Mercy (The Last Army Book 1) (5 page)

We marched at a glacial speed through the thick, swirling dust cloud kicked up by a warm gale howling through the streets. The faint red light from the darkened sun barely pierced the hazy veil, so we couldn’t even see the ground. Every step we took felt like wading through a shallow, murky pond.

The dust in the air was so thick, a block away from the hospital, that breathing became difficult. Some of the boys took off their shirts and wrapped them around their faces, but our clothes were so impregnated with grime and sweat that I wondered if it was any improvement.

I clasped Karla’s hand as we navigated the rows of abandoned cars along the street. A couple of hands kept hold of my shoulders, those walking behind me obviously fearful of getting separated and ending up stranded in the reddish haze. I could barely make out the blurry silhouettes of the guys in front of me. I didn’t let my apprehension slow me down, though—not when we were so close to our objective.

“Hey, what the hell?” a boy right behind me asked.

Without stopping, I turned my head back to see the reason for his surprise. He held a broken piece of smooth white plastic. At first I thought it was some kind of toy, since it had a small panel with an assortment of buttons, but pretty soon I figured out it was part of a bed railing... a hospital bed.

Karla had her eyes fixed on the road, still oblivious to our classmate’s discovery. I kept my mouth shut and quickened my pace, driven by the awful realization weighing down my gut, swallowing mouthfuls of dust as my tense breathing turned into gasping. I feared what I’d find at the end of the block, but the hope that I was mistaken pushed me toward the hospital.

“Slow down, Becca. I can barely see,” Karla said, her feet drumming on the pavement as she struggled to keep up. I almost lost my grip on her hand as thick beads of cold perspiration drenched my skin, but I managed to hang onto her as I dragged her along the street.

“Miss Stirling, come back here right now!” Mr. Jenkins yelled when I rushed past him. “I thought I made it clear we have to stick together!”

I ignored him, my desire to put my fears to rest much stronger than his furious commands. The teacher cursed at the dust storm and hurried after me. He wouldn’t chase after me for long, though, as a solid ring of students and teachers blocked the end of the street.

The students held onto each other, weeping and cursing. Some sat down on the broken road, staring into nothing as tears streamed down their faces. The teachers tried to calm them down but couldn’t even contain their own emotions, their words of reassurance spoken with teary grimaces on their faces. I froze in place at the outskirts of the crowd. Our situation was clear enough without having to see the hospital’s ruins.

Not Karla, though. She escaped my grip and shoved her way through our dejected schoolmates. I chased after her. She made the sign of the cross with a trembling hand, calling upon the Virgin Mary with increasing desperation the closer we got to the hospital.

“Oh, God… oh, God, please, no… Dad!” she screamed, and collapsed to her knees, weeping into her hands. I knelt beside her and hugged her, unable to take my eyes off the ruins. She grasped onto my arms so tightly she buried her fingernails into my skin.

I barely felt the sting, my body numbed by the sight of the hospital's five stories of bright-red brick, spotless white walls, and large sparkling windows pancaked into an amorphous mountain of rubble. Wide plumes rose from the dark crevices of the devastated hospital and were carried away by the waning breeze.

Karla’s body turned cold and limp in my arms.

“Karla? No, Karla, please, stay with me. It’s gonna be okay. Everything’s gonna be okay.” I shook her. “I’m sure they evacuated before… before… come on, Lala!”

I frantically rubbed her arms. My eyes were clouded by tears. Her head sagged against my chest. My tears spilled onto her quivering lips. She moaned and whispered unintelligible words. She grasped my shirt and pressed her face against my chest, sobbing with complete abandon. I cradled her head and rested my lips on top of her dirty black hair.

“Dad… Daddy… please, God, no…” she said between sobs.

“He’s fine—I’m sure he’s fine,” I said, wishing I could believe it.

St. Anne’s wasn’t an old hospital. Although such a destructive earthquake was probably the last thing on its designer’s mind, I never thought it would crumble like that. If it couldn’t withstand the violence of the earthquake, then the much taller building in which my parents worked…

“They must’ve had time to evacuate. I know they did,” I said, thinking out loud. Karla nodded feebly and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands.

