Mercy 6 (23 page)

On screen was a 3-D gridded globe. The globe was sliced in half diagonally with a circular plane. “In a perfect universe, that would be our crush line.” Covey motioned her fingertip around the disc that sliced the Earth.

“
Our
crush line?”

“Yours. Mine.” She prodded the tablet, adjusting the brightness to the bar light. The room was beginning to crowd; patrons sought standing space, shouldered between sitters. “Different latitudes of the Earth rotate at different speeds.” She tapped the screen and the slicing disc warped slightly.

“I never knew that.”

“You could tell me things, I'm sure.”

Mendenhall wanted to tell her about Albert Cabral, how he had been struck while fashioning shadow puppets on the ER wall, had spent his limbo trying to help, had died. She sipped and pursed her wine.

“There's the Earth's magnetic field.” Covey made another tap, and the disc became wavy, a rippled slice around the globe.

“Solar wind. Current solar prominences, major and minor. Current alignment of Jovian planets. Of inner planets.” Each statement came with another tap, the rippled slice growing wavier.

“Inclination.” Tap. “Eccentricity.” Covey offered a coy peek.

“Those aren't metaphors.”

“I know.” Mendenhall pointed to the equations for orbital inclination and eccentricity. She considered the equation beneath the inner-planets calculation. She thought she saw a shortcut, motioned to it without touching. “Why can't you just—”

“The planets don't circle the sun on the same flat plane. Only in pictures and first grade classrooms. They revolve on their respective orbital planes, tilting around one another, all elliptical. No circles.

Nothing's perfect in all this. Still.” Covey looked at Mendenhall.

“Not bad for a hasher.”

“Why are you here?” asked Mendenhall.

“For the good pinot.”

“I mean out. Out here.” Mendenhall pointed to the floor, angled her wrist for emphasis. “Here?”

Covey looked over her shoulder into the crowd, beyond the crowd. The doors swung open.

“What are you thinking?” Mendenhall followed her gaze, traced her thoughts. “What do you know?”

One of her followers was silhouetted against the late-afternoon light. He was taller than the rest of the crowd, tilting his way through happy hour, his white t-shirt a wedge between dark lapels.

Mendenhall checked his flank, saw another who must've entered a few seconds earlier.

She stood. Covey gave her a pleading look, shook her head.

Mendenhall cut toward the left side of the wide doorway, decided, and drew her line. Who could razor a crowd better than she? Maybe Pao Pao. She saw that it was going to be close, the figure quicker than she had anticipated. She pushed through a pawing couple, severing them. The follower appeared to stretch himself taller, sensing Mendenhall meant business. Then something struck him low, buckled him. He was swallowed by the crowd, dipped, a splash. Mendenhall slid along the tangent, swung out.

Bar-fight calls mixed with music spilled out the doorway with her, creating a strange and better song, jumpy lyrics and melody punctuated by dark cheers, yelps, groans.

The sidewalk was almost as crowded as the bar. The late-afternoon light gave everyone a golden-haired look, varied only in brightness, lined by tall shadows, glints off high windows. She reached for a slice of lime, felt more than once for it before realizing, jostled by the crowd, that it was with her tracksuit, two changes removed.

Five pedestrians dropped, knees buckled, torso forward, then over to the right, following their dominant side. They were all right-handed. This was what she registered as they fell. They dropped in a line approaching her, parting the thick crowd, only the last two next to each other. Most of the crowd looked around, sure it was yet another flash mob.

Mendenhall at first ignored the dead and hurried to a woman who stumbled away from the middle of the fall line. People shouted.

Phones came out. Some covered their mouths with handkerchiefs, hands, or elbows. Some had masks ready. Up and down the sidewalk the mouth covering turned epidemic. Some tried to run from the fallen; some stood paralyzed with fear or disbelief. This created a pool of confusion, rougher and thicker than the ER bay.

Mendenhall was able to clutch the shirttail of the stumbling woman. Her yank broke one of the woman's heels, and she reeled closer. Here Mendenhall felt the pull of the stricken, and she tried to sidestep to the nearest body. Sirens—all types, near and far—

were going off.

