Mercy House

by Adam Cesare

  His large hands tightened around her shoulders, some of his fingers feeling stronger than others, presumably less nerve damage in the ones that could squeeze. As the tips closed down on her skin she could feel that all of them were baby-smooth, like freshly blown glass, without calluses and imperfections. She pulled the knife around, catching his cheek and yanking his whole body to one side, off her. He moved with the blade, still aware enough of his surroundings to know that the inside of his mouth had not been fire-hardened like his neck.

  Spinning the blade, she heard the serrated edge dance across the enamel of his teeth. It stuck briefly to his tongue before he pulled it out of the way.

  His hands tried to readjust their grip so he could get the knife out off his mouth, but it was too late—she had her legs wrapped around him now, and used his momentum to point the blade up through the roof of his mouth and into his brain.

  Even though it should have been, that wasn’t the end of it. He kept holding on, his death spasms bruising her upper arms. His feet kicked against the steel legs of the table in the middle of the room, the two bodies atop it shaking, threatening to fall down to the floor. What had begun as an exercise in stealth had turned into anything but, and she hoped the noise would not attract any company.

  Part of him was still alive, his muscles tensed like he was electrified, a phenomenon she recognized. Freeing one arm, Harriet used the knife to saw halfway through the webbing of his thumb and forefinger to extricate herself completely from his grip.

  She stood and listened to the room around her, silent between the man’s gurgles.

  There were footsteps in the dining room. She would either need to hide or open the submarine door to enact her revenge now, likely immolating herself in a blaze of glory once the army men had seen what she’d done. Her hand on the door to the refrigerator that the man had been guarding, she paused and considered herself in the reflection. The door was polished enough to see her general outline, but the details were soft enough that she didn’t have to see herself as she was now, but as she had been.

  Harriet Laurel was that hard-bitten woman in the neighborhood who had been widowed by a construction accident too young; the rest of her life had gone no easier for her.

  She’d scrapped with bill collectors with a baby at her breast and another clinging to her knee. She’d worked two jobs, clocking out from a warehouse in North Philly with just enough time to catch a bus down to wait tables in Fairmont. And what did she get? Her girl skipping town for LA, never heard from again, and the other child going into the same job that had killed his pop. And then marrying her, not only a dark girl but a professional one whose job had put a knot in her tubes and made her averse to children.

  And then did Harriet fold when it looked like the end of the Laurel name was on the horizon? No. Did she stop standing up straight? Never.

  So would she give it all up now to skin that bitch?

  Harriet backed away from her reflection, the footsteps almost at the door to the kitchen. As quietly as she could, making sure her socks weren’t leaving footprints, she climbed inside one of the cabinets and closed the door behind her. In the dark, she slowed her breath, listened, and waited.

  Chapter 38

  Two scenarios presented themselves to Sarah Campbell as the food and drink hit her stomach and made the connections in her brain work a bit better.

  In the first scenario, what Sarah couldn’t help but feel was the fairy-tale ending: Their captors left them alone. Nikki, Paulo, and she would be allowed to eat and sleep all they liked, with a guard occasionally checking in on them, the leader of these monsters content to keep them as pets, turning out to be a benevolent overlord.

  In this story that she told herself, they were allowed to live for however many days it would take for rescue to arrive or the virus to wear off or whatever other serendipitous means of emancipation the universe wanted to bestow. Even if it took weeks, they had enough food to last that long.

  In the epilogue to this story, Nikki and Sarah might even stay in touch after the ordeal. Sarah would have learned a valuable lesson not to work so hard, not to always follow the letter of the law and to value other traits above her own professionalism.

  That was all fine, but it was a fantasy.

  Closer to the truth, a darker scene played itself out. While Nikki sought to arm herself, Sarah wanted to warn her that she knew from firsthand experience that final stands did not work as planned when these things were involved.

  Instead as Nikki stroked Paulo’s forehead, Sarah’s eyes glided up to the box of d-CON over her shoulder. The most humane course of action, at this point, would be the relatively bloodless death that came with poisoning.

  She saw herself volunteering to take the first guard shift, Nikki and Paulo falling asleep, and then stuffing the rest of their Nutri-Grain bars with rat poison. It might not work, there might be other variables, but she would at least be able to scarf hers down, ensuring her death before the other two awoke.

  Whatever the men out there were keeping them alive for, it couldn’t be good.

  There were other ways the rest of their lives could go, for sure, the number of possibilities stretched to infinity, but most of the ones that Sarah could think of ended in their grisly deaths.

  She decided on suicide, at least temporarily, as she listened to the dull screams and shuffling on the other side of the door.

  Nikki looked reinvigorated by the new sounds. Sarah could tell by her face that she was thinking that if there was a struggle for life and death on the other side of that door, it could mean rescue. Sarah, who’d hours ago stopped repeating her mantra of Survive whatever it takes, and replaced it with Please let it end, did not allow herself the same hope.

  “If it looks like we have an opportunity, I’m going to take it,” Nikki said, scooting her ass closer to the door, lifting up Paulo’s legs and setting them down gently on the concrete floor, waking him.

  Sarah didn’t say anything; she let Paulo do the talking.

