Candice, with her paltry group of three or four admirers at any one time, was able to see to Sarah’s captivity. The former Mrs. Amato had set up shop by the door, both in an effort to ensnare newcomers and to spread her arms wide anytime Sarah tried to edge out of the room, blocking her progress.

  There was no real violence as the men jockeyed to enter the snake ball, only some pushing and shoving to be the next in line, to get a hand, tongue, or any other piece of herself Beatrice was willing to bestow. Toward the end of the marathon, one man was thrown from the pile and lost consciousness as his head smacked one of the handrails affixed to the walls. He fell into the endless lap pool, face-first, the water still and cool without electricity. Sarah did not flip him over, and none of his fellow residents seemed to care. His life passed with a string of bubbles and all Sarah could think as she listened to his final breath was: one down.

  Things had calmed after that, as if the imperceptible (to Sarah at least) pheromones of death had made the men quicker to come. This wasn’t mating, though, was it? Not procreation but recreation. These men were spending their rounds on the tile walls, the small of Candice’s back, mixing together in the still Jacuzzis, the chlorine smell of the room only worsening, Sarah never getting used to it.

  These women could not conceive, not this late in their lives, this long after menopause, right? Or was this transformation a new lease on youth and all that went with it? Would the intrepid few that had been allowed to finish inside the Queen be helping to bring forth a new prince or princess? And what exactly would her larva look like?

  This close to them, even in the low light, Sarah had seen and felt enough of the residents for a provisional diagnosis to come to mind: Marfan syndrome. Well, not Marfan itself, since that was a disorder you were born with, not something you caught. But whatever had caused the residents to stretch and change was definitely marfanoid in its symptoms: the elongation of the limbs, the thinning so that even overweight residents were now baring their rib cages, their skin slackening. Sarah used to look at pictures in her medical books of children afflicted with Marfan syndrome and pity the ugly little boys and girls, but now she would hold them in nothing but contempt, if she would ever be able to see her books again.

  These were the thoughts and questions with which Sarah preoccupied herself with to pass the time as she huffed sex fumes, the party around her sliding down the scale of intensity from bacchanal to slumber. Escape, something that seemed impossible before her eyes had adjusted to the gloom and her ears to the sounds of loose skin-to-skin contact, became a viable option as the men and women of the hydrotherapy room entered a deep postcoital sleep.

  The door to the hallway, to the light, remained blocked. But the door to the service hallway? Barely visible in the blackness of the deep room? The path that led to the staff locker room? To her cell phone and salvation?

  With them all dozing around her, that door was now unguarded.

  Chapter 17

  In medical school, Fredrick Dane had been known as his class’s grumpy old man. It was not a term of endearment, but rather a clever juxtaposition of his young age—he had been part of an accelerated undergraduate program and was one of the youngest students in his class—and his sour disposition.

  It’s not that he worked especially hard, no harder than the rest of them, which was quite hard. No, Dane was just no fun at class gatherings. He liked to do his drinking by himself rather than rub elbows with Boston’s many obnoxious college students, and he remained reluctant to belt out “Sweet Caroline” as the bars instituted last call.

  Fredrick didn’t see it himself.

  His attitude wasn’t that bad. In fact, he thought he had a rather well-refined sense of humor. He would call it wry, while sarcastic might have been a bit closer to the truth, if he was being honest. Not that he was feeling jolly now. A stream of blood leaked down his forearm while he did his best to elevate the wound, tetanus probably coursing through his veins as the group crouched there, discussing their next course of action. It was a good thing that he’d had enough foresight to begin medicating earlier in the evening.

  He’d kicked his oxy habit last year. Well, cut down, really. Okay, maybe not cut down. Maybe Donner had caught him fudging his script orders, writing pain meds for patients who’d never received them. Patients who maybe got just half their morphine-drip dosage and had to tough it out after that hip replacement. It was fine, the pain built character, many of the residents were overmedicated anyway. It was all part of Mercy House’s deluxe treatment: We’ll keep you so doped up you won’t even realize that nobody remembers or loves you!

  He was still able to squirrel a pill away every now and again. Theft was especially easy when a guest had made her final checkout, and then everything was up for grabs. There’d been a few times when Dane had been scooped by the handyman, that weird pervert, but turning the kid in for beating him to the punch would have made things awkward, so they now had a gentlemen’s agreement: Whoever made it to the room first had dibs.

  “What do you think?” the black girl, Nikki, said, the tone of her voice indicating to Dane that this wasn’t the first time she’d asked.

  “I’m sorry, what? I was a little preoccupied,” he said. Untrue: He’d been opening and closing his wounded hand, watching the bifurcated flesh between his fingers flap open and closed. He was probably injuring himself further in his painless stupor, zoning out at the rivulets of blood the same way a stoner might lose himself in a blacklight poster, stroking the velvet.