“Hey, I think there’s someone still alive over there!” a girl screamed. She teetered on her scuffed high heels and gripped her short plaid skirt. Karla didn’t seem to hear her and kept on crying, but Mr. Jenkins rushed up to the girl.

“Are you sure? Where?” he asked.

She pointed at a heap of crushed bricks a few yards ahead. Even from a distance, I could see the bricks jostling rhythmically, as if someone really was trying to get out from under the wreckage.

This time none of the other teachers seemed too eager to become impromptu rescuers. The buildings left standing around the hospital loomed over the ruins. I couldn’t blame them. The speed at which our school collapsed proved that there would be no time to run away if those buildings finally toppled over. Only Mr. Jenkins ran toward the brick mound. Loose bits of building material detached from the pile and rolled downhill. Once he reached the site, Mr. Jenkins pushed back the debris with his bare hands. His black hair stuck to his sweaty forehead.

“Can you hear me? Stay calm. We’re gonna get you out of there!” he yelled.

Several of the men who’d joined us in the park rushed to aid him in his rescue attempt. They tossed aside bricks and hunks of rubble, kicking up a broad cloud and raising a terrible racket as they yelled words of encouragement at the trapped survivor.

“I think I see someone in there!” one of the rescuers shouted.

A collective gasp swept through the crowd. Many of them mumbled prayers with teary eyes—Karla among them—hoping to finally get some good news after so much suffering. The rescuers redoubled their efforts to get the survivor out, kicking up even more dust. Mr. Jenkins finally seemed to have reached whoever was trapped under the rubble.

“Okay, I think I can… Jesus Christ! What—?”

He screamed. Fear and pain were tangible in that high-pitched shriek, so powerful that it sapped the warmth from my body. The men who were with him ran out of the haze, screaming, their eyes wide open with fear.

“Run! Run! Come on, get the hell out of here!” one of them managed to yell as he elbowed his way through the bewildered crowd.

Karla shrieked and grabbed my arm with an icy hand, making me turn my eyes back to the ruins. Now it was my turn to scream. Mr. Jenkins crawled away from the dust cloud, leaving behind a bright-red blood trail.

His right leg was gone.

It’d been ripped apart at the knee, and his shredded grey trousers were sodden with blood. I ran toward him, unable to just stand by as he dragged himself through the wreckage.

“No, Rebecca, don’t! Get out of here! Now!” Mr. Jenkins screamed.

I stopped right at the edge of the mountain of debris that had been the hospital, swaying on my weakened legs. I stared at Mr. Jenkins in a catatonic stupor as he desperately crawled toward me on his bloodied hands. He clenched his teeth and grunted with every inch he advanced, his eyes alight with terror.

I didn’t snap out of my trance until I heard the blood-curdling shrieks behind me. The cries that rang throughout the crowd were unlike anything I’d ever heard, the unhinged panic in them bordering on madness.

Of course, none of us had ever come face-to-face with a demon before.

Three pairs of glowing red eyes stared at me from within the fading dirt cloud. All of them belonged to the same creature.

The beast’s long black snout emerged from the dusty veil as it paced toward me on its massive paws. Grey ram-like horns curved out of its head. Its vast jaws were rimmed with long fangs, stained bright red. Strips of grey fabric were stuck between them. Saliva and blood dripped from the thick black fur around the demon’s mouth and onto Mr. Jenkins’s back. He closed his eyes and covered his head as he whimpered, accepting his fate. The creature glared at me, challenging me to rescue its helpless victim.

I slumped on the pavement and couldn’t get up, my leaden legs sprawled uselessly under me, as if I’d been hypnotized by the creature’s demonic gaze. The beast pinned Mr. Jenkins down with its vicious claws. The teacher wailed and squirmed under the demon’s weight. The monster parted its cavernous jaws and roared, the sound as loud as a freight train’s horn. Its foul breath enveloped me in the stench of putrid meat.

The demon clamped its jaws on Mr. Jenkins’s head and tore it off. I screamed as it feasted on the rest of his body.