  “What’s happening?” the man asked, his voice sleepy but strong, like he could go another few rounds with whoever had mangled his arm.

  “From the sound of it, most of them left about ten minutes ago. The one that killed Dr. Dane is still out there though, and it sounds like someone’s fighting with him. I know it’s him, I heard him crying.” Nikki stopped talking and shushed them, even though she was the one speaking.

  There was nothing out there now, not that they could hear much through the insulated metal door. There could have been a mutant dance party going on and as long as they’d turned the bass down, they wouldn’t know it.

  Reaching up, Nikki grabbed the door pull. It was a bold move, too bold for Sarah who fell over herself, stuttering, “S-t-top. You don’t know they’re gone.”

  Nikki kept her hand on the metal, the chrome of the handle getting foggy around her fingers, the condensation serving as a reminder to Sarah that, yes, she was cold, causing her to tremble.

  “You need to arm yourself. The next time this door opens it may be because they’ve figured out what they want to do to us. Or it may not be them at all,” Nikki said.

  Visions of the hydrotherapy room filled Sarah’s mind, Queen Bea shouting “More!” in her ears. The thought didn’t make her want to fight back; it made her want to shove handfuls of d-CON into her mouth and swallow it down quickly enough that nobody could make her bring it back up.

  But she had spent too much of her life following directions; more than that, she was letting Nikki’s infectious hope rekindle hers. If not her hope, then her chant: Survive.

  She turned to the pile of junk, unwrapped some of the pillowcases that Nikki hadn’t bothered with before, hadn’t known were there.

  “You want one of these?” Sarah said, and holding a skewer high, she angled it toward the lantern so that the edge of it glinted like a samurai sword. Sarah took the shorter one for herself, its lightness an advantage, considering how weak her arms felt.

  �
��How?” Nikki asked, her hand falling to her side, placing the knife sharpener on the rack behind her as she swapped it out for the skewer.

  “Luau Night. The chefs make suckling pig and we eat outside. It’s always a hit,” Sarah said.

  “Right on,” Paulo said, smiling and lifting his head from the pillow of rice.

  There, at the apex of her hope, the details of a new happy ending shifted into focus in Sarah’s mind, and then the fridge door was pulled open.

  Their three captors stepped into the room, furious, and covered in blood.

  —

  Sarah thought she was playing it cool, and maybe she was, but that didn’t mean that Nikki couldn’t read her like a book and see that Sarah was dangerously close to the edge.

  In Nikki’s profession, it would be time to call the police, or at least have the kid put under observation, have her house swept for weapons, her phone and text messages checked for anything incriminating or, in this case, suicidal.

  But Nikki didn’t have that luxury, so she would need to give the girl a pep talk the only way she knew how: giving her a problem to solve, people who were depending on her. It had started with little questions, asking for help with Paulo, a few getting-to-know-you exercises to build trust. It culminated with the girl uncovering the weapons cache, even cracking a joke about Luau Night.

  Too bad that was when the men had decided to return.

  They moved with precision. The black man who’d been guarding the fridge when they’d arrived moved to Paulo and placed a wet foot on top of his arm, not applying too much pressure, just enough to make Paulo’s legs go still and flat against the floor.

  The remaining two, the leader and the shorter one, pressed into the room, backing Sarah and Nikki into a corner.

  Nikki raised her skewer, aiming it at the big one’s heart, imagining that she could get him to run toward her and she would bend her wrist just right, like a matador going for the kill.

  Beside her, Sarah moaned and let her skewer rest against her thigh, her body language indicating such defeat that even opening her fist to drop the weapon would have been a great effort.

  “Drop it,” the leader said.

  Nikki didn’t but instead looked down at their feet. Their pant legs were soaked through with blood, different colors forming waterlines, the bottoms of their slippers the darkest. They had been wading through blood, and recently.

  Nikki yelled something that wasn’t words, the irony not lost on her that she was incapable of speech whereas the monster seemed to have no problem making himself understood. She faked a jab with her weapon. The blow went unanswered except for a gentle lean that brought the man out of harm’s way. He looked back to the black guard who then applied pressure to Paulo’s arm, stepping down.

  Paulo screamed, and even from where Nikki stood she could see the blood welling up on his bandages, his fingers fluttering, moving to the very limit of their reduced range.

  Nikki dropped her skewer. It had been nice while it lasted, all forty seconds of it.

  As soon as the dull blade hit the ground, the leader struck a free hand out and clasped Nikki’s neck, picking her up like a kitten, pale stars appearing in her vision as her consciousness blinked. He readjusted his hand, moving it to her shoulder and allowing the blood to resume flowing to her brain. She was then turned around and pushed out the door.

  In front of her was a counter space transformed into a funeral slab. Dane’s body served as a cruel reminder of the losses they’d accrued here, but the near-severed head of the man she’d killed sparked a weird sense of pride. I did that.

  Their bodies were not what the leader had been trying to show her, and he jabbed her in the lower back with the flat of his spear to force her eyes down.

  “You? Did you?” the man asked, losing some of his cool and thereby the ability to speak articulately.