  “Do we go for the phone or the basement?” Paulo asked, the annoyance plain in his voice. That guy was a prick, so buddy-buddy with the residents, with the nurses, but always questioning Dane’s diagnoses and treatments, especially when it came to orthopedic cases. Was that a thorough enough physical exam, Doctor? Like the fucker’s correspondence course in sports medicine or whatever held the same weight as Dane’s PhD.

  Dane liked to think of Paulo Lima as the Biddy Bender, because that’s what his job description really should have read. Physical therapist? Please. He taught people how to use walkers, possibly the most intuitive tool ever invented.

  “Remind me again. How the fuck are you going to get her husband’s phone?” Dane liked to swear when discussing patients with Paulo. I
t gave him a boost while talking to the big man, making him feel like he didn’t have to crane his neck quite so much. It was a subtle way of saying, I’m important enough that I get to ignore Donner’s inane rules about the workplace; do you have the stones to try matching my language? Maybe one of these old gals hears you, gets offended, gets you canned?

  “We can check the dining room on the way to the stairs. We have to run the length of the building anyway,” Paulo said, his voice rising to the point that Nikki had to snake a hand through the debris around her and pat his shoulder to quiet him down. The basement was their best bet—their only bet—unless they wanted to make a rope out of bedsheets and rappel from the roof.

  The basement was not the only place to access the freight elevator, which may require a key and power to run it, and down there the windows were unbarred. Dane looked at Paulo and wondered if the big Mexican or Ecuadorian or whatever he was would be able to suck in his stomach enough to shimmy out of those skinny half-windows.

  “And why don’t we use the elevator? Isn’t it supposed to work in emergencies?” Dane asked.

  Paulo sighed and the girl picked up the slack. She was a hot little thang to have been married already. Widowed, actually. But maybe she only looked young. That was a thing, right? A trait of many caramel-colored people, that they looked young?

  “Have you heard it buzz?” she asked, then added, not waiting for a response, “Either it isn’t working or they aren’t using the elevator. If it makes its noise, if it’s on the third floor or something and it takes too long, they’ll know it’s us.”

  It took Dane a minute to decode her vague use of pronouns. They was the superpowered mammys and pappys who were running the place, us was their plucky group of survivors. Got it.

  “Wait, what day is it?” Dane asked.

  “Friday, genius! The deliveries won’t be happening again until Monday,” Paulo said too loud, with none of the control he’d first exhibited when they’d crawled under the pile of knockoff furniture. He must have anticipated Dane’s line of reasoning. If it were a delivery day, it would mean early-morning produce deliveries and trash pickup, then maybe the delivery men would realize something was wrong and call for help.

  Dane may have asked that question already. It was hard to remember; his thoughts were in a codeine dream-state, shuffling like a deck of cards, but in a magician’s hand, the cards materializing and vanishing unbidden. If this really was Friday, that meant he hadn’t slept this week. Not good.

  “From the way you’re saying it, I guess I’m outvoted and we’re checking for the phone.”

  “Yes,” Paulo said.

  Dane was happy that the man was separated by half a couch, otherwise it looked likely that the big man would slug him. Dane was not the easiest guy to get along with; his classmates really had him pegged all those years ago.

  “And if her hubby’s not in the dining room? Or if they’ve field-stripped him like they did the lunch lady?” He shuddered to think of the attack he’d seen, the woman’s screaming head dipped down into the scalding water of the steam tray, held under until she was dead, but the witches behind her not waiting for that before they’d begun to peel the flesh from her back in long strips. They’d been so into it, they didn’t see him inching toward the door, edging into the hallway, and running for cover to the offices.

  Dane’s words had hurt Nikki, and he felt a pang of remorse, an almost alien emotion for Mercy House’s only full-time physician. The rest of the doctors that families were told about during tours were just consultants, specialists with their own practices, or hospital workers who took Mercy House jobs to supplement their paychecks. Fredrick Dane was the swingingest dick on campus and it was a mode that he never switched off, because he had gotten so used to it that he couldn’t.

  “Look, I’m sorry. Just one more time, what’s the plan again after we check for the phone and don’t find it?” He didn’t mention the distinct possibility that the dining room was still in use, that they wouldn’t risk opening the door if they heard movement on the other side. Which would be a best-case scenario because it meant that they wouldn’t be spotted; if they did open the door and wind up attacked, it was every man for himself, and he was headed for the basement.

  “Power walk to the basement; if we get seen then run like hell.”

  “Sounds good,” Dane said, riffling through his pockets. He knew he had some NoDoz in there, among the Vics and the Klonopin. Now he just had to find them.