The woman tried to slap Mendenhall away.

“Stay with me.”

“We need to get away,” the woman hissed, then cried.

This split response convinced Mendenhall even further.“You need to come with me.” Mendenhall tugged her toward the body, a man in a business suit with white hair. His sunglasses had stayed put. He lay in a Z pattern, with mantis arms.

She sensed helplessness all around and within, the spin-away, a crush line pulsing over the city. The crowd was gathering to help the woman get free of Mendenhall.

“I'm fine,” the woman was sobbing, mascara running, making her look younger, prettier, forlorn in a French film. Surprising Mendenhall with her angle, she pulled free. She bumped into someone, and Mendenhall gained ground and then a hold but felt herself giving up on the man in sunglasses. If Pao Pao were here it would've been easy, routine, doctor going one way, nurse keeling the other.

A swell moving through the crowd, an ambulance's arrival, and an extra shove from those wanting to run knocked the woman free of Mendenhall's grasp. She gave up on the chase, just called once more, “You need to come with me.”

Covey appeared first, cupping the woman's shoulders, soothing her with soft words Mendenhall could not hear. The ambulance nosed its way through the crowd. More people clustered by the vehicle as though it offered a shield or cure. The EMTs disembarked wearing masks and gloves and goggles.

Covey gazed at Mendenhall, held the woman softly, waited.

As soon as the woman realized that Covey was linked with Mendenhall, she shrieked and squirmed away. A hooded figure, skinny and quick, earbuds loose, seized the woman.

It was Kae. Kae Ng 23. Mendenhall was sure she was imagining him, another former patient slipping in front of her mind's eye.

But he was there. He took hold of the woman's wrist. With his free hand he drew a plastic strip from his hoodie pocket. Kevlar cuffs.

Cops used them to bring bound patients to the ER. Kae had a bundle of them in there, frayed out and shining in the low sun and ambulance lights. He expertly wrapped and locked the plastic cuff around his wrist and the woman's. Mendenhall pictured escaped convicts, movies again.

She kept moving, in mode. She flashed Covey one look, then headed for the ambulance. Covey understood. She called to the EMT nearest the ambulance doors, the one guarding the open spread and ramp. The EMTs with the gurney were confused, not knowing which body to attend.

“Please,” said Covey. She used a soft voice that drew the EMT

to her. She bent over and held her forearm. He reached for her.

Mendenhall went into the ambulance, saw the syringe she needed, took it and a swab packet, and hopped out. She hurried to Kae and his captive. Kae watched, enthralled by Mendenhall's grip and twist, the way she paralyzed the thrashing limb. She swabbed the woman's forearm, the one fastened to Kae's, and injected the Trapanal. The woman gently collapsed against Kae, caressed his face with her free hand. “Good boy,” she said.

“Don't let her go under.” Mendenhall escorted them away from the EMTs. “She shouldn't, but I only guessed the dose. So don't let her.”

She palpated his shoulder, saw him wince. She noticed that three of his knuckles were split, lines of dried blood. Covey joined them before Mendenhall could say anything to Kae, ask him anything.

What could she ask? Who are you? Why? How in hell?

Mendenhall pointed to Covey. “Can you get a cab in all this?”

“I have a car,” replied Covey. “Like normal people.”

Covey took the driver's seat, Mendenhall shotgun, with Kae and his charge in the back. Seemingly unaware of the Kevlar, the woman held Kae's hand as she stared out the window, eyes glassy, the colors of the emergency lights. Three ambulances had prodded their way into the crowd. Sirens echoed from a couple more beyond the high rises. All glass was orange, almost yellow on the highest buildings, darkening toward red in the vertical drop. Half the pedestrians moved toward the flashing lights; half hurried away, an absurd order forming.

“It's like a giant viewing,” said Covey.

“It
is
a giant viewing. People always wonder why they go look.”

Mendenhall shoved her arm. “Start the car.” She shoved again, more to stimulate herself than to prompt Covey. She had slept three hours coming up on a full day. She was ragged, quivering, ready to run, ready to nap.

“It's not kidnapping,” she said to no one in particular. “I'm taking her to the ER.” She pointed to the K-cuff. “You have something to cut that?”