  At her feet was the man who killed Dane, even more grotesque in death than he had been in life, more open gashes added to his uncountable wounds, old and new.

  She held her hands up. “No. No we didn’t!” But I’m glad he’s dead.

  There were sounds behind her, another yelp of pain from Paulo, but a reserved silence from Sarah, as if the girl were a ghost, already dead, and had made peace with the idea and would no longer whine about it.

  No, not Nikki, not ever. Stubbornness was a double-edged sword, Nikki knew that and had seen the trait cut both ways.

  No, I’m keeping the baby. I can work and finish school and raise him on my own, you just watch me.

  Or: Yes, I don’t care if he is my father, that drunk motherfucker is out of my life for good.

  Absolutes could help you up or they could bury you, and Sarah seemed like a girl who could flit between absolutes with the best of them.

  “Walk,” the man said. Nikki turned around to see Paulo and Sarah forced out of the relative comfort of the fridge. They had things so good in there.

  With his free hand, the leader smacked her on the cheek and pointed, the message was: Keep your eyes forward.

  The six of them, three and three, marched out into the cafeteria, dozens of hungry eyes turning to them. At least she had been spared the sight of Don’s crucifixion a second time, but the transformed cafeteria was not much of a reprieve.

  They didn’t stop there, though, but were paraded in front of the residents in the cafeteria in a tight triangle, the troopers growling at any observer who got too close or looked a little too hungry. They then pushed the prisoners out into the main hallway and back toward the stairwell. They were making a circuit, being shown around to the men and women of Mercy House. Outnumbered, they were a spectacle, a sideshow, the only living things in the building who weren’t eligible to join the AARP.

  Wherever this tour was ending, Nikki doubted there would be Devil Dogs and PediaSure at the end of the march. They weren’t going to be put back in the fridge, not after being seen by so many. There was a finality to this, cattle brought to auction. Their vitality, their youth, and their vigor were being scrutinized, exploited by these men.

  For what purpose Nikki couldn’t fathom. Until it was explained to her in the rec room.

  Chapter 39

  Like most professions that Paulo Lima had come in contact with, physical therapy had its own litany of terms and phrases. Buzzwords that got thrown around in classes, literature, and meetings.

  The one that came to mind now, as he tried to keep from blacking out from the intense pain in his arm, was scaffolding.

  Scaffolding had been the subject of one of his papers during his clinical master’s practicum and he’d gotten so sick of the word, and the fact that it kept getting flagged as incorrect by spellcheck, that he’d never used it again after school. Instead he substituted it out for phrases like achievable goals and structured sessions. It was the process by which, when setting up a regimen for a patient, a therapist could build observable benchmarks and support systems into the program so that it could be chunked into blocks to seem less daunting for the patient than the final projected outcome.

  A patient can’t walk across the room unaided? Then focus on getting them to do it with a walker. Can’t do that? Then pare it back to just five steps with the walker. Is that still not a realistic expectation for this individual patient? Make your goal to get them standing unaided.

  You assessed strengths and weaknesses and then worked backward, sharing only reasonable goals with your patients.

  When you were confident in both yourself and your program—if you scaffolded properly—geriatrics made for rewarding work.

  Right now, Paulo’s achievable goal was staying conscious, with his long-term goal being living long enough to get the bones of his arm reset, his gashes cleaned, and get himself into a cast. Rehabilitation of his elbow, wrist, and hand was not even on the table yet; that could be its own set of scaffolding. He could worry about being able to hold a pencil later.

  It wasn’t just the pain that was making him light-headed. The dramatic shifts in lig
hting were making his temples throb and his vision go fuzzy.

  Within a span of five minutes the light around him had changed from the fluorescent blue-green of the lantern in the fridge, with its dark shadows and chrome shelving, to the red glow of the emergency lighting in the hallway, and culminated in the smoky orange fire glow of the rec room, cut through with bands of light as the clouds outside shifted over the sun.

  In the cafeteria, it had taken Paulo a moment to reconcile the tears in his eyes with his cloudy vision and realize that neither was the result of his own blood loss and fever, but instead were due to the smoke from all the controlled fires that now blazed in the open areas of Mercy House. Pots and pans became hobo flames, fed with clothes and particleboard, the residents not needing the extra warmth but apparently starting the fires for no other reason than because they looked pretty.

  There were a few instances where they would march by a flame and Paulo could swear he smelled barbecue, but he didn’t see anything so he assumed it was wishful thinking. Of course, after he thought about it some more, he kept his eyes down, just in case that was not pig that they were roasting. Would it even be considered cannibalism, if the residents were no longer human and the meat was dead staffers?

  The windows toward the back of the cafeteria had been knocked out, either to provide a vent for the smoke or to use the broken glass as weapons. He saw some residents gripping shards as they were walked to the center of the room, some of them taking the time to fashion handles out of cloth, some of them more blasé when it came to the ;of slicing open their hands.

  Instead of scrutinizing the residents they passed, Paulo watched the legs of Nikki and the man behind her, a man he’d only recently placed as Arnold Piper, a guy who didn’t, or wouldn’t, accept his help when it came to his knees, and therefore hadn’t been his patient. He looked so different now, they all did.