  Part III

  Under New Management

  Chapter 18

  Piper knew where the three refugees were, of course. He caught snippets of movement, imagined he could smell them, the sweat caking them, but he also knew that they wouldn’t be getting out of that room. Grant and Beaumont had done a smart thing by sealing off the front door, and they’d done it on their own initiative, as if they’d still be running Mercy House had Piper never taken up the reins. Piper noted that he would have to squash any power struggles before they began. They left the waiting room: His group had more pressing matters on the agenda.

  His people needed to control the food. From what they’d seen in the cafeteria, the way the other residents had gorged themselves on the prepared food, wasting just as much as they managed to get into their mouths, most of the residents were not forward thinkers. They seemed to range from creatures of complete id to lobotomized automatons, occasionally giggling at some act of violence perpetrated by one of their friends, but otherwise benign.

  Ready to confront them in the basement stairwell, Piper was saluted by Grant and Beaumont. Grant’s salute had maybe started as a joke, a mockery of their former life, but Beaumont’s was delivered earnestly enough that all three of them seemed to come to an understanding, no words needed. Which was good, because Piper wasn’t sure how much they’d be able to comprehend, how much he’d be able to articulate, even though they’d placed him in charge.

  Walking away from the anteroom, they followed Piper back down the hallway, in perfect lockstep. This order, in his estimation, came partly from the fact that Grant and Beaumont were happy to be back on the job, their new strength just part of getting back to normal. The other part was that they needed direction, and Piper was ready to provide that.

  They entered the cafeteria, Grant and Beaumont moving a bit closer to their leader. Beaumont hoisted his shield up to block an incoming bombardment of chocolate pudding, laughter erupting in pockets around them. A bag of shit followed the pudding from the other side, less amusing to Grant, who growled toward the trickster, wiping a smudge from his cheek.

  As they approached the back of the room, toward the service door to the kitchen, Piper felt his hopes drop. The door was propped open and a resident sat in the threshold, his pajama shirt unbuttoned and a raw steak in his teeth. The blood dripped down onto his belly, which had been hollowed out by the change, although enough of the fat was still there to indicate that he’d had one. If this man had raw meat, it meant that the fridges and freezers had already been raided. Piper hoped there was something left. He kicked the reclining man in the face, knocking the back of his head against the door frame and spattering cool steak juice onto his socks. The man lost consciousness and fell over, and Grant dragged him out of the way so the three of them didn’t have to step over him to access the doorway.

  To make matters worse, they had been followed down the hallway, and a dark, misshapen shadow was sitting down at one of the cafeteria tables when Piper turned to look in its direction.

  Beaumont began to move into the service hallway, a swing door ten feet in front of them providing access to the kitchen. Piper made a sound to get his attention, then motioned for both of them to enter through the dining room and flank the kitchen while Piper continued ahead alone. They understood; Piper had only to point to the sliding partition that connected the dining room to the caf, then make a half-circle motion with his hand.

  They left and Piper took one more look behind him, scanning the entirety of the c
afeteria but only really caring about the man who’d been following them. He was still watching, and now that Piper could see him, he recognized him as the crispy critter who sat in on their vet meetings.

  If he was going to keep following, Piper didn’t have a problem with it.

  He pushed into the hallway, shield at the ready in case he startled whoever was in the kitchen, raiding his pantry.

  Without looking, Piper could feel the scarred man rising from his seat to follow.

  Whether this was a good or a bad thing, time would tell.

  The kitchen didn’t have to be a field exercise, a war game, but he was glad that it was, if only to show him the strength of his force and impress its efficiency on those inside the kitchen who survived to flee.

  There were eight men and women in the kitchen and fridge. The refrigerator was a large walk-in, the door propped open with a bag of rice.

  Piper stood watching from the swing-door window as Grant and Beaumont entered, hooting and waving their arms, scattering the raiders. The first man to fight back, a smaller resident who gripped a partially wrapped ham under one arm, was immediately struck down by Beaumont. Both the man and the ham fell to the floor, the man gripping his slashed throat, sputtering blood.

  Not to be outdone, Grant caught a man by the back of the neck and pressed his head down onto one of the stainless countertops, snapping the man’s jaw free from the rest of his skull with a flick of the wrist. His tongue hung out, his jaw elastic.

  It didn’t look like there was going to be any more resistance, so Piper entered the room and moved away from the swing door, motioning the remaining residents out. Grant and Beaumont flushed them like cattle, using the blunt ends of their spears to knock food from hands.

  Piper stepped into the fridge, the air around him still cool, which meant that the door hadn’t been open for too long. The stocks were relatively untouched beyond a few torn bags and toppled stacks of prepackaged meals.