A loud blast went off behind me. One of the monster’s eyes exploded, discharging ribbons of black blood. The demon howled, stunned. Martin dashed forward until he stood next to me, holding a gun. He kept a steady aim on the creature’s head and squeezed the trigger again and again with a deliberate calm, betrayed only by the horror in his eyes. The demon’s long fangs shattered as the bullets struck them. Three more of its eyes burst under Martin’s barrage.

The handgun’s empty magazine clinked on the pavement. The monster gathered its strength and advanced toward us with forceful but uncoordinated strides, growling as torrents of dark blood oozed from its face. I shrieked as it swiftly closed the gap between us. The beast’s two remaining eyes burned with murderous intent.

Another magazine clicked into Martin’s handgun. A torrent of blazing lead checked the demon’s advance, scattering its brains across the street. The creature collapsed on its side and swiped the air, clinging to life, but its large purple tongue soon flopped onto the pavement.

Martin slapped another magazine into the gun and trained it on the demon. A few seconds went by, and the creature remained still. Martin lowered his weapon and took a couple of long, slow breaths with his eyes closed.

“What the hell’s going on?” Martin asked himself. He brushed back his short black hair. “Are you hurt?” He looked down at me and offered to help me to my feet. I took his hand. The warmth of his touch restored some of my strength, but my legs still shook so badly I barely managed to get up. Martin approached the demon’s corpse, the gun clasped in his hands, finger on the trigger. I followed him, keeping his broad shoulders between the monster and myself.

The reek of rotten eggs rose from the dark blood pooling around the demon. Clusters of jagged holes covered its face. I saw no exit wounds. The beast must’ve measured at least ten feet from the tip of its mangled snout to the end of its lion’s tail. The fur on its stomach and behind its legs was a dark grey rather than pitch black like the rest of it. Martin crept closer to the demon, and as he stepped on its blood, the sole of his boot fizzled. He pulled it back right away. The smell of burnt rubber briefly overpowered the demon’s stench.

“Stay away from it—it’s dangerous,” he said.

“You don’t say?” I took a deep breath. “Sorry… it’s just that—”

“I know. It’s okay.” His lips briefly twitched into a smile.

“What… what is that… that thing?” Karla asked as she inched forward, tears still trailing down her cheeks.

I was surprised to find her still around. The school’s security guard trailed behind her, staring in awe at the lifeless creature. Everyone else had fled.

“Lala! Are you okay?” I asked, rushing to her.

“No,” she whispered. Although she stared me in the face, it felt as if her light-brown eyes looked right through me. I squeezed her between my arms and patted her back.

“Don’t worry, Lala. We’ll join up with the others, and then we’ll look for your dad, okay?”

Martin walked up to the security guard and handed him the gun. The guard took it as if it were a bundle of poison ivy, barely raising his hands. Martin gave him a nod and turned to me.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Rebecca. We’re practically out of the city. Our best bet would be to push on eastward, head for some open ground.”

Karla stiffened. She pushed me out of the way and marched up to Martin. “No, we’ve got to search for survivors around here and then find the others.”

“We should get out of here—right now,” Martin said.

Karla mouthed a response, but swung her head toward me. “Becca?”

Martin sighed and looked at me as well, as if waiting for me to talk some sense into my friend.

I wanted to help Karla look for her dad. I definitely could relate to her situation, seeing how I didn’t know if my parents were even still alive. But a glance at the gory puddle where Mr. Jenkins had been torn to pieces made up my mind for me.

“I don’t know, Karla. I guess Martin’s right.”

Karla bit her lip and looked back at the hospital ruins. She wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered, crying.

“Don’t be like that, Lala. I mean, there might be more of those monsters lurking arou—”

As if on cue, a deep growl echoed throughout the ravaged streets, settling the argument for good.

“Oh, Jesus,” the security guard said and raised his gun. A chorus of roars, howls, and screeches answered the monster’s growl. Dozens of red eyes blazed from within the shadows of the wrecked buildings surrounding us, their demonic glares fixed on the slain monster at our feet.