He raised his arm, the woman's lifting along with it. “You need special snips. A knife won't do.”

“You have a knife?”

Kae shook his head, barely, gazed at Mendenhall. She stared back.

“You have a scalpel.”

He did not respond.

“Throw it out the window.” She nodded toward the bundle of cuffs protruding from his hoodie pocket. “Those, too.”

She glared at Covey. “And
start the car
.”

Mendenhall reached for the woman's wrist and took her pulse.

She listed the three freeways Covey needed to return to Mercy General.

Mendenhall understood Covey's trance. Three of the five bodies were on gurneys now. They were covered. The two others had been rolled and straightened into supine positions. The EMTs appeared lost above them, ears to cell phones. Mendenhall scanned the crowd for possible struck survivors, but it was an impossible task.

Too many seemed dazed, arms stiff and undirected, steps going sideways, then back, then forward, expressions of understanding—a state of mind that had to be symptomatic, perhaps delusional. The only ones who looked sane, who looked knowledgeable, were the two bodies on the ground looking grimly toward the sky.

“Between here and the ocean,” said Covey, “more have fallen.”

Exhaustion loomed. Mendenhall had slept three hours over the last thirty. Her life felt wasted, she wanted to nap in the car, she was confident she could get back into Mercy, and she knew none of these feelings made sense. She told Covey she didn't have to drive so fast. She checked the woman—her patient. The Trapanal was working. She was watching the sunset over the thinnest part of the city, where they could almost see the ocean. She was holding hands with Kae.

Kae stared at Mendenhall, let the motion of the car lull his body. The lock of hair had returned, covering one eye, the tip grazing his cheekbone. He calculated something, something about her, how many of her features were worthwhile, how many moles he could find, how anything about her came together, eyes to skin, hair to lips.

Mendenhall nodded to the cuff holding Kae to the patient.

“Where did you get those?”

“Not on your floor.” He appeared at ease, shoulders folded to the corner of the seat and window, his cuffed arm turned up and relaxed as his hand received the patient's grasp. Mendenhall imagined him gliding through the cafeteria, the kitchen, looking for anything to gain advantage. He would have moved behind the big security guys, no more than shadow and sliver. He had even thought to snitch a visitor sticker. The handwritten name read, “Karlo Singh.”

“And drugs?” she asked.

He fished around in his hoodie pockets, showed her a handful of very slim syringes, all capped and loaded. She fingered them, then lifted them from his palm. “Tell me you didn't inject those

. . . guys.”

He gave a sideways look.

She held up a blue one. “This would've been better if you'd injected yourself. Stronger, more energy, better decision-making, better fight.”

“I saw that,” he replied. “After the second guy.”

“Where is he?”

“Down a storm drain on one of those quiet streets you ran. I liked that neighborhood.”

“He's cuffed? Under the lid of a storm drain? With high-dose adrenaline?”

Kae remained still.

Covey adjusted the rearview, angled it more toward him, glanced at Mendenhall. Mendenhall double-checked the freeway and direction. She trusted no one in this car, longed for the open betrayal of the bay.

She held up an orange syringe. “This?”

“That was the last one. He went horizontal. Fast. Back on that bar floor.” Kae made a sliding motion with his free hand.

Mendenhall recalled the height of the guy, estimated his weight from the breadth of his shoulders. “A full dose?”

“Half,” said Kae. “I put the rest in his wingman.”

“Why?”

“Because no way I could take them like that. The crowd would push us together. I need lots of space to take them, move around, like. I'm a boxer, not a fighter.”

“No. I mean why are you following me?”

“Because I plan to stay alive. If I go where you go, I have a chance.”

“But you see that's not true.” Covey spoke quickly, releasing. She glanced in the rearview. “Those people back there? Five?”

“It's more than that,” he said. “Bigger than that. I saw more men heading to another part of the city.”

Mendenhall closed her eyes, yearned for the ER.

Covey angled another peek into the mirror.

“I hate laying around. She,” he nodded toward Mendenhall,

“hates waiting around. Waiting around to die. Where she goes, I go.

At least we're doing something. Stay close to death, and you